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4 direct connectionsAnshar appears in Sumerian cosmogony as a primordial deity and resurfaces millennia later in alien contact narratives as the name of an advanced underground race. What connects these two worlds — and what separates myth from modern speculation?
Anshar in Sumerian Cosmogony
In the Enuma Elish, the Babylonian creation poem dated approximately to the 18th century BC and preserved on cuneiform tablets found at Nineveh, Anshar appears as one of the primordial deities. The son of Lahmu and Lahamu — the first beings generated from the mixing of the primordial waters of Apsu and Tiamat — Anshar represents the celestial horizon, the circular edge of the sky. His name, in Akkadian, can be interpreted as 'totality of the sky' or 'axis of the upper sky'.
Anshar and his counterpart Kishar form a cosmological pair: she represents the terrestrial horizon, he the celestial horizon. Together, they are the parents of Anu, the supreme sky god in Mesopotamian tradition. This divine genealogy is not merely poetic — it reflects an elaborate cosmology about the structure of the universe, where layers of reality stack between the watery depths and the celestial heights.
It is important to contextualize: the mythological Sumerian-Babylonian Anshar has no direct relationship with underground races or extraterrestrials. This association is a modern construction, emerging mainly in the second half of the 20th century, within esoteric communities and the alien contact movement.
The Enuma Elish and Anshar's Place in Creation
The Enuma Elish, whose seven tablets were discovered in the ruins of Ashurbanipal's library at Nineveh by archaeologist Austen Henry Layard in 1849, is one of the oldest preserved cosmogonic texts. Anshar appears in the first tablet as a generational entity — a link in the chain from the primordial waters to the greater gods such as Marduk.
Scholars like Thorkild Jacobsen, in Treasures of Darkness (1976), analyzed Anshar's role as the personification of abstract cosmic forces, common in Mesopotamian tradition. He is not a god with an active cult, dedicated temples or priesthoods — Anshar is, above all, a personified cosmological concept, representing the boundary between what exists and what lies beyond.
Academic tradition clearly distinguishes between primordial deities like Anshar — representing cosmological principles — and the gods of the active Sumerian-Akkadian pantheon, such as Enlil, Enki and Inanna. Anshar belongs to the earlier generation, to the mythical substrate of creation.
The Modern Resurgence: From Deity to Underground Race
The transformation of Anshar from a Sumerian cosmological deity into an advanced underground race is a 20th century phenomenon, specifically from the 1980s and 1990s, when the 'alien contact' or 'abduction experience' movement gained momentum in the United States and Europe. In this context, Anshar came to designate a supposed civilization inhabiting the Earth's interior, technologically advanced and spiritually developed.
The central figure in popularizing this modern narrative is Corey Goode, an American who claims to have been recruited as a child into a secret program called the 'Secret Space Program' (SSP). His descriptions, widely disseminated in podcasts, online series and on the Gaia TV platform from 2015, include encounters with beings called Anshar who would inhabit deep chambers beneath the Earth's surface.
It is essential to be clear: Corey Goode's claims have no verifiable evidence. No document, independent witness, image or physical data corroborates the descriptions of underground bases inhabited by Anshar. The narrative belongs to the genre of contemporary mythology — culturally significant as a social phenomenon, but without documented factual basis.
The Contact Narrative: What the Accounts Say
According to Goode's accounts and others within the same narrative ecosystem, the Anshar would be humans from the future who returned to the past to influence humanity's development, inhabiting underground chambers created tens of thousands of years ago. They would be guardians of spiritual and technological knowledge, with human appearance but with mental and spiritual capacities far beyond those of modern humans.
Within these narratives, the Anshar appear in contrast to other races described as present in the Earth's interior — some benevolent, others hostile. This narrative scheme, with diverse races, intergalactic conflicts and humans recruited as intermediaries, follows a literary structure common in science fiction and in modern esoteric traditions such as the New Age Movement.
Researchers of UFO culture and the abduction phenomenon, such as Professor David Halperin of the University of North Carolina, analyze these narratives as expressions of deep psychological and spiritual needs — the search for contact with the sacred, for transcendent mentors and for a sense of cosmic purpose — without validating their literal content.
Connections with the Inner Earth Tradition
The Anshar narrative intertwines with the broader tradition of the Inner Earth or Hollow Earth — the belief that the Earth harbors advanced civilizations in its interior. This tradition has diverse roots: Norse cosmology with Midgard and Asgard, the Tibetan Agartha described by occultist Alexandre Saint-Yves d'Alveydre in the 19th century, and Buddhist Shambhala.
The connection between Anshar and the Inner Earth is not original to Sumerian mythology — it is a modern overlay that takes the name of an ancient deity and inserts it into a Western esoteric tradition. This process of resignifying elements from ancient cultures within contemporary belief systems is common and studied by historians of religion such as Wouter Hanegraaff in New Age Religion and Western Culture (1996).
What makes the Anshar narrative particularly interesting as an object of study is not its factual veracity, but its structure: it combines borrowed archaeological authority (the Sumerian name), futuristic technology, time travel, spirituality and cosmic politics into an internally coherent system — a characteristic common to the great mythological narratives of all ages.
Anshar in the Secret Space Program Context
In the narratives of the so-called Secret Space Program (SSP), the Anshar are presented as allies of humanity, in contrast to other entities described as exploitative or controlling. This duality — benevolent guardians versus shadowy forces — is a recurring narrative archetype in spiritual traditions, from Zoroastrianism to Gnosticism.
The community around these narratives includes former military personnel, independent researchers and enthusiasts who interpret the accounts as literally true. Others treat them as spiritual metaphors or as symbolic communications of a psychic nature. The diversity of interpretations within the community itself reveals the plasticity of these narratives.
Investigative journalists like Keith Kloor of Discover magazine, and skeptical researchers like Jason Colavito, have analyzed SSP and Anshar claims, documenting internal contradictions, lack of evidence and patterns common to belief frauds. This does not invalidate the social phenomenon, but contextualizes its relationship with verifiable reality.
Mythological Parallels: Other Traditions of Underground Beings
The idea of advanced beings inhabiting the underground is not exclusive to the Anshar narrative. In Native American traditions, such as those of the Hopi, there are accounts of previous worlds inhabited beneath the surface. In Hinduism, the Nagas are divine serpents inhabiting Patala, the underground world. In Japanese mythology, there is Ryūgū-jō, the Dragon Palace at the bottom of the sea.
These traditions share a structure: beings of superior wisdom inhabit realms inaccessible to ordinary humans, and contact with them transforms those privileged enough to experience it. The cultural specificity varies enormously, but the archetypal pattern is universal. Carl Jung identified this pattern as an expression of the collective unconscious — the underworld as a metaphor for the deep psyche.
The modern Anshar narrative can be understood as a contemporary version of this universal archetype, clothed in the language and aesthetics of the 21st century: space technology, secret government programs and abduction experiences replace the enchanted forests and magic portals of ancient traditions.
The Role of Media Platforms in Spreading the Narrative
The expansion of the Anshar narrative is directly linked to the alternative media ecosystem of the 21st century. Gaia TV, founded in 2009 and specializing in wellness and expanded consciousness content, became the main vehicle for disseminating Corey Goode's claims through the series Cosmic Disclosure, which eventually had hundreds of episodes.
Podcasts like David Wilcock's, YouTube channels dedicated to the topic and communities on Reddit and specialized forums created a mutual reinforcement ecosystem, where narratives expand and deepen without going through journalistic or scientific scrutiny. This phenomenon is studied by disinformation researchers as a form of alternative epistemic community.
It is relevant to note that the internal community of the SSP movement went through significant divisions. In 2017, researcher Dr. Michael Salla and Corey Goode distanced themselves from other collaborators after disputes about the veracity and ownership of the narratives — a pattern common in movements based on unverifiable personal revelations.
Critical Reading: Separating Layers
To approach Anshar with intellectual honesty, it is necessary to distinguish at least three distinct layers. The first is the historical Anshar: a deity from Sumerian-Babylonian cosmogony, documented in verifiable archaeological texts, with no association with underground beings or extraterrestrials. The second is the esoteric Anshar: an appropriation of the name to designate a supposed Inner Earth race within 20th century occultist traditions.
The third layer is the Anshar of contemporary contact narratives, specifically the SSP movement: an elaborate belief system, without verifiable evidence, combining elements of science fiction, New Age spirituality and conspiracy theories. Confusing these three layers is a common analytical error among both enthusiasts and skeptics.
The genuine interest surrounding Anshar reveals something real and important: the human need for narratives of contact with the transcendent, for wise guardians, for hidden knowledge and for belonging to a larger story. This impulse is universal and deserves to be taken seriously as anthropological data — regardless of the literal veracity of the narratives that express it.
What We Know and What Remains Open
What is verifiable: Anshar is a name of Sumerian-Akkadian origin designating a primordial deity in the Enuma Elish. The texts describing it were excavated at archaeological sites in present-day Iraq and Syria, dated and translated by Assyriologists at universities around the world. This is solid historical reality.
What is speculation without evidence: the existence of a race called Anshar inhabiting the Earth's interior, Corey Goode's claims about encounters with this race, and any related secret government program. None of these claims have evidence verifiable by independent methods.
What remains genuinely open: the extent of what governments know about unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs), the possibility of life forms in extreme geological environments, and the psychological and spiritual significance of contact experiences reported by thousands of people worldwide. These questions deserve serious investigation and do not benefit from extraordinary claims without corresponding evidence.
Anshar and the AwakenMap
In the AwakenMap, Anshar appears as a node within the Inner Earth cluster and hidden civilization narratives. Its presence on the map does not imply endorsement of SSP claims — but recognizes that this set of narratives is culturally significant and connected to other important themes: Agartha, Inner Earth Civilization, Ancient Builder Race and debates about access to suppressed knowledge.
The connections on the map reveal the structure of this belief network: Anshar connects to Inner Earth through shared cosmology; to the Ancient Builder Race through the idea of advanced prehistoric civilizations; to Operation Highjump through speculation about what governments know and do not reveal; and to the traditions of Agartha and Shambhala through the theme of underground spiritual guardians.
Exploring Anshar in the AwakenMap is an opportunity to understand how ancient narratives are resignified in modern contexts, how belief systems are constructed and spread, and what these phenomena reveal about deep human needs — for transcendence, contact and meaning.
Critical reading
This theme should be read in layers: documented facts, historical hypothesis, spiritual narrative, UFO culture and speculation. The goal here is to expand inquiry without turning lack of proof into certainty.
References and starting points
- Enuma Elish — Tradução e análise (British Museum)
- Jacobsen, Thorkild — Treasures of Darkness: A History of Mesopotamian Religion (Yale University Press, 1976)
- Hanegraaff, Wouter — New Age Religion and Western Culture (SUNY Press, 1998)
- Halperin, David — Intimate Alien: The Hidden Story of the UFO (Stanford University Press, 2020)
- Colavito, Jason — análise crítica das narrativas SSP
- Ancient History Encyclopedia — Enuma Elish
FAQ
Is Anshar a real being or just mythology?
Anshar is a documented deity from Sumerian-Babylonian cosmogony, present in the Enuma Elish. As an ancient deity, it is real in the historical and cultural sense. As an advanced underground race — the modern narrative associated with the SSP movement — there is no verifiable evidence of its physical existence.
What is the Secret Space Program and what is its connection to Anshar?
The Secret Space Program (SSP) is a series of claims made primarily by Corey Goode about a hidden government program with access to extraterrestrial technology and contacts with alien races, including the Anshar. These claims have no verifiable evidence and are rejected by the scientific community and investigative journalism.
Is there any archaeological basis for modern narratives about Anshar?
The archaeological basis exists only for the historical Anshar — the Sumerian deity documented on cuneiform tablets. Modern narratives about Anshar as an underground race borrowed the name, but have no continuity or basis in the original archaeological texts.
Why do these narratives attract so many people?
Narratives like that of the Anshar offer what many religious traditions offer: a sense of contact with superior beings, of belonging to a larger story, of hidden knowledge accessible to few. In a secularized world, these narratives fill genuine spiritual and psychological needs, even without verifiable factual basis.
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