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Symbolism of the Revolving Cosmos

Originally part of the Lunar Beasts series, but I felt that it doesn’t quite fit the subject matter, which primarily focuses on the Lunar Beast, a symbol that is related to other mythical ideas of the ever-revolving cosmos of death and life, such as this one, although without any actual lunar-moon symbols.

According to Plutarch’s (46 - 121 A.D) account of Isis in Byblos, Osiris was trapped inside a chest (another threshold motif) by the evil Set, and cast adrift upon the Nile and eventually floated out to sea. The chest washed up on the shore of Byblos in Lebanon and became entangled in the roots of a young tree. Over time the tree grew around the chest encasing it with it’s trunk, and was finally chopped down to become the central pillar of the royal palace.

The goddess Isis came to Byblos searching for her lost husband, and disguised as an old women, she became the nurse maid to the baby prince. At night she placed the boy in a fire to burn away his mortality, and transforming herself into a swallow, flew around the central pillar containing the body of Osiris, while chirping loudly.

The Sow in Math son of Mathonwy

This mad symbolism has its conterpart in The fourth Branch of the Mabinogi:

The Mythological Victim is now portrayed in both his temporal, and eternal aspects. We have already seen Lleu Lleu Gyffes reborn within the threshold, that is also the womb of the life-giving Goddess. Here, we have a representation of the Triple-Goddess in her death aspect, who kills her consort within the threshold, ‘neither inside a house nor outside’.

Gwydion searched long and hard for the missing Lleu, until finally he met a swineherd who was worried about his sow. every day he would release her, and she would mysteriously disappear until evening. Gwydion decided to follow the sow, and was led to an oak tree, with Lleu, still in the form of an eagle, perched upon its uppermost branches.

Rotting flesh and maggots fell from the eagle’s body each time it ruffled its feathers, feeding the sow that waited hungrily below. Gwydion recognized his nephew immediately and sang a song (here translated by Lady Charlotte Guest), coaxing the eagle down from the oak, until it sat upon his knee.
The Cosmological Theme

The image of the death and life god within (as in the case of Osiris), and upon (Lleu perched upon the tree in the form of an Eagle), the Axis Mundi, which is what both the Oak and the central pillar of the royal palace represent, symbolize the ever-revolving realm of the cosmos.

Like Isis in the form of a swallow continually circling the pillar, drawing life from her dead Husband Isis in a mystical ritual to bestow the gift of immortality upon the young prince, the sow is also the Goddess feeding upon death. Both images correspond with the serpent Nidhogg, who feeds upon the roots of the Cosmic Yggdrasil, and the Midgard Serpent that also encircled (as Isis encircled), the cosmic tree of opposites.

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