The Great Reconciler (Part 2)

The problem and solution concealed in the content of comparative myth is this:  There are advanced esoteric truths and we have hard heads, so, in order to get past the ego-brain barrier, constant reformulation of truth is the best method.  Eventually, the medicine finally takes, the bell finally rings, and the symbolism reaches the deep right brain, “the subconscious-” the ancient early circuitry, and creates a direct knowing. 

Time itself is a mnemonic device.  The only way to divide attention or create a memory is to assume a past and future, in reality there is only the present.  There is only present moment, forever and always.

I understand why authors create new terminology to explain metaphysical ideas.  Part of it is the writers’ persona, from the omi-inclusive slang of Buckminster Fuller to the proselytized and parochial pandering of one Aleister Crowley.  But the major point here is that words get old.  They carry baggage, and they never mean what you want them to.  Consider the word Gnostic, for instance.  There are some who say these mysterious worshippers of the Naas snake never really existed.  There are others who would have them represent any and all of their pet metaphysical projects, their favorite underdog-ideas and new age ideals. 

Whatever happened to the physical experience?  What do the ancient Gnostic symbols actually represent?

There are three relevant topics I would like to discuss (reverberate) in regards to Gnostic symbolism:

1. A Chimera idol-often a snake, rooster, hawk, or lion, (usually a combination of two or more of these)
2. Sun symbolism-and the number seven 
3. The Chnuphis Serpent

To the extent that they help explain the baggage attached to the word Gnostic, let’s discuss seven Sun Gods.  Look for the above components in the summaries that follow.

Apollo- Ancient Greek God, Son of Goddess Leto, and twin brother of Artemis.  Apollo slew Python and his son is Asclepius, the god o’ healin.  Asclepius is also known as the constellation Ophichus, which some Astrologers consider the 13^th astrological sign, as it overlaps the constellation Scorpio. 

Jesus-Sacrebleu!  Yes, Jesus is a sun god, but only because he shares his birthday with Tammuz.  How very Christian of him.  The Christ myth draws from previous fertility cults, pagan in origin.  Christianity works, in a half assed way, but only due to its shameless borrowing of prominent preexisting mythological dates and rites.  The Holy Catholic Communion combines the rites of Tammuz/Apollo with Dionysus/Bacchus in a shameless rip-off of these previous (and contemporaneous) mystery religions and their rites.

Really, I don’t have a lot bad to say about Christianity, the funny thing is that if you take the paganism out of it; there isn’t a whole lot of anything left.  How did Christianity take over from a religion which actually had some real substance to back their claims?  Fear, subversion and statecraft are the primary enemies of truth.  The problem is, and the Pauline Christians at Nicea knew this, that lies only stand if there is nobody to speak against them, so they burned the truth.

Jessie L Weston said it best, in From Ritual to Romance:

“But the triumph of the new faith once assured the organizing, dominating, influence of Imperial Rome speedily came into play.  Christianity, originally an Eastern, became a Western religion, the “Mystery” elements were frowned upon, kinship with pre-christian faiths ignored, or denied; where the resemblances between the cults proved too striking for either of these methods such resemblances were boldly attributed to the invention of the Father of Lies himself, a cunning snare whereby to deceive unwary souls.  Christianity was carefully trimmed, shaped, and forced into an Orthodox mould, and anything that refused to adopt itself to this drastic process became by that very refusal anathema to the righteous.” Jessie L Weston

I’itoi- not necessarily a sun god in his own right, I’itoi is a mountaintop creator god of the O’odham Indians, local to the Sonoran Desert.  I’itoi is known as “the man in the maze,” which is an intricate labyrinth design which these native people still incorporate into baskets and art.  The design combines a sun ray motif with a labyrinth design consisting of seven concentric circles, with a little man perched on top.  The man in the maze symbol is said to represent the choices of life. 

The Man in the Maize, ahem, Maze, is the perfect symbol for a winnowing basket.  But MIM, as I like to call him, is a very ancient symbol, occurring in early petroglyph rock carvings. 

To put the I’itoi myth in a more Kabbalistic light, I’itoi, acts as the Son of the Sun God, or Tammuz, while representing the seven concentric circles, as the “choices of life,” which might better be interpreted as, the forces which cause man to choose, whether he wants to or not.  

Paul Maud’Dib, from Frank Herbert’s Dune, is an excellent Apollo.  Read Dune.  (I’m just sayin.)

Leto II, sand snake extraordinaire, is worshiped by “fish speakers,” a female warrior caste in the Dune myth.  The Catholics of course, call them Nuns.  The Hebrew letter “Nun is thought to have come from a pictogram of a snake (the Hebrew word for snake, nachash begins with a Nun and snake in Aramaic is nun) or eel. Some have hypothesized a hieroglyph of a fish in water for its origin (in Arabic, nūn means large fish or whale). The Phoenician letter was named nūn "fish", but the glyph has been suggested to descend from a hypothetical Proto-Canaanite naḥš "snake", based on the name in Ethiopic, ultimately from a hieroglyph representing a snake.”  -Wikipedia

Garuda is the Hindu Bird God associated with the sun and its rays.  The story of Vinata, Garuda’s mother being held prisoner by snakes, who demand Amrita, the soma of the gods, for her release, reads similarly to the Apollo/Python myth. “Garuda was the enemy of the snakes, [Anata] and the snakes were all afraid of Garuda.”

Tammuz-It is only helpful to “remythologize” if you’ve found a new and interesting way of stating a grand truth, a greater dimension of grandeur.   There is, of course, a common mythological theme between grains, sacramental breads and grain mills.  The Babalonian God Tammuz is the son of the Sun, the God in the seed, who, in dying (sowing in the earth) brings life.  We eat of him to remember, and praise his sacrifice, weeping for him.  The ancient Babalonian trinity is Nimrod (Father), Semiramis(Mother) and Tammuz(Son). 

Tammuz in the God who, after travelling seven spheres, or Sephirah, is crushed in the millstone of Daath, destroying the ego and yielding the holy bread of life.  This is a myth with meaning.  The Lion headed snake has been associated with the number seven since ancient Egypt, look for the many archeological occurrences of this theme here: http://www.kornbluthphoto.com/Abrasax1.html 

So, there went the ancient myth, now what about now, in the Synchromystic Moment?

I have been having a great deal of synchronicity linking the snake with the bee.  Come to think of it, I am really coming to terms with my own Synchronicity.  I no longer think of it in a “gee whiz, this is fun” type of way.  Now I think of it with the philosophy: “what can my Synchronicity do for me?”  The title image of this post, of the Chnuphis with a bee on its mouth, “turned up” after I had three unusual personal experiences linking the snake with the bee in my everyday life.

In the first situation I was hiking the Appalachian Trail with my dogs, and after seeing two snakes in my path, (a little one and a big one) my dogs were attacked by a nest of ground-dwelling yellow jackets.   The yellow jackets continued to attack my puppies, so I poked the bees to death with a stick; thankfully I was not stung myself.

Several days later, at my place of work, I observed a woman with an extensive (and beautiful) snake tattoo on her arm.  Directly afterwards I found a honeybee in the same area, which I picked up by her wings and placed outside. 

Now, I’m a hopeless romantic when it comes to Synchronicity, and I interpret it as instruction, as the universe trying to tell me something.  I will attempt to explain the combined meaning of the two Synchronous symbols:  

To me, the bee is a symbolic representation of the collective experience.  To be a bee is to act as a member of a highly functional collectivity.  The buzzing of the bee also represents the whirring sound which tends to occur before travel out of body.  I suspect that the fire snake may represent the reptile mind, or the basest animal instincts, while the bee represents the unity, or the greatest spiritual height.  In other words:  Reconciliation of higher and lower is what this symbol means. 

This brings us to what I see as a modern retelling of this age old mystery: in Star Trek Voyager (and Next Generation)

“I am the beginning, the end, the one who is many, I am the Borg.” –The Borg Queen

The Chnuphis snake is the form which the Borg Queen takes when she is plugged in to the collective.  Then when she wants to act as an individual, she inserts her snake/spine into a human body.

The Borg are a bee-like collective colony/humanoid race in the Star Trek universe.  For those who are unfamiliar with The Next Generation Series, the Borg are portrayed as a great enemy to humanity.  The Borg are a highly technological, transhuman collective who are portrayed as more machine than human.  As it goes, (In Star Trek Voyager) there is a virtual-reality dream-world, called “unimatrix zero,” which the (some of) the Borg can visit while they sleep.  This analogy is a pretty cohesive reversal of what Jungians believe about our dream/imaginal state.  Jung believed that he could access the collective unconscious by active imagination as well as dreaming.   We are individuals who dream collectively and these Borg are collectives who dream themselves individuals!

I would like to clarify again, that I have absolutely no intention of muddling different myths together with the goal of justifying a single great concept or all encompassing God.  There is everything to be said of Paganism, and it’s attachment of local ecology-based understandings, to the natural cycles of growth, death, and resurrection.  What is interesting in the comparison of myth are the new ideas that occur when you observe a familiar myth under the interpretation of another cultural or imaginative setting.  There is just so much truth that you can wring out of these ancient archetypes, they clean up so nice! 

There are still mysteries out there.