Idols in Disguise
With reference to the Kaaba of Mecca, it is worth noting that a temple called the Elagabalium was built on the east face of the Palatine Hill in Rome to house the holy stone of the Emesa temple, a black conical meteorite. Formerly the black stone was located at the Elagabalium of Emesa in what is now known as Syria and the Great Mosque of Homs in Syria now stands on the site formerly occupied by the temple.
Elagabal was the name of the Arab sun god but he had no human statue or representation, instead people worshipped him as a black, conical meteoric stone (a baetyl) that featured rough, round markings, likened by some writers to the meteorite which was placed and worshipped in the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus Turkey. In ancient Canaanite worship, deities were heavily associated with and represented by sacred standing stones, rather than carved human idols, these unhewn, sacred stones were treated as the literal or symbolic dwelling places of the gods within a temple's inner sanctum. Baetyl means ‘House of God’ or Beet El, similar to Bethlehem, whose originally name in the Canaanite language meant: "Temple (home) of the god Lakhmu" but the meaning changed under the Israelites to Beet Lehem, or House of Bread. Since these Baetyl stones are usually meteorites, the idea is that they are seen as the Gods coming to Earth from their home in the heavens, and the stones were literally thought to house the spirit of the god.
In Genesis 28:10–22, Jacob sleeps with his head on a stone, dreams of a ladder with angels ascending and descending, and upon waking declares the place the “house of God” and “gate of heaven.” He sets the stone up as a sacred pillar, anoints it with oil, and names the site Bethel. The Stone of Scone (pronounced “skoon”), also known as the Stone of Destiny or Lia Fáil in Gaelic, is a rectangular block of pale sandstone used for centuries in the coronation of Scottish (and later British) monarchs. There were hundreds of such sites in ancient times though the Biblical prophets later polemicise against their continued use.
Regarding the black stone of the Kaaba, one tradition states that Adam placed the Black Stone in the original Kaaba, and that the stone was originally pure white and the sins of mankind touching it turned it black. Prophetic tradition states: "Touching them both (the Black Stone and al-Rukn al-Yamani (the southwestern corner of the Kaaba which faces Yemen) is an expiation for sins." The original Kaaba of Adam was said to have been lost during the Great Flood. It is also said that Abraham later rediscovered the Black Stone at the site of Adam’s altar when it was revealed by the angel Gabriel and ordered his son Ishmael, from whom all Arabs are descended, to build a new temple, the Kaaba, into which the stone was to be embedded.
Tafsir and Hadith traditions say that the Black Stone was originally an angel that had been placed in the Garden of Eden by God to guard Adam. The angel was absent when Adam ate the forbidden fruit and was punished by being turned into the Black Stone. God granted it the power of speech and placed it at the top of a mountain before moving the mountain to Mecca. When Abraham took the Black Stone from the mountain to build the Kaaba, the mountain asked him to intercede with God so that it would not be returned to Khorasan but would stay in Mecca.
All of this is of course, mind numbingly stupid and guaranteed to halve your IQ as soon as you start even thinking it might be true. That such nonsense is still being believed by hundreds of millions of people in the 21st century is a sign of how bad affairs on Earth really are and how pernicious and effective Islamic mind-control is.
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus was a deranged teenage Roman emperor known as Elagabalus who was also the high priest of Elagabal from a prominent Syrian Arab family of royal pagan priests. Many historians consider they were Phoenician, which makes them Canaanites which fits perfectly with their religion and behaviour. Members of this family inherited various roles within the cult. He ruled the empire between 218AD and 222AD ruling from the age of 14 until his murder by the Praetorian Guard at the age of 18.
He built a temple on the Palatine Hill, elevated Elagabal above Jupiter as the chief deity of the empire, and forced elites to participate in Syrian-style rituals while wearing ‘oriental’ dress. This deeply offended traditional Roman religious and cultural sensibilities. Elagabalus also married the Vestal Virgin Aquilia Severa, breaking one of Rome’s most sacred laws (Vestals took a 30-year vow of chastity; violating it traditionally meant death by burial alive). He justified it by saying a high priest should marry a high priestess. This shocked Roman society more than almost anything else
He opened a brothel in the imperial palace, dressed like a woman, wore makeup and wigs, prostituted himself in taverns or the palace, and asked physicians to surgically create female genitalia for him. He appointed officials based on physical attractiveness or the size of their genitals rather than merit, and promoted low-born or foreigners as favourites. There were even claims of human sacrifice (selecting beautiful noble children, murdering them and then examining their entrails with magicians). All of this was considered deeply shameful for a Roman Emperor and he was ultimately murdered by the Praetorian guard.
Ancient historians like Herodian and later Byzantine texts (like the Suda) described the stone of Elagabalus as a massive, towering object—the historian Herodian writes of that stone:
This stone is worshipped as though it were sent from heaven; on it there are some small projecting pieces and markings that are pointed out, which the people would like to believe are a rough picture of the sun, because this is how they see them.[i]
Egabalus like Mohammed had multiple marriages, but apparently preferred men and preferred to be the ‘passive’ partner. After the murder of Egabalus, Severus Alexander quickly reversed the religious changes and the stone was sent back to its original temple in Emesa. The stone remained in Emesa and the local cult continued for some decades (it appears on coins of the mid-3rd-century). After that, it disappears from the historical record and it is now lost.
Although Muslims claim they do not imbue the Black Stone with divine or supernatural qualities, and are merely continuing a historical tradition which Mohammed was part of, I personally consider this more of the double-dealing and wilful self-deception Islam is replete with. The Muslims also revere yet another, third stone, enshrined in the Dome of the Rock building on top of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The building was constructed by the Umayyad caliph ʿAbd al-Malik, and completed around 691–692 AD to enclose and honour this rock, which sits at its centre.
Muslims revere it as the spot from which the Prophet Mohammad ascended to heaven during the Night Journey. However, it is much more likely that this is just a rebadging of Jewish tradition where it is identified as the Foundation Stone, the site associated with the creation of the world, the Holy of Holies of the ancient Jerusalem Temple, and the binding of Isaac.
A portion of the rock remains exposed and is visible inside the shrine, protected by a railing. What is seen is natural bedrock with man-made carvings forming the top of Mount Moriah which probably formed part of the Herodian Temple, below which is a cave known as the Well of Souls. It is believed that the Ark of the Covenant was situated here within the Holy of Holies of the Herodian Temple.
The Sunni Muslims consider the first caliphates, the Rashidun or ‘Rightly Guided Caliphs’ as the Golden Age of Islam, however the Shia Muslims only consider the fourth and final caliph, Ali, to be a legitimate caliph and reject the first three and heap curses on their memory. Ali ibn Abi Talib (d. 661), cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad; first Imam for the Shia and for Sunnis, the fourth Rashidun Caliph.
The first Sunni caliph was Abu Bakr, close companion and father-in-law of Mohammed, the 50-year-old Mohammed having married his 6-year-old daughter Aisha and consummated the relationship at 9. Abu Bakr to his merit tried to dissuade Mohammed but his ardour for a 6-year-old, grooming her until she was 9, was not to be quelled. Supporters of Ali (and future Shia) believe that only people from Mohammad's family qualify as rulers since Ali was Mohammed’s cousin and Mohammed allowed Ali to marry his daughter Fatima thus making Ali the cousin and son-in-law of the Islamic prophet. Abu Bakr’s reign as supreme caliph and successor to Mohammed lasted just 2 years and 77 days before he apparently died of natural causes. He was the only one of the four ‘rightly guided’ caliphs to die of natural causes. It is Abu Bakr, who after the death of Mohammed, compiled the Quran.
As to what compiling might mean in this instance; whether the story of the delivery of the Quran is true, or else possibly, as some researches such as Dr Jay Smith indicate, it was largely fabricated by Abu Bakr: filling the narrative with gnostic and silly stories about Jesus creating and giving life to stone birds, and also, more interestingly, revealing more perhaps of Islam’s true origins - recurring elements of Jewish midrash.
[i] Herodian, History of the Empire, trans. C. R. Whittaker, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970), 5.3.5.
