The Marriage of Totem and Taboo

“If we seek to penetrate the original nature of totemism, without regard to subsequent accretions or attenuations, we find that it’s essential characteristics are these:  Originally, all totems were animals, and were regarded as the ancestors of the different clans.  Totems were inherited only from the female line.  There was a prohibition against killing the totem (or-which, under primitive conditions, is the same thing-against eating it).  Members of the same totem clan were forbidden to practice sexual intercourse with one another.” -Freud

In all of Freud’s Totem and Taboo, we lack the grounding of a full discussion of Shamanism and it’s psychological effect on pre-patriarchal societies.  Shamanic vision was at once metamorphosis and mystery.   After the fall of the early matriarchal society, “from that day on, the mystery is also the thing you are ashamed of.  This development depended, in turn, on the developing history of metamorphosis.  Each from had its own perfect sharpness, so long as it retained that form, but everybody knew that a moment later it might become something else.  At the time of Europa and Io, the veil of epiphany was still operating.  The bellowing bull, the crazed cow, would once again appear as a god and girl.  But as Generation followed generation, metamorphosis became more and more difficult, and the fatal nature of reality, its irreversibility, all the more evident.  Only a generation after Europa, Pasiphae would have to crouch inside a wooden cow, a big toy on wheels, and have herself pushed as far a s the meadows of Gortyn, where the bull she desired was grazing.  And from their union was born a creature who would never be able to go back to either being beast or man.  He would just be a hybrid, forever.  And just as the craftsman Daedalus had had to invent another object, the labyrinth, to conceal the son.  The Minotaur would be slain, Pasiphae was to die in captivity and shame.  Humans could no longer gain access to other forms and return from them.  The veil of epiphany was rent and tattered now.  If the power of metamorphosis was to be maintained, there was no alternative but to invent objects and generate monsters.” –Roberto Calasso

Totem, when associated with the Matriarchal line, puts one in the mind of Matrilineal succession of lineage, right to rule, and sacred marriage.   The divine King was only such as result of his marriage to the divine Queen. 

Freud makes an effort to explain why exogamy, or marriage outside of one’s clan, came into being for merely psychological reasons.  He infers that natives knew nothing of the dangers of inbreeding.  Freud is unlike many of his predecessors and colleagues, in his assertion that children growing up in close proximity did have sexual feelings toward each other which were not naturally curtailed by “familiarity during upbringing.” 

It is to be understood that Freud was the major forerunner of the idea that children even had sexuality, a theme that Wilhelm Reich was to expound upon in his works.  Freud believed there was concealed energy in sexual taboo which could be sublimated to higher civilized impulses.  Reich differed, advocating that an extremely open sexuality was healthy and even necessary to full health.

Did Freud explain exogamy with the Oedipus complex?  Are his theories purely scientific, practical, or even probable?

Freud believed that the taboo of exogamy was created by the guilt of “killing the father.”  The Father, according to Freud, was associated with the totem animal.  Freud theorizes:  A dominant tribal male was leader and champion of a large band of women, who he alone slept with, and ruled.  Lesser, marauding, jealous bands of “sons” waited in the wings for signs of the father’s weakness.  The warrior-male bands, watched and probed for weakness, finally finding the bravery to overthrow and kill the father.  Overcome with guilt, the men were unable to fully take the father’s place, and identified the father with the ritual totemic sacrifice, whom they deified. 

Now, I can see where reading the myths of ancient Greece could put you in such a mind.  What then, is the role of the Queen or Consort, in all of this generational warfare?  Let’s take Zeus, the God of the Pantheon, and ruler of Olympus as a perfect example of this psychology.  Zeus killed his father, the Titan Chronos, and took the kingdom of Earth as his own.  Later, the God Thetis rejected Zeus, as a lover, out of knowledge that her own son would have the potential to overthrow him.  Thetis so loved Zeus that she refused her own progeny existence, preserving his sovereignty by closing her legs.  “Thus the need for a woman’s help was not limited to the heroes but also applied to the greatest of the gods.”  -Roberto Calasso

Some help, that, a woman who chooses not to mate, for fear of her own offspring.  There is something latent in the next generation, something to be feared.  But none of this explains the continued respect and ancestor worship that predominated in these same early cultures.  Kill the father, and then pray to him for advice?  I don’t think so.

I believe the totem can be explained by shamanic vision trances, which also included visions of ancestors, and all under one common and well documented experience.  I don’t buy into Freud’s confabulations.  Oedipus makes a good Greek myth, and even a decent psychological truth, but tell us something about exogamy, it does not.    Marriage is more custom than Psychology, and custom defers to tribal values over personal urges.

There is going to be some inbreeding, and I’m not even sure this is a great mystery.  Perhaps the best boon to exogamy was the dowry.  Perhaps the genetic traits that plague inbred people are washed out after several more generations of breeding with unrelated people.  Royalty, Swineherds, and landlocked New Englanders have all been notoriously inbred, and apart from the ever-prevalent Innsmouth look, or hereditary harelip, what’s to worry about? 

I think there is clearly a connection between totem and father figure, and it has to do with ancestry.  I suspect, as time goes on, ancestor worship and spirit channeling will be studied covalently.  I know that, for a fact, I am similar to my father.  Even more interestingly, when I am “excited” I can literally channel certain expressions and speech patterns, especially in his physical presence.  Combined with a potent belief system, and a sufficient level of ecstatic state, I could easily “possess” my father in a very convincing way.

 

I would also like to discuss a dream I had several days ago, I will note, I had this dream before I reread Totem and Taboo for this blog.  

I began the dream with my father, who was an "Indiana Jones" type adventurer.  He had stowed a large, “undocumented” Egyptian wooden totem in our basement.  Later, I was in a large house with my mother.  There was an approaching tornado, and my mother was “remodeling the house.”  There were candles lit throughout the house, and I was concerned she would burn the house down.   I retreated to the basement, to hide from the tornado.  We lived off jerky that was human flesh, which I spit out, horrified.

Now let me interpret several factors of this dream.  The human flesh is at a state of death, which entails decomposition, eating it adds another layer of slow decomposition which is digestion.  This, I believe, is representative of a controlled or consuming destruction.  The potential fire and tornado represent “fast destruction.”   Additionally, you have my father identified as the one “bringing home the totem.”  The totem represents ancestry, and mystery.  It also seemed that the totem may have contained “mummy meat” which was the jerky that we were eating.  I only remember the dream because the thought of eating the human flesh repulsed me so much.  Tornadoes are also associated with consuming destruction on a large scale, which would have been worsened by fire.  

Perhaps the native value of the original totem animal was the mystery of consumption; the mystery of life living upon life.  Our physical bodies live by consuming the corporeal flesh of animals, while our souls live by consuming spiritual food.  So, the answer to Freud's unintentional question of "how are totems and fathers similar?" is this:  After death, the father, as ancestor, becomes the spiritual food, the sustenance of the soul.

“There is no such thing as an isolated mythological event, just as there is no such thing as an isolated word.  Myth, like language, gives all of itself in each of its fragments.  When a myth brings into play repetition and variants, the skeleton of the system emerges for a while, the latent order, covered in seaweed.” –Roberto Calasso

Sources:

Freud, Totem and Taboo

Roberto Calasso, The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony

The Universal Fountain

I believe in the contiguity and the homeopathy; I believe in the Ether.

The Fountain (2006 Aronofsky, Director) covers quite a bit of magical ground in a great simplistic beauty.  I think most people expect truth to be complex and rational.  I expect truth to be simple and intuitive, and cumulative.  In The Fountain, Izzy(Rachel Weisz) gives Tom, (Hugh Jackman) a magical record, a book which details a fictional account of a Conquistador searching for the Fountain of Youth.  Isabel (Izzy), is Queen Elizabeth, who embodies the Tree of Life, and represents the fountain of youth, as the tree-tomb/womb, the canvas of creation and the natural source of renewed life in childbirth.  Izzy writes the book, allegedly, to help herself and Tom cope with her impending death from cancer.  I see Izzy’s book as a magical journal, which in reading causes Tom to remember his past life, and possibly his future lives as well.     

Magical Memory is a Crowlean (and Castanedan) concept which describes techniques for remembering past lives.  The technique recommends listing (journaling) all your past history, who you’ve met and when, and is intended to initiate a “great remembering” of past lives.  Past lives are perhaps a misnomer to start with, perhaps contiguity of lives better states the experience.  I am a bit enamored of the idea that we live all our incarnations simultaneously, and perhaps to a lesser degree, live out any and all possible individual life choices as tree branches of parallel realities.   

“My father’s house has many rooms.”

The Memory Theatre is another similar, mnemonic concept which Frances Yates discusses in her The Art of Memory. The technique consists of making an imaginal estate with many rooms, filled with memory cueing action and imagery.  While Yates describes famous feats of memory and the life and times of several famous mnemonic masters, (Llull and Giordano Bruno, for example) Yates leaves out any relevant discourse as to how one might use (or be used) by this mnemonic art.  For that we can go to Science Fiction and Mythology: 

Turings Apples, by Stephen Baxter is an excellent science fiction short story, the gist of which is that You are the memory component in the universe.  Fascinating ideas…

http://kasmana.people.cofc.edu/MATHFICT/mfview.php?callnumber=mf934

Myth: as mnemonic device, anyone?

A similar theme is given to this Art of Memory below, but with a very Robert Graves (a la Greek Myth) kind of twist on this website:  

http://www.tokenrock.com/secret_resonance/llull_theatre.php

“Greek mythology, with its archetypal gods of nature, was in fact Llull's 'universal theatre,' developed thousands of years earlier by musical-astrological philosophers to help society remember 'the great book of the universe.' As personifications of the forces and geometries underlying harmonic physics, the Greek gods must have been designed as memory objects to help store knowledge about nature in the theatre of the human mind. The mythical gods' ancestry, traits, marriages and affairs were used to symbolize their place in the cosmic theatre, forming a holographic and hierarchical cast of characters that could be retrieved and retold through Greek fables. Lullism was nothing less than the ancient Greek worldview, originating from the study of harmonic science and music perception just as I had found while writing my book. Perhaps it was no coincidence that Llull had been a traveling troubadour in his youth, telling stories and singing songs. […] But it will always be the people who are the actors in this passion play. As nature's very own cast of memory objects, it is still our job to help nature remember what it learns by remembering what we learn. Let us never forget that we are nature too – we are nature's memory.”

So, if we extrapolate that Izzy is the canvas of creation, inspiration and wife, then Tom is the Protector, the memory component of the universe; the Magician as King and husband. 

From Frazer’s Golden Bough: “In his character of the founder of the sacred grove and first king of Nemi, Virbius is clearly the mythological predecessor or archetype of the line of priests who served Diana under the title Kings of the Wood. And who came, like him, one after another, to a violent end.”

In the conquistador section of The Fountain storyline, we see the conquistador changing places with the last guardian of the chalice/grail or fountain of youth, in a duel-to-the-death, as in Indiana Jones the Last Crusade.  (Itself a fountain of youth yarn)

Continuing the Frazer Quote:  “It is natural, therefore, to conjecture that they [these kings] stood to the goddess in the grove in the same way Virbius stood to her; in short, the mortal King of the Wood had for his queen the woodland Diana herself.  If the sacred tree which he guarded with his life was supposed, as seems probable, to be her special embodiment, her priest may not only have worshipped it as his goddess but embraced it as his wife.”

Such is the symbolism of the chalice or Parcival’s Grail, and also the Tree of Life itself.  Now, this is all philosophy, and right it should be, but it is also an intuitive Geometry, of an ancient sort:

http://sacredgeometry.50megs.com/custom2.html

“Plato describes three kinds of being:

1.)that which is uncreated and indestructible, changeless, eternal, imperceptible to any sense, open only to the contemplation of the intelligence, and this is the principle of the Father [spirit], the ideal or formal essence of the world;
2.) that which is sensible and created and always in motion, the Child [matter], the world of change and life;
3.) the Mother [spacetime], like the Father, is eternal and admits not of destruction. She provides a home for all created things, and is apprehended 'without the help of sense, by a kind of spurious reason, and is indeed hardly real.'
This mothering space is the cause of the determinism of nature. Plato identifies it as the material element of being. As pure matter, it is purely indeterminate, but it is receptive. The four elements, earth, air, fire and water, are formed from it, for 'the mother substance becomes earth and air, insofar as she receives the impressions of them.'

Plato's conception of the formation of these elements from the original substance was as purely mathematical as are our modern physical notions. 'God fashioned them by form and number,' he says: and the forms which he assigned were the forms of the regular solids. Thus the form of the fiery element is the pyramid, of air, the octahedron; of water, the icosahedron; of earth, the cube. “

The fifth solid, the dodecahedron, is the form of the universe as a whole, or perhaps one might say the scaffold upon which the spherical universe is constructed. “

<!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]-->http://www.greatdreams.com/crop/omphalos/omphalos.htm

Salvador Dali’s Dodecahedron Last Supper has an interesting backdrop, as Jesus is pictured crucified to a tree/dodecahedron!

This painting, by Salvador Dali, (Which is in D.C., I’ve seen it!)  shows the dodecahedron structure of the universe as promulgated by Frater Achad, Buckminster Fuller, and Plato.  The lights in the picture are a reflection from the glass covering the painting off the lights in the room, but this is about the right coloring; it is quite a dark painting.

Another topic I would like to touch on is soul-binding, or the relationship between the King of the Wood and his sacred tree.  According to Frazer,” Kings of the Wood, who regularly perished by the swords of their successors, and whose lives were in a manner bound up with a certain tree in the grove, because so long as that tree was uninjured they were safe from attack.”

This theme we see to a lesser and greater extent in The Fountain and also in HBO’s Carnivale miniseries.  Hugh Jackman’s character, Tom is compelled to eat of the tree (twice), first for the promise of eternity with his beloved, and second to actually survive that eternity. 

In Carnivale, the Demonic Preacher is one bound to a tree on a “holy hill” overlooking his ministry and church, then when it comes time to injure him, his only weak point in battle is his tattoo of the same tree, on his chest.  This sympathetic connection between himself and the tree makes the preacher a “King of the Wood” in Frazerian myth.  There was, of course, some overlay with another common Frazerian meme: the “corn-king” myth.  Carnivale also refers to Ben Hawkins as "John St. John," which is the title of one of Crowley's "Libers" which refers specifically to the method of recovering "magical memory."  

Placing a holy tree on a hill outside of town goes back to ancient Israel and the worship of Asherah, God’s wife.  Worship of Asherah took place on a “Bamah,” Hebrew for high place.  Bamah later became synonymous with altar and is represented inside modern churches as a raised dais or pedestal.   Worship of Asherah, consort of the old god El, came to be Biblically associated with the grove or tree, but early worship predominantly consisted of worshipping a simple wooden pole, known simply as an Asherah.

From the Bible, Song of Solomon 4.12-16

“A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse; a spring shut up, a fountain sealed.

Thy plants are an orchard of pomegranates, with pleasant fruits; camphire, with spikenard,

Spikenard and saffron; calamus and cinnamon, with all trees frankinsense; myrrh and aloes, with all the chief spices:"

"A fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, and streams from Lebanon.

Awake, O north wind; and come, thou south; blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out. Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat his pleasant fruits.”

“A fountain sealed” is another phrase which Crowley associated with The Tower Tarot card.  The fountain that is woman dries up in pregnancy, as the seed of new life has been planted in the womb.  The pomegranate is the dodecahedron, the symbolic seed from which the Tree of Life blooms.

The very first picture in this blog post is the Fountain of Youth by Cranach the Elder.  On it, I’ve superimposed the hidden sacred geometry of the dodecahedron, which is less subtly drawn within Salvador Dali’s The Last Supper.  I did the same, with a less dramatic result with The Fountain’s Garden of Eden screenshot.  (In the movie the Garden of Eden is atop an Aztec temple) 

I don’t have any trouble at all connecting the fountain with the tree.  Trees themselves are ephemeral fountains of sorts, using the natural levitative energies of water to act as heat syncs for climatic control.  Another look at the Aztec temple scene adds some more insight, connecting the fountain to the death principle, the Thanatos.  We see Tom confronted by the guardian of the fountain, who states “death is the road to awe,” before appearing to give a lethal blow with a flaming sword.

The connection between the dodecahedron and the pomegranate has to do with the mathematical concept of the closest packing of spheres, discussion of which inevitably draws comparison to beehives as well.  A brief Internet search will turn up several serious scientific articles with such headlines as: “The universe is a soccer ball, so say scientists.”  Johannes Kepler's studies of the latticework of closely packed spheres prefigures Buckminster Fuller's study of the way energetic systems blossom.  Simply stated: spheres squished together predict the synergetic shape of the universe; and atomic structures, to boot.

The Titans Goblet:

The ultimate concept garnered by all this speculation is can be esoterically (?) summed up as:

Nuit (Nut) or, to take a page from M. Bertiaux’s Voudon Gnosticism:

“…the “Black Goddess of Space,” Binah, the emanation of Mother/Father/Space/Time called “Saturn” by the Classicists, and “Geudhe Nibbho” by the preists of Voudoo science.  The consort of the Black Goddess of Space is Death, the God of All Transformations, known as Mystere Royale (Desak’karum), who shines his supreme eye through Saturn when in Scorpio, “whose throne is in the east.””

John St John, Crowley:  http://hermetic.com/crowley/libers/lib860.html

Article on Kepler's Six cornered snowflake, closest packing of spheres article: http://www.keplersdiscovery.com/SixCornered.html

(?) = not sure about coinage of the word esoterically 

Water Flowing Underground

St. George and the Telluric Force

“When he opened the sixth seal, I looked, and behold, there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as sackcloth, the full moon became like blood, and the stars of the sky fell to the earth as the fig tree sheds its winter fruit when shaken by a gale. The sky vanished like a scroll that is being rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place.” –Revelations 6: 12-14

Last year in Roanoke Virginia, the City I work in, there was a 3.0 magnitude earthquake in the Cave Spring area of the City.  The locals got excited because “we don’t get earthquakes in Virginia.”  I got excited too, perhaps for different reasons. 

There are still myths and stories that connects water with underground earth-moving forces, some of which can still be taken as the word of God (in a pinch.)  Local folklore says: “When it rains and the sun is still shining, “that’s the Devil beating his wife.”  The modern Devil, of course, is seen as the serpent of the ages:  “And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.” –Revelations 12: 9

Ancient earthquake myths from around the world portray every sort of sea creature, under the ground, or “at the center of the Earth,” as the cause of earth movements.  According to Nigel Penneck, in Games of the Gods, the Ancient Greeks believed that Priests had the ritual ability or even the responsibility of staking to Earth the telluric force.  When referring to this telluric force, I am discussing what I believe to be a lost art, having to do with water divination, and associated with oracular vision.  It is appropriate to think of this force as an old god, a primary mover; an ancient force. 

“Below the underworld sleeps a great snake, known as Shesha or Anata.  It has a thousand hoods, all covered with jewels.  In fact, this snake is really Vishnu in one of his various forms.”

Apollo and Python is probably the most pristine version of this myth, although it is also present in the myth of St. George and the Dragon or that of St. Patrick and the “snakes of Ireland.”  Slaying the Python represents calming the earth, placating or killing the beast which is causing the Earth to tremble; ergo stopping the earthquakes.  This is to be understood as an ancient myth which hides an ancient understanding of a real natural force: the living energy of water.

Victor Schauberger, the German scientist often associated with “ufoes” and “zero point energy” had, as a primary interest in his life: the study of nature and water.  Shauberger was a Forester by day, and a highly advanced telluric (geomantic) diviner by night.  Schauberger studied the energetic potential of spiraling centripetal water and (re)discovered the secrets of a counter-force to the Newtonian theories, what he called the levitative force of nature.  Schauberger believed that the natural winding of rivers, and the natural underground writhing of water, charged the water with this levitative force, which in full term compelled the water to travel upwards and be born as mountain springs.  Schauberger’s modern protégé Callum Coates, discusses very real scientific proof of many of these theories in his book Natural Energies.  

Nigel Penneck states that the Bishop’s Crosier, or Shepherds staff was originally an Augurs staff.  Augury is divination or fortune telling based on the symbolic interpretation of birds in flight.  The Augurs Crosier was used on a ceremonial mound, dividing the Earth into four directions, then again for eight directions, then again for sixteen directions.  The compass rose shares these sixteen directional indicators, and the original Augury Crozier had 16 notches which were used to divide the horizon.  Although the art of the Augur is no longer known, it is safe to assume that it became an advanced and highly nuanced form of fortune telling. 

Water wizardry, as practiced by Victor Schauberger is an ancient Priestly pastime, but who is the most famous water wizard?  What Biblical personage also made water do his bidding with his Geomantic Staff, no less?

Exodus 17:  Water from the Rock

“17 The whole Israelite community set out from the Desert of Sin, traveling from place to place as the Lord commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. ² So they quarreled with Moses and said, “Give us water to drink.”

Moses replied, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you put the Lord to the test?”

³ But the people were thirsty for water there, and they grumbled against Moses. They said, “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to make us and our children and livestock die of thirst?”

⁴ Then Moses cried out to the Lord, “What am I to do with these people? They are almost ready to stone me.”

⁵ The Lord answered Moses, “Go out in front of the people. Take with you some of the elders of Israel and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. ⁶ I will stand there before you by the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it for the people to drink.” So Moses did this in the sight of the elders of Israel. ⁷ And he called the place Massah^[a] and Meribah^[b] because the Israelites quarreled and because they tested the Lord saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?””

So what is to be done about Earthquakes in the little big city of Roanoke Virginia?  Well, now we just twaddle about it in the newspapers.  In the past, the locals expected “something to be done!”   

Performing the Geomantic Act

Step 1:

Locate Bishops Crosier or Geomantic Staff

Step 2:

Locate Epicenter of Earthquake

Step 3:

Locate a nearby mound or Sacred Spring

Step 4:

Divide area into 16 Subsections, if so inspired, observe for “worm sign” ahem; auspicious signal

Step 5:

Perform ritualistic subdual of Upset Geomantic Force, striking staff into the earth.  (This is, perhaps, the first step and not the last?)

Result?  Who knows?  Perhaps there is a real underground spring which is looking for a new outlet.  Perhaps bringing in a “professional dowser” is in order.

Looking a little deeper into the St George Iconography, you can see that the image consists of several primary components, the staff, the damsel, the dragon and the tower.  The omnipresence of the tower suggests that this Christian Saint is hiding another special interest of mine:  The Tower Tarot card!

You guessed it, the St. George icon is a clearly a rebranding of the Tower Tarot card, especially when you consider Crowley’s version of this card has the Chnuphis/Serapis depicted along with the eye of Shiva.  The “staking of the Geomantic force” throws a really exciting new aspect into the interpretation of this card.

I also love the fact that there is a geomantic staff present in Frank Herbert’s Dune, in the form of the “thumper” which “summons the worm.”  Dune can be interpreted as a geomantic allegory of sorts, where the value on a man’s “water” can be greater than the value of his life.      

Sources:
THE BRAHMA PURANA: http://www.dharmakshetra.com/literature/puranas/brahma.html
Games of the Gods, Nigel Penneck

Wormwood Star

Wormwood, or mugwort, is a species of herb, also known as St. John’s plant.  St John the Divine is most well known for being the author of the New Testament’s Book of Revelations.  The book of Revelations is a visionary manuscript, the ecstatic vision of a shamanic trance, accepted into the bible as an allegory of evil. 

In the opening of the Seventh Seal, in Revelations Chapter 8, verse 10 and 11: “… the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters; And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.”

The allegory here with wormwood is that it is a bitter herb, although wormwood itself is also a drug, and is associated with visions of a certain sort.

“A wormwood user may also become disoriented and experience an altered, dream-like perception of reality. Some users report wormwood effects such as an increase in clarity of thought, euphoria, and sensation of relaxing.  A curious phenomenon known as the "doll-house" effect is one of the more distinctive wormwood effects. Users describe perceiving objects as idealized representations of themselves or as simplified copies of the real objects, as though they belonged in a doll house. This effect is often experienced along with wormwood's other common effects. Objects may be perceived with a striking clarity of definition and color, however, wormwood only serves to enhance perception and has no hallucinogenic properties.”
–Source 1

On that note I must point out that one of the main themes of Philip K Dicks Gnostic Science Fiction work The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich may have been based on the experiences of a similar “drug trip.”  In this novel, interstellar colonists on a harsh terraforming assignment use “Can-D,” a drug which allows them to vicariously inhabit and experience the life of little miniature dolls.  The colonists buy and set up little doll houses and then communally live artificial lives through the effects of the Can-D drug.  Philip K Dick is simply a modern St John, interpreting his visions into Science Fiction rather than biblical testament. 

Wormwood is also a primary ingredient to traditional absinthe, a green colored and licorice flavored liquor once common in France and Europe.  Now, I can go on and discuss how Aleister Crowley was a famous absinthe drinker, or how the word Chernobyl translates to “place where wormwood grows” but I would like to do you one better.

Wormwood, the Daemonic Connection:

The Screwtape Letters, by CS Lewis, (another famous Science Fiction writer) are a series of polemic essays disguised as correspondence letters between two demons, discussing demonic stratagems for luring a man away from God.  In them, Screwtape, the elder demon, tutors his nephew Wormwood on the finer points of corrupting a soul. 

Wormwood is an herb also known for its anti-parasitic properties, which is a very telling clue to the hierarchal nature of these demonic entities.  The text can be read from a magical perspective; Lewis clearly has a deep understanding of the topic at hand.  It has been speculated by many that Lewis and Tolkien may have been members of The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.  If not, I would at least assert that Lewis understood the esoteric undercurrents of Christianity.  The political and materialist philosophies within Lewis’s Letters smash any misconception that modern politics are anything but black magic, and common morality a befuddlement of truth.  But don’t take my word for it.   From CS Lewis The Screwtape Letters:

“I wonder you should ask me whether it is essential to keep the patient in ignorance of your own existence. That question, at least for the present phase of the struggle, has been answered for us by the High Command. Our policy, for the moment, is to conceal ourselves. Of course this has not always been so. We are really faced with a cruel dilemma. When the humans disbelieve in our existence we lose all he pleasing results of direct terrorism and we make no magicians. On the other hand, when they believe in us, we cannot make them materialists and sceptics. At least, not yet. I have great hopes that we shall learn in due time how to emotionalise and mythologise their science to such an extent that what is, in effect, belief in us, (though not under that name) will creep in while the human mind remains closed to belief in the Enemy. The "Life Force", the worship of sex, and some aspects of Psychoanalysis, may here prove useful. If once we can produce our perfect work - the Materialist Magician, the man, not using, but veritably worshipping, what he vaguely calls "Forces" while denying the existence of "spirits" - then the end of the war will be in sight. But in the meantime we must obey our orders. I do not think you will have much difficulty in keeping the patient in the dark. The fact that "devils" are predominantly comic figures in the modern imagination will help you. If any faint suspicion of your existence begins to arise in his mind, suggest to him a picture of something in red tights, and persuade him that since he cannot believe in that (it is an old textbook method of confusing them) he therefore cannot believe in you."

"I had not forgotten my promise to consider whether we should make the patient an extreme patriot or an extreme pacifist. All extremes, except extreme devotion to the Enemy, are to be encouraged.”

I read the above as an interesting denouncement of Crowley’s hermeticim.  Although it should be noted that not all Gnostics are tantrics; (sometimes a snake is only a snake.) 

From another letter we have the Church compared to a Goddess:  “One of our great allies at present is the Church itself. Do not misunderstand me. I do not mean the Church as we see her spread but through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners. That, I confess, is a spectacle which makes I our boldest tempters uneasy. But fortunately it is quite invisible to these humans.”

“Terrible as an army with banners” is a biblical phrase from the Song of Solomon, 6:10:  “Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners?” 

In The Red Goddess, Peter Grey states the woman referred to here is Babalon, and that John and Solomon were both inspired by the same “Red Goddess.”  Grey goes as far as suggesting that John used a preexistent (pre-Christian) text as a basis for his work, expanding upon it to create Revelations.  

"And there appeared a great sign in heaven; a woman clothed with the Sun, and the Moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars. She was pregnant and screamed in the anguish of delivery." -Revelations

How should we interpret the statements of CS Lewis, whose truth is hiding between the lines?  Lewis’s own advice on understanding these letters is this:

“There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight. The sort of script which is used in this book can be very easily obtained by anyone who has once learned the knack; but disposed or excitable people who might make a bad use of it shall not learn it from me.

Readers are advised to remember that the devil is a liar. Not everything that Screwtape says should be assumed to be true even from his own angle.”

When everything is politically polemicised, every man is set upon his own world, the final resulting philosophy is “nothing is true, everything is permitted,” with every man justifying his own personal desires.  A truthful writer actually studies the argument of his enemy with equal respect, considering it for its merits, and wrestling with the part of his own mind which wants to believe one thing or another.  Then, an honest writer asks themselves why.

What is absent in mainstream Christianity is the discourse, the option to doubt, and therefore the ability to let a truth stand on its own two feet, and not on “faith alone.”  Clearly, CS Lewis was able to discern the depth of the issue, and consider all sides of the argument.  From one of CS Lewis’s personal letters, we can see the “demons” he was struggling with:

“Now the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened: and one must be content to accept it in the same way, remembering that it is God's myth where the others are men's myth: i.e. the Pagan stories are God expressing Himself through the minds of poets, using such images as He found there, while Christianity is God expressing Himself through what we call 'real things'. Therefore it is true, not in the sense of being a 'description' of God (that no finite mind could take in) but in the sense of being the way in which God chooses to (or can) appear to our faculties. The 'doctrines' we get out of the true myths are of course less true: they are translations into our concepts and ideas of the wh. God has already expressed in a language more adequate, namely the actual incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection. Does this amount to a belief in Christianity? At any rate I am now certain (a) That this Christian story is to be approached, in a sense, as I approach the other myths. (b) That it is the most important and full of meaning. I am also nearly certain that it really happened.”

In other words, it’s a complex issue.  Or you can just accept that the myth transcends religious or phenomenological precepts and tenets?  And exists outside of time?

I want to end this post with some Gematria, Just for fun.  Philip K Dick’s book Valis has a Jewish Gematria value of 820.  Another phrase which equals 820 is The Gray Demons.  Valis is an interesting word all on its own; perhaps PKD chose it for its similarity with the word Vatis.  Vatis is a Latin word which means prophetess, mouthpiece of deity, oracle or soothsayer.  So why not just title the book Vatis, you say?  PKD may have chosen to change the word for a more appropriate Gematria value.  See for yourself:

Valis=820,378, 63

Vatis=900,426,71

Yhvh=1116,378,63

The Gray Demons=820,924,154

Values listed above are for Jewish Gematria, followed by English and simple Gematria.

Sources:

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-are-the-main-wormwood-effects.htm

CS Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

Gematria Calculator Online:  http://www.gematrix.org/

http://ww2.montreat.edu/dking/lewis/MYTH.htm

The Red Goddess, Peter Grey

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.