The Fate of the Watchers

Exploring Ancient Texts for Secrets of the Beings "Who Fell" to Earth

BY ANDREW COLLINS

The Genesis Secret by Thomas Knox (HarperCollins, 2009) is a novel centered around the discovery in southeast Turkey of the proto-Neolithic megalithic complex of Gobekli Tepe, constructed circa 10,000 BC by an unknown race of people at the end of the last Ice Age.

Thomas Knox is the nom-de-plume of British journalist Sean Thomas, who first contacted me back in 2007. He had become interested in Gobekli Tepe, which I'd written about extensively since visiting there and nearby Harran back in 2004. He wanted to know how to get to the megalithic complex, so Sue and I gave him the necessary instructions. A few months later, his article on the subject appeared in newspapers worldwide. It highlighted the fact that Dr. Klaus Schmidt, the German archaeologist in charge of excavations at the site, had unofficially admitted that the region was most probably the biblical Garden of Eden. This, of course, was the conclusion I made in From the Ashes of Angels, published in 1996, which provides ample evidence that Eden was located where the headwaters of the Tigris, Euphrates, and Greater Zab rivers converge, a region close to Lake Van in southeast Turkey (a brand new theory at that time). My book appeared four years before the first announcements regarding the discovery in 1994 of Gobekli Tepe, which is even now being uncovered by Schmidt and his team. What I stated also was that the heretical Jewish work known as the Book of Enoch spoke of Eden — known also as "Paradise" or "Heaven" — as being the home of the Watchers, a race of mythical beings often identified as human-like angels. They are credited with having revealed the forbidden arts and sciences of Heaven to mortal kind, causing mankind's fall from divine grace and his expulsion from the Garden of Eden.

The Story of the Watchers

In both the Book of Genesis and the Book of Enoch, the rebel Watchers are said also to have come upon the Daughters of Men, that is to say, mortal women, who afterward gave birth to giant offspring called Nephilim. For this transgression against the laws of Heaven, the renegades were incarcerated and punished by those Watchers who had remained loyal to Heaven. The rebel Watchers' offspring, the Nephilim (a word meaning "those who fell"), were either killed outright or were afterward destroyed in the flood of Noah. However, the Torah — the first five books of the Old Testament — makes it clear that some Nephilim survived and went on to become the ancestors of giant races named the Anakim, Gibborim, and Rapheim.

I wrote that the story of the Watchers is in fact the memory of a priestly or shamanic elite, a group of highly intelligent, human individuals, who entered the Upper Euphrates region from another part of the ancient world sometime around the end of the last Ice Age, circa 11,000–10,000 BC. On their arrival in what became known as the land or kingdom of Eden (a term actually used in the Old Testament), they assumed control of the gradually emerging agrarian communities, who were tutored in a semi-rural life style centered around agriculture, metal working, and the rearing of animal livestock. More disconcertingly, these people were made to venerate their superiors; i.e. the Watchers, as living gods, or immortals.

The precise same region of the Near East, now thought to be the biblical Garden of Eden, has long been held to be the cradle of civilization. Here a number of "firsts" occurred at the beginning of the Neolithic revolution, which began circa 10,000–9000 BC. It was in southeast Turkey, northern Syria, and northern Iraq, for example, that the first domestication of wild grasses took place, the first fired pottery and baked statues were produced, the first copper and lead were smelted, the first stone buildings and standing stones were erected, the first beautification of the eyes took place among woman, the first drilled beads in ultra hard stone were produced, the first alcohol was brewed and distilled, etc., etc. In fact, many of the arts and sciences of Heaven that the Watchers are said to have revealed to mortal kind were all reported first in this region of the globe, known to archaeologists as Upper Mesopotamia, and to the indigenous peoples of the region as Kurdistan.

Sean Thomas acknowledges my help at the beginning of the The Genesis Secret, which follows exactly the same themes as From the Ashes of Angels (and my later book Gods of Eden, published in 1998), including the fact that the Watchers and founders of Eden were bird men; i.e., proto-Neolithic shamans who wore cloaks of feathers, and that local angel worshipping cults in Kurdistan, such as the Yezidi, Yaresan, and Alevi, even today preserve some semblance of knowledge regarding the former existence of the Watchers or angels as the bringers of civilization. Their deity, for instance, known as Melek Taus (or Melek Tawas), the "Peacock Angel," goes also by the name Azazel, one of the two leaders of the rebel Watchers (the other being Shemyaza) according to the Book of Enoch.

It is an honor for my work to be acknowledged in this manner by Sean Thomas, especially as The Genesis Secret has become a bestseller (as was From the Ashes of Angels in 1996). I won't spoil the plot so will not reveal Sean's conclusions, or...