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Each of the albums, the artworks and visualisations by Japetus
open a doorway, a portal, to experience different levels of consciousness.
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Japetus - The Name
So many people want to know the origin of the name Japetus and as there are so many different aspects I decided to dedicate a page to it. The pronunciation of the name is confusing and difficult for many because it has existed in many times and countries and languages. Like some sacred words they are not really meant to be 'vibrated in the air' and are more a 'vibrational arrangement of characters' that are symbolic for a state of being or a realm of consciousness. Who can really say how it was originally pronounced in ancient Egypt and ancient Greece but because it was originally spelled with an 'I' (Iapetus) it must have been more like this - eye-AP-it-os. As the name moved into more recent usage in Europe in the 1500's and 1600's it took on the German usage with the 'J' (Japetus) and would have been pronounced more like YAH-pet-toos. However, when it reached me in 1977 in Australia my preferred pronunciation was JAY-pet-us with the emphasis on the first syllable. Hence the short-form I use for my personal nick name - Jay. Japetus has existed in many different cultures throughout the millennia in a wide variety of different guises, spellings and pronunciations. I am not an expert on language or history but the things I have manage to find out over the years are listed below. I can't guarantee the total accuracy of the references I uncovered and what is written below is only my interpretation. You only have to put Japetus into Google to see the multitude of references, ranging from butterflies to backgammon games to distant moons. The name Japetus very much 'chose' me over 35 years ago and I still do my best to live up to it. While I have always felt an 'overshadowing' from higher realms with a strong sense of guidance and inspiration for my work, I cannot confirm that the source of this inspiration is related to the historical entity known as Japetus/Iapetus. However, I have had many mystical experiences while creating this body of work including, during a deep meditation, finding myself sitting in an old monastery with rows of monks slowly chanting the name Japetus in a manner and form I had never heard before. I suspect that Japetus, like all the mythological gods, is more a state of consciousness that flows into the mundane world if various harmonic connections are set up. If you have any feedback or discover any information please, do send it on. References to Japetus appear throughout history and in the ancient mythological texts since the beginning of time and through Atlantis, the Greeks, the Christians, Cassini in 1642 and finally into the 20th and 21st century via the book 2001: A Space Odyssey, where it found me. Traditionally, the name is spelt - Iapetus and Iapetos. It is pronounced e-yah-pey-tos. In ancient Greek the 'I' and the 'J' were interchangeable as they are in many countries still today. "IAPETOS (or Iapetus) was one of the Titan gods, sons of Ouranos (Heaven) and Gaia (Earth). Led by Kronos, Iapetos and his brothers conspired against their father, preparing an ambush for him as he descended to lie with Earth. Krios, Koios, Hyperion and Iapetos were posted at the four corners of the world where they seized hold of the Sky-god and held him fast, while Kronos, hidden in the centre, castrated him with a sickle. In this myth, Iapetos and the three brothers represent the four cosmic pillars which appear in Near-Eastern cosmogonies holding heaven and earth apart. Iapetos himself was no doubt the pillar of the west, a position which was later and more obviously held by his son Atlas. Iapetos "the piercer" may also have been regarded as the Titan god of the mortal life-span. Indeed, his sons Prometheus and Epimetheus were represented as the creators of mankind and other mortal creatures. The Titanes were eventually deposed by Zeus and cast into the pit of Tartaros. Hesiod describes this as a void lying beneath the foundations of the cosmos, where earth, sea and sky all have their roots. Here the Titanes shift in cosmological terms from being holders of heaven to bearers of the entire cosmos. According to Pindar and Aeschylus (in his lost play Prometheus Unbound) the Titanes were eventually released from the pit through the clemency of Zeus." Keeping reading in more depth here. The name in all its forms has a complex history and is best know to us today in the context of the Titans from Greek mythology. The Titans are an archetypal group more representative of states of being or of consciousness or of stages of evolutionary expression. The Titans (often described as only 7 entities) have been correlated to many ancient spiritual systems including the 7 Manus, 7 Rishi's, the 7 Rays, the 7 Kabirum. It was the Titans who created humanity.
In Greek creation mythology The Titans were the 12 strong, giant like, divine children of Gaea and Uranus (males: Coeus, Crius, Hyperion, Iapetus/Japetus, Kronus/Cronus, and Oceanus, and female: Mnemosyne, Phoebe, Rhea, Tethys, Theia and Themis) - they overthrew their own father to make Cronus king - however his own son Zeus overthrew Cronus and began a war with the Titans - eventually Zeus won and the Titans were thrown into Tartarus (a part of Hell lower than even Hades). The Greek gods are connected to Egyptian cosmology. The quote below is out of context and doesn't make much sense but still shows the connection to the name. Here is a quote from - A Short Chronicle from the First Memory of Things in Europe, to the Conquest of Persia by Alexander the Great by Isaac Newton. Source: The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended (London: 1728). "958. Oedipus kills his father Laius. Sthenelus the son of Perseus Reigns in Mycene. 956. Sesac is slain by his brother Japetus, who after death was deified in Afric by the name of Neptune, and called Typhon by the Egyptians. Orus Reigns and routs the Libyans, who under the conduct of Japetus, and his Son Antæus or Atlas, invaded Egypt. Sesac from his making the river Nile useful, by cutting channels from it to all the cities of Egypt, was called by its names, Sihor or Siris, Nilus and Egyptus. The Greeks, hearing the Egyptians lament, O Siris and Bou Siris, called him Osiris and Busiris. The Arabians from his great acts called him Bacchus, that is, the Great. The Phrygians called him Ma-fors or Mavors, the valiant, and by contraction Mars. Because he set up pillars in all his conquests, and his army in his father's Reign fought against the Africans with clubs, he is painted with pillars and a club: and this is that Hercules who, according to Cicero, was born upon the Nile; and according to Eudoxus, was slain by Typhon; and according to Diodorus, was an Egyptian, and went over a great part of the world, and set up the pillars in Afric. He seems to be also the Belus who, according to Diodorus, led a Colony of Egyptians to Babylon, and there instituted Priests called Chaldeans, who were free from taxes, and observed the stars, as in Egypt. Hitherto Judah and Israel laboured under great vexations, but henceforward Asa King of Judah had peace ten years. 947. The Ethiopians invade Egypt, and drown Orus in the....." The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms by Isaac Newton The body of myth By J. Nigro Sansonese Great Pyramid By Colonel Garnier This video explains some of the Greek history and how it relates to the biblical history.
The story of the Titans became part of our culture and the astronomer Cassini decided to name all the moons of Saturn after the Titans when he discovered them in 1642. A lot of the study of these new celestial bodies was carried out in Germany and in Europe, with a general usage in the 'J' form Japetus. So when all the data on the moons was recorded it was all written as Japetus not Iapetus and the 'J' form found its way into use in popular culture. Iapetus, was discovered to be the most unique celestial body in our solar system (and therefore the known universe). It is one of the outer moons and in its orbit around Saturn it incredibly shows the same face towards the sun all the time. The upshot of this is that the sunny side is scorched and burned and black, and the dark side is frozen white water ice.  In the mid 1900's, around the time I was born, science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke wrote a short story called The Sentinel. It was about extraterrestrial artifacts being found on the moon. In the 60's, film director Stanley Kubrick was looking for a big movie to make and following up such timeless classics as Dr Strangelove and A Clockwork Orange he looked toward the space race and what that meant for humanity. Kubrick loved The Sentinel story and asked Clarke to work with him on the movie and co-write a screenplay based on the The Sentinel. It was an amazing coming together and then they went away and did their bits separately. They met regularly to share progress. Clarke wrote the book 2001: A Space Odyssey and Kubrick began work creating the visuals. In the book, humanity is evolved by extraterrestrial influence up to space travel and uncovers a solar powered inter-dimensional alarm clock buried on the moon that, when exposed to the sunlight for the first time, sends a high frequency radio emission towards Saturn. In fact aimed straight at one special little outer moon of Saturn called Iapetus. There was speculation because of its unique alignment that it just might be some sort of artificial satellite or even, as the book describes, an alien portal, which is why Arthur chose it. It stands out in our system and doesn't really fit normal planetary behaviour. There was speculation also about the nature of its surfaces. What kept it oriented towards the sun and what was on the white frozen far side. 2001 speculates that there is a portal - a giant inter-dimensional vortex wormhole through hyper-space where you are basically reborn as a planetary guide.
Unfortunately, in the movie when Kubrick tried to recreate the rings of Saturn he couldn't do it realistically enough so the special effects team decided to go with Jupiter instead not knowing, in those days before Voyager flybys, that Jupiter has rings too, as does Neptune. At that point the whole relationship to Iapetus as far as the movie was concerned was lost and the focus became Jupiter's moon Europa. In all the subsequent movies and books the focus has always remained Jupiter. Mind you, as a devoted fan of Arthur C. Clarke, I contacted him in the early 80's when I started this catalogue and he wrote many letters and sent me many autographed books. Amazingly he turned out to be an electronic music groupy and was also in close touch with Jean-Michell Jarre and Wendy Carlos. In fact, in one of the books he sent - 2061 - he actually apologised to me for changing the destination in 2010: Odyssey Two!! One of the greatest book and movie trilogies of our time and he apologises to me!!??... quite silly really...
There are many online backgammon games and social networking identities that use 'Japetus' . Nerds who used to study Greek mythology at college no doubt. It was already being used by a guy on MySpace and I asked him one day to let me know if he ever gave it up. A few years later I got an email saying it was mine if I login now! Amazing just how nice some people can be. Japetus Steenstrup was a famous marine biologist who studied whales. It is probably the only other high profile usage of the name (after researching on Google). Johannes Japetus Smith Steenstrup (1813 - 1897) was a Danish zoologist, biologist, and professor. Links to other information sites about Japetus - Astronomical: |
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