3. The snake, the egg, and the
sun-bird
In Anglo-Saxon
poetry we find the beautiful description of the Phoenix. This bird lives for a 1000 years on the high plain of
Paradise. But when it grows old, it flies to a desert in Syria, builds a nest
of many fragrant twigs and blossoms, and sets the nest afire, thereby burning
itself to ashes. The ashes will shrink to a ball “in the ashes the likeness of
an apple is afterwards found. From it grows a worm, wondrous fair, as if it had
been brought forth from eggs, bright from the shell.” Then it grows to the
likeness of an eagle and finally it receives its rich array of plumage.[1]
Philo
of Byblos tells about a very beautiful snake “in the shape of a falcon”[2].
When it opened its eyes, there was light everywhere, when its eyes were closed,
there was darkness.
This strange twofold creature composed of
snake and bird is also very important as a symbol of divine, magical power in
Egypt, where the winged sun-disc is
like a bird with two uraeus snakes hanging down from it. As an explanation of
this very important and powerful symbol used as a weapon by Horus in his fights
The Persian version of the motif:
we would like
to bring in the archaic Indian symbolism surrounding the kundalini-power (the
word means “the coiled one”) resting like a snake coiled 3 1/2 times around a
golden egg at the foot of man's spine from where it has to be activated by
certain yogic techniques seen as the fusion of female and male power: The final
ecstasy is seen as the ascent of the female snake-power along the spinal cord
through 7 whirls called cakras until it reaches the 7th and highest cakra
called the 1000-petalled lotus and situated at the top of the scull. This lotus
is the seat of the male power, the god Shiwa, and the female kundalini-power
coming up the so called sushumna-channel
creates with her fusion with the male god the highest bliss, mystical vision, understood as divine orgasm in the
brain of the believer.
A
similar symbolism can be found in the Near East, but here the fusion of male
and female power is often seen as two
snakes coiling around each other with their raised heads meeting and
uniting in a mystical kiss. This symbol is the origin of the Hermes-staff, the
caduceus. This Greek symbol can be shown to have Sumerian forerunners.
Ill.
from L.Heuzey, Catalogue des Antiquités
chaldéennes no. 12569,287,339.
Acc. to ancient psychology one of the ways leading to
supernatural vision was an androgynous consciousness. The Theban seer,
Teiresias, saw two serpents in the act of coupling. He struck at them with his
staff, killing the female. Immediately he was turned into a woman and became a
celebrated harlot; but seven years later he saw the same sight again, and
regained his manhood by killing the male serpent. He is a symbol of the Near
Eastern Seer~Soothsayer trying to gain androgynous consciousness, and for that
purpose even cutting off their private parts and dressing as a woman. In
Scandinavian religion Loki, is the great magician and an androgynous person,
who gives birth to several children, all of them connected to magic &
ecstasy:
Sleipner, like Pegasus the symbol of magic flight
through the air, Fenris, symbol of the ecstatic change of man into
wolf-warrior, and the Midgárdsworm coiling
around Midgárd, the cosmic kundalini-snake at the end of time raising
itself on its tail, thereby being able to sink its teeth into Odin's throne,
Hlithskjalf, the place from where there was vision of the whole universe.
Also in the Near East, the result of the snake(s) being raised,
the female and male side being united, is very bright light, mystical vision,
ecstatic journey to heaven or hell. (Hermas, the fast travelling herald of the
gods, is holding the symbol of the male and female snake coiling and kissing).
Because the raising and fusing of the two snakes results in vision, their heads
are replaced by the shining sun, the mystical sun bird, the winged disc, which
can also be the winged, mystical 4-petalled lotus, another symbol of mystical
vision, or the mystical union of the light of the sun with that of the moon.
Another symbol of the snake being raised to mystical
vision is the Egyptian uraeus-snake's head coming forward and resting on the
forehead of Pharaoh as a third mystical eye.
In the mystical vision man is becoming one with
primordial totality, his little soul melting together with
the
all-penetrating World Soul. Therefore what happened on the personal level has a
correspondence on the cosmic level: the coiled one being here a great snake
which when raised and opening its eyes, fills the whole cosmos with primordial
mystical light, the same light as seen in the mystical vision. When not being
raised it can be seen as dangerous massive matter coiling around the world
mountain. The egg and the snake coiling around it is a symbol of the universe
as the world-egg.
The worm that comes out of the egg and grows into the
many-colored Phoenix is the kundalini power transcending cosmos, raising itself
to mystical vision, symbolized by the brilliantly colored bird.
Bar Hebraeus, the Syrian medieval mystic, has written a
book about how to reach mystical vision, and calls it the “Book of the Dove”. The dove is the Holy Spirit, but is described as
a bird of cosmic dimensions with wings reaching from east to west, and also as
a bird of fire. “All images are represented in her
without her possessing color herself” (Introduction).
In Greek mythology the snake, Ladon, is coiling around a
tree in the Garden of the Hesperides a tree of life that gives apples which
provide a food of immortality. In Ugarit there were tales about a cosmic snake
monster with seven heads and with the name LTN, the same name as the Greek
Ladon and the Hebrew Leviathan - the meaning of this name being “the coiled
one”. It can be no mere accident that the meaning of the Indian word,
kundalini, is “the coiled one”. The symbolism can be found everywhere in the
prehistoric iconography and stiffens into the pattern called the snake-coil. Note the exact number of 7 coils in the pattern below: the
seal shows the male and the female god meeting under the mystical light seen as
the unity of sun, moon, and mystical flower. Note the raised snake as a third
eye on the forehead of the god.
Left:
Syrian seal after Daum. Right:
Frankfort, fig.34.
On the seal shown above the high god is sitting with the
drink of immortality behind a fire-altar, and behind him the symbol of mystical
vision and primordial totality. A devotee is guided into the presence of the
highgod, followed by a priest with a bucket and a very clear symbol of raised
kundalini fastened on his neck and forehead. On some Hittite seals the two
snakes are so coiled together that only two heads can be seen sticking out. (On
this seal only one):
Amiet, pl.14bisH. Frankfort, fig.35.
The second seal shows the god of primordial totality.
The two snakes are peeping out of his skirt. He is flanked by his two helpers,
personifications of the world pillars. They are his sons, his own nature as
primordial totality being split into the gate for the sun: the two world
pillars or Heracles pillars. The God is often seen as this trinity: Mithras in
the Roman mysteries is followed by Cautes and Cautopates. They are split off
from Mithras, they are personifications of dawn and dusk, their names meaning burners. Also the two servants on the
seal have incense-burners in their hands. On the seal this trinity of the high
god and his Dioscuric helpers (they are primordial unity and the first duality,
the first split of the cosmic mountain into two) is indicated by all 3 gods
wearing the same head dress with bull's horns.
Everywhere in archaic folk religion we find the
symbolism of the snake coiled together or being raised to mystical vision.
Mysticism is not something originating with Origen, Plotinos, and the monk
Macarios the Great. Mystic symbolism of the kind we find in Indian left hand
tantra and Chinese tao-philosophy can be found everywhere in the prehistoric
cultures emanating from Inner Anatolia. It presupposes the mystic vision, a
vision of supernatural light clearer than the sun, or like the bright colours
of a cosmic flower opening out of the darkness. It goes together with a strong
feeling of every strife being settled, divine presence is felt as a great
unity/harmony, everything coming together into One. One feels a close contact
with some divine cosmic consciousness before creation seen as division into
two: the world massive split into the two world pillars, human consciousness
divided into male and female.
A close parallel to the Indian cosmic egg as the “golden
embryo” of the universe and the kundalini symbolism is found by Fr.LeRoux in
Celtic religion[3]:
Plinius the Elder tells us[4]
that the druids worshipped a tight coiling together of snakes in the shape of
an egg. It could fly through the air with a hissing sound, and was attracted by
gold. The Ulster King, Conchobar, was born with a worm in each hand (like
Heracles). LeRoux also draws our attention to a god on the Danish
Gundestrup-bowl (early iron age). He has the antlers of a stag and is sitting
in a yogic position, a horned snake in one hand. A similar figure is found in
the prehistoric Mohenjo Daro-civilization
in
the Indus Valley. The posture of the god sitting on the platform is most certainly
an attempt to fuse duality, symbolized by the hands and arms and legs and the
horns into one: a kind of big flower or plant opening itself to the sky. A
similar going from duality to unity is expressed by a small figurine found at
Catal Hüyük[5]. The coiled
snake is also found in Catal Hüyük as the handle of a stone knife[6]
and in the culture taking over from C.H.: Tell Halaf in Northern Syria,
Northern Iraq.
An early cylinder seal from
Mesopotamia (Frankfort, pl.IIIb) shows the double snake ascending to unite with
the divine double goat and the mystical rosette. Its ascension is parallel to
the ascent of the eagle of ecstasy.
An urn from Tepe Gawra[7]
shows an interesting scenery: in a mountain massive adorned with the cosmic
snake, a man and his dog are hunting the vision of primeval reality, the divine
bull being one with the eternal mountains. As another helper besides the dog is
seen a big snake standing on its tail.
From a vase from the Sin temple in Tell Asmar (29-2700
B.C.) the Shepherd with flowing water in his hands, sitting on the backs of
bulls. On the other side the hunter, standing on the backs of lions with the
two kundalini snakes in his hands. The lion (instead of the panther) is seen
killing the bull.
In India the raising of the kundalini snake is seen as the
turning of the flow of sperm: it is turned upwards into the spinal cord instead
of being emitted in the sexual act. That the snake also in the prehistoric
Middle East has something to do with the flow of sperm is seen on this seal,
where it comes out of the dog's private parts, being turned into the flight of
the bird, a symbol of ecstasy. (From the Iranian highlands, Shahr-i Sokhta,
Amiet, no.1696). By the killing of the bull, the snake is falling from a triple
light, perhaps the moon with the morning and evening star[8]:
Seals from Luristan show the “Ibex-god” with the
up-and-down-going kundalini snake. Note that he is shown as a trinity with his
two feet also adorned as horned ibex-heads. From early Elam: the double
kundalini snake ascends from a jug with the ecstasy-giving drink[9]:
Another
seal[10]
shows a man with the snake going in and coming out of his private parts, a
motif also known from a picture of a goddess from Ugarit:
The naked woman is also in India a symbol of Shakti = the female kundalini power
personified in the goddess, Kali, with the tongue hanging out of her mouth – a
grimace also shown by the Greek Medusa.
A big golden bowl from
12-10th cent.B.C. was found in the ruins of a burnt down castle in Hasanlu in
north-west Iran. It was covered by a multitude of motifs.[11]
We find the big hunter with his bow, dressed in a kilt, and with an
uraeus-snake standing out as the “third eye”. The same figure is seen fighting
the world-mountain, the primordial massive like Typhon seen as both man and
snake. Primordial reality is seen as a trinity, a triple snake, and placed
between a flood of water coming out of the mouth of the divine bull pulling the
highgod's cart (the water stream even surrounded by a heavy rain) and the
demonic lion. The primordial mountain is the unity of the two opposites:
water-bull and fiery destroyer. The naked goddess is standing on the backs of
two rams. She is the female power of fertility taken away into primordial
reality, the triple-snake-mountain, but liberated by the young hunter. The
Dioscouric twins are also seen killing the Huwawa-figure, a new symbol of the
killing of primordial unity making way for duality and creation. The goddess is
brought into safety on the back of an eagle (after escaping the dragon, Apoc
12,14), and on the back of a lion until giving birth to the divine baby.
The rain-giving highgod
is like Baal and Mithras and Juppiter Dolichenus followed by two servants. They
are here sun and moon, but just as often seen as the two world pillars, the
first splitting of the primordial mountain into two.
The next picture shows
two flights of stairs and a platform from the palace in Persepolis. The
beautiful facade shows, in the midst of a green thicket, the holy bull being
killed by the big hunter, the lion, and over it the bird of mystical light.[12]
From a Nimrud ivory this beautiful fire-bird with the
mystical lotus in her hands (Mallowan, II, fig.393):
We will try to prove that the Indian left hand tantra,
where you get magic power by turning to the dark demonic side of the
supernatural, is a very old practice since time immemorial, linked to a demonic
god called the great hunter. He carries his weapon in his left hand (ambidexter Apollo). His numen is androgynous: Apollo has a twin
sister, Artemis, and he is homosexual, Baal has, as his beloved and close
partner, his sister Anat. Shiwa has his beloved Shakti.
The mystical vision is a well-known fact in the history
of religion, known also from modern mystics and out-of-body experiences. It
even seems possible to provoke this vision by using some psychedelic drug
(LSD).
In the Bible it is the vision of the Glory of God (Ez
1-3), but the presence of God is both bliss and danger, and of the different
chemical and sexual techniques of raising the snake power there is no trace.
The promises of the snake in the Garden of Eden: opening of eyes, being like
God, with knowledge of everything, both good and evil, even the depths of darkness,
is also today the promises of kundalini mysticism. But in reality it is often
an experience so strong that it does great harm to the human mind. (A burning
feeling moving up and down the spinal cord, a bubbling, boiling feeling in the
brain are some examples.) A whole group of networks to help the victims of
these experiences has already been called into existence. Poor little man laden
with sins, and by use of unclean methods, has tried to force his way into the
inner sanctuary. In Phil 2 Jesus is pictured going the opposite way: he was not
like a robber trying to be God. But being God, he became man, and even died on
the cross.
The Bible knows the symbol of the snake coiling up the
stick: the copper snake is a symbol of healing (Hermas with the caduceus is the
divine shaman, journeying to hell to bring back the soul of the sick; the snake
on the rod is a symbol of raised magic, shamanic force. Job speaks of "the
magicians raising Leviathan", 3,8.) But in the long run this symbol was
seen as incompatible with God, Jhvh, and it was cast out of the temple yard,
where it actually stood for some time.
A small alabaster bowl dated back to
the 3th-5th cent.A.C. from Syria or Asia Minor[13]
shows the adoration of the snake coiled around an egg or an omphalos-stone. The
men and women participating in the cult are naked. Most of them are putting
their right hand on the breast, a gesture which, acc to Leisegang, is
characteristic of the mysteries of Sabazios or Hekate. Some of them are raising
the left hand to the classical gesture of adoration. Lifting the right hand as
a sign of adoration is very common, but the left hand only when it is the gods
of the underworld who are hailed. The snake is emitting light, a corona of
saw-toothed beams are coming out of it together with a wreath of flames.
Leisegang compares with the god Aion from Modena, a male figure with a snake
coiling around his body ascending to rest its head on the top of the world egg.
The god is standing inside a hatched egg. Macrobios says that the Phoenicians
pictured the world “that is heaven”(mundum
id est caelum) as a snake which, in a giant cycle, is biting its own tail[14].
In my opinion it is likely that the
"egg" is the world mountain surrounded by the snake. Because it is
said in an inscription: “… you bend yourself in a circle on the infinitely wide
Olympos”. Leisegang has no comment on the purpose of the bowl. It must have
contained a fluid becoming one with the primordial waters out of which the
world mountain rose. A fluid, which, by this symbolism, became a very strong
rejuvenating drink. The snake is the sacred symbol of amorphous totality before
creation. It is said in the text that goes with the bowl: “Earth and heaven
were only one form”.
In short, the snake is not a symbol of
Baal as so often stressed by scholars. It is a symbol of primeval totality and
magic strength. Cf. the Mandaean gimra-amulet. It consists of a snake coiled around
itself with its tail in the mouth surrounding
a lion, a scorpion, a bee. The snake is Ur, “the snake without hands and feet”[15]. This amulet is the weapon Hibil Ziwa
(Abel, the shepherd) took from the powers of darkness, and which is used in
exorcism.
A Curdish sect worshipping the Peacock-angel (the devil)
are the so called Yezidees (number today almost a million believers). They
think that in the last judgement will the devil be reconciled with God, and
even play an important role in the final judgement of man (so you have to be on
good terms with him). In fact, they are a remnant of pre Christian religion:
the peacock angel being the mysterious Phoenix. The picture shows an aroused
snake by the entrance to a Yezidee-temple. It is blackened by soot.
One important motif in the religious art of the Middle
East is the snake or the double snake ascending in or around the tree of life
in the navel of the earth. A seal cylinder from Cyprus shows the winged disc
above a conventionalized tree; the tree rests on the omphalos flanked by two
serpents: Di Cesnola, Cyprus pl.XXXVII,
no.10.
The tree of life is closely connected to primordial
totality and the mystical vision, it is also the tree of ultimate knowledge.
But in the Bible there is a polemic attitude to this notion of mystic vision as
the ultimate unity of good and evil.
The gate from which the sun comes into the universe is
the gate to the transcendent paradise. The sun comes out of a place where it is
continually renewed in strength. Paradise is the place of eternal rejuvenation.
Zech 4,2ff. is a vision of the two olive trees which mark the gate of the light
and in the gate: “Behold a candlestick all of gold, with a bowl at its top and
his seven lamps thereon, and seven pipes to the seven lamps..”. The mystical
light is a seven times sevenfold light.
The next picture shows the gate of the sun marked out by
two very different trees. The gate of the sun is the primordial mountain split
into duality. Because the two trees are a sign of duality they are marked out
as opposites.
Prinz, Altorientalische Symbolik,
1915 Taf.X,no. 9.
In the Kabbalistic doctrine of the
Tree of the 10 Sefirot this tree is a symbol of the mystical descent (through 7 levels) of divine light, and a
symbol of unity between opposites. In
the centre runs the trunk as the "Pillar of Equilibrium" with the 3
Sefirot: Foundation, Beauty, Crown being the unity of the left "Pillar of
Judgement" (consisting of the female Binah = Understanding, Judgement and
Glory) and right "Pillar of Mercy" (consisting of the male Hokmah =
Wisdom, Mercy and Victory). A similar symbolism could be seen in the tree to
the left of the sun gate. A central line is formed by three cross-symbols: From
the bottom a cross of St. Andrew, in the centre a normal cross, at the top a
star with 8 rays, the unity of the normal cross with the cross of St. Andrew.
The central line of ascent is surrounded by the holy quadrangle, and the whole
figure could, as in Kabbalah be seen as a symbol of macr´anthropos. 
That the Assyrian tree of life is a symbol
of binding right and left together seems obvious from these examples taken from
S.Parpola: "The Assyrian Tree of Life", JNES, 52, 1993, p.175, fig.6. Below mmeditating man on amulet from
Mohenjo Daro conf. the Sefirotic Tree. Both figures start from unity, expand
into duality, and at the top return to mystic unity:
We must
conclude that there are traces in the Near East of a mysticism, a technique
aiming more at the dark side of the supernatural. In Petra a stone monument
shows a snake with a very broad ugly head
coiled 3 1/2 times around a cone, cf from the same city the double snake
raising to touch the horse with the wildly raised tail, a symbol of ecstatic
flight (Dalman, Petra,ab.28/no.47).
Yoga comes from an Indo-European word known in English
as yoke. The root yuj means “to yoke, to harness, to bind
together”. The original goal in yoga is to be yoked together with a helping
demon in the supernatural world. In the Bible it is told that Israel wandering
in the desert came across some women
from Midjan, and obviously these women were not so nice as they were looking:
the result was orgies and “Israel was put in Yoke with Baal Peor”. In much
later Gnostic movements the soul needs “a syzygie”,
“a yoke-fellow” in the spiritual world. Yoga is, acc. to Fr. Heiler, a very old
technique, used by the shaman in Neolithic society for the purpose of training
his ability to act as a medium for the spirits. A question still unsolved by
the science of religion is: who or what are those forces called upon in these old
techniques? Are they good, or perhaps chaotic? In the so called “left hand
tantra” you have to call upon them by breaking religious taboos, thereby
building yourself up into “black magician”. A girl on an ivory from Nimrud
(Mallowan,II,fig.545) is looking very tenderly into the snarling face of a
lion, in my opinion her genius, her demon "yoke-fellow"(pict. next
p.). The same "beauty and beast" motif is known from India, from
Middle Age Khadshuraho (H.Mode, Das frühe
Indien,1959,fig.45, see the picture below).
The Bible is familiar with the mystic vision of God.
Paul has such a vision, but has kept silent about it for 14 years, 2 Cor
12,2-5. Also the vision of Ez 1-3 must be regarded as a mystic vision. But such
visions can not be called forward with human efforts. Man is only a little
worm. He must wait, and he must pray, knowing that he is only dust and ashes in
the presence of God Almighty. He is not allowed to go behind the curtain into
the holy of holies, he is not allowed to put forward his hand and touch the arc
over which God makes his epiphany. But when the light, the glory of God, shines
upon him, the little worm is happy, and he knows that such a light can only be
given by grace alone.
A mysticism reached by certain unclean methods can be traced
all over the Middle East in the prehistoric high-cultures. In Susa we find the
two snakes coiling and kissing around 3 mystical flowers. Exactly the same
motif in found in prehistoric Egypt(Amiet, RA
51,pp.121-9). The two snakes can be made into snake-like necks of two lions
coiling, kissing. And again the motif is identical in prehistoric Egypt and
prehistoric Mesopotamia:
Left:
Lion-snakes from the “Shield of Narmer” 3200 BC. Right: Similar Mesopotamian motif, Amiet, pl. 14bis C.
The double-snake ascending is a he- and a she- snake,
and the means to make the snake-power ascend is often a melting together of the
male and female pole of life: an ecstasy reached by very orgiastic means. This
prehistoric seal from North Iraq shows male and female copulating in a posture
well known from modern Indian tantra. Thereby they make the snakepower ascend.
A.J.Tobler,Exc.Tepe Gawra II,pl. CLXIII.fig. 88
& 87.
Same motif from early Susa, L.le Breton, IRAQ 19,1957, p.104, fig.18.
The female partner is placed on the yogi's lap. Her body
is held very close, to arouse a spiritual union with female nature. But
certainly the technique can also be more rough, cf. the Orphic motif of Baubo
sitting on a pig in a very indecent position, offering the ladder = the journey
to heaven. A prehistoric version of the same motif: a girl with long floating
hair flanked with scorpion and reptile:
Müller-Karpe,
III, 3 Taf. 180, 23. The
tale of the scorpion is an ascending snake.
Actually
the modern artist (from A.B.Cook, Zeus)
thinks a little too highly of the girl, for on the original sculpture (cf. the
photo in Lex.Icon.: Baubo) the right
hand is pointing to the most private parts of the young lady. The same motif
can be seen on a prehistoric bowl from Tell Halaff (see below): in Indian
tantra a stark naked woman is a symbol of Shakti: “The girl may be seated on a
low altar, with legs spread wide apart to display the hallowed symbol of
adoration, the yoni”[16].
H.Schmidt[17] thinks the
bulky stomach is a sign of pregnancy, but the navel is not protruding, but
deeply hidden in the midst of surrounding hills of fat, obviously a sign of
female beauty and softness (and voluptuous joy?). The bowl points to an ecstasy
giving drink, perhaps this mixture of wine and cannabis which, in Iranian myth,
gives universal knowledge.[18]
The last proof of the striking similarities between
India and the Near East is this coin from Tyre showing the crowned snake
coiling around a gigantic egg:
Illustration from A.B.Cook, Zeus, II, p.982, fig. 791, Babelon, Les Perses Achmenides, p.328 no. 224o:
The Hellenistic author, Nonnos, has a description of how
Tyre was founded. Melqart, called Heracles Astrochiton
("coat full of stars") came to a people as old as time itself with
bodies made from unploughed mud (Gen 2). He came as they were sleeping, and
commanded them to build a ship and sail out over the sea until they reached two
rocks called “the ambrosian rocks" floating on the waves. “In the center
of the navel of the rock” an olive tree was growing. At the top of it an eagle
had its nest, and there was also a big bowl, and a snake was coiling around the
tree, and “a fire lit by itself was
spewing wonderful sparks”. The tree is burning without being burnt down. When
the eagle is killed and brought as an offering
to Poseidon, the rocks will stop their wanderings and be grounded, and the
people will be able to build a town on them. Butterworth (The Tree at the Navel…)
calls our attention to the fact that the bowl of the moon containing the drink
of immortality is often, in Oriental iconography, placed at the top of the
world tree. And he calls our attention to another symbol, the moon-bowl with
the sacred drop of supernatural light falling into it (Far East), or the moon-bowl
containing the bright disc of the sun.
Pherecydes' cosmic tree has wings, and the moon-bowl
containing the ambrosia is also known from this author's lost work: the moon
was where the gods were eating as it brings forth ambrosia daily.
Interesting for our subject is the snake coiling around
the world axis, the world-tree, to reach the sun-bird, the eagle, or the bowl
with the drink of ecstatic rapture. The eagle at the top of the world axis, the
ladder to heaven, is the mystical symbol of ecstasy. The killing of the symbol
of mystic ecstasy is creation out of
unstable, ever-floating matter.
In Mesopotamian myth we find the killing of the bird in
the poem about the Anzu-bird who had stolen the tablets of destiny, and thereby
having total control over gods and cosmos. Ninurta taking the tablets back is
cosmos being reestablished. Mystic vision is the normal day-to-day structure of
the cosmos being threatened.
Motif on a coin from Hierapolis in Phrygia: snake ascending to the head
of Apollo Lairbenos with a hairdo like an aura of sunbeams (after Cook, II,
fig. 456).
A relief from Mastala in Upper Syria shows a god
standing on a bull with two coiled snakes under the bull and there is a
dedication to: “the very greatest god, Op Eresem…” Acc. to R.Mouterde[19]
Op comes from Sumerian Ub (“in high heaven”) and Eresem is pluralis
majestatis of heres = sun. The god has something
in his arms which could look like the hind part of an animal, and Mouterde thinks
he is a shepherd-god.
The sign used to indicate the Hittite king shows the
bird of the mystical light flying over a gate made of two pillars.
The gate of the sun is the world mountain split into
two, the first division of primordial union into duality. If the high god is
primordial reality, his first splitting into two is seen as his two sons, they
are split off from the same being. -Therefore the
guardians of the gate are often two bull-men, sons of the bull god. The picture
shows the two lifting up the mystical bird, thereby making space for the sun to
run its course (in “Knielauf”, the symbol of fast running, slab from the temple
in Tell Halaf, 9th cent.B.C.). . But certainly
the highgod can also be seen as Baalshamin followed by his two sons symbolizing
sun and moon. Here sun and moon are seen as the first splitting up of
primordial light and reality into night and day. Baalshamin in Palmyra is the
old god with beard and polos. He is the world pillar of the
ecstatic journey to heaven by uniting duality. The two parts are tied together
with the ribbon hanging from the polos. The highgod is the union of right and
left, and his sons are the division of the highgod into two. Note the
remarkable likeness between the three. On the many Saturn-stelai found all over
Punic Africa, Saturn is a god closely connected to the bull and followed by his
two Dioscuric helpers.
First
half of the first cent. A.C. Louvre Mus. (SYRIA
26,1949, pp.28ff.)
In Job 29,18: “I thought I would die in my nest live
as long as Hol” cf. Ps 103,5: “My youth is renewed as the eagle’s”, we find the
Hol = Phoenix as a positive symbol of life renewed.
But in accordance with the tendency in Semitic religion
to see primeval reality, the bull El, enthroned by a young warrior and
hunter-god, the eagle of eternity, the Anzu, is shot by the young Ninurta.
Enlarged picture of Anzu's “third eye” taken from the picture below.
Anzu is the symbol of forces taking the universe
back into primordial chaos. “(Anzu has disrupted) the kingship ... he has
rob(bed Ellil), rejected your father. (Make?) a path, fix the hour, let light
dawn for the gods”, is the command given to Ninurta/Ningirsu in the Old
Babylonian version[20].
A stone slab found in the temple of Ninurta at
Nimrud shows Ninurta attacking Anzu. The god has a sickle hanging from his
shoulder, and the bird monster has a third eye on its forehead: the god has to
cut up primordial totality seen by the mystical vision & the third eye and
make a path for the sun to shine, thereby creating order in primordial chaos.[21]
No Sumerian account of the Anzu-episode is
known, and in Sumerian litt. the Anzu is a kind and benevolent bird. In the
Standard Babylonian version Ninurta is given the title Bel (= Baal). Other
deeds of Ninurta are known from passing references: he slew the seven-headed
serpent, he slew the bull-man in the sea (the bull as the god of life-fluids).
The Anzu-bird is closely connected to the mountains as primordial massive: “his
mantle of radiance surrounded the mountain”. The bird as a symbol of mystical
vision is one with the shining Mt Paradise.
In
Greek myth, in the Garden of the Hesperides, a snake called Ladon is guarding
the tree with apples giving eternal life. Ltn is also the name of the snake
with seven heads in the Ugarittexts, so obviously the Greek notion has its root
in Near Eastern myth and the Bible. This makes it possible to compare the Greek
snake with the snake in the Bible offering the fruits from the Tree of
Knowledge to Eve. This infamous creature must be Leviathan, the coiled one, and
its temptation must be the old promise of mystic vision, universal knowledge,
divine enlightenment, change from merely human into divine consciousness. This
notion of original sin is closely connected to a similar thinking in Nordic
myth, where Odin’s friendship with Loki and his dabbling with occult powers is
also seen as the way evil powers are able to enter the human mind. Still Cain
is able to resist the sin lurking at the door, but later on in the generation
of the Great Flood mankind has become the victim of an obsession with dark
forces.
“The
wild hunt”, this important piece of European folklore, is originally a hunt for
the divine stag with the light cross between its antlers, the symbol of the
highgod, but in a manner typical of tantric thinking it degenerates into a hunt
for the naked “witch with her breasts hanging down to the earth” when she is
caught and thrown over the horseback[22],
a typical symbol of Hecate and female kundalini-power.
Perseus tries not to look
at Medusa, who is personified kundalini-power (with the many snakes coming out
from her head, a double-snake coiling on her breast, and the long tongue coming
out of her mouth like the Indian goddess, Kali), resting in a cave in some kind
of primordial mountain in the deep west, transcending the routes of the sun. I
think he does well in this. Mystic vision reached by some occult,
heaven-climbing technique can be terrifying. In fact, in ancient Greece, the
vision of the Medusa-head was the vision the dead soul feared to meet after
death.
Also Athena is personified kundalini. She carries the
Medusa head on her shield or is seen together with her snake which acc. to some
traditions also ended up as the head on her shield. She is a close parallel to
the Syrian goddess Anat once in the Ugarit~texts named as Anat Ltn (Leviathan/Lotan). She was born when Zeus received a big
blow on his scull, in the place where raised female kundalini is united with
the male god. Male and female force being separated is creation, the opposite is mystic vision: everything melting into
mystic union.