In 1952, H. C. Baldry wrote “Who Invented the Golden Age?” for the Classical Quarterly journal—a truly heavy-duty piece of scholarship, showing complete fluency in multiple languages, often without even offering any translations. You have to be a major scholar to get through this paper without the help of a translator, including the ability to read the Greek alphabet and language. Amid all this intellectual chest-thumping, Baldry gives a remarkably thorough analysis of how the idea of a Golden Age came into being.
There are many passages in ancient literature which depict an imaginary existence different from the hardships of real life—an existence blessed with Nature’s bounty, untroubled by strife or want. Naturally this happy state is always placed somewhere or sometime outside normal human experience, whether off the map in some remote quarter of the world, or in Elysium after death, or in the dim future or the distant past. Such an imaginary time of bliss in the past or the future has become known as the golden age. . . .
[We know that] (i) the picture of a happy existence remote from ordinary life . . . came from sources earlier than any extant classical literature; (ii) this traditional picture was normally known in antiquity before the Roman Empire as the age of Kronos [Time] or Saturnus; [and] (iii) gold and the use of gold had no place in the traditional picture. . . . When first mentioned in [Hesiod’s] Works and Days (42-46) it is not explained, but briefly alluded to as the state which men would now enjoy if the gods had not hidden the means of life from them. . . .1
Hesiod is believed to have lived around 800 B.C.—and this is a particularly fascinating quote. It implies that we, as humans, once lived in a state that was far better than what we experience now. Baldry’s research is implying that during the Golden Age—the age of Time—we experience a state of being that has now been “hidden from us” by the gods. Bear in mind that since this is a mythological retelling of ancient information, in this case the gods may represent nothing more than natural cycles of earth, Sun and galaxy that affect our state of being and our level of evolution.
References in later literature show an even greater variety of belief about the time and place of the happier life—a variety which cannot be traced back to Hesiod or any other single source, but suggests an old and widespread tradition handled at different times and places, and by different authors, in many different ways. . . . Further confirmation may be sought in the various parallels contained in Eastern literature, notably the Indo-Iranian myth in which Yima of the [Zoroastrian] Avesta and Yama of the [Hindu] Vedas must have had their common source—the story of a past age of happiness under a ruler who, when it ended, became lord of a Paradise inhabited by the souls of the blessed. . . . 2
The Golden Age represented a “Paradise inhabited by the souls of the blessed.” Baldry mentions a common source that we can trace all the Golden Age prophecies back to—namely the primordial “Indo-Iranian myth” which gave rise to both Zoroastrianism and Hinduism. Both religions appear to be talking about the same hero-king, the name slightly changed depending on which religion you look at. His name was Yima in Zoroastrianism and Yama in the Vedas.
Zoroastrianism
We’ve already gotten a good look at the Hindu legends of the Golden Age in Part One, but we haven’t explored Zoroastrianism at all. The Traditional Zoroastrianism Web site features an extremely comprehensive collection of research articles on the subject, and in “History of the Ancient Aryans” by Porus Homi Havewala,3 we find out more about this primordial Indo-Iranian civilization that later (probably much later) splintered off into Zoroastrianism and Hinduism:All the ancient Zoroastrian scriptures speak of an earlier homeland from where our people came, the lost “Airyane Vaejahi” or seedland of the Aryans. From this homeland, the Indo-Europeans or Aryans moved to upper India, Iran, Russia and the nations of Europe such as Greece, Italy, Germany, France, Scandinavia, England, Scotland and Ireland. . . . The “Vendidad” is one of the ancient scriptures of the Zoroastrians. . . . In the first “Fargad” or chapter, the Golden Age of the ancient Aryans is outlined with their greatest king, “Yima Kshaeta” (Yam Raj in the Indian Vedas), who banished old age and death.
Then, the ice age broke on the ancient home, and the Aryans were forced to migrate southward, to the southeast and the southwest. Mr. Bal Gangadhar Tilak, a great Brahmin (Indian Aryan) scholar of India in the last century, studied the Vedas and the Vendidad to find an ancient homeland of the Aryans. The Vedas are scriptures written by the Indo-Europeans or Aryans after they migrated to India. From the descriptions of the weather patterns mentioned in the Vedas, Tilak concluded that the ancient home must be in the Arctic regions, i.e., above present Russia. The Aryans migrated from the ancient home to Iran, and from there to India and Greece and Europe. Tilak also said that the most ancient historical scripture was the Iranian Vendidad, which actually describes the ancient homeland of the Aryans. . . .4
The great nineteenth-century Indian scholar Bal Gangadhar Tilak concluded that the Zoroastrian Vendidad was the “most ancient historical scripture” in the world. The name Zoroaster is actually a Greek pronunciation of “Zarathushtra,” so both names refer to the same man. Zarathushtra allegedly made contact with Ahura Mazda, the Zoroastrian equivalent of God—but according to the Vendidad, this was only a more recent reconnection.
Zarathushtra asked Ahura Mazda: “O Ahura Mazda, righteous Creator of the corporeal world, who was the first person to whom You taught these teachings?” Then spoke Ahura Mazda: “YIMA the splendid, who watched over his subjects, O righteous Zarathushtra. I first did teach the Aryan religion to him, prior to you.5
The author then describes the prior Golden Age in which “there be neither cold wind nor hot wind (neither extreme winter or summer), [and] there be no sickness nor death,” in which people are “undying and unwanting, and gloriously happy.” We then have a very interesting statement about time: “In the first 1,000 years of his rule, Yima the splendid enjoined righteous order on his Aryan subjects. He controlled invisible time itself, making it so much large in size so as to praise and spread the righteous law.”6 It is very interesting to speculate on what was meant by controlling “invisible time itself.” Given what we now know, this carries much more potential impact than most people may realize. Graham Hancock points out similar statements from Egyptian texts in his introduction to this book—that life is maintained by the “progress and movement of time”—and these words now sound very cutting-edge.
As the Vendidad continues, we have what appears to be a very clear description of the coming of the last major Ice Age.
That glorious age of the Aryans did not last for ever, O Zarathushtra. It was time for the evil one’s attack. I Who am Ahura Mazda spoke then to Yima Kshaeta: “O splendid Yima, toward the sacred Aryan land will rush evil as a severe fatal winter; evil will rush as thick snow flakes falling in increased depth. From the three directions will wild and ferocious animals attack, arriving from the most dreadful sites. Before this winter, any snow that fell would melt and convey the water away. Now the snow will not melt (but will form the Polar ice cap) . . . Now, there will be no footprints discernible at all on the packed sheets of hard ice that will form.”7
Hence, the ancient Aryan civilization appears to have originated in what is now the frozen wasteland of northern Russia—prior to the coming of the last great Ice Age. Given all the work of Graham Hancock and others, we can safely associate this with the time of the purported civilization of Atlantis.
Boyce and Grenet’s Pioneering Research
As soon as I read this, I wanted to know as much about the ancient prophecies inherited by Zoroaster as I could. This may be as close as we can get, in our own historical record, to the original teachings about what 2012 and the Golden Age really means. This brings us to Mary Boyce and Frantz Grenet’s epic scholarly work from 1991, A History of Zoroastrianism, Volume Three: Zoroastrianism Under Macedonian and Roman Rule.8In it, considered among scholars to be the defining standard of all research into Zoroastrianism, we find out
that some of the literary, archeological and numismatic (coin) evidence used to paint the picture of Zoroastrianism has only recently come to light. What I find interesting about this book is that the original Zoroastrian concepts about the end of the age do not have the apocalyptic quality that many other prophecies do.
Zoroaster did not espouse the idea of human beings levitating up into the heavens and disappearing.
[Zoroaster’s] future expectations were fixed upon this loved and familiar earth. It is on it, restored to its original perfection, that the kingdom of Ahura Mazda is to come; and the blessed are to live here eternally in his presence, solid flesh on solid ground. . . . It was an end of history that he foretold, not an end of the world.9
On page 382, we get more detail about how this transition into the Golden Age is expected to take place. Namely, we see a “progressive weakening” of evil thanks to the hard work of many people in exposing the truth.
Prophecies of woes and iniquities in the last age are alien to orthodox Zoroastrianism, for Zoroaster’s fundamental message was that the triumph of goodness would come when evil had been progressively weakened through the concerted efforts of the just. . . . [H]uman virtues, such as justice, faith, liberality, joyfulness, will then be increasing throughout the world, and vices such as tyranny, enmity, heresy and injustice will dwindle away. . . .10
Zoroaster “perceived the salvation of the world as dependent both on cosmic striving and on the sum of individual human choices; and these two conjoined aspects of his teachings—emphasis on individual responsibility and concern for the whole cosmos—made his doctrines strikingly relevant to the conditions and problems of the Hellenistic age.”11
Of course, the Hellenistic age inherited these teachings, as did all other religions. That’s one of the points that Boyce and Grenet make so effectively. Everything traces back to the original seed of information and insight—and it appears that Zoroaster is the farthest back in time, and therefore the closest to the original essence of it.
Very interesting context about the true nature of evil was revealed on page 443: “Zoroastrianism taught that Ahura Mazda’s rule over earth in the beginning had been deliberately brief, since he wished for the invasion of his Adversary, the Evil Spirit, so that he might defeat and annihilate him.”12 This, of course, suggests that the real purpose of the negative forces are simply to help us evolve in consciousness; but they were never intended to win—and never can win. They can only adapt to the basic nature of the Universe itself, which is loving kindness.
Fraso-Kererti
On pages 427–428, we find out that time itself is expected to change—by basically ceasing to exist as we now know it—once the Golden Age has arrived. This passage also speaks of a “Great Judgment,” which could obviously be disturbing to many people—and this may already represent how the original teachings were starting to get watered down and altered. Based on many other prophetic sources I have encountered, it appears that all this judgment really means is that we will be given a choice of whether we wish to continue reincarnating, and learning the same lessons, or move into a state where we can pass through space-time and time-space with equal effectiveness—basically in an Ascended form. If we don’t decide to take the “Great Invitation,” we’re not punished—we live our lives, pass away when it is normal and right, and continue moving through the growth opportunities that future lives in a physical body can give us.
This passage is taken out of 2 Enoch in the old Zoroastrian scriptures.
Before everything was, before all creation came to pass, the Lord established the Aion of Creation. Thereafter He created all His creation, the visible and the invisible. After all that He created man in His image. . . . Then for the sake of man, the Lord caused the Aion to come forth, and divided it into times and hours. . . . When all the creation that was created by the Lord will come to an end, and every man will go to the Great Judgment of the Lord, then the times will perish: there will not be any more years, or months or days, the hours will not be counted anymore, but the Aion will be one. And all the righteous that will escape the Great Judgment of the Lord will join the great Aion, and at the same time the Aion will join the righteous, and they will be eternal. . . . 13
This all sounds very much like a blending together of space-time and time-space—so we can function in both worlds at the same time. Boyce and Grenet give valuable context from other sources about the same thing on pages 444–445.
In another passage (I Corinthians 7:29, 31) Paul, believing that “the appointed time has grown very short,” declared that “the form of this world is passing away.” Some centuries later Augustine . . . saw this change of the world’s “form.” . . . The cosmos, too, is to pass out of time into eternity, [and] is to share, according to its capacity, in the eternity of the immutable Truth. . . . In the final consummation of all things, therefore, time will be no more; all will be eternal—God, man, the world.” This teaching, found by Augustine in Paul, has been characterized as remarkable; but it is in fact what had been taught by Zoroaster, and believed by his followers down the ages.14
On pages 365–366, we hear about how we will have a “future body” that is a “return to perfection.”
Among Zoroaster’s eschatological ideas was his teaching about the “future body,” that at the Last Day the bones of the dead will be clothed again in flesh and reanimated by the soul (which has been existing apart, in heaven, hell or limbo, according to the individual judgment passed on it at death). . . . According to him, each created thing, animate or inanimate, possesses its own indwelling force or spirit; and Ahura Mazda created these spirits first and then clothed them in material forms . . . at the end of time there will be a return to that perfection, with the blessed entering into the kingdom of Ahura Mazda in the ideal form of a just soul clad in an unblemished body, made immortal and undecaying.15
Bear in mind this is not talking about a single Messianic figure—this is saying that “the blessed” will achieve this feat. This could be many different people.
Boyce and Grenet carefully trace how the difficulties of Roman and Macedonian rule affected Zoroastrian prophecies as well—causing later writers to adopt much more of a doom-and-gloom approach, which then seeded into all other Western religions. Nonetheless, what we see in the oldest, least-disturbed accounts is of a world that is transformed—in which time as we know it has come to an end, but not in a cataclysmic fashion. Evil is exposed and dwindles away, and humanity on earth appears to have transformed into an “unblemished body, made immortal and undecaying.”
The Golden Race
Getting back to the intense, multilingual scholarship of Baldry on the Roman writings about the Golden Age, he concludes that the Roman poets mistranslated the words saecula and aetas as both meaning “age”—but in fact, saecula may mean either “race” or “age,” and aetas should be translated as “race.”
Now it all comes together. Everyone thinks the classical prophecies are talking about a Golden Age—and that’s definitely a part of it—but that’s also a mistranslation. The Zoroastrian prophecy of immortality in an ideal and unblemished body made its way into Greek thought as a Golden Race—but this was then mistranslated by the Romans into the idea of a Golden Age—without necessarily describing what would happen to us once we get there. The last word in “Novus Ordo Seclorum” is derived from saecula as well—so this directly relates to the Sibylline prophecies, giving them even greater context—as well as the Great Seal of the United States.
It is extremely important to mention that this Golden Race is not some weird and sick Hitlerian vision of a bunch of blond-haired, blue-eyed wunderkinder, or Nietzschean overmen, that everyone else must die off in order to make room for. Just like the Cayce Readings said about the “Fifth Root Race,” this Golden Race may well be everyone on earth, within a finite period of time—not just a particular nationality or skin color. As we just learned, Zoroaster called it the “Future Body.” Let’s pick up with Baldry again to learn
more about this so-called Golden Race:Gold played no part in the generally accepted picture of those whom Hesiod called the golden race. . . . These Greek authors, like Hesiod, all refer to a golden race. It is only in Latin poetry that this is sometimes replaced by a golden age. . . . Gold, far from having a place in the traditional picture, was seen as one of the causes of degeneration from that happy state. . . . It was Roman writers who made the transition from a golden race to a golden age, and from them the concept was handed down into more modern literature.16
This really blew my mind. The coming of the Age of Aquarius, surrounding the year 2012, is the repetition of a cycle that has already occurred before—a cycle in which everyone on earth apparently had mystical abilities much greater than what most of us now possess, leading them to have perpetual bounty and a life “untroubled by strife or want . . . a Paradise inhabited by the souls of the blessed.” The pursuit of gold was seen as “one of the causes of degeneration from that happy state.” Unfortunately, our current scientific models are woefully insufficient to explain how something like this could be possible—but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t actually happen.
Apotheosis in 2012
The Sibylline prophecies speak of a coming Golden Age in the Zoroastrian tradition, and clearly state that this will be a time where “the Golden One shall arise again in the whole earth”—meaning everyone who is here. Intriguingly, there are thirteen courses on the pyramid in the Great Seal of the United States, and the year 1776 is inscribed at the bottom. During the time the Spanish conquerors came to Mesoamerica, the natives were using a thirteen-katun system to count time that they called U Kahlay Katunob, which adds up to about 256 years.17 A katun is 7,200 days, or less than 20 years. The time of the founding of the United States occurred as the Maya calendar shifted to a new katun, and this may have been intentional.
The Source Field Investigations Page 45