Ra (Re) – The Red Sun God

planetary winged orb.
Winged Disk.

Re (Ra), the Egyptian RED sun

Fact: Egyptian art reveals not one single golden glaring Sun with a complete 360° sweep of sun rays, why?

Why did the Ancient Egyptians depict the Sun as a red disk?

The following essay it is a perfect example of how the most obvious evidence can be overlooked. It shows how childlike observations can lead to incredible discoveries which irrefutably prove that planetary chaos is reaching out to us from the not so distant past.

To understand the God King Scenario (GKS) requires transporting yourself back in time to a world dominated by planets that appeared larger than the Sun; a time when Mars, Venus, Mercury and the Moon plus entourage ruled the heavens as divine kings and queens for an incredible 3,000 years.

Horus Sun Egyptian
Ra, the Red Sun.

I understand that for some such an outrageous theory is difficult to comprehend let alone accept, after all, apart from the Moon, these planets no longer dominate the heavens or reign (literally) over Earth. The divine royal family of ancient Egypt are now mere specks of light in the night sky or, as the Egyptians believed, divine stars in the ‘kingdom of Osiris.’ There is, however, one glaring orb that hasn’t altered its eternal path across the heavens or changed its shape and size. It is our source of light, energy and heat and it appears today just as it did millennia ago. I am of course referring to the Sun.

The Sun rises in the east, arcs across the sky and sets in the west in a very predictable and measurable 24-hour cycle. As the Sun was present throughout periods of planetary chaos, and taking into account the close relationship that existed between the sun god Ra and the divine Egyptian monarchy (The monarchy were offspring of the sun), the sun is the one orb we cannot ignore when discussing the GKS.

Ra, the Sun God

Horus Red Disk.
Red Sun?

Re, the Sun god, was typically represented as a sun-disk, or as a falcon-headed man wearing a red sun-disk on his head. This imagery points to the god’s solar character. With epithets such as ‘opening the day,’ ‘light,’ ‘shinest’ and ‘lord of all lands,’ we are presented with traits which are consistent with the life-giving properties of the Sun we experience today. This makes perfect sense, until we turn our attention to Re’s most common representation – the red disk.

Horus Ra Sun
Egyptian Red Sun’s.

This is Re’s solar disk. It features heavily in Egyptian art and there are hundreds of thousands of them adorning every monument, tomb and temple wall throughout Egypt. They can also be found painted on stela (round topped stones), decorated on the inside and outside of coffins and sarcophagi, and on artefacts, scrolls of papyrus, statues and even incorporated into Egyptian jewellery. Re’s red disk can be found everywhere. As the Sun was the primary source of life in ancient Egypt, such ubiquitous representation is only to be expected. That said, there is something unusual about the way the Egyptians represented our nearest star which is incredibly revealing when considered alongside planetary chaos.

The Egyptians always depicted the sun as a red disk!

Dust and debris
Veiled Red Sun.

It matters little where Re’s symbol is found. Whether used as part of the ‘sacred’ inscriptions or as a pictorial image dressed with wings, cow’s horns, plumes or cobras, Re’s most basic form consisted of a simple red disk – why?

Ra's solar barque
Ra’s solar boat.

The Sun is a blinding, golden-yellow disk with emanating rays – a ball of glaring, golden light – so why paint, what is by comparison, a lifeless red disk? Ask a child to paint the Sun and they will paint a yellow circle with yellow sunrays, an adult would do the same. So why didn’t the Egyptians portray the Sun as it appeared – a bright yellow disk with rays?

Re's Solar Barque
Why a red orb?
Egyptian gods
Why the serpent?

As one of the original creator gods, Re was ‘the lord of all lands’ and ‘the great light who shinest in the heavens.’ Life on Earth depended on Re and he was revered greatly. The Egyptians believed that he created the world, and the rising Sun was their symbol of creation. Would the Egyptians risk the wrath of this great god by ignoring its true form in this way?

The abundance of glorious reliefs proves that the Egyptians were proud of their art. Many pieces took months, if not years, to complete as each hieroglyph was meticulously carved and painted. The colours were of paramount importance and many gods had their own sacred colours. It therefore seems bizarre that they created a disk to represent the Sun and then proceeded to paint it red!

Excluding the Amarna period

Genesis of Mercury.
The Aten/Mercury orb with rays is Mercury.

When discussing the Egyptians depiction of the red Sun, I would like to point out that I am excluding the Amarna period. This was the revolutionary episode in Egyptian history when the ‘heretic’ pharaoh Akhenaten left Thebes to form a new capital in Middle Egypt for the worship of the Aten, the ‘Disk of the Sun.’ This is not because this was an age of yellow suns with rays. On the contrary, there were numerous red disks from this period which the Egyptians called the Aten and which scholars have erroneously assumed were aspects of the Sun. Shown slightly larger than normal, the Aten had one distinct trait that separated it from the millions of red suns before and after the Amarna period – it was shown with sunrays. They were not normal rays because they did not sweep around the circumference of the disk but protruded from the lower half only. Nevertheless, the Amarna period was the only time in Egyptian history when a ‘sun’ was depicted with rays (see images)

Mercury in ancient times.
The Aten/Mercury.

However, I am not excluding the Amarna period because of the existence of sunrays. I am excluding it because the Aten had nothing to do with the Sun! This whole epoch of approximately 17 years was a time when the combined gravitational forces of Earth and Venus sucked out the core of Mars which became the planet Mercury. The evidence for the genesis of Mercury is still visible today in the form of the Valles Marineris. An enormous scar on the surface of Mars with a length approximately the same diameter as Mercury. Surely this is no coincidence! Planetary scientists do actually theorise that Mercury was once the solid core of a planet – in a head-on collision the outer layers of a planet were blasted off leaving behind its core or as we call it Mercury. I would also add that Mars at some time in the past once held a magnetic field but for reasons yet to be explained, it stopped working. This is because its ‘dynamo’ was catastrophically sucked out to become the planet Mercury, the first ‘rock’ from the Sun.

This biblical event occurred in the skies above Earth and was witnessed by all ancient cultures. The Egyptians initially called Mercury the Aten – and so the Aten was Mercury. It was never a renamed sun and to suggest such a thing is totally incorrect.

Akhenaten Worship Aten
Akhenaten/Mars offering to the Aten/Mercury.

Ancient cultures do not suddenly decide to rename one of their most important creator deities. Re was never the Aten. The Aten was portrayed as a large red disk with partial rays because that is exactly how Mercury appeared. It was a totally separate body to the Sun. In fact, the Sun was blotted out for at least 17 years because of the light from Mercury. As it cooled down, Mercury joined the royal bloodline of astral god-kings. Even the golden Aten on the back of Tutankhamun’s (Mars) throne was an image of the recently born Mercury of the first millennium BC.

Comet Venus crown.
Personified planetary orbs as signified by the celestial crowns.

An interesting point regarding the Amarna period comes to us via way the Aten is reproduced; many TV documentaries, books and web sites depict the Aten and its rays as yellow. And yet the reliefs at Amarna clearly show traces of red paint (see images), in fact, there are hundreds of red Aten’s at Amarna. My question is, why not show it as is – as the Egyptian’s coloured it, a red disk with red rays? Perhaps the producers struggled to accept a red Sun because their subconscious told them it must be yellow. Or, perhaps they take their lead from the ‘rare’ golden Aten on the back of Tutankhamun throne. I say ‘rare’ because this is probably the only golden Aten (with sunrays) to be found and I’m not so sure this wasn’t at some time in the past painted RED. Take a close look at the back of Tutankhamun’s throne, here traces of what looks like red paint can be seen, although I hasten to add, this could just be a case of ‘pink gold.’ Further research is required here and I will be adding a piece on the Aten/Mercury as and when time permits.

I mention this because the ‘transforming’ of red suns to yellow suns (computer generated or otherwise) is a practice carried out by documentary producers from other periods of Egyptian history. Again, why distort the evidence in this way? Why not tell it as it is? If the ‘Sun’ reliefs show traces of red paint then paint it red!

Goddess Isis Ecliptic
Red planetary orbs abound!

When I said the sun is always depicted as a red disk this isn’t strictly true. You will, if you search long and hard enough find a proportionally small number of yellow disks, the occasional blue or even a rare white disk. This has to be understood in the context of the GKS which contends many of these disks are representations of the planets in chaos, this of course, including the ubiquitous red disk (Mars, the red god of war). This especially so where we find a disk surmounted by cow horns crowned on many of Egypt’s gods such as the nurturing goddesses’ Isis and Hathor. In other words, given that the GKS contends that many disks visited Earth in ancient times, all were related but not all were the sun.

The underlying fact is, the red disk dominates Egyptian art and I challenge anybody to find a golden yellow sun with a complete set of 360 degree sunrays – a sun as we would portray it, if none are found the question has to be why?

Could the red Sun derive from observations of the Sun at sunrise or sunset?

‘Red is also a colour given to the Sun, red at its rising and its setting.’ (Touregypt)

Egyptian Solar God
Hazed red disk.

The Sun occasionally appears red on the horizon due to the disfiguring refraction caused by the layering of the air. At sunset, light travels through more of the atmosphere and appears to the observer as if the transmitted light from the Sun has an intense red hue, hence a red Sun.

To propose that the Egyptians depicted the Sun as a red disk because it occasionally appears red at sunrise and sunset is a ridiculous assumption. Why? Because if the ubiquitous red disk represents the Sun at sunset then we should expect to find an amount of corresponding yellow disks to represent the Sun during the day. Furthermore, as the Sun only occasionally appears red on the horizon, the percentage of yellow suns should far outweigh any red suns. There should be millions of yellow suns and less proportional red suns, but ancient Egyptian art is dominated by the red disk.

Yellow paint?

Egyptian Sun God
Red disk dominates Egyptian art.

Did the Egyptian palette contain yellow paint? Yes it did – yellow ochre was readily available and was used regularly by the Egyptians. There were many reliefs where yellow paint was used as well as the occasional yellow disk. For example, in ‘The Art of Ancient Egypt’ by Gay Robins, on page 173 there is a facsimile painting of a scene from the chapel of Isis in the Osiris complex. It shows King Seti I (Mercury) offering a platter of food to the seated figure of the goddess Isis. This mothering goddess is normally depicted crowned with a large red disk surmounted with black cow’s horns. However, in this scene Isis is unusually shown with yellow flesh and a flat-topped yellow crown with white cow’s horns and a large yellow disk. If this yellow disk represented the Sun, it is clear evidence that the Egyptians not only used yellow paint but also had the ability to paint a yellow Sun. Therefore all disks that represented the Sun should have been coloured yellow. Yet this scene also contains hieroglyphic red suns and numerous images of cobras, each one crowned with a red disk. What are we to make of this?

Gold – the flesh of the gods

Red sun sunset.
Red Sun orbs everywhere.

The situation becomes increasingly bizarre when we consider the precious metal gold which was regarded as the flesh of the gods. It was closely associated with the Sun as the following quotes highlight:

“With decorations in gold leaf or yellow paint to represent gold, which both form the flesh of the gods and as a colour had a close association with the sun god.” (Robins, quoting on the gold funerary mask of an elite woman, The Art of Ancient Egypt, 2000, p 146)

“Because of its warm glow and indestructibility, gold was thought to be the flesh of the Sun god Ra and contained supernatural powers.” (Discovery Channel, Age of Gold, 2004)

“The colour yellow was often associated with the sun-disk and with gold, or nbw. Gold was not only associated with the Sun, it was also the flesh of the gods.” (Touregypt).

If gold was the flesh of the gods, and if this originated with our golden Sun, why didn’t the Egyptians paint the Sun yellow? More importantly, why haven’t scholars questioned this irregularity? It seems strange to ignore the golden flesh of the original creator god in favour of red flesh. It could even be argued that the Egyptians were contradicting themselves.

“Khenet, or yellow, was symbolic of all that is eternal and imperishable.” (ibid)

Cosmic chaos.
Would a child paint the Sun red?

The Sun is eternal and imperishable; it rises and sets with ceaseless regularity and remains imperishable at the centre of the solar system. It has traversed our skies for billions of years; it was present at the birth of pharonic Egypt and at the end some 3,000 years later. As the Egyptians believed that yellow was symbolic of all that was eternal and imperishable, they would have used this divine colour to paint the Sun. Yet Egyptian images do not tally with their sacred words and there is no connection between gold flesh and the colour of the Sun. Is there any way we can reconcile such apparent contradictions?

Where are the sunrays?

Having considered colour, we will now consider the Sun’s rays. We know that the Sun has rays of light streaming from it, so why didn’t the Egyptians paint a few simple lines around the Sun to represent this glaring light? If we consider the skill required to produce certain intricate hieroglyphs, carvings and paintings, a disk with rays would have been effortless by comparison.

Ra Sun Deity
A hazed red orb housed in horns.

In the title ‘sa-re’ (son of Re), the duck glyph (son) took longer to carve than a disk with rays. What of the hieroglyphic texts which represented an owl, a crocodile, a bee or a boat with sails? All required expertise, time and patience whereas a novice could have carved a circle with rays. The Aten from the Amarna period was clearly shown with partial rays emanating downwards, this, provides clear evidence that the Egyptians were able to depict a disk with sunrays.

Many tomb ceilings were decorated with rows of five-pointed stars. Here the Egyptians depicted exactly what they saw with the five points representing the twinkling of the stars. It therefore seems strange that they did not show rays of light emanating from the Sun.

Why did the Egyptians depict the Sun in such a bizarre fashion? I believe there is a perfectly logical explanation which has been missed due to its simplicity.

The Egyptians portrayed the Sun as a red disk because it only ever appeared as a red disk!

Planetary chaos and a solar system besieged with space debris

The GKS proposes a 3,000 year period of planetary chaos from 5,200 (3,200 BC) years ago to around the birth of Christ (Pharaonic Egypt).

Planet Venus as a comet.
Red disk sailing across the heavens.

It makes sense to suppose that 3,000 years of chaos would have produced trillions of tons of space debris made up of comets, asteroids, gigantic boulders, icebergs, fine grains of sand, frozen water droplets, dust and gasses. This debris scattered throughout the solar system to form a gargantuan, universal ‘cosmic cloud’ along the ecliptic plane, the flat disk on which the sun and the planets lie (today!) The sun was a spinning star cocooned in a pea-soup of haze and gasses as a gigantic flat pancake shaped disk of debris formed stretching out from the sun and beyond the outer planets Jupiter, Saturn and possibly even as far out as Uranus and Neptune.

This ‘ecliptic haze’ was constantly fed by ongoing planetary chaos primarily involving the planets Jupiter, Mars and Venus. Jupiter, churning out countless tons of debris for several millennia after its initial ‘eruption,’ while Mars and Venus, in entering into repeated encounters with earth also subsequently scattering countless tons of debris throughout the ecliptic.

ancient chaos leds to a red sun.
Red Sun greeted by moon-like baboons.

A natural sequential order of things saw masses upon masses of the ecliptic debris tidally drawn in towards the planets forming gigantic ring systems around their equatorial regions. This would include Earth; our planet also developed one enormous band of debris around its girth. Forming shortly after the birth of chaos and remaining for at least 3,000 years it was constantly fed by ongoing chaos. The ecliptic haze and Earth’s ring of debris were presided over by many deities, Ptah, Isis and Hathor to name just three. I refer you to GKS 2 for further information on just how such phenomenon was deified.

In order to keep this simple we have a solar system besieged by incalculable quantities of dust, gas and debris especially the space between the Earth and the Sun. The distance here is approximately 93 million miles, so from the perspective of earth, to observe the sun is to gaze though 93 millions miles of ‘haze.’ This, as you would expect, had a profound effect on the appearance of the sun, especially when combined with earth ring of debris – it hazed the Sun and turned it red for an incredible 3,000 years!

red sun and a Dust filled atmosphere.
Red orb sailing across earths skies.

The ancient Egyptians portrayed the Sun as a red disk simply because it appeared as a red disk. Huge amounts of dust and debris around the Sun and the Earth, as well as dust in the Earth’s atmosphere, distorted the image of the Sun and transformed it from a blinding golden disk to a red disk. The Egyptians did not inhabit a bizarre world of make believe and strange practices where the Sun’s true colour was ignored. They lived in a real world of cosmic chaos where the Sun appeared as a red disk and was portrayed accordingly. The Sun rose in the east as a red disk, traversed the heavens as a red disk and set in the west as a red disk (chaos permitting). This is the reason for the absence of yellow suns with sunrays in ancient times, such a Sun did not exist. Cosmic chaos ensured our ancestors never experienced a blinding golden Sun as we do today; they experienced a veiled red-Sun. That, along with the fact the planets in chaos appeared as red disks, is why the red disk dominated Egyptian art for 3,000 years.

Sunset analogy

Seti Horus Ra
Seti offering to Horus.

As mentioned above, the red colour of the rising and setting Sun today is due to the atmosphere that its rays pass through before reaching our eyes. Our thick, impurity-laden lower atmosphere only allows the red tones to pass through and the Sun therefore takes on a distinctly reddish hue. The same principle turned the Sun red in ancient times, only our forebears were not merely looking at the Sun through Earth’s dusty atmosphere. They were also gazing through a hazy band of debris and a wall of rubble, dust and gasses some 93 million miles thick.

History

Cosmic chaos and debris.
Winged red disk

I believe a red Sun existed from the birth of pharonic Egypt, the birth of cosmic chaos some 5,000 years ago. Therefore historical man never experienced a glaring golden Sun. As we find a golden Sun perfectly normal, a hazed red Sun to ancient cultures was also normal. Even when cosmic chaos entered periods of relative calm and Earth’s ring of debris (See Hathor GKS 2) began to dissipate, there were still tons of dust and debris orbiting between the earth and the sun, this continuing to mask the sun red.

Book of the dead
The red orb dominates, why?

Re’s most common symbol, a red disk, was therefore the true representation of the Sun in ancient times. It can be found in every corner of pharonic Egypt because it is a ‘sacred’ representation of the Sun exactly as it appeared in the heavens 4,000 years ago. Only when the divine planetary gods retreated back to the heavens did the Sun’s true golden brilliance begin to burst through. This true golden appearance neatly coinciding with the introduction of golden mummies, death masks, and golden coffins during the Greco-Roman period (please remember, excluding Tutankhamun and the whole golden Amarna period). Many would aspire to be eternal like the emerging golden sun.

The clean-up in the heavens and the emergence of the true colour of the Sun was a slow process. The gods left the Moon behind to speed up the process of clearing Earth’s ring while Venus, Mercury and the Sun itself would ultimately clear the way for a golden glaring sun replete with sun rays.

Implications of a Red Sun

The sun and serpent.
Our Sun with Cobra snake-like prominence.

The implications of a red Sun are far reaching, profound and incredibly exciting! Just as we can look at a red sunset today, ancient cultures could look directly at the Sun throughout the day as there was no blinding glare. They could watch the Sun god Re as he journeyed across the heavens in his celestial ‘boat of millions of years’ without any fear of being blinded. This led to incredible observations of solar phenomena we have only recently discovered. I am referring to phenomena such as solar flares, prominences, Coronal Mass Ejections (CME’s) and sun-spots – these were all clearly observed with the naked eye and were either represented or deified in one way or another. For example, you will note many Egyptian Sun’s are dressed with a thin yellow ring around the circumference. Again, the Egyptians portrayed exactly what was observed here. The yellow ring represents the incredibly active corona which is a million degrees hotter than the interior of the sun. From an earthly perspective this shone brighter than the actual body of the sun, it appeared as a thin yellow ring as portrayed. This is subject for future discussion but for now and in keeping with pictorial evidence I would like to support the ‘Red Sun’ by taking a look at the attire worn by the Egyptians.

Update: Nov 19, 2010. Solar phenomena (coronal discharges) such as flares, CMEs and prominences were clearly observed and deified in the cobra goddess Wadjet as demonstrated here.

Egyptian clothing

It is puzzling that ancient Egyptians wore nothing more than a loincloth. Look at any Egyptian relief, whether depicting workers in the field or soldiers following the pharaoh into battle, and you will notice the figures are shown wearing loincloths. Even Hollywood movies and documentaries take their lead from these reliefs and depict the Egyptians in this distinctly odd attire.

Ra Hurus sun god.
If you wore such attire today you’d be burned to a crisp.

Egypt today has one of the hottest and sunniest climates in the world. During the summer months its average daily sunlight is 12 hours a day; it is incredibly hot and sunny. The intensity of the summer heat is such that it requires the population to cover themselves from head to toe for protection. Even the Egyptian tourist board advises extreme caution against the Egyptian Sun.

If the population of modern Egypt emulated the attire worn by the ancient Egyptians, they would be severely burnt. How was it possible to wear nothing more than a loincloth in such scorching heat? Scholars in an attempt to explain this abnormality have suggested that the artwork depicts an idealistic world. In other words, the ancient Egyptians thought it would be a good idea to depict themselves engaging in battle or otherwise in the most impractical attire possible – attire better suited to a beach in the Bahamas!

Ancient battles.
Egyptian Soldiers with virtually no
protection from the scorching elements. Absurd!

This explanation is ridiculous and demonstrates a poor understanding of ancient Egypt. It also raises many questions. Given the hundreds of thousands of carved reliefs and paintings on every temple and tomb façade throughout Egypt, exactly what is real and what is idealised? Are we dealing with a partial thing here? Inasmuch, are some of the pictorial stories presented part real, part idealised? If so, there is something seriously wrong here. For instance, take the numerous battle scenes recounting how pharaoh after pharaoh led vast armies of 20,000 men north into Syria to beat up the enemy, take everything that wasn’t nailed down and return home. These campaigns involved marching for months on end across the scorching Sinai desert. And yet, if the battle annuls are anything to go by, these superhuman feats were carried out wearing nothing more that a loincloth!! Are we to assume the battles took place but the wearing of the loincloth was idealised? This is, just as it sounds, absurd and nonsensical.

Besides, despite the fact that some Egyptologists attempt to dismiss the wearing of a loincloth as idealistic, a little research reveals that the ancient Egyptians did actually wear loincloths or short kilts.

“In general, Egyptian clothing was very simple; men working in the fields or involved in craftwork often wore little more than a loin-cloth or short kilt…”

(Shaw & Nicholson, Dictionary of Ancient Egypt, 2002, p 66)

How do we explain this?

The explanation is obvious – the ancient Egyptians wore nothing more than a loincloth because the climate allowed them to.

A veiled red Sun resulted in a totally different climate to that of today. It was a climate devoid of a scorching hot Sun, with no burning rays or intense heat. This twilight world allowed the ancient Egyptians to endlessly work the fields and build great monuments in dedication to the astral monarchy and universal deities. Such activities could be carried out at any time during the day and throughout the year as there was no scorching Sun to impede their work. Temples such as the Vatican of ancient Egypt, the temple complex dedicated to the king of the gods Amun at Karnak, could be worked upon every daylight hour as there was no intense heat.

The loincloth was not an impractical article of clothing. On the contrary, it was totally practical and was dictated by the climate of 4,000 years ago. There was no need to cover oneself from head to toe in protective clothing such as hats, scarves, sunglasses or even sun cream. The hazed red Sun and mild climate lasted for the duration of pharaonic Egypt. I actually believe the climate was very moist and devoid of rain, why? Because the Egyptians had a god of moisture (Tefnut) but no god of rain. In fact, rain was considered bad and referred to as the ‘evil that comes from the sky.’ The only plausible explanation for such a view points to toxic or acid rain i.e. fallout from planetary chaos.

Where’s the Moon?

I find it impossible to leave my Red Sun article without briefly mentioning the moon.

Earth's capture of the Moon, Gary Gilligan.
Try finding the basic phases of
the Moon in antiquity.

In keeping with childlike observations of Egyptian art you will note the absence of anything resembling a very basic white crescent moon, or a white full Moon, why is this? Why aren’t the basic phases (waxing crescent, first quarter, etc. etc.) of the moon pictorially represented on temple walls, tombs and monuments? All things normal there should be hundreds of thousands of simple white moons (crescent or otherwise) on a par with the ubiquitous red Sun but the fact is there isn’t. Are we to presume the Egyptians ignored the moon in favour of the Sun? No, the Moon is an enigma in ancient times because it was only captured in orbit around the earth some 3,000 years ago!

The Symbol Akhet

(Added: Nov 29, 2010)

Ancient Egypt Sun
Horizon Glyph.
Sun God Ra
Red disk in the horizon.
Egyptian Sun.
A red Sun on the horizon.

Above (and right) is the Egyptian hieroglyph for horizon (Akhet) – the Sun resting in the notch of a mountain. Here we have a pictorial representation that is as good as self-explanatory. Inasmuch, ask folk to describe what they see and most would describe the Sun on the horizon. The akhet glyph clearly demonstrates the Egyptians were very capable of representing exactly what was seen – a red Sun at sunset or sunrise. In the theme of the questions raised above, where’s the daytime Sun? Where’s Ra in full bloom i.e. a golden disk with a full set of sunrays?




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The God King Scenario