Send in the...Frogs???

The one question that I get asked probably more than anything else about Enlightenment is this: Why Frogs?

Back in the days of the Pharaohs, the Egyptians worshiped gods and goddesses which were represented by animal forms. One of those goddesses was Heket; “She” was the goddess of childbirth and of predicting the future. Although modern scholars consider her a “minor” deity, the frog images that her followers would present as good omens to pregnant women were found in most Egyptian households, from the smallest hut to the royal palace. Some research points to the idea that the Biblical accounts of both the slaughter of Israelite babies by Egyptian midwives and the Plague of Frogs which descended on the inhabitants of the Nile are connected… That the followers of the frog cult had the symbol of their devotion rammed down their throats.

The frog as a symbol of evil runs through the Bible, most notably in John’s Apocalypse. In it’s 16^th chapter, he records the following Vision:

The sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up to prepare the way for the kings from the East. Then I saw three evil spirits that looked like frogs; they came out of the mouth of the dragon, out of the mouth of the beast and out of the mouth of the false prophet. They are spirits of demons performing miraculous signs, and they go out to the kings of the whole world, to gather them for the battle on the great day of God Almighty.

It’s a powerful image, and one that will shape the story of Enlightenment: the devil you know in many ways…