Beasts Beneath: Underworld Kings and Prophecy

The ancient Near Eastern world contained a vast array of stories about beings who existed between the human and divine realms, and some of these stories strongly shaped later traditions that appear in the Hebrew Bible, Second Temple Jewish literature, and the mythic expansions of rabbinic and Kabbalistic thought. One of the least-known but most important sources comes from Ugarit, a Late Bronze Age Canaanite city whose tablets provide a worldview full of semi-divine warrior spirits, underworld forces, and liminal beings who move between life and death. These beings, particularly those called the Rephaim, show striking parallels with the Nephilim tradition in Genesis 6 as well as with the later Jewish accounts of Naamah, Lilith, the Watchers, and the rise of demons such as Ashmodai.

The Ugaritic Rephaim (rpʾm), sometimes called the rapi’uma, appear in texts such as KTU 1.22 and KTU 1.161. These tablets describe the Rephaim as ancient kings, heroic warriors, and semi-divine ancestral spirits who can “rise” from the underworld and participate in ritual feasts. In KTU 1.22, the Rephaim are invoked in a ritual setting; they are described riding, assembled, and journeying from the chthonic realm. In KTU 1.161, the Rephaim appear as a troop of hero-spirits participating in a sacred procession. They are not simple ghosts; they are powerful, exalted, warrior-like beings who have one foot in the realm of the dead and another in the divine world. They accompany underworld deities such as Milku, sometimes translated as “King” or “Melek,” a god whose authority extends across the subterranean regions.

This Ugaritic image connects directly to how the biblical texts use the word Rephaim. In verses like Isaiah 14:9 (“Sheol beneath is stirred up to meet you when you come; it rouses the shades [rephaim]”), Psalm 88:10 (“Do you show wonders to the dead? Do the rephaim rise to praise you?”), and Job 26:5 (“The rephaim tremble under the waters and their inhabitants”), the Hebrew Bible portrays the Rephaim as underworld spirits. Yet other biblical passages treat the Rephaim as giant clans: Genesis 14:5, Deuteronomy 2:11, and Joshua 12:4 describe the Rephaim as ancient peoples of enormous size inhabiting Canaan. The blending of meanings; dead spirits and giants; makes sense only when one understands the Ugaritic background: the Rephaim were originally both ancestral dead and semi-divine warriors. Israel inherited the word and applied it to two different categories, both preserving the older idea of a liminal, powerful, ancient race.

This background supports the interpretation that the “Nephilim” in Genesis 6:1–4 have roots in this same tradition. Genesis 6 describes the “sons of God” taking human women and producing the Nephilim, “the mighty men of old, men of renown.” The phrase “men of renown” echoes the Ugaritic language of the Rephaim as “ancient kings” and "heroic" beings whose memory persists across generations. The biblical text does not explicitly describe the sons of God as angels, but Second Temple Jewish literature, especially 1 Enoch, reinterprets them as the Watchers, heavenly beings who descended/ascended, took wives, and produced hybrid offspring who became violent giants. In 1 Enoch, the Flood is sent not only because of human sin but because of the destructive influence of these semi-divine hybrids. When the hybrids die, their disembodied spirits become evil spirits roaming the earth. This view influenced later Jewish demonology: the idea that demons were the restless spirits of illicit hybrid beings.

The same framework also influences later Kabbalistic demonology. In medieval Kabbalah, the Sitra Achra (the Other Side) becomes the realm of impurity. Samael (God's poison), often identified with the angelic antagonist behind Esau and Edom, becomes the male power of the Other Side. In rabbinic and later mystical interpretation, Edom is not only the biblical nation descended from Esau but a symbolic name for Rome, the empire that destroyed the Second Temple and dominated Israel’s exile. As Rome rose to power, Jewish tradition began using “Edom” as a coded way to describe Roman authority, its spiritual influence, and the forces seen as working behind it. Thus, Edom becomes the earthly manifestation of the same hostile power embodied by Esau and ultimately by Samael in the unseen realm. Lilith, at times compared to the winged goddess Isis/Venus/Ishtar/Inanna in symbolic interpretations and originally known as a night demon, becomes identified as Samael’s consort, with Samael often paralleled to Osiris (God of the underworld).

The Ugaritic Rephaim and the Enochic Watchers both present a worldview in which semi-divine beings cross boundaries, producing hybrid warriors whose power distorts human history. The biblical references to giants, mighty men, and underworld spirits echo this older Near Eastern environment. The Naamah traditions, the story of the Watchers, and the concept of demonic progeny reveal how these legends were reshaped within Judaism. KTU 1.22 and KTU 1.161 show that long before Greek myths imagined Zeus (Osiris/Jupiter/Baal) descending to women, the Canaanite world envisioned warrior spirits, ancient kings, and underworld riders who could be summoned or who rose from the depths. These ideas flowed into early Hebrew concepts of the Rephaim and influenced later expansions on Genesis 6.

While mainstream Judaism and Christianity ultimately reject the literal existence of hybrid beings walking the earth, the ancient texts preserve the memory of a world in which the boundaries were porous. "Gods", spirits, and ancestral kings could travel between realms; heavenly beings could fall; powerful warrior spirits could rise from beneath the earth; and humans like Naamah could act as the hinge between heaven’s rebellion and the emergence of dark powers. The Ugaritic tablets, the biblical references to the Rephaim, and the Enochic and midrashic stories all form a layered, complex tradition that reveals how ancient people understood evil, lineage, spiritual mixture, and the dangers of the boundary between the mortal and divine.

Across the ancient world the presence of the dead was not a distant memory but a daily reality, and people often believed that the boundary between the living and the dead was thin and permeable. Just as ancestor worship, necromancy, and summoning rituals were widespread from Sumer to Rome, so too the keeping of relics, bones, skulls, and bodily remains became a common way for communities to maintain contact with the departed and harness their power for protection, divination, or sorcery. These practices arise independently in multiple regions, but together they form a consistent pattern: the dead were believed to possess influence, and their physical remains served as conduits for that influence.

Could this be why the Roman Catholic Church exhumed and burned the bones of John Wycliffe; after the Council of Constance condemned him posthumously for translating Scripture and challenging the Church’s authority? If Rome truly had no knowledge of the occult or its own rituals surrounding relics and remains, why take such extreme action against a man already long dead? And whatever happened to the command to love thy brother?

I digress...

In the earliest known civilization of Sumer, the dead were honored with ritual offerings placed directly in domestic areas, and archaeological excavations show that some households kept skulls or bones of ancestors either buried beneath floors or placed in niches. These remains were not considered morbid; they were believed to anchor the spirit of the ancestor so that it could protect the family. Ritual specialists in Sumer used bones and objects taken from burial sites in exorcisms, divination rites, and necromantic summoning ceremonies. The logic was simple: a relic maintains a spiritual connection between the corpse and the living world, allowing the practitioner to call the ghost forth.

Babylonian and Assyrian cultures inherited this worldview and made it more elaborate. Burials often included a designated object that became a permanent house of the dead person’s ghost. But in cases where the dead were not properly cared for, necromancers might retrieve remains to perform rituals involving the etemmu, the ghost-spirit. Some Akkadian incantation tablets describe the use of skulls taken from abandoned graves to summon restless spirits. These practices were not fringe or suburban magic; they formed part of the recognized toolkit of professional magicians and diviners. The Babylonian kispum ritual, a monthly rite for feeding and honoring ancestors, often involved dedicating food to a specific relic of the deceased, because the relic was considered an anchor for the ghost. The dead were not far away; they needed attention, and their remains formed an accessible link.

In Ugarit, where the Rephaim appear as ancestral warrior spirits, the question of relics becomes more explicit. Archaeological findings include skull deposits, cultic pits, and ancestor-specific shrines where bones were kept in jars and invoked during rituals. The Ugaritic texts such as KTU 1.22 and KTU 1.161 describe the Rephaim rising from the underworld in response to ritual invocation. These rituals were not abstract; they correspond to physical practices in which the remains of dead kings or ancestors were stored and used during ceremonies. The Rephaim were not merely remembered; they were ritually engaged, and their bones served as points of contact between the living and the chthonic warrior-spirits. This background helps explain why biblical texts view the Rephaim as both underworld spirits and ancient giants, and why Israelite religion later forbade such practices.

Egypt provides perhaps the most vivid example of relic veneration. Egyptian tombs were not places to seal the dead away; they were portals through which the living could maintain a relationship with the ka, the spiritual double of the deceased. Mummification itself is the ultimate expression of relic preservation: the entire body became a sacred object through which the living and the dead interacted. Priests performed rites involving hair, nails, and body parts of the deceased, all carefully preserved in jars and coffins. Magical papyri refer to using bones or shreds of mummy wrappings in protective or curse spells. Relics served both as memorials and magical instruments.

In Greece, relics take on a distinctive role in the cult of heroes. Greek city-states often transported, guarded, or fought wars over the bones of ancient heroes. The remains of Orestes, Theseus, and other legendary figures were believed to confer protection or victory. These relics were placed in temples, honored with sacrifice, and treated as living presences. The warriors of old, like the Ugaritic Rephaim, were thought to retain supernatural power beyond death, and their bones functioned as the physical focal points of that influence. Greek necromancy, such as the rituals described in Odyssey Book 11 or practiced at the Nekromanteion of Acheron, sometimes involved remains or offerings placed before tombs to call forth spirits.

Rome adopted both Greek hero-cults and its own forms of ancestor veneration. Wealthy Roman homes kept wax masks (imagines) of deceased ancestors, originally cast from the faces of the dead. Although not bones, these masks were treated as relics that connected the living to their forefathers. However, archaeological evidence also shows bones used in household shrines dedicated to the Lares and Manes. Magical texts from the Roman world describe necromancers using skulls, hair, and shrouds in spells meant to summon spirits or curse enemies. Roman state festivals like Parentalia involved bringing offerings to ancestral tombs, again treating the grave site; and by extension the remains; as a point where the living could interact with the dead.

In all these cultures the use of relics is not about morbid fascination; it is about facilitating communication. The remains carry the identity, power, and presence of the deceased. This makes sense in a world where the dead are not fully departed but present in another mode of existence. From Mesopotamia to Rome, people believed that the dead could help, harm, advise, bless, or curse. Relics provided physical access points for rituals aimed at summoning or appeasing spirits.

The Hebrew Bible stands in opposition to this entire tradition. The bans on necromancy in Deuteronomy 18:10–11 explicitly forbid consulting the dead, and the story of Saul and the medium of Endor in 1 Samuel 28 shows that the practice existed but was condemned. These prohibitions arise because Israel’s neighbors engaged in the veneration and summoning of the dead so extensively that the biblical authors considered it spiritually dangerous. The use of bones in relic ritual explains why contact with bones could make a person unclean according to the Torah; bones were central to necromantic rites in surrounding cultures, and Israel rejected the practice.

When later Jewish traditions developed legends of Naamah, Lilith, the Watchers, and the birth of demonic beings, they did so in a cultural environment where the dead and their remnants were thought to wield real power. Yet later Judaism refuses to treat relics as spiritual conduits; instead, it shifts to symbolic interpretations, spiritual forces, and moral warnings.

The widespread ancient practice of keeping relics of the dead shows a consistent belief: that physical remains anchor the spirit and allow the living to contact realms beyond ordinary perception. This belief shaped the mythology of giants, warrior-spirits, the Rephaim, the Nephilim, and the Watchers, all of whom sit in the space between the human and the divine. Although later traditions move away from literal relic magic, the older worldview illuminates how early cultures imagined the dead as active participants in the world of the living, and how bones, skulls, and relics were the tools through which humanity sought to bridge the gap.

Yesterday’s post explained how the Roman Catholic Church adopted relic “veneration” and presented it as though it were part of apostolic Christianity. If you missed it, review the previous entry to understand why relic veneration is not rooted in the original Christian faith.

https://www.rebuildspirit.com/post/apostolic-christianity-and-the-question-of-relics

When the Bible describes the “beast that rises from the earth” and the “horns” on the beasts in Daniel and Revelation, it uses symbolic language drawn from the same ancient Near Eastern world that believed in underworld warrior-kings, ancestral spirits, and semi-divine rulers. These symbols do not come from Greek mythology but from the world of Canaan, Babylon, and Mesopotamia; the very cultures that venerated the Rephaim and summoned underworld kings in rituals.

In the book of Revelation, the beast that rises from the earth (Revelation 13:11) is described as having “two horns like a lamb” but speaking “like a dragon.” Horns in biblical prophetic language always represent authority, kingship, and power. This is because ancient Near Eastern cultures used horned crowns to depict divine or semi-divine kings. In Mesopotamian iconography, gods, demigods, and heroic dead were shown with horned helmets, often indicating their supernatural authority. The Ugaritic Rephaim were called “ancient kings,” and some rituals explicitly invoke them as beings who rise from the earth to assemble as a council of warrior-spirits. This directly parallels the language in Revelation where a beast rises from the earth, imitating innocence (horns like a lamb) but speaking with the voice and authority of an ancient power.

The horns on the beasts in Daniel follow the same symbolic pattern. In Daniel 7, the fourth beast has ten horns, and another horn rises among them. Daniel 8 uses the imagery of the ram with two horns and the goat with one great horn. These horns represent kings, rulers, or kingdoms. But behind the political symbolism lies an even older image: the ancient warrior-kings of the underworld who possessed supernatural authority, the same kind of authority associated with the Rephaim in KTU 1.22 and KTU 1.161. In those Ugaritic texts, the Rephaim are summoned as mounted warrior-spirits, a kind of underworld army. Their kingship is old, chthonic, and not human in origin. When Revelation describes a beast rising from the abyss (Revelation 11:7) or the earth (Revelation 13:11), the text evokes that ancient image of underworld powers emerging to influence the world of the living.

The biblical writers were not borrowing the theology of the surrounding cultures, but they were using the same symbolic vocabulary. In ancient Canaan and Mesopotamia, horns indicated royal authority, divine sanction, or supernatural kingship. The horned crown was worn by gods, demigods, and heroic dead. Thus, when Revelation and Daniel depict horns, they are signaling not only political authority but also the deeper idea of old powers rising up; kings or kingdoms animated by spiritual forces tied to the underworld or to the rebellion of the divine realm. In the worldview of the Old Testament, evil kingdoms on earth were often seen as the earthly expression of heavenly or underworld powers. Isaiah 14 connects the king of Babylon with a fallen heavenly being. Ezekiel 28 speaks of the king of Tyre in terms that echo Eden and the divine council. These passages hint that human rulers can be influenced or animated by ancient rebel powers.

The beast from the earth in Revelation fits that pattern. Could it be a literal resurrected Rephaim? The lamb-like horns are a parody of legitimate authority, just as ancient necromantic rituals summoned the Rephaim to give strength or guidance to kings who sought power outside of God. The dragon-like speech ties it to the primordial adversary, much like the old Canaanite warrior-kings of the underworld were tied to deities like Mot or Milku. Horns on the beast therefore signify kingship, authority, and the influence of older, darker powers behind earthly rulers.

Daniel’s vision of ten horns mirrors Revelation’s ten-horned beast because both draw from the same ancient symbolic root: the idea of a coalition of kings or powers representing earthly empires animated by something older and deeper. The “little horn” that rises and uproots others reflects the ancient motif of a new king empowered by spiritual forces that transcend human politics. In the context of the ancient world, this would have been immediately understood as a kingdom driven by the same kind of underworld or semi-divine authority that the Ugaritic texts associate with the Rephaim.

When the biblical prophets speak of kings descending to Sheol, or Sheol rising to meet new arrivals, they are drawing on the same symbolic foundation. Isaiah 14 portrays the dead kings of the nations stirring in the underworld, rising from their thrones to mock the king of Babylon. This passage mirrors the Ugaritic vision of the Rephaim gathering in the underworld in preparation for rituals performed among the living. The Bible rewrites the symbol, transforming it from a necromantic act of veneration into a scene of divine judgment. But the imagery remains rooted in the same cultural soil.

This background helps explain why Revelation describes beasts that rise from beneath. The beast from the sea, the beast from the earth, and the beast from the abyss are not random inventions. They echo the ancient idea that empires and rulers can be empowered by old forces, rebellious powers that dwell in the deep places of the world. The biblical writers do not affirm the pagan worldview, but they use its imagery to express a theological point: human kingdoms may appear powerful on the surface, but behind them stand spiritual forces whose nature is ancient, deceptive, and grounded in rebellion.

The book of Revelation makes this connection explicit through its language of the abyss, the bottomless pit, and the beast who rises from it. The abyss in biblical literature is the symbolic counterpart to the Mesopotamian realm of the dead, the Apsu and Kur, and the Canaanite underworld ruled by deities like Milku. When a beast rises from the abyss, the text is intentionally evoking the ancient idea of a chthonic power emerging from beneath the earth, just as the Rephaim were said to rise when summoned. But Revelation uses the symbol not to promote ancestor veneration but to expose the spiritual reality behind the final rebellion: the beast is not a resurrected warrior-king but a manifestation of the same rebellious force that the nations once tried to access through ritual.

This reworking of ancient symbolism shows the continuity of thought across cultures. The nations surrounding Israel believed in semi-divine kings and ancestral spirits who could influence living leaders. Their rituals sought to draw power from these beings, and their relics served as focal points for communication with the dead. Israel rejected these practices but still recognized that spiritual forces stood behind earthly rulers. Prophetic literature redirects the symbols to show that these forces are not ancestors but rebellious spiritual powers.

In understanding the Rephaim, it is essential to recognize that their role in Ugaritic and broader Canaanite belief was tied not only to the underworld but also to the cosmic movements of the heavens, especially the sun. Although the texts never call the sun the “star of the Rephaim,” the idea fits the pattern of how the ancient world imagined the relationship between the dead, the underworld, and the celestial order. The Rephaim belong to the realm beneath the earth, a place the sun enters each evening as it descends below the horizon. Because of this cosmic journey, the Rephaim and the sun occupy the same conceptual space during the night. The Ugaritic ritual texts, such as KTU 1.22 and KTU 1.161, depict the Rephaim rising or appearing at twilight, the moments when the sun is either sinking into the realm of the dead or rising again from it. These liminal hours are when the boundary between the living and the dead is thinnest. In these texts, the Rephaim assemble as a council of ancestral kings, mounted warrior spirits who accompany or greet the divine riders of the night. Their appearance at dusk and dawn links them directly to the sun’s transition across the thresholds of the world.

This makes sense because in the ancient Near East, kings were often associated with the sun. The sun, as the supreme cosmic power of order, light, and judgment, was the patron of kingship. When kings died, they were believed to join the retinue of the sun god in the underworld. Thus, ancestral kings became solarized figures, part of the nightly procession of the sun as it traveled through the realm of the dead. The Rephaim, being described as ancient kings and heroes, fit into this pattern. Their power was tied to the cosmic cycle of death and renewal reflected in the sun’s daily descent and ascent. When summoned in ritual, the Rephaim were invoked at the same moments the sun crossed the boundaries between the world of the living and the underworld.

This also sheds light on biblical imagery. The prophets, while rejecting ancestor worship, still used culturally familiar symbols. Isaiah 14 portrays the kings of the nations rising from their thrones in Sheol to greet the fallen king of Babylon, a scene reminiscent of Ugaritic depictions of the Rephaim assembling below. The title “son of the dawn” applied to the proud king in Isaiah echoes the solar associations of royal and semi-divine beings. Psalm 88 speaks of the Rephaim in connection with the depths, darkness, and cosmic order, all environments the sun traverses in myth. Even Ezekiel’s laments over fallen kings descending to the pit use language that matches the ancient solar-descent tradition. In all these passages, the sun is the celestial marker of the underworld realm where the Rephaim dwell.

When Amos speaks of Israel carrying “the star of your god,” he is not inventing a new concept but referring to a very old religious pattern that existed across Canaan, Mesopotamia, and the wider ancient Near East. The nations surrounding Israel believed that the spirits of dead kings, heroic ancestors, and underworld beings were connected to the movements of the heavens. They associated these spirits with specific stars or planets, believing that celestial bodies reflected the presence, throne, or authority of the gods of the dead. When Israel adopted this practice, they were not just worshipping a star; they were participating in the same system that venerated the Rephaim, the ancestral warrior spirits who rose from the underworld in Ugaritic religion. The “star of your god” was therefore more than an astronomical symbol. It represented an entire worldview in which the dead, the underworld, and the heavens were linked.

The figure named in Amos and Acts as Kiyyun or Rephan is widely understood to be connected with a deity associated with Saturn(the black sun) or another astral power. In the ancient world, Saturn was often linked with the underworld, fate, and the domain of the dead. This connection is not accidental. The same cultures that summoned the Rephaim, honored ancestral kings, and performed necromantic rites also practiced astral religion, believing that stars and planets were the visible forms of divine or semi-divine beings. Thus, when Israel lifted up the “star of your god,” they were participating in the same religious pattern that honored the dead and sought power from them. For them, the star symbolized a divine presence connected to the underworld and to the spirits of the departed.

This becomes even clearer when one considers that Moloch is mentioned alongside the “star of your god” in both Amos and Acts. Moloch was not merely a fertility god but a deity tied to death, sacrifice, and the underworld (Osiris). The rites associated with Moloch included offerings that crossed the boundary between life and death, making him part of the same system that venerated the dead and sought power through them. In Ugarit, the Rephaim were called “the mighty ones,” a term also used for ancient kings and heroes who became otherworldly figures after death. If the Rephaim could be invoked through ritual, and if their presence was tied to cosmic cycles like twilight and dawn, then it makes sense that astral symbols like stars or planets would be used to represent them. The heavenly bodies were seen as markers of the spiritual world, and specific stars became associated with particular gods or ancestral powers.

In this light, the biblical condemnation is not simply about idol worship but about the larger Canaanite pattern of honoring the dead through astral symbols, relics, sacrifices, and summoning rites. The Rephaim, the cult of the ancestors, the sun’s nightly descent into the underworld, and the worship of astral deities all formed one integrated religious worldview. When Israel took up the star of another god, they were aligning themselves with that system. The Bible answers this not by denying the existence of the underworld or its powers, but by declaring that Yahweh alone rules over the dead and the living. The stars, the sun, and the underworld belong to Him, not to the spirits invoked by the nations.

It raises the question: why did Pope John Paul II present a monstrance (a sun symbol) for public "veneration" (worship), containing faces of the dead? And why does the Church continue to promote relic veneration when, as shown in yesterday’s discussion, it has no foundation in apostolic Christianity?