Discovery of Hell on Earth (rituals, Torah, mission, myth)

[yuvgotmel]

Discovery of Hell on Earth:

Specifically in a little town in southern Italy called Baia.

“Many people know the story of Orpheus and Eurydice: that Orpheus descended into the Underworld in an attempt to see his wife Eurydice, who had died. In Homer’s Odyssey, Odysseus also descends into Hades and invokes the shade of the dead seer Teiresias. In the Aeneid of Vergil, Aeneas too descends into Hell, which is minutely described. What is not widely appreciated is that these episodes were based on an actual physical location.”

“Oracles of the Dead: Ancient Techniques for Predicting the Future” by Robert Temple, p. 14

Did the ancient Greeks and Romans literally go to hell? It appears so. Before the rise of Christianity, the accounts in Homer’s Odyssey and other ancient writings (such as Dante’s Inferno later on) may have been inspired by a subterranean labyrinth, complete with a man-made river, to house a well-orchestrated organization of mediums that thrived on the entrance fees of the wealthy who dared descend into hell in order to contact the dead and gain knowledge of the future.

“The most terrifying and dangerous of all ancient rituals for foretelling the future was undertaken by means of the descent into Hell. This took place at the Oracle of the Dead at Baia, in southern Italy.It was not just a poetical or mythological allegory; it actually happened, and the description of how it occurred is one of the most bizarre stories of ancient history, one that has been known by archaeologists only since 1962.

“Oracles of the Dead: Ancient Techniques for Predicting the Future” by Robert Temple, p. 4

Due to the Italian government’s already stretched funding for archaeological digs, amateur archaeologists are allowed to explore and dig with special permission. Robert Temple and National Geographic both have taken up the opportunity to do just that. The pictures here are a couple of the images available.





Researchers agree that the site at Baia is most likely the first of its’ kind, and was later mimicked by at least one other site in Greece. However, unlike the other sites, researchers of Baia, who have entered and graphed the underground maze (and surrounding areas), have found obvious and striking similarities to hell as described in Dante’s Inferno and Homer’s Odyssey and the site at Baia, which is complete with a River Styx.

“Although this extra soil raise the level of the Styx, the subsidences of the Vesuvius region had already done the same thing in the two thousand years before. But this had gone undiscovered, as no one had entered the Oracle of the Dead at Baia since the reign of the Roman Emperor Augustus when General Agrippa tried to block up the whole complex to ensure that is use again as an oracle would be prevented forever.”

“…the Romans went to great trouble to seal the entrance…”

“Oracles of the Dead: Ancient Techniques for Predicting the Future” by Robert Temple, pp. 8~9

After the rise of Christianity in Rome, the site at Baia was closed until 1962, when it was accidentally discovered and thereafter partially excavated. For decades after the first discovery, it remained mostly unexplored. In the past few years, researchers, archaeologists and film crews have been allowed to dig, film and graph the underground hell.



To read more visit http://www.robert-temple.com/

[astarath]

cool but to see Baigent's name attached is concerning as he is often chalked up to be a bit of a nut.

Any Ideas of Why the Romans went to great Lengths to seal the Enterance???

[yuvgotmel]

Originally Posted by A. Leaf

Any Ideas of Why the Romans went to great Lengths to seal the Enterance???

Yes. I'll find some quotes for you to be specific. But from what I can gather, the Romans, at the time of the rise of Christianity, wanted to shut down all previous practices that were not approved by the church, which meant that the pagan deities, mediums and so forth were targeted for persecution.

The inner sanctuary of "hell" at Baia has yet to be excavated. However, the researchers do believe that some of the mediums were buried alive intentionally. From the evidence of how the site was sealed off by the Romans, it does appear that they did their job fast and with the express purpose that it would never be reopened or accessed again.

Do they think that you might have angry souls that might be released and find a righteous body and go on a revenge mission? And is it only in the last couple of years that it has been fully opened??

[yuvgotmel]

Originally Posted by astarath

cool but to see Baigent's name attached is concerning as he is often chalked up to be a bit of a nut.

Michael Baigent served as the photographer for one of the explorations by Robert Temple. It even says so in the opening credits of the book.

[MaddLlama]

If they haven't completely excavated or investigated it yet, how can they come to a definate conclusion as to its purpose?

[yuvgotmel]

Originally Posted by A. Leaf

Any Ideas of Why the Romans went to great Lengths to seal the Enterance???

First of all, I would like to make a correction to what I previously posted. The Oracle of the Dead at Baia was NOT blocked after the rise of Christianity. In fact, it occurred well before that time. It has been a long time since I read the book that I had forgotten and was only reminded of it again last night in the chatroom on RF. So, please forgive me for that wrong information. After reading through the book again today, looking for quotes for you, I realized my mistake. I had been thinking it happened in an era a bit later. At any rate, here is what I found; and I hope it answers your question.

“The Baian Oracle cult was suppressed by the Roman admiral Marcus Agrippa during the reign of Augustus in the first century BC. He cut down the sacred groves which surrounded the area and used the trees to build ships for his fleet. He had a special hatred of the Oracle of the Dead for some reason which we do not know. He blocked up some of the passages and the Inner Sanctum, though not the long entrance tunnel. But even the limited blocking-up for which he was responsible was a gigantic undertaking.

Paget did calculations for the operation as follows: “All this filling material was carried in from the surface in baskets. Calculation shows that some 700 cubic yards of earth were required for the work. The basket [based on what we know of Roman baskets] would hold about 40-50 pounds. No fewer than 30,000 man journeys were involved in the transport of all this material. And the tunnel would not allow anyone to pass anyone else except at one point where it divided, so a man with an empty basket could not pass a man with a full basket in the tunnel but would have to wait for him to emerge before entering. Bearing this in mind, the 30,000 man-journeys cannot have been work done by gangs of men working side by side but would have had to be nearly the equivalent of a single man making 30,000 journeys of a quarter or a third of a mile dragging for half of that distance a fifty-pound load. If we allow for a ten-hour working day with no breaks at all and allot for each journey a time of fifteen minutes (which is highly optimistic in such a tunnel and assumes constant and frantic activity) this means 750 days, or over two years without a break! As Paget says, although he did not work out these further calculations, “Why did [Agrippa] not just block the entrance…? It seems certain that there was some psychological reason for doing the job the way he did.” This is Paget’s tactful way of suggesting that any admiral who would waste years of his sailors’ time blocking up an underground oracle complex had to be not only obsessed but perhaps a little insane as well. Tacitus tells us of this Marcus Agrippa that he was “a commoner but a first-rate soldier” singled out by Augustus as his personal henchman, and that later he married Augustus’s daughter Julia. Agrippa’s grandson was the notorious Emperor Nero, who was not noted for his mental stability. We know that Agrippa was capable of emotional tantrums on a grand scale: Suetonius in his Life of Augustus tells us that Agrippa was piqued that Augustus “was not behaving as warmly toward him as he should,” and that he “resigned all his offices, and went off to Mytilene in Asia Minor.” This is certainly not the behavior of a man with an even temper.”

“Oracles of the Dead: Ancient Techniques for Predicting the Future” by Robert Temple, pp. 31~32

[yuvgotmel]

Originally Posted by MaddLlama

If they haven't completely excavated or investigated it yet, how can they come to a definate conclusion as to its purpose?

Most all of it has been excavated with the exception of the Inner Sanctum. There have been SOME digs by amateur archaeologist. And National Geographic filmed there as well.

There are other sites that were built AFTER the Oracle of the Dead at Baia. Here is some information about that:

The Greek Oracle of the Dead is often called the Thesprotian Oracle, after the name of the region. It is also known as the Nekromanteion, which is simply the Greek word meaning “Oracle of the Dead.” In ancient times it was reachable by river from the sea. The name of the river, on which one can now take pleasure boat journeys, is the River Acheron. Strangely, there is a River Acheron near Baia as well, and indeed there are several underworld names common to the locales of both ancient Oracles of the Dead. It seems that the Oracle on the west coast of Italy and the one near the west coast of Greece were intended to be complementary. It is likely that one was modeled after the other, and it appears that the Greek one was a copy of the Italian one, rather than the other way around, for there is no evidence that the Nekromanteion is nearly as old as the Oracle of the Dead at Baia. As for the actual name “Baia,” it is extremely old. According to the ancient geographer Strabo, whom we have previously quoted: “They say that Baia took its name from Baius, one of the companions of Odysseus…” This ancient tradition is doubtless associated with the visit of Odysseus to the Baian Oracle which is recounted in the Odyssey.

“Oracles of the Dead: Ancient Techniques for Predicting the Future” by Robert Temple, p. 37

[yuvgotmel]

Originally Posted by A. Leaf

Do they think that you might have angry souls that might be released and find a righteous body and go on a revenge mission? And is it only in the last couple of years that it has been fully opened??

It is not fully open, at least not to my knowledge. I think persons are allowed in the tunnels at their own risks and with special permission. However, for tourists, there are two other similar sites (one in Italy and another in Greece), which I wrote about briefly in another post.