Filling in for George Noory, Ian Punnett (Twitter) welcomed Edward Dodge, a technology consultant and writer who has studied the ancient use of cannabis and discovered a connection to goddess worship. There are five references in the Hebrew scriptures that get mistranslated as different plants, he explained, noting cannabis was an ingredient for Moses in holy anointing oil. According to Dodge, before the rise of monotheism the early Hebrews were pagan, used cannabis in their religion, and worshipped the mother goddess Asherah. "I found a connection all over the ancient Near East that where you saw the cannabis you saw these goddess traditions practiced very strongly," he said.
The earliest references to the goddess are cave paintings and 'Venus' figurines from 60,000 BC, Dodge continued. In the Old Testament the divine feminine is primarily seen in the Asherah pole, he added. "My basic premise is that the whole culture of the Israelites were pagan all the way through the First Temple Period," Dodge revealed. The concept of a single male god represented by Yahweh was introduced later by religious reformers railing against popular pagan culture, he suggested. Dodge traced the goddess tradition to Mesopotamia as Ishtar of Babylon and her incarnation as Inanna in Sumerian sources through to her personification as Astarte in the Bible. "The Virgin Mary absolutely carries these traditions directly forward," he proposed. Dodge also spoke about the Triple Goddess archetype of Mother, Maiden and Crone found repeatedly across cultures both ancient and modern.
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Open Lines followed in the latter half of the program. Joel in Cleveland phoned it to make his case against evolution. According to Joel, starting from time of Charles Darwin, scientists have arbitrarily traced the descent of modern animals and plants back millions of years. According to Joel, data from around 1868 shows modern species of plants being placed in the time of the dinosaurs. In 2001, the University of Florida placed modern animal species from Late Ice Age into the Pliocene Epoch (5.3 to 2.6 million years ago), he added. Ian pointed out that many other sources disagree with his conclusions.
Joshua from Texas shared details from his encounter with a shadow person. The incident took place at his in-laws house while he, his girlfriend, and another friend were sitting outside. The blinds to a bedroom were open and Joshua caught something move in front of a light that was on inside. "I see what looks like the silhouette of a person but it's all black," he recalled. It darted to the right at phenomenal speed leaving a black streak and ran into the hallway, Joshua added. They investigated but no trace of the being could be found. John in Ohio described seeing some kind of flying craft land in southern Pennsylvania. "It flew across the sky then just kind of dropped down," he remembered. John initially thought it was a shooting star. "I can neither confirm nor deny said phenomena," he said.