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Lunar Beasts (part six)

1. Lunar Beasts (part 1)
2. Lunar Beasts (part 2)
3. Lunar Beasts (part 3)
4. Lunar Beasts (part 4)
5. Lunar Beasts (part 5)
6. Lunar Beasts (part 6)
7. Lunar Beasts (part 7)
8. Lunar Beasts (part 8 )

The serpent and the cosmic centre

The serpent and the tree, is a well known mythological symbol. In Greek myth there’s Ladon, the sleepless serpent who guarded the golden apple Tree of the Hesperides. In Hebrew myth we have the Serpent in the Garden of Eden, who deceived Eve into tasting the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil. Then there’s The dragon Nidhogg, who chewed at the roots of the cosmic ash in Norse mythology. Odin was said to of hung himself from the cosmic tree for nine days and nights, pieced by a spear, to gain the wisdom (it would seem) of the Runes. In a symbolic rendering of Buddha’s enlightenment, a cobra shielded the future Buddha from a terrible storm, as he sat beneath the Bodhi tree, that also functioned as the mythical Axis-Mundi.
The Cosmic and Microcosmic Axis-Mundi (Mahud)

The image below is taken from a Syrian cylinder seal (1000 BC), and depicts two figures flanking a type of Axis-Mundi or Tree of Life and Death. It’s in the form of a pole surmounted with a pair of lunar crescents containing an orb, that represents the sun.

The Lunar/Solar Crescent Pole and Serpent

Tree of the sun and Moon

The figure on the right holds a serpent alongside the ‘trunk’ of the tree, inviting us to make a mythical connection between it (as a symbol of death and life, also reflected in the cycle of the moon), and the tree, that also embodies both principles.

The image of a sun rising from a lunar crescent is also similar to the Sumerian word for ‘day’, when reduced to it’s original pictographic form.

Cosmic and Microcosmic Virgin Birth

The double image of the sun (symbolizing the eternal or divine) and moon (emblematic of the revolving cosmos of death and life), on a cosmic level, denotes the principle of the divine somehow born from within the temporal universe, and on a microcosmic level, the divine spirit miraculously born within all living things. A Cosmic and Microcosmic Virgin Birth, if you like.

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