6 Comments
The altar: a representation of the gateway to the divine

I’ve finally set up an altar, and have chosen an image of Cernunnos as a representation of my Panentheistic understanding of divinity. The arrangement is pretty simple to look at, although It is based on a wide range of mythic images, as I understand them.

Altar (click image to enlarge)

The necklace represents the cosmic order of time and space, comparable to the Ouroboros serpent that devours it’s own tail, or the river that encircles the world, typical to many mythologies, such as the Greek God Oceanus.

The head and tail of the serpent correspond with the beginning and end of the cosmic manifestation, further symbolized by the images of waning and waxing moons.

The mythical symbolism of Lunar death and rebirth, is again represented by the two candles. In Mithraic iconography, twin torchbearers stand either side of the God, one pointing a torch downwards towards the realm of death, and the other upwards, towards the realm of life. Dionysus is also depicted flanked by two goddesses, with torches held in a similar fashion, while the Two Goddesses of the Eleusinian Mysteries, are also shown holding torches pointing upward and downward. We may also compare Jesus on the cross, in a state between death and life, flanked by two thieves who are destined to both heaven and hell.

The dark period of lunar death and rebirth can be symbolized as a oceanic journey upon an Old and New Moon boat, much like Noah’s Ark, or the various other vessels of death and rebirth. The myth of Adonis relates that Aphrodite hid him in a chest and gave it to the goddess of death for safekeeping. The ‘solar’ Lleu Llaw Gyffes was concealed in a chest by his uncle Gwydion, to be ‘reborn’ after the death of his waterborne twin Dylan. Osiris was tricked into a floating coffin by Set. In the medieval romance of Tristan and Iseult, the wounded Tristan is cast adrift in a boat, and later in a bath, is almost slain by his beloved. The infant Moses was hidden by his Hebrew mother in a basket among the reeds of the river Nile and “drawn out” by his Egyptian Mother, under the watchful eye of his sister Miriam (Exodus 2: 1–8). Clytemnestra murdered her husband Agamemnon in a bath. While, Danae and her son Perseus, were together shut up in a coffin (as were Semele and Dionysus) and cast adrift by Acrisius. All these myths are examples of Lunar-Cosmic rebirth, within the threshold of the Cosmic Goddess, that is also the access point to the Solar-Eternal realms beyond, as, for example, in the Chinese myth of the Island of the New Moon Passage.

I’ve already talked about the Lunar-Solar imagery of the God Cernunnos, in The Fruit and the Branches, which again represents much of what I’ve mentioned in this post. I’d like to add that the torc, that Cernunnos holds up in his right hand, and the ram-headed serpent in the other, may again represent the revolving-serpentine cosmic order (note the serpent’s single circular coil), that the divinity both makes and unmakes, where the cosmic oppocites converge and diverge like the serpentine circles of the Caduceus. I have chosen Cern as a representation of the divine, who I understand to be both male and female, cosmically united and divided (like Oceanus and his wife Tethys or Shiva and Parvati), and also eternally transcendent of gender (although, traditionally understood as the realm of the Father, such as Zeus).

Another interesting observation is the mythological signaling of the mouth. The God in anthropomorphic form holds the serpent’s mouth up to his lips, while the stag’s mouth is adjacent to the torc (both stag and serpent function as divinity in lunar-theriomorphic form). Romano-Celtic representations of Cernunnos show the God to both give and receive the ambrosial boon, often in the form of overflowing grain or sacks of coins. The zoomorphic God (also in the form of a bull, as well as snake and stag), feeds upon his own bounty, and in one representation the stag also has coins pouring from it’s mouth. I have placed two symbolic offerings of whiskey and money upon the altar, corresponding with the divine ambrosial boon, that the ever-giving deity pours forth in each and every blessing we receive.

« The Fruit and the Branches | Journaling Forward: Inspired by Simple Magics »