21. The cherubim
In Plato´s dialogue, Timaeos[1]
it is told how Zeus creates the cosmos after the model of “a perfect living being”. In this being he saw
four perfect forms: 1) the form of the gods, 2) the form of the birds, 3) the form
of the nautic creatures, and 4) the form of the animals living on dry land.
It is
obvious that Plato here has a creature like the O.T. cherub, or the Chronos of
Hieronimus, in mind. The Cherub is composed of lion (beast of prey), man, bird,
and oxe (cattle). As the tree of life is the ideal model of vegetation, and the
well of life the paradise model of all life-giving fluids, so are the “Living
Beings”(Hayyim, another word for the
cherubim) the ideal model of living creatures. “You were the seal of the taknit, full of wisdom and perfect in
beauty” Ez 28,12 about the King of Tyre hailed as a cherub. tkn = be straight,
in pi´el = “measure out”. Taknit means “plan”,”pattern”. Acc to Philo of
Alexandria the earthly world was created after a heavenly pattern:
“We must suppose that, when God was
disposed to found the great city (i.e. cosmos), he first conceived its
patterns, out of which he constituted the intelligible world, and using that as
a model, he completed also the visible world” (De opif.19,after the Loeb ed.). The world was made after the model
of the intelligible world, which is also called “the archetypal seal”[2].
Interesting are the ten different precious stones enumerated Ez 28,13, among them the sapphire. In the Kabbalah they become the 10 sefirot, together making out the body of macr´anthropos, Adam Cadmon.
It is said
about the cherub “you were a cherub of measurement - shielding. I made you. You
were on the holy (cosmic) mountain of God. Among fiery stones (the stars) you
were wandering about. Perfect were you on your route from the day you were
created”. Ez. 28,12-15. mimshakh, the
word we have translated by measurement means something like “measure”,
“extension” (Vulgata: extentus). Also
this Cherub from Tyre is the perfect paradigm, the ideal pattern after which
all living creatures are created. The cherub is described as the highlight of
artificial skill: “the handicraft of the mounting of your gems and the
engravings on you, on the day you were created, they were founded”[3].
These patterns were founded, invented by God on the day the cherub was created.
Also the tree of life can be described as a tree of precious stones (as we have
seen in Gades and by the arrival of Gilgamesh at the garden of paradise). When
crystals are formed in the most beautiful patterns, when flowers enfold to
reveal a pattern of beauty they reveal an order penetrating matter trying to
form it into a higher quality, although this process, due to the condition of
matter, is only imperfect. But it is the heavenly plan that makes the things
full of adorable gratia. We have
already seen that the paradise-island for Diodor is the perfect example of
beauty for both art and music.
In Ez 1-3
four hayyim are seen, each with a
rotating wheel, with another wheel inside crossing the first wheel. The
world-soul is, acc. to Plato, two circles crossing each other, one for the
regular circle-movements of the stars, and one for the irregular movements of
the planets. This heavenly mechanism is seen as the two wheels: ”the invisible
machinery of heaven revealed itself to an astonished priest”[4].
“And the body of the Hayyim was like the look
of glowing coal. They were burning - like torches to look at. She walked among the hayyim, and there
was a aura like fire, and from the fire lightening shot out. And the hayyim
were running to and fro, and they were like bzq
to look at” Ez 1,3f. (perhaps brq
“lightening”?). The sudden shift to the female gender is not incidental. The
author wants to stress the androgynous character of the vision. Later this
mystical vision with the sudden appearance of a female gave rise to the notion
of a female holder of the Holy Grail.
El Cronos has, acc to Philo, two
pairs of eyes: “two awake and two closed, resting” and “on the shoulders 4
wings, two looking as if they flew, and two looking as if they rested. This was
a symbol, for Cronos saw while he slept
and slept while he was awake”. This “symbol” is typically ecstatic: the god is coincidentia oppositorum, the unity of
sleep and being awake, that is, he is constantly in the borderland where trance
and visions come. On his head he had two feathers or small wings symbolising Nous & Aisthêsis (visionary sight by the mind and ordinary sight by the
senses). The Hayyim in the Bible also have 2 pairs of wings: 1 pair was used
for flying, 1 rested and was used for covering the body. They had a human body,
but hooves like a calf, see the picture of Aion[5].
Note the kundalini snakes falling from the stomach of the god and dividing into
fire and fluid, the main pair of opposites in the visible world. But from the
fire-altar the kundalini power is able to rise again to vision, that is, to the
face of the god. With his wings, his human body, calf’s feet and lion’s face,
the god, Aion, has some similarity to the biblical cherub. As a matter of fact,
he is the Cronos of Tyre (and Byblos) also in Ez. described as a cherub, and
more or less one with the king of Tyre.(Note that the cherubical look with a
pair of double wings was constructed by Hermes as a sign of kingship, acc to Philo.) In the Bible the kundalini snakes
are totally absent from the vision.
M. Avi-Jonah[6]
has drawn attention to the fact that in the early Hellenistic period and
before, the gods were always pictured in profile, with only a few exceptions,
“imported from Syria” (Qds, Bes, “woman at the window”, Hathor). The reason for
picturing Qds with her front turned towards the viewer was that she was an
object of meditation. And this purpose of the idol becomes more and more
important (Aion, Jupiter from Baalbek). In fact, all the gods mentioned here are
symbols of the kundalini power.
An Orphic
myth, probably taken from the Sabazios-cult from Inner Anatolia, tells about
Zeus pursuing Rhea, who changes herself into a snake in the hope of escaping
him. Immediately, he changed into a male snake and coiled around her in the
so-called Heracles knot, also shown by the caduceus of Hermes. Rhea bore
Persephone as his daughter, a child with 4 eyes, two faces and horns[7].
The kundalini-power is raised, pictured in the union of male and female snake,
and gives birth to the goddess as the archetypal ecstatic, as is seen from her
identity with the semeion-symbol
dealt with above. The usual tantric motif of incest is also imbedded in the
myth: Sabazios is born by Zeus having intercourse with his daughter,
Persephone. The incest motif is also important in the Hellenistic novel, Apollonios, King of Tyre. The travels of
Ap., sailing out from Tyre, being shipwrecked in Libya, and much later, as an
old man, returning with a ship full of grain to end the hunger, show that
Apollonios is Apollo identified with Melqart of Tyre sailing out and returning
as Saturn Frugiferus, “giver of
fruit”.
Of
particular interest for our present subjects are the primordial beings called
Zophasemin (“contemplators of heaven”) described by Philo I 10,2. They were
lying in passive contemplation, but were woken up by thunder “and began to move
around on land and in sea as male and female”. The god of thunder is the
creator of active life from the passive enjoying primordial mystic
(androgynous) vision. A similar idea is behind the description in Plato´s myth
in Symposion of primordial man as round, with two faces and mostly androgynous.
Zeus cut them in two as when a hard-boiled egg is cut. Now, the egg in Orphic
theology is the holy symbol of the universe in its primordial, ideal state, and
the idea of the two, man and woman, Uranos and Ge united, but then separated,
is cosmogony. Characteristic of the myth of Plato is that the macrocosmic
cosmogony is used also about the microcosm, man. In a strange way the
primordial state of microcosm, man, is identical with macrocosmos. Ecstasy is a
regression to mystical primordial totality. The egg-form attributed also by
Philo to Zophasemin is the world-egg.
A sculpture found in Borcovicum in
England[8]
shows, not the Syrian god of thunder, but Mithras keeping the two halves of the
world-egg apart with the two poles, symbols of the Heracles-pillars, but the
two poles are taken from Resheph = El Cronos in Byblos. Baal´s two servants lifts
the twin mountains up in their hands. They are the personified world pillars.
That the
cherub is the master pattern is parallel to the Phoenician idea that the plan
and order of cosmos was seen by Cronos in visions before made manifest by the
younger god. Already F.Cumont touched on this motif, also important for the
understanding of the mysteries of Mithras, that Aión is given the world order
in his dreams, but the idea is further dealt with by A.Alföldi[9].
The motif is already found in Aristotle[10].
One important fact is that a certain iconographical type: ”Cronos on a throne,
in his right hand supporting his veiled head” became most common in the North
African way of picturing their god, Saturnus-Frugifer/Saeculum frugiferum, see
the cult statues in M.Leglay[11].
In
Aphrodisias in Caria is seen the Zoilos-monument from the period of Augustus
with the god Aión pictured on the griffin throne (the Semitic throne of
cherubim), dreaming, with his head leaning on his right hand and shoulder
(picture in Alföldi, Aion…).
In the
Orphic-Neoplatonic cosmogony, Cronos thought out the world order and
transmitted it in oracles to his son, and Alföldi draws our attention to the
fact that this doctrine, acc. to the version by Damascios, was of Phoenician
origin[12]:
”He governs and makes straight the creation of cosmos. So most clearly by the
Phoenicians these thing are attributed to him, as they make him the first
demon… in this way Cronos is the head of cosmos: he is not the actual builder
of cosmos, but he who cares for cosmos, a benefactor, and one who fills all
life in the universe and exists before the demiurgos”.
When
Anaximander writes about “the existing things paying penalty to each other for
their wrongdoings acc to the order of Chronos”[13]
he is obviously identifying Chronos with the Phoenician Saturn-Cronos, master
of the world order. The things are constantly offending the world-order going
way out of limit, and therefore periodically dissolved in the “limitless” (Apeiron). This mystical Apeiron, which,
to Anaximander, is the primordial principle of the universe, is primordial
unity without limits and division. Apeiron
Aion (“limitless eternity”) is also, acc. to Philo of Byblos, the
primordial state of the universe. It is important to understand that the key to
all this is mysticism. Mystic vision is the vision of divine unity prior to all
division and strife. Anaximander´s cosmology is the idea of all things
periodically returning to the mystical state of limitless unity.
[1] Tim. 39E
[2] De opif. 25
[3] 28, 13
[4] M.L.West, Early Greek Philosophy and the
Orient,pp.88f.,see also Aion standing on the globe
[5] SYRIA 27, Relief from Oxyrhynchos Museum in Alexandria
[6] Art in Ancient Palestine, 1981, p.189
[7] Athenagoras supplicatio pro Christianus 20, pp.22f.; 32,p.42. Schwartz, Cook, Zeus I,p.398
[8] Cook, Zeus II, p.1053
[9] Aion in Merida und Aphrodisias,1979, ch.3:
"Der in Gedanken versunkene Aion von Aphrodisias und der schlummernde
Kronos, der die kosmische Weltordnung ertraümt"
[10] ap. Tertullian de anima 46,10:quod prior omnibus
Saturnus somniarit
[11] Saturne africain, Monuments I: t.
3,3/12,3/13,2 stelai 8,1/9,4/12,3. vol II: 6/33,4
[12] Damascios dubit. et solut. 305v-306v; 2,pp.136f. Ruelle = Orphic fragm. 155
Kern
[13] Diels-Kranz A 9