SONG OF LYRAN historical and creative notes

The Jewish approach to knowing God comes through words, which may be sung and come with numeric values.

Much of the symbolism in SONG OF LYRAN is inspired by or borrowed from Judaism and Jewish mysticism. Since the Hebrews (known to the ancient Egyptians as the Ivrim tribes, which included the Essenes) were the OGs of monotheism, it seemed a fitting tribute to include them in a book celebrating the concept. Also, because the other two major religions, Christianity and Islam, are based on Jewish texts and ideas, doing so also opened the door to a space where the Brotherhood of this book might be able to manipulate meaning, exploit intent, and otherwise mislead good people attracted to the concepts but unfamiliar with the source context or culture.

One of the fascinating elements of Judaism is the value of each letter of the Hebrew alphabet, which gives each word a deeper meaning than what is understood when it is spoken aloud or translated. For example, the letters het and yud in the word chai (חי), which means life, have a value of 18 when added to together. Because of this, it’s customary for those of the Jewish faith to give gifts in increments of 18 to symbolically bless the recipient with the gift of a good, long life.

In the faux-religious book within this book, it is mentioned that the Aspects will be called back when the last turn of the wheel is completed. The value of that epoch is given 25,776 years. People familiar with astronomy might wonder why I set it there rather than at 25,772 or 36,000 years. Those numbers are generally thought of as being the Great Year or Platonic Year, which is the time it takes the Earth’s equinoxes to complete one turn around the ecliptic, or for the sun, moon, and planets to travel to the same place you see them in now, respectively. It’s because I wanted the number to be divisible by 18.

The choice of women in Sekhmet’s line was a combination of art and science. When I was 19 years old, I had a vision, much like the one described in the first Honey chapter, during which I saw the faces of all the people I’d ever been, including one who had the head of a lion. They were all so different, but the one thing that bound us all was that we all possessed the same eyes.

A conversation with my friend Randall Harr, decades later, inspired me to take that vision and turn it into a longer narrative. If you enjoyed this story, you should thank Randall for putting the idea into my head that this was a story worth telling.

When I sat down to write this book, I made a grid of all the women I remembered seeing along with potential birthplaces, cultures, and other half-remembered clues from that vision. I then chose a handful that I felt the strongest connection to, anchored them to real or mythic women who had similar enough facts to tie them to the story I wanted to tell, and began to weave this narrative together.

Much of Sekhmet's journey takes place in Egypt.
Much of Sekhmet’s journey takes place in a version of ancient Egypt when Amarna was under construction.

If you are curious to learn more about the women featured in this story, search for Sekhmet and Nefertiti, Philomela and Ovid, Foreach and the exile of the Déisi people in Ireland, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz and her friendship with Carlos de Siguenza, and talk to any unhappily married woman in present-day America. You might discover interesting similarities and more than a few creative departures to the characters who appear on these pages. After all, this is a fictional work of my imagination.

What I did not invent or elaborate on should be easily found via Google or Wikipedia search (Author’s plea: Please donate to Wikipedia!). If you’re curious to see more notes and source material I used for this book, visit kristicasey.com.

Although this is a creative work, I do think it is worth reexamining what’s been passed down to us as fact. After all, we know that history was written by the victors, and even religious texts have socio-political reasons for being. What, then, is the truth? We may never know. All we can do is hope to find the Answer we’re looking for in this life. And be content with that.

Who — or what — are the Lyrans?

Eye of Sekhmet by Lex Sanders

If you’ve heard of SONG OF LYRAN, you’ve probably wondered: what’s a ‘Lyran’? Well, settle in my friends and I’ll give you a little background on where the idea for the Lion-hearted Lyrans, exemplified by the character of Sekhmet, came from.

I have to say that the villains of the book came to me first. During the dark days of the pandemic, I started hearing about QAnon and 4Chan. At first, I didn’t take what I heard seriously. I mean, c’mon! There’s an alien race of reptilians disguised as politicians who are running the country? And they’re pedophiles who like to operate out of a pizza joint in Washington, D.C.?

But then I started to meet people, including members of my extended family, who believed these things. If not wholeheartedly, then at least as ideas that existed within the realm of possibility. I noticed that while these same people purported to be scared of corruption and the evils attributed to the ‘lizard people’ who ran the ‘swamp,’ the politicians they supported were being accused of the very same evils.

How clever would it be, if I was trying to deflect attention from myself, to accuse innocent people of committing the atrocities I’m committing, I thought. And indeed, as this germ of an idea rattled around my brain, I did stumble across this very idea in propaganda playbooks. Now, the idea became: what if there was a race of reptilian creatures who ruled things from behind the scenes and manipulated humans into aiding and abetting them through fear and propaganda that accused the innocent of the very crimes they committed?

That gave me the power dynamic for the book. I knew who the figures behind the darkness would be. I googled ‘alien race of reptiles,’ I found entries talking about ancient aliens called the Brotherhood of the Snake who were connected to all sorts of groups, like ancient Egypt’s Amun Priesthood, and originated from the star Draco.

Bingo! I had my villains. Now I needed worthy opponents. Returning to my rabbit hole of Google research I stumbled across the Lyrans. By some accounts they were connected to lions, in others they had green eyes, in all they were descended from the star Lyra and connected to other ‘star seed’ from the Pleiades and Sirius. Cross-referencing the idea of lions of light and snakes of darkness with the historical epochs each of the women of Sekhmet’s line inhabit, I was able to find lions (or their feline counterparts) and snakes in each of the women’s cultures.

In the SONG OF LYRAN, I elaborate on this mythology, connecting it to earthbound myths you might be familiar with from the Torah or Old Testament. For example, Sekhmet’s ability to form a line of genealogical descent can be explained by Book of Genesis angels being able to have children with humans.

All this is a very long answer to the short question: who or what are the Lyrans?

The short answer is: Lyrans are aspects of God. They are not human, but they interact and can breed with them. Some call them aliens, others know them as angels. But they are engaged in an eternal battle with the forces of darkness, represented by the Brotherhood of the Snake, who also have divine origin.

What other questions do you have for me about SONG OF LYRAN? Leave a comment and I’ll answer your query in a future blog. 🙂