4) Athena and Poseidon celebrating Boujloud back in the « Bled »

So, you're going to tell me: « You're driving us crazy, Paraklet, with this connections between Hawaii, the Bible, the Quran, and now the Berbers—where are you going with this?" For now, it's just an introduction, my children. Soon, all the mysteries will be revealed. But let's just say that at this stage, this detour via Hawaii allows me to introduce you to the culture of my ancestors, the Berbers, who, like the Hawaiians, are « Sea peoples » ...

What? Are you surprised that I refer to the Berbers as « Sea peoples »? I understand; you probably imagine them living in the Atlas Mountains. And besides, who is really interested in the Berbers? Yet, not so long ago, in antiquity, North Africa was of great interest to the ancients. This was because they had already noticed strange similarities between the north and south of the Mediterranean, such as the story of Aeneas who fled to Carthage, now Tunis, after the fall of Troy, as Virgil tells us.... Yes, in Tunisia—I know, I know, it always surprised me too. What was he doing among those Maghrebis?

But that's not all. As reported by René Basset, P25 Pomponius Mela, the first Roman geographer, noted that « the inhabitants of the shores of Africa, from the Pillars of Hercules, have adopted our customs and traditions in every respect ». Also in Rome, the great historian Herodotus noted that in addition to the Sun and the Moon, the Libyans worshipped Triton, Poseidon, and Athena—the latter in particular. I found this in Oric Bates' reference work on the Berbers in Antiquity, The Eastern Libyans, published in 1914. René Basset, for his part, reports that, again according to Herodotus, « it was the Libyans who revealed Poseidon » (p. 23).

As for the god « Triton », he is linked to Lake Triton, which is located today between southeastern Algeria and southern Tunisia, the Chotts el-Jérid and Melrhir. These lakes form a sort of separation between the mountainous western part of North Africa and the flatter eastern part. According to Greco-Roman tradition, it was on the shores of Lake Triton that Zeus felt the pangs of headache after swallowing Metis, before Athena emerged from his skull shortly afterwards. This would explain why Athena is often called Athena Tritogeneia. Crazy, isn't it? Athena – « THE » goddess embodying the Greek miracle – a little Tunisian Amazigh? Strange that we forgot about that, isn't it?

Around Lake Triton, a festival was held every year, described by Herodotus and reported by René Basset as follows (P24):

On the day of the annual festival of Athena, the virgins line up in two bands and fight each other with stones and sticks. Those who die from their wounds are considered false virgins. Before the battle, the one recognized as the most beautiful is adorned with a Corinthian helmet and Greek armor; she is also placed on a chariot and paraded around the lake.

More recently, in 1933, Léonce Joleaud P241 drew a parallel between this ritual battle and the Koura, the Berber ball game, which « gives rise to real hand-to-hand combat », sometimes violent.

In the Aurès and elsewhere, the ball game is an integral part of the spring festival [...] In Ras el Oued (Haut Sous), when drought threatens the harvest, the men gather in one camp and the women in another to play koura. In Tajgalt, in the Haouz region of Marrakech, women and men take part in this exercise, each on their own side, around marabout shrines. Among the Aït Ouaraindu in the northeast of the Middle Atlas, two or three completely naked women play pelota with sticks, far from the sight of men. Among the Tsoul, northwest of Taza, women, also naked, engage in this sport using a soup spoon to throw the ball. In eastern Algeria [...] in El Milia, after the doll parade, women throw a cork ball at each other with curved sticks. The same custom is found in Greater Kabylie, again as a rain ritual.

About the Lake Triton in Tunisia, it also features in the epic tale of the Argonauts, composed by Apollonius of Rhodes in the 3rdcentury BC. Finally, still quoting the great Herodotus, Yves Modéran notes in his « Mythes d'origine des Berbères », published in 2010, P1, « that the Maxyes, a people he locates west of the Triton River (near the Tunisian Chotts), claimed to be descendants of the Trojans ». He also reports that Diodorus of Sicily mentioned « an African city named Mesqela, which was founded by Greeks returning from the Trojan War » and that, according to « Servius, the great scholar of the late4thcentury AD, who used very ancient sources, reports that [...] companions of Ajax, after landing in Cyrenaica, were the ancestors of the famous Nasamons of the Libyan desert ». But I know what the Pharisians will say in response to this evidence: these are just fables, myths, stories of the ancients!

Let them gnash their teeth. And let us continue our exploration of Berber culture in Antiquity, by focusing on the ram, which had a prominent place in it – in connection with fertility and the sun. In his book on rock engravings and water rituals in North Africa, « Gravures rupestres et rites de l'eau en Afrique du Nord », Léonce Joleaud has catalogued all the rock engravings of rams P220 wearing a kind of helmet and urinating , a metaphor for the fertilizing rain, to which we will return. Sometimes they are depicted with women in adoration or in labor—giving birth, legs bent and spread apart.

He also mentions a pilgrimage that took place in a mountain between the High Atlas and the Anti-Atlas, where pilgrims (P252):

...bring with them a ram that they sacrifice on the large natural slabs at the summit and at the same time offer their walking sticks to the pseudo-tomb of a marabout, located at the highest point of the mountain. This so-called tomb, where probably no one has ever been buried, is located in this high location, with many stone « kerkours ».

The same type of natural sacrificial slabs were observed in the Canary Islands by La Blanchère in 1883.

Oric Bates, (P195), mentions the ram, whose strength, speed, inaccessible refuges, and propensity for heights commanded the respect of « primitive spirits ». Incidentally, in the Bible, it is not a ram but a goat that was thrown from the heights—to Azazel. For Léonce Joleaud (P232), the helmet depicted on the rams' heads:

was undoubtedly a calabash, a basket or often a clay vase, which could be held on the animal's head by a chin strap passing under the neck. From this calabash, basket or vase emerged either feathers, leaves, foliage or fruits.

And do you know who else is familiar with fertility rituals involving « filled baskets »? Yes, my friends...the Hawaiians! Once the ceremonies to the God Lono were over—you know, the one with the cross wrapped in a cloth—well, they would make a large net (P212):

Four men held the corners. It was filled with all kinds of food: taro, sweet potatoes, breadfruit, bananas, coconuts, and pork. The priests would step forward to pray: « The net fills the heavens. Shake it! Let the divine food fall! Scatter it, O heavens! (...) Life of Kane, Kane, god of life. (...) Let us salute Kane of the life-giving water! »

The Jews of Morocco are also familiar with baskets filled with provisions – on Passover/Pessah evening, during the family meal, the head of the household passes around a « filled basket », a symbol of abundance, over the heads of the guests while singing « Bi’ibilou Yatsanou mitsrayim …  ». But we will come back to this when we discuss the exodus from Egypt ...

Léonce Joleaud also makes the connection with:

...the Egyptian myth of the resurrection of Osiris. In particular, the engravings of rams at El Korema, where these animals wear helmets pierced with numerous holes, through which a whole series of shoots seem to emerge [...] At Philae, the myth is summarized by the representation of the body of Osiris giving birth to plant stems, thanks to the watering by a character: thus is manifested the connection between the renewal of vegetation and water.

We find the same link between animal and plant fertility in the festival of Boujloud or Biyelman, which Léonce Joleaud described as follows in 1933, (P270):

The man of « Aid el Kebir » has his naked body covered with sheep or goat skins. The hooves of these animals hang from his hands so that he can use them to strike. He is wearing a sheep's head or cow's horn- : the tip of each horn is often stuck into an orange decorated with a bouquet of feathers. Boujloud's face is masked by an old wineskin; his head and shoulders are sometimes covered with branches of greenery. Two or three snail necklaces hang around his neck. A large penis hangs between his legs. Finally, with one or two sticks, sometimes four to five meters long and ending in a ram's or goat's foot, he hits everyone.

Yes, Boujloud is a textbook satyr!

For Léonce Joleaud (P246), the sacrifice of a sheep at Aid al-Adha could be:

...a remnant of the cult of the ram [...] Usually, the animal destined for ritual slaughter is adorned with colorful fabrics and paraded in procession [...] In general, shepherds keep the tail of the victim and throw it into the ritual fires, so that, they say, their flocks will prosper and remain in hand.

Finally, let us note that Oric Bates reports on page 187 that, according to Herodotus, all Libyans sacrificed to the Sun and the Moon, beginning with the ear of the victim, which they cut off and threw over their homes. You will recall that this same ear plays a prominent role in Hawaiian sacrifices—as it does in the Quran, which specifically criticizes those who prostrate themselves before the sun and the moon in Surah Fussilat 41.37.

But to return to the prominent place of the ram in the Berber worldview in Antiquity, Léonce Joleaud quotes Saint Athanasius P251 and Macrobius (P255), for whom « the Libyans consider the Ram, whom they call Ammon, to be a god ». He also cites a legend (P251) of a saint who « imprisoned by the chieftain, called for help from the Rams of his country: they rushed to the castle where the saint was being held, and overturned the building, thus freeing the prisoner ».

Finally, Léonce Joleaud quotes Servius, for whom Ammon was the name of a god « personified, [...] from Carthage [in Tunisia] to Cyrene [in Libya], by a child wearing ram's horns ». Oric Bates specifies (P190) that this child was found by shepherds in the dunes, uttering prophecies—but that he would stop when lifted up and start again once he was put back on the ground. He then disappeared—and it is this event that is said to be the origin of the cult of Zeus-Ammon, , and its link with prophetic speech (P 194).

Oric Bates makes the connection between Ammon and the well-documented ancestor cult among the Berbers – which I already mentioned in my video S5 when I talked about Adebni, the divination on the tombs of saints. This method of divination on tombs is another very important parallel with the Hawaiian culture and . According to Oric Bates, p. 194, Ammon was indeed the archetype « of those ancestors and men of renown to whose graves the Libyans resorted to learn the future » and whose answers were sometimes transmitted in dreams . Exactly as in Hawaii, where the ancestors, the Aumakua, also communicate with men and women in their dreams, often near the Kane stone – remember that family standing stone anointed with coconut oil?

And so, to return to Ammon, the solar Ram God, the capital of his cult was the oasis of Siwah, also called Ammonium. An oracle resided there and its popularity was recognized as far away as Greece: the Athenians even maintained a dedicated ship at the expense of the state to consult the Libyan god P191. It is even said that Alexander the Great himself visited this desert sanctuary.

Ammonium or Siwah was therefore a major center of divination, and consultations were conducted there in a much more impressive setting than the usual Adebni on the tombs of ancestors. The god Ammon, was carried in a procession in a boat carried in the palm grove. by 80 priests—some seeing in this the Egyptian influence of the cult of Ammon-Re. On this boat rested the golden deity, while a long line of virgins and matrons followed the boat singing propitiatory songs.

There was also a sacred fountain of the Sun in Siwah and a sacred stone that must not be touched on pain of awakening a Djinn in the form of a sandstorm. This link with the Sun refers to the many accounts of a privileged cult of the Sun among the Berbers, sometimes called Ammon, as for example by Macrobius P187 – and also to the fact that the constellation of Aries is the one the Sun crosses at the spring equinox.