Experiencing the Primal Power
1 Comment | January 22, 2009 at 11:41 am by mahud
Filed under Cosmic-Lunar Cycles, Death, Tarot, Cosmogonic Myth, Mystery Religions, Sprituality, The Cosmic Mysteries
A Mythology is like a series of sign posts, that direct us through this cosmic mystery, which is also the mystery of our own existence. Mythology is a product of the sub-conscious, which in turn, is the product of the underlying cause of all things, and so creation myths and end of the world myths, are directly linked with our own existence and mortality.
Cernunnos’ Path: A New Mythology
Last week I was meditating upon the Tarot card Death. In the Rider-Waite-Smith deck (which my deck is based upon) the sun can be seen on the horizon. I was uncertain whether it was a sunrise or a sunset. I was reminded of my mediation a few days later while reading a wonderful post by Jeff of Druid Journal: Become Death, illuminating (for me) the mythic connection between the cosmogonic and the microcosmogonic.
The creation-destruction/death-transformation myth is central to my own study of mythology, as is the mystery of death, which I hold to be the prime mystery revealed through the myth and ritual of Mystery Religions (or ‘cults’ as they are often called), such as the most ancient Eleusinian Mysteries, that celebrated Persephone’s encounter with Death personified and her return from Death’s realm.
Jeff’s visualization has numerous mythic parallels. Kronos’ castration of Ouranos is one example:
The Children (Titans) of Ouranos (Heaven) and Gaia (Earth), were hated by their tyrannical father, who imprisoned them deep within their mother Earth. Gaia plotted to release them from her aching innards, and forming a sharp-toothed sickle made of strong adamant, she incited her children to take revenge. Her words transfixed them with fear, and in the deadly silence that followed, only the corrupt Kronos took courage and agreed to his mother’s plan. Gaia concealed Kronos—probably within her vagina (‘The Nature of Greek Myths’, Kirk, G.S, 1990, p.116)—and waited. Ouranos approached Gaia, desiring to unite, when suddenly Kronos sprang from his hiding place and castrated Ouranos, tossing his genitals into the raging ocean.
Cernunnos’ Path: The Theme of the Eighty Brothers
The slaying or wounding of the sun (often the act of a ‘Solar Hero’), is mirrored in the Hindu myth of the destruction of the sixty-thousand sons of King Sagara (‘ocean’). The sixty-thousand sons had followed a sacrificial horse (belonging to their father) to the underworld and found it grazing near the hermitage of the great Sage Kapila (‘red’), who sat nearby deep in mediation. Believing him to be a thief, Sagara’s sons were about to attack Kapila, when he opened his third eye (symbolic of the sun) and with a glance reduced them to ashes. It was some time afterwards that the Goddess Ganges descended from heaven and eventually restored them back to life.
“…the mystery of death, which I hold to be the prime mystery revealed through the myth and ritual of Mystery Religions…”
The destruction and rebirth of Sagara’s sons can be understood as simultaneous events in the myth of their birth. Physical birth, like many myths of creation, is the first traumatic experience of a new mode of being outside the womb. Also, the womb is symbolically linked with the underworld realm, as in the myth of Mother Earth who ‘gave birth’ to the Titans after Heaven was separated from her body. According to the Hindu myth, one of Sagara’s wives (he had two) miraculously gave birth to a gourd, which fell upon the earth and shattered, releasing, like seeds, the sixty thousand princes, paralleling the birth of the Titans. It is in the traumatic birth and transformation of both Gaia’s and the queen’s children into a new mode of existence that both the birth and death become simultaneous. Through destruction, such as the shattering of the gourd (which may or may not be an emblem of the sun. EDIT: I would say it’s definitely a womb symbol, perhaps with a solar connection), as in Jeff’s vision where the sun is cleaved and the stars shone in the darkness of ‘lunar’ reality (of death and rebirth), the One is transformed into the Many.
It is through such creation-destruction myths, that I find the reconciliation of two mythic themes: the Separation of Heaven and Earth (Spirit separated from Matter) and the ‘Virgin’ Birth (Matter producing Spirit). Although we live in a reality which was separated from Spirit, Spirit miraculously and paradoxically manifests from within the cosmos, through a single destructive act, that again, miraculously and paradoxically, is transmuted into an act of creation. And all things participate continually in this cosmic arrangement of death and re-creation. We all as individual beings participate on a daily basis in the myth of creation-destruction (or re-enact it through ritual) in a universe where the divine is ever-present yet often unexperienced or unmanifest.
Jeff’s vision also reminded me of something I read recently of Merlin in the Vita Merlini:
The bridegroom stood watching from a lofty window and marvelling at the rider on his seat, and he laughed. But when the prophet saw him and understood who he was, at once he wrenched the horns from the stag he was riding and shook them and threw them at the man and completely smashed his head in, and killed him and drove out his life into the air. With a quick blow of his heels he set the stag flying and was on his way back to the woods.
Parry, John Jay, 1925, ‘Vita Merlini‘, (Sacred Texts)
I’ve previously touched upon the symbolism of the stag and its association with the moon (including the sun rising from the recumbent lunar crescent). And also the waxing and waning moons as a ‘cosmic weapon’ (like the double axe) that flank the cyclic cosmic threshold of creation and destruction. Here Merlin, who, like a Lord of Animals (such as Noah or Shiva) may also be representative of the god who dwells upon the threshold of death and life. He also may be death personified. The transforming primal power of cosmic dissolution that gives rise to new beginnings.
Is horizon’s sun on the Death card rising or setting? I think it’s both.
