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The Kings of Athens 1556-682 B.C.

* Immediately after the war Menestheus was murdered on the Isle of Melus.

** Codrus, the last Athenian king, perished in a great war in 1069 B.C..  Though she lost her king, Athens triumphed over her foes.  To honor the fallen king, Athenians agreed that no other man in after days should have the honor of that office.  Thereafter Athenian rulers assumed the title of Archon.  Until 753 B.C. the Archons held office throughout their lifetime.  The Perpetual Archons are listed below.

The Kings of Athens 1556-682 B.C. (Continued)

*In 753 the Perpetual Archons were replaced by Dicennial Archons.  That is, each held the office for 10 years.  The seven Dicennial Archons of Athens were:

*Their rule covered a period of 70 years -- 753-683.

*In 683 B.C. “The hereditary kingship was abolished and made into an annual office (archon basileus) like the archon and polemarch.  Six thesmothetai were created to determine the customary law.  These, with the archon basileus, the polemarch, and the archon eponymous (civil archon), were known as the nine archons.  They were chosen from the nobles by the Areopagus, a council of nobles which was the greatest power in the state.  The ecclesia (assembly of all the freemen) had either gone out of use or was completely without power” (Langer’s, Encyclopedia of World History, Houghton Mifflin, 1960, p. 51).  (see also Clinton’s Fasti Hellenici, I, 182).

“Plato, son of Ariston and Perictione, was born in 428 or 427 B.C.  His family was, on both sides, one of the most distinguished of Athens.  Ariston is said to have traced his descent through Codrus to the god Poseidon; on the mother’s side, the family, which was related to Solon, goes back to Dropides, archon to the year 644 B.C.  His mother apparently married as her second husband her uncle Pyrilampes, a prominent supporter of Pericles, and Plato was probably chiefly brought up in this house.”  (Jowett, Benjamin, The Dialogues of Plato, Oxford University Press, reprinted by The University of Chicago, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1952, p. v)

The complete framework of Athenian history has been preserved correctly from Castor, the historian of Rhodes, in the Eusebian Chronicles.  Athenian history commences with the founding of the city by Cecrops in 1556 B.C., ancestor of Plato.

The Life and Times of Plato

The Great ‘Magus’ of Greece (427-347 B.C.) 

“Plato was born in Athens.  His family was one of the oldest and most distinguished in the city.  His mother, Perictione, was related to the great Athenian lawmaker Solon.  His father, Ariston, died when Plato was a child.  Perictione married her uncle, Pyrilampes, and Plato was raised in his house.  Pyrilampes had been a close friend and supporter of Pericles, the statesman who brilliantly led Athens in the mid-400’s b.c.  The word Plato was a nickname, meaning broad-shouldered [this was also one of the names of Mithras].  Plato’s real name was Aristocles [Plato is his Chaldean name—he was apparently named after the great Magus Mithras].”

“As a young man, Plato wanted to become a politician.  In 404 b.c., a group of wealthy men, including two of Plato’s relatives—cousin Critias and his uncle Charmides—established themselves as dictators in Athens.  They invited Plato to join them.  But Plato refused because he was disgusted by their cruel and unethical practices.  In 403 b.c., the Athenians deposed the dictators and established a democracy.  Plato reconsidered entering politics but was again repelled when his friend, the philosopher Socrates, was brought to trial and sentenced to death in 399 b.c.  Deeply disillusioned with political life, Plato left Athens and traveled widely for several years throughout the ancient world.”

“In 387 b.c., Plato returned to Athens and founded a school of philosophy and science that became known as the Academy.  The school stood in a grove of trees that, according to legend, was once owned by a Greek hero named Academus.   ...Except for two trips to the city of Syracuse in Sicily in the 360’s b.c., Plato lived in Athens and headed the Academy for the rest of his life.”  (Plato,World Book Encyclopedia)

An Outline of Plato’s Life

 Plato Admits Philosophers Possessed by Demons 

Plato described the unusual kind of insanity that clutched the minds of Greece’s great poet-historians and philosophers. 

In the Phaedrus Plato characterizes ‘poetic inspiration’ as the ‘state of being possessed by the Muses’—a kind of ‘madness, which, on entering a delicate and virgin soul, arouses and excites it to frenzy in odes and other kinds of poetry ...  But he that is without the Muses’ madness when he knocks at the doors of Poesy, fancying that art alone will make him a competent poet, -- he and his poetry, the poetry of sober sense, will never attain perfection, but will be eclipsed by the poetry of inspired madmen’ (245 A). 

Again, in the Laws Plato wrote that ‘whenever a poet is enthroned on the tripod of the Muse, he is not in his right mind’ (719 C). 

In Ion the Greek theory of ‘inspiration’ is most thoroughly expressed:  ‘It is not by art, but by being inspired and possessed, that all good epic poets produce their beautiful poems... just as the Corybantic revellers are not in their right mind when they are dancing, even so the melic poets are not in their right mind when they are composing their beautiful strains.  On the contrary, when they have fallen under the spell of melody and metre, they are like inspired revellers, and on becoming possessed, -- even as the Maenads are possessed and not in their right senses... the soul of the melic poets acts in like manner, as they themselves admit.... And what they say is true; for the poet...cannot compose until he becomes inspired and out of his senses, with his mind no longer in him; but, so long as he is in possession of his senses, not one of them is capable of composing, or of uttering his oracular sayings’ (533 E-534 D).”

The Magi and the Grove of Academus

What is not commonly taught in the halls of modern academia (academus was the demon of Plato and Aristotle that haunted the Grove of Academus outside Athens, Greece) is the fact that these same Chaldean/Magi were the teachers of the ancient Greek philosophers Pythagoras, Democritus, Parmenides, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle!  “No priesthood of antiquity was more famous than that of the Magi.  They were renowned as followers of Zarathushtra (Zoroaster); as the teachers of some of the greatest Greek thinkers (Pythagoras, Democritus, Plato);...”  (Ibid, p. 80)      

Notice further evidence that Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, (the three white canaanites of Greece who have had the greatest impact of all on western culture) learned their trade from the Persian Magi:

“For the Greeks Zoroaster was the archetypal magus or priest, the great Persian sage.  Plato is said to have wanted to travel to the Orient and learn from his ‘pupils’, the magi [as we shall see a little later, Plato did just that!].  There is even a tradition that Socrates had a magus for a teacher.  Many famous Greeks, including Aristotle, knew the Persian teachings, and a number of books apparently circulated throughout the Greek world under the name of Zoroaster.  The Greeks placed Zoroaster in hoary antiquity, dating him six thousand years before Plato [Zoroaster was an actual man of Persia who lived and taught during the early part of the seventh century b.c., just before the final collapse of the Assyrian Empire] , an adaptation and misunderstanding of the Zorastrian scheme of history.  Such awe for the ancient oriental sage must, of course, derive ultimately from the Persian attitude to the prophet, but this is not mythology; for that we have to look at the beliefs surrounding the life of the teacher of the Good Religion” (Hinnells, John R., Persian Mythology, The Hamlyn Publishing Group Limited, London and New York, 1973, p. 91).

Plato Develops Chaldean Philosophy of  Archetypes

The One and the Many

“NATURE (natura, Gk. phusos) was the principal object of study for most ancient philosophers.  While they did not neglect the study of man and the ways by which he knows nature, they did not, like many modern philosophers, consider the theory of knowledge the principal problem of philosophy.  More interested in the object of knowledge than in its method, they thought of man as a part of nature, not of nature as part of human experience.  Their problem was the problem of being, to know what is the most real aspect of things, what is that which truly is.  The most ancient western philosopher whose works have survived is Plato.  There were others before him, but their writings have been lost.  One of these earlier philosophers, Democritus [taught by the Magi], is said to have founded the fundamentally real nature in the invisible material atoms of which visible things are made, the visible forms being mere transient groups of atoms.  The philosophy of Plato was diametrically opposed to this materialism [materialistic philosophy is the basis of the ‘modern’ idea of evolution].  According to him, the real nature is found in the eternal ideas, which are the archetypes according to which material things are formed.  While it had long been a principle of the ancient Babylonian wisdom that terrestrial things are copies of eternal archetypes existing in heaven, Plato developed this principle in an idealistic sense, maintaining that the eternal archetypes are not the visible constellations but the intelligible ideas [Plato’s Philosophy of Forms], of which even the constellations, the most beautiful things in the visible world, are imperfect copies.  All things, which are apprehended by the senses, come into being and pass away; but those things, which are apprehended by the understanding, are eternal and therefore truly real.    In the long line of philosophers who followed Plato and developed his philosophy the most important were Aristotle and Plotinus [Plotinus was a famous Chaldean Philosopher, born 205 b.c.  He had an incredible influence on early Catholic doctrine].  Aristotle described the organon or system of logic by which nature can be apprehended rationally.  He distinguished the ten categories into which all beings can be grouped—essence, that which a substance is in itself, so as to be able to exist by itself, and the nine kinds of accidents, which are not essential to the substance of which they are predicated.  He taught that any substance has both form and matter, and that therefore an immaterial form is not more substantial than unformed matter.  His doctrine, if not contradicting Plato’s, was marked by a greater interest in the visible world of particular substances existing in time and space.  Plotinus, on the other hand, was interested rather in the pure ideas.  He taught that these exist eternally in the divine mind.  This mind is an emanation from the one true being, which is apprehended only in mystical ecstasy, and from this mind emanates the cosmic soul which animates the world.” (Burch, Early Medieval Philosophy, pp. 1-2) 

“Plato wrote in a literary form called the dialogue.  A dialogue is a conversation between two or more people.  Plato’s dialogues are actually dramas that are primarily concerned with the presentation, criticism, and conflict of philosophical ideas.  The characters in his dialogues discuss philosophical problems and often argue the opposing sides of an issue”  (Jowett, The Dialogues of Plato, p. v).

The dialogues are very similar in construction to the dialogue dramas of Baal.  Hooded Monks of Baal acted out their philosophic dramas in his temples throughout the Near East.  These monks originated the ‘philosophic garb’ used by the early Catholic Church Fathers.  Plato brought this ‘Magian/Chaldean habit’ back with him to Greece. 

The Philosophic Historicity of the One and the Many

Parmenides: Plato’s Dialogue of the Magi 

The primary source 1 of all Western doctrine concerning the mystery of the Trinity, i.e., the One and the Many, is the Parmenides dialogue of Plato.  Written in Plato’s later life, this dialogue openly introduced the Western mind to the secret mysteries of Pythagoras and Plato’s old friend, Parmenides.  As a work, it is pure demonic gibberish:

“The Parmenides presents a great difficulty to the reader.  The best Platonists differ about its meaning.  The ordinary person will be hard put to it to discover any meaning at all.  The argument runs on and on in words that appear to make sense and yet convey nothing to the mind.  Examples are on every page, as, for instance, ‘The one is also younger than itself at the time when, in becoming older, it coincides with the present.  But the present is with the one always throughout its existence.  Therefore, at all times the one both is and is becoming older and younger than itself.’ (Cornford, F.M, The Collected Dialogues of Plato: Introduction to Parmenides, Princeton University Press, 1989, p. 920).”  Cornford is one of THE authorities on Plato and is the translator of Parmenides for this collection of dialogues. 

Continuing with Cornford and his introduction to Parmenides, “The Parmenides seems to disclaim any achievement at all.  Finally, the great man says to his audience, ‘It seems that, whether there is or is not a one, both that one and the others alike are and are not, and appear and do not appear to be.’  ‘Most true,’ says Socrates, and the dialogue ends.  Whether this ‘truth’ is for or against the theory of Ideas is left undecided” (Ibid, p. 920).

1 A familiarity with Neoplatonism, the commentaries on the Categories of Aristotle, the commentary tradition concerned with the Sophist, the Parmenides, the Timaeus of Plato, with the Chaldaean Oracles and the works of Marius Victorinus is recommended for a well grounded understanding of the “Mystery of the Trinity.”

Sound familiar?  “There is one God, and that one God is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  They are distinct, but not separate....Therefore, God is everything we can conceive of and more!” (Joseph W. Tkach Sr., July 27, 1993.) 

Here is the Chaldean mystery of the One and the Many, the mystery of the Trinity, as understood and expounded by a modern magus! 

Selected quotes from Parmenides:

“All is one”, page 922

The One:

“Cannot be anywhere,” page 932

“Is both equal and unequal to itself and others,” page 941

“Is neither equal nor unequal to itself or another,” page 934

“Comes into existence and ceases to exist”, page 947                           

“Is immovable,” page 933

“Neither is one, nor is at all,” page 935

“In no sense is,” page 935

“Is both in itself and in another,” page 938

“Is both like and unlike itself and others,” page 940

“Is not like or unlike itself or another,” page 933

“Becomes older and younger than itself,” page 934                       

“Has shape,” page 938

“Has no shape,” page 932

“Does not occupy time,” page 934

“Partakes of time,” page 943

“Touches and does not touch itself and the others,” page 941

The Hypotheses of One:

“If there is a one ...that ... one has being ...  “If one is both one and many ...it is like the others...

“If the one exists ... the others exist...

Other Qualities of One:

Does not change

Partakes of existence and nonexistence:

Has inequality

May participate in many

Has motion and is at rest

Becomes and does not become unlike

Unlike the others and like itself

This description of the One sounds very much like a mystery!   Again, we should defer to Cornford:     “The Parmenides presents a great difficulty to the reader.  The best Platonists differ about its meaning.  The ordinary person will be hard put to it to discover any meaning at all.  The argument runs on and on in words that appear to make sense and yet convey nothing to the mind....”    

This then, is the ancient source of Joseph Tkach’s theology of the Trinity!

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