4 Comments May 1, 2008 at 7:15 am by mahud
This post is one of many in the third Mythology Synchroblog (View the list of other bloggers below)
…the primordial image of Mother Earth…is found throughout the world in countless forms and variants. It is the Terra Mater or Tellus Mater so familiar to Mediterranean religions, who gives birth to all beings.
…In some religions Mother Earth is imagined as capable of conceiving alone, without the assistance of a coadjutor. Traces of such archaic ideas are still found in the myths of partenogenesis of Mediterranean goddesses. According to Hesiod, Gaia (= Earth) gave birth to Ouranos “a being equal to herself, able to cover her completely” (Theogony, 126 f.)…. This is a mythical expression of the self-sufficiency and fecundity of Mother Earth.
…In other religions the cosmic creation, or at least its completion, is the result of a hierogamy between the Sky-God and Mother Earth. This cosmogonic myth is quite widely disseminated. It is found especially in Oceania—from Indonesia to Micronesia—but it also occurs in Asia, Africa, and the two Americas.
Eliade, Mircea, 1959 (1987), ‘The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion‘, p.139;134;135 (Harcourt Brace & Co.)
While both earth and sky surely created equally powerful religious impressions upon the human mind in many ways from prehistoric times, it seems natural to assume that the recognition of the earth as Mother preceded that of the Father as Sky. While the symbolic relationship between Mother and Earth is obvious (in the seasonal cycle of birth and growth), the symbolic relationship between Fatherhood and Sky doesn’t appear to be based on phenomenal reality, and may well be merely an subsequent and inevitable extension of the image of the earth as Mother, in a cosmogonic hieros gamos. In this way Father Sky became a mirror image of Mother Earth, rather than a reflection of fatherhood. Interpreted through supernatural revelation as a mystery of mysteries from a reality unseen, rather than the natural revelation of the mysteries that give rise to the life generating forces of the natural world, as epitomized by Mother Earth.
Father Sky as a mirror to Mother Earth is apparent in at least one respect, in the myths and rituals that transfer the act of childbirth into the invisible realm of the Sky God. In Joseph Campbell’s The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology, he recounts an initiation rite of the Central Australian Aranda, where boys between the ages of 10 and 12 are separated from their mothers and are told they are no longer free to associate with the women and girls in the tribe. From then on (and when the ordeals of the initiation are complete) they are to “join the men and hunt the kangaroo.” (p.89). Before being taken away and reborn into manhood the men of the tribe sing:
“May he reach to the stomach of the sky, may he grow up to the stomach of the sky, may he go right into the stomach of the sky.”
Campbell, Joseph, 1959 (1969), ‘The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology‘, p.88 (Viking Press)
Campbell adds, “in this simple rite…
…it is apparent that the image of birth has been transferred from the mother to the sky… A woman gave birth to the boy’s temporal body, but the men will now bring him to spiritual birth.
Campbell, Joseph, 1959 (1969), ‘ibid‘, p.89 (Viking Press)
Comparatively, in Greek mythology there are also the mythologies of Dionysus Zagreus, the child of Zeus and Persephone, and heir to the throne of heavenly Olympus, who was torn apart by the Titans and again reborn in his father’s thigh. And in another myth, the mortal princess Semele, the lover of Zeus and their child (again) Dionysus:
Hera, Zeus’ wife, jealous of the affair, caused Semele to question her lover’s divinity, who then forced Zeus to fully reveal his destructive Godhead, which, in the form of a thunderbolt (akin to the solar force of transcendent reality), reduced Semele to ashes. The child Dionysus — prematurely born in the very moment of his mother’s destruction, exposed, as she was, to the indestructible wrath-bliss, — was, it seems, caught within the temporal threshold of simultaneous birth and death…. …Dionysus was then snatched up and sown inside his father’s thigh (perhaps a euphemism for penis), to be born a second time, in the heavenly realm of the Sky-God….
Dionysus and Jesus and the Simultaneous Cosmic Destruction-Creation (Between Old and New Moons)
The motif of rebirth via the Father is also apparent in the myth of Kronos who devours his children (the Olympian gods) immediately after his wife Rhea (associated with Gaia) had given them birth. Sometime afterward Kronos is forced to regurgitate the Olympians, who are reborn whole (via the mouth).
In the Hurrian version of the Hesiod’s myth of Kronos’ castration with an adamantine sickle, the god Kumarbi (who in the Greek version is Kronos), bites off the genitals of the god Anu (The supreme God of Heaven originally from Mesopotamia), and subsequently becomes pregnant with five gods. It is after Kumarbi gives birth to his children he attempts to devour them, but fails.
A problem with a vertical dualism of Father Sky above and Mother Earth below, is that the Role of the Great Mother can become subordinate to that of the Heavenly Father. An example could be the Taoist conception of the cosmos as the heavenly yang, which is masculine, and the earthly yin, which is feminine, which gave rise to the belief that the heavenly-yang-masculine principle is superior to the inferior earthly-yin-feminine principle, otherwise understood as interacting opposites that exist in a dynamic state of macro and microcosmic equality:
…it would have to be admitted that yang generally appears to be superior to yin. The precedence of yang over yin is partially solved by Robinet, who wrote, “seen horizontally as two complementary poles in human life, they are clearly equals; if aligned vertically, Yang is always upper and dominates Yin….”
Fowler, Jeaneane, 2005, ‘An Introduction to the Philosophy and Religion of Taoism: Pathways to Immortality‘, p.74 (Sussex Academic Press)
Although the above author goes on to say that even when the cosmic duality of yin and yang when viewed “horizontally,” (in the realm of Human: A mixture of heaven/yang and earth/yin), yang and yin still retain, respectively, superior and inferior associations. Yung Sik Kim in The Natural Philosophy of Chu Hsi (or Zhu Xi: Confucian scholar), Writes, “…some yin-yang associations suggest an obvious supremacy of yang over yin. What was good, great, virtuous, lucky, and noble, for example, was associated with yang, whereas what was bad, small, evil, unlucky, and humble was classified as yin (2000, p.53). Also, in family relationships the husband and father is seen as superior (yang) to both his children and wife (who is yin ‘inferior’ in relation with her husband, but yang ’superior’ in relation to her children).
Despite the continual insistence of the Biblical scriptures to the contrary*, as a Christian I understood God to contain both male and female aspects and also transcend them. I wasn’t being unique or anything, as Christians acknowledge that God created both male and female in his image (Genesis 1:27). I understood that ‘Father,’ ultimately went beyond the limitations of gender and that a human Father was simply a “copy or shadow” of the heavenly reality. The reality is that although the Bible contains hints of sexual equality, its writers (and many readers, even today) were certainly partially blinded by patriarchal religious values (enshrined in the Old Testament) and couldn’t completely overcome them. The closest to Bible comes to a hieros gamos is the relationship between God/Christ and the Church (the Bride of Christ). But what about the Goddess? Why was God never scripturally revealed in feminine terms? I really don’t remember asking those questions until I began studying mythology.
What distinguishes the witness of the prophets and the apostles, so that it can have this significance for the existence of the congregation and its proclamation to the world? After all, they were men fallible as we are, children of their time as we are of ours, and their spiritual horizon was as limited as ours—in significant ways, even more limited than ours. Whoever enjoys that sort of thing can again and again demonstrate that their natural science, conception of the world, and also to a great extent their morality cannot be binding for us. They told all sorts of sagas and legends and at least made free use of all kinds of mythological material. In many things they said—and in some important propositions—they contradicted each other. With few exceptions they were not remarkable theologians.
Barth, Karl, 1964 (2006), ‘God Here and Now‘, p.59
- * God is continually addressed as lord (Heb: Adonai), and his name, YHWH (Tetragrammaton), is also translated as LORD (between 6000-7000 times) throughout the Old Testament. God’s relationship with King David is that of a Father and Son in Psalm 2:7, and the Messianic theme is repeated with Jesus (the Son) in the New Testament (Hebrews 1:5), who continually refers to God as the/his Father (‘Father’ in the Sermon on the Mount, John’s Gospel 1:18-10:15, 10:17-16:10, 16: 15-32). The rest of the New Testament, including the Letters of Paul (Gal-Col; 1 Thes-Phile), repeats the pattern.
Who’s Participating…
- Is duality really a figment of your imagination? (Dream Builders)
- Duality and Beyond (Quaker Pagan Reflections)
- Duality - Love With Its Back Turned (Aquila ka Hecate)
- Seeing Number 11 and Symbolic Duality (Symbolic Meanings)
- On What Are These Things Woven Back And Forth?: Thoughts on Duality (ReligionThink)
- Jewish Duality vs. Dualism (Jewish Myth, Magic, and Mysticism)
- ARCHETYPES Part 2: Archetypes in Duality (When Isis Rises)
- Maybe: Pagan Thoughts on the Limits & Uses of Duality (FULL CIRCLE * Earthwise News & Notes)
- The Dual (Paleothea: the Ancient Goddess)
- Looking Through the Kaleidoscope: Kitchen Thoughts on Duality or Not (Goddess in a Teapot)
- Samh and Geimh (Politics and Polytheism) NEW LINK!!
If I’ve missed your post let me know. I’ll add more as I find them 
Some Previous Mythology Synchroblogging
It is said that when the Primal Pair had finished animating all things, they pulled a feather from a bald eagle, and blowing upon it, set it in motion. Everything in creation, like the eagle feather, is in constant motion, and depends upon Holy Air for its existence. Without Air nothing would be possible. As language animates the landscape through speech, so also speech is animated through the invisible and all surrounding power of Air.
Chanting the Landscape (Theme: Landscapes)
The Greeks identified Cybele with Rhea, the mother of the Olympian Gods. Cybele was known as the mother of both the Gods Meter theon and Men. Among many other epithets she was also known as ‘Mountain Mother’ Meter oreie and ‘Idaean Mother,’ pointing back to her origins in Asia Minor. In the Homeric Hymn (14) To the Mother of the Gods, it is said that she enjoys hearing the sound of rattles and tympanums and the mountains and forest valleys echo with the roaring of lions and the crying of wolves.
The Great Mother from Asia Minor to Rome (Theme: Motherhood)
0 Comments April 25, 2008 at 12:31 pm by mahud
Long ago, there lived a race of giants, called the Rheena. Among them was a young Giant called Jib, who was the youngest of seven bothers. Even though he was the youngest, he was the strongest, and his brothers were all jealous of his feats of strength.
Jib was a fisherman. He was such a fine fisherman, he needed only to take his boat out for the first day of each month, and would come back in the evening with enough fish to feed every giant in the land. And there were a lot more giants back then too.
Before he set out on his monthly fishing expedition, Jib would rise earlier than the sun to enjoy a refreshing drink from a nearby stream. He would reach high into the star filled sky to grab hold of the moon, and using it as a cup, he would fill it to the brim with water from the stream, and drink his fill.
Every night Jib dreamed the same dream. In this dream he grew so tall that he could reach up a grab hold of the sun, without burning his hand. He pulled the sun down from the sky and the whole world burned up from the heat, all apart from the great ocean that surrounds the world. He scooped every last drop of ocean water in his fiery cup and drank. And to Jib’s amazement, the ocean no longer tasty salty, but sweet.
Because of his dream, Jib would often boast to his brothers, that one day it would come true. Behind his back they all scoffed at him, but they were all afraid that one day it would indeed come true, and so they devised a plan.
So, one night when the moon hung low in the sky, the brothers crept quietly into Jib’s room, and tying his long golden hair to the bedposts, they lit a huge fire under his bed. Jib was fast asleep dreaming his usual dream, except this time, when he reached out to grab hold of the sun, he felt the terrible heat of its rays burning his skin. Soon enough the burning heat became so unbearable, he jumped up out of his bed, ripping the hair from his head. He burst through the roof of the house, and sliced off his head on the sickle shaped moon.
His gigantic body fell with a crash upon the shore of the eastern continent and was transformed into the Giga Mountains, while his head fell upon the western continent and was likewise transformed into stone. It is said that Jib’s head still dreams the same dream of drinking from the cup of the sun. Many believe that that day will come when Jib finally wakes up at the end of the world.
Riddles of Jib
Jib’s head sleeps upon the edge of the cosmic ocean,
His giant body on the yonder shore.
No one knows how long he has dreamed,
The dream of dreams.
Who can enter the labyrinthine mind of Jib,
to wake him up?
2 Comments April 16, 2008 at 1:39 am by mahud
Having recently bought a pack of tarot cards, I have been spending time familiarizing myself with the deck.
To aid the learning process, I’ve began a daily reading journal, where I randomly pick a card from the deck and put into words my impressions. The journal’s online, although because it’s likely to get a bit personal, I’ve set it to private. I’ve decided to post the less personal and more mythological interpretations here on my on my blog.
The Magician (Reading from 9th April 2008)
The magician (card 1) is in union with the cosmos, not unlike the last card in the Major Arcana, the world (card 22), depicting a female or androgynous being holding two staffs and surrounded by the four creatures, that in the Book of Revelation surround the throne of God and are also symbolic of the four Gospels, which no more and no less, symbolize completeness. They also symbolize the four cosmic directions.
Upon the Magician’s table are the symbols for the four suits of the lesser arcana, cups, swords, wands/clubs, and pentacles/coins, which represent the four medieval social classes and the four elements of water, air, fire and earth, and so they are again symbolic of completeness both at the universal and social level.
The magician is also known as the juggler. An instinctual mover and shamanic navigator. He knows what sets the world in motion and partakes in the world generating/animating process, symbolized by the ouroboros belt around his waist with total and harmonious control.
The magician is perfectly in tune with the harmony of the cosmic spheres. He contains the whole world within his body. pointing upward with his wand, and with his finger pointing at the ground he is an indicator of the co-dependent spiritual and material process of existence that are foundational to his magical craft.
Daily Tarot Reading Journal
4 Comments April 7, 2008 at 2:45 am by mahud
Having recently bought a pack of tarot cards, I have been spending time familiarizing myself with the deck, primarily through the book that came with it Beginner’s Guide to Tarot, and an online Tarot course (also check out: Tarotpedia, Symbol Meanings of the Tarot, Major Arcana (Wikipedia), The Tarot (Sacred Texts), Toni Allen, Aeclectic Tarot).
To aid the learning process, I’ve began a daily reading journal, where I randomly pick a card from the deck and put into words my impressions. The journal’s online, although because it’s likely to get a bit personal, I’ve set it to private. I’ll possibly set it to public in the future if I’m so emboldened :D.
I’ve decided to post the less personal and more mythological interpretations here on my on my blog. What impresses me about the Tarot (and why I think it’s working for me) is the sheer number of mythic elements contained within each card (each open to multiple interpretations involving combinations with other cards and so on).
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
A New Mythology
Mythic images contain information relating to spiritual truth and our relationship with the universe, both sharing the same ultimate ground of being. The major Arcana begins with the fool (microcosm) and ends with the world (macrocosm), which, I think, signifies a life cycle in the fool’s journey (also compare the hero’s journey), having achieved a magical union or balance with the universe. Each mythic image creates an opportunity to both look both within and without on many different levels, from many perspectives, which is what a good mythical, spiritual, knowledge, etc, system should do.
The Tower (Reading from 4th April 2008)
The tower reminds me (and I’m sure most who are familiar with the myth) of the Tower of Babel, although that tower wasn’t destroyed (possibly it remained uncompleted), rather God scattered the unified primordial nation into many nations, each with their own language (This can also be read cosmogonically. As an act of chaos has an outward radiating affect (the one becoming many), so does creation, linking both creation and destruction into a single cosmic act). There is also an African myth of an old woman who attempted to build a tower to reach up to the dwelling of the most high God by stacking pestles one on top of another. The tower remained one pestle short of completion, and so the bottom pestle was removed to be placed on top and the tower collapsed. This myth corresponds to the cosmic circle (and the tree) of death and life.
How can life exist after death? The answer is through the cosmic circle of death and re-creation, joining the end of life to the beginning, unifying death and life into a single cosmic mechanism through which death is transformed into life (sometimes to the point of cosmic transcendence or a unification with the all-seeing ’solar’ eye of the universe, that looks beyond our mundane perception of reality, bound by what Hindu philosophy names ‘maya,’ the “magic trick of illusion” ) and the principle of life gives way to death.
This life giving principle bound up and concealed within the mystery of death (which is also the mystery of the primordial one that becomes two) is the spiritual force that holds the universe together and is the ultimate ground of all existence that infuses/animates the cosmos with a soul, which becomes/is also many souls; a universe of endless multiplicity. The tower only shows the death/chaos aspect of the tower/axis mundi. It is a time when “things fall apart; the centre cannot hold”, when order finally succumbs to disorder.
It is a time when the weight of an unhealthy imbalanced worn down cosmos, society, situation, relationship, etc, or even our own physical selves inevitably collapses. with each death comes a new birth: Or even many re-birthings: “Unless a seed dies, it remains only one seed; but when a seed dies, it bears many seeds.”
Daily Tarot Reading Journal
6 Comments April 4, 2008 at 11:18 pm by mahud
Every week or so, I’ll pick a Deity/or a human character from myth (in alphabetical order), and from memory write all I can remember from myth, archaeology, experience, or elsewhere, relating to that Deity. It would be great if you could play along in the comments. Also, feel free to add or correct any of the given info.
Here’s my attempt…
Amazingly I can spell her name. Not too sure on the pronunciation. I think it’s something like blod-e-weth. Arianrhod, in an attempt to deprive her son Lleu Llaw Gyffes on attaining his manhood placed three curse on him: 1) He would remain nameless, unless Arianrhod named him; 2) He would not bear arms unless she armed him; 3) and he would never marry a natural born woman. With the help of Gwydion…
(Gwydion adopted him, although recently when I researching Arianrhod, I kept reading that he was married to Arianrhod, who was also his sister, and that Lleu was his natural son. I’m not sure if that’s correct or not. I’ve always understood that Lleu was the magically conceived and instantaneously born son of Math and Arianrhod (admittedly that my own personal interpretation). Although, what I interpret as as a magical act of sex without them actually doing it, strictly speaking it was a test to see if Arianrhod was a virgin or not after she had applied for the job of ‘royal foot-holder.’ When she on the spot gave birth to twins, that kind of gave the game away and she returned to Caer Arianrhod (Arianrhod, means something like ’silver circle.’))
…, who was something of a magician, Lleu overcame the first two curses. The third, required the help of King Math (from whose branch of the Mabinogi, the myth comes from). Together, Math and Gwydion created a wife for Lleu from a combination of (six kinds of ?) flowers (If you can name them I’ll be impressed. I remember one was meadowsweet). Blodeuwedd meaning something like ‘flower face/aspect/persona.’
At first Lleu and Blodeuwedd were happily married, but while Lleu was away somewhere, Blodeuwedd fell in love with someone else (Can’t remember his name). The lovers decided to figure out how to kill Lleu, and one day Blodeuwedd manged to get Lleu to reveal how he might be killed….
(This is a pretty common theme in mythology and folktales, and it crops up a few times in Celtic myths alone. The myth of Blodeuwedd and Lleu has a close parallel in Egyptian myth in the tale of ‘Bata and his brother.’)
Lleu seemed to think he was indestructible, and told her that he could only be killed if he was both inside a house and outside, with one foot on a bath…
(The ‘Bath Murder’ is another reoccuring theme. Agamemnon was said to of been killed by Clytemnestra while taking a bath. In the romance of ‘Tristan and Iseult,’ Iseult tries to kill the already wounded Tristan in a bath, after discovering that he had killed her father. The boat that Tristan was set adrift in is again related to the symbol of the bath, as if the floating chest/coffin/ark/ (also Vishnu’s couch) of various mythologies, that are related to the old-and-new-moon boat that floats upon the cosmic ocean symbolic of the Goddess’s womb. The bath symbol kind of re-inverts this mythic image of the ocean vessel, which is itself a womb symbol, where the dying/wounded/drunk/asleep god, caught within the threshold of death and life of the cycle, be it monthly, yearly, or the entire cosmic manifestation of cyclic existence, dies and is reborn.)
…and the other on a mule, with a spear that was created on sunday (the day of rest), implying that his death was somehow impossible. However, Blodeuwedd took him seriously, and after (a year and a day?), her lover had fashioned the forbidden spear, and Blodeuwedd convinced Lleu to act out his paradoxical death stance. Lleu was speared, but instead of dying, he was transformed into an eagle and flew away, which was good enough for the two lovers.
Gwydion searched the land for Lleu, until one day he came across a swineherd who told him that every day his sow would disappear ever morning and return again at night, and was puzzled as to her whereabouts. Gwydion followed the sow to a tree upon a hill, where there was perched an eagle, who dropped bits of rotting meat to the sow below, who devoured them. Gwydion summoned up his magical power in verse and struck the eagle with his staff, which transformed back into Lleu. After Lleu had regained his former health, he compelled his wife’s lover to accept his fate, and assume the same impossible death stance, and Lleu killed him with the spear. Blodeuwedd was transformed into an owl… (’Wide-eyed’ Athene was also an owl, and was depicted as such on Greek coins, as (I think) was Lilith)), …fated to remain in the darkness of night forever, shunned by all other birds.