From Giants to Empire: The Bloodline of the Beast

Today we follow a trail that runs from Bashan; the land of the Rephaim, to Ashteroth Karnaim, from horned strongholds and storm gods to imperial Rome and its divine ancestors. What begins in Genesis with ancient giants and contested territory unfolds across centuries into goddess syncretism, sacralized bloodlines, and empires that claimed heaven’s authority.

This is not merely a study of names, but of patterns: giants “afterward,” cities named for Astarte, Baal the storm lord, horns as symbols of kings, Rome’s deified rulers, and the Great Mother enthroned on seven hills. The question is not whether these threads exist, they do; but how they interlock.

Today we look at the convergence.

If Scripture uses trees as symbols of powers, then we must read Bashan through that lens. The Tree of Life represents divine order and eternal authority. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil represents a rival structure of power, a counterfeit ascent. Trees in prophetic literature are rarely just trees. They are thrones, powers, dominions, empires.

Bashan is repeatedly described in terms of its mighty oaks and cedars. In the prophets, these lofty trees are brought low. If trees symbolize powers, then Bashan is not merely geography. It is a realm of towering authority, an elevated stronghold.

Now return to Psalm 22.

“Many bulls surround me; strong bulls of Bashan encircle me. They open wide their mouths at me, like a ravening and roaring lion.”

Bashan is not random. Bashan is the land of Og, the last remnant of the Rephaim. Bashan is giant territory. In Genesis it says the Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward. That phrase, “and also afterward,” matters. It suggests survival, continuation, reappearance. Later Scripture identifies Og of Bashan as a remnant of the Rephaim. The flood did not erase the bloodline entirely. Something endured.

If Bashan carries giant memory, then the bulls of Bashan are not just well-fed cattle. They are symbols of oppressive strength rooted in ancient, pre-flood rebellion. Bulls in the ancient Near East represented dominion, fertility, divine kingship. Baal was symbolized as a bull. Royal power was often horned power. Horns signify authority.

Psalm 22 intensifies the imagery. The bulls do not merely stand nearby. They surround. They encircle. They open their mouths like a roaring lion. The lion imagery evokes predatory sovereignty. In biblical language the adversary is described as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. The bulls and the lion blend into one predatory force.

Then comes the piercing.

“They pierced my hands and my feet.”

The suffering figure is surrounded by Bashan bulls and then pierced. If Bashan is giant territory, if bulls represent dominant powers, then the crucifixion scene becomes more than a Roman execution. It becomes a confrontation with an ancient order, a remnant empire of rebellious strength.

Consider the broader thread. Genesis tells us the Nephilim were present before the flood and after. Deuteronomy records Og of Bashan as the last of the Rephaim. Bashan becomes associated with the realm of the dead, the shades, the Rephaim in poetic literature. The underworld in Hebrew thought includes the Rephaim as shadowy ancestral powers. Bashan is not just fertile land; it is mythically charged ground.

In Greco-Roman tradition we encounter something similar. The Titans, the demigods populate heroic bloodlines. Rome practiced ancestor veneration. The dead were not gone; they were present as shades. Imperial ideology linked rulers to divine lineage. Julius Caesar claimed descent from Venus through Aeneas. Augustus styled himself “son of the divine.” Bloodline mattered. Divine ancestry justified rule.

If trees symbolize powers and bulls symbolize dominion, then Bashan’s trees and Bashan’s bulls both point to entrenched authority structures, towering, ancient, pre-Abrahamic forces. Isaiah speaks of the lofty oaks of Bashan being brought low. Psalm 22 speaks of the bulls of Bashan surrounding the righteous sufferer. In both cases Bashan stands as a symbol of arrogant strength destined for judgment.

Now consider the image of the woman who rides the beast in Revelation. The beast represents empire, but it is not merely political machinery. The beast in apocalyptic imagery is not human. It rises from the sea, carries horns, speaks blasphemies. It is hybrid, composite, unnatural. It is something more than a king and less than a god.

The woman is called the mother of abominations. In Greco-Roman religion, the great mother goddess, whether named Isis, Cybele, Venus, or Astarte, was associated with fertility, lions, sovereignty, and cosmic motherhood. Cybele was brought to Rome in 204 BC and installed on the Palatine in the form of a sacred stone said to have fallen from heaven, flanked by lions. Lions again. Dominion imagery again. A mother enthroned at the heart of empire.

If the beast is not fully human, then what is it? Revelation later identifies the number of the beast as 666, “the number of a man.” Yet it is a man who is more than a man. Six in biblical symbolism often falls short of seven, the number of divine completion.

Consider figures like Gilgamesh in Mesopotamian tradition. He is described as two-thirds divine and one-third human. Not fully god, not fully mortal. A hybrid king who seeks immortality because he does not possess it inherently. He searches for eternal life precisely because he stands between realms. He is mighty, yet incomplete.

In that pattern, the beast becomes a symbolic embodiment of hybrid dominion; not divine, not merely human. A system or ruler claiming godlike authority, yet lacking true divinity. A counterfeit ascent.

If the woman is the mother, and the beast is hybrid empire, then the imagery suggests a birth of unnatural sovereignty. The great mother archetype aligned with imperial power produces something that is neither fully heaven nor fully earth. It is a constructed immortality ; emperors declared gods, bloodlines traced to Venus, rulers deified by decree.

Like Gilgamesh, such a figure seeks immortality because it is not native to him. Like the Nephilim traditions, it echoes a mingling that produces mighty ones but not eternal ones. The number 666 becomes the signature of that condition: intensified humanity striving toward godhood, yet eternally falling short.

So the beast is not simply a tyrant. It is a hybrid claim, empire clothed in divinity, humanity crowned as god, power born from a mother who promises sovereignty but cannot grant true life.

Not divine. Not fully human.

If the Nephilim, or what later myth would call Titans, are understood as beings born from rebellion, neither fully divine nor fully human, then they occupy a tragic middle ground. Formed through the transgression of fallen angels (demons) and humanity, associated with violence and corruption, they do not possess true immortality. The Flood, in the biblical account, is the decisive judgment against that corrupted order.

In contrast, the promise of the Gospel is radically different. Eternal life is not seized, engineered, or inherited through bloodline, it is granted through union with Christ. Immortality, in this framework, comes not through hybrid power or divine ancestry, but through restored relationship with the Creator.

If that is the case, then the ultimate conflict is not merely political or mythological, it is existential. If rebellious beings cannot attain true eternal life, yet humanity is offered it through Christ, then the strategy would not be to create immortality, but to prevent access to it. The simplest way to do that would be to distance humanity from the source of life, to redirect allegiance, to obscure truth, to substitute counterfeit paths for the narrow one.

“And will ye pollute me among my people for handfuls of barley and for pieces of bread, to slay the souls that should not die, and to save the souls alive that should not live, by your lying to my people that hear your lies?”

— Ezekiel 13:19, KJV

“And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.”

— Genesis 3:15, KJV

Within that symbolic structure, spiritual deception becomes more strategic than physical domination. If eternal life flows through Christ, then drawing humanity away from Him becomes the central objective.

There is another layer worth noting. In some late traditions, Isis proclaims herself “first-born of time.” That phrase carries mythic weight. In Greek cosmology, Chronos (often identified with Cronus) is associated with primordial time. Cronus is a Titan, one of the pre-Olympian (Christ) powers. If Isis identifies herself in relation to primordial time, and Cronus represents the Titan order, then the language subtly connects her to the era of the Titans; the ancient order preceding the Olympians.

It is also historically significant that certain modern ideological movements, most notably elements within Nazi leadership such as Heinrich Himmler, were deeply influenced by occultism and neo-pagan mythology, seeking to suppress Christianity and Judaism in favor of a reconstructed pre-Christian Aryan religious identity rooted in mythic antiquity. Himmler in particular showed fascination with Germanic paganism, ancestral cult, sacred bloodlines, and “Mother Earth” symbolism; an archetype that in the wider ancient world echoes figures like Cybele, the Magna Mater, the pagan Queen of Heaven. In Roman religion, Cybele was not only a mother of gods but also associated with chthonic power, tied symbolically to the realm of the dead where ancestral spirits were believed to dwell. Within that mythic framework, earth becomes both womb and grave; mother of life and keeper of the underworld; reinforcing the ancient pattern of divine motherhood intertwined with empire, ancestry, and the shades below.

Germanic paganism itself shared structural similarities with Roman religion. Both systems venerated ancestral spirits and heroic forebears, both sacralized kingship, and both blended warrior ethos with divine lineage myths. The Germanic gods, like the Roman and earlier Indo-European pantheons, operated within a cosmology of sky gods, earth powers, fate, and underworld realms. Sacred groves (Bohemian Grove?) and high places functioned much like Roman temples and cult sites. Heroic bloodlines were traced back to divine progenitors, just as Roman elites claimed descent from gods like Venus through Aeneas. In both religious worlds, myth, ancestry, and rulership were deeply intertwined, creating a framework in which political authority could be interpreted as divinely rooted and cosmically sanctioned.

If one traces the mythic thread, one sees a pattern: giant bloodlines, demigod kings, divine mothers, beast empires, ancestor veneration, underworld shades, towering trees of power, horned bulls of dominion. Scripture speaks in symbols, but symbols point to realities. The Nephilim before the flood and “also afterward.” Og of Bashan, remnant of the Rephaim. Bulls of Bashan encircling the pierced one.

Read this way, the crucifixion is not merely political execution. It is the moment when the righteous one stands encircled by the full weight of an ancient rebellious order; human, imperial, and possibly something older; and allows that order to exhaust itself upon him.

The bulls gore. The lion roars. The hands and feet are pierced.

And yet Psalm 22 does not end in defeat.

If Bashan represents giant power, if the beast empire represents titanic dominion, then the cross becomes a confrontation with the surviving legacy of Genesis 6. The flood did not end the story. Bashan preserves its memory. Rome claims divine ancestry. Emperors style themselves sons of gods. The shades linger in the underworld traditions. The trees grow tall again.

When we trace Bashan through Scripture carefully, a pattern begins to emerge.

Bashan lies east of the Jordan. It is ruled in Deuteronomy 3 by Og, described as the last of the Rephaim. That term Rephaim is where the thread deepens. In some passages it refers to ancient giant peoples, formidable and pre-Israelite. In others, it refers to the shades of the dead in Sheol.

Isaiah 14:9 declares that Sheol stirs up the Rephaim to greet fallen kings. Proverbs 9:18 warns that “the dead (Rephaim) are there.” The same word holds both meanings: giants and underworld spirits. That overlap is not incidental. It suggests that in the Hebrew imagination, memory of ancient mighty ones and the realm of the dead were conceptually intertwined.

Bashan, then, is the land of the last giant king; and linguistically connected to the realm of the shades.

The geography intensifies this.

Bashan includes the region of Mount Hermon. In later Jewish tradition, particularly in 1 Enoch, Mount Hermon is the place where the Watchers descended. The Watchers transgressed, corrupted humanity, and fathered giant offspring. Those giants were destroyed, but their spirits, according to that tradition, became wandering evil spirits. While this narrative does not appear directly in the canonical Hebrew Bible, it was deeply influential in Second Temple Judaism. By that period, Hermon and Bashan were not just landscapes. They were remembered as sites of primordial rebellion.

So Bashan becomes layered with associations: fallen beings, giant offspring, corruption before the flood, lingering spirits after judgment.

Then comes Psalm 68:22. “The Lord said, I will bring them back from Bashan; I will bring them back from the depths of the sea.” Bashan is paralleled with the depths of the sea. In biblical symbolism, the sea represents chaos, the abyss, the untamed deep. The depths evoke underworld imagery. Bashan and abyss are placed in poetic parallel. That matters.

It suggests that Bashan was not merely high pastureland but symbolically resonant with the realm of death, the deep, the chaotic underworld.

Now consider the New Testament setting. In Matthew 16:18, the declaration is made that the gates of Hades shall not prevail. This statement occurs near Caesarea Philippi, at the foot of Mount Hermon, in the region historically associated with Bashan. That region in Greco-Roman times contained pagan shrines and a cave believed to be an entrance to the underworld. The geography was already mythically charged. Abyss imagery. Portals of the dead. Cosmic conflict.

The declaration about the defeat of the gates of death is made in territory long associated with giant memory and underworld lore.

By the Second Temple period, Bashan and Hermon carried layered meanings. Rephaim were both ancient giants and shades of the dead. Watcher traditions placed rebellion there. Underworld imagery overlapped with giant traditions. Bashan became symbolically connected with primeval revolt and the lingering realm of the dead.

With that framework, return to Psalm 22.

“Many bulls surround me; strong bulls of Bashan encircle me.”

If trees represent powers; the Tree of Life as divine order, the tree of knowledge as rival authority, then the oaks of Bashan in Isaiah 2 are towering powers destined to fall. Bashan’s trees are not merely forestry. They are elevated structures of strength. Empires. Bloodlines. Thrones.

Likewise, the bulls of Bashan are not random livestock. Bulls in the ancient world symbolized dominion, virility, divine kingship, storm-god authority. Horns represent power. Bashan’s bulls evoke not just strength but entrenched, ancient strength.

And Psalm 22 intensifies the scene.

The bulls surround. They encircle. They open their mouths like a ravening and roaring lion. The imagery shifts from bovine strength to predatory sovereignty. A roaring lion in biblical language is associated with the adversary, with devouring power. The righteous sufferer is not merely opposed by men; he is encircled by archetypal oppressive force.

Then comes the piercing. “They pierced my hands and my feet.”

If Genesis says the Nephilim were on the earth in those days and also afterward, and if Og of Bashan stands as a remnant of the Rephaim, then Bashan preserves the post-flood continuation of giant memory. The flood judged, but something survived. The phrase “and also afterward” leaves the door open.

In Greco-Roman ideology, rulers claimed divine descent. Julius Caesar traced lineage to Venus through Aeneas. Augustus became son of the divine. Ancestor veneration blurred the line between dead heroes and living authority. Shades of the dead were not erased; they were invoked. Bloodline legitimated rule. Divine ancestry justified empire. How often throughout history have we heard the claim that certain people possess a “divine right” to rule?

If Bashan represents the remnant territory of giants, and if Rephaim overlaps linguistically with shades of the dead, then Bashan becomes both giant land and underworld memory. A preserved node of antediluvian power.

So when Psalm 22 speaks of bulls of Bashan surrounding the pierced one, it can be read as more than metaphor for strong men. It can be read as confrontation with an ancient order, a surviving titan-like dominion embedded in empire, bloodline, and spiritual rebellion.

The crucifixion then becomes not merely Roman execution, but a cosmic moment. The righteous one stands encircled by the full weight of post-flood giant legacy, imperial divinity claims, underworld shades, and beast-like empire. The bulls of Bashan gore. The lion roars. The hands and feet are pierced.

If the beast empire is the continuation of titanic dominion, demigod lineage, divine motherhood mythology, imperial self-deification, then the cross stands at the collision point between the true Tree of Life and the towering counterfeit trees of Bashan.

Psalm 68:22 adds another layer to the Bashan thread, and it sharpens the tone.

“The Lord said, I will bring them back from Bashan; I will bring them back from the depths of the sea.”

The first question is unavoidable: who is “them,” and what does it mean to bring them back?

The immediate context controls the direction. Psalm 68 is not lament but victory. It is a procession psalm. God rises, enemies scatter, kings flee. Just after verse 22, the language turns graphic, enemies are struck down, subdued, defeated.

So “bringing back” is not rescue. It is summons. It is extraction for judgment.

Bashan in this context represents strength, fortified territory, remembered defiance. It is the land once ruled by Og, last of the Rephaim. A place associated with formidable opposition. To say “I will bring them back from Bashan” is to say that even from the stronghold of giant memory, even from entrenched power, no enemy remains beyond reach.

The parallel line intensifies it: “I will bring them back from the depths of the sea.”

In Hebrew poetry, the sea often symbolizes chaos, abyss, primordial waters. The depths evoke the unreachable, the concealed, the underworld-like recesses of creation. Bashan and the depths of the sea are placed side by side, elevated fortress and cosmic abyss.

The effect is comprehensive. From the highest citadel to the deepest chasm, there is no refuge.

It communicates inevitability. No matter how fortified the empire, no matter how ancient the bloodline, no matter how mythically rooted the rebellion, whether it traces itself to giants, divine ancestry, or titanic memory, it cannot hide in Bashan. Nor can it disappear into the abyss.

This matters when we read Bashan symbolically.

If trees represent powers, towering structures of authority, then Bashan’s oaks in Isaiah represent elevated dominions brought low. If bulls represent aggressive sovereignty, then the bulls of Bashan in Psalm 22 embody encircling force. And here in Psalm 68, Bashan becomes a symbol of entrenched opposition that imagines itself secure.

But it is not secure.

Psalm 68 is a march. God advances from Sinai. He scatters kings. He ascends in triumph. It is enthronement imagery. The movement culminates not in chaos but in reign.

So when we hold this alongside Psalm 22, a larger picture forms.

Zeus Ammon; known to the Romans as Jupiter Ammon; the horned sky god, merging Greek Zeus with the Egyptian Amun, crowned with ram’s horns as a symbol of divine sovereignty and cosmic rule.

It is worth noting how strongly the bull is associated with Zeus; and in Rome, Jupiter. In Greek myth, Zeus famously takes the form of a bull in the story of Europa, and the bull symbol throughout the Mediterranean represented strength, virility, storm power, and kingship. Zeus repeatedly fathers children through mortal women; Perseus, Heracles, Minos; producing semi-divine heroes whose bloodlines often legitimize kingdoms. The pattern is clear: divine seed entering humanity creates mighty rulers.

There are also longstanding discussions about the continuity of classical imagery in "Christian" Rome. Some researchers suggest that the Chair of Saint Peter contains mythological engravings interpreted by some as Heraclean motifs. Heracles himself was a son of Zeus and a mortal woman, the archetypal demi-god hero. Likewise, the famous bronze statue identified as Saint Peter has been debated by art historians, with some proposing it may have originally represented Jupiter before being reinterpreted. What is certain is that millions continue to kiss its foot in reverence, a gesture not unfamiliar in ancient image veneration (worship).

Another significant fusion is Zeus-Ammon, or Jupiter Ammon; the horned sky god combining Greek Zeus with the Egyptian Amun. Amun-Ra was a supreme solar deity, and his symbol included ram’s horns. The obelisk, associated with Egyptian solar worship, was later transported to Rome and erected in imperial spaces, eventually becoming part of "Christian" Rome’s landscape.

Across these elements; bull symbolism, horned sky gods, divine-human offspring, and sacred objects carried into empire; the theme of divine lineage and cosmic authority remains consistent.

Genesis 6:4 makes a statement that is brief but weighty. It tells us that the Nephilim (Titans) were on the earth in those days; and also afterward. The verse offers no mechanism. It does not describe a second descent. It does not narrate a renewed transgression. It simply places the Nephilim on both sides of the Flood.

That quiet continuation is striking. The narrative moves swiftly into judgment, into waters that erase a corrupted world, into a reset through Noah. Yet when the text looks back at the Nephilim, it does not confine them entirely to the antediluvian era. It leaves a door open.

After the Flood narrative concludes, giant-associated groups appear again in Israel’s memory. The Anakim are encountered in Numbers 13, where the spies describe them as formidable and overwhelming. Deuteronomy 2 and 3 speak of the Rephaim, the Zamzummim, the Emim; peoples remembered for unusual size and strength. Og of Bashan is explicitly identified as belonging to the Rephaim. His bedstead becomes a detail preserved to emphasize scale, physicality, and lingering otherness.

So the biblical storyline does not erase giant memory after Genesis 6. It reintroduces it in the land narrative.

Historically, interpreters have wrestled with this.

Some Second Temple Jewish writings expand the story. Texts like 1 Enoch describe Watchers descending before the Flood, fathering giants whose bodies perish but whose spirits persist. In those traditions, later giant groups are understood as remnants or re-emergences of that primordial corruption. This is not spelled out in Genesis itself; it is an attempt to account for the “afterward.”

If their spirits endure, and if birds are used symbolically to represent spiritual forces, then when Revelation describes Babylon as becoming “the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird” (Revelation 18:2, KJV), the imagery becomes striking. Does this suggest that those same rebellious forces continue to operate within a renewed Babylon; a “Babylon 2.0”; with their mother-figure enthroned at the heart of empire on the Palatine?

It is also significant that, in Egyptian myth, Isis uses heka; sacred magic; to reassemble and revive Osiris after his death. She becomes the restorer of a slain god, the mediator between death and renewed rule. Resurrection in that system comes through hidden knowledge and ritual power.

It is also worth considering that in the Osirian mysteries, initiates believed themselves to be symbolically reborn through Osiris; participating in his death and rebirth; and when placed alongside the concept of the number of the beast, that parallel invites deeper reflection.

Serapis (Greek: Σέραπις, also rendered Sarapis) was a Hellenistic fusion deity formed by combining the Egyptian gods Osiris and Apis into a single Greco-Egyptian figure.

The name itself derives from the Egyptian compound Osiris-Apis (Wsir-Hapi). Osiris was the god of the dead, resurrection, and kingship. Apis was the sacred bull of Memphis, regarded as a living manifestation of divine power and vitality. Over time, the compound Osiris-Apis was shortened and Hellenized into the Greek form Serapis.

Linguistically, the name carries the meaning of “Osiris manifested as Apis”; or more simply, the Osiris-Apis god.

Under the Ptolemaic dynasty, after Alexander the Great’s conquest of Egypt, Serapis was promoted as a unifying deity meant to bridge Egyptian and Greek religious traditions. Rather than depicting him as a bull, artists portrayed Serapis as a bearded, enthroned figure resembling Zeus; regal, authoritative, and universal. In him were combined elements of Osiris (underworld and resurrection), Apis (bull strength and vitality), Zeus (sky sovereignty), and Hades (rulership of the realm of the dead).

Serapis thus became associated with the underworld, resurrection, healing, fertility, and royal authority. He functioned as a theological bridge; a carefully constructed deity designed to merge Egyptian tradition with Greek philosophical and imperial religion.

In essence, Serapis represents the fusion of Osiris and Apis into a single imperial god; a synthesis of resurrection, bull power, and cosmic kingship.

The “missing” piece lies in the Greek article — ο / ὁ.

In Greek isopsephy (numerical value assigned to letters), the name Ὄσιρις (Osiris) equals 590. The name Ἄπις (Apis) equals 291. Even when combined conceptually as Osiris and Apis, their numerical values do not produce 666.

However, when the two are fused into the Hellenistic syncretic deity Σέραπις (Serapis) — the Greco-Egyptian synthesis of Osiris and Apis promoted in the Ptolemaic and Roman periods; the value changes.

Σέραπις calculates as 596:

Σ (200)Ε (5)Ρ (100)Α (1)Π (80)Ι (10)Σ (200)= 596

Now comes the significant detail. In Greek usage, divine names are often preceded by the article ο (“the” or vocative “O”). The letter ο (omicron) carries the numerical value 70.

So when written as ο Σέραπις:

ο = 70Σέραπις = 596Total = 666

The addition of the Greek article brings the total to 666.

What does that suggest?

If nations are deceived through sorcery, if great men are complicit, and if kings unite in opposition to the returning Christ, then the conflict is not accidental or fragmented. It is coordinated. It is global. It is ideological and spiritual as much as military.

Christ warned that it would be “as it was in the days of Noah”; a time marked by corruption and the distortion of humanity. If immortality or transcendence is offered again apart from God; through power, manipulation, or technological promise; the question becomes pressing: is this restoration, or is it alteration?

The pattern to watch is not merely spectacle, but allegiance. Signs and wonders can persuade. Claims of resurrection can captivate. But if the kings of the earth ultimately align themselves against the Lamb, then the deeper issue is sovereignty.

I will leave that implication open for reflection.

When we follow the name Ashtaroth through Scripture, geography, and later religious history, the strands begin to converge in striking ways.

Ashtaroth appears in Deuteronomy 1:4 as one of the royal centers of Og king of Bashan, who “lived at Ashtaroth and at Edrei.” Deuteronomy 3:10 lists it among the cities of Bashan. Joshua 12:4 and 13:12 record that this territory was taken from Og. First Chronicles 6:71 later notes that Ashtaroth in Bashan was given to the Levites.

This is not incidental. Ashtaroth was a capital city of Og’s kingdom; Og, explicitly called the last of the Rephaim. Bashan is repeatedly linked with the Rephaim, the giant peoples. The land east of the Jordan, north of Gilead, in the basaltic plateau of Argob, was remembered as fortified, formidable, and associated with ancient strength. Bashan was the land of the giants.

The name Ashtaroth itself is connected linguistically to Astarte (Ashtoreth) the pagan Queen of Heaven, the Canaanite goddess associated with fertility, war, and royal power. That means Og’s royal city bore the name of a goddess. The political center of giant territory was marked by the name of a divine (fallen) feminine power.

So Bashan is not only militarily strong. It is spiritually charged. The land of the giants is linked with the name of Astarte.

Now widen the lens.

In the wider Mediterranean world, Astarte merges with Ishtar, then with Isis, then with Cybele and Venus. By the Greco-Roman period, syncretism fuses these identities. In Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, Isis declares herself known under many names; Isis, Cybele, Venus, Astarte. One mother, many titles.

Cybele, the Magna Mater, was brought to Rome in 204 BC and installed on the Palatine Hill. Not in the form of a sculpted goddess, but as a sacred black stone said to have fallen from heaven. A meteoritic object becomes the embodied presence of the Great Mother at the heart of Rome. A heavenly stone enthroned on the political summit of empire.

Rome itself is famously built on seven hills.

When Revelation speaks of a woman who sits on seven hills, called the mother of abominations, riding the beast, it uses imagery already saturated with imperial and goddess symbolism. A great mother enthroned upon the city of seven hills. A feminine figure aligned with empire.

If Astarte’s name marks the royal center of Bashan; the land of the Rephaim; and if later religious systems elevate her into a universal mother figure associated with throne, lions, war, and sovereignty, the symbolic trajectory becomes provocative.

Bashan is repeatedly associated with giants. Og of Bashan is the last of the Rephaim. The territory includes Ashtaroth, bearing the name of the goddess. In prophetic literature, Bashan represents pride, strength, abundance, and oppressive power. The bulls of Bashan surround the righteous sufferer. The oaks of Bashan are lofty and destined to fall. The region becomes more than soil; it becomes a symbol of entrenched might.

If one frames the Nephilim and Rephaim as a titan-like order; mighty ones before the Flood and “afterward”; then Bashan stands as their post-flood stronghold. A preserved remnant of ancient greatness.

The Great Mother births gods and powers. Imperial Rome absorbs and rebrands these mythic structures, placing the Magna Mater on the Palatine as a sanctioning presence over empire. Divine motherhood legitimizes rule.

So the question arises: is the Great Mother archetype the mythic memory of the one who mothers the Nephilim? Is the beast empire; the imperial system claiming divine descent and heavenly sanction, a continuation of titan dominion in political form?

Scripture does not explicitly state that the woman of Revelation is Astarte, Isis, or Cybele. But the imagery overlaps: mother of abominations, seated on seven hills, allied with beast power. In earlier Canaanite religion, Astarte stands alongside Baal, associated with fertility and war. The name Ashtaroth marks the capital of giant territory. The land of the Rephaim bears her imprint.

Bashan, the land of giants, is linked to Ashtaroth. The royal city of Og carries her name. Later, a universalized mother goddess sits enthroned at the heart of the greatest beast-like empire of antiquity, in the form of a stone said to have fallen from heaven.

Within that symbolic arc, one can see a pattern: giant land, goddess city, imperial mother, beast power.

In Book XI of Metamorphoses, Lucius prays for deliverance and the "goddess" appears to him in radiant form. She declares that she is the one divine power worshipped throughout the world under many names. Among the Romans she is Ceres, Minerva, Venus, Diana. In the underworld she is Proserpina and Hecate. In the East she is Astarte. In Egypt she is Isis.

This reflects the imperial religious worldview in which major female deities were understood as manifestations of a single Great "Goddess". By this stage of Mediterranean religion, Isis, Astarte, Aphrodite, Atargatis, Venus, and even Cybele could be seen as culturally distinct expressions of one universal mother figure, placed on the Palatine Hill with proximity to the Mother Church.

Centuries later, that same goddess identity is absorbed into Isis and Venus. And Venus is crucial. Julius Caesar claimed descent from Venus through Aeneas. After his death, he was declared divine. Augustus styled himself son of the divine. The Caesars increasingly moved within a framework of divine or semi-divine status.

Judges 2:13 states plainly, “They forsook the LORD and served Baal and Ashtaroth.” The verse is brief, but the pairing is powerful.

“Baal” means “lord,” and in the ancient Levant it functioned both as a title and as the name of a storm deity. There were many local Baals; Baal of Peor, Baal of Hermon, Baal of Tyre; but behind these stood the larger image of Baal as the storm god: the rider on the clouds, the wielder of thunder, the bringer of rain, fertility, and military strength. He was the divine warrior of the skies.

“Ashtaroth” is the plural form of Astarte. It can refer to multiple manifestations of the goddess or to a broader category of female fertility worship. When Judges pairs “Baal and Ashtaroth,” it is describing participation in the full Canaanite cultic system; male storm lord and female fertility queen.

In earlier Ugaritic texts, the pantheon is complex. Anat and Asherah have defined roles, and Astarte appears among the goddesses without always being Baal’s formal consort. But religion is rarely static. Over centuries, especially in Phoenician and Syrian regions, divine identities blurred. Baal-type storm gods and Astarte-type goddesses were frequently worshiped together as a complementary pair; sky and womb, thunder and fertility, power and production.

Israel abandoned exclusive covenant loyalty and adopted the surrounding fertility system. Storm god and goddess were served alongside one another.

Now consider how this develops symbolically.

Baal is the storm god; master of wind, thunder, and high places. In later Jewish and Christian tradition, a name derived from Baal, “Baal-zebub” (Beelzebub), becomes associated with a demonic prince. In the Gospels, Beelzebub is called the “prince of demons.” The storm lord of Canaanite religion becomes, in later interpretation, a demonic ruler.

If one views the “sons of God” in Genesis 6 as fallen beings and connects later demonology to the lingering spirits of that rebellion, then Baal’s transformation into Beelzebub takes on symbolic weight. The storm god becomes recast as a fallen power, ruler over lesser spirits.

Now bring Astarte back into the frame. (sorry for the repetition)

Ashtaroth in Bashan was one of the royal cities of Og; Og, the last of the Rephaim. Bashan was remembered as the land of giants. The capital of giant territory bore the goddess’s name. So in that region, the memory of Rephaim and the name of Astarte converge.

Later, Astarte merges into Isis, Venus, and Cybele in imperial religion. Venus becomes the claimed ancestress of Julius Caesar. Caesar is declared divine; Augustus becomes son of the divine; the imperial line moves within a framework of demi-god language.

So on one side stands Baal, storm lord, later remembered as Beelzebub, prince of demons. On the other stands Astarte, the goddess whose name marks the royal center of giant land, later absorbed into the Great Mother of empire. Together in Judges they represent the male-female axis of the Canaanite system; power and fertility, storm and womb.

Within this interpretive framework, the pairing can be seen not merely as agricultural religion but as a revival of an older order: a system of divine-human entanglement, titan memory, and rival sovereignty. If the Nephilim represent a hybridized rebellion and the Rephaim its post-flood continuation, then Bashan; with Ashtaroth at its center; becomes a symbolic node where goddess worship and giant lineage meet.

“And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus: and when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration.”

— Revelation 17:6, KJV

“My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me…”

— Hosea 4:6, KJV

Genesis 14:5 gives us one of the earliest and most concentrated references to the Rephaim:

“In the fourteenth year came Chedorlaomer… and smote the Rephaim in Ashteroth Karnaim.”

This is long before Israel becomes a nation. The setting is the time of Abram. The text places the Rephaim firmly within the landscape of early Transjordan history.

The Rephaim, in later biblical memory, are associated with unusual size and strength. Deuteronomy 2–3 preserves traditions of ancient peoples in the region east of the Jordan; Rephaim, Emim, Zamzummim; groups remembered as formidable and displaced by later inhabitants. Og king of Bashan is explicitly called the last remnant of the Rephaim. Bashan becomes their final stronghold.

Genesis 14 shows that even in Abram’s era, the Rephaim were already an identifiable people inhabiting a defined territory.

That territory is named: Ashteroth Karnaim.

The name itself is revealing. “Ashteroth” is linguistically related to Astarte, the Canaanite goddess. “Karnaim” means “horns.” Horns in the ancient Near East represent power, strength, authority. Deities were often depicted with horned crowns. Altars had horns at their corners. Kings and gods alike were associated with horn imagery as a symbol of dominion.

So Ashteroth Karnaim can be understood as “Astarte of the Horns” or “Astarte at the Twin Horns.” It combines the goddess-name with imagery of power.

In Genesis 14, a coalition of eastern kings sweeps through the region. They defeat the Rephaim in Ashteroth Karnaim, the Zuzim, the Emim, and the Horites. These are early inhabitants of Transjordan, some of whom later texts connect with giant traditions. The campaign shows layered populations and shifting power structures long before Israel’s conquest narratives.

When later prophetic literature speaks of Bashan with symbolic weight; its oaks, its bulls; it draws on a region already marked by giant memory and cultic associations. The land of the Rephaim is also the land of Astarte’s name.

The Kittim (Chittim) enter the picture later in biblical and intertestamental literature. Originally referring to peoples associated with Cyprus (Kition), the term expands in prophetic and apocalyptic texts to designate western maritime powers. In Daniel and later writings, the Kittim represent distant imperial forces moving across the Mediterranean world. Over time, the name becomes shorthand for western empires; including, in some interpretations, Rome.

So we have an arc that moves from Genesis 14; Rephaim in Ashteroth Karnaim, goddess-name and horns in giant territory; to Deuteronomy’s memory of Bashan as the last refuge of the Rephaim, to later prophetic language about horns as kingdoms, and finally to apocalyptic references to Kittim as western imperial powers.

The biblical text itself keeps these strands distinct. It preserves memory of early Transjordan populations, notes their displacement, and situates them geographically. But when viewed across centuries, the layering becomes striking: giant peoples in Bashan, a royal center bearing the name of Astarte, horn imagery associated with power, and later western empires symbolized as rising horns in prophetic visions.

One important text is Psalm 68:15–16. Bashan is described as a “mountain of God,” a high-peaked mountain envied by other mountains. The language is unusual. Bashan is elevated rhetorically, almost rivaling Zion. In ancient Near Eastern thought, mountains are divine dwelling places. If Bashan carries giant memory and cultic associations, and is described in exalted mountain language, it fits the pattern of contested sacred geography; rival heights challenging the chosen mountain.

Another key passage is Amos 4:1: “Hear this word, you cows of Bashan…” The phrase is directed at wealthy, oppressive elites. Bashan’s livestock imagery becomes shorthand for indulgent, domineering power. Bulls and cows of Bashan represent oppressive strength and luxury tied to corruption. That strengthens the symbolic reading of Bashan as more than fertile pasture; it is power swollen with arrogance.

Ezekiel 39:18 also uses sacrificial imagery involving “rams, lambs, goats, bulls — all of them fatlings of Bashan.” In apocalyptic war language, Bashan’s livestock become part of a great judgment feast. Bashan’s “fatness” becomes associated with judgment imagery.

Zechariah 11:2 says, “Wail, O oaks of Bashan, for the strong forest has fallen.” Oaks, like horns, represent strength and exaltation. Bashan’s trees again become symbols of high structures brought down.

In Second Temple literature, especially 1 Enoch, Mount Hermon is the site of the Watchers’ descent. Whether one takes that as canonical or not, it shows that by the intertestamental period, Jewish thought strongly linked that northern region with primordial rebellion and the origin of corrupt spiritual forces. That reinforces the Bashan–Hermon–Rephaim cluster.

Daniel 7 introduces beast empires rising from the sea; the abyss.These beasts are hybrid, monstrous, horned. Horns in Daniel explicitly represent kings. If Ashteroth Karnaim encodes horn symbolism in giant territory, and Daniel uses horns for imperial rulers, the symbolic language aligns remarkably well.

Revelation 13 and 17 then continue Daniel’s imagery: a beast rising from the sea, ten horns, and a woman associated with imperial Rome. The sea, horns, empire, and female figure converge in apocalyptic symbolism. Revelation also describes “Babylon the Great, mother of the abominations of the earth,” seated on seven hills. Rome’s imperial cult, divine lineage claims, and goddess syncretism form the historical backdrop.

Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 also contain taunt songs against earthly kings that use cosmic rebellion language; ascent to heaven, fall from divine height. While addressed to Babylon and Tyre, the imagery transcends mere politics. It blends human rulers with mythic fall motifs.

Finally, the consistent biblical pattern of God confronting “high places” is worth noting. High places are not just hills; they are cultic centers. Bashan is elevated terrain. Hermon is elevated. Rome’s seven hills are elevated. Mountains, horns, trees; all vertical symbols; become associated with rival authority.

To understand Rome in this light, you have to step into how Romans viewed ancestry, divinity, and the dead.

Roman religion included veneration (worship) of the manes — the spirits of the dead. Families maintained domestic shrines honoring ancestors. The dead were not absent; they were present, protective, sometimes powerful. During festivals like Parentalia and Lemuria, the living interacted ritually with the shades of the departed.

The concept of the mundus adds another layer. The Roman mundus was a sacred pit, traditionally associated with Romulus (also Nephilim) It was considered a kind of opening to the underworld. On certain days, the mundus was opened, and it was said that the spirits of the dead could ascend. The boundary between upper world and lower world was ritually thinned.

So Rome institutionalized contact with ancestral shades. The dead, especially founding figures, were integrated into civic consciousness.

When emperors were deified, this was not symbolic flattery alone. It placed them among the divine ancestors of the state. The Senate could proclaim apotheosis, and temples were built to deified rulers. The imperial cult formalized what had already existed culturally: the merging of political authority and divine lineage.

Now consider this alongside titan and giant traditions.

In Greek myth, the Titans were primordial powers preceding the Olympians. They were not demons in the later Christian sense, but they represented an earlier cosmic order. The Olympian gods overthrew them, yet their memory persisted as ancient, immense beings.

If one overlays the Nephilim and Rephaim traditions; mighty ones before the Flood and afterward; onto Greco-Roman mythic consciousness, one sees structural parallels. Ancient mighty beings. Hybrid or semi-divine heroes. Founders linked to gods. Imperial rulers claiming divine descent.

Rome did not say, “We worship Titans.” But it did venerate heroic ancestors with divine blood. It did elevate rulers into godhood. It did maintain ritual contact with the shades of the dead. It did install a Great Mother on the Palatine in the form of a stone said to have fallen from heaven. It did build an empire whose authority was grounded in divine ancestry.

It did murder the Messiah, who came to defeat death and free us slaves.

Meanwhile....

The idea that Isis “found the path of the sun” (remember they are not immortal) belongs to the wider Egyptian theological world that shaped how she was understood in late antiquity.

In Egyptian religion, the sun’s daily journey across the sky and its nightly descent into the underworld was the central cosmic drama. The sun god; most commonly Ra; sailed across the heavens by day and traveled through the Duat (the underworld) by night. Maintaining that path meant maintaining cosmic order. A counterfeit cosmic order arising from the violation and corruption of the divinely appointed life-bearer; Eve, Zion, Wisdom, cosmic woman, the bride, whose role was meant to carry and reflect true divine life.

In certain hymns and late Egyptian texts, Isis is portrayed as possessing supreme magical knowledge. One famous myth tells how she learned the secret name of Ra, gaining power over him through that knowledge. In Greco-Egyptian religious texts and hymns from the Hellenistic and Roman periods, Isis is described as mistress of the cosmos, ruler of stars, controller of winds and seas, and regulator of celestial cycles.

In that context, references to Isis as one who knows or reveals the “course” or “path” of the sun appear in hymnic and philosophical descriptions of her cosmic sovereignty. She is the light bearer (Lucifer). She becomes identified with the ordering intelligence behind the heavens. In some inscriptions, she is praised as the one who “regulates the course of the sun and moon” or “governs the revolutions of the heavens.”

By the time Apuleius writes Metamorphoses, Isis is no longer merely an Egyptian goddess of a particular myth cycle. She is presented as the universal queen of heaven (and the underworld) whose power extends over sky, sea, and underworld. Her self-revelation speech in Book XI portrays her as cosmic ruler; governing the elements, seasons, and celestial bodies. While Apuleius does not explicitly phrase it as “I discovered the path of the sun,” his Isis claims authority over its movement.

This matters symbolically.

In ancient thought, knowing or controlling the path of the sun was not astronomical trivia. It meant authority over cosmic order itself. The sun’s path determined time, agriculture, kingship cycles, and ritual calendars. To claim mastery of that path is to claim cosmic sovereignty.

When Isis becomes identified with Astarte and Venus; and Venus becomes ancestress of Caesar; the Great Goddess (also whore of Babylon) is no longer local. She is celestial architect, regulator of heavenly movement, and mother of rulers who claim divine status.

So if Isis claims knowledge of the sun’s path, and Rome claims descent from Venus (with whom Isis is identified), then imperial theology indirectly aligns itself with a goddess portrayed as mistress of cosmic order. The emperor is not merely politically supreme; he is son of a goddess associated with the governance of heaven itself.

In a framework that sees titanic or Nephilim-like beings as ancient contenders for cosmic authority, this becomes symbolically charged. Control of the sun’s path is control of dominion. It is throne language written into astronomy. Interestingly, an obelisk functions as a giant gnomon (the upright part of a sundial), casting a shadow that marks the movement of the sun, and in St. Peter’s Square the central obelisk is positioned so its shadow interacts with the radiating lines and elliptical colonnades, creating a layered, sun-dial-like spatial design tied to solar alignment.

Whether one reads these traditions historically, mythically, or theologically, the pattern is clear: in late antique religion, Isis is exalted as cosmic queen. She is not just mother or mourner; she is universal sovereign who claims knowledge and governance of the heavens.

That claim; mastery of the sun’s course; situates her not merely within earthbound fertility cult, but within the realm of cosmic rulership.

Until Christ returns of course.

Repent and Believe the Gospel.