Prehistoric religion (2).
In 1999 a survey of new discoveries in the search for early farmers was
published: Neolithic in Turkey, The cradle of Civilization, New
Discoveries, ed. by Mehmet Özdogan & N. Basgelen. It begins with a short
report on the diggings in Hallan Cemi and Cayönü and The Urfa Region
(Nevali Cori & Göbekli Tepe). In Hallan Cemi by the Batman-river a small
village with a "public building" with an auroch's skull has been dug
out,p.16 fig 10. Also a row of 3 sheep's crania in what is seen as the
central activity area in the village is found, p.18 fig.16. An animal with
a long raised tail is found incised on a stone bowl, p.12 fig.3. The way
the tail of the animal is raised has a close parallel to the way the tail
of the leopard is raised in Catal Hüyük. As proved by me in the chapter on
Catal Hüyük (The Origin of our Belief) the leopard is a symbol of ecstasy,
of man being changed to an animal of prey, a ferocious killer. Like the
snake raised along the spine the raised tail is a symbol of kundalini-
power, and in Hallan Cemi the tail is decorated with a raised zigzag-line.
A snake moving along in a zigzag-line is also found carved in bone, p.16
fig. 11. In Catal Hüyük the famous goddess enthroned with a leopard to her
right and to her left also has the tails of the leopards raising along her
back and coiling round her shoulders. Certainly the raised tail is an
important symbol of a power personified by the goddess. In Hacilar two
goddesses enthroned on leopards have been dug out by Mellaart (Anatolian
Studies XI, 1961, p.60, by radiocarbon dated to 5500-5400 B.C.) One of the
goddesses has the tails of the two animals curving up her back. The goddess
from Catal Hüyük sitting on a throne with leopards seems to rest her right
foot on a human skull, cf. the typical Kali-icon: The goddess trampling on
a man or dwarf.
At Nevali Cori a cult building very similar to the encircled enclosures dug
out by the German team at Göbekli Tepe contains two central T-formed
pillars surrounded by four benches,p.43 fig. 9. On the benches are standing
similar stone pillars. They are all obviously marked out as stone-people
with arms sculptured on the surface of the pillars. In my opinion they are
an early example of the later so important notion of the numinous centre,
the mountain of the assembly of the gods, an assembly mostly consisting of
12 gods, exactly the number of pillars standing on the benches surrounding
the two central pillars in cult building III.
This centre is also the symbol of life and primordial unity, the primordial
mountain of gold or splendour, more or less identified with the nightly
starry sky with its top in the Polar star. Its importance as a religious
symbol, as the link between heaven and earth, is obvious from its being
remodelled in the pyramids and the Mesopotamian temple tower. Sitting on
the benches in the deep and solid cult building creates direct contact with
this primordial massive and its primordial spirits, especially the two
primordial twins representing the first splitting up of mystic unity into
duality, the god riding the bull and the god riding the leopard. There are
no bulls or aurochs horns found in Nevali Cori, but a leopard's skin
fastened to the waist is seen on a small male clay figurine, p.50 fig.21.
And a snarling feline head with all its teeth showing is among the
findings,p.50 fig.20, (very similar to the snarling lion with a raised tail
on pillar "1" at Göbekli Tepe, p.51 fig.24). In Nevali Cori a limestone
head has a snake coiling up its neck resting its head almost on the top of
the skull, p.44 fig 10. This is the typical notion of an ecstatic kundalini-
power rising along the spine coming to its goal at the top of the human
brain.
The networks of people experiencing more or less successful kundalini-
raising can be studied on the Internet. It is obviously not always a
totally harmless thing to judge from the many suffering from both physical
and psychological injuries caused by such an experience. In Denmark a
rising of the kundalinipower is described by the late professor in
literature Aage Henriksen (Copenhagen University).
At Tepe Giyan in Iran there are found several prehistoric seals showing an
animal of prey with a snake coiling up its spine (This Fertile Land. Signs
+ Symbols in the Early Arts of Iran and Iraq, ed. Margaret Cool Root, 2005,
p.164, fig.89). A similar snake is raising along the spine of a man having
sexual intercourse, p.167, fig.98 & p.89, fig.8.2f. Root has
also drawn attention to a rather common motif on the seals: "The displayed
female": A schematic human with widely spread legs and arms and a very
bulky stomach: The displayed female presents her body and especially the
centre of her fertility, the womb, fig.90.91.93 & 95a & 101,Bb. A
"displayed female" is found on a limestone bowl from Nevali Cori, p.48
fig.16, together with a similar "displayed" animal (and carved on a stone
slab in Göbekli Tepe here obviously in the act of sexual intercourse,p.55
fig.35). The provoking frontal display of female nakedness and female
attributes is in India a symbol of the female kundalinipower. Another clay
figurine shows a seated goddess with full forms and stark naked but with
the holy cross-formed flower painted on both legs and both breasts. A slate
plaque with four figures shows two scenes: a man and a woman embracing each
other in a sitting posture typical of the tantric way of making love. The
man has one eye closed and one eye wide open staring into the wide-open eye
of the woman. Back to back with the woman another woman (or the same?)
lifts up a child (Anatolian Studies III,pp.91f).
The stone pillars from Nevali Cori seem to carry a stole hanging down in
front, dividing the narrow frontal side of the "stone-man" into 3 narrow
bands. In Göbekli Tepe the two bands of the stole begin to fall down just
under the chin of the stone-man. In Nevali Cori they are united with a v-
formed band just under the chin, Klaus Schmidt, Sie bauten die ersten
Tempel,2006, p.118. At a yet archeologically unexplored site at Karahan, a
T-formed stone pillar has a snake coming up its frontal side with its head
just under the stone-man's chin, Abb.94, p. 202. In Göbekli Tepe snakes are
rising, but mostly descending in the furrow between the two bands from the
stole, and in a single case even descending along the bands of the stole.
On one pillar a lot of snakes are stretching their heads towards the
frontal furrow. This furrow obviously has a special meaning for the snakes.
On one of the stone pillars there are no snakes, but a device consisting of
a circle resting in a crescent, Abb. 80,p.172. As shown in my book The
Origin this sign has an almost universal meaning in the Near Eastern
iconography: it is the sign of mystical light, the unity of all light shown
as the unity of the light of the moon and light of the sun. Over it is an H-
formed symbol, two pillars: the two primordial pillars united. It is a
double symbol of mystical primordial unity. The snake-power moving up and
down the furrow is the kundalini-power, either raised to mystical unity,
mystical vision or moving down to ejaculation, cf. the snakes coming out
from where the fox should have had its sex, Schmidt, p. 184. The stole is
perhaps not so much a stole as a symbol of duality, and the furrow a symbol
of unity. On some of the figurines from Sha'ar Hagolan is seen a so called
"scarf": a horizontal clay ribbon circling the base of the head, i.e. the
area of the throat. It begins as a line extending from the figure's lower
back and left side, ascends to the neck, passes round the neck and throat,
and descends on the back to the lower parts of the back parallel to the
first part of the ribbon, and comes out on the right side[1]. I see this
scarf as a symbol of left and right ascending into some kind of mystical
unity just below the head. The head itself with its strange shape is a
symbol of duality and unity: The long hanging nose in front matches the
thick hairdo hanging down the neck, the two closed eyes, the two big ears
are the symbols of duality being raised to unity in the prolonged back
head.
The German folklorist Otto Höfler (Kultische Geheimbünde der
Germanen,I,1934; Verwandlungskulte, Volkssagen und Mythen, 1973) has tried
to prove the existence of old prehistoric ecstatic ideology, a secret man-
being-changed-to-animal-of-prey cult. In Saxo's description of the band of
chaotic warriors sizing power at the court of Frotho they are described as
howling like wolves: In Northern myth and saga it is mostly a man-into-wolf
ideology (or man-into-bear = "going berserk"). But also the boar has great
symbolic value because of the rage with which it was known to attack its
enemy, and therefore it gives its name to the special formation of the
troops ("svinefylking") which Odin himself had taught the Danish king. In
Greece it is woman changed into leopard.
It is difficult to prove, but this ecstatic ideology was originally carried
and cultivated by bands of young warriors serving the primordial twins,
Romolus and Remus suckled by the she-wolf, Gilgamesh and Enkidu. Geo
Widengren has tried to show that the special hairdo worn by Gilgamesh, his
"heroic" nakedness, and the thick belt he wears, is an indication of old
Indo-Germanic warrior ideology, and the same goes for the tragic-heroic
character of the epos,[2]. The existence of such bands of young warriors in
the prehistoric Indo-Iranian culture has been shown by Stig Wikander (Der
arische Männerbund, 1938). (Cf. the description of the Maruts in the Vedas
serving the war god Indra or the fear inspiring Rudra.) Their ecstatic cult
seems to have had a strong chthonic and sexual character.
The primordial twins or brothers seems to be a very old motif: In Iran,
Ohrmazd and Ahriman are twins, and it is described how the one is killing
the other, Ohrmazd being represented both by the perfect divine Gayomart
and by the primordial bull. In Egypt, Osiris, the god of life, the bull, is
killed by Seth, the god of chaos, with the Seth-animal, the dog or fox as
his emblem. Much later in Hellenistic Cilicia the divine bull is hunted
down and killed by Mithras who is followed by the divine twins and by lion,
dog, snake and raven. The divine twins are often seen as the two
personified world-pillars, the sun-gate, the world mountain divided into
two (on the placates belonging to the Juppiter Dolichenus-cult). At the
Roman feast Lupercalia the rituals seem centred around two young men, and
there is a men- changed-into-wolf symbolism:
"A quite savage brotherhood this, downright rustic and uncouth, consisting
of those genuine wolf-men whose famous woodland pack was founded long
before civilisation and law!" Cicero,Cael.26. agrestis – "uncouth"
corresponds to the Greek word agrios. This and similar words are used by
Philo of Byblos in his description of the culture inventing pairs of twins,
the first to invent bricks and walls and pens and finally building the
first city. Also Cain was the first to build a city, giving it the name of
his son Hanok i.e. "the initiated one", cf. Romulus founding the city of
Rome after killing his brother. The primordial twins are bringers of
culture and religious initiations. Many Greek cities are founded by a pair
of twins or brothers, often of quite opposite nature. Ex.: Ajax and Teucer,
the big strong Ajax commits suicide, and from his blood a flower sprouts;
he is the strong god of vegetation. Teucer, the small bowman/hunter becomes
founder of the city of Salamis. They are a Greek version of the Cilician
gods Tarku and Ja – w. suffix -ax). Gilgamesh is the master builder of the
city wall in Uruk. Enkidu is the god-man living in unity with nature.
But certainly there are also strong ties to a yearly cult of the dead.
Lupercalia was celebrated on the 15th of February, during the nine days of
parentatio for the dead (13-21 February). The 21st of February was the
festival Feralia in honour of Tacita, "the silent goddess". She was
originally a nymph called Lara/Lala, "the chatterbox", who warned her
sister to flee the amorous Jupiter. For this her tongue was torn out, and
she was banished to the underworld. But Mercury, who had to escort her to
the underworld, took advantage of her and she conceived and bore twins, the
so called Lares. Also Philo of Byblos tells that at the time of the
brothers Usoos and Hypsuranios, the women mated freely. All this points to
an old tradition of a festival for the dead spirits with a certain
licentious behaviour caused by the presence of the dead spirits and gods.
Most probably to promote fertility. At the Lupercalia the young men ran
naked through the town slapping all the women they met with straps of
goatskin. Actually they were not totally naked because they had a small
loincloth made of the flayed-off skin of the sacrificed goats, cf. the pack
of hunters with leopard's skin attached to their loins at Catal Hüyük.
Lupercalia was an old ritual thought to prevent stillbirths and
miscarriages, both animal and human.
What Höfler quotes from Olaus Magnus, archbishop in Sweden, and Philipp
Melanchthon about men acting like wolves during Christmas time in Latvia
and Lithuania and East Prussia gives a good impression of the last remnants
of the old man-into-wolf religion.[3]
The main theory presented in O.Höfler's book from 1934 Kultische
Geheimbünde der Germanen I, was accepted by the Swedish scholars Geo
Widengren (Der Feudalismus im Alten Iran, 1969) and Stig Wikander but
severely criticized by others. In 2006 prof. Britt-Mari Näsström gave out
the book Bärsärkarna, Vikingatidens Elitsoldater where Höfler's theories
are evaluated: There is no proof of secrecy and "secret men's societies"
but the ecstatic ideology of being changed into wolves and bears cannot be
denied. Näsström calls her own interpretation an "Entmythologisierung" of
Höflers secret men's societies (p.251). Perhaps this phrase is not so
wholly satisfying because to my mind the man-into wolf ideology is also
behind the myth of the Fenris-wolf being a danger to both gods and men and
the "Wut/wütend" aspect of Wotan/Odin. The many coiling snakes on the
Goldhorn from Gallehus together with men with animal heads and four legged
animals with human heads are certainly witnessing a cultic use of the horns
in a man-into-animal ideology. The man floating through the air with an
ascending snake on each side of him obviously indicates some kind of
ecstasy. See also Michael P. Speidel, Ancient Germanic Warriors, 2008.
Originally Odin was the leader of the "wild hunt", later in Denmark called
"the wild hunt of king Wolmer". Kris Kershaw, The One-Eyed God: Odin and
the (Indo-) Germanic Männerbünde, 2000 concludes that it is no longer
possible to dismiss Höfler's findings about the "Wild Host". Speidel has
proved that on Trajan's column the elite soldiers of the emperor (his
"Striking Force") are ecstatic Germanic warriors wearing wolf- and bear-
skin or fighting barefoot and half naked, armed with clubs.
Od 19.song tells us about the grandfather of Odysseus, Autolycus, known as
the most accomplished thief in the whole world. He also helped Odysseus'
parents name him. He told them to "name the child 'Ulysses,' or the child
of anger. When he grows up and comes to visit his mother's family on Mount
Parnassus, where my possessions lie, I will make him a present." By
Odysseus' visit to his grandfather he got the famous mark on his thigh. (He
was attacked by a wild boar during a hunt: As part of the initiation the
young warriors perhaps were given a kind of tattoo on the thigh, later in
Orphic initiation covered with a thin golden plate.) In Sparta, warrior
training was the work of Lycurgos, the "Wolf-worker". He laid down a law
that for a year young warriors had to hide and live outside society as
wolves. Elsewhere in Greece, Apollo the Wolf-God, presided over the
training of young warrior, Daniel Gershenson, Apollo, the Wolf-god, 1991,
Greek lyssa was the word used for wolfish rage, M. Speidel, pp.16f. & n.18.
Gilgamesh does not receive eternal life, but his consolation is that after
death he will become judge and ruler in the underworld. There he will be
counted among the Anunnaki (old gods of the underworld) and meet all his
friends. The hottest month (July-August) will be the month of Gilgamesh,
under the sign of Sirius. In this month there will be wrestling in his
honour and a feast for the dead spirits. When fertility is threatened, in
Mesopotamia by the summer heat, in Rome by the sterility of the winter
months there is a feast where the dead spirits come to join the living.
Man's hope is not for heaven but more to seek comfort, advice (?),
fertility and magic strength from this being together with the spirits of
his forefathers. Cf. the remodelling of sculls in some of the earliest
Neolithic cultures. But the Lord of the spirits is not a kind god. His
symbol at Göbekli Tepe is a mad boar with frightening big teeth, and a
snarling lion with an extremely raised tail. Even the fox shows its jaws
and its teeth. It is tempting to see the lion or leopard as the symbol of a
god and the fox as the symbol of minor daemons (the lion is pictured on the
head of the pillar, the fox is more humble, situated on the shaft).
The boar is an Indogermanic symbol of the warrior obsessed with ecstasy:
Indra, Rudra and Verethragna are described as boars. Even in Norse saga the
hero can be described as a mad boar. An important scene on the Etruscan
pitcher dealt with later is a row of warriors with a boar painted on their
shields.
Snakes ascending to the head
The head found in Nevali Cori with a snake creeping up the neck, putting
its head on the back of the scull has its nearest parallel in a much later
time in the pictures of the god Saturn/Aion in the mysteries of Mithras.
Wilhelm Bousset[4] has shown that this god is probably a Syrian god. The
Semitic name for Saturn is Kwn, "standing upright", "standing firm", a name
characterizing the world pillar separating heaven and earth. The word is
taken over by the Greeks as kión = "a pillar". The statues of the god Aiôn
show him as a pillar-like standing male with a lion's head and a snake
ascending to his head by winding round his body and putting its head on the
god's forehead. In The Origin I have tried to interpret this snake as
kundalini-power[5]
The most famous example of a snake ascending to the head is the uræus snake
raising its head on Pharaoh's crown. A very old picture of the blinding of
Polyphemus, the Cyclops, shows a big spotted snake touching his
forehead.[6] The Cyclops had only one eye acc. to Homer, but later pictures
show him with two eyes and a third eye over the eyebrows where the so
-called "third eye', the eye opened in the mystic vision acc. to old Indian
psychology, is thought to be situated.[7] The snake coming out on Pharaoh's
forehead is a symbol of magic power, ecstatic power coming out of the
"third eye". The blinding of Polyphemus is the killing/splitting up of
primordial totality, of mystic vision, similar to the killing of the
enormous bull in Catal Hüyuk, similar to the killing of the bull as the
great act of cosmogony in the mysteries of Mithras. A similar killing is
the culmination of Theseus' descent into the centre of the labyrinth, the
killing of the bull-man Minotauros. When Theseus landed on Delos he and his
companions danced the Crane-dance, which consists of labyrinthine
evolutions after the maze pattern of the labyrinth. This dance obviously
leads the dancers to an ecstatic centre seen as the confrontation with and
killing of a primordial numen. Cf. the bird dance seen on the stones from
Göbekli Tepe resulting in an ecstasy pictured as a lot of snakes stretching
towards the furrow of the world pillar, the channel where there is ascent
and descent of the snake power.
Perhaps the T-form of the stone pillars at Göbekli Tepe indicates that they
are thought to carry an invisible heavy burden (the sky?)
That twin world-pillars or sky-pillars play an
important role in prehistoric religion is seen from the man standing
between two pillars with massive heads on a seal from Susa (4th mill.
B.C.)[8]
In the early agricultural societies developing on the hilly slopes in
Northern Iraq the bull and the lion or leopard seem to be of central
importance. On a cup from Tello (Heuzey no.221- later, but still belonging
the archaic period) the lion is seen killing the bull, a scene that, for
some reason, becomes a classic icon and is repeated again and again.
It is the central myth and the central ritual act just as much later
Mithras' killing of the divine bull is the central icon in the mysteries of
Mithras.
The bull has a seven pointed star filling out the curve of its horn. It is
in itself a very important symbol: The unity of heavenly light, the seven-
fold mystical light resting in the crescent moon. As in the mysteries of
Mithras, the bull symbolizes primordial totality, and the killing of the
bull is the great cosmogonic act. Behind the back of the lion a hand is
seen holding an archaic weapon, the throwing stick, already in Catal Hüyük
used in hunting the divine bull. It is the same myth and the same ritual in
Catal Hüyük and in Tello, the killing of a high god, the giver of life and
light, the lord of nature and all the life-giving fluids, and as the killer
a demon-god, the great hunter (but in some versions the mad boar, as a
symbol of dark ecstatic madness – Osiris and Adonis are killed by a boar).
Cylinder seal from Mesopotamia shows the killing of the divine bull
giving the precious water of life.
The eagle with a lion's head is a very common motif in early Mesopotamian
iconography. It is often pictured with its wings, legs and tail spread out
and with a strange but very distinct omphalos on top of its stomach. (Birds
being hatched from eggs are certainly without such a thing.) The only
explanation for marking out such a centre of the stretched out body parts
of the bird is that it is meant to indicate the mystical centre and unity
of up and down, right and left wing and feet: the bird is a symbol of the
ecstasy cultivated by the worshippers of the lion-demon. It is also seen in
the act of biting the divine bull at the root of its tail (Heuzey,
no.233,no.234, p.401). A beautiful silver vase from Tello shows the lion-
headed eagle (with spread-out wings and a big round navel) holding two
lions by the root of their tails, then a new lion-headed eagle holding two
stags in the same way, then two more lions being held, and finally two
bucks, both the bucks and the stags being also bitten by the lion (no.218,
p373-5 pic. at the end of this chap.). The bull, the stag and the buck
(sometimes feeding on the tree of life) are the symbols of the god of life
here in the act of being controlled and submitted by the demon god's
animals especially attacking the root of the kundalini-power situated at
the lowest part of the spine.
One of the most important findings dug out from Tello was the vulture
stele, six fragments of a stele made in commemoration of a victory won by
king Eannatum, (about 2740 B.C.). It shows a lot of dead enemies being
trampled over by the king's army and the king himself armed with the
throwing stick (boomerang) walking and driving in front of the phalanx, big
heaps of dead bodies and vultures feeding on them, and finally the bodies
being heaped up symmetrically in a tumulus and workers carrying earth
climbing the tumulus to cover the mass grave. But on the other side of the
stele a mythological interpretation is added to the historical scene
(Heuzey, p.112ff, no.10, p.103-7). A great Herculean character armed with a
club stands in front of a big hunting net filled with naked enemies, and
over the net he holds this obviously very important symbol consisting of
the two lions clutched by the spread-out eagle. In my opinion he is the
great hunter, the ecstatic warrior giving supernatural force to the
attackers, perhaps even changing them to animals of prey, and certainly
changing the battle to the great hunt of the bull: an enormous bull is seen
lying tied to the ground in front of the tumulus and at the feet of the
king (see pic.at the end of this chap.).
When the lion-eagle is seen clutching the two lions, the intention is
certainly not to eat the lions, but to control them or rather take control
over the ecstatic kundalini-power they contain. The lion or bull or bull-
man supplemented back to back with his reflected image is a very common
symbol symbolizing duality coming together into mystic unity. Already in
Nevali Cori a piece of a so-called totem (height: 1 metre) is found. Just
below the bird symbolizing ecstatic take off, two women are seen back to
back. On one of them an eye is still seen looking upwards.
The Bible and even the prehistoric world of icons use a set of pictures
mediating an impression of the highest reality and the highest beauty:
1) The life-giving water and all the sprouting and blossoming, it
creates.
2) The garden with its aromatic scents and the flowers of the almond tree
and anemones in early spring.
3) The starry vault.
4) The sun rising on the Eastern horizon.
5) The primordial mountain pictured in the shining pyramid.
6) The mountain of God rising in the middle of nowhere, like a tower
reaching heaven.
7) The great stag or bull in the thickets of the forest.
All these pictures are more than pictures they are epiphanies of the God of
life just as the merciless killing in battle, and the lion slowly killing
the desperate and helpless bull by sinking its teeth in his throat is an
epiphany of a chaotic demon-god. Dionysos is the life-giving god from the
paradise-mountain of Nysa in the East, India or Arabia (Dio-nysos) closely
connected to the life-giving fluids in all the sprouts of spring, the sea
and the juice filling the grapes. But he is also the chaotic god. His
mating with the lawful wife of the basileus in Athens is not a hieros
gamos, but more a chaotic take-over by a king of the carnival. With his
close connection to panthers and the women he is also a descendant of the
killing god of Catal Hüyük where the goddess and the young god are seen
riding the leopard. The highest god is the god riding the bull. He is
"victorious" life conquering even death. Perhaps the leopard god is a god
mostly for hunting and chaotic and "mad" behaviour. Ian Hodder has stressed
the total absence of leopard bones and sculls in Catal Hüyük. The reason
could be that it is a taboo-animal more feared than treasured.
The notion of God is a very early and strong notion releasing enormous
energy, giving inspiration to the most astounding achievements in early
history, the temple towers of Mesopotamia and the pyramids and being the
inspiration also for early art and tragedy. This notion of God cannot be
understood by rational thinking, sociology or psychology, but perhaps only
by a widening of one's consciousness?
It would be interesting to test the findings at Göbekli Tepe with the
mythological idea of the psychocosmic mountain in the navel of the earth:
The nightly starry heaven is seen as a massive mountain (in Ugarit Mt Lal
cf. Hebrew: Lajla ="night"), primordial totality, primordial rock, the
residence of El and ilim (the dead spirits in a state of eternity and
apotheosis), "the mountain where the gods assemble".
The standing stone-pillar is a symbol of this eternal house for a deceased
spirit, a symbol of Bet-el ("House of God"), but also a symbol of the
central pillar in the centre of the universe connecting heaven and earth.
The Egyptian pyramid is the most well known symbol of this mountain,
connecting heaven and earth.
The North Syrian god is always followed by his two dioscur servants (Sandas
as world pillar flanked by the two dioskuric twins on the coins from
Tarsus. Jupiter Dolichenus and the two personified world pillars, Baal and
his two servants, Mithras and his two look-a-likes Cautes and Cautopates),
cf. the triple bull in Catal Hüyük. They are the symbol of the primordial
mountain and the primordial mountain split into duality: The world pillar
and the split world pillar.
When the sun rises on the eastern horizon, it is seen as the splitting of
the primordial pillar into two, creating the gate for light and the sun.
In West Semitic myth the central pillar is Kewan/ Saturn ("the grounded
one"). It is also seen as the sun of night. After setting in the West, the
sun becomes pale and slow, almost fixed to the firmament, the primordial
mountain, until it is revitalized in east in the garden of Life eternally
renewed.
Acc. to the Babylonian world view Saturn is the sun during the night. The
"standing", the "grounded" Kwn-Saturn is the endpoint also of the deceased
soul following the route of the sun to eternity. The goal of the after-life
is to be standing eternally on the mountain of the gods, to become a
pillar.
The symbolism surrounding the Saturn-pillar and the two pillars of Heracles
has already been explained in the old book by F. Movers, Die Phoenizier,
I,1841.
I think the journey towards a cosmic centre, a holy mountain, and the
feeling of being in the centre of the earth has a strong religious appeal
to the human mind.
I should like to quote from The Melammu-project a note written by the
Finnish scholar Amar Annus: "Isaiah 14:12-15 uses a mythical material in
the taunt-song, where the king of Babylon is addressed as Helel ben-Shahar,
who 'ascended the heavens above the stars of El' to 'sit on the Mount of
Assembly, on the slopes of Saphon'. This reflects the Syro-Mesopotamian
mythological conceptions of the cosmic mountain as the place of the divine
assembly. This cosmic mountain as the place of assembly probably derives
from Enlil's main temple in Nippur, which was called é-kur 'house of the
mountain' and was considered the navel of the earth. The idea of the cosmic
mountain is represented in Mesopotamia, on a land in the plain, by the
temple tower or ziggurat and in the Enlil's epithet as "the big mountain"
(Sumerian kur-gal). 'Tower' is also a name of Christ in both Aphrahat and
Ephrem. Christ has given us in the Church a Tower which really leads up to
heaven, in other places he himself is the Tower.
At Hazor there was in an open air temple from 1300 B.C. (dug out by
Y.Yadin) a row of standing stones which the Swedish scholar G.W. Ahlström
has interpreted as picturing the assembly of the gods.[9]
The ring of pillars is picturing the council of the forefathers the
deceased in some state of eternity or apotheosis, resting on or in the
omfalos-mountain who is the symbol of mystic unity, primordial totality
also marked out by its latent duality (the two central pillars). Unity in
the Middle East is the symbol of mystical eternity, duality is the symbol
of creation, separating heaven and
Earth, creating space.
Note on the council/assembly of the gods: F.M.Cross: "The Council of Yahweh
in Second Isaiah", JNBS 12,1953 pp.274-78. R.N.Whybray, The Heavenly
Counsellor in Is 40,13-14, 1971. R.B. Brown: "The Pre-Christian Semitic
Concept of Mystery", CBQ 20, 1958 pp.417-20. H.W.Robinson: "The Council of
Yahweh" JTS 45,1944, pp.151-7. "The prophets had access to this higher
sphere as a source of information, the false prophets had not stood in
Yahveh's counsil" (Jer 23,18+22). John J. Collins: "Apocalyptic Eschatology
as the transcendence of Death", CBQ 36,1974, pp.21-43.
Bull-man and lion-man
The divine bull with a human face is an important motif in Mesopotamian
iconography. Heuzey brings two very beautiful examples (no.120 & 126, one
of them can be admired at the end of this chap.). Exactly the same hairdo
and crown of horns are found on the divine bull and the bull-man (no.183).
The bull-man and "Gilgamesh" are often found together as a pair of divine
brothers or contrasting twins. It is tempting to see the six great hair-
curls of "Gilgamesh" (no.183 & 232) as a lion's mane making him the lion-
man.
The rising sun between two columns
The rising sun between two columns is a very important symbol of victory
and healing . The two columns are the symbol of duality, the symbol of the
primordial world massive split into two to allow the light to shine, the
winds to blow and the sun to run its course:
Sharruma's protection of the king. From Yazilikaya
The high pointed hood is decorated with the symbol of the world-pillar
indicating expanded consciousness.
The cultic cry, Jeïe Paián, is a calling on the healing dawn, it is used in
war as a calling on the light to prevail over darkness as well as in
praying for healing of an sick person.
The god of the world column(s) is Apollo or Heracles. Santas-Heracles from
Tarsus is seen on coins from this city with a polos on his head indicating
that he is the world-pillar. A lot of figurines from Syria show Baal
as the world-pillar (notice that the high conical hat flattens out on the
top in a small platform thereby being able to carry the heavy burden of the
sky):
The next picture from a seal shows the world pillar flanked by the spilt
world-mountain. The split mountain indicated duality, the undivided pillar
indicates mystic primordial reality. Therefore it is much higher than the
split mountain, and because it is the symbol of unity, the way to mystic
vision, it is seen carrying the sun, the moon, and the morning and evening
stars. It is the unity of all heavenly lights. The sun is even inscribed
with a cross, symbol of the mystic unity of up and down, left and right.
Mittanian seal of king Ithia
A very common motif on coins from Tarsus is the lion killing the divine
bull: Sandan-Heracles killing the highgod Baal Tarz = Sandan-Zeus killing
Typhon/Tsaphon, the primordial mountain, also seen as an amorphous snake-
monster called Jao,
see the chap. Jao below[10].
c
Mitannian seals drawn by D.Stein.
On the lowest seal ©: two guardians of the column that leads to mystic
vision and a lion killing the divine bull enjoying mystic vision.
b: The bird of ecstasy unites duality by holding together two bucks
contemplating the mystic light, the sun resting in the crescent moon.
a: A lion attacking a composite animal-group consisting mostly of cattle,
but also a bird's and a horse's heads are seen looking towards the mystic
light.
The lion killing the bull is a symbol of cosmogony, of the high god, the
paradise mountain, primordial reality and unity, being cut up.
Rock carving from Kargamis
There is a clear un-Greek (Estruscan) element in the adventures of Heracles
in Italy. The Estruscan Hercle has given name to the Roman Hercules. The
forefather of the Estruscans, Tyrrhenus, was a son of Heracles and Omphale.
Now Heracles was serving queen Omphale dressed as a woman, that is carrying
the red dress called sandyx. He is obviously the Lydian Santas with his
androgynous behavior. Geryon is the old shepherd- or bull-god. As the bull-
god in Catal Hüyük, and much later Mithras, he has the characteristic
trinitarian nature: 3 heads or even 3 bodies united to one. It is tempting
to see the name Geryon (and his dog Orthos) as a variation of Orion, the
big hunter. In the myth about the great hunter there is a tendency to fuse
the two gods, the killer and his victim into one single figure (Dionysos is
both the "cow-born", coming on bull-feet to Elis, and the killer, the big
hunter Zas-agreus = Zagreus. In the Ugarit poem "Baal's hunt", Baal ends up
as the victim.
The killing of the divine bull is certainly also a ritual act repeated in
the sacrificial cult. It's the dying of a god of vegetation loudly lamented
by the cult congregation. The Greek word "tragedy" is the songs of lament
sung over the sacrificial goat which is a symbol of the dying Dionysos, the
god of life and spring and sprouting ivy.
Dionysos, the hunter and his panthers
In the classical book by Walter F. Otto on Dionysos, 1933 it is shown
beyond any doubt that Dionysus is not only a god of life and joy, but also
a sinister god of death and madness. The spring festival of Athens, the
Anthesteria, is also a feast for the dead spirits of the Keres, a feast
where the dead come to visit the living. Dionysos is called
anthrõporraístês, "one who tears up humans", and his followers act like
panthers and tear up humans and even bulls. Porphyr de abstin 2,55 tells us
that the women of Chios, when they were taken by the god's frenzy, would
tear a human into pieces as a tribute to Dionysos Omadios, the god who,
like a beast of prey, would eat the flesh raw. The god is a hunter hunting
for the blood of young bucks (Bacc. 138f), and his maenads are compared to
the hunting dogs lusting for fresh meat. He is an "eater of raw" (õmêstês)
as a beast of prey. He is followed by panthers or lions or even lynx. Also
the Agrionia in Argos was a feast for the dead (nekýsia: Hesych.). The
presence of the god was often symbolized by his mask. Vase-pictures of
feasts for Dionysus often show the big mask of the god hanging on a tree or
a pillar and a long robe hanging down underneath the mask to make the
impression of an idol complete. The empty mask is the epiphany of the god.
Masks are even today at Halloween used to symbolize ghosts and evil spirits
coming up from the realm of darkness[11]. Like Baal in Ugarit coming to the
threshing ground as leader of the dead spirits, the repha'im, D. is coming
as the leader of the satyrs, who are half men, half horses, the horse
character stressing their strong ties to the realm of death. Heraclitus
even stresses: Dionysus is Hades.
But D. is also the god of life, bougenês, the divine bull or calf, the
young victim of the ferocious tearing up of the titans. The titans are
smeared with chalk, they are ghost-like spirits from the underworld. In the
cult of Dionysus the hunter and his victim are fused into one.
Janus
A similar god to the Roman Janus Bifrons is also seen on seals from Asia
Minor. Janus is a god of gates and doorways and as the god of gates he is
called Janus Geminus ("twin").[12]
Janus is referred to as the porter of heaven. His temple at Forum had to
doors, one towards the rising sun and the other towards the setting sun. He
is the god setting up the gate or the pillars of the sun, thereby creating
room for the light to shine and overcoming darkness and the primordial
massive chaos. Therefore he is invoked at the beginning of each new day.
This makes him also a god introducing laws and culture and even
agriculture. And it makes him the god who secures the progression of time
from past to future. He is often pictured with two faces, one with a beard
and one unshaven. He is the old high god of life and beginning, the first
day in each month is dedicated to him. He causes a hot spring to erupt,
causing the Sabine attackers to flee, and he is the father of Fontus
("well"). He was honoured at the beginning of the planting season and again
at harvest. At the same time he is the high god's son, the young god
setting up the gate of the sun (cf. Enki and Enkidu)
He creates room in primordial darkness: the Roman legionaries marched off
to battle through the gates of his temple at Forum.
Archaic cults
"When the wave of Sea Peoples and Dorian migrations destroyed Mycenaean
culture, only the mountainous region of Arcadia was able as a retreat to
assert its pre-Dorian individuality" (W.Burkert[13]). Here we find the
strange and archaic looking cult of Zeus Lykaios with a man-to-wolf
symbolism tied to the eating of the sacrificial meat. It was told that once
the gods came to visit the ancestral king of the Arcadians, king Lykaon.
But the king had slaughtered a boy upon the altar at the summit of Mt
Lykaion and mixed his entrails with the sacrificial meat and brought it to
the table. Zeus overturned the table and turned Lykaon into a wolf and sent
a flood to cleanse the human race. Close to Mt. Lykaion is the village of
Lykosura ("wolf-tail"), acc. to Pausanias 38,1:"Of all the cities that
earth has ever shown, ..the oldest, and the first that the sun beheld".
Scattered around in the oldest layers of Greek mythology we find traces of
a tradition much similar to the tradition told in Genesis 1-11 combined
with the archaic man-into-wolf ideology.
This tradition seems to have the following elements
1) A universal flooding – punishing a sinful generation.
2) The two primordial brothers, one killing the other, the man of nature,
the shepherd, being killed by the city founder/the culture bringer
(agriculture), the founder of mysteries.
3) The well of life and the tree of life and the snake coiling up its
trunk, both the rising snake and the tree being a symbol of mystic
vision, universal knowledge ("of both good and evil", i.e.
everything).
4) The gods falling in love with mortal women.
5) The outcome of this love surviving in an arc.
6) At Delphi we find the sacred laurel and the Kastalia spring and the
young boy fleeing after killing the Python = Typhon-Jao = Tsafon, the
personified paradise mountain, the highgod being killed by the boy who
is the cultic representation of Apollo, the god of wolves and
panthers. The flight of the boy to Tempe is an "erratic wandering",
just like the flight of Cain, Gen 4,14.
7) To Delphi is also tied the tradition of Deukalion's arc and the
repopulation of the earth.
8) After Zeus killing of his brother for mating with a goddess, Dardanos
survives the flood by floating on some device to the region of Troy,
where he builds a city and gives it his own name.
At Athens, at the spring festival for Dionysus a special day is reserved
for heavy drinking in silence, each man sitting with his own table with his
own wine-jar. All that in memory of Orestes, who came to Athens after
killing his mother and her lover and followed by the avenging spirits. The
king granted him hospitality, but no one spoke to him or wanted any kind of
friendly sharing with him. Later in the ritual there is the swinging of
young girls in a swing. This costume is said to please a poor girl, Aletes
("wandering"), who came to Athens and killed herself. There seems to be a
rather gloomy presence of dead spirits, some claim that the feast is
celebrated in memory of Erigone and Ikaros. Ikaros was the first to make
wine, but when he took his product to Athens and people tasted it, they got
drunk and dizzy and believed that they were poisoned, and killed the poor
wine-farmer. His daughter went searching for him, and when she found his
dead body in a well, she hanged herself. At the festival, the keres, the
spirits of the forefathers, a primordial population thought to originate in
Caria in SW Asia Minor, came with Dionysus to drink the new wine from all
the newly opened wine jars. It was a bunch of not only thirsty, but also
bloodthirsty and sex craving entities. There was also served a special
food, all kinds of seeds mixed together in a jar with honey and cooked
until the grains got softened, a dish even today in Greece served in memory
of the dead. Together with the Roman rituals of February and the
Mesopotamian rituals over which Gilgamesh presides, this spring festival is
a witness of a very old prehistoric pattern: The dead come to visit the
living in an atmosphere of intoxication. They come from the realm of death
and have a craving for both killing and sexual licence. On a certain
evening during the festival the matrons were allowed to make love with
young strangers going from door to door (as especially pointed out by
K.Kerenyi, Dionysos, 1976).
The softened grain was eaten in memory of the few people that survived the
flood. This was the only food they were able to find. Again we have the
notion of contact with the evil spirits of an early population living
before the great flood.
Temples dug out at Beycesultan in Asia Minor has a very peculiar altar, the
example shown is from level XV, "Shrine A", (Anatolian Stud.XIX, 1969,
p.149) 2500 B.C. The two central elevations seem to be developed out of a
round centre. They are the symbol of unity splitting up into contrast. The
whole device is oriented towards NNE. North is the symbol of the massive
world mountain and East the symbol of the raising of the sun through the
primordial gate, which is the world mountain split open and divided into
two. One of the big storing jars hiding behind the split elevation is
halfway sunk into the earth. It is perhaps meant to receive the offerings
for the killed twin brother.
Jao
The old name of the god of vegetation is Ja, Jeïe, Aiaia (the sun-island of
Circe "where is the dwelling place of early dawn": Ja with a simple
reduplicative), Jao, Ajax, Hya-kinthos (with k-suffix and the ending
-inthos), cf. the cultic calls eleleu ju ju and Jambe (Ja- with suffix cf.
Tri-ambe, witness to the god Tarku) Jakchos (Ja with k-suffix, cf. Jo-
bakchos). He is the source of light and life.
The Cilician Ja must be identical with the Mesopotamian god of life and
water Ea. Perhaps also with the Roman/Etruscan god Janus with Diana as his
female, cf. Dio/Dione at Dodona and the moon goddess Jo (without a male
namesake).
In Iliad 2,781-3 Typhon is said to lay slain among the Arimoi (the
Aramaeans) J.Fontenrose has dealt with the myth[14]. He has shown the
amazing parallels with the Delphian myth of the slaying of the dragon
Python. Typhon's lair was the Corycian cave in Cilicia but there is also a
Corycian cave on the slopes of Parnassos. And there is also a Cappadocian
city called Parnassos. The Delphian myth seems to originate in Anatolia,
and the name Typhon must have some connection to Tsaphon and Mt. Kassios in
Northern Syria.
Typhon is primordial totality seen as a snake coiling around itself.
Fontenrose quotes a Scholiast who tells a strange story about Hera wanting
to take revenge on Zeus and for that purpose got two eggs from Kronos
smeared with his semen. From them would spring a monster to usurp Zeus'
throne[15]. Snakes are hatched from eggs and Typhon has two snakes as his
legs. On a picture one of the snakes (his right leg) wears long stripes
whereas the other (left leg) is covered with a slalom-running pattern
(Fontenrose, fig.13):
Cf. the Jao gem showing a man with a bird's head and snakes as legs. He is
the symbol of all duality melting into primordial amorphous unity. The
version found in Apollodoros 1,6,3 is the most ancient and original version
as shown by Fontenrose: It tells that when Zeus attacked him, he coiled
round Zeus and took Zeus' weapon, the sickle, and cut out all the sinews of
poor Zeus. Thereby also reducing the god to primordial amorpheous inertia.
The two snakes, male and female coiling round each other is a very old
symbol of primordial totality and duality uniting into one and mystic
tantric vision. As a matter of fact it is often stressed that Typhon had a
mate, a female snake called Echidna. He is the personified totality, he is
said to have numerous heads: From his 100 heads came the voices and cries
of all kind of animals says Hesiod. A Scholiast says that he represented
every kind of wild beast (Schol. Rec. on Aesch. Pr.351). To my mind he is
the distorted and faint image of the old bull god killed by Sandan/Baal. On
a frieze from the altar of Pergamon he is seen with a bull's horns and
ears.[16] And his Delphian twin is said to have a son, Aix ( goat"),
Plutarch Mor. 293C,417f-418b. At the Corycian cave there is an underground
stream called Aoos which was also one of the names of Adonis, EM 117[17].
His original name must have been Jao/Jaw.
The ice from the last glacial period seems to have melted rather quickly
around 9600 BC. With the transition to Neolithic sedentism and food
production economy a new form of life appears in the Northern part of the
fertile crescent. And this sedentary life form is stronger and gives more
chance for the fragile humans to survive than the hard life of the hunters.
The homeland of the Sino-Tibetan-North Caucasian languages can not be too
far away from this area. A.Kassian[18] pleads for a relationship between
Hattic (the old holy language of the Hittites) and North Caucasian and
Yenisseian languages.
The same word is used for "seven" and "bull" in Indoeuropean (Latin taurus)
and Semitic (Ugarit: tr, Hebrew shor) and "wine" (Greek oinos, Hebrew
yayin). The same goes for the God of life Ea/Aos, Ya/Jau/Ju/ Dyaus also
called "Father"/Pitar/Attis. His enemy the god of death and destruction is
Erra/Girra/Er/A´ra (in Petra) also called Kush (Edom), Zas/Shantas. (Both
Shantas and Platon's Er is placed on a big bonfire, Resheph means
"burning".) The existence of so many different language-families in a small
area along the fertile crescent is amazing. The Kartvelian languages of
Georgia is very different from the Indo-European and the Sino-Caucasian.
Not to mention Sumerian and Semitic. To find the origin of the
abovementioned names we have to look for at culture being an early homeland
for both proto-Indo-Europaean and proto-Semitic. The Mesopotamian god Ea
first appears 24.cent.BC as the Akkadian/Semitic version of the Sumerian
god Enki. He is called DAR MAH "Great Stag", "Stag of abzu" and his
emblematic animal is the goat-fish, he is the god of life-giving water and
often seen enthroned among jars flowing with streams of water. The Italian
team excavating 3rd mill. Ebla found a tendency in personal names to
exchange the syllable El with Ia. Perhaps Ia was the Westsemitic way of
saying Ea[19]. In my opinion it is a very old Nostratic (that is before the
splitting up in Indoeuropean and Semitic) name especially used to call on
the epiphany of the saving God: Iãie or Iõ Paian, Eleleu juju, Hallelu-ja,
Iõ-Saturnalia.
The sign for "god" in Hieroglyph-Hittite is an oval double circle with a
vertical beam running through. It is also in a slightly more elaborate form
found as religious decoration on buildings and palaces on Crete (H.Th.
Bossert, Santas und Kupapa, 1932, p.11, Abb.3.a-e). On the pic. above the
Hittite god for thunder is followed by the sign for god and the sign for
thunder. Notice that his tiara is adorned with the sign for god (te)
arranged 4 times along a vertical beam. The king's tutelary god in the rock
sanctuary of Yazilikaya has a tiara of the same sort. Behind this headgear
the winged sun disc resting on two columns and in the center a third column
standing on a boot. The same arrangement is seen standing on the right fist
of a god, but the third column in the center is here a personified
mountain. The central pillar is the world pillar, the world mountain, and
the boot is the sign for earth. The world pillar separates between heaven
and earth. It is the primordial world massive with a latent duality
inherent: it seems to be splitting into two at the bottom. It carries the
sign for god, but originally this sign is the sign for "chakra", the
shamanistic ideology mostly counts 3 or 7 levels in the journey to heaven
(3 nights the moon seems extinct before the new moon is born, 7 is the
number of planets+sun and moon). That this is the originally meaning is
seen from the way the word pillar standing between the pillar split
into duality on the roof of an early Mesopotamian temple for the
bull, the high god.
Archaic Germanic warrior-ideology (Excurse).
Two iron age Scandinavian warriors (7th cent.) from the helmet in grave 7
at Valsgärde, Uppland with bird-helmets and raised snake.power and an eagle
ascending in front of them, pict. below:
From Torslunda, Öland (same period). The sun-hero with his round head
running ("Knielauf"). The two spears are in the Middle East the two pillars
of the sun gate. The chaotic wolf warrior is trying to stop his running by
cutting a wound in his foot.
Valgärde grave 8: The sun-hero as a helping demon crouching behind the
warrior giving him extra strength to throw his spear. Something like a
double snake is crowning his head, a symbol of his ecstatic state of mind.
Below right: helmet decoration, found in Sutton Hoo: warriors with the same
kind of helmet symbolizing raised kundalini:
In the year 361 Emperor Julian raised troops among the Franks and the
Alamanni, six new Auxilia
Palatina. Some of them bore images of wolves on their shields. Others two
snakes kissing, many the sol invictus on top of the world pillar (the
drawing is from Speidel, p.21,fig.1.2) and they are a good example of the
symbols of ecstasy and "Himmelreise" being an important part of Germanic
martial ideology.
-----------------------
[1] , Yosef Garfinkel and Michele A.Miller, Sha'ar Hagolan 1, 2002, p.195,
& fig 13,10f.
[2] Ryttarfolket från öster, 1960,p.68f.,94f., pictures opp.to p.96.
[3] Verwandlungskulte..s.145-8.
[4] Hauptprobleme der Gnosis, 1907, p.351-5.
[5] Part 1, ch. 3 & 30, part 2,ch.7.
[6] Jane Ellen Harrison: 'The Myth of the Cyclops', in ibd. Myths of the
Odyssey in Art and Literature, pl.4. The snake is moving vertically, not
horizontally, towards the forehead of the giant, obviously because of the
narrow space bounded by the small circle of this early cylix found at Nola.
[7] ibd, pl.13 & 15 & 16.
[8] M.Riemschneider, Augengott und heilige Hochzeit, 1953, Abb 1,p.1 cf the
3-parted pillar device Abb.16, p.15,Heinrich, Kleinfunde aus Uruk T 25b.
[9] "Heaven on earth – at Hazor and Arad", in Birger A. Pearson ed.
Religious syncretism in antiquity. Essays in conversation with Geo
Widengren, 1975, pp.67-83. Cf. Tryggve N.D. Mettinger, No Graven Image?,
1995 p.85, 96, 180, s.185, w. pictures of Semitic stelae.
[10] Remnants from the Inner Anatolian culture of Catal Hüyük must be
sought in Cilicia. James Mellaart (A.S. XIII, 1963,pp.210-36) has shown
that the Early Bronze Age culture of Cilicia was derived from that of the
Konya plain. In the Konya plain E.B.A.2 comes to an end with the "Luwian"
invasion from the Pontic steppe c.2300 B.C.
[11] Otto, p.83.
[12] In Mesopotamian folk-religion figurines of twins are set up as
guardians of the doorframe one to the left and one to the right, or twins
"fighting each other" in the doorway, W.Burkert, The Orientalizing
Revolution, 1992, pp.110f..
[13] Homo Necans, trans. by P.Bing, 1983,p.84.
[14] Python, 1959, repr. as paperback 1980 p.70-93.
[15] p.72, Schol. B on Il. 2,783.
[16] Fontenrose,fig.15,p.81.
[17] see epigram, Hicks: "Inscriptions from Western Cilicia", JHS 1891
p.240, no.2.
[18] Hattic as a Sino-Caucasian Language, Ugarit-Forschungen,
Bd.41,2009,pp.309-448.
[19] Jean Bottero, Religion in Ancient Mesopotamia, 2004 and Ida Boboula,
The Great Stag, American Journal of Archeology, 56, 1952, p.171.
