The Forbidden History Of The Fallen Ones

It is a pleasure to have Andrew Collins back with us on to discuss one of his more ancient books. A gem of information on the angels and the fallen ones. We have delved into these topics heavily on my radio show The Church of Mabus many times in the past. But Andrew has a unique flare of knowledge about him not found anywhere else that is unique. When it comes to wisdom regarding these topics and he especially makes these interviews more graceful and enchanting due to his knowledge. I found this interview to be full of wisdom and answered many of my questions about humanity's past and the strange past of our planet Earth regarding these universal forces. Presenting.

1. What was your sole purpose in bringing forth your book 'From the Ashes of Angels: The Forbidden Legacy of a Fallen Race' message wise?

Andrew Collins: From the Ashes of Angels (published in 1996) looked at the origins of angels. I proposed that they are echoes of an age when strange mythical beings, quite human in nature, not only walked the earth, but also helped catalyze the genesis of civilization. I outlined my belief that the angels of ancient Jewish and early Christian literature were in fact memories of a shamanic elite of immense sophistication and power that inspired the Neolithic revolution, the sudden shift from hunter-gatherer to settled pastoralist and farmer shortly after the end of the last Ice Age, sometime around 9500 BC. These faceless individuals were, I wrote, the inspiration for the so-called Watchers (from the Hebrew ir, “to watch”) of the book of Enoch. This is a pseudepigraphical (or falsely attributed) work of immense age, the oldest fragments of which have been identified among the Dead Sea Scrolls, found concealed in a remote cave overlooking the Dead Sea in 1947 and dating back to the time of Christ.

The book of Enoch recounts how the antediluvian (i.e. pre-flood) patriarch Enoch was visited in the night by two angels who took him on a tour of the seven heavens. Here, in the third heaven, he sees the terrestrial Paradise, the Garden of Righteousness (i.e. the Garden of Eden), from which emerges a single stream that splits into four branches to become the four great rivers of the earth.

2. What can you tell us about the earthly paradise of Eden being in a realm in the mountains of Kurdistan?

Andrew Collins: Both in the book of Enoch and among other non-canonical religious literature of the early Christian era there are clear indications that the Seven Heavens had some kind of terrestrial counterpart in the region of historical Armenia, modern eastern Turkey. This includes the location of the Garden of Eden where Adam and Eve lived in eternal bliss before disobeying God’s commands by eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and realising that they were naked. As a result of this transgression, the First Couple were cast out of Eden to live beyond its bounds in a terrestrial realm, where they were forced to pay the price of their sins by experiencing mortal life in all of its ugly forms, a curse that would be borne by all their offspring until the Day of Judgment.

That historical Armenia was the site of the Garden of Eden was a conclusion reached by some Bible scholars as early as the seventeenth century, when the English poet and visionary John Milton popularised the subject in his classic work Paradise Lost. Thereafter maps of the ancient world would often show the terrestrial Paradise as located somewhere in the region of Lake Van, Turkey’s largest inland sea. One legend even spoke of the Garden of Eden lying at the bottom of Lake Van, where it had lain since the time of the Great Flood.

According to the book of Genesis a single stream that took its rise in the Garden of Eden formed four mighty rivers of the ancient world. Two of these rivers are easily identifiable. They are the Tigris and Euphrates, which both rise in the vicinity of Lake Van and flow through much of eastern Turkey and northern Syria before entering what is today Iraq. Here they become like parallel arteries, irrigating the surrounding valleys to create a fertile landscape that has a history stretching back several thousand years. On the banks of these rivers rose some of the greatest civilizations of the ancient world. Sumer, Akkad, Babylon and Assyria all flourished on the Tigris and Euphrates, their entangled mythologies undoubtedly influencing the original source material behind the construction of the book of Genesis, from the story of Adam and Eve to the Flood of Noah.

Crucial to this debate is that many of the key characters featured in the book of Genesis are connected in legend with eastern Anatolia: Adam and Eve, Job, Noah, Enoch, Abraham and even Nimrod, the creator of the Tower of Babel, are all said to have “lived” in these parts, their shrines and monuments still revered to this day.

The other two rivers of Paradise are a little more difficult to identify, although most likely they are the Araxes, or Aras, which rises in the mountains northwest of Lake Van, Turkey’s largest land-locked sea, and flows eastwards into the Caspian Sea, and the Greater Zab, which rises southeast of Lake Van and flows eventually into the Tigris. Thus all four rivers might be seen to have their source in the mountains that form an almost impenetrable barrier around Lake Van, making sense of why the inhabitants of Greater Armenia came to believe that Eden, the Terrestrial Paradise, was to be found in their country.

A Numbers of Firsts

It was in this very same region of the globe that the Neolithic revolution began. From around 9500 BC onwards for a period of 4,000 years the highlands of eastern Anatolia, along with territories a little further south on the banks of the Euphrates river in northern Syria, became the setting for some of the greatest “firsts” for human kind. It was here, for instance, that the domestication of animals, such as the pig and goat, took place. There is firm evidence also for the deliberate cultivation of wild grasses, such as einkorn and emmer wheat, in order to create domesticated cereal crops. Here too metalworking and smelting took place at a very early age, as did the creation of fired statuettes and pottery, the building of circular and rectangular structures, the erection of carved stele and standing stones, the laying of terrazzo floors, the use of mortar, the brewing of beer, and perhaps even the first use of grapes in the production of wine.

This very same epoch saw the first use of stone drills, arguably made of flint, to penetrate large pieces of semi-precious stone, such as quartz and agate, in order to make beads for ornate necklaces. At the same location that these incredible necklaces were found women (presumably) were beautifying their eyes for the first time using palettes of blue cobalt powder. The rebel Watchers of the book of Enoch were accused of teaching women how to beautify themselves, just as they were said to have introduced working with metal, another technology first for the Near East.

Human Angels

Was it possible that some memory of humanity’s sudden leap forward in evolution at the end of the last Ice Age involved the presence in the Anatolian highlands of a ruling elite remembered in terms of the Watchers of the book of Enoch, the so-called Annunaki, or building gods, of the Sumerians, and the Immortals of Iranian myth and legend? The likelihood seemed strong indeed, which is what I wrote in From the Ashes of Angels.

3. Angels, demons, and fallen angels were flesh-and-blood members of a giant race predating humanity, spoken of in the Bible as the Nephilim your book states. Please tell us more information about this.

Andrew Collins: Bible scholars are convinced that the book of Enoch, and other similar such “Enochian” literature, derive from a few brief lines in Genesis, the first book of the Old Testament. Chapter 6 speaks of how the Elohim (or “Sons of God)”, an alternative name for the Watchers, came upon the “daughters of men” and, finding them fair, laid with them to produce Nephilim, which in most forms of the Bible is translated as “giants”:

There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown (Gen. 6:4).

That these meager lines should have inspired the story of the Watchers in the book of Enoch has to me always seemed unlikely. More plausible is that it was the other way around: the few lines in the book of Genesis on the Sons of God coming upon the Daughters of Man are interpolations, i.e. later insertions, based on quite separate source material, perhaps even the now lost book of Noah, parts of which went on to form key sections on the Watchers in the book of Enoch.

After reading the story of the Watchers, I became convinced that these angelic beings were the memory of very powerful human individuals who lived during some distant age of mankind. Who they were, and where they came from, remains a mystery. Yet what we do know is that they were advanced enough to give us the rudiments of civilization, remembered in the manner in which the Watchers revealed to mortal kind the forbidden arts and sciences of heaven. What is more, their sexual liaisons with the “daughters of men” expressed their human failings, as well as their ability to co-create in order to produce flesh and blood offspring, which they seemed ably able to do.

4. When it comes to these beings falling what do we know knowledge wise as to why God aka the Creator particularly expelled them? Is it the Michael casting Satan down to Earth story? Or are there other stories from ancient cultures telling us what happened?

Andrew Collins: It is whilst in the midst of the angels’ heavenly abode that Enoch is shown a group of incarcerated Watchers, described as the “rebels”. On asking what crime they have committed, the patriarch is told that 200 of their number, led by one named Shemyaza, had gone against the laws of heaven and descended among mortal kind where they had taken wives for themselves. As a result, these women had given birth to giant offspring called Nephilim (a Hebrew word meaning “the fallen”, or “those who have fallen”). More significantly, the rebel Watchers, who are clearly the inspiration behind the fallen angels of biblical tradition, are said to have revealed to their mortal partners forbidden knowledge, an inexcusable crime in the eyes of God.

5. What is your perspective on what other races lived on the planet before humans?

Andrew Collins: The release of From the Ashes of Angels in 1996 helped conjure a somewhat disturbing vision of human angels walking among the earliest Proto-Neolithic settlements of the Near East, instructing them in new ways of living. Yet these angels, who seemed to have very human failings, bore no wings. In Enochian literature they are described only as tall in stature, with long white hair, pale skin, ruddy complexions and mesmeric eyes that quite literally shone like the sun. In the Testament of Amram, an Enochian text found with the Dead Sea Scrolls, the visage of one Watcher is likened to that of a “viper”, suggesting a long, gaunt face of serpentine appearance.

At other times the Watchers and Nephilim are actually said to be Serpents, or sons of Serpents. Indeed, one rebel Watcher in the book of Enoch is named as the Serpent that seduced Eve. More crucially these strange beings are occasionally portrayed as birdlike, or they are said to adorn themselves in coats of feathers. These are very telling statements that belie the Watchers’ role not only as individuals with clear serpentine features, but also shamans adorned in garments of feathers, most obviously those of raptor birds and carrions, such as the vulture. Vultures, which feature heavily in the art of the earliest Proto-Neolithic communities of Anatolia, were powerful symbols of death and resurrection. It was in the guise of a vulture that these shamans might have acted as intermediaries between this world and the next, journeying into the spectral realms in order to bring back otherworldly knowledge and wisdom to the land of the living.

The Watchers bear all the hallmarks of being albinos. It is possible that they represent a strain of humanity other than homo sapien sapiens. From what branch of the tree they come from is not known, although I think it will be worth searching in the future for DNA among the discovered remains of tall, dolichocephalic (long-headed) individuals to see if this throws up any interesting or unusual patterns.

I doubt whether they have any direct links with Neanderthals, although some connection with them cannot be ruled out at this time.

Just for the record, they were not aliens.

6. So what of the good races who stayed in the Creator's grace what were they doing while evil was a crackling down here on Earth? What do we know about there role in the story of the origins of mankind. Also were they in constant conflict with these beings up until now in the modern world?

Andrew Collins: The war in heaven between Satan and the angels loyal to God is simply a later Christian confusion of the expulsion of the rebel Watchers from their heavenly abode.

That said the hybrid offspring of the Watchers, the so-called Nephilim, if they existed, would seem to have engaged in warlike activities right down to the age of Moses, if we are to believe the Old Testament. They may have come up against the heavenly Watchers, and their armies, and that this is the memory of these wars of heaven. We call them the “Nephilim wars”, and feel they took place in Armenia, Iran and Upper Mesopotamia sometime between 5000 and 3000 BC. They are echoed in some pretty amazing accounts recorded in ancient Mesopotamian and Armenian literature.

7. So biblically speaking do you think there's going to be a big apocalyptic bang with the forces of the fallen ones versus the goody goods? Do you subscribe to any sort of end of the world scenario or does any culture paint out any apocalyptic scenarios?

Andrew Collins: Any predicted end of the world scenarios are based solely on an inherent fear of what has happened before can happen again. In my new book Finding Eden I demonstrate that the story of the Watchers and their fall is intimately bound up in memories of a cataclysm that devastated the world around 10,900 BC, and out of which Gobekli Tepe came into being. Its sheer existence is a reaction to the traumatic events of a previous epoch of destruction caused by a comet impact, which I have described in detail in my books Gateway to Atlantis (2000) and Beneath the Pyramids (2009). The Norse “end of the world” scenario known as Ragnarok, or the Twilight of the Gods, was seen as both a memory of an actual catastrophe that happened in the age of the Gods, and as something that would one day happen again (and linked in Christian times with the events of the book of Revelations). Ragnarok was unquestionably based on a dim memory of the cataclysm of 10,900 BC.

We suffer the same fear of the past today some 12,900 years after the last major cataclysm.

8. Do you think there's any connection between the Nephilim and Sasquatch scenarios in our world now presently in our time? Most of the stories seem good hearted and I wonder if perhaps they have returned to the source so to speak. But of course there are stories out there of possible rogue Sasquatch. Plus with the Missing 411 David Paulides book a lot of people are trying to tie in the Sasquatch with these missing people. I am just curious to your thoughts on all this.

Andrew Collins: I don’t believe there is any connection between the story of the Watchers and Sasquatch. That is a matter of cryptozoology, which is fascinating and more connected with the subject matter of my book LightQuest, its final few chapters at least.

9. Do you think these fallen forces are still at work in our world thus the corrupt and selfish and politics and government madness and all the chaos in the world being influenced by them? Are they now currently residing in the bodies of Republicans in America? =)

Andrew Collins: Western civilization is the result of the interaction between our ancestors and the ruling elite of the Neolithic Age, whom we see today in terms of the Watchers of the book of Enoch, and the Annunaki of Sumerian mythology. It can all be seen as evil, if you like, and this was exactly what the Gnostics concluded some 1,700 years ago. The founder of the Manchaeans, a guy called Mani, actually read the book of Enoch, and was deeply influenced by its contents. It made him realize that everything in the material world was the product of the Watchers, or Satan. Humanity had to escape from it to save his soul, and was something that could only really come about through physical death. Only then would your trapped spark of life be given freedom from this living hell.

This is clearly a little extreme, but there have been people along the way who have realized that the Watchers may well have messed up the harmonious world that was originally intended for us. Yet this was not really their fault, but can be put down to the changes that occurred in the wake of the cataclysm in around 10,900 BC. This was what caused civilization, not the Watchers.

10. So what else Andrew would you like to share with us about this book that maybe we haven't touched on as you depart? Also what are you up to in the future book wise and events wise? Thanks Andrew!

Andrew Collins: Until the release of From the Ashes of Angels in 1996, fallen angels, and more specifically the Watchers and their offspring the Nephilim, had rarely been cast as anything other than divine messengers of God, or as ancient astronauts responsible for manufacturing the Adamic race. Yet as eerie-looking human beings, priest shamans adorned in coats of feathers inspiring the rise of civilization, these mythical beings were given a new lease of life. It was a concept readily adopted by a wide audience, ranging from biblical scholars to the gothic communities of this world. It inspired musical compositions, video games and fantasy literature. For example, British fantasy writer Storm Constantine’s series of books entitled the Grigori Trilogy were directly inspired by the theories presented in From the Ashes of Angels, while The Genesis Secret (2009), a bloodcurdling novel by Tom Knox, the nom-de-plume of British journalist and writer Sean Thomas, owes a great debt to the book’s profound vision of the Watchers and their homeland of Kurdistan (modern eastern Turkey).

More recently, American writer Danielle Trussoni has revitalized the idea of all-powerful, flesh and blood angels intermingling with mankind in her bestselling novel Angelology. The book, now set to be a major movie, centers around the theme that the rebel Watchers of the book of Enoch remain incarcerated within a Thracian cave. Their offspring, the Nephilim, remain at large, manipulating mankind in every manner. Opposing them are the angelologists, those who attempt to undermine the Nephilimic stranglehold on humanity.

Trussoni’s Angelology portrays the Watchers and Nephilim with beautiful wings, which in the latter’s case are strapped to their backs when out in public. Even though it was the early Church fathers who first promulgated the view that heavenly angels bore wings, there can be no doubt that this vision of the angelic race is deeply entrenched in people’s minds, and remains as sexy as any big-screen vampire or werewolf.

Showing that members of the angelic race were behind the emergence of civilization goes some way to explain both our strange fascination with these mythical beings, and why it is that we yearn so much to understand their alleged trafficking with mortal kind.

Yet if From the Ashes of Angels ably expresses these views why, you might ask, write another book on the same subject? The answer is that since its publication dramatic new discoveries have been made in the field of archaeology that add substantially to the growing belief that the Anatolian highlands was not just the most likely site of the Garden of Eden, the Terrestrial Paradise, but that it was here that the Neolithic revolution really began.

All of these new ideas stem from the knowledge that a previously unknown, 12,000-year-old temple complex, made up principally of rings of exquisitely carved stone pillars, has been unearthed in the precise area under review here—the highlands of eastern Anatolia. This breathtaking archaeological site, now known to the world as Gobekli Tepe, challenges our entire understanding about of the emergence of the Neolithic way of life in the wake of the last Ice Age.

Finding Eden is a book about who built Gobekli Tepe, why it existed and how its discovery helps confirm that the origins of everything we value in this world, from a loaf of bread to the iPad and flat screen TV, emerged from the chaos of a very frightening epoch indeed—one that had just experienced a very terrifying cataclysm of cosmic origin. It was a world of masters and servants, and quite possibly even messianic figures, who sought to convince the masses that they could help navigate them through these difficult times, where the fear of another global catastrophe was very real indeed. We go in search of that long lost world, which will eventually return us back to Eden itself, where I will take the reader to the site of the Garden itself, and reveal why the memory of its former presence lingered here for such a long time indeed.

Andrew Collins words, copyright Andrew Collins, 2012.

Andrew Collins’s website is www.andrewcollins.com

From the Ashes of Angels can be purchased from Amazon, or via Andrew at his website.

For more information on the book, go to:

http://www.andrewcollins.com/page/articles/ashes/ashespreview.html

Jeffery Pritchett is the host of The Church Of Mabus Show bringing you high strange stories from professionals in the carousel of fields surrounding the paranormal.

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