In my research I came across the Emerald Tablets of Thoth. The tablets, if they are translated correctly, are the basis for the story line of Destiny. Thoth is an Atlantean Priest King who created the tablets, if dated correctly, around 36,000 BC/BCE. Thoth himself was consider a god by most people and his last known incarnation was Hermes (Thrice-Born).
The Tablets themselves are very remarkable and made from a substance that is not affected by ionization, the process of decay. Even the blood is affected by ionization, it's what causes our bodies to deteriorate and become prone to more diseases. At first, the tablets translate as the earliest known religion on the planet and quite possibly the base structure for every religion ever known to man. However, after reading the tablets a few times I started seeing similarities between the story on them and Destiny's story.
Before delving into the similarities between the tablets and Destiny I feel that a brief description of the tablet's story is necessary . Thoth writes about his journey from being simply a man to being an immortal who has learned of the secret mysteries. Throughout the tablets he mentions learning the secret of life and being freed from the bonds of death and the circle of life. Thoth speaks to us directly after a he found his own way to the light, trying to guide us and teach us to walk the path to the light as well. He states that the body and darkness seek to bind us and keep our free soul tethered as a test until we too find the path to the light. Thoth outlines the information to allow us to enter the halls of Amenti and seek out his wisdom. Stating he intentionally left the Great Pyramid of Giza blank as a clue to us to find and gain access to the halls.
I strongly encourage everyone who reads this to go find the tablets and read them. You can find them on crystallinks.com or you can just search for them. No matter how you find them, they are sure to provide great insight into Destiny.
Now onto the good stuff, what do the Emerald Tablets of Thoth and Destiny have in common? The enemies of Destiny are called the Hive, Fallen, Vex, and Cabal. In tablet 8, The Key of Mystery, Thoth speaks of the "HOUNDS of the Barriers" who guard a place where time does not exist. They can only move through angles and you must travel in circles to save your soul from being imprisoned by them. The Vex including Aetheon guard The Vault of Glass to protect the barriers of the past and future. So, Aetheon is the good guy after all and guess who the bad guy is then. The Black Garden is their prison camp where they keep all the evil souls who attempted to breach the barriers and failed. So, the heart of the garden saw you the guardian as a way out and it activated the sentinels. What better way to escape then to have someone kill the guards for you.
On to our next enemy the Hive, more specifically the Thrall. In tablet 8 Thoth states "For know ye, ever the dwellers, seek such Souls to hold in their thrall." This is where I read between the lines and made the connection. Thrall means to be a servant or slave physically or mentally. Slave to the Darkness surrounded by the Abyss. Crota's End begins in The Abyss and mostly Thrall inhabit it. Thoth even states that he ventured into the Abyss to obtain more wisdom.
The Fallen come into play as Thoth describes the rise and fall of races, including man. So, in Destiny the Fallen describe this continuous process of rising and falling. "Man has risen and man has fallen as ever new waves of consciousness flow from the great abyss below us toward the Sun of their goal."
As I don't want to spoil all of the story of Destiny I will stop here. However, you may be saying to yourself that this proves nothing. This is just one man's opinion and it doesn't hold water. So, I say to you go to crystallinks.com or search the web for The Emerald Tablets of Thoth and decided for yourself if Bungie took it's story for Destiny from them. Here are some keywords to look out for if you do decide to read them:
Thrall
Hounds of the Barriers
Fallen
Darkness
Light
Dark Brothers
Light Brothers
The Nine
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The "tablet" is text from an Arabic source that is typical magical mumbo jumbo based on Greek ideas. Some of these websites and their wishful thinking. Sure, the text and story may be interesting, but there is no tablet and any claims to antiquity are probably pretty spurious. Atlantis, for Pete's sake...
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I LOVE ancient religions and stuff like this. I had no idea these tablets even existed. Will definitely read up on them, very curious to see the further correlation. What's almost as cool is that someone like yourself (I'm picturing a Indiana Jones-esque individual) with the knowledge you have is actually playing Destiny with us.
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I'm not reading that
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Huh...interestind read. I'm usually pretty good at reading up on stories attributed to crypto-history, usually the Under ground empire theory. Ill have to look this up, right now I'm researching Black Mountain in Austrailia and death Valley in russia.
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I will have to check this out, cool, thanks!
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Straight bump
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Yeah I can definitely see where they got some influence from the tablets of Thoth.
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Interesting theory! Thanks for the good read.
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Destiny's story has yet to be written... The player holds the pen.
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Things just got a whole bunch more complicated. I. LOVE. IT.
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[quote]Shapes there were, moving in Order, great and majestic as stars in the night; mounting in harmony, ordered equilibrium, symbols of the Cosmic, like unto Law.[/quote] Hm, Oracles?
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[quote]As I don't want to spoil all of the story of Destiny I will stop here[/quote] Dont stop Now!! great work OP
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Have you seen the ship Atalanta's Hunt?
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So in short, destiny is just "Faux Thoth"?
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Have you read 'Seven Ancient Wonders' trilogy of books by Matthew Reilly per chance? It's fictional with historical elements but the second book 'Six Sacred Stones', had the Tablets of Thoth in it. They are a great read and the only fictional books I have sought out and bought.
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Edited by FireWindDrake: 2/17/2015 8:25:22 AMWell, one of the biggest relations I found within the tablets is The Nine. There are 7 beings that form The Nine that are each at a different levels of conciousness. The Nine are titled THREE, FOUR, FIVE, and SIX, SEVEN, EIGHT, NINE. The reason one and two are left out is because they are still bound by the darkness and only take physical forms. The Queen of the Reef speaks of this order of Nine during the Gatelord missions on Mars and Xur is the agent of the Nine. The codes you enter on the site are all 9 digits and 7 is Bungie's magic number. The codes may have nothing to do with it, but they were hidden in most of the limited edition material.
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Within the tablets Thoth speaks of the Darkness seeking to keep our free souls bound and that the body (physical form) is the device that keeps us bound. Although, the Darkness itself is only an obstacle on the path to the light and light will prevail over the Darkness. At the beginning of the game a Ghost, which I shall refer to as the false light, revives our lifeless dead body and binds our free soul once more to it. This would mean that our Ghost is a part of the Darkness and the Traveler is one of the Dark Brothers. Destiny lore tells us that the Traveler came to bring the light to our planet and that the Darkness followed it. However, I feel that the Traveler merely came to pave the way for the Darkness. We had reached our Golden Age before the Traveler and this triggered what the tablets refer to as the war between Darkness and the Light.
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I didnt read all of it and here is why. My wife bought me Halo:MCC for V-Day and ive already played all through the remastered Halo 2. It made me remember the importance and need that games need story's well established within them. Not through the games website outside of the console, not for people to just fish around and hope they understand a little better or for people to just throw theory's around. Halo has caught my eye again and Destiny can screw itself. Destiny's 20 GB's download < MCC's 70+ GB's download