Gog

Gog and Magog are the respective names of a mysterious Biblical land, and its people, who feature in apocalyptic prophecy. They appear in the Book of Ezekiel and the Book of Revelation. They are also giants who appear in English folklore.

Table of contents

1 The Biblical Gog and Magog 2 Gog and Magog in England 3 See Also 4 External Links

The Biblical Gog and Magog

Ezekiel begins:

Son of man, set thy face against Gog, the land of Magog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal, and prophesy against him, and say, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I am against thee, O Gog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal. (Ezekiel 38:2-3 KJV)

Jewish tradition has it that there are 70 national angel some of which have fallen and others are still with God. The prophecy says that Gog -the angel of the nation called Magog- will be defeated after he leads an army to attack Israel from the four corners of the land. Ezekiel 38 and 39 continues to speak of Gog, and that Gog (Lydia) together with Persia from the east, Puntites from the west, Kushites from the south, and others, like Gomer and the house of Togarmah from the north, whose identities at this remove are even harder to identify. We are told that Gog dwelt north of Israel, but apart from this direction, there is little else to identify Gog in the passage. Gog and his allies are to be defeated in a mighty bloodbath; according to chapter 39, it will take seven months to bury all the dead.

Gog reappears in Revelation 20:7-8, which says:

And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog of Magog, to gather them together to battle: the number of whom is as the sand of the sea. And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city: and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them.

Here Gog is identified as the land in the four corners of the earth and Gog's attack here is represented as an eschatological event that will occur after the Millennium, and that will be vanquished by divine intervention.

The term "Gog Magog" or "Gogmagog" is simply a clarification which may be understood as "Gog as in those from Gog" and despite apocalyptic attempts to devise scenarios whereby nations associated with Magog will one day attack Israel, Magog is not implied in the literal readings of the biblical texts occurring as nothing more than a reference for which Gog is being mentioned.

The origin of Gog's name remains mysterious. Many Bible scholars believe that Gig or Gyges (Greek Γυγες), king of Lydia (687-652BC), is meant; in Assyrian letters, Gyges appears as Gu-gu; in which case Magog (literally "from Gog") might be his territory in Anatolia. Josephus identifies the Magog with Scythians, but this name was used generally in antiquity for any peoples north of the Black Sea.

Gog is identified as the original country of the Magog people. Magog actually means "from Gog" and although certain Celtic peoples consider themselves to be descendants of Magog (see below), Gog itself is identified in the Bible as "the country at the four corners of the world". Outside of the Bible, Gog is most commonly identified as Central Eurasia. Legends present in countries throughout Eastern Europe and the Middle East mention that massive copper, iron, or brass gates were built on its southern borders with the Persian Empire; this would support the identification of these "four corners of the world" as Central Eurasia, the westernmost of these gates having been built at Derbent. (These gates are usually called the "Gates of Alexander" or "Alexander's Wall", after their supposed builder Alexander the Great.) However, Magog was supposed to have a grandchild called Heber, who spread throughout the mediterranean and Greeks called such Iberes mentioning that they were refugees from Atlantis who had come to settle the Caucasus. The result is that Gog -- the land of the four corners of the world -- has also been identified as lands somewhere in the oceans surrounding The Old World i.e. The New World.

During the 20th century, Gog as both a confusion of Atlantis & Central Eurasia myths became the driving force behind the Aryan movement culminating in the attempts of "The Fatherland's Nazis" to reach "The Central Eurasian Motherland" through invading Russia. Aryanism has not yet died and many texts concerning Central Eurasian ethnology are still littered with Aryanistic ideas. It is conceivable that a form of Central Eurasian Aryanism may yet raise its head again as a motivating force in a White supremacist world movement.

Gog and Magog in England

Given this somewhat frightening Biblical imagery, it is somewhat odd that images of Gog and Magog depicted as giants are carried in a traditional procession in the Lord Mayor's Show by the Lord Mayor of the City of London. According to the Lord Mayor, the giants Gog and Magog are traditional guardians of the City of London. Images of Gog and Magog have been carried in the Lord Mayor's Show since the days of King Henry V. The Lord Mayor's procession takes place each year on the second Saturday in November.

The Lord Mayor's account of Gog and Magog says that the Roman Emperor Diocletian had thirty-three wicked daughters. He found thirty three husbands for them to curb their wicked ways; they chafed at this, and under the leadership of the eldest sister, Alba, they murdered them. For this crime, they were set adrift at sea; they were washed ashore on a windswept island, which after Alba was called Albion. Here they coupled with demons, and gave birth to a race of giants, among whose descendants were Gog and Magog.

According to Geoffrey of Monmouth, Gogmagog was a giant who was slain by the eponymous Cornish hero Corin or Corineus. The tale figures in the body of unlikely lore that has Britain settled by "Brutus" and other fleeing heroes from the Trojan War. Corineus is supposed to have slain the giant by throwing him into the sea near Plymouth. John Milton's History of Britain gives this version of the story:

The Island, not yet Britain, but Albion, was in a manner desert and inhospitable, kept only by a remnant of Giants, whose excessive Force and Tyrannie had consumed the rest. Them Brutus destroies, and to his people divides the land, which, with some reference to his own name, he thenceforth calls Britain. To Corineus, Cornwall, as now we call it, fell by lot; the rather by him lik't, for that the hugest Giants in Rocks and Caves were said to lurk still there; which kind of Monsters to deal with was his old exercise.

And heer, with leave bespok'n to recite a grand fable, though dignify'd by our best Poets: While Brutus, on a certain Festival day, solemnly kept on that shoar where he first landed (Totness), was with the People in great jollity and mirth, a crew of these savages, breaking in upon them, began on the sudden another sort of Game than at such a meeting was expected. But at length by many hands overcome, Goemagog, the hugest, in hight twelve cubits, is reserved alive; that with him Corineus, who desired nothing more, might try his strength, whom in a Wrestle the Giant catching aloft, with a terrible hugg broke three of his Ribs: Nevertheless Corineus, enraged, heaving him up by main force, and on his shoulders bearing him to the next high rock, threw him hedlong all shatter'd into the sea, and left his name on the cliff, called ever since Langoemagog, which is to say, the Giant's Leap.

There is a minor problem with the chronology of these several tales. If Britain was settled by giants during the Roman Empire, it is hard to imagine the giants being there shortly after the Trojan War.

Michael Drayton's Polyolbion preserves the tale as well:

Amongst the ragged Cleeves those monstrous giants sought:

Who (of their dreadful kind) t'appal the Trojans brought

Great Gogmagog, an oake that by the roots could teare;

So mighty were (that time) the men who lived there:

But, for the use of armes he did not understand

(Except some rock or tree, that coming next to land,

He raised out of the earth to execute his rage),

He challenge makes for strength, and offereth there his gage,

Which Corin taketh up, to answer by and by,

Upon this sonne of earth his utmost power to try.

See Also

• History of London

External Links

• Gog and Magog in the City of London's Lord Mayor's Show