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The Sacred Wound of Healing

November 15, 2006 at 12:25 am by mahud

The Foot/Heel Wound

In Greek myth, the hero Philoctetes was bitten on the foot by a snake, or as another account records, he accidentally wounded himself, when one of his poisoned arrows (which once belonged to Herakles) accidentally slipped from his quiver. The injury remained incurable until a son of Asklepios put Philoctetes into a deep adamic sleep (Footnote: The Sleeping God) and cut out the wound, aiding his recovery with the appliance of a healing herb.

The Centaurs Cheiron and Pholus were also injured in the foot, in both cases inflicted by a poisoned arrow of Herakles. According to two versions of the myth, Cheiron was either accidentally wounded by Herakles himself, or, like Pholus, the injury was self-inflicted.

The bronze man Talos was invulnerable apart from a vein that terminated at a point in his ankle, said to contain ichor, the blood of the gods. As guardian of the island of Crete, he would ward off any unwelcome visitors by tossing large rocks at approaching ships. Medea, witch-priestess of the Goddess Hecate, Bewitched Talos and caused him to inadvertently wound his own ankle against one of these rocks, or alternatively, She caused him to fall asleep and fatally pierced the ankle herself. Still another variant claimed that Poas, who inherited the arrows of Herakles, was responsible for shooting Talos in the foot.

The Castration Motif

In comparison, Attis, the son and consort of the Phrygian Goddess Cybele, was believed to of died either through self-castration, or killed by a wild boar. In the religion and myth of the ‘Hindu’ God Shiva, the deity castrated himself and cast his phallus (the Atmaligam) like a spear, penetrating both the sky and earth, to the underworld below. Or, according to another myth, a group of forest dwelling ascetics suspect Shiva of seducing their wives, and cursing his phallus, cause it to drop off. Shiva was also said to of had deformed feet.

“The mythological victim has both an active as well as passive role in his own death. ”

These paradoxical yet complementary traditions seem to convey a double truth that the myth of Talos and Medea alone has managed to successfully encapsulate. The mythological victim has both an active (Talos injures himself with his own weapon) as well as passive (through the witchcraft of Medea) role in his own death. Easily understood in the light of the Protevangelium and the primordial event (i.e, the eating of the forbidden fruit),
and historically revealed to us in the death of Christ.

Life through Death (The Self-Frustrating Serpent Bite)

Also in that victim’s death, life is miraculously and spontaneously born again. Consider the incurable wound of Philoctetes, bitten by a serpent, and the wound of healing discharged by the son of Asklepios with a single incision of the surgeon’s double-edged scalpel. Asclepius was a god of healing, who received from the goddess Athene, the blood of Medusa, drawn from both sides of her body. The blood from her right side had the power to restore life, while the blood from her left side brought death.

This image of Medusa corresponds with certain figurines (1600 B.C) excavated on Crete, of a serpent wielding goddess, priestess, or both; one of which, has her arms upraised and is holding a serpent in each hand. The deadly bite of the serpent, it would seem, is self defeating.

Asclepius’ emblem was a serpent on a staff, which must have been very similar to the bronze serpent Nehushtan, Moses erected in the desert:

Then the LORD sent venomous snakes among them; they bit the people and many Israelites died. The people came to Moses and said, “We sinned when we spoke out against the LORD and against you. Pray that the LORD will take the snakes away from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. The LORD said to Moses, “Make a snake and put it up on a pole: anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.” So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, he lived. Numbers 21:6–9 N.I.V

The double-edged bite of the serpent was also resident in the serpent staff (Exod 4:1–5; 7:8–10) that transformed the waters of the Nile to blood (Exod 7:14-21) and also caused living water to flow from the rock (Exod 17:6; Num 20:11).

“The double-edged bite of the serpent was also resident in the serpent staff that transformed the waters of the Nile to blood and also caused living water to flow from the rock.”

And again, in Greek myth, Achilles (who it will be remembered, died of a wound to the heel) injured Telephus (the son of Divine Herakles and Auge, a temple virgin) in the thigh with his spear. The wound refused to heal so Telephus consulted an Oracle and was told that “it could only be cured by its cause.” Rust from Achilles’ spear was rubbed into the wound and it eventually healed.

The Divine Weapon

The club of the Celtic Dagda ‘the good god’, the spear of Odin, Thor’s hammer Mjolnir, as well as the arrows of Eros, all had the power to bestow life, as well as destroy it.

Caught within the Lunar Threshold of Death and Life

In the myth concerning Adonis‘ ever-revolving decent and ascent, both his birth and death occur simultaneously, caused, like Attis, by the lethal tusks (Old-and-New moon symbol) of a boar.

“Every year he (Adonis) would alternate between the two goddesses, ever-passing between the temporal realms of death and life.”

Aphrodite placed Adonis in a chest and gave him to Persephone, Queen of the underworld. Every year he would alternate between the two goddesses, ever-passing between the temporal realms of death and life. The festival of his death and rebirth, the Adonia, was celebrated annually. The myth of Adonis, as retold by Ovid in his Metamorphoses recalls that his castration and death were caused by a boar in a hunting accident (10.707-717).

Odysseus was also wounded by a boar. According to Homer’s Oddessy, the young hero paid a visit to his grandfather Autolycus, who lived, along with his sons upon Mount Parnassus. Odysseus had travelled there to collect some treasures, that Autolycus had promised him while his was still an infant. During his stay, Odysseus ventured out on a hunting expedition, accompanied by his uncles and a pack of hounds, who eventually led them to the lair of a wild boar. Odysseus single-handedly pitted his strength against the boar which struck him in the thigh. However, Odysseus managed to counter the attack with a fatal strike of his spear. His uncles (who, in the original myth, would have been trying to kill him) bound up his wound and took him back to their father’s palace, where he was rewarded with the promised treasure. It could be said, in part, that It was then that he earned his name; Odysseus the Man of Pain, “a name he’ll earn in full” (Fagles, R. ‘trans’, 1996, 19.463–521).

The second clause of the Protevangelium

He will crush your head, and you will strike his heel. Genesis 3:15

The second clause of the Protevangelium (Footnote: Primal Prophecy) is to be found in a myth known to the Greek, Celtic, and Nordic traditions.

The Greek Protevangelium

The second labour of Herakles was the destruction of the Lernaean Hydra, a deadly water serpent with the body of a dog and a multitude of heads. For each head that was destroyed more would sprout up in their place. The Hydra was accompanied by a large crab that attacked Herakles on the foot. He crushed the crab, and finally overcame the Hydra with the aid of Iolus, who cauterised the creature’s severed stumps with firebrands, preventing the heads from regenerating. Herakles cut open the Hydra’s body and extracted its deadly poison, which he would ever-afterwards use to tip his arrows.

Sometime afterwards, Herakles and his wife Deianira needed to cross a flooded river. Nessus the centaur offered to ferry them to the other side, but as soon as Deianeira was on board he attempted to rape her. Herakles shot Nessus with one of his poisoned arrows, and as the centaur lay dying he instructed Deianeira to collect his blood, claiming it would act as an effective love potion should Herakles ever cease in his desire for her. She stored up the blood in a jar, and kept the knowledge of its existence to herself. Deianeira was finally compelled to use the love potion, fearing that a beautiful woman called Iole, whom Herakles had taken as his concubine, was stealing his love away from her. Herakles, wanting to offer a sacrifice to Zeus, asked for Deianeira to send him a clean ceremonial shirt. She soaked the shirt in Nessus’ blood, unaware that it was contaminated by the Hydra’s poison, and delivered it to her husband. Herakles put on the shirt, and as the sacrifice commenced, the poison began to saturate his flesh and burn away his skin. Realising the truth, Herakles recollected the enigmatic prophecy that “he would be killed, not by the living, but by the dead.”

The Celtic Protevangelium

We find the second variation of the myth in the Irish Fionn Cycle, at the climax of ‘The pursuit of Diarmaid and Grainne’. Finn Maccumhail never truly forgave Diarmaid for running off with Grianne, to whom he was betrothed, and despite their reconciliation, he still harboured bitterness in his heart. Aware of a prophecy foretelling that the boar of Boann Ghulban would be responsible for Diarmaid’s death, Finn arranged for him to take part in a hunting expedition. Diarmaid managed to kill the boar, but as he measured out the skin with his feet, the boar’s poisonous bristles pierced Diarmaid’s heel and he died.

The Norse Protevangelium

In the Nordic version, it was foretold that Thor would die at Ragnarok, ‘the doom of the gods’, in the final confrontation with the serpent Iormungand. Thor succeeded in slaying the serpent, crushing its skull with his hammer. After striking the final blow, Thor could only manage to step back nine paces before he succumbed to the serpent’s deadly venom and fell down dead. This myth agrees with the Hebrew account on a number of points:

1. All contain the double-death of both the mythological victim and the serpent (substituted by a boar in the Celtic variant, as in the myths of Attis, Adonis, and Odysseus).
2. The mythological victim is victorious over the serpent.
3. The double-death was foretold.
4. Both Herakles and Diarmaid suffered injuries to the feet.
5. Thor was said to of struck the serpent’s head.

The multi-headed Hydra is representative of the Temporal Realm as well as ‘Cosmological Problem’ that only the Mythological Victim can solve.

Symbolic of the Temporal Realm

Iormungand, also known as the Midgard serpent, symbolized the mythological Oceanos that encircled the world. It is also emblematic of revolving (lunar) time, which is, in the words of Plato, “an eternal moving image of the eternity which remains for ever at one” (Timaeus, Lee, D ‘trans’, 1977, p.51). It is the universally ancient Ouroboros, the serpent who devours its own tail, joining the end to the beginning, whom we also encounter echoed in the words of the Targum Onkelos, “…he (Messiah) will remember what you (serpent) did to him in the beginning, and you shall be observing him in the end”.

“It is the universally ancient Ouroboros, the serpent who devours its own tail, joining the end to the beginning.”

Both the Ikveta D’ Meshicha and Ragnarok are parallel traditions of the same cataclysmic event, the threshold period of destruction and recreation. It is clear that the nine steps which Thor took after crushing the serpent’s head, took him somehow back to the beginning, uniting the head with the tail.

The Ouroboros is unquestionably a symbol of sexual union, as well as primal androgyny. According to Homer, Oceanos and his wife Tethys, were the “fountainhead of the gods” (Fagles, R ‘trans’, 1990, 14.244), who existed in a state of enmity which kept them apart (14:248–50), suggesting a paradoxical state of unity and division.

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