next »

[Barmy Codger]

First, reading through the page again recently, I realized my ambiguous wording might have been misleading.  Paradox, when I used the word 'schadenfreude' I didn't mean pleasure from the cold temperatures you were experiencing while ours were unseasonably warm.  My pleasure was from the discomfort of the winter games organizers faced with no winter.


--Sunny Egypt--

Emerald, it's great to see you here once more in the twilight days of this discussion.  Always stimulating.  Your revelations about the sphinx don't agree with what little I read of Mr Temple's 'Sphinx Mystery' mentioned here earlier.  But that is a disagreement between experts, and I'm not faulting any interpretation because I know nothing.  Robert Temple believed the sphinx was originally the god Anubis, the guardian of the necropolis, as Cerebus guards the entrance to Hades.  The proportions of the sphinx can accept a large dog head which Mr Temple believes was there originally.  Later a human head was carved on the remaining sculpture and Mr Temple matched the head with that of a pharaoh whom I can't remember.  The book had to go back to the library.

Ricke further argued that each pillar represented an hour in the sun's daily circuit.

I will argue against this comment.  When I first read it I thought of Jeremy Naydler's book 'Temple of Cosmos'.  If  I remember correctly he pointed out that time for the ancient Egyptians was flexible.  An hour of daylight increased or decreased as the length of day changed with the seasons, and the hours of the night expanded or contracted accordingly.  For what it's worth, from this site --http://www.googobits.com/articles/2194-the-origins-and-history-of-timekeeping.html --

it was not until about 3500 BCE in ancient Egypt that a system for breaking up the day into smaller units first developed. In order to keep better track of time, the Egyptians separated day and night each into 12 units, resulting in an ultimate 24 hour day.

The hours of the day were not even from one day to the next under this system, however. The length of daylight changes every day, growing longer with each passing day in the spring and summer then receding after the summer solstice. The Egyptians, however, were content with their system and their uneven hours.

It was in Mesopotamia about 3000 BCE that a standardized hour first developed. The ancient Sumerians, whose base number for their counting system was 12, followed a 24 hour day like the Egyptians. (Roughly 12 day hours and 12 night hours). However, they standardized the hours so that they would no longer exactly correspond to the Sun, but would remain consistent throughout the year.

So, regularly spaced pillars would not serve a flexible view of time.  More problematic is the use of twenty-four markers when the sun isn't visible during the night.  Modern timekeeping is twenty-four hours but modern devices are mechanical instruments, not sundials.

Possibly the theories you showed us apply to a time when the Sun had more importance than in earlier Egypt, but a lot of writers maintain the sphinx is pretty ancient.

--Voldemort's Soul--

I've bogged down with reading 'The Mysteries of the Great Cross of Hendaye'.  The authors' arcane theorizings make my head ache, but I hope to get through it eventually and try to summarize some of the ideas here.  For now, here's a bit from 'Prisoners of Shangri-La -Tibetan Buddhism and the West' (1998) by Donald S. Lopez, Jr.  The book is mostly about the projection of western yearnings on the esoteric presence of Tibet.  Mr Lopez begins by examining the misnomer 'lamaism' being applied to Tibetan Buddhism.  He says the Tibetan translators of Indian texts had no equivalents for some of the Sanskrit terms and had to create them, and that 'lama' is the created equivalent of 'guru'.  And so---

The Tibetan term 'lama' (bla ma) is derived from two words, la and ma.  The notion of la, generally translated as 'soul,' 'spirit,' or 'life,' predates the introduction of Buddhism into Tibet.  The la is said to be an individual's life force, the essential support of the physical and mental constitution of the person.  It is mobile; it can depart from the body and wander or be carried off by gods and demons, to the detriment of the person it leaves, who will become either ill or mentally unbalanced as a result.  There are therefore rites designed to call the la back into the body.  Even when the la is properly restored to its place in the body, it may simultaneously reside in certain external abodes, such as a lake, tree, mountain, or animal.  The person in whom the la resides is in what Sir James Frazer would call a sympathetic relationship with these phenomena: if the la mountain is dug into the person will fall ill.  In an attempt to conquer a certain demoness, the Tibetan epic hero Gesar of Ling cuts down her la tree and empties her la lake; he fails because he does not kill her la sheep. The identity of these external la is thus commonly kept secret, and portable abodes of the la, usually a precious object of some kind (often a turquoise), are placed in special receptacles and hidden by the person who shares the la.

This is as far as we'll go because I'm not telling you about lamas, but about the storing of the soul in external containers, a la horcruxes.  Frazer is the only source of information I have seen before this about the external storage of the soul, and it's unclear how much of the quote above comes from Frazer and how much from Tibet.   If not from Frazer, maybe Ms Rowling got the ideas from the Theosophists who were keen on Tibet.

That's all for now.

[Emerald63]

Greetings!

Yes, that's right - two, count them, two posts from me in less than two weeks!

The Crowd Goes Wild!!!

As promised, here's my review of the documentary on the decorated caves of France. The show was an episode of the Naked Science series on National Geographic Channel but, no, the scientists weren't naked.   This one was called "Ancient Astronomers" and featured the theories of archeo-astronomer Chantal Jegues-Wolkiewiez, whom I'll refer to as JW.


Caves - More Than Just Holes in the Ground
JW began her work in 1992. She was curious as to how prehistoric humans viewed the sky and if their observations had any meaning for them.

Her first findings concerned outdoor rock carvings in France's Valley of Marvels at a 7,000 foot elevation. On a large formation referred to as The Altar, she noted incised images of spears all point to the spot on the horizon (at the upper edge of The Altar), where the sun rises on both equinoxes. Further, she discovered that at the midpoint of the nights following the equinoxes, the moon also rose just above the spears.

JW also noted a small natural crawl space under an enormous boulder, just down-slope from the spear heads, is lit up by both the sun and moon on both equinoxes. Her view is these possibly spiritually viewed joinings of sun and moon caught the attention of ancient humans. More practically, they may also have served as a means to reset their seasonal "clock," telling them in the autumn when it was time to descend to a lower, more hospitable elevation, as would their prey.

At Lascaux, JW found that the Summer Solstice sunset - and only that day's sunset - illuminates the interior of the first chamber of this extensively painted cave. When she introduced the idea of a possible celestial alignment to Jean Clottes, a cave painting expert, he found JW's ideas interesting, but didn't really think (at first) the cave's orientation had anything to do with why it was chosen. He felt it was just an interesting coincidence. Clottes, his colleagues, and anthropologists have long held the view that the caves were the haunts of shamans, who painted the animal figures in them for magico-religious purposes. Considering that many of the paintings are placed on rock formations that already suggest certain animal forms, and that those formations add visually to the paintings, Clottes and others believe the shamanic reason for painting the animals in caves had to do with spiritual beliefs about the earth, about the rock itself and about the void that creates the cave.

To see if her notion was indeed merely a coincidence, JW traveled all over France to examine other caves. The narration said she looked at undecorated caves, finding them to have no particular orientation whatsoever. (I was disappointed that they did not say how many undecorated caves she examined.) But of the 130 decorated caves she examined, only 4 failed to align with one major celestial event or another. I find that rather convincing.

As she explored, JW began to develop another, more complex theory - that not only was cave orientation important to choosing a cave to decorate, it was also important to choosing what decorations would be made and how. For example, a cave whose mouth faces the winter solstice sunrise features a ceiling carving of a salmon. The salmon features a special jaw formation that develops only during egg-laying, which takes place in winter. Only on the morning of the winter solstice does the sun shine on this ceiling carving.

When some caves seemed to align with specific lunar events, JW did an experiment. She sat outside one such cave and recorded the rising and setting point of the moon, along with the phase, during an entire lunar cycle. An artifact had been found in this particular cave with an unusual pattern of carved indentations. In the 1970s, American anthropologist Alexander Marschak identified these indentations as a record of lunar cycles. His view was summarily dismissed by pretty much everyone. However, when JW plotted her observations onto a graph, the resulting pattern closely matched that found on the artifact. The artifact had missed an occasional phase and had slight variations, but the strong similarities were clear when the patterns were superimposed on one another.

By this time, Clottes, at least, was beginning to see her point. However, many others still have serious doubt about even this basic aspect of her theory, which gets even more complex and exotic. According to the narration (which has issues of its own which I'll explain below), even Clottes still doubts whether the "sun worshippers," who made the same observations JW has, would have influenced the shamans involved in decorating and using the subterranean ritual spaces. The narration added that JW believes that "sun worshipers" and shamans could have "co-existed."

As a practicing Pagan I just had to shake my head in disbelief. Gee, you mean the cavemen might have seen their way clear to looking at both the earth and the sun and not killed each other over which one was the "right" one to worship? As a nonprofessional archeology enthusiast I also had to shake my head that, once again, the "experts" are so entrenched in their own speculations about the ancients that they simply couldn't begin to accept that maybe something very different, or much broader, than they'd previously imagined might have gone on in the mind of "primitive" man.

< fantasizes momentarily about smacking all the "experts" upside their heads >

JW soon started looking at more than just the sun and moon. To begin, she measured the distances between specific points on the cave painting animals - the tips of horns and muzzles, the mid-back, the eyes, all four hooves, the tail, etc. Using these distances as a guide, she scaled down the paintings. She used these for comparison to views of the night sky as it appeared 17,000 years ago, as shown by an astronomical computer program. According to her findings, the same bright stars we use today to define constellations match up with the important points she observed on the cave painting animals. In other words, they are representations of constellations, as well as magical prey animals.

  +    =  Lascaux Cave

An especially complex example is in Lascaux Cave itself and features two bison, back to back. Rather than representing constellations, JW believes these two animals reference several pivotal celestial events. She explains that if this part of the wall of the cave (deep inside and never illuminated by sunlight) were made of glass, the painting would exactly fit over the view of these celestial events as seen from Lascaux Cave. (I assume this means the wall has curved away from those creating the entrance, which faces midsummer sunset.) From a common distance, JW measured the angle of each bison's gaze. The right-hand bison, which is shown in rut (a fall/winter event) has a gaze of 124' above the horizon. Beyond the wall of the cave, the midwinter sun rises at an elevation 124' above ground level (presumably over a mountain in the distance). The left-hand bison, shown molting (a spring/summer event) has a gaze 56' above the horizon, which corresponds to the spot where the midsummer sun rises outside the cave if seen from that spot. Further, their tails cross as they stand back to back. This occurs at a 90' angle and marks the sunrise point for both equinoxes, where the path of the sun crosses back over itself twice a year. Therefore, the position and seasonal state of each animal corresponds to the appropriate celestial event.

  +     +    =  Bison Tableaux

Critics seriously doubt that ancient humans could have successfully transposed a view of what was behind a stone wall (actually a mountain) onto that wall without the aid of advanced observational and recording devices. But JW explained that even today many astronomers still make field observations using their hand, held at arm's length, to gauge size and distance. Whether tall or short, young or old, the ratio of palm width to arm length is constant. She also cites a number of odd artifacts found in and near caves which feature holes and markings. She believes these may have been used, in conjunction with cord of some sort, to record observed celestial distances, rather like land surveying. A modern mock up of an animal hide with a small rendering of the sky was shown, implying that appropriate proportions could have been recorded onto a small facsimile of the celestial vault and then scaled up for the cave paintings themselves.

According to JW, the main chamber of Lascaux itself represents the entire zodiacal band of that celestial vault. Each animal represents the pattern of a grouping of bright stars, what we now call constellations. And, she says, if the entire cave ceiling were made of glass, the painted animals would overlay those constellations almost perfectly.


That's an awful lot of theorizing, but IMO at least some of it seems sound. That stone age humans, even those long before the time of Stone Henge and similar monuments, were aware of and commemorating seasonal celestial events sounds extremely likely to me. We've seen too much evidence supporting this view in our studies, even if we haven't seen any examples quite this old before, not that I remember anyway. I also find it highly plausible that whatever magico-religious rituals happened inside the caves were supported and highlighted by a particular cave's celestial alignment. The synthesis of external sky observations and internal, womb-like Mother Earth exists in many prehistoric religions, at least as they are currently understood.

Personally, I'd like to see numerous scientists be able to duplicate JW's more exotic findings. There are any number of astronomical computer programs for looking at sky conditions in the past. Do her findings work with all of them? Or at least a good number of them? And what about her measurements of certain points on cave paintings - are they accurate? Are they really laid out in the same formation as constellations' stars?

Sadly, since she completed her observations Lascaux has been closed, not only to the public but to scientists as well. After years of exposure to exhaled carbon dioxide, humidity, and artificial light sources, the artwork is now simply too fragile to be exposed any further. However, before being closed, every decorated surface, nook, and cranny of Lascaux was thoroughly mapped out and now exists in a virtual reality version. Perhaps that will suffice to support or discount JW's work and the profound implications it creates for how we should view the sophistication of ancient humans.


The documentary's form, rather than content
There were some rather bothersome issues with the production of this show, most notably with the script for the narration.

First, though, I found it quite difficult to take notes during the early part of the show, because subtitles were used to translate the French speakers featured. Later in the show, translations were made by dubbing. Occasionally the two methods were interchanged. I was glad of the move to dubbing and annoyed when subtitles came back. I don't have a problem with them in general, only when they are printed too small, come and go too quickly, or when I'm trying to take notes. I had the same complaint in my "Anthropology Through Film" course in college.

However, as I said, the worst issue was with the script, i.e. with what I believe to have been factual errors in it. Nothing in either the subtitled or dubbed comments by the scientists concerned me, but several times the narrator said things that were either confusing or simply not possible.

When JW was working in the Valley of Marvels, the narration said she was looking for evidence of celestial observations being made during the Bronze Age. But everything else in the program concerned the 17,000 before-present Stone Age. There's a whopping difference between the two.

The most serious error, one for which there is no excuse in a National Geographic produced documentary, involved the alignment of Lascaux. JW spoke of the midsummer sunset illuminating the entry chamber of the cave. But the narration then claimed that the setting sun on both midsummer and midwinter - and only on those two days - shone into the cave's entry. Of course this is impossible. Even if the mouth of the cave is so wide as to allow in both the midwinter and midsummer sunsets, the implication is that the setting sun's light on every other day of the year would also enter.

On the whole, I found most of JW's findings plausible, encouraging, and moving. I'm not as sure about the "star maps inside of caves" portion of her theory, but further study and having others reproduce her results would help convince me. The content of the show, therefore, was excellent. Only the documentary production team was lacking, imo.


My next entry will include a few more observations about Egypt, along with some responses to Barmy's comments on my earlier Egypt post. Till then...

[Fostwolf]

I just had to share this ;-)

[Barmy Codger]

That's a good one, Fostwolf.  I've saved it to show others.  And it's somewhat apropo of this post (--that's a teaser to get you through this big one).

Thanks for telling us about Lascaux, etc, Emerald. A search using 'Chantal Jegues-Wolkiewiez' immediately turned up some information about the subject--http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/sciencetech/what-the-lascaux-cave-paintings-tell-us-about-how-our-ancestors-understood-the-stars/15506 -'What the Lascaux Cave Paintings Tell Us About How Our Ancestors Understood the Stars'- is an interesting page having several images of the Lascaux cave paintings and the relevant sky.  One photo shows the solstice sun shining on the cave entrance, and there's a diagram showing how the paintings would be illuminated.

Somewhat related to this is information from the book 'Hiram's Key' by Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas, which I mentioned quite a while back.  The book began with a discussion of the Grooved Ware People who they say were the builders of the megaliths in the British Isles and western Europe--

There are many impressive megalithic structures in the Boyne Valley of Ireland, but one is particularly large, Newgrange is a 280,000-ton structure that started to be built around 3500 BCE - more than a thousand years before the Egyptians cleared the sands of the Giza Plateau for the Great Pyramid of Kufu and over two and a half thousand years before Hiram's team of builders laid the foundation stone of King Solomon's Temple.

---
It might never have occurred to us to think about Venus if not for the fact that Robert spent several years investigating a megalithic site called Bryn Celli Ddu, some fifty miles from the mouth of the river Boyne across the Irish sea on ANglesey.  His prolonged study revealed that this small structure, dating from the same period as Newgrange, provided a large number of astronomical alignments which were clearly intentional.  These included:
1 Sight Lines which have been chosen to maximise Moon observations and which yield sufficient information to predict eclipses.
2 The alignment of the passage and its cup marking sequences which highlight the equinoxes and the summer solstice.
3 A shadow gauge which indicates where you are in the solar year at any time.
4 an internal pillar and an aligned lightbox (a slot in the wall of the chamber which allows light to enter) which are positioned to accurately measure the Venus cycle and mark the winter solstice.

Robert Graves in 'The White Goddess' gives contradicting information--

Moste Irish archaeologists are now, I find, agreed that New Grange was built by a matriarchal passage-grave-making people that first reached Ireland about the year 2100 B.C., but not until they had become well/established some five hundred years later and were able to command the enormous labour necessary for the task.

The interesting thing about Grave's discussion of New Grange is the spiral motif--

Thus the pagan Irish could call New Grange 'Spiral Castle' and, revolving a fore-finger in explanation, could say, 'Our king has gone to Spiral Castle': in other words, 'he is dead'.  A revolving wheel before the door of a castle is common in Goidelic legend.

There's more but the reason I quoted this stuff from Graves a couple years ago or more was because the imagery was much like the revolving doors in the Department of Mysteries in 'Harry Potter'.  At any rate, the point is that the stonework isn't Celtic.  The other thing that occurred to me is that the megalithic barrows are constructed versions of the natural caves such as at Lascaux.  If I remember right 'Hiram's Key' theorizes that the Grooved Ware people migrated to the eastern end of the Mediterranean, becoming the Phoenicians, I think, and influenced the cultures there. Ancient Egypt, for one --

My next entry will include a few more observations about Egypt, along with some responses to Barmy's comments on my earlier Egypt post. Till then...

That made me nervous so I researched a bit more.  Also I had been thinking about it since last post.  From this site --http://africanhistory.about.com/library/weekly/aa033101b.htm-- is more to consider.

Early man divided the day into temporal hours whose length depended upon the time of year. A summer hour, with the longer period of daylight, would be longer than that of a winter day. It was the Egyptians who first divided the day (and night) into 24 temporal hours.

The Egyptians measured time during the day using shadow clocks, precursors to the more recognizable sun dials seen today. Records suggest that early shadow clocks were based on the shadow from a bar crossing four marks, representing hourly periods starting two hours into the day. A midday, when the sun was at its highest the shadow clock would be reversed and hours counted down to dusk. An improved version using a rod (or gnomon) and which indicates the time according to the length and position of the shadow has survived from the second millennia BCE.

Problems with observing the sun and stars may have been the reason the Egyptians invented the water clock, or "clepsydra" (meaning water thief in Greek). The earliest remaining example survives from the Temple of Karnak is dated to the fifteenth century BCE. Water drips through a small hole in one container to a lower one. Marks on either container can be used to give a record of hours passed. Some Egyptian clepsydras have several sets of marks to be used at different times of the year, to maintain consistency with the seasonal temporal hours. The design of the clepsydra was later adapted and improved by the Greeks.

Sorry for the long excerpt.  It hadn't occurred to me that 24 equal hours could be had at the time of the equinoxes. And I was unaware of the water clocks by which time could be marked at night.  Wikipedia --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12-hour_clock-- confirms--

The 12-hour clock can be traced back as far as Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt: Both an Egyptian sundial for daytime useand an Egyptian water clock for nighttime use were found in the tomb of Pharaoh Amenhotep I. Dating to c. 1500 BC, these clocks divided their respective times of use into 12 hours each

And from this page --http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=594--

There is a more in-depth explanation for the division of night-time into 12 hours which is based on the number of "decan" stars which were seen to rise during summer nights in Ancient Egypt. A "decan" star was a star which rose just before sunrise at the beginning of a 10-day "decade" in Ancient Egypt. 36 "decan" stars marked the passage of a year for the Egyptians (or 36 10 day periods). During summer nights, 12 decan stars rose - one for each "hour".

All this brings us back to a preoccupation with the stars and the heavens.

The lack of activity here has given me time to reflect, remembering the past enthusiasm and flurry of posts on the forums about all aspects of 'Harry Potter'.  Continued reading of 'Prisoners of Shangri La' has made me aware of the level of misinformation to which we fall prey,or shall I say the level of wishful thinking.  After discussing the term 'lamaism' used in the West instead of the more appropriate 'Tibetan Buddhism', Mr Lopez, the author, considers the Tibetan Book of the Dead.

The Bar do thos grol --in its incarnation as The Tibetan Book of the Dead, it has been discovered and rediscovered in the West over the course of almost a century; five major (and several minor) discoveries of this text, each somehow suitable for its own time, have occurred since 1919.  Together they illuminate much about the various purposes that the Bar do thos grol has been meant to serve.  Each of the five, in the order of their appearance in the West, will be considered here: The Tibetan Book of the Dead, by Walter Y. Evans-Wentz (1927); The Psychedelic Experience, by Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner, and Richard Alpert (1964); The Tibetan Book of the Dead, translated by Francesca Fremantle and Chogyam Trungpa (1975); The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, by Sogyal Rinpoche (1992); and The Tibetan Book of the Dead, translated by Robert Thurman (1994). From its first incarnation in English in 1927, the work has taken on a life of its own as something of a timeless world spiritual classic.  It has been made to serve wide-ranging agendas in various fields of use, agendas that have far more to do with the twentieth-century cultural fashions of Europe and America than with how the text has been used over the centuries of its history in Tibet.

We seem to have a need for these contemporary interpretations, just as we needed to dig into 'Harry Potter' for all the esoteric hints about the spirit world.  I'm still making connections, for example, the first presenter of the Book of the Dead -

After graduating from Stanford, Wentz went to Jesus College Oxford to study Celtic folklore.  It was there that he added a family name from his mother's side to his surname and became Walter Evans-Wentz.

So of course I thought of Lily Evans. Is it too far a reach to think Ms Rowling drew from such a writer, one who was strongly linked with Theosophy?  Then in the following chapter the author considers T. Lobsang Rampa--

The word mystify, the dictionary tells us, is derived from the Greek mystos, meaning to close the eyes and lips during an iitition or religious rite.  T. Lobsang Rampa, whose books about 'Tibet' have sold more copies than any other author on the subject, claimed to be an initiate into the secret cults of Lamaism.  Rampa's eyes were closed, however, to the authorized knowledge of Tibetan history and culture because he was not an initiate of another cult, the cult of Tibetology.  He might then be called a mystifier, in two senses of the modern meaning of the word.  First, he mystified Tibet, embellishing its various realities with his own mystical fancies, and, second, he mystified his readers, playing on the credulity of the reading public.  This latter sense of mystify has a strong connotation of intentional deceit, a charge vehemently denied by Rampa, who is regarded as the greatest hoaxer in the history of Tibetan Studies.  Although Alexandra David-Neel dressed as a Tibetan to hide her true identity and Lama Govinda dressed as a Tibetan to signal his new identity, the Englishman who wrote under the name of T. Lobsang Rampa claimed to have been possessed by a Tibetan lama, and over the course of seven years to have become a Tibetan, not just in his dress but in his molecules.

--T. Lobsang Rampa was an Englishman who had never left England.

Why not then see The Third Eye as a mind treasure, a dgong gter, discovered unexpectedly in the mind of Cyril Hoskin at a crucial moment, in 1956, soon after the People's Liberation Army had occupied Lhasa and the Dalai Lama had met with Chairman Mao?  Why not see the book as having brought the plight of Tibet to an otherwise indifferent audience of hundreds of thousands of Westerners, who would remain unconcerned were it not for the trappings of astral travel, spiritualism, and the hope of human evolution to a new age?

The account of Rampa's career and literary output reminds me of none other than Gilderoy Lockhart.  Although Ms Rowling says he is a characiture of someone she knew, the model for Lockhart seems to be Rampa.  Consider the further comments --

Lobsang Rampa is rather like the lu (glud) (translated by some as 'scapegoat' but derived from the verb glu, meaning 'to deceive' and 'to seduce'), the ransom offered to the demons in a Tibetan exorcism ceremony in exchange for the spirit of the possessed.  The officiating lama, the person authorized to perform the exorcism, makes a dough effigy of the person possessed.  In order to empower the simulacrum, the possessed person both breathes on the effigy and mixes his saliva into the dough.  The effigy is then dressed in a garment made from clothing belonging to the possessed.  In addition, precious substances, such as pieces of turquoise, are pressed into the dough.  The lama then summons the demons, offers them gifts, and effusively praises the effigy.  In return for releasing the person they possess, the demons are offered something of greater value, the effigy.

This does not seem to be a case of tricking the demons into thinking that the effigy is the person, but rather of convincing them that the effigy is of greater value.  In effect, the person possessed, in order to save himself, gives up something of himself by pressing precious substances into the body of his substitute.  Once the exchange is complete, the effigy, now considered to be in possession of the demons, is carried to a safe distance outside the community, where it is abandoned.  In this strange version of mimesis, then, a double is created:  endowed with the qualities of beauty and wealth that one has so long desired, it is then expelled to be consumed by demons. To escape the demons, wealth and power must be renounced.  The effigy is not, therefore, precisely a scapegoat because what is expelled from the city is not what is most vile, instead the seductive and the exalted --beauty, wealth, and power --are ostracized.

Very likely people will think my imagination has jumped to extremes but it seems to me this describes Lockhart.  He was given to the demons.   He ended up in a hospital mad and no longer a part of the community.  The parallel is very loose, admittedly, but the person possessed was Ginny.  Lockhart was taken and Ginny released.  Ms Rowling could have known about Hoskin, an Englishman who died in 1981, but although 'Prisoners of Shangri-La' was copyrighted 1998, early enough to influence 'Harry Potter', it's a book from the U.S.  As unlikely as it seems, many ideas from this book appear to be part of 'Harry Potter'.

 At any rate it's a fascinating read, and makes one examine one's own wishful thinking about the otherworld.  And that's more than enough for this post.  Friday night as I wrote this a huge fireworks display was set off after the ceremony starting the winter olympics here in Vancouver.  They were done in the inlet on the north side of the city and I could see them easily from where I live.  All week there have been constant sirens and helicopters and growing excitement.  Even the naysayers have become intrigued.

[Paradox]

Underground Star Maps

Emerald:
Critics seriously doubt that ancient humans could have successfully transposed a view of what was behind a stone wall (actually a mountain) onto that wall without the aid of advanced observational and recording devices.

Emerald, can I please have a shot at smacking "the experts" up-side the head? After you're done, of course. It took me about 20 seconds to come up with a 'primitive' method that would allow you to do exactly this with accuracy to maybe three degrees. It is actually based on Micronesian stick charts, so it is comparable to something the ancients came up with themselves at a similar technological level; it doesn't depend on modern hindsight.

Step 1: Make a hoop or square or some other conveniently shaped frame from any reasonable material, perhaps in a manner similar to a stick chart. The frame needs to be small enough to fit through the smallest aperture in the cave system, but large enough to handle easily; so, let's say maybe 18 inches across. Make a simple but sturdy base for the frame to sit on, so that it can be aligned in any direction without being moved accidentally.

Step 2: Tie a straight stick across the frame. Mark this stick as #1 by making one notch in it with your flint knife. Cut a few more straight sticks to take with you into the cave, along with some binding twine or leather or gut or vine "string." Bring some charcoal, colored earth, and/or some rocks to make markers inside the cave.

Build a couple small stone markers outside the cave that align with the solar or lunar light that shines into the cave on the correct day of the year, one at the very mouth of the cave, one farther away.

Step 3: You need three people with torches. We'll call them 'Lead' (L), 'Middle' (M), and 'Follow' (F).

Send 'L' into the cave, with a torch, to the farthest point from where he/she can still see the entrance. With the frame located at the cave mouth stone marker, and with the first stick in alignment with the other stone marker, 'M' & 'F' bind a second straight stick (with two notches) across the frame, which points exactly at 'L.'

Step 4: 'F' stays at the cave mouth, holding an object/torch exactly where the frame was located that can easily be seen inside the cave by 'L.' 'M' now carries the frame down to 'L' and they firmly place it exactly where 'L' held the torch, so that the second stick is aligned with the object/torch held by 'F' at the cave mouth.

Step 5: 'L' now proceeds further into the cave, carrying his torch. He goes as far as he can still see the torch of 'M,' then stops. 'M' then ties a third stick (with three notches) to the frame in alignment with 'L' (actually, a stick is not absolutely necessary; one can merely mark or notch the frame with a distinctive pattern that will allow them to know which mark represents which step in the process. But sticks might be easier and more accurate). 'M' is then joined by 'F,' who stays there for the next step, and 'M' carries the frame down farther into the cave to meet 'L.'

Step 6-... The team then repeats this process as often as necessary; 'L' goes as far as he can while still seeing 'M's' torch, then stops; another stick or marking is added to the frame, and the process is repeated until the team has reached the chamber it wishes to decorate.

Next-to-last step: When the last stick is tied in place, permanent stone or charcoal markers are placed in the cavern to indicate the alignment of the FIRST stick, which was the one originally aligned with the light.

Why this works: As each stick is added, there will of course be some degree of error. However, the errors will be in random directions, so they will tend to cancel out. With care in the process (particularly with the first and last sticks), you can probably get an alignment that is true to within three degrees without too much problem, and maybe better. Changes in elevation as the cave passages go up and down will not decrease accuracy, so long as the frame is kept level. Vertical drops might cause  problems getting a firm alignment, but you would need ropes and apparatus- logs, ladders, etc., to pass these areas, so you could probably sight from the alignment of your relatively permanent equipment.
 
Last step: Back outside the cave, make a new (probably 3D) frame, tie a straight stick across it and align it with the two stone markers. You then copy the positions of the stars/planets/etc., by tying sticks and shells to the appropriate locations to represent the positions of the stars. You might loosely tie one end of a hollow reed or small tube to a fixed point on the frame, then sight your star through it so you can get the accurate location. When you've finished, this new frame is then taken back into the cave, aligned with the permanent markers in the chosen cavern, and you now have a working 3D map of the skies, down underground, correctly aligned with the pattern in the sky above you.


The Known Universe

Here is a very cool "Powers of Ten" type video, except this one actually uses the charted positions of stars, planets, etc. The HiDef version is here.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/17jymDn0W6U&rel=0" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/17jymDn0W6U&rel=0</a>


Noise

Barmy, we've talked about noise and its mental effects before; here's an interesting article on the subject: An Unquiet Nation. Excerpt:

As audio ecologist Gordon Hempton defines it, silence is "the complete absence of all audible mechanical vibrations, leaving only the sounds of nature at her most natural. Silence is the presence of everything, undisturbed."

And silence, Hempton believes, is rapidly disappearing, even in the most remote places. He says there are fewer than a dozen places of silence—areas "where natural silence reigns over many square miles"—remaining in America, and none in Europe. In his book, One Square Inch of Silence: One Man's Search for Natural Silence in a Noisy World, written with John Grossman, Hempton argues that silence—a precious, underrated commodity—is facing extinction.

Indo-Europeans in Mongolia

More evidence has come to light of Indo-European influence in Mongolia and eastern China. This article describes the finding of a tomb of a well-placed man of I-E heritage:

Consider an older gentleman whose skeleton lay in one of more than 200 tombs recently excavated at a 2,000-year-old cemetery in eastern Mongolia, near China's northern border. DNA extracted from this man's bones pegs him as a descendant of Europeans or western Asians. Yet he still assumed a prominent position in ancient Mongolia's Xiongnu Empire, say geneticist Kyung-Yong Kim of Chung-Ang University in Seoul, South Korea, and his colleagues.

Schadenfreude

Barmy:
First, reading through the page again recently, I realized my ambiguous wording might have been misleading.  Paradox, when I used the word 'schadenfreude' I didn't mean pleasure from the cold temperatures you were experiencing while ours were unseasonably warm.  My pleasure was from the discomfort of the winter games organizers faced with no winter.

I took it as you intended... And I deeply sympathize. IMO the Olympics should go on hiatus for about one generation, to squeeze out some of the money-grubbing and corruption- and then perhaps not start back up at all. And the Winter Olympics probably need to be canceled entirely. Speaking as a former competitive skater, the Olympics have become a grotesque distortion, a serial exploitation of young athletes, and a remarkable mis-allocation of the resources of host cities. Time for all of it to end.


Clark Heinrich

For Christmas I received as a gift a very welcome copy of Clark Heinrich's Magic Mushrooms in Religion and Alchemy, which I am slowly working through. Barmy, if I remember correctly you also received this book, from Rust_Loup? Much of the book's content we have already discussed, although there remains some interesting material we haven't. Heinrich has also dosed himself with the mushroom, including drinking psychoactive urine, and these reports are valuable.

The book is very much an exploratory overview of the subject, and since the original publication under the title Strange Fruit, more has been learned by Heinrich and other researchers to confirm his hypothesis. In a sense it is good that I am coming across this now, after having arrived at essentially the same conclusions about the symbolism via our discussions, since there is a lot of speculation in the book and I am not sure that I would have taken it seriously if I had come across it before having some familiarity with the topic. Hopefully I will have some cogent comments on it in the near future.



And Finally, Harry Potter

I am feeling a little more energetic lately, after less than wonderful health through most of January. So hopefully I will be able to make more of a contribution here. While reading Heinrich it occurred to me that there should be some specific symbolic material in the Deathly Hallows chapters 5 through 9 (the Trio's stay at the Burrow). Exactly what made me think that, I'm not sure, but I intend to give those chapters a closer look a few days hence.

[Barmy Codger]

When you've finished --- you now have a working 3D map of the skies, down underground, correctly aligned with the pattern in the sky above you.

I'll take your word for it.  I couldn't visualize very well the procedure you described.  The whole phenomenon obviously requires great intent.  &nbsp;I wonder when the paintings are analyzed as simply shamanic ways of managing the hunt for animals.  I also wonder about the descriptions of prehistoric life and the presumptions of primitiveness in humans.  If one takes a view of history as being cycles instead of a long progression then it seems likely that there were times when humans could be sophisticated yet constrained by a primitive lifestyle.  After a disaster there are no technological resources available, and if there have been disasters on a global scale then they might have resulted in reversals of civilized life.  Also we have areas of the world now where people live in a very basic way, whether they are the remnants of 'primitive' societies, or forced to live in poverty.  I wonder what archaeologists of the future will make of the evidence from our times of 'primitive' and 'advanced' societies living simultaneously.  Even five hundred years from now what will they make of the people like the Amish who use horses and buggies and live without electricity in their homes in the midst of a technological morass?  My skepticism comes, I think, from reading years ago 'A Canticle for Liebowitz' --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Canticle_for_Leibowitz

we've talked about noise and its mental effects before; here's an interesting article on the subject:

Thanks for bringing this to our attention.  I enjoyed reading it despite the depressing facts.  Years ago a man I worked with left the city to homestead in northern British Columbia.  A few years later when he returned to live in the city he told me that what was most noticeable was the hum from electricity everywhere.  Also, the time I like the most is about 4:30 in the morning when the city is asleep and at its quietest.  I used to walk home from work at that time and carry a walkman for music, but seldom used it.  It was better to enjoy the quiet hour.

the Winter Olympics probably need to be canceled entirely

You'd fit in here.  Vancouver held a referendum about whether or not to host the games.  Just before the games started it was difficult to find anyone who would admit having voted in favour.  Even now the detractors outnumber the fans but an interesting phenomenon has taken place.  Once the winter games started the city was transformed into a festival.  Normal life has been turned upside down and people have been lifted out of their ruts.  Many who are opposed to the event have chosen to enjoy the side offerings since they're available.  It looks like the hangover will last several years.  Being a 'Harry Potter' fan, I'm reminded of the World Quidditch Cup.

I received as a gift a very welcome copy of Clark Heinrich's Magic Mushrooms in Religion and Alchemy

I'm very pleased for you.  Yes, my copy was a gift from Rust Loup -which makes it special to me.  Long ago when we were on CoS forum I quoted a bit from Heinrich's experiences under the influence --telepathy being a symptom --but the specifics are a bit unpalatable, especially for CoS, so I didn't present very much.  Same for John Allegro's assertions.  Of particular interest in regard to 'Harry Potter' is the business about the 'red howler', which is surely a direct reference.  What intrigued me, too, were Heinrich's ideas about the Grail and the ouroboros.  His relating it and the mushroom to urine, and his ideas about the round table provided a perspective which worked really well for interpreting Kubrick's 'Dr Strangelove'.  However,  since then I've read interpretations of the ouroboros in terms of astronomy rather than mycology and they make sense, too.  Various interpretations have their merits and I don't know what to think.

The book 'The Mysteries of the Great Cross of Hendaye' posits an ages-long secret tradition, and its summary of history from that point of view has been very enlightening, if not believable.  The authors assert that the Stone was a real stone, a meteorite.  From other things I've read apparently Egypt is a favourite landing spot for meteors.  But as with all these books, while I read the theories I always test them against the sacred mushroom.  I always ask myself whether the authors' theories can be explained by substituting the mushroom as the agent of their mistaken enthusiasms.  I&nbsp; blame Clark Heinrich for that, and Rust Loup.  I hope to present some of the ideas from 'Great Cross of Hendaye' but the book deals with a lot of material.

The ongoing puzzle for me is the link between the ecstasy of shamanism and the obsession with the cosmos.  The only answer so far is that the ecstatic experience is responsible for an intense awareness of events in the sky.  With that in mind it seems possible that the painters of Lascaux while under the influence of an entheogen could have 'seen' the heavens from within the cave -just as the sky can be seen from inside Hogwarts.

[Paradox]

Underground Star Maps

Barmy:
I'll take your word for it.  I couldn't visualize very well the procedure you described.  The whole phenomenon obviously requires great intent.

I should have stated the concept more clearly; as you travel deeper into the cave system, what you are doing is recording each angle change you make in your direction, so when you have reached the end, by a simple comparison you can determine the original starting direction. You have in a sense made a vector map of the cave system.

Think of it as running a tight string from the cave mouth, through the passages, and into the final chamber. All you would do is to measure each angle when the string changes direction, and at the end, calculate to determine your beginning angle's relation to the final angle. Doing it with sticks and torches and such just releases the hunter-gatherers at Lascaux from having to invent calculators and make a several-kilometer-long string...


Vancouver

Barmy:
It looks like the hangover will last several years.

Yes. However long it will take to pay off a what- seven or nine Billion dollar cost overrun over an original budget of maybe $700 Million?



Heaven and Mushroom

Barmy:
The ongoing puzzle for me is the link between the ecstasy of shamanism and the obsession with the cosmos.  The only answer so far is that the ecstatic experience is responsible for an intense awareness of events in the sky.  With that in mind it seems possible that the painters of Lascaux while under the influence of an entheogen could have 'seen' the heavens from within the cave -just as the sky can be seen from inside Hogwarts.

The link puzzles me also, but it's clearly there, and your suggestion is a good one. And seeing the stars from inside the caves after having eaten the mushroom would plainly be 'high' technology indeed... However, modern peoples tend to forget that 'primitive' man has a vastly superior memory than ours, simply from needing it. He has no books or microfilm to store information, he needs to keep it in his head, and has devised methods to do that, which we've forgotten. It's possible that once he was sure of his orientation within the cave, he wouldn't need any further guide as to where to paint the stars; that would already be memorized.

I have only one other suggestion at the moment, which is based on Heinrich's experience that the sacred mushroom has the tendency to shut off thoughts one at a time, until the mind is silent. It also has the power to shut the eater off completely from sensory imput. Put these two together, and you essentially have the cave experience.

[Barmy Codger]

I should have stated the concept more clearly

The problem is my brain, not your writing.

Heaven and Mushroom

As usual, if the question occurs to me, it occurred to others and unlike me they research and write books.  Perhaps the situation has changed since I began to torment myself with these mysteries years ago, for possibly earlier there was less information than now.  A search on the internet under 'shamanic cosmos' produced a few titles, none of them free of charge.  The first up looks good 'Shamanic Cosmos: From India to the North Pole Star' (1999) by Romano Mastromattei & Antonio Rigopoulos --http://www.exoticindiaart.com/book/details/IDG019/  &nbsp;But from another title here's an excerpt which gives a simple answer.  I can't keep the idea in my head because I'm still locked in the usual materialism mindset, I guess, and need these reminders --
http://www.shamaaniseura.fi/sh315.htm  --

Animism is an academic term used to describe the world of spirits, and nature, and the relationship between the two. Animism is described as a basis upon which the practice of shamanism takes place, whereby everything in the universe is connected together as a whole, via strands and forms of energy that are intricately woven between the earth, the cosmos, trees, stones, the stars, the sun, the moon, humans, animals, plants and the dead. All these different elements are combined together producing what Chief Seattle called: The Web of Life.

--A Canticle for Liebowitz--

Not sure why the title floated up while I was writing the last post.  Our library has five copies in the system and four are being read, which shows the story from 1960 is still popular.  I found a site where the book can be downloaded&nbsp; --http://www.archive.org/details/canticleforleibo00mill  The first PDF listed is encrypted and I couldn't find a key.  The second PDF of the book in black and white scan (B/W PDF) worked and I've read about four chapters.  The story begins with the fateful discovery of an underground fallout shelter which contains documents belonging to the venerated Leibowitz.  I had a suspicion about this book before starting to read it.  It will be no surprise to find it has familiar symbolism.  The cause for suspicion was learning beforehand the fact that this was author Miller's only published novel, although he had written many stories.  This is typical of esoteric writing --the novel is often the only one written, otherwise the only one of its kind of the author's works --making the story the author's alchemical 'Great Work'.

So, 'A Canticle for Liebowitz' begins with a cave.  And we remember Harry in his cupboard under the stairs (almost stars? Shaman's 'ladder'?).  I hope this story confirms my suspicions.  It would help explain its continued popularity.  If not, I'll readily admit my error.

[Emerald63]

Greetings!

Loved the cartoon, Fostwolf! So much for all those "End of the World" theories, eh?

And now, time to once again beat a dead Sphinx...

My next entry will include a few more observations about Egypt, along with some responses to Barmy's comments on my earlier Egypt post. Till then...

That made me nervous so I researched a bit more. Also I had been thinking about it since last post.

It's gratifying to know that my post prompted you to think about Egypt. Not so much that it made you nervous! Please, don't ever be nervous about presenting a dissenting opinion! If it were not for those, we'd have very little discussion... and certainly not one as interesting or entertaining. And gee... it's not like I never have a dissenting opinion...


It's a Jackal, It's a Lion, It's Super Sphinx!!!

Robert Temple believed the sphinx was originally the god Anubis, the guardian of the necropolis, as Cerebus guards the entrance to Hades. The proportions of the sphinx can accept a large dog head which Mr Temple believes was there originally. Later a human head was carved on the remaining sculpture and Mr Temple matched the head with that of a pharaoh whom I can't remember.

I agree that, mythologically, Anubis would seem a good candidate for a necropolis guardian. But I don't know about the body proportions being appropriate. A pre-existing rock outcropping might account for an earlier head formation, such as Anubis, but the full body did not exist until the time of Khafre's Valley-, Sphinx-, and mortuary-temples. Since the Sphinx's face bears a striking resemblance to the statue of Khafre, and the body was created during his time, it would be odd if the body had been excavated to go with the proportions of a head that was in the process of being done away with.

Some photos to compare...

  A statue of Khafre:
 


  A 19th century image of the Sphinx.
  Before it was fully excavated, one could get a closer to eye level look at the face.
 


  A more direct look at the face of Khafre:
 


OK, so the image of Khafre as the head of the Sphinx works better for me. But what about the body? Why a lion? A bit of a recap from my last Egypt post:

"the shadow of the Sphinx and the shadow of the the pyramid, both symbols of the king, become merged silhouettes. The Sphinx itself, it seems, symbolized the pharaoh presenting offerings to the sun god in the court of the temple." Hawass concurs, saying the Sphinx represents Khafre as Horus, the Egyptians' revered royal falcon god, "who is giving offerings with his two paws to his father, Khufu, incarnated as the sun god, Ra, who rises and sets in that temple."

...the sun appears to set midway between the silhouettes of the pyramids of Khafre and Khufu. The scene resembles the hieroglyph akhet, which can be translated as 'horizon' but also symbolized the cycle of life and rebirth

On re-reading, the "Sphinx represents... Horus" confused me. I wasn't sure how the Sphinx, obviously with a mammal's body (a lion, for sake of argument), could be equated with an avian falcon. But I found other confirmations of it, along with more on "akhet." What's convincing to me that the Sphinx is and always has been a lion is that lions are linked with kings, the sun, the horizon, and the netherworld.

http://www.pantheon.org/articles/h/har-em-akhet.html

"Horus upon the Horizon". Another form of Horus in which he figures as a sun god (identified with Re-Her-Akhety). Later is was believed that the sphinx of Gizeh represented "Horus of the Morning Sun" looking toward the eastern horizon. Also Her-Akhety, "Horus of the Two Horizons".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akhet_%28hieroglyph_and_season%29

The Egyptian language word Akhet is both a hieroglyph and an Ancient Egyptian season.

The two uses for akhet:
-- In Ancient Egyptian, the place where the sun rises and sets; often translated as "horizon" or "mountain of light". It is included in names like "Akhet Khufu" (Ancient Egyptian name for the Great Pyramid) and Akhetaten. Betrò's book names the hieroglyph: 'Mountain with the Rising Sun', and the hieroglyph is used as an ideogram for "horizon".
-- The first of three seasons of the ancient Egyptian calendar--the inundation season. This was the time of the Egyptian calendar year when the Nile waters flooded farmland and brought much nutrients to the tilled soil. The Akhet season ran approximately from mid-July to mid-November in Ancient Egypt, and was followed by Peret and Shemu.

  Here is an image of the hieroglyph "akhet":
 


More about lions in Egypt, from this site:

While lions no longer roam Egypt, there was a time when they did. They tended to live on the edges of the desert and became known as the guardians of the horizon. As the sun arose each morning and sank each evening on this horizon, the lion represented the heat of the sun. The lion was often associated with the powerful sun god Ra. In addition, the lion was a feature of the god Aker, who guarded the gateway to the netherworld, through which the sun passed each day. Thus, the lion was associated also with death and rebirth. A number of goddesses are also depicted with lion faces.

I found the most interesting information under an entry for Aker:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aker_%28god%29

In Egyptian mythology, Aker (also spelt Akar) was one of the earliest gods worshiped, and was the deification of the horizon. There are strong indications that Aker was worshiped before other known Egyptian gods of the earth, such as Geb. In particular, the Pyramid texts make a sinister statement that the Akeru (plural of Aker) will not seize the pharaoh, as if this were something that might have happened, and was something of which to be afraid. Aker itself translates as (one who) bends, and thus Akeru translates as benders, though in what sense this is meant is not fully understood....

I'll stop here for a moment to point out that, as they both refer to the horizon, akhet and Aker would seem to be linguistically related. Thus the "lion [as] a feature of the god Aker" ties the lion to akhet as well. It is logical, then, that the akhet sunset formation between the two pyramids would be accompanied by a lion image.

The connection to bending is interesting from a neo-Pagan perspective. One etymology for "Wicca" is "to bend or shape." Thus Wiccans are those who bend or shape, which references bending and/or shaping spiritual energy when performing magick. In ancient Egypt, those who could perform magick - and did so for nefarious purposes - were highly feared. I would not be surprised if the Akeru had been considered capable of somehow reaching, or "bending," over the horizon to grab a person and drag them prematurely to the netherworld. A written proscription against this happening to the Pharaoh would make sense. How the Akeru could be associated with evil, though is still a question. Perhaps this might give us a hint...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_texts

The oldest of the [Pyramid] texts date to between 2400-2300 BC. Unlike the Coffin Texts and Book of the Dead into which parts of the pyramid texts later evolved, the pyramid texts were reserved only for the pharaoh and were not illustrated. Following the earlier Palermo Stone, the pyramid texts mark the next-oldest known mention of Osiris, who would become the most important deity associated with afterlife in the Ancient Egyptian religion.

The spells, or "utterances", of the pyramid texts are primarily concerned with protecting the pharaoh's remains, reanimating his body after death, and helping him ascend to the heavens, which are the emphasis of the afterlife during the Old Kingdom. The spells delineate all of the ways the pharaoh could travel, including the use of ramps, stairs, ladders, and most importantly flying. The spells could also be used to call the gods to help, even threatening them if they did not comply.

Perhaps "not seizing the Pharaoh" refers to the Akeru doing as they were bid - protect him - as opposed to what they might do of their own accord - seize him.

At any rate, imo something odd is going on simply from the perspective of their being a plural of "horizon." In modern times, we tend to think of a single 360' horizon. But for the Egyptians it probably referred to the rising sun's and setting sun's separate horizons, both of which were conceived of as connections to the netherworld. As such, both would present dangers if it were possible for netherworld beings (of any sort) to reach into our realm through either of them. I have to wonder if the unusual phenomenon of a flash of green light sometimes appearing at daybreak might have been feared as such a being. (Or perhaps even seen as benevolent green-skinned Osiris...)

As the horizon, Aker was also seen as symbolic of the borders between each day, and so was originally depicted as a narrow strip of land (i.e. a horizon), with heads on either side, facing away from one another, a symbol of borders. Since the sun reaches its peak (its solstice) in the zodiac of Leo, these heads were usually those of lions. Over time, the heads became full figures of lions (still facing away from each other), one representing the concept of yesterday (Sef in Egyptian), and the other the concept of tomorrow (Duau in Egyptian).

Yesterday and Tomorrow? Sounds a great deal like the Roman god Janus, also a guardian of gateways. That the summer solstice, when the sun is at its strongest, occurs in Leo goes a long way to supporting the Sphinx as a lion from Day 1. That is, of course, given that the solstice was within the constellation Leo during ancient times and that the Egyptians saw the constellation as a lion. (I've heard indications of the latter before, but I do not remember if they were from reliable sources.)

Consequently, Aker often became referred to as Ruti, the Egyptian word meaning two lions. Between them would often appear the hieroglyph for horizon, which was the sun's disc placed between two mountains. Sometimes the lions were depicted as being covered with leopard-like spots, leading some to think it a depiction of the extinct Barbary lion, which, unlike African species, had a spotted coat.

Since the horizon was where night became day, Aker was said to guard the entrance and exit to the underworld, opening them for the sun to pass through during the night. As the guard, it was said that the dead had to request Aker to open the underworld's gates, so that they might enter. Also, as all who had died had to pass Aker, it was said that Aker annulled the causes of death, such as extracting the poison from any snakes that had bitten the deceased, or from any scorpions that had stung them.

The article states that Aker was a very early god. I believe Anubis was as well. In early times he, too, was seen as being a protector of the netherworld, along with the dead. It wasn't till later that he came to be more associated with the act of embalming.

I do not know all the fine points of how Aker might have differed from Anubis. However, one difference I am familiar with could have something to do with why it would make more sense for the Sphinx to be lion-bodied. Jackals were often seen in cemeteries, i.e. they were amongst the dead. Another example of this was that they were also known to come out of the desert to the west, i.e. the netherworld. From what I've read for this post, Aker was seen as present at, and as a representative of, the actual boundary between this world and the next, rather than mingling inside the areas associated with the netherworld. As in most ancient cultures, boundaries, and the gateways found on them, had strong magical connotations in ancient Egypt. Controlling them was vital in order to both protect the Pharaoh and to add to his power.

Further, while Anubis was associated with the west, where the sun sets, I don't know that he was ever associated with the rising sun of the east. And the Pharaoh was never viewed as an incarnation of Anubis, as he was with Horus. Since Aker-associated "akhet" was implied by the solstice sunset between the two larger pyramids at Giza, as well as by the Egyptian name for the Great Pyramid, my guess would be that the lion's association with the rising and setting sun, as well as with kingship and Horus, would trump Anubis's association with the setting sun of the west.

Of course an argument against this might be that, if lion-bodied, there is only one Sphinx, while Aker was symbolized by two lions. But Aker's lions were not the only ones linked with kingship.

I found the bit about lionish Aker removing the cause of death from the deceased oddly reminiscent of Aesop's Androcles and the Lion. "Androcles" means "the glory of man." In that story the roles are reversed: a man removes a thorn from the paw of a lion, thus soothing him to such a degree that the lion abandons his deadly ways. Interesting parallel, eh?

There was one more bit about Aker that relates to post-Egyptian times:

As the Egyptians believed that the gates of the morning and evening were guarded by Aker, they sometimes placed twin statues of lions at the doors of their palaces and tombs. This was to guard the households and tombs from evil spirits and other malevolent beings. This practice was adopted by the Greeks and Romans, and is still unknowingly followed by some today. Unlike most of the other Egyptian deities, the worship of Aker remained popular well into the Greco-Roman era. Aker had no temples of his own like the main gods in the Egyptian religion, since he was more connected to the primeval concepts of the very old earth powers.

  This is the double-lion image of Aker. Note that it incorporates the "akhet" hieroglyph.
 

Possibly the theories you showed us apply to a time when the Sun had more importance than in earlier Egypt, but a lot of writers maintain the sphinx is pretty ancient.

I mentioned the theories of Vasil Dobrev, the supporter of Djedhefre as builder of the Sphinx, prior to Khafre building his own pyramid. Though I now disagree with that portion of Dobrev's theory, he also pointed out that Djedhefre was the first Egyptian ruler to incorporate the name "Re" (aka Ra) into his name as Pharaoh. He did so in such a way as to mean "Son of Ra." This was when the sun and its primary representative gods, Ra and Horus, were put at the head of the pantheon for the first time.

If the Sphinx were from an earlier time, then it might well be associated with something other than the sun. As I said in my last Egypt post, no one is entirely sure what the Sphinx meant to those who built it. Given the archeological and geological evidence of when it was built, though, along with the mythological associations of the lion (of which I had not previously been aware), I choose to recognize the attribution of the Sphinx's creation to Khafre and its likely symbolism to be that of the lion that guards the horizons' entrances to the netherworld.



Moving on to the discussion of time-keeping...
"I'm late, I'm late, for a very important date..."
From http://www.googobits.com/articles/2194-the-origins-and-history-of-timekeeping.html, via Barmy:

it was not until about 3500 BCE in ancient Egypt that a system for breaking up the day into smaller units first developed. In order to keep better track of time, the Egyptians separated day and night each into 12 units, resulting in an ultimate 24 hour day.

The hours of the day were not even from one day to the next under this system, however....

So, regularly spaced pillars would not serve a flexible view of time.  More problematic is the use of twenty-four markers when the sun isn't visible during the night.

Thanks for the info on how the Egyptians viewed time. I had not known that! And while I'd known about water clocks in medieval Europe, I'd totally forgotten about them existing in ancient Egypt... just like most of the world did until medieval times.
Durr...

So, regularly spaced pillars would not serve a flexible view of time...

I don't feel the use of uneven hours would necessarily preclude the Egyptians from representing each of the hours with one column. Remember, these are the people who put a tiny false door on the face of a tomb so that part of the deceased's spirit could come and go. The spirit portion was not tied to the body when it did so, yet they still used a door-shaped emblem with the width to height proportions of a standing human to represent comings and goings. This establishes a precedent for an inequitably sized, symbolic use of an otherwise normal building component. Matching a regular sized element, a column, to irregular natural elements, like variable hours, seems plausible as well.

Also, the spacing could simply have been a matter of accommodating the properties of the building material; stone is not known for tensile strength and does not lend itself to much variation. Also, Egyptian design is well known for its use of regularized grids. Spaces and elements within a single structure could be found in multiples or fractions of a basic unit (as with the tiny false door emblems), but those spaces and elements would not have occurred on a sliding scale as they would have to in order to directly represent the varying hours of the day.

I'm also reminded that there are approximately 12 lunar months in the year. Perhaps one set of 12 columns referred to this world while the other 12 referred to the netherworld. But I'll defer to the experts on equating the columns with the hours of the day.

The description of decan stars was extremely interesting. They, too, could well have been the basis for the columns in the Valley Temple, and possibly for other Egyptian uses of number symbolism. What caught my attention was that the second use for the akhet symbol...

The first of three seasons of the ancient Egyptian calendar--the inundation season. This was the time of the Egyptian calendar year when the Nile waters flooded farmland and brought much nutrients to the tilled soil. The Akhet season ran approximately from mid-July to mid-November in Ancient Egypt, and was followed by Peret and Shemu.

...accounts for the Egyptians having three seasons of four months each, while the following...

A "decan" star was a star which rose just before sunrise at the beginning of a 10-day "decade" in Ancient Egypt. 36 "decan" stars marked the passage of a year for the Egyptians (or 36 10 day periods). During summer nights, 12 decan stars rose - one for each "hour".

...accounts for 36 stars to mark a year and 12 stars to mark the hours of the night.

Any of these show how the number 12 might have come about as the basis for time keeping, as well as the basis for magical numerology. One other source of "12" occurred to me as well. I'm sure someone has to have thought of it before, but I don't recall hearing about it. Yes, we have 5 fingers on each hand and, yes, that would seem to imply "10" as the basis for a counting system. But if you also include the joined five fingers, the fist, as a unit, then each hand gives 6, rather than 5. Together, both hands give you 12.



Moving on once again...
The Wonderful World of Books

Continued reading of 'Prisoners of Shangri La' has made me aware of the level of misinformation to which we fall prey,or shall I say the level of wishful thinking...

We seem to have a need for these contemporary interpretations, just as we needed to dig into 'Harry Potter' for all the esoteric hints about the spirit world.

More to comment on in a moment, but this is a good spot for a wonderful quote from the March/April, 2010 issue of Archaeology magazine:

Big unsolved enigmas attract especially megalomaniac amateurs and dilettantes, most of whom have no background knowledge of, let alone training in, the scholarly fields required in such a study.

*whistles long and low* Hey, did you guys know we're "megalomaniac amateurs and dilettantes"? I don't know about you, but I sure have fun with it.

I'm still making connections, for example, the first presenter of the Book of the Dead -

After graduating from Stanford, Wentz went to Jesus College Oxford to study Celtic folklore.  It was there that he added a family name from his mother's side to his surname and became Walter Evans-Wentz.

So of course I thought of Lily Evans. Is it too far a reach to think Ms Rowling drew from such a writer, one who was strongly linked with Theosophy?

I don't believe it's too far a reach at all, not the least reason being I quoted Evans-Wentz in my one and only published original HP editorial. I ended "A Celtic Solution to Harry's Conundrum" with this:

Whatever the means, I have no doubt that Harry will indeed vanquish the Dark Lord and rid the world of Voldemort for good. I have great hopes that afterwards Harry will have a long, happy, and richly deserved life in which to enjoy a peaceful existence with his remaining loved ones. For as W.Y. Evans-Wentz wrote in 1911 in "The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries," "...to have passed from the realm of mortal existence to the Realm of the Dead, of the Fairy-Folk... and back again, with full human consciousness all the while, was equivalent to having gained the Philosopher's Stone, the Elixir of Life... which confers triumph over Death and unending happiness."

How could Ms. Rowling not be familiar with this quote? I was lucky to stumble across it during my research, but given her acknowledged fondness for books of all sorts, that she likely read (what I now know to be) an early and popular exposé on British myth sounds like a gimme.

Whether or not she was familiar with Mr. Lopez's work in particular, the concept of a changeling is found in Celtic folklore as well as Tibetan practice. The Fey were thought to leave a changeling, a "duplicate," when they wished to whisk a human baby off to live in their world. Perhaps some enterprising Celts thought to fool them at their own game and leave a changeling of their own for the Fey to kidnap. (Woe be to them, though, if they were ever found out! ) Though I can't think of any specific examples offhand, I also seem to recall stolen people or property being ransomed back from the Fey and the magical beings of other mythologies by giving them something they viewed as more valuable, even if it was not valuable to the humans giving it up (or was even an outright fake). If memory serves and this practice is, in fact, found in various mythologies/folklore, Ms. Rowling would not necessarily need to have read of it in Mr. Lopez's work.

Another example of similar beliefs...

...if the la mountain is dug into the person will fall ill. In an attempt to conquer a certain demoness, the Tibetan epic hero Gesar of Ling cuts down her la tree and empties her la lake; he fails because he does not kill her la sheep. The identity of these external la is thus commonly kept secret, and portable abodes of the la, usually a precious object of some kind (often a turquoise), are placed in special receptacles and hidden by the person who shares the la.

Along with the definite parallel to Voldemort's horcruxes, I see a similarity between a "dug into" la mountain causing illness and the case of dryads in Greek mythology.

...dryads are specifically the nymphs of oak trees, though the term has come to be used for all tree nymphs in general. "Such deities are very much overshadowed by the divine figures defined through poetry and cult," Walter Burkert remarked of Greek nature deities. They were normally considered to be very shy creatures, except around the goddess Artemis, who was known to be a friend to most nymphs....

Dryads, like all nymphs, were supernaturally long-lived and tied to their homes, but some were a step beyond most nymphs. These were the hamadryads who were an integral part of their trees, such that if the tree died, the hamadryad associated with it died as well. For these reasons, dryads and the Greek gods punished any mortals who harmed trees without first propitiating the tree-nymphs.

I had thought all dryads were integral to their trees, but apparently not. Those who were, though, seem similar to me to the la items mentioned by Mr. Lopez. I assume that in Tibet, if the la item is utterly destroyed, then death might ensue rather than illness.

As to the secretive aura around la items, this reminded me of the Native American practice of keeping the identity of an individual's totem animal secret. Only if it gives its permission may it be discussed with others.

As the the la concept in general, Bravo Barmy on noting the parallels between this scenario and Mr. Lockhart's... unfortunate... demise! And bravo on having something more connected to HP to say than I've had of late.


Next Time...
Possibly more thoughts on Lascaux. Depends on if I can follow the copy-sky/paste-in-cave instructions Paradox provided!

Also, I've just now picked up Fred Gettings's book on astrology again, mostly because I'd forgotten about it once it became buried in The Pile. A few of the passages I highlighted in that one actually relate to Harry Potter!

What's not in the pile, and which are apparently in hiding, are both volumes of Robert Graves' Greek Mythology. Along with being back here now, and back at theorizing for the final season of Lost, which began February 2, as well as watching the Olympics, I'm needing more than ever to really get to some housework, if only to find those books.

Eeehh... who needs clean clothes and dishes?!

[Fostwolf]

I'm not trying to start anything new, however some of the last posts have got me wondering. Our ancient ancestors spent a good deal of time studying the skys, but I have never run into any stories, legends or myths about why the sun and moon are large when they rise, get smaller while they cross the sky and then get larger again when they set. I was wondering if any of you have.
 There have been a lot of interesting post lately. I have a copy of " A Canticle for Liebowitz", but haven't read it in a long time. I'll have to dig it out again.

[Barmy Codger]

Fostwolf, in December 1975 I drove from Vancouver across Canada to Quebec, a rather foolhardy undertking, but not only was I favoured with a Chinook (unseasonably warm winds, like what plague the winter games here now), the skies were clear day and night and the moon was full.  On the prairies it rose early in the evening as big and red as the sun.  It was a remarkable sight, and I agree that it's odd that the change in size doesn't figure in myths.  Myself, I wonder that there has never been a god of gravity.   Emerald gave me a book for Christmas, 'Beyond the Blue Horizon -Myths & Legends of the Sun, Moon, Stars & Planets', by E C Krupp.  I looked for any mention of the size changes at rising and setting of sun and moon, but found none.  No mention of mushrooms, either, but one can't expect an astronomer to jeopardize his career.

--Canticle for Leibowitz--

I had planned on posting here more about the story.  My posts are already too long so I put the results into the essay section.  There are two things that have been on my mind since then.  One is that the novel doesn't seem to have the usual transformation of a character, unless we take it to be the entire human race.  My premise has always been that it's the reader who is transformed by the story, so I guess that will have to apply here.

The other thing is that this makes at least three stories where the Catholic church is the structure which stands for the Tradition, or more precisely the Tradition is located in one of its churches or monasteries --namely Notre Dame cathedral in Hugo's novel, the abbey in Eco's 'Name of the Rose', and the monastery of  St Leibowitz.  In other stories there are representative structures, like Hogwarts, but having it in the Church raises a question.  We've assumed the Tradition involves heretical ideas which the Church has suppressed yet in these three stories the Tradition is the Church or part of the Church.  I've thought about A.E Waite's conviction that there was a second church, a secret one based on John rather than Peter.  So maybe they're suggesting the Tradition is a thread that runs through the Church itself.  Another simple explanation is that the Church is just another representative of our current zodiacal age which arose and will perish.  Or, if we guess that the writers are being subversive, and we keep in mind that like the sacred mushroom, the secret is supposedly open and everywhere, yet hidden, then it's a bit of a joke to put the secret within the Church itself.  I'm sorry but I can't put this more clearly.  It''s an idea I'm trying to sort out.  One thought that came out of it is that perhaps the Church's suppression of heresies was never about religion but simply about political power.

--Anubis worrying the question like a bone--

It's gratifying to know that my post prompted you to think about Egypt. Not so much that it made you nervous!

I guess I should start using smileys.  We've known each other quite a while, Emerald  I think of you with affection, not apprehension.

There are several places discusing the sphinx being anubis, and of course several disagreements.  Here's one page which shows an illustration of the sphinx with an outline of anubis' head as it might have looked --http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread454348/pg1  And what should we make of an animal with the head of a man, while the gods are shown as humans with the heads of animals?

This page- http://www.sacredsites.com/africa/egypt/sphinx.html  -favours ideas from the megalomaniacs -

While a few stubborn Egyptologists still maintain that the Sphnix was constructed in the 4th Dynasty by the Pharaoh Chephren (Khafre), an accumulating body of evidence, both archaeological and geological, indicates that the Sphinx is far older than the 4th Dynasty, and was only restored by Chephren during his reign. There are no inscriptions on the Sphinx, or on any of the temples connected to it that, that offer evidence of construction by Chepren, yet the so-called 'Inventory Stele' (uncovered on the Giza plateau in the 19th century) tells that the Pharaoh Cheops - Chephren's predecessor - ordered a temple built alongside the Sphinx, meaning of course that the Sphinx was already there, and thus could not have been constructed by Chephren.

A much greater age for the Sphinx has been suggested by R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz, based upon geological considerations. Schwaller de Lubicz observed, and recent geologists (such as Robert Schoch, Professor of Geology at Boston University) have confirmed, that the extreme erosion on the body of the Sphinx could not be the result of wind and sand, as has been universally assumed, but rather was the result of water. Geologists agree that in the distant past Egypt was subjected to severe flooding. Wind erosion cannot take place when the body of the Sphinx is covered by sand, and the Sphinx has been in this condition for nearly all of the last five thousand years - since the alleged time of its 4th Dynasty construction. Furthermore, if wind-blown sand had indeed caused the deep erosion of the Sphinx, we would expect to find evidence of such erosion on other Egyptian monuments built of similar materials and exposed to the wind for a similar length of time. Yet the fact of the matter is, that even on structures that have had more exposure to the wind-blown sand, there are minimal effects of erosion, the sand having done little more than scour clean the surface of the dressed stones.

Additional evidence for the great age of the Sphinx may perhaps be indicated by the astronomical significance of its shape, being that of a lion. Roughly every two thousand years (2160 to be exact), and because of the precession of the equinoxes, the sun on the vernal equinox rises against the stellar background of a different constellation. For the past two thousand years that constellation has been Pisces the Fish, symbol of the Christian age. Prior to the age of Pisces it was the age of Aries the Ram, and before that it was the age of Taurus the Bull. It is interesting to note that during the first and second millennia BC, approximately the Age of Aries, ram-oriented iconography was common in Dynastic Egypt, while during the Age of Taurus the Bull-cult arose in Minoan Crete. Perhaps the builders of the Sphinx likewise used astrological symbolism in designing their monumental sculpture. The geological findings discussed above indicate that the Sphinx seems to have been sculpted sometime before 10,000 BC, and this period coincides with the Age of Leo the Lion, which lasted from 10,970 to 8810 BC.

So the age of the sphinx may be greater than your quotes suggest, but that makes it more likely to be a lion.  But then, there is a page- http://www.ianlawton.com/as3.htm -with a geologist's dissenting opinion --

When geologist Robert Schoch and pyramid-power proponent John Anthony West first proposed their radical reinterpretation of the age of Giza's Great Sphinx in 1991-92, I was the first geologist to challenge their geological arguments. My position was then, and still is, that the degradation pattern seen on the limestone of the Sphinx's body and enclosure walls are consistent with a Fourth Dynasty date for this monument. I, thus, see no reason to doubt that the Sphinx was carved as part of king Khafre's funerary complex.

--
The quarry walls have probably been buried under sand for most of their history and so have been weathered in the same way as the Sphinx's body; that is, by a combination of subsurface (wet sand) and subaerial weathering.

The dissent is clear and dispassionate.  As usual I don't know what to think, but the doubt begins with the web page which is called 'Rational Spirituality -Evidence not Faith'.  I'm all for evidence but does it have to be rational?

I don't feel the use of uneven hours would necessarily preclude the Egyptians from representing each of the hours with one column.

After the research I don't either, but the original statement was 'Ricke further argued that each pillar represented an hour in the sun's daily circuit.'  As I understand it, we can have a twenty-four hour Egyptian day -of course they could add twelve and twelve--but at night the hours are not associated with the sun's circuit.  At night the sun is simply in the underworld.  It's logical for us to assume that the sun's travel from sunset to sunrise can be marked with the same intervals as in the day, but what did the Egyptians assume?  The book 'Beyond the Blue Horizon' says that the ancient Egyptians thought the sun was reborn every morning.  Anyway, the important thing seems to be the evidence for alignments of the sphinx and the pyramid with the sun and that would not have changed over time.  What changed are alignments with the stars, and if these were important,  then it helps the argument that the sphinx must be from the age of Leo.

in my one and only published original HP editorial.

I followed the link and read your editorial.  This was the first time I had returned to CoS since we left it.  Not impressed with the pop-up ad but the site is pretty flashy.  Something like revisiting my hometown.  A while ago I goofed big time and lost a lot of material when I re-did the computer system.  It's good to see that our discussion is still archived there.  I'll retrieve it once more.

---Aker--

I found the most interesting information under an entry for Aker

To me worshiping the horizon seems as strange as worshiping gravity.  But after reading the text from your link what I think is important is that the horizon marked the separation of the mundane with the cosmos.  At certain times of the year souls would be able to ascend or descend from the stars and these were times when the right constellations touched the horizon.  But the horizon also is entrance to the underworld.  This might distinguish Aker from Anubis.

--Scapegoats--

Bravo Barmy on noting the parallels between this scenario and Mr. Lockhart's... unfortunate... demise!

Thank you.  Lockhart as an exchange for Ginny's soul makes for a very sophisticated bit of writing from Ms Rowling.

--and finally--
 'rituals are nothing more than enacted symbols.'  -Goblet D'Alviella 'The Mysteries of Eleusis'

[Paradox]

Göbekli Tepe

Another article on Göbekli Tepe with some new, very interesting information. It appears that the site is sacred or ceremonial in nature, and predates all signs of civilization, including agriculture. As such, the archaeologist working on the site suggests that the common view of human development is wrong:

The site isn't just old, it redefines old: the temple was built 11,500 years ago—a staggering 7,000 years before the Great Pyramid, and more than 6,000 years before Stonehenge first took shape. The ruins are so early that they predate villages, pottery, domesticated animals, and even agriculture—the first embers of civilization. In fact, Schmidt thinks the temple itself, built after the end of the last Ice Age by hunter-gatherers, became that ember—the spark that launched mankind toward farming, urban life, and all that followed.

Göbekli Tepe—the name in Turkish for "potbelly hill"—lays art and religion squarely at the start of that journey. After a dozen years of patient work, Schmidt has uncovered what he thinks is definitive proof that a huge ceremonial site flourished here, a "Rome of the Ice Age," as he puts it, where hunter-gatherers met to build a complex religious community.
...
Schmidt's thesis is simple and bold: it was the urge to worship that brought mankind together in the very first urban conglomerations. The need to build and maintain this temple, he says, drove the builders to seek stable food sources, like grains and animals that could be domesticated, and then to settle down to guard their new way of life. The temple begat the city.
...
This theory reverses a standard chronology of human origins, in which primitive man went through a "Neolithic revolution" 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. In the old model, shepherds and farmers appeared first, and then created pottery, villages, cities, specialized labor, kings, writing, art, and—somewhere on the way to the airplane—organized religion.

And my earlier assessment of the 'tau crosses' as being reconstructions was wrong; they are apparently original; they are well preserved because the site was deliberately buried at some point- apparently when agriculture began.

I can't shake the mushroom imagery in these crosses, and there is some extra ammunition later in the story, with a mention of poisonous creatures- spiders, scorpions, and snakes- carved into the rock throughout the site. There is also this:

The T shapes appear to be towering humanoids but have no faces, hinting at the worship of ancestors or humanlike deities. "In the Bible it talks about how God created man in his image," says Johns Hopkins archeologist Glenn Schwartz. Göbekli Tepe "is the first time you can see humans with that idea, that they resemble gods."

Or, the god living in the mushroom, who provides the visions. However, the most common carvings were carrion birds, leading the archaeologist to the conclusion that Göbekli Tepe is an excarnation site.


Moonrise, Moon Set

Fostwolf:
I have never run into any stories, legends or myths about why the sun and moon are large when they rise, get smaller while they cross the sky and then get larger again when they set.

That is an excellent question, one that gets more curious as I think it over. I regret I have little to add. There is some mariner's lore on the subject, mostly related to weather forecasting. But I wonder if this phenomenon is accounted in other tales, in which dawn and dusk are important, rather than myths of the sun and moon per se.

I did find this Navajo story, The Sun, Moon and Stars, which seems to skim close to the matter by having the sun and moon fastened to the sky, above tall mountains, before they are sent to move across the heavens. The story is replete with symbolism, and is well worth your time. It even mentions Canopus (associated with Coyote), which we have seen is a possible candidate for Sirius' companion star in Egyptian lore. Interestingly, in the story Navajo laws are associated with the stars.

There are many more stories on the main page, "Native American Legends, Myths and Lore.

World-wide, rabbits are regularly associated with the moon; it may be imagined that the moon goes down the rabbit hole at the end of the night.

[Barmy Codger]

Nice illustration in your signature, Paradox.

--Dead Is Dead --(or --Blame It On The Olympics)--

My recent reading continues to be science fiction, so I have little to bring to the discussion.  My posts generally are the ideas I find in books and I regret that they don't amount to something better and aren't what encourages conversation.

The little book I was reading about the Eleusinian Mysteries had a quote which went something like --'Initiation is dying.  Dying is initiation.'  Those simple words have shifted my perspective and the new view needs sorting out.  Instead of being the subject of detached interest, initiation suddenly becomes the fate of all of us.  Rather than making spirit journeys and returning as shamans do, we all will make a spirit journey which has no escape --unless the way lies in the conquest of death so often mentioned.  I'll be paying closer attention to the subject.

Exploring the idea a bit I searched internet for 'little death', finding to my surprise that it refers to orgasm -'le petite mort', something which I hadn't known or had forgotten.  It's a natural use for the term because ecstasy is the soul's leaving the body.  Further searching of some sort led me to an interview with Michael Harner who has written a lot about shamanism and the use of entheogens.  http://www.shamanism.org/articles/article16.html

What shamans discover is consistent with much of the Perennial Philosophy. I think there’s an unfortunate tendency among some scholars and writers to consider shamanism as primitive. But the hypothesis of a kind of evolutionary hierarchy in which the caste-based societies of the Indian subcontinent house the highest and most developed spirituality is somewhat naive. Once the spirits get their hands on you, it doesn’t matter what your original intention was—whether you were going to follow the Buddhist path, Christianity, or whatever. Once you give the spirits an opportunity to teach you, they’re going to give you what you need, not what you planned according to your culture’s program.

[Paradox]

Barmy:
Blame It On The Olympics

I have been in a rather foul retrospective mood this past few weeks, and I willingly blame at least some of it on the Olympics since I was a first a skater, then a coach, for a period of roughly twenty years. There are both good and bad memories in there, yet the Olympics seem to have brought mostly bad ones to mind.

But this funk goes well beyond nostalgia, I'm afraid; "events surrounding me" are at a turning point, and I have little certainty about where things are headed. So I seem to be looking backwards to find the last 'stable point' at which I can regroup. However, the last nine years on the boat appear to be that point, and things before that were enough worse that I cannot see using any of it as a "launching pad" to deal with whatever comes next. Complicating matters is the fact that the world does not seem to have much use for graybeards.


Questions About the Sacred

A comment from Barmy a few months ago has set a persistent question running through my mind, and I ask for suggestions as to the answer: how do we know if something is sacred?

I think this needs to be sub-divided into more specific questions:

1: Is there, or can there be, a non-recursive definition of 'sacred?' Word Net Web gives these definitions:

# concerned with religion or religious purposes; "sacred texts"; "sacred rites"; "sacred music"

# worthy of respect or dedication; "saw motherhood as woman's sacred calling"

# consecrated: made or declared or believed to be holy; devoted to a deity or some religious ceremony or use; "a consecrated church"; "the sacred mosque"; "sacred elephants"; "sacred bread and wine"; "sanctified wine"

# hallowed: worthy of religious veneration; "the sacred name of Jesus"; "Jerusalem's hallowed soil"

# (often followed by `to') devoted exclusively to a single use or purpose or person; "a fund sacred to charity"; "a morning hour sacred to study"; "a private office sacred to the President"

That seems fine on the surface, but as we have seen, Shamanism is not the same as 'religion' yet it is clear that Shamans have their own 'sacred' tools, their spirit allies, etc. At any rate, what these definitions mainly do is to kick the problem onto another word, 'religion,' without really solving anything. There's some heft to the last definition, of exclusive devotion, but the main problem is still unanswered; why is, say, a church obviously sacred- even if it is used for Bingo on Tuesdays- and a complex and expensive Ford sedan not- even if it is only used to go to Church on Sundays?

2: Is there anything that is always sacred? In other words, is some level of determination of sacredness physically built into us, or is sacredness always culturally or 'locally' determined? Why do all cultures (that I am aware of) have a category of items or practices that can be safely called 'sacred?'

3: How do we make the determination that something is sacred? For example, the HP books would not be called sacred, even though they deal with matters that have been held sacred for thousands of years.

4: This is the question I most had in mind: how do we tell if a communication is about a sacred matter? The HP books again are a good example; we here know that they are about sacred matters, but the average person probably does not see them as anything more than a 'ripping yarn.'


The Holy Grail

Thinking that the Deathly Hallows are obviously modeled after the Grail procession objects (and their Celtic corollaries), and that the Grail obviously symbolizes the attributes and effects of the sacred mushroom, I began looking more at the history of the Grail romances. While I still haven't managed to wade through all the damosels to finish Parzival, I did read this piece by our ol' buddy Philip Coppens. Coppens states that Swiss scholar André de Mandach has successfuly deciphered Parzival, and has reliably identified Parzival as one Rotrou II de Perche, lord of Val Perche (= perche-val = Percival), and the Fisher King as King Alfonso I of Aragon, cousin or uncle (Coppens isn't clear) to Rotrou II. De Mandach provides further details that flesh out the identification in a satisfying way, and identifies the Grail Castle as San Juan de la Peña.

However, deeper in the article Coppens mentions a series of paintings, located in a few Churches in Aragon:

Wolfram thought that the story of the Grail had its origins in Spain, which is where he cites his sources, whether he invented them or not. Canadian Professor of history Joseph Goering has identified a number of churches in Aragon that have frescoes of the Virgin Mary holding a fiery Grail. He points out that the oddity about this depiction is twofold. First, the area in which the Virgin was depicted with a fiery Grail is very small. Second, she was depicted with the Grail fifty years before Chrétien’s tale – when the Grail was officially not yet invented as a “literary device”.

The earliest example of a fresco depicting the Virgin with a Grail dates from December 1123 and is an apse painting in the church of St. Clement in Taüll. Here, the Grail is a dish-like object, filled with a red-orange material from which rays rise, as if the plate is hot. Goering noted that the position of the Virgin holding this Grail in her left hand, the rest of her arm obscured by her blue cloak, while making a hand gesture with the right hand, is equally unique in iconography.

Searching for a photo of this fresco, I found it at another Grail site, Grail Gate. Scroll down about 1/5th of the page and right-click "view image" or equivalent to see the enlargement. However, this very entertaining page works from Chrétien de Troyes' Le Conte du Graal to provide a different identification for Parzifal (Guifré el Pelós), and also argues for a source manuscript from which de Troyes worked.

Both suggestions have their merits, and both web pages are entertaining reading. However, the existence of Grail imagery in Aragonian Churches half a century prior to Le Conte du Graal is most intriguing, especially as that imagery is so similar to other sacred mushroom iconography we have looked at. It suggests the possibility that the "holy secret" passed down from Jesus to his Apostles was preserved by an organized group and carried to Aragon and/or Catalonia, where it remained under protection. This squares well with what we have already seen about northern Spain being where esoteric writings and practices from Moslem and Jewish sources first entered Europe.
 

[Emerald63]

Greetings!

Only a short comment for now, but I have a regular length post almost finished. I just wanted to say I'm sorry to hear you both (Barmy and Paradox) are feeling out of sorts. You both know, I hope, that I'm always available for private discussion if you like.

I also wanted to mention that this part of Barmy's recent Michael Harner quote reminded me of an old, purportedly humorous saying...

Once the spirits get their hands on you, it doesn’t matter what your original intention was—whether you were going to follow the Buddhist path, Christianity, or whatever. Once you give the spirits an opportunity to teach you, they’re going to give you what you need, not what you planned according to your culture’s program.

The saying? "We plan. God laughs." No doubt.