The Rise and Fall of the Nephilim: The Untold Story of Fallen Angels, Giants on the Earth, and Their Extraterrestrial Origins
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Goliath was the offspring remnant of the Nephilim, and he had four other brothers.
But what of the acts of the Watchers? Are they still happening today? Is mankind still being visited by the members of the Divine Council and those who left that domain thousands of years ago? And what of the Nephilim themselves?
chapter 10
Where Are They Now?
“2 Don’t forget to show hospitality to strangers, for some who have done this have entertained angels without realizing it.”
(Hebrews 13:2)
There is a pervasive question regarding the Nephilim as to whether or not they are still among us today. The answer would simply be yes, but obviously not in the same form as they interacted with humanity thousands of years ago. And though there may be a bloodline remnant of the Nephilim evident throughout history, it would be a safe bet to say that it no longer has anything to do with the original Watchers. Their influence died thousands of years ago. Unless there are more Watchers in the heavens who did not fall to the earth that day so long ago, there is little probably that their influence will ever be seen again.
But the same cannot be said for their offspring.
It is unknown whether the entire Divine Council of gods came to earth, touching down on the slopes of Mount Hermon. Nor is there any way to calculate the number of beings who may have descended and intermingled with humanity over the millenia. What we know for a certainty is that nearly every ancient culture experienced this brand of extra-terrestrial interruption on some level, bequeathing offspring that took the form of what we now deem as mythological or legendary beings—or, better, the heroes of old and men of renown. From the Tuatha de Danaan’s Elven deities, the statuesque, bright shining giants of the Celtic peoples, to the Sasquatch of the Native Americans, there have been genetic footprints left in nearly every ancient culture throughout all of recorded history.
As we have already seen, there were remnants of the Nephilim found in various passages of the Old Testament. As early as the time of Abraham, the Nephilim are mentioned as having dwelled in the region around the Dead Sea, scattered among several tribes. The footnotes of the Jerusalem Bible suggest that Moses, in the Genesis 6 passage, intended his words on the Nephilim to be an “anecdote of a superhuman race.” According to the Jerusalem Bible’s commentary, Moses does not go into great detail, nor does he make any bones about representing the Nephilim as the offspring of superhuman beings, as it was already a known entity in his day. He merely references them in order to establish, in his account of Noah’s Flood, the severity of the “wickedness” that was present on the earth prior to the meting out of God’s judgment by flood.
In Christian evangelical circles, there are those who believe these Watchers came down to “pollute” the Messianic bloodline of Jesus Christ. By interfering with human DNA, the “pure,” necessary humanity of the Messiah could thus be thwarted before it ever came to be. Along with Ancient Alienists, Chuck Missler, an evangelical Christian, also believes that the Watchers were extra-terrestrials or grey aliens1 who were, in actuality, fallen angels or demonic beings setting out to muddy the Messianic waters.
The history of the human race is synonymous with the history of a great spiritual conflict. When we view world politics today, many of us wonder why we can’t just all come to the table and settle disputes in a peaceful fashion. To some extent, it seems to me that the gods and every caste of spiritual being beneath them seem intent on not being able to do what seems so common sensed to humans. There was not a “war in Heaven”: there is an ongoing conflict that makes the stuff of earthly battles seem insignificant. And it has been taking place since before the dawn of time itself.
The Demonology Connection
It is interesting to note that so much of what we read in the biblical accounts of the first family and the subsequent books of the Law, revolve around sexuality and the encoded messages of adultery and sexual prohibition. Just pick up a Bible and read the first five books of the Old Testament, and you’ll get the picture. The subtext is rife with pictures of God’s relationship to man taking on the tone of a marriage, any deviation from which would be adulterous. And adultery, in accordance with Biblical Law, bore the punishment of death—but only for the woman, not the man. Is this a residual condemnation placed on the female because it was she who was tempted in the Garden of Eden, thereby bringing on the fall of mankind? Is it residual judgment of the women who introduced the world to the Nephilim by sleeping with the Watchers, allowing the world to be corrupted by their offspring?
Creation is sexual in nature—and if you don’t believe that, you need to get out more. Whether it was simple lust, as the Genesis passage tells us, or the seeking of elemental power over creation, the heavenly beings were drawn to the sexuality of humans. Do not try to define away the word lust as something other than it’s true intent, which is sexual in its basic, most primal etymology. Could it also be that so much of what we read in the biblical accounts of early mankind—the serpent in the Garden, the Watchers, the overtly sexually discriminating, gender-biased Mosaic Law—are so sexually underwritten in their subtexts, that they were created for the sole purpose of enforcing patriarchal rule? And was that patriarchal rule contrived out of scapegoating the female gender for all of mankind’s spiritual woes? Were the questionably misogynistic mandates laid out for the early Christian Church by the Apostle Paul simply there for the intent of controlling women in first-century patriarchal Judean society, or were they in adherence to what was—even then—the ancient notion that women needed to keep covered to prevent the temptation of angels and other spirit beings? It is clear that the Judeo-Christian scriptures contain a resounding undertone of sexual prohibition that can trace its foundations back to the role that women played in the downfall of man, and the corruption and destruction of the world by the Nephilim. Clearly, it is the sexual promiscuity of women that brought on the greatest woes of the world, and clearly the under-code of sexual prohibition is there to remind them of their follies and keep them suppressed as punishment for their gender-driven acts. The Watchers were not the only ones placed under lock and key when God imposed judgment on the world.
Make no mistake: It was the early church fathers who first said that the angels and other spirit beings were “sexless.” This is a completely fabricated, extra-biblical notion. Scripture never states that angels and demons cannot engage in sex. The highly quoted passage in Matthew 22:30 has Jesus telling his followers that “angels do not marry.” He doesn’t, however, say they are incapable of sex, and the context of his words in this passage focus on the righteous angels, not the unrighteous demons. The entire contextual point of Christ’s argument is that people will not marry in heaven; He is not particularly discussing the sexual habits of the angels.
There is something more to all of this, something deeper. Some alien conspiracy theorists contend that the Church has been silent about UFOs and abductions, and about alien hybridization, fetus thefts, and the impregnation of women by these beings. Yet, all along, the Church has spoken out as loudly as any other voice in that it has a complete doctrine built around the infiltration and interference of the demonic on humanity—and it all stems from the very first impregnation of Eve in the Garden, by the character known as the “Serpent.” It was he who fathered Cain, the first of the Nephilim. This act was repeated throughout all of antediluvial humanity until God had had enough, and there was judgment.
According to Roman Catholic Church doctrine, “the fallen” have been attempting to breed the perfect hybrid offspring of spirit and human since the time of the resurgence of humanity onto the still damp floodplains of ancient Mesopotamia. In accordance with Roman Catholic systematic theology—and in the simplist of terms—God keeps demons on a pretty short leash. They can do nothing without his consent or allowance. The account of the descent of the Watchers is not to be misconstrued as demonic attempts at breeding with human women. The Watchers, as we have seen, were not demonic, nor were they fallen angels. T
hey were the minor gods of the Divine Council who “left their first estate” and descended to their charges, the humans, to interbreed with them, and the judgment imposed on them is hinted at in Psalm 82: “They were stripped of their immortality and died like mortal men.”
From Genetic Hybrid to Demon
Although it is commonplace in Judeo-Christian circles to believe that demons are simply the angels who rebelled against God and were cast to the earth, the Book of Enoch gives us a very different alternative to that tradition:
“8 And now, the giants, who are produced from the spirits and flesh, shall be called evil spirits upon 9 the earth, and on the earth shall be their dwelling. Evil spirits have proceeded from their bodies; because they are born from men and from the holy Watchers is their beginning and primal origin; 10 they shall be evil spirits on earth, and evil spirits shall they be called. (As for the spirits of heaven, in heaven shall be their dwelling, but as for the spirits of the earth which were born upon the earth, on the earth shall be their dwelling.) 11 And the spirits of the giants afflict, oppress, destroy, attack, do battle, and work destruction on the earth, and cause trouble: they take no food, but nevertheless 12 hunger and thirst, and cause offences. And these spirits shall rise up against the children of men and against the women, because they have proceeded from them.”
(Enoch 15: 8-12)
The Enochian passage is implicit. It is the spirits of the Nephilim killed in the Great Flood that are the demonic forces dwelling on the earth today. It was here on the earth that they were born; it is here on the earth where they died. And because they were fathered by spirit beings, Enoch tells us that they will forever dwell on the earth in the form of evil spirits. The “ghosts” of the Nephilim are the demonic host who have plagued humanity through the ages. The offspring of the Watchers and human women were disruptive, corrupt, and evil in nature, and that is why the Divine sent a great flood to wipe them out. Evidently, in spirit form they are no different.
The earliest known representation of Lilith, Sumerian, circa 1950 BCE. Famous relief from the Old Babylonian period (not in the British Museum) called the “Burney relief” or “Queen of the Night relief.” The depicted figure could be an aspect of Ishtar, Mesopotamian goddess of sexual love and war. However, her bird-like feet and accompanying owls have suggested to some a connection with Lilitu (called Lilith in the Bible), though seemingly not the usual demonic Lilitu.
Photo courtesy of the British Museum, London.
The spirits of the Nephilim are the great harassers of mankind. They are the true Fallen—those who came down, those who descended, those who fell. They troubled mankind to the point of watery judgment imposed by the supreme God, and they continue, in spirit form, to commit evil against humanity. The Watchers are not fallen angels, as we have established already in this book, but their offspring, whose mix of extra-terrestrial and human DNA made them unique on the earth, have become the spiritual hounds of hell who torment the living.
And they continue wreaking havoc on the earth and in the lives of humans—even today.
Sleeping With the Enemy
In The Gilgamesh Epic, the god-man Gilgamesh’s father is listed as Lilu,2 and he is one of the earliest mentions of an incubus. The story hales from ancient Mesopotamia and is found in the Sumerian King List (2400 BCE), where it is said that Lilu seduced women in their sleep and had sex with them. At the same time, Lilitu3 (“Lilith”), a female demon, appeared to men in their erotic dreams. Both Lilu and Lilitu strove to fulfill their sexual desires and create offspring.
Regarding Lilith (Hebrew: ) herself, she is a character found in Jewish mythology, mentioned earliest in the Babylonian Talmud, documents compiled between the third and fourth centuries CE. In Jewish folklore, during the eighth to 10th centuries CE, Lilith became known as Adam’s first wife, and this mythology developed into a widely accepted view among the Jews of the Middle Ages.4 As the legend became more refined and expanded, the 13th-century writings of Rabbi Isaac ben Jacob Alfasi ha-Cohen had Lilith leaving Adam, refusing to return to Eden after she refused to become subservient to him. She later mated with archangel Samael.5 The resulting Lilith legend is still found in modern Western culture, literature, occultism, fantasy, and even horror. And she has even become a cult favorite in the spiritist-feminist community.
It is said in some traditions that Lilith, taking the form of a male, was actually the serpent in the garden who seduced Eve, and then went on to seduce Adam with grave consequence:
“And the Serpent, the Woman of Harlotry, incited and seduced Eve through the husks of Light which in itself is holiness. And the Serpent seduced Holy Eve, and enough said for him who understands. And all this ruination came about because Adam the first man coupled with Eve while she was in her menstrual impurity—this is the filth and the impure seed of the Serpent who mounted Eve before Adam mounted her. Behold, here it is before you: because of the sins of Adam the first man all the things mentioned came into being. For Evil Lilith, when she saw the greatness of his corruption, became strong in her husks, and came to Adam against his will, and became hot from him and bore him many demons and spirits and Lilin.”6
It was the offspring of Lilith by Adam that was said, in this tradition, to have become the host of demons. This is really the birth of the modern understanding of the incubus and succubus, demonic beings who sleep with humans for the purpose of satiating some innate sexual drive, and for the purpose of creating spirit offspring.
In the Christian tradition, there existed a huge debate over the veracity of demonic influence—especially when it came to discussions over the incubi and succubi. St. Augustine, a Roman philosopher and theologian who lived in the late fourth and early fifth centuries, touched on this topic in his work, The City of God. Sounding much like alien abduction believers today, Augustine said that there were too many attacks by incubi to deny their existence: “There is, too, a very general rumor, which many have verified by their own experience, or which trustworthy persons who have heard the experience of others corroborate, that sylvans and fauns, who are commonly called incubi, had often made wicked assaults upon women.”7
Eight hundred years later, Thomas Aquinas, disputing the reproductive abilities of incubi, as they were—in his account—fallen angels, therefore incapable of sexual reproduction, wrote: “Still if some are occasionally begotten from demons, it is not from the seed of such demons, nor from their assumed bodies, but from the seed of men taken for the purpose; as when the demon assumes first the form of a woman, and afterwards of a man; just as they take the seed of other things for other generating purposes.”8
According to the Malleus Maleficarum (“Witches’ Hammer”), written by Heinrich Kramer in 1486, a succubus will have sex with a human male in order to collect semen from the men she seduces. She then gives it to the incubi or male demons, who then use the semen to impregnate human females, thus explaining how demons could apparently sire children despite the traditional belief that they were incapable of reproduction. Children so begotten were known as cambions, and were supposed to be those who were born deformed, or more susceptible to supernatural influences.9 The Malleus Maleficarum does not address the obvious issue: why a human female impregnated with the semen of a human male would not produce normal, healthy human offspring, even if the mode of delivery was demonic.
Of course, it is also widely believed that the Malleus Maleficarum, written during the period of the Inquisition’s greatest power, is nothing more than a work of misongyny. It holds women as the main culprits of evil and perpetrators of witchcraft. The book also claims that women are much more susceptible to demonic influence as they are “weaker in faith than men,” and more apt to be carnal. The author also put forward the notion that most of the women accused as witches were guilty of “possessing strong personalities” and were known to defy convention by overstepping the lines of “proper female decorum.”10
Whether or not any of information on demonic activity as found within the pages of the
Malleus bears any resemblance to the truth of the matter is very hard to decipher, especially when obfuscated by the persecution and the political maneuverings of those who were in control of the masses at the time of its writing. When one steps back, outside the box, it all starts to take on the tone of so much ridiculous surmising and story-telling, and works such as the Malleus Maleficarum do little to dispel the notion that so much of this is pure fiction.
Do the demonic spirits of the Nephilim have sex with humans to continue to propagate a species of mixed-blood spirit beings? It seems that even in death, the offspring of the Watchers continue to perpetrate their raging corruption of humanity. Of course, there is very little of this that can be proven by physical evidence, so it once again it is all governed by the tone of what you choose to believe. And it all sounds so fanciful and the stuffs of dark imaginings, it is no wonder the scientific community shuns the slightest notion.
The Paranormal
There is a great and grave fascination with demons among modern paranormal hobbyists. The surge of ghost hunting and paranormal investigation throughout the last decade, spurred on by the success of pop cultural, live-action paranormal television, has fostered a rise in interest in demons and demonology, the study of evil spirits and their influence on people. However, with the rise of pop cultural influence also comes the rise in pop cultural application, and the vast majority of so-called demonologists operating today have little knowledge of what it is they claim to be, and little ability to enact on the behalf of those tormented by demonic spirits. Having an interest in the demonic is not the same as having experience with helping people who are in bondage to these beings.