An Outline of World History according to the Homeric Method, where the Dynamics of History are represented by the Actions of the Gods
80,000 BC: Around this date the Mother-goddesses lead mankind out of drought-stricken Africa to India, only to find that the two Father-gods, having accepted invitations to a celebratory feast, quarrel over whether man should be obedient or dexterous. At last they split, and Daksha stays with dexterous tribes in India, while El leads obedient tribes to the Promised Land. To stop any Eastern interference, El builds before the Indus a Forbidden Wall, and has his Forbidden Tree guarded by a titan, Tarak, with a Sword of Doom.
3,000 BC: By now in India, Daksha’s tribes are developing Yoga and the cults of Enlightenment. But El’s son Zeus proves disobedient, and the immorality of the Western cities so angers El, he has Tarak and his sword bring down the Doom of the Flood. But other gods save man, and the Goddesses, shocked at El’s tyranny, foster chivalry by raising in the sky a necklace of lapis lazuli to be a Blue Bridge to heaven.
1,000 BC: The Blue Bridge lures Apollo west, and a zest for Science is kindled in the son of Zeus. For coming to the misty isle of Britain he sees a Forbidden Tree, sunset-boughed. A dragon keeps him from its golden apples, but he falls for its Time-nymph, Electra, and she urges him to win her by learning the secrets of the Tree of Knowledge. The Titan Tarak then chases Apollo back to Hellas, and urges the Father-god El to let his sword bring Doom on Apollo and Zeus. But El broods that it would be too soon after the Flood to pursue another Doom.
800 BC: In Greece the Goddesses inspire the children of Zeus to the arts of Classical civilisation. The gods create the Olympic Games, Classical literature, architecture and sculpture, and with Athene, Bacchus and Apollo promote Democracy, the Theatre and Science. Hoping to win Electra, Apollo develops geocentric astronomy.
500 BC: In India Buddha popularises Yoga by inventing evangelism, the despatch of angels on missions to speed the cult of Enlightenment, and with a vow of non-violence he establishes a spiritual society.
300 BC: But Apollo believes the perfect society is his, and against the advice of Athene, has his protégé, Alexander the Great, annexe the Persian Empire, and on a brief excursion round the Forbidden Wall, enter India. Apollo comes across Shiva, God of Yoga, meditating in the Himalayas, and challenges him to a duel: Shiva’s system of Yoga versus his of Western Science. Shiva agrees, but warns him first to attain the protection of Yoga, as he has transgressed twice against El.
100 AD: Around this date Buddhism starts to develop a concept of a Hell, a country-sized cavern, with gaping Hell-gates, reserved for the dead. The angels meanwhile spread Buddhism peacefully in China.
400 AD: El now brings Doom on the gods. Using evangelism to win men’s souls to his revelation of Christianity, he makes his faith the sole religion of Rome. His Archangel Michael has Tarak bar up the Hell-queen’s domain, then hurl down the gods of the idolatrous Egyptians, Canaanites, Babylonians and Teutons. The pagan Olympic Games is abolished and the Time-nymphs hidden in woods. But Gabriel is told to make a pact with Athene that retains for Christians her Classical system of education, and, sparing them Hell, the Greek gods are banished for a thousand years to the planets that bear their names.
500 AD: In his zodiac exile, Apollo repents his hubris in ignoring the warnings of Shiva and Athene. And fearing that Electra is now in Hell, he realises his geocentric science would never have won her anyway. Orbiting earth, though, he sees how Science could make the world of one consciousness. He also sees how the Goddesses’ Lapis Lazuli Necklace was used by the Teuton gods as a Blue Bridge to heaven, and plans to use it himself to lead mankind to the chivalry of Science, and with no lady to accept its homage, leave the winnings to humanity.
600 AD: Gabriel now heralds Islam as El’s last revelation, and Michael subdues the Middle East to Moslem rule. Spiritual societies now bring peace to both East and West. But Tarak broods and is restless.
600 AD: From India the romantic chivalry of the Guptas has fostered Golden Ages. Vidya spirits, flying after the Buddhist angels, have inspired the Chinese Pear-tree Academy of the Tang, and the court poetry of Samurai Japan. In his Himalayan heaven Daksha is proud.
700 AD: But Tarak urges the Archangel Michael to breach the Forbidden Wall, and let his Sword annihilate Hindu idolatry. In North India he razes all statues, temples and universities, expels into exile Buddhist angels, and begins a thousand-year battle to destroy the Indian gods. Daksha can only gaze aghast at El’s breach of his own Forbidden Wall.
1100 AD: But the breach in the Wall is a gift to the Goddesses. They wing the vidyas over it, and enrapture the West just as the East. Crossing the Indus they foster the love-cults among the Persians and Arabs of El’s Abbasid rule, and the forested abbeys and castles of the Poitevin West. The vidyas also export to Europe Daksha’s decimal system of calculation, and the Chinese “Four Great Inventions” of gunpowder, paper-making, printing and the compass. Meanwhile among wintry hills and misty rivers, his gold shield emblazoned with a black sun, a knight rides in search of the fairy barrow that holds his courtly Lady.
1400 AD: But Athene fears, their exile over, Apollo will again dream of world conquest, as the Olympians return after a thousand years to the market in Florence whence they departed for the stars. But happy to be back, she brings her Republican politics to the Renaissance, as Bacchus does his theatre, Apollo his Science, while Diana inspires the Italian merchant-adventurers to discover America and a sea-route to India.
1600 AD: This year in London founding the East India Company, Apollo and Diana start to trade in India. This year too, with the discovery of electricity, Apollo finds Electra in a Thames-wood, and brings her towards London and his Castle of Chivalry by the Blue Bridge. His joy is checked, though, by Athene briefly making Britain a republic, and Archangel Michael, against Gabriel’s idolatry in Rome stirs the Wars of Religion. But an angel called Suriel, in dismay at the slaughter, starts to discuss a new future with Athene, while Apollo in India, to Tarak’s chagrin, defends her chivalry, and ends the assault on her gods.
1800 AD: As Athene marvels, Suriel- now Surian- breeds three sons from a Titaness, takes up the cause of the Rights of Man and renounces El. Rousing France to revolution, he swiftly wins all Europe, and even plans to invade Britain. But the gods and angels of Britain and Russia oppose. Apollo and Vulcan with the Industrial Revolution then create the source of world power, and, with the “All Red Line”of the British Imperial telegraph system, engineer the orbit of world consciousness.
1911 AD: But Athene and Surian use evangelism to win intellectuals to the creed of Revolution, and soon Fate affords them a chance for world dominion. When Apollo in India at an imperial Durbar attempts to hold his Joust with Shiva, the Sarez Earthquake shatters it, and spews from Hell the giants and demons of Revolution. Surian ideology now dooms the empires of the Chinese, the Austrians, the Russians and the Moslems, purging to Hell a hundred million souls. After two world wars Eurasia salutes Surian supreme. Alone in Britain, with nuclear and computer science, Apollo and Vulcan gain respite for a while.
2,000 AD: But after a century of Surian fashions, the Goddesses hanker for the old cults of courtesy, Poitevin, Abbasid, Gupta or Tang, so they promote the tyros of Apollo’s internet to be trained as vidyas of World-chivalry. And to signal their drive to restore the Golden Ages, they urge Apollo to revive the World Joust in time for the 2012 Olympics and the Jubilee of his father, the Monarch-god Zeus. It only remains to find some innocent e-spirits, knowing nothing of history but only of the internet, to deliver invitations to the Father-gods, Daksha and El.