Title of the work
Country of the First Edition
Country/countries of popularity
Original Language
First Edition Date
First Edition Details
Gary Margrove, Hercules Son of God: Deceit of the Gods. Amazon Digital Services LLC, 52 pp.
Genre
Apocalyptic fiction
Target Audience
Young adults (It is not clear to what age group or demographic this book is targeted but it’s not children)
Cover
We are still trying to obtain permission for posting the original cover.
Author of the Entry:
Tikva Schein, Bar-Ilan University, tikva.blaukopf@gmail.com
Peer-reviewer of the Entry:
Lisa Maurice, Bar-Ilan University, lisa.maurice@biu.ac.il
Susan Deacy, University of Roehampton, s.deacy@roehampton.ac.uk
Gary Margrove (Author)
Gary Margrove is a retired homeopathy practitioner who has written upwards of eighty books, all accessible on Kindle. His writings are on a range of topics mostly centered around controversial topics on which has given a definitive explanation of his views. Margrove writes on a wide range of interests from the Illuminati and ancient nuclear wars to Disney conspiracies.
Source:
Profile at the amazon.com (accessed: October 16, 2018)
Bio prepared by Tikva Schein, Bar-Ilan University, tikva.blaukopf@gmail.com
Summary
This book is written as the fourth in a series of five as an exposition of the deadly threats facing our planet in the face of the Anunnaki (“relatives of Anu, ruler of the planet Nibiru”) and their attempts to take over the Earth. The author asserts that he has written this book as a service to the public, educating all as to the apocalyptic dangers that lie ahead. The writing, using second person narrative addressed to the reader, is peppered with URLs to extra reading material, bolstering Margrove’s thesis. Margrove interprets the twelve labours of Heracles not as pure myth but as parts of the story of these deadly threats.
After explaining the beings Antu and Anu and humanity’s descent from the Anunnaki, Margrove introduces the aspect of Heracles. Heracles is presented as hated by Hera. The author details a few of Heracles’ labours, associatively connects Heracles with other Mediterranean-basin cultures and mentions a few other of his labors in passing with interspersed thoughts on holographs and other unexpected mentions.
Margrove tells the story of most of Hercules’ labours but with some told in more depth than others. He spends the rest of the book giving a timeline "according to Zecharia Sitchin of events before the deluge" ("450,000 years ago") and then explaining how this book fits in with the rest of his series Legacy of the Gods.
Analysis
Margrove attempts to synthesize the Classical myth of Hercules within his narrative, integrating elements of the Hercules mythology into his thesis on apocalypse. Margrove mixes Mesopotamian, Sumerian and Indo-European with his reading of the Herculean myth. Margrove’s method is to tell the Hercules story and then pick a seemingly abstruse detail of the story which then form the anchor for a tangent on the dangers threatening the world. For example, Nereus is seen as a shapeshifter, who is compared to certain products of the Apple computer industry. Margrove’s synthesis is not a successful one though it is certainly interesting and he provides much detailed description of his thesis, together with helpful timelines and supporting evidence.
Margrove delights in making associative connections between the world of the Anunnaki and the Greek myths and all other ingredients in this pot pourri of a book. For example, "Erebus was god of the Underworld, also known as Hades. He is Ergal son of Ereskigal. Ereskigal is therefore Nyx." (location 190).
Every page has a multitude of URLs so that the inquisitive reader can garner a large amount of reading from this one text. A meta-reading of this text offers perhaps more than the text itself in the context of Classical mythology reception: the inter-connectedness of the different banks of mythology are well represented in the spider web nature of this work.
At one point (kindle location 199), Margrove himself comments on the story of Hercules. Often, his first person comments can be witnessed through the story. In relating the episode of the garden of the Hesperides, he states, "The story grows even stranger when Hercules (with no GPS on his vehicle) becomes lost". The hint of some humour in Margrove’s work lends one to wonder how much of the rest is humorous too. Nevertheless, the focus of the author on the myth he is retelling is an interesting example of what makes this work so unusual and such a fascinating example of myth in reception.
The thread of the text seems to be non-linear in that Margrove can be talking about one topic and then jump to two or three others before possibly – or possibly not – returning to his first topic.
As a standard resource for the someone wanting to understand the classical myths, this would not provide nearly any information on the Classical world. It certainly does not seem to be aimed at an audience of children but rather for an audience of those who have some awareness of the different references he is making to the various cultures. However, for someone interested in how the Classical world has been received, this book is a strange example of an author who has taken myth and incorporated it into his own beliefs, to the extent that it is in fact a question of how far, bearing in mind the propaganda with which the work is peppered, it is even suitable for children. It shows how someone has taken Classical elements and interwoven them into a larger thesis. The Heracles plot is used here as an instrument of persuasion for the general thesis of apocalypse.
Addenda
ASIN: B00ERE89T4
