Gog and Magog

Gog-Magog legends are found not just in several parts of Britain (Cambridge, Devon, Cornwall, and Glastonbury at least) but also in the Middle East and Russia. In Britain, the legends tend to be fairly benign. It’s said that there used to be a pair of Gog and Magog (or Gogmagot and Corineus) figures on Plymouth Hoe, connected with the story of Corineus and Brutus as the founder of Britain.

The legend according to Geoffrey of Monmouth in about 1136:

Brutus, the great-grandson of the hero Aeneas, came to Albion (at Totnes) with his men, and because of its fruitfulness decided to settle here. He renamed the island Britain (supposed by Geoffrey to derive from ‘Brutus’) and drove the giants who inhabited it into the mountains of the west. One day when he and his followers were holding a festival at the port where they first landed, a party of giants attacked them. They fought back and killed all the giants except for one named Gogmagog who was twelve cubits high and could wield an uprooted oak as easily as a hazel wand. Him they kept alive to wrestle with Corineus, Duke of Cornwall, who, when Brutus was parcelling out the land of Britain amongst his followers, had chosen for his share the rocky land that came to be named after him, because he loved nothing so much as to wrestle with giants, and there were more of them in Cornwall than elsewhere. When the two opponents came to grips, Gogmagog hugged the duke to him in so tight an embrace that three of his ribs were broken. Corineus was so enraged that he at once rushed to the nearest stretch of shore and hurled Gogmagog off the cliff to his death on the rocks below. The place at which this happened was thereafter known as Gogmagog’s Leap (Lam Goëmagot)

Some authors equate Goemagot with the Gaulish/Irish culture god Ogmios, identified by the Celts with Hercules and often depicted with a club.
Another possibility is Gog Ma-Gog, as Gog son of Gog.
Hebrew : “Ma”
Gaelic : “Mac”
Is there any connection between the Hebrew use of “Ma = Son of” and the Gaelic use of “Mac = Son of”?

"Gogmagog's Leap" has been preserved near the spot which now presents a fortress to the foes of Britain; and there are those "who say that, at the last digging on the Haw for the foundation of the citadel of Plymouth, the great jaws and teeth therein found were those of Gogmagog."
Ref : Brutus and of Corineus

There is a record of the chalk cut giant being on Plymouth Hoe in 1486 and a record in the City Archive shows a receipt for a bill for cleaning and weeding the giant. The bill was paid by the Earl of Edgcumbe.

One of this group is Ogma, the Champion. Also known as Ogma, the Sun Sage.

In Cambridgeshire, we have the Gog Magog hills , with bronze-age forts.

According to Iman Wilkens in Where Troy Once Stood:

Troy was located in England on the Gog Magog Downs in Cambridgeshire. He believes that Celts living there were attacked around 1200 BC by fellow Celts from the continent to battle over access to the tin mines in Cornwall as tin was a very important component for the production of bronze.

But sadly:

His work has had little impact among professional scholars. Anthony Snodgrass, Emeritus Professor of Classical Archaeology at Cambridge University, has named Wilkens as an example of an "infinitely less-serious" writer

Despite the poo-pooing from orthodox historians, the archaeologists are still finding large Bronze Age hoards in East Anglia and especially the Isleham hoard.

The Isleham Hoard is a hoard of more than 6,500 pieces of worked and unworked bronze, dating from the Bronze Age, found in 1959, by William 'Bill' Houghton and his brother, Arthur, at Isleham, near Ely, in the English county of Cambridgeshire. It is the largest Bronze Age hoard ever discovered in England and one of the finest. It consists in particular of swords, spear-heads, arrows, axes, palstaves, knives, daggers, armour, decorative equipment (in particular for horses), and many fragments of sheet bronze, all dating from the Wilburton-Wallington Phase of the late Bronze Age (about 1000 BCE). The swords show holes where rivets or studs held the wooden hilts in place.

Given the age (about 1000 BCE), there does seem to be some "careful ignoral" from our experts. How can the biggest-ever hoard found also be the oldest, and why is the source unexplained?

What about how Gog & Magog in London? Gogmagot and Corineus were traditionally carried in the Lord Mayor’s Parade in London. Or Gog and Magog as they are now known, as the traditional guardians of the City of London.

How did they get to London as well?

The story goes that the Roman Emperor Diocletian had 33 daughters who were all wicked. To reform their ways the emperor found them all husbands, but the daughters were unhappy with them, plotted together, and murdered them all in their sleep one night by cutting their throats. As a punishment, all 33 daughters were put in a boat and set adrift, and they finally washed up on the shores of Britain (led by a sister called Alba). At the time this island was a wild and inhospitable place. But the daughters created a new population by mating with demons. The result was a race of giants, the most fearsome of whom were… Gog and Magog.
Ref : Prayer for London

But the number 33 is suggestive of something allegorical or astronomical.

Two giants named Gog and Magog used to live there before Brutus set up home, and upon arrival he defeated them, tamed them, and shackled them outside his palace, to become guardians of his estate. By the 15th century the story had sufficiently grown that Gog and Magog were considered guardians of the City of London, and took up their place in the annual Lord Mayor’s parade. And ever since Londoners have adopted them to their hearts as protectors of the City.
Ref : Prayer for London

That's a nice Creation Myth, even if does bother people who Pray For London. But stories of fornicating giants are found in many places, like the Book of Enoch.

The notion of Alba and her wicked sisters copulating with demons to produce an elder race of giants is highly suggestive of a similar tale in the Book of Enoch. Excluded from the Biblical canon by all but the Ethiopan Orthodox Church, the Book of Enoch recounts the erotic coupling between the daughters of Cain and a group of fallen angels known as the Watchers, Elohim or Grigori. These beings are alleged to have taught mankind the arts of writing, blacksmithing, sorcery, herblore, astrology, mirrors, cosmetics and the courses of the Moon. All the tricks of the trade. The offspring produced by this lovemaking between witch and devil was a race of giants known as the Nephilim, which are described in the Book of Genesis as “the heroes of old, the men of renown”.
http://www.bangthebore.org/archives/2258

The Nephilim puts us slap-bang straight back into one of the greatest Creation Myths of all, just transplanted to England's dark and satanic mills, with a bit of porn to make it spicy. But mulling over this Emperor Diocletian connection, logically, it makes no sense, as he (according to orthodoxy) - Emperor Diocletian - "was a Roman emperor from 284 to 305" . Presumably 284 to 305 AD, and a long while after Brutus is supposed to have waded ashore in Totnes.

Where else in Britain can we find mention of Gog Magog? Glastonbury has plenty, so are the references. Then, in the Ogbourne valley in Wiltshire, near Avebury, a large Celtic "temple" has been found. Except the largest room in the temple was a six foot high malting oven, used to roast barley to make beer. Perhaps a temple devoted to the art of brewing. Was this associated with Og? Or with the Celtic Og meaning young, early or little?

Thomas Lethbridge, (author of Gogmagog – The Buried Gods) claimed to have found a giant carved into the chalk at Wandlebury, but that seems to have upset a great many of the archeo’s of his time, who thought it was wishful thinking at best.
Ref : http://www.archaeologyuk.org/ba/ba112/feat3.shtml

Middle-eastern connections

In the Middle East, stories about Gog and Magog tend to be a lot more apocalyptic, based on Ezekial and Revalations, with stories of war and “end times” for Israel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gog_and_Magog

But trying to makes sense of all this takes us into an internet Twylight Zone of fundamental religious beliefs of all kinds (Christian, Jewish and Islamic) including how George W Bush tried to get France to join in the invasion of Iraq.

President Jacques Chirac wanted to know what the hell President Bush had been on about in their last conversation. Bush had said (to Chirac) that when he looked at the Middle East, he saw "Gog and Magog at work" and the biblical prophecies unfolding.
Ref : The Guardian, August 2009
Ref : An Islamic view of Gog and Magog

As remarked by Wael Baseem :

Any place north of the Holy Land may be the land of Gog and Magog; Gog may be a person and Magog a nation; the Magog of the Genesis reference is certainly a person (the descendent of Noah through Japeth) but the Magog of the other references is apparently a nation or tribe. Take your pick.

Gog/Magog features in the history of Alexander The Great in the Caucasus as well, as people from a land so terrible that Alexander build a huge wall to keep them out.

Alexander The Great is equated with Hercules, and is also Iskender (an Islamic saint). Gog/Magog’s reputation offends several religious authors, equating them with Anti-Christs, but that might depend on whoever you want the Anti-Christ to be at this moment in history.
Ref : Everything you want to know

In some biblical genealogies, Magog is shown as the grandson of Noah. Magogians are also called Scythians by the Greeks, but also descended from Scythes, the youngest of the three sons of Hercules. In the less-benign view of Gog and Magog as Anti-Christs, as the patron saints of the City of London Corporation, some say they represent corporate demons

“corporations act as the spiritual embodiment of these demons feeding off of human greed.”

Oh, by the way, it’ll be the end of the world as we know it as well.

According to Ezekiel’s prophecy, Gog will be the leader of a great army that attacks the land of Israel, while Gog is described as “of the land of Magog, prince of Rosh, Meshech, and Tubal”. Most of the mythology state that God himself (or his son) will defeat Magog on the mountains of Israel. This will be a tremendous slaughter, that often is equated to Armaggeddon. The slaughter will be so grand, it will take seven months to bury all of the dead. As Satan will also be defeated in this battle, “Evil” in a sense will find its final resting place in the lake of Fire. The current or present heaven and earth will be destroyed, and replaced by a new heaven and earth. Some of this is comparative to other mythologies, like the Norse “Ragnarok” and the Christian “Apocalypse”.

It's also comparable to some Daish beliefs. But I'll leave that for others.

After all the doom and gloom, are we any closer to making sense of the geneology? Does Diocletian give us any clues? After having dragged the Roman Empire back from the brink of collapse and stabilising it for c.100 years, what did he do?

Diocletian left the imperial office on 1 May 305, and became the first Roman emperor to voluntarily abdicate the position. He lived out his retirement in his palace on the Dalmatian coast, tending to his vegetable gardens.

Going on gardening leave? How very British! Anyway, this story of Diocletian and his 33 fornicating daughters keeps appearing all over the place.

The myth states that the Roman Emperor Diocletian had 33 wicked daughters whom he married off to 33 husbands who curbed their unsettling ways. However the daughters were so wicked, led by the eldest sister Alba, they plotted to cut the throats of their husbands as they slept. As punishment for this crime, they were set adrift in a boat with a half year’s rations of food, shunned forever. They drifted ashore the isles of what later became “Albion” (named after the eldest).
Ref: Too gigantick to fail and Dicletian

Oh those brazen hussies! But where's the explanation? Why are there 33 daughters, and no mention of any mother(s) or sons? Never mind how any boat could drift from Rome to Britain. It's ridiculous! But the number 33 is suggestive of something allegorical or astronomical. One place that has 33 as a symbolic number is the (supposed) 33 degrees of Scottish Rite Freemasonry. If we play with that notion, - "Goëmagot (Gogmagog), who stood in stature twelve cubits" (or the pair of them) - could allude to the twin pillars of Boaz and Jachin which stood in the porch of Solomon's Temple, the first Temple in Jerusalem.

From there, it's a leap. Could the whole "Gog and Magog in London" story might be part of an allegorical tale that explains how Freemasonry was established in Britain as the New Jerusalem, transplanted from Troy/Babylon/Israel?

At the moment, this is a rather weak connection, because the 33 degrees are associated with Scottish Rite Freemasonry, not the English version, which only has three degrees (or four, if you count the Royal Arch degree), and I don't know why the Guildhall in London would be associated with Scottish Rite Freemasonry, unless we take another leap and start on the Temple area of London as well?

One possible source-connection is via the Roman Army. Was Diocletian a Mithraic Grand Master? I've no idea, but Freemasonry in England, Scotland, Ireland and France has propagated and survived in arduous times most strongly via military regiments. The military connection is also a serious explanation for how Freemasonry got off to such a strong start in the USA, and why the British military leaders never seriously tried to defeat their US fraternal brethren.

One possible link is Mithras, and Mithraic Britain.

Next : Here Be Dragons!