Zeus, the Extraterrestrial: Part One

The well known and recognized ancient Greek character Zeus, was either as fictional as Alice in Wonderland, or a supernatural deity as described, or a terrestrial mortal or a flesh-and-blood extraterrestrial. Of the four possibilities, the final one, Zeus the ET, is the most intriguing.

I’ve argued long and loud that the polytheistic gods were not supernatural deities but flesh-and-blood extraterrestrials. I’m not the only person who has come to this conclusion – there’s an entire set of ‘ancient astronaut’ buffs who also have argued equally long and loud that the mythologies of the gods are really the history of extraterrestrials that have influenced humanity over the millennia. Rather than cover generalities yet again, I’ll focus on probably the best known of the polytheistic gods – Zeus, IMHO the extraterrestrial (though one could just about pick any of the thousands of polytheistic deities and perform a similar analysis).

Zeus vs. God: The Greek god Zeus (Jupiter in the Roman pantheon of gods) was a King-of-Kings deity, top of the totem pole, but unlike the monotheistic God…

Zeus was born and had a precarious start in life and childhood. His daddy wasn’t a very friendly father figure. In fact the father of Zeus, the Titan god Cronus (the product of Gaia and Uranus who was later done a mischief by Cronus) really sucked big-time. Cronus swallowed all of his new born kids in order that they, in the future, wouldn’t become rivals and a pain in the ass by challenging his rule. Fortunately, Zeus’s mother, Rhea, came to the rescue and tricked Cronus into swallowing a substitute stone instead of Zeus. Baby Zeus was secluded away to Crete and raised independently by nymphs, coming back eventually to get daddy to vomit up his siblings, and they collectively gave Cronus his just deserts in the war of the Titans vs. the Olympians. 

So Zeus, unlike God, had to work and fight his way to the top job.

Zeus lived on Earth – Mount Olympus. Mount Olympus at least is a really real place one can sink one’s teeth into, unlike the nebulous Godly abode of Heaven. 

Zeus also shared power, in the main with his brothers Poseidon and Hades, but also including various Olympic goddesses - the opposite sex. God does not share power; certainly not with females.  

There are statues of Zeus commissioned while he was still Greek’s all powerful chief cook and bottle washer, so we know today what Zeus looked like (and our imaginations and representations of God’s images are usually molded on images of Zeus).

Zeus and Sex: Zeus is probably more famous for his sexual exploits than anything else!

Unlike God, Zeus ‘married’, two or even three times. Firstly there was the Titaness goddess Metis, who produced Zeus’s daughter Athena via a very unusual mating process. Zeus apparently swallowed his pregnant wife and she gave birth to Athena in Zeus’s head which had to be split open to release the kid; well actually Athena was ‘born’ fully grown and armed (and presumably clothed as well). Now I put to you that no human in even the wildest drug induced state would conjure up such a fantasy. Instead, this is a misinterpretation of some sort of high-tech alien process little understood by the ancient Greek historians. See below for further analysis. 

Secondly, Zeus ‘married’ Themis, yet another Titaness goddess. That union produced the Fates, Dike, and Eirene. Lastly, Zeus ‘married’ Hera – the Queen of Olympus and his sister to boot – from which more offspring came, like Ares. But was Zeus a faithful hubby? Not on your Nellie; not a snowball’s chance in Hades!  

Zeus had sexual desires that just wouldn’t quit. God never lusted after Mother Mary or Eve I bet! Anyway, Zeus, via mortal women (and usually via trickery if not outright force), fathered a who’s who in Greek mythological demigods and demigoddesses – the hybrids that result from the mating of gods/goddesses with mortals. There was Helen of Troy; Heracles (Hercules); Perseus; Castor, Polydeuces, Minos and the Muses for starters. The randy old bugger even mated with another of his own sisters, Demeter producing Persephone (who later had a randy run-in with Zeus’s brother, Hades).

Speaking of Minos (son of Zeus and his rape victim Europa) and hybrids, there’s another example of weird unions; births and resulting offspring that’s suggestive of high-tech. Now it seems Minos pissed off Zeus’s brother Poseidon. Poseidon, ever inventive, caused Mrs. Minos (Pasiphae) to lust after a bull (and presumably the bull to lust after Mrs. Minos). The end product of this union became that human-bovine hybrid, the Minotaur (and that’s no bull!).

As an aside, in case you think Zeus is the sexual exception when it comes to lusting after us mortals and not the sexual rule in mythology, think again. Greek/Roman mythology is full of X-rated amorous tales for the over-18 only. You just have to think of Eros/Cupid and Aphrodite/Venus. The latter also mated with a mortal male producing some of the next generation (lucky guy). Now Aphrodite, like Athena, had a rather odd ‘birth’. She was also ‘born’ thanks to some weird biology between seawater foam and those severed private parts of Zeus’s grandfather, Uranus (see below for more graphic details). 

This is just the tip of the iceberg in the ‘who begat who’ and under what circumstances, and that god-mortal relationship isn’t confined to the Greek (and Roman) pantheon.

God gets into the act in the sense that the Old Testament references those “Sons of God” getting it on with the “Daughters of Men”.

Then there are American Indian tales such as the one from the Algonquin tribe that relates the story of the mortal Algon and the Sky-Girl he fell in love with. There are those from South America (Peru) where you have the mortal Ollantay and the love of his life, Cusicollur, a direct descendent from the Inca Sun-God Viracocha. Also Peruvian, involving a son or incarnation of Viracocha, name of Coniraya, who had it off with Cavillaca, a high-ranking but nevertheless mortal Inca who got pregnant in one of those rather unusual mythological ways – in this case by eating sperm-laden fruit (a case of artificial insemination perhaps?). Then you have the demigod Sigurd (Siegfried) who shacks up with his aunt Brynhildr (Brunnhilde), originally a goddess, a shield-maiden or Valkyrie in Norse mythology, but who was transformed into a mortal before Sigurd met her. These and more mirror the general theme of amorous god-mortal relationships in Greek mythology.

Now there has to be an explanation apart from the obvious one (it’s all fiction) how either supernatural beings and/or aliens can mate with humans. I dismiss the possibility of there being any really real supernatural deities, so that leaves ET as the other option. Now mythologies around the globe record that the ‘gods’ created human beings. The only way that could have been done is by their using incredibly advanced biotechnology, bio-engineering and other genetic manipulation techniques.

Part of that creation process was making sure humans were sexually and genetically compatible with their creators. Why they (deities or aliens) would desire that is for the moment unanswerable. At the least it suggests that various life forms in the cosmos can’t be all that dissimilar at a biochemical level, and might imply that a terrestrial-extraterrestrial connection extends farther back and is deeper than one could on probability expect. 

But back to alien-human genetic technology than enables our sexual and reproductive compatibility, the parallel is, moral and ethical considerations aside, this is genetic technology we ourselves might be capable of in the not all that distant future. In theory, even if a form of rather perverted theory, we could manipulate our genetics, and the genetics of another terrestrial species, to create a human-animal hybrid. In fact this has already been accomplished with less complex life forms. The term ‘Frankenfish’ comes to mind in context, though ‘GloFish’ is more correct. It was the transfer of the gene from a jellyfish into a zebrafish so that the fish became fluorescent. Though not created for the purpose, they can be obtained in the aquarium/pet trade. If GloFish today, translated into our near future, might it really be possible if one really wanted to, to create a really real mermaid? Yes!

To be continued...