The Island of the New Moon Passage

2 Comments | May 21, 2007 at 5:31 pm by mahud
Filed under Oriental Mythology, The Cosmic Mysteries

The secular philosopher Wang Chung (27 BC - 97 AD) quotes a myth concerning a mountain called Tu Shuo, situated in the eastern ocean, from a lost version of the Shan Hai Jing, ‘classic of mountains and oceans’ (4th-3rd century B.C).

Overshadowing the island mountain grew a huge peach tree, its branches extending for three thousand li. To the north-east, the branches formed an archway, called ‘the gate of demons’, and through this gateway the ten thousand departed spirits must pass (ten thousand symbolizing totality, like the ‘ten thousand things’ of manifest reality in Daoist philosophy).

Guarding the gateway were two spirits called Shen shu and Yu lei. These guardians would allow only those spirits who were considered worthy to pass through the gateway, and would bind up the evil spirits and cast them to the tigers (or tiger), to be devoured.

The Gateway Gods Associated with Chinese New Year

The Chinese New year (spring festival), according to the Chinese lunar-solar calendar, begins on the first new moon between January and February, usually the beginning of the second lunar month, following the winter solstice.

“The appearance of the moon is called, Shuo Day, meaning New Moon”

The appearance of the moon is called, Shuo Day, meaning New Moon, indicating that the Mountain Island of Tu Shuo is connected with the lunar cycle. The new year symbolizes rebirth and a new beginning.

During the new year festivities it is customary to place images of guardian gods on doors and gateways, to protect against evil spirits. Two popular door gods are the ministers Chin Shu pao and Yuchi Gong, who replaced Shen shu and Yu lei (The guardian spirits in the myth), during the Tang Dynasty (906/7 A.D).

The Lunar Mystery of Death and Rebirth

According to Klaus Antoni (based on an essay by Erwin Rousselle), the word tu, can be interpreted as meaning ‘the Passage’, giving the name of Mt. Tu Shuo, as meaning ‘the new moon of the passage.’

Quoting Rousselle, Antoni writes that the people along the coast of China, towards “India and to the Islands”, liken the waxing moon to a silver boat, that ferries the spirits of the ancestors.

Antoni continues (quoting Carl Hentze), that the word for new moon in an early pictographic form, represented two figures: A larger figure to the left, representing an old man, turned upside down (corresponding to the character Ta, meaning ‘big’), and on the right a smaller upright figure, representing a child (corresponding to the character Tzu, meaning ‘son’ or ‘child’). Both figures are standing above a horizontal crescent moon, reminiscent of a boat.

It appears that the two guardian spirits of the new moon island are related to the two figures in the boat. The old man on the left that is inverted, downwards towards the realm of death, and corresponding with the dying moon, and the child on the right positioned upwards towards the realm of life, and corresponding with the moon reborn. To this, Antoni writes;

According to Hentze’s research, the symbolism of upright/inverted in ancient China was connected to life and death, being and dying, “the being devoured and spit out by a demon,” and also with light and dark. (1)

“The relationship between death and life, dark and light, and old and new, is also present in the representations of the two door gods”

The relationship between death and life, dark and light, and old and new, is also present in the representations of the two door gods Chin Shu pao, who is dark skinned, and Yuchi Gong, who is depicted as light skinned (see image above).

Parallels from Near/Middle-Eastern Mythology

In the Epic of Gilgamesh, the guardians of the gateway are the scorpion men who open and close the gate for the rising and setting of the sun god Utu/Shamash, situated on the twin peaks of the mythical Mt. Mashu.

Gilgamesh himself gains entrance through the scorpion gate, dressing in lion skins (the garb of the solar hero) and travels through the land of darkness, encounters first a female guardian, and then a ferryman, before sailing across the ocean of death, towards the island of immortality, a journey that only Utu/shamash himself can cross.

In Genesis, the gateway to paradise is similarly protected by two spiritual guardians, who according the Hebrew rendering of the myth, are two Cherubim. In the Chinese myth, the tigers who devour the unrighteous, correspond with the revolving sword of fire that prevents access to the tree of Life (the heavenly peach tree) that in the Akkadian Epic, is the dangerous wrathful aspect of Utu/Shamesh himself, pictographically represented as four swords (or one sword rotating), in the sun god’s familiar glyph.

“In Genesis, the gateway to paradise is similarly protected by two spiritual guardians”

According to the Mesopotamian myth, it is upon the island of immortality that Gilgamesh learns that immortality is a mode of being reserved for the gods alone, and instead learns of a secondary reality, attained via the retrieval a mysterious plant named, ‘old man grown young.’

Gilgamesh fetches the plant from the bottom of death’s ocean and, as prophesied by Utnaphistim (the Akkadian counterpart of the Biblical Noah), Gilgamesh receives a wound. The plant then passes into the realm of the serpent, who gains the power of rejuvenation.

The Solar and Lunar realities

The myth combines two mysteries; that of the eternal (solar) reality, symbolized by the tree of life, and the temporal (lunar) reality, combining both death and life, light and dark, etc, bound up in the properties of the plant recovered by Gilgamesh, whose counterpart, in the related Hebrew myth, is the tree of knowledge of good and evil, also associated with a serpent.

The Torch-Bearers of Death and Life

The name of the plant ‘old man grown young’ is also mirrored in the Chinese mystery of the moon of the inverted old man and upright child upon the lunar boat, representing the realms of death and life, a mythical motif found in the mysteries of the two goddesses, typically Persephone, who is sometimes depicted carrying a torch pointing downwards, and her mother Demeter, who holds a burning torch upwards.

In the Attic vase (5th Century B.C) pictured below, four female attendants flank an effigy of the god Dionysus, the figure on the outer left holds a torch downwards, while the figure on the outer right, points her touch upwards, while the god himself, we can guess, is suspended in between both extremes, embodying both principles.

In the mysteries of Mithras, two male figures flank the cosmic bull-slaying scene (Taruoctony), called Cautes and Cautopates, again holding torches towards the realm of light (connected with the god Sol, the sun), and towards the realm of darkness (connected with the goddess Luna, the moon).