Mythic Gnosis
Meaning is born as 'Knowing'
from the symbol that was pregnant with it.
Myth always feels real – otherwise it would not be myth, and would have no effect.
I fully agree with it, only I would ask you to state explicitly that in my psychology the " mythological" aspect means "religious attitude."
~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 468
Meaning is born as 'Knowing'
from the symbol that was pregnant with it.
Myth always feels real – otherwise it would not be myth, and would have no effect.
I fully agree with it, only I would ask you to state explicitly that in my psychology the " mythological" aspect means "religious attitude."
~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 468
To K. W. Bash
Dear Colleague, 12 December 1958
Best thanks for your expose.
I fully agree with it, only I would ask you to state explicitly that in
my psychology the "mythological" aspect means "religious attitude."
You will surely have noticed in reading my writings that I do not
mince my words and clearly and expressly point out that the regard
for mythological parallels is conducive to a religious attitude.
The absence of a unitary view of the world is just what is deplored
by many people today and is said to be a sad loss, unlike earlier
times when people had a general Anschauung that was a bulwark
against the difficulties of life.
It was the Enlightenment which destroyed this bulwark by reducing the
unitary view to nothing but mythology. In its
modern usage mythology simply means "it is nothing," since
myths are unrealistic.
My whole endeavour has been to show that myth is something very real
because it connects us with the instinctive bases of our existence.
The astronomer Hoyle offers an instructive example in this respect:
he emphasizes that astronomy can't find any God and that
therefore there isn't one, yet writes a novel in which a cosmic cloud
represents this very God.
One has to be extremely careful in using the word "mythology"
as it brings you into head-on collision with the all-pervading infantile
arguments of the Enlightenment.
With cordial greetings,
Yours sincerely,
C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 468
Dear Colleague, 12 December 1958
Best thanks for your expose.
I fully agree with it, only I would ask you to state explicitly that in
my psychology the "mythological" aspect means "religious attitude."
You will surely have noticed in reading my writings that I do not
mince my words and clearly and expressly point out that the regard
for mythological parallels is conducive to a religious attitude.
The absence of a unitary view of the world is just what is deplored
by many people today and is said to be a sad loss, unlike earlier
times when people had a general Anschauung that was a bulwark
against the difficulties of life.
It was the Enlightenment which destroyed this bulwark by reducing the
unitary view to nothing but mythology. In its
modern usage mythology simply means "it is nothing," since
myths are unrealistic.
My whole endeavour has been to show that myth is something very real
because it connects us with the instinctive bases of our existence.
The astronomer Hoyle offers an instructive example in this respect:
he emphasizes that astronomy can't find any God and that
therefore there isn't one, yet writes a novel in which a cosmic cloud
represents this very God.
One has to be extremely careful in using the word "mythology"
as it brings you into head-on collision with the all-pervading infantile
arguments of the Enlightenment.
With cordial greetings,
Yours sincerely,
C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 468
Myths are clues to the spiritual potentialities of the human life. --Joseph Campbell
If, for instance, we were to create a myth, we would say that "God" has two aspects, spiritual and chthonic, or rather: material. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 341-343.
I am a psychologist and empiricist, and for me the meaning of life does not lie in annulling it for the sake of an alleged "possibility of transcendental existence" which nobody knows how to envisage. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 381.
There is no difference in principle between the animal and the human psyche. The kinship of the two is too obvious. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 372-373
If one can stay in the middle, know one is human, relate to both the god and the animal of the god, one is all right. One must remember, over the animal is the god, with the god is the god's animal. ~Carl Jung, J.E.T., Page 112.
Here the soul drew near to my ear and whispered, The Gods are even happy to turn a blind eye from time to time, since basically they know very well that it would be bad for life if there were no exception to eternal law. Hence their tolerance of the devil. ~Carl Jung; The Red Book; Scrutinies; Page 359.
The word ‘Myth’ originates from the Greek word mythos, meaning ‘word’ or ‘tale’ or ‘true narrative’, referring not only to the means by which it was transmitted but also to its being rooted in truth. Mythos was also closely related to the word myo, meaning ‘to teach’, or ‘to initiate into the mysteries’.
My point, once again, is not that those ancient people told literal stories and we are now smart enough to take them symbolically, but that they told them symbolically and we are now dumb enough to take them literally.
~John Dominic Crossan
If, for instance, we were to create a myth, we would say that "God" has two aspects, spiritual and chthonic, or rather: material. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 341-343.
I am a psychologist and empiricist, and for me the meaning of life does not lie in annulling it for the sake of an alleged "possibility of transcendental existence" which nobody knows how to envisage. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 381.
There is no difference in principle between the animal and the human psyche. The kinship of the two is too obvious. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 372-373
If one can stay in the middle, know one is human, relate to both the god and the animal of the god, one is all right. One must remember, over the animal is the god, with the god is the god's animal. ~Carl Jung, J.E.T., Page 112.
Here the soul drew near to my ear and whispered, The Gods are even happy to turn a blind eye from time to time, since basically they know very well that it would be bad for life if there were no exception to eternal law. Hence their tolerance of the devil. ~Carl Jung; The Red Book; Scrutinies; Page 359.
The word ‘Myth’ originates from the Greek word mythos, meaning ‘word’ or ‘tale’ or ‘true narrative’, referring not only to the means by which it was transmitted but also to its being rooted in truth. Mythos was also closely related to the word myo, meaning ‘to teach’, or ‘to initiate into the mysteries’.
My point, once again, is not that those ancient people told literal stories and we are now smart enough to take them symbolically, but that they told them symbolically and we are now dumb enough to take them literally.
~John Dominic Crossan
"Called or Uncalled the Gods are Present." –C. G. Jung
Our mind is the scene upon which the gods perform their plays, and
we don't know the beginning and we don't know the end.
~Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1306
If one waits long enough, one sees how the Gods all change into serpents and underworld dragons in the end. This is also the fate of the Logos: in the end it poisons us all. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 280.
Gods are personifications of unconscious contents, for they reveal themselves to us through the unconscious activity of the psyche. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Page 163.
Myths are original revelations of the preconscious psyche, involuntary statements about unconscious psychic happenings, and anything but allegories of physical processes. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 261.
Myth is the revelation of a divine life in man. It is not we who invent
myth, rather it speaks to us as a Word of God. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 340
An ethical fraternity, with its mythical Nothing, not infused by any
archaic-infantile driving force, is a pure vacuum and can never
evoke in man the slightest trace of that age-old animal power which
drives the migrating bird across the sea. . . .~Carl Jung, F/J Letters, Page 294.
In fact, it is unhygienic, because if you wipe out the mythology of a man, his entire historical sequence, he becomes a statistical average, a number; that is, he becomes nothing.
~Carl Jung, Evans Conversations, Page 36.
Only a mythical being has a range greater than man's.
How then can man form any definite opinions about himself? ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 4.
In early childhood we become acquainted with fairy tales and we learn mythology in school and in our later reading, we forget most of it in consciousness, but in the depths it is all carefully treasured. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 22Feb1935, Pages 192.
Carl Jung: “Mythology as a vital psychic phenomenon is as necessary as it is unavoidable.”
To Pastor Jakob Amstutz.
Dear Pastor Amstutz, Mammern, 23 May 1955
Meanwhile I have read your typescript, "Zum Verstandnis der Lehre vom werdenden Gotte."
It seems to me one more proof of the overweening gnostic tendency in philosophical thinking to ascribe to God qualities which are the product of our own anthropomorphic formulations.
Every metaphysical judgment is necessarily antino mian, since it transcends experience and must therefore be complemented by its counterposition.
If we describe God as "evolving," we must bear in mind at the same time that perhaps he is so vast that the process of cognition only moves along his contours, as it were, so that the attribute "evolving" applies more to it than to him.
Moreover, "evolving" as a quality of human cognition is far more probable empirically than the presumptuous projection of this quality on to a Being whose nature and scope transcend by definition our human stature in every respect.
Such projective statements are pure gnosticism.
I hold the contrary view that there are certain experiences (of the most varied kinds) which we characterize by the attribute "divine" without being able to offer the slightest proof that they are caused by a Being with any definite qualities.
Were such a proof possible, the Being that caused them could only have a finite nature and so, by definition, could not be God.
For me "God" is on the one hand a mystery that cannot be unveiled, and to which I must attribute only one quality: that it exists in the form of a particular psychic event which I feel to be numinous and cannot trace back to any sufficient cause lying within my field of experience.
On the other hand "God" is a verbal image, a predicate or mythologem founded on archetypal premises which underlie the structure of the psyche as images of the instincts ("instinctual patterns").
Like the instincts, these images possess a certain autonomy which enables them to break through, sometimes against the rational expectations of consciousness (thus accounting in part for their numinosity).
"God" in this sense is a biological, instinctual and elemental "model," an archetypal "arrangement" of individual, contemporary and historical contents, which, despite its numinosity, is and must be exposed to intellectual and moral criticism, just like the image of the "evolving" God or of Yahweh or the Summum Bonum or the Trinity.
"God" as a mythologem dominates your discussion, which casts a deceptive veil over the religious reality.
For the religious man it is an embarrassment to speak of the mystery which he can say nothing about anyway except paradoxes, and which he would rather conceal from profane eyes if he had anything in his hands at all that he could conceal from anybody.
It is unfortunately true: he has and holds a mystery in his hands and at the same time is contained in its mystery.
What can he proclaim? Himself or God? Or neither?
The truth is that he doesn't know who he is talking of, God or himself.
All talk of God is mythology, an archetypal pronouncement of archetypal causation.
Mythology as a vital psychic phenomenon is as necessary as it is unavoidable.
Metaphysical speculations that keep within the bounds of reason (in the wider sense) are therefore quite in place so long as one is aware of their anthropomorphism and their epistemological limitations.
The relatively autonomous life of the archetypes requires symbolic statements like the "evolving God" or the encyclicals Munificentissimus Deus and Ad Caeli Reginam or Cod as complexio oppositorum, etc., because collective psychic life is strongly influenced by changes in the "Pleroma" of the mundus archetypus (cf. Hitler's "saviour epidemic" and the worldwide Communist delusion of a Utopia peopled by human robots).
In this discussion, it seems to me, the gnostic danger of ousting the unknowable and incomprehensible and unutterable God by philosophems and mythologems must be clearly recognized, so that nothing is shoved in between human consciousness and the primordial numinous experience.
The mythologem of the Incarnation seems to serve this purpose indirectly, because it is symbolic. I hope you won't find my criticism of your discussion officious, but will take it rather as an expression of my sympathetic interest. For us psychotherapists, at any rate for those of them who have come to see how great is the importance of the religious attitude for psychic equilibrium, theological discussions are of the utmost practical value, because questions of this kind are directed to us more often than the layman imagines.
Yours sincerely,
C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 254-256.
Our fantasies are always hovering on the point of our insufficiency where a defect ought to be compensated. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 305-306.
The spiritual (as contrasted with the worldly) Messiah, Christ, Mithras, Osiris, Dionysos, Buddha are all visualizations or personifications of the irrepresentable archetype which, borrowing from Ezekiel and Daniel, I call the Anthropos. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 304-306.
Our mind is the scene upon which the gods perform their plays, and
we don't know the beginning and we don't know the end.
~Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1306
If one waits long enough, one sees how the Gods all change into serpents and underworld dragons in the end. This is also the fate of the Logos: in the end it poisons us all. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 280.
Gods are personifications of unconscious contents, for they reveal themselves to us through the unconscious activity of the psyche. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Page 163.
Myths are original revelations of the preconscious psyche, involuntary statements about unconscious psychic happenings, and anything but allegories of physical processes. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 261.
Myth is the revelation of a divine life in man. It is not we who invent
myth, rather it speaks to us as a Word of God. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 340
An ethical fraternity, with its mythical Nothing, not infused by any
archaic-infantile driving force, is a pure vacuum and can never
evoke in man the slightest trace of that age-old animal power which
drives the migrating bird across the sea. . . .~Carl Jung, F/J Letters, Page 294.
In fact, it is unhygienic, because if you wipe out the mythology of a man, his entire historical sequence, he becomes a statistical average, a number; that is, he becomes nothing.
~Carl Jung, Evans Conversations, Page 36.
Only a mythical being has a range greater than man's.
How then can man form any definite opinions about himself? ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 4.
In early childhood we become acquainted with fairy tales and we learn mythology in school and in our later reading, we forget most of it in consciousness, but in the depths it is all carefully treasured. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 22Feb1935, Pages 192.
Carl Jung: “Mythology as a vital psychic phenomenon is as necessary as it is unavoidable.”
To Pastor Jakob Amstutz.
Dear Pastor Amstutz, Mammern, 23 May 1955
Meanwhile I have read your typescript, "Zum Verstandnis der Lehre vom werdenden Gotte."
It seems to me one more proof of the overweening gnostic tendency in philosophical thinking to ascribe to God qualities which are the product of our own anthropomorphic formulations.
Every metaphysical judgment is necessarily antino mian, since it transcends experience and must therefore be complemented by its counterposition.
If we describe God as "evolving," we must bear in mind at the same time that perhaps he is so vast that the process of cognition only moves along his contours, as it were, so that the attribute "evolving" applies more to it than to him.
Moreover, "evolving" as a quality of human cognition is far more probable empirically than the presumptuous projection of this quality on to a Being whose nature and scope transcend by definition our human stature in every respect.
Such projective statements are pure gnosticism.
I hold the contrary view that there are certain experiences (of the most varied kinds) which we characterize by the attribute "divine" without being able to offer the slightest proof that they are caused by a Being with any definite qualities.
Were such a proof possible, the Being that caused them could only have a finite nature and so, by definition, could not be God.
For me "God" is on the one hand a mystery that cannot be unveiled, and to which I must attribute only one quality: that it exists in the form of a particular psychic event which I feel to be numinous and cannot trace back to any sufficient cause lying within my field of experience.
On the other hand "God" is a verbal image, a predicate or mythologem founded on archetypal premises which underlie the structure of the psyche as images of the instincts ("instinctual patterns").
Like the instincts, these images possess a certain autonomy which enables them to break through, sometimes against the rational expectations of consciousness (thus accounting in part for their numinosity).
"God" in this sense is a biological, instinctual and elemental "model," an archetypal "arrangement" of individual, contemporary and historical contents, which, despite its numinosity, is and must be exposed to intellectual and moral criticism, just like the image of the "evolving" God or of Yahweh or the Summum Bonum or the Trinity.
"God" as a mythologem dominates your discussion, which casts a deceptive veil over the religious reality.
For the religious man it is an embarrassment to speak of the mystery which he can say nothing about anyway except paradoxes, and which he would rather conceal from profane eyes if he had anything in his hands at all that he could conceal from anybody.
It is unfortunately true: he has and holds a mystery in his hands and at the same time is contained in its mystery.
What can he proclaim? Himself or God? Or neither?
The truth is that he doesn't know who he is talking of, God or himself.
All talk of God is mythology, an archetypal pronouncement of archetypal causation.
Mythology as a vital psychic phenomenon is as necessary as it is unavoidable.
Metaphysical speculations that keep within the bounds of reason (in the wider sense) are therefore quite in place so long as one is aware of their anthropomorphism and their epistemological limitations.
The relatively autonomous life of the archetypes requires symbolic statements like the "evolving God" or the encyclicals Munificentissimus Deus and Ad Caeli Reginam or Cod as complexio oppositorum, etc., because collective psychic life is strongly influenced by changes in the "Pleroma" of the mundus archetypus (cf. Hitler's "saviour epidemic" and the worldwide Communist delusion of a Utopia peopled by human robots).
In this discussion, it seems to me, the gnostic danger of ousting the unknowable and incomprehensible and unutterable God by philosophems and mythologems must be clearly recognized, so that nothing is shoved in between human consciousness and the primordial numinous experience.
The mythologem of the Incarnation seems to serve this purpose indirectly, because it is symbolic. I hope you won't find my criticism of your discussion officious, but will take it rather as an expression of my sympathetic interest. For us psychotherapists, at any rate for those of them who have come to see how great is the importance of the religious attitude for psychic equilibrium, theological discussions are of the utmost practical value, because questions of this kind are directed to us more often than the layman imagines.
Yours sincerely,
C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 254-256.
Our fantasies are always hovering on the point of our insufficiency where a defect ought to be compensated. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 305-306.
The spiritual (as contrasted with the worldly) Messiah, Christ, Mithras, Osiris, Dionysos, Buddha are all visualizations or personifications of the irrepresentable archetype which, borrowing from Ezekiel and Daniel, I call the Anthropos. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 304-306.
"Kore", Iona Miller
We are living in what the Greeks called the right time for a "metamorphosis of the gods," i.e. of the fundamental principles and symbols. This peculiarity of our time, which is certainly not of our conscious choosing, is the expression of the unconscious man within us who is changing. Coming generations will have to take account of this momentous transformation if humanity is not to destroy itself through the might of its own technology and science. ~Carl Jung; The Undiscovered Self; Page 110.
All ages before ours believed in gods in some form or other. Only an unparalleled impoverishment in symbolism could enable us to rediscover the gods as psychic factors, which is to say, as archetypes of the unconscious. No doubt this discovery is hardly credible as yet. ~Carl Jung; The Integration of the Personality p. 72
Philosophy can produce allegory but not genuine mythology, since this is far older.
It does, however, have affinities with philosophy through its budding philosophical ideas.
These ideas are then worked out in philosophy.
Their mythological aspect would amount to their involution.
But this never leads to mythology, only to allegory.
Philosophical interpretation and primordial image are always found side by side, as you quite rightly remark, for nothing promotes philosophical reflection as much as the experience of primordial images.
C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 553-554.
Myth is the natural and indispensable intermediate stage between
unconscious and conscious cognition. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 311.
The fairy tale is the great mother of the novel, and has even more universal validity than the most-avidly read novel of your time. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 262.
Astrology, like the collective unconscious with which psychology is concerned, consists of symbolic configurations: The "planets" are the gods, symbols of the powers of the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 175.
God always speaks mythologically.
If he didn't, he would reveal reason and science. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 9-10.
One is not just a Protestant or a Catholic but a human being with paganism still ingrained in his very bones. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 65-68.
Ideas of God are first of all myths, statements about things that are philosophically and scientifically indeterminable; that is, they are psychological objects which are amenable to discussion. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 65-68.
To be sure "Christ" gave the myth a new meaning for the man of antiquity. But when we still go on stressing the newness 2000 years later, we must point out what exactly is the news for us, which we haven't yet heard and understood. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 83-86
The ego has to acknowledge many gods before it attains the centre where no god helps it any longer against another god. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 257-264.
Mythology as a vital psychic phenomenon is as necessary as it is unavoidable. In this discussion, it seems to me, the gnostic danger of ousting the unknowable and incomprehensible and unutterable God by philosophems and mythologems must be clearly recognized, so that nothing is shoved in between human consciousness and the primordial numinous experience. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 254-256.
We are living in what the Greeks called the right time for a "metamorphosis of the gods," i.e. of the fundamental principles and symbols. This peculiarity of our time, which is certainly not of our conscious choosing, is the expression of the unconscious man within us who is changing. Coming generations will have to take account of this momentous transformation if humanity is not to destroy itself through the might of its own technology and science. ~Carl Jung; The Undiscovered Self; Page 110.
All ages before ours believed in gods in some form or other. Only an unparalleled impoverishment in symbolism could enable us to rediscover the gods as psychic factors, which is to say, as archetypes of the unconscious. No doubt this discovery is hardly credible as yet. ~Carl Jung; The Integration of the Personality p. 72
Philosophy can produce allegory but not genuine mythology, since this is far older.
It does, however, have affinities with philosophy through its budding philosophical ideas.
These ideas are then worked out in philosophy.
Their mythological aspect would amount to their involution.
But this never leads to mythology, only to allegory.
Philosophical interpretation and primordial image are always found side by side, as you quite rightly remark, for nothing promotes philosophical reflection as much as the experience of primordial images.
C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 553-554.
Myth is the natural and indispensable intermediate stage between
unconscious and conscious cognition. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 311.
The fairy tale is the great mother of the novel, and has even more universal validity than the most-avidly read novel of your time. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 262.
Astrology, like the collective unconscious with which psychology is concerned, consists of symbolic configurations: The "planets" are the gods, symbols of the powers of the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 175.
God always speaks mythologically.
If he didn't, he would reveal reason and science. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 9-10.
One is not just a Protestant or a Catholic but a human being with paganism still ingrained in his very bones. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 65-68.
Ideas of God are first of all myths, statements about things that are philosophically and scientifically indeterminable; that is, they are psychological objects which are amenable to discussion. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 65-68.
To be sure "Christ" gave the myth a new meaning for the man of antiquity. But when we still go on stressing the newness 2000 years later, we must point out what exactly is the news for us, which we haven't yet heard and understood. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 83-86
The ego has to acknowledge many gods before it attains the centre where no god helps it any longer against another god. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 257-264.
Mythology as a vital psychic phenomenon is as necessary as it is unavoidable. In this discussion, it seems to me, the gnostic danger of ousting the unknowable and incomprehensible and unutterable God by philosophems and mythologems must be clearly recognized, so that nothing is shoved in between human consciousness and the primordial numinous experience. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 254-256.
From the earliest societies to contemporary civilizations, genealogical methods have traced ancestries back to gods, animal totems, and legendary heroes. Originally the oral history narratives of clan or tribebequeathed the lineage. In ancient Sumeria, Babylon, Egypt, India and China, kings and heads of state claimed their rights to the throne through genealogy. The Old Testament recounts the "begats" of Adam, Noah and Abraham, and later the royal bloodline of the House of David. Muslims trace their descent from Mohammed, while the Greeks and Romans and Vikings linked their heritage to the gods. The importance of ancestry to soul appears in Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian genealogies. In Germanic folklore the soul was considered, in certain respects, something inherited.
Therefore a wise man does not want to be a charioteer, for he knows that will
and intention certainly attain goals but disturb the becoming of the future.
~Carl Jung to his Ego, Liber Novus, Page 311.
Therefore a wise man does not want to be a charioteer, for he knows that will
and intention certainly attain goals but disturb the becoming of the future.
~Carl Jung to his Ego, Liber Novus, Page 311.
"What is it we are questing for? It is the fulfillment of that which is potential in each of us. Questing for it is not an ego trip; it is an adventure to bring into fulfillment your gift to the world, which is yourself. There is nothing you can do that's more important than being fulfilled. You become a sign, you become a signal, transparent to transcendence; in this way you will find, live, become a realization of your own personal myth." --Josph Campbell
It helps to regard soul as an active intelligence, forming and plotting each person’s fate. Translators use “plot” to render the ancient Greek word mythos in English. The plots that entangle our souls and draw forth our characters are the great myths. That is why we need a sense of myth and knowledge of different myths to gain insight into our epic struggles, our misalliances, and our tragedies. Myths show the imaginative structures inside our messes, and our human characters can locate themselves against the background of the characters of myth. --James Hillman, Source: The Force of Character: And the Lasting Life, Pages: 11
“The concept of the archetype, which is an indispensable correlate of the idea of the collective unconscious, indicates the existence of definite forms in the psyche which seem to be present always and everywhere; collective, universal, and impersonal." –C. G. JUNG
Wotan not only represents the ecstatic experience fighting, but also the ecstatic joy of death.
‘Myths are not [...] detached stories. They are imaginative patterns, networks of powerful symbols that suggest particular ways of interpreting the world’ --Mary Midgley
According to Joseph Campbell, "Myth helps you to put your mind in touch with this experience of being alive. It tells you what the experience is. Marriage, for example. What is marriage? The myth tells you what it is. It's the reunion of the separated duad. Originally you were one. You are now two in the world, but the recognition of the spiritual identity is what marriage is. . . . When people get married because they think it's a long-time love affair, they'll be divorced very soon, because all love affairs end in disappointment. But marriage is recognition of a spiritual identity. . . . By marrying the right person, we reconstruct the image of the incarnate God, and that's what marriage is. The internal union of hieros gamos helps ensure the external reunion in a primary relationship. By discovering splits within myself and healing them, I prepare for a spiritual identity. Otherwise my partner ends up carrying the burden of Eve, Helena, Mary or Sophia to compensate for my unresolved anima issues."
Our fearsome gods have only changed their names: they now rhyme with—ism.
~Carl Jung; "The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious", 1928.
Myths which day has forgotten continue to be told by night, and powerful figures which consciousness has reduced to banality and ridiculous triviality are recognized again by poets and prophetically revived; therefore they can also be recognized "in changed form" by the thoughtful person. ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections, Page 282.
What we are to our inward vision, and what man appears to be sub specie aeternitatis, can only be expressed by way of myth. Myth is more individual and expresses life more precisely than does science. Science works with concepts of averages which are far too general to do justice to the subjective variety of an individual life. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 3.
I was driven to ask myself in all seriousness: ‘What is the myth you are living?
‘I found no answer to the question, and had to admit that I was not living a myth, or even in a myth, but rather in an uncertain cloud of theoretical possibilities which I was beginning to regard with increasing distrust…
So in the most natural way, I took it upon myself to get to know ‘my’ myth, and I regarded this as the task of tasks — for — so I told myself — how could I when treating my patients, make due allowance for the personal factor, for my personal equation, which is yet so necessary for a knowledge of the other person if I was unconscious of it.
~Carl Jung, Quoted by Shamdasani, 2009, p. 197)
One of our great dangers is that on the surface we do not recognize the important moments of our life and it is in such moments that these mythological themes rise from the depths and present themselves. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Page 192.
Myths are miracle tales . . . In the everyday world of consciousness such things hardly exist; that is to say, until 1933. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Page 66.
You are no Christian and no pagan, but a hospitable inhospitable one, a host of the Gods, a survivor, an eternal one, the father of all eternal wisdom. ~Carl Jung to Philemon, Liber Novus, Page 315.
Only a mythical being has a range greater than man's. How then can man form any definite opinions about himself? ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 4.
Myths are original revelations of the preconscious psyche, involuntary statements about unconscious psychic happenings… But religion is a vital link with psychic processes independent of and beyond consciousness, in the dark hinterland of the psyche. ~Carl Jung CW 9i, para. 261.
Because of its unconscious component the self is so far removed from the conscious mind that it can only be partially expressed by human figures; the other part of it has to be expressed by objective, abstract symbols. The human figures are father and son, mother and daughter, king and queen, god and goddess…. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, para. 314-315
It helps to regard soul as an active intelligence, forming and plotting each person’s fate. Translators use “plot” to render the ancient Greek word mythos in English. The plots that entangle our souls and draw forth our characters are the great myths. That is why we need a sense of myth and knowledge of different myths to gain insight into our epic struggles, our misalliances, and our tragedies. Myths show the imaginative structures inside our messes, and our human characters can locate themselves against the background of the characters of myth. --James Hillman, Source: The Force of Character: And the Lasting Life, Pages: 11
“The concept of the archetype, which is an indispensable correlate of the idea of the collective unconscious, indicates the existence of definite forms in the psyche which seem to be present always and everywhere; collective, universal, and impersonal." –C. G. JUNG
Wotan not only represents the ecstatic experience fighting, but also the ecstatic joy of death.
‘Myths are not [...] detached stories. They are imaginative patterns, networks of powerful symbols that suggest particular ways of interpreting the world’ --Mary Midgley
According to Joseph Campbell, "Myth helps you to put your mind in touch with this experience of being alive. It tells you what the experience is. Marriage, for example. What is marriage? The myth tells you what it is. It's the reunion of the separated duad. Originally you were one. You are now two in the world, but the recognition of the spiritual identity is what marriage is. . . . When people get married because they think it's a long-time love affair, they'll be divorced very soon, because all love affairs end in disappointment. But marriage is recognition of a spiritual identity. . . . By marrying the right person, we reconstruct the image of the incarnate God, and that's what marriage is. The internal union of hieros gamos helps ensure the external reunion in a primary relationship. By discovering splits within myself and healing them, I prepare for a spiritual identity. Otherwise my partner ends up carrying the burden of Eve, Helena, Mary or Sophia to compensate for my unresolved anima issues."
Our fearsome gods have only changed their names: they now rhyme with—ism.
~Carl Jung; "The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious", 1928.
Myths which day has forgotten continue to be told by night, and powerful figures which consciousness has reduced to banality and ridiculous triviality are recognized again by poets and prophetically revived; therefore they can also be recognized "in changed form" by the thoughtful person. ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections, Page 282.
What we are to our inward vision, and what man appears to be sub specie aeternitatis, can only be expressed by way of myth. Myth is more individual and expresses life more precisely than does science. Science works with concepts of averages which are far too general to do justice to the subjective variety of an individual life. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 3.
I was driven to ask myself in all seriousness: ‘What is the myth you are living?
‘I found no answer to the question, and had to admit that I was not living a myth, or even in a myth, but rather in an uncertain cloud of theoretical possibilities which I was beginning to regard with increasing distrust…
So in the most natural way, I took it upon myself to get to know ‘my’ myth, and I regarded this as the task of tasks — for — so I told myself — how could I when treating my patients, make due allowance for the personal factor, for my personal equation, which is yet so necessary for a knowledge of the other person if I was unconscious of it.
~Carl Jung, Quoted by Shamdasani, 2009, p. 197)
One of our great dangers is that on the surface we do not recognize the important moments of our life and it is in such moments that these mythological themes rise from the depths and present themselves. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Page 192.
Myths are miracle tales . . . In the everyday world of consciousness such things hardly exist; that is to say, until 1933. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Page 66.
You are no Christian and no pagan, but a hospitable inhospitable one, a host of the Gods, a survivor, an eternal one, the father of all eternal wisdom. ~Carl Jung to Philemon, Liber Novus, Page 315.
Only a mythical being has a range greater than man's. How then can man form any definite opinions about himself? ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 4.
Myths are original revelations of the preconscious psyche, involuntary statements about unconscious psychic happenings… But religion is a vital link with psychic processes independent of and beyond consciousness, in the dark hinterland of the psyche. ~Carl Jung CW 9i, para. 261.
Because of its unconscious component the self is so far removed from the conscious mind that it can only be partially expressed by human figures; the other part of it has to be expressed by objective, abstract symbols. The human figures are father and son, mother and daughter, king and queen, god and goddess…. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, para. 314-315
Walter Crane - The Roll of Fate
The collective unconscious…appears to consist of mythological motifs or primordial images, for which reason the myths of all nations are its real exponents. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Par. 325.
Primal or original. (See also participation mystique.)
Every civilized human being, however high his conscious development, is still an archaic man at the deeper levels of his psyche.["Archaic Man," CW 10, par. 105]
In anthropology, the term archaic is generally descriptive of primitive psychology.
Jung used it when referring to thoughts, fantasies and feelings that are not consciously differentiated.
Archaism attaches primarily to the fantasies of the unconscious, i.e., to the products of unconscious fantasy activity which reach consciousness.
An image has an archaic quality when it possesses unmistakable mythological parallels. Archaic, too, are the associations-by-analogy of unconscious fantasy, and so is their symbolism.
The relation of identity with an object, or participation mystique, is likewise archaic. Concretism of thought and feeling is archaic; also compulsion and inability to control oneself (ecstatic or trance state, possession, etc.).
Fusion of the psychological functions, of thinking with feeling, feeling with sensation, feeling with intuition, and so on, is archaic, as is also the fusion of part of a function with its counterpart. --Jung, ["Definitions," CW 6, par. 684.]
You are no Christian and no pagan, but a hospitable inhospitable one, a host of the Gods, a survivor, an eternal one, the father of all eternal wisdom.
~Carl Jung to Philemon, Liber Novus, Page 315.
The collective unconscious…appears to consist of mythological motifs or primordial images, for which reason the myths of all nations are its real exponents. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Par. 325.
Primal or original. (See also participation mystique.)
Every civilized human being, however high his conscious development, is still an archaic man at the deeper levels of his psyche.["Archaic Man," CW 10, par. 105]
In anthropology, the term archaic is generally descriptive of primitive psychology.
Jung used it when referring to thoughts, fantasies and feelings that are not consciously differentiated.
Archaism attaches primarily to the fantasies of the unconscious, i.e., to the products of unconscious fantasy activity which reach consciousness.
An image has an archaic quality when it possesses unmistakable mythological parallels. Archaic, too, are the associations-by-analogy of unconscious fantasy, and so is their symbolism.
The relation of identity with an object, or participation mystique, is likewise archaic. Concretism of thought and feeling is archaic; also compulsion and inability to control oneself (ecstatic or trance state, possession, etc.).
Fusion of the psychological functions, of thinking with feeling, feeling with sensation, feeling with intuition, and so on, is archaic, as is also the fusion of part of a function with its counterpart. --Jung, ["Definitions," CW 6, par. 684.]
You are no Christian and no pagan, but a hospitable inhospitable one, a host of the Gods, a survivor, an eternal one, the father of all eternal wisdom.
~Carl Jung to Philemon, Liber Novus, Page 315.
Myths are the earliest form of science.
~Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections.
Mythology is the most archaic and profound record we have of mankind's essential spirit and nature. As far back as we are able to trace the origins of our species, we find myth and myth-making as the fundamental language through which man relates to life's mystery and fashions meaning from his experiences. The world of myth has its own laws and its own reality. Instead of concepts and facts that make logical sense, we find patterns of irrational imagery whose meaning must be discerned or experienced by the participant-observer. Discovering these patterns of meaning is what Jung meant by the symbolic approach to religion, myth, and dream.
The mythic image is not to be taken literally and concretely as it would be in the belief-system of a particular religion, nor is it to be dismissed as 'mere illusion,' as often happens in scientific circles. Instead, we must approach myth symbolically as revealed eternal 'truths' about mankind's psychic existence — about the reality of the psyche. 'Once upon a time' does not mean 'once' in history but refers to events that occur in eternal time, always and everywhere. http://www.cgjungny.org/d/d_mythpsyche.html
You can take away a man's gods, but only to give him others in return.
--Carl Jung (The Undiscovered Self, 1958)
If tendencies towards disassociation were not inherent in the human psyche, parts never would have been split off; in other words, neither spirits nor gods would ever have come to exist. ~Carl Jung, The Secret of the Golden Flower, Pages 109-110.
"One of the functions of mythology is to present an image of the cosmos in such a way that it becomes the carrier of this mystical realization, so that wherever you look it’s as though you are looking at an icon, a holy picture, and the walls of space and time open out into the deep dimension of mystery, which is a dimension within ourselves, as well as out there.
"This dimension can open through the science of today even more wonderfully than it opened through the science of the second millennium B.C.. There is absolutely no conflict between science and the religious mood or the mythological realization—but there is a conflict between the science of the twentieth century A.D. and the twentieth century B.C.. This is what we are getting in our religion, because the whole thing became petrified in the fourth century at the time of Theodosius when the authority of Byzantium came down with St. Augustine to establish the beliefs that had to be accepted. From this came the petrifaction in our tradition and the split between the scientific and the religious view."
--Joseph Campbell, Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine
~Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections.
Mythology is the most archaic and profound record we have of mankind's essential spirit and nature. As far back as we are able to trace the origins of our species, we find myth and myth-making as the fundamental language through which man relates to life's mystery and fashions meaning from his experiences. The world of myth has its own laws and its own reality. Instead of concepts and facts that make logical sense, we find patterns of irrational imagery whose meaning must be discerned or experienced by the participant-observer. Discovering these patterns of meaning is what Jung meant by the symbolic approach to religion, myth, and dream.
The mythic image is not to be taken literally and concretely as it would be in the belief-system of a particular religion, nor is it to be dismissed as 'mere illusion,' as often happens in scientific circles. Instead, we must approach myth symbolically as revealed eternal 'truths' about mankind's psychic existence — about the reality of the psyche. 'Once upon a time' does not mean 'once' in history but refers to events that occur in eternal time, always and everywhere. http://www.cgjungny.org/d/d_mythpsyche.html
You can take away a man's gods, but only to give him others in return.
--Carl Jung (The Undiscovered Self, 1958)
If tendencies towards disassociation were not inherent in the human psyche, parts never would have been split off; in other words, neither spirits nor gods would ever have come to exist. ~Carl Jung, The Secret of the Golden Flower, Pages 109-110.
"One of the functions of mythology is to present an image of the cosmos in such a way that it becomes the carrier of this mystical realization, so that wherever you look it’s as though you are looking at an icon, a holy picture, and the walls of space and time open out into the deep dimension of mystery, which is a dimension within ourselves, as well as out there.
"This dimension can open through the science of today even more wonderfully than it opened through the science of the second millennium B.C.. There is absolutely no conflict between science and the religious mood or the mythological realization—but there is a conflict between the science of the twentieth century A.D. and the twentieth century B.C.. This is what we are getting in our religion, because the whole thing became petrified in the fourth century at the time of Theodosius when the authority of Byzantium came down with St. Augustine to establish the beliefs that had to be accepted. From this came the petrifaction in our tradition and the split between the scientific and the religious view."
--Joseph Campbell, Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine
In early childhood we become acquainted with fairy tales and we learn mythology in school and in our later reading, we forget most of it in consciousness, but in the depths it is all carefully treasured. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 22Feb1935, Pages 192.
The twenty gods have no special importance in the East, Eastern man has no liking for being born a god, for the gods have to become men and this they think would only make the process last longer. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture III, 17May 1935, Pages 210.
The twenty gods have no special importance in the East, Eastern man has no liking for being born a god, for the gods have to become men and this they think would only make the process last longer. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture III, 17May 1935, Pages 210.
The dreams of early childhood contain mythological motifs which the children could not possibly know of.
These archetypal images are the primeval knowledge of mankind; we are born with this inheritance, though this fact is not obvious and only becomes visible in indirect ways.
~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture XIV, Page 119.
The practice of magic consists in making what is not understood understandable in an incomprehensible manner. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 314.
These archetypal images are the primeval knowledge of mankind; we are born with this inheritance, though this fact is not obvious and only becomes visible in indirect ways.
~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture XIV, Page 119.
The practice of magic consists in making what is not understood understandable in an incomprehensible manner. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 314.
"We are lived by powers we pretend to understand."
- James Hillman
Gods are personifications of unconscious contents, for they reveal themselves to us through the unconscious activity of the psyche. -- Jung, Psychology and Religion, Page 163.
One of our great dangers is that on the surface we do not recognize the important moments of our life and it is in such moments that these mythological themes rise from the depths and present themselves. ~Jung, Modern Psychology, Page 192.
- James Hillman
Gods are personifications of unconscious contents, for they reveal themselves to us through the unconscious activity of the psyche. -- Jung, Psychology and Religion, Page 163.
One of our great dangers is that on the surface we do not recognize the important moments of our life and it is in such moments that these mythological themes rise from the depths and present themselves. ~Jung, Modern Psychology, Page 192.
Goddess Europa
In our language a mythological god is an archetype and an archetype is always at the same time an instinctive pattern, an instinctive basis. Of the archetype of the mother, the biological basis would be motherhood, or of the archetype of the coniunctio, it would be sex.
You Could refer to a biological instinctive god every field, it is ITS meaning, or spiritual aspect. You could Say That every instinctive dynamism Has an archetypal image. Thus gods are representations of general complexes. Ares or Mars, is an image of the instinct of aggression and self-defense in nature. In animal life, self-defense and aggression and fear to dominate whole part of life, and we are not exempt from this. Every god archetype is a dynamic, explosive load of dynamite and Therefore uncontrolled. The gods are always a bit below the mark as Compared with the human level. Even to the Greeks they were shocking, for they behaved like animals. Stoics The philosophical arguments used to explain it in a philosophical way. The role of the mother-goddess and gods longer available is measureless to have outbursts where they experience the greatest dynamism of life . ~ Marie Louise von Franz 1972, pp.59-60. http://solarlunar.com/mythological-gods-archetypes/
"Could God exist if nobody else did? No. That’s why gods are very avid for worshipers. If there is nobody to worship them, there are no gods. There are as many gods as there are people thinking about God. In choosing your god, you choose your way of looking at the universe. There are plenty of Gods. Choose yours. The god you worship is the god you deserve."
A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living
Philosophy can produce allegory but not genuine mythology, since this is far older.
It does, however, have affinities with philosophy through its budding philosophical ideas.
These ideas are then worked out in philosophy.
Their mythological aspect would amount to their involution.
But this never leads to mythology, only to allegory.
Philosophical interpretation and primordial image are always found side by side, as you quite rightly remark, for nothing promotes philosophical reflection as much as the
experience of primordial images.
C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 553-554.
You Could refer to a biological instinctive god every field, it is ITS meaning, or spiritual aspect. You could Say That every instinctive dynamism Has an archetypal image. Thus gods are representations of general complexes. Ares or Mars, is an image of the instinct of aggression and self-defense in nature. In animal life, self-defense and aggression and fear to dominate whole part of life, and we are not exempt from this. Every god archetype is a dynamic, explosive load of dynamite and Therefore uncontrolled. The gods are always a bit below the mark as Compared with the human level. Even to the Greeks they were shocking, for they behaved like animals. Stoics The philosophical arguments used to explain it in a philosophical way. The role of the mother-goddess and gods longer available is measureless to have outbursts where they experience the greatest dynamism of life . ~ Marie Louise von Franz 1972, pp.59-60. http://solarlunar.com/mythological-gods-archetypes/
"Could God exist if nobody else did? No. That’s why gods are very avid for worshipers. If there is nobody to worship them, there are no gods. There are as many gods as there are people thinking about God. In choosing your god, you choose your way of looking at the universe. There are plenty of Gods. Choose yours. The god you worship is the god you deserve."
A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living
Philosophy can produce allegory but not genuine mythology, since this is far older.
It does, however, have affinities with philosophy through its budding philosophical ideas.
These ideas are then worked out in philosophy.
Their mythological aspect would amount to their involution.
But this never leads to mythology, only to allegory.
Philosophical interpretation and primordial image are always found side by side, as you quite rightly remark, for nothing promotes philosophical reflection as much as the
experience of primordial images.
C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 553-554.
Zeus Seducing Olympia~Giulio Romano
Our
ancestors used traditional tales as vehicles for transmitting ancient
wisdom accumulated over millennia to inform, instruct, and to heal.
Myths, for example, are stories that have stayed alive in human
imagination over long periods of time because there is a ring of truth
in them about shared human experience. According to Joseph Campbell,
myths, guide us in the “experience of being alive.” They are told to
enlighten us about our origins, our inner realities, and what it means
to be human.
Wisdom Tales:
Traditional folk tales and multicultural myths can be used as powerful tools because they are repositories of ancient wisdom about the human condition and because they teach the language of symbolism, imagery, and metaphor. These wisdom tales can help us gain insight into behavior and can function as effective catalysts for bringing about change. Through storytelling, we can learn the language of metaphor, which can help us intuit the existence of deeper meanings and truths.
Accessing the Truth Within
According to Marion Woodman, Jungian analyst and author, the healing power of metaphor lies in its ability to provide us with images that can transform unconscious material into conscious awareness. She believes storytelling and the use of metaphor have more of an immediate impact than abstract analysis. “So long as it’s theory, it’s removed from the actual feeling…if I put it in a story form or use images, the mind may not hear it, but the body responds. And if it’s reverberating in the body, sooner or later it’s going to get through to consciousness.”
...if I put it in a story form or use images, the mind may not hear it, but the body responds. - Marion Woodman
Wisdom Tales:
Traditional folk tales and multicultural myths can be used as powerful tools because they are repositories of ancient wisdom about the human condition and because they teach the language of symbolism, imagery, and metaphor. These wisdom tales can help us gain insight into behavior and can function as effective catalysts for bringing about change. Through storytelling, we can learn the language of metaphor, which can help us intuit the existence of deeper meanings and truths.
Accessing the Truth Within
According to Marion Woodman, Jungian analyst and author, the healing power of metaphor lies in its ability to provide us with images that can transform unconscious material into conscious awareness. She believes storytelling and the use of metaphor have more of an immediate impact than abstract analysis. “So long as it’s theory, it’s removed from the actual feeling…if I put it in a story form or use images, the mind may not hear it, but the body responds. And if it’s reverberating in the body, sooner or later it’s going to get through to consciousness.”
...if I put it in a story form or use images, the mind may not hear it, but the body responds. - Marion Woodman
Our mind is the scene upon which the gods perform their plays, and we
don't know the beginning and we don't know the end. ~Jung,
Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1306.
On a parallel track, beginners to genealogy often ask if it is indeed possible to trace their pedigree or lineage back to Adam. To answer this question, I always quote from The Ensign, February 1984, an article by Robert C. Gunderson, senior royalty research specialist at the Family History Library. “The simplest answer to this question is no,” he said.
“In my 35 years of genealogical research, I have yet to see a pedigree back to Adam that can be documented. I have reviewed hundreds of pedigrees over the years, and I have not found one where each connection on the pedigree can be justified by evidence from contemporary documents. In my opinion, it is not even possible to verify historically a connected European pedigree earlier than the time of the Merovingian Kings (circa 450 AD to 752 AD). Every pedigree I have seen which attempts to bridge the gap between that time and the biblical pedigree appears to be based on questionable tradition, or at worst, plain fabrication. Generally these pedigrees offer no evidence as to the origin of the information, or they cite a vague source.”
Ancient genealogy suffers from four marked defects: it can hardly be disentangled from mythology; it is fragmentary, frequently unreliable and contradictory; it confuses tribal origins with individual names; it is artificial in that often its main purpose is to offer a descent that would allow a person to qualify for office, priestly or secular.The psyche is nothing different from the living being. It is the psychical aspect of the living being. It is even the psychical aspect of matter. It is a quality. ~Carl Jung; Conversations with Carl Jung and Richard L. Evans
The self is not only the centre, but also the whole circumference which embraces both conscious and unconscious; it is the centre of this totality, just as the ego is the centre of consciousness. ["Introduction," CW 12, par. 44.]
Like any archetype, the essential nature of the self is unknowable, but its manifestations are the content of myth and legend.
The self appears in dreams, myths, and fairytales in the figure of the "supraordinate personality," such as a king, hero, prophet, saviour, etc., or in the form of a totality symbol, such as the circle, square, quadratura circuli, cross, etc. When it represents a complexio oppositorum, a union of opposites, it can also appear as a united duality, in the form, for instance, of tao as the interplay of yang and yin, or of the hostile brothers, or of the hero and his adversary (arch-enemy, dragon), Faust and Mephistopheles, etc. Empirically, therefore, the self appears as a play of light and shadow, although conceived as a totality and unity in which the opposites are united.[Definitions," CW 6, par. 790.]
The primordial images are the most ancient and the most universal "thought-forms" of humanity.
They are as much feelings as thoughts; indeed, they lead their own independent life rather in the manner of part-souls, as can easily be seen in those philosophical or Gnostic systems which rely on perception of the unconscious as the source of knowledge.
The idea of angels, archangels, "principalities and powers" in St. Paul, the archons of the Gnostics, the heavenly hierarchy of Dionysius the Areopagite, all come from the perception of the relative autonomy of the archetypes. ~Carl Jung; Two Essays on Analytical Psychology; Page 66; Paragraph 104.
All ages before ours believed in gods in some form or other.
Only an unparalleled impoverishment in symbolism could enable us to rediscover the gods as psychic factors, which is to say, as archetypes of the unconscious.
No doubt this discovery is hardly credible as yet. ~Carl Jung; The Integration of the Personality p. 72
On a parallel track, beginners to genealogy often ask if it is indeed possible to trace their pedigree or lineage back to Adam. To answer this question, I always quote from The Ensign, February 1984, an article by Robert C. Gunderson, senior royalty research specialist at the Family History Library. “The simplest answer to this question is no,” he said.
“In my 35 years of genealogical research, I have yet to see a pedigree back to Adam that can be documented. I have reviewed hundreds of pedigrees over the years, and I have not found one where each connection on the pedigree can be justified by evidence from contemporary documents. In my opinion, it is not even possible to verify historically a connected European pedigree earlier than the time of the Merovingian Kings (circa 450 AD to 752 AD). Every pedigree I have seen which attempts to bridge the gap between that time and the biblical pedigree appears to be based on questionable tradition, or at worst, plain fabrication. Generally these pedigrees offer no evidence as to the origin of the information, or they cite a vague source.”
Ancient genealogy suffers from four marked defects: it can hardly be disentangled from mythology; it is fragmentary, frequently unreliable and contradictory; it confuses tribal origins with individual names; it is artificial in that often its main purpose is to offer a descent that would allow a person to qualify for office, priestly or secular.The psyche is nothing different from the living being. It is the psychical aspect of the living being. It is even the psychical aspect of matter. It is a quality. ~Carl Jung; Conversations with Carl Jung and Richard L. Evans
The self is not only the centre, but also the whole circumference which embraces both conscious and unconscious; it is the centre of this totality, just as the ego is the centre of consciousness. ["Introduction," CW 12, par. 44.]
Like any archetype, the essential nature of the self is unknowable, but its manifestations are the content of myth and legend.
The self appears in dreams, myths, and fairytales in the figure of the "supraordinate personality," such as a king, hero, prophet, saviour, etc., or in the form of a totality symbol, such as the circle, square, quadratura circuli, cross, etc. When it represents a complexio oppositorum, a union of opposites, it can also appear as a united duality, in the form, for instance, of tao as the interplay of yang and yin, or of the hostile brothers, or of the hero and his adversary (arch-enemy, dragon), Faust and Mephistopheles, etc. Empirically, therefore, the self appears as a play of light and shadow, although conceived as a totality and unity in which the opposites are united.[Definitions," CW 6, par. 790.]
The primordial images are the most ancient and the most universal "thought-forms" of humanity.
They are as much feelings as thoughts; indeed, they lead their own independent life rather in the manner of part-souls, as can easily be seen in those philosophical or Gnostic systems which rely on perception of the unconscious as the source of knowledge.
The idea of angels, archangels, "principalities and powers" in St. Paul, the archons of the Gnostics, the heavenly hierarchy of Dionysius the Areopagite, all come from the perception of the relative autonomy of the archetypes. ~Carl Jung; Two Essays on Analytical Psychology; Page 66; Paragraph 104.
All ages before ours believed in gods in some form or other.
Only an unparalleled impoverishment in symbolism could enable us to rediscover the gods as psychic factors, which is to say, as archetypes of the unconscious.
No doubt this discovery is hardly credible as yet. ~Carl Jung; The Integration of the Personality p. 72
Because we cannot discover God's throne in the sky with a radio-telescope or establish (for certain) that a beloved father or mother is still about in a more or less corporeal form, people assume that such ideas are "not true."
I would rather say that they are not "true" enough, for these are conceptions of a kind that have accompanied human life from prehistoric times, and that still break through into consciousness at any provocation. ~Carl Jung; Man and His Symbols
Myth is the natural and indispensable intermediate stage between unconscious and conscious cognition.
True, the unconscious knows more than the conscious does; but it is knowledge of a special sort, knowledge in eternity, usually without reference to the here and now, not couched in the language of the intellect.
Only when we let its statements amplify themselves does it come within the range of our understanding; only then does a new aspect become perceptible to us.
This process is convincingly repeated in every successful dream analysis.
That is why it is so important not to have any preconceived, doctrinal opinions about statements made by dreams.
As soon as a certain "monotony of interpretation" strikes us, we know that our approach has become doctrinaire and hence sterile. ~Carl Jung
Dionysus is the abyss of impassioned dissolution, where all human distinctions are merged in the animal divinity of the primordial psyche—a blissful and terrible experience. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 90.
Joseph Campbell: "What is it we are questing for? It is the fulfillment of that which is potential in each of us. Questing for it is not an ego trip; it is an adventure to bring into fulfillment your gift to the world, which is yourself. There is nothing you can do that's more important than being fulfilled. You become a sign, you become a signal, transparent to transcendence; in this way you will find, live, become a realization of your own personal myth."
I would rather say that they are not "true" enough, for these are conceptions of a kind that have accompanied human life from prehistoric times, and that still break through into consciousness at any provocation. ~Carl Jung; Man and His Symbols
Myth is the natural and indispensable intermediate stage between unconscious and conscious cognition.
True, the unconscious knows more than the conscious does; but it is knowledge of a special sort, knowledge in eternity, usually without reference to the here and now, not couched in the language of the intellect.
Only when we let its statements amplify themselves does it come within the range of our understanding; only then does a new aspect become perceptible to us.
This process is convincingly repeated in every successful dream analysis.
That is why it is so important not to have any preconceived, doctrinal opinions about statements made by dreams.
As soon as a certain "monotony of interpretation" strikes us, we know that our approach has become doctrinaire and hence sterile. ~Carl Jung
Dionysus is the abyss of impassioned dissolution, where all human distinctions are merged in the animal divinity of the primordial psyche—a blissful and terrible experience. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 90.
Joseph Campbell: "What is it we are questing for? It is the fulfillment of that which is potential in each of us. Questing for it is not an ego trip; it is an adventure to bring into fulfillment your gift to the world, which is yourself. There is nothing you can do that's more important than being fulfilled. You become a sign, you become a signal, transparent to transcendence; in this way you will find, live, become a realization of your own personal myth."
Genealogy Without Proof is Mythology
Myths are original revelations of the preconscious psyche, involuntary statements about unconscious psychic happenings… But religion is a vital link with psychic processes independent of and beyond consciousness, in the dark hinterland of the psyche.” (Carl Jung CW 9i, para. 261)
Our fearsome gods have only changed their names: they now rhyme with—ism. ~Carl Jung; "The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious", 1928.
Myths are miracle tales . . . In the everyday world of consciousness such things hardly exist; that is to say, until 1933. Only lunatics would have been found in possession of living fragments of mythology. After this date the world of heroes and monsters spread like a devastating fire over whole nations, proving that the strange world of myth had suffered no loss of vitality during the centuries of reason and enlightenment. If metaphysical ideas no longer have . . . a fascinating effect . . ., this is certainly . . . simply and solely (due) to the fact that (some symbols) express what is now welling up from the unconscious as the end-result of the development of Christian consciousness through the centuries . . . a false spirit of arrogance, hysteria, . . ., criminal amorality, and . . . a purveyor of shoddy spiritual goods, . . . philosophical stutterings, and Utopian humbug . . . That is what the post-Christian spirit looks like. - Aion (1951) CW 9, Part II: P.66
I was driven to ask myself in all seriousness: ‘What is the myth you are living? ‘I found no answer to the question, and had to admit that I was not living a myth, or even in a myth, but rather in an uncertain cloud of theoretical possibilities which I was beginning to regard with increasing distrust…. So in the most natural way, I took it upon myself to get to know ‘my’ myth, and I regarded this as the task of tasks — for — so I told myself — how could I when treating my patients, make due allowance for the personal factor, for my personal equation, which is yet so necessary for a knowledge of the other person if I was unconscious of it. (Jung, Quoted by Shamdasani, 2009, p. 197)
Myths are original revelations of the preconscious psyche, involuntary statements about unconscious psychic happenings… But religion is a vital link with psychic processes independent of and beyond consciousness, in the dark hinterland of the psyche.” (Carl Jung CW 9i, para. 261)
Our fearsome gods have only changed their names: they now rhyme with—ism. ~Carl Jung; "The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious", 1928.
Myths are miracle tales . . . In the everyday world of consciousness such things hardly exist; that is to say, until 1933. Only lunatics would have been found in possession of living fragments of mythology. After this date the world of heroes and monsters spread like a devastating fire over whole nations, proving that the strange world of myth had suffered no loss of vitality during the centuries of reason and enlightenment. If metaphysical ideas no longer have . . . a fascinating effect . . ., this is certainly . . . simply and solely (due) to the fact that (some symbols) express what is now welling up from the unconscious as the end-result of the development of Christian consciousness through the centuries . . . a false spirit of arrogance, hysteria, . . ., criminal amorality, and . . . a purveyor of shoddy spiritual goods, . . . philosophical stutterings, and Utopian humbug . . . That is what the post-Christian spirit looks like. - Aion (1951) CW 9, Part II: P.66
I was driven to ask myself in all seriousness: ‘What is the myth you are living? ‘I found no answer to the question, and had to admit that I was not living a myth, or even in a myth, but rather in an uncertain cloud of theoretical possibilities which I was beginning to regard with increasing distrust…. So in the most natural way, I took it upon myself to get to know ‘my’ myth, and I regarded this as the task of tasks — for — so I told myself — how could I when treating my patients, make due allowance for the personal factor, for my personal equation, which is yet so necessary for a knowledge of the other person if I was unconscious of it. (Jung, Quoted by Shamdasani, 2009, p. 197)
"There are gods in our ideas." --James Hillman
A living symbol is a pregnant symbol. The symbol is alive only so long as it is pregnant with meaning. But once its meaning has been born out of it, once that expression is found which formulates the meaning. The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it. Carl Jung, "Modern Man in Search of a Soul"
The need for mythic statements is satisfied when we frame a view of the world which adequately explains the meaning of human existence in the cosmos, a view which springs from our psychic wholeness, from the co-operation between conscious and unconscious.
Meaninglessness inhibits fullness of life and is therefore equivalent to illness. Meaning makes a great many things endurable perhaps everything.
~Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams and Reflections; Page 340.
The unconscious is not just evil by nature, it is also the source of the highest good: not only dark but also light, not only bestial, semi-human, and demonic but superhuman, spiritual, and, in the classical sense of the word, "divine." ~Carl Jung
Myth is the revelation of divine life in man. It is not we who invent myth; rather it speaks to us as a Word of God. No science will ever replace myth, and a myth cannot be made out of any science. For it is not that "God" is a myth, but that myth is the revelation of a divine life in man. It is not we who invent myth; rather it speaks to us as a Word of God.
~Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams and Reflections; Page 340.
“Not only the gods, but the goddesses, too, are libido-symbols, when regarded from the point of view of their dynamism. The libido expresses itself in images of sun, light, fire, sex, fertility, and growth. In this way the goddesses, as we have seen, come to possess phallic symbols, even though the latter are essentially masculine. One of the main reasons for this is that, just as the female lies hidden in the male, so the male lies hidden in the female” (para 324).
A living symbol is a pregnant symbol. The symbol is alive only so long as it is pregnant with meaning. But once its meaning has been born out of it, once that expression is found which formulates the meaning. The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it. Carl Jung, "Modern Man in Search of a Soul"
The need for mythic statements is satisfied when we frame a view of the world which adequately explains the meaning of human existence in the cosmos, a view which springs from our psychic wholeness, from the co-operation between conscious and unconscious.
Meaninglessness inhibits fullness of life and is therefore equivalent to illness. Meaning makes a great many things endurable perhaps everything.
~Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams and Reflections; Page 340.
The unconscious is not just evil by nature, it is also the source of the highest good: not only dark but also light, not only bestial, semi-human, and demonic but superhuman, spiritual, and, in the classical sense of the word, "divine." ~Carl Jung
Myth is the revelation of divine life in man. It is not we who invent myth; rather it speaks to us as a Word of God. No science will ever replace myth, and a myth cannot be made out of any science. For it is not that "God" is a myth, but that myth is the revelation of a divine life in man. It is not we who invent myth; rather it speaks to us as a Word of God.
~Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams and Reflections; Page 340.
“Not only the gods, but the goddesses, too, are libido-symbols, when regarded from the point of view of their dynamism. The libido expresses itself in images of sun, light, fire, sex, fertility, and growth. In this way the goddesses, as we have seen, come to possess phallic symbols, even though the latter are essentially masculine. One of the main reasons for this is that, just as the female lies hidden in the male, so the male lies hidden in the female” (para 324).
Merovingian Bee
Jung's RED BOOK
https://archive.org/details/LiberNovus-TheRedBookjung
Myths go back to the primitive storyteller and his dreams, to men moved by the stirring of their fantasies.
These people were not very different from those whom later generations called poets or philosophers. ~Carl Jung; Man and His Symbols; Page 78
We are living in what the Greeks called the right time for a "metamorphosis of the gods," i.e. of the fundamental principles and symbols.
This peculiarity of our time, which is certainly not of our conscious choosing, is the expression of the unconscious man within us who is changing.
Coming generations will have to take account of this momentous transformation if humanity is not to destroy itself through the might of its own technology and science. ~Carl Jung; The Undiscovered Self; Page 110.
https://archive.org/details/LiberNovus-TheRedBookjung
Myths go back to the primitive storyteller and his dreams, to men moved by the stirring of their fantasies.
These people were not very different from those whom later generations called poets or philosophers. ~Carl Jung; Man and His Symbols; Page 78
We are living in what the Greeks called the right time for a "metamorphosis of the gods," i.e. of the fundamental principles and symbols.
This peculiarity of our time, which is certainly not of our conscious choosing, is the expression of the unconscious man within us who is changing.
Coming generations will have to take account of this momentous transformation if humanity is not to destroy itself through the might of its own technology and science. ~Carl Jung; The Undiscovered Self; Page 110.
But religious statements without exception have to do with the reality of the psyche and not with the reality of physis. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Religion, Page 464.
Hence I prefer the term "the unconscious," knowing that I might equally well speak of "God" or "daimon" if I wished to express myself in mythic language. When I do use such mythic language, I am aware that "mana," "daimon," and "God" are synonyms for the unconscious that is to say, we know just as much or just as little about them as about the latter. People only believe they know much more about them and for certain purposes that belief is far more useful and effective than a scientific concept.
The great advantage of the concepts "daimon" and "God" lies in making possible a much better objectification of the vis-d-vis, namely, a personification of it. Their emotional quality confers life and effectuality upon them. Hate and love, fear and reverence, enter the scene of the confrontation and raise it to a drama. What has merely been "displayed" becomes "acted."
The whole man is challenged and enters the fray with his total reality. ~Carl Jung; Memories Dreams and Reflections; Page 337.
SEEKING THE GRAIL
Whoever speaks in primordial images speaks with a thousand voices. ~ Carl Jung
Everything that man should, and yet cannot, be or do- be it in a positive or negative sense - lives on as a mythological figure and anticipation alongside his consciousness, either as a religious projection or-what is still more dangerous-as unconscious contents which then project themselves spontaneously into incongruous objects.
-Carl Jung, Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
"My fantasies, my symptoms put me in my place. It is no longer to know at which place I belong - at which God - but at what place I belong, on which altar I give myself, my myth by which suffering is transformed into devotion. "- James Hillman
You trust your unconscious as if it were a loving father. But it is nature and cannot be made use of as if it were a reliable human being. It is inhuman and it needs the human mind to function usefully for man's purposes.... It always seeks its collective purposes and never your individual destiny. Your destiny is the result of the collaboration between the conscious and the unconscious. (Jung, 1973, p. 283)
THE ART OF MYTH
The great advantage of the concepts "daimon" and "God" lies in making possible a much better objectification of the vis-d-vis, namely, a personification of it. Their emotional quality confers life and effectuality upon them. Hate and love, fear and reverence, enter the scene of the confrontation and raise it to a drama. What has merely been "displayed" becomes "acted."
The whole man is challenged and enters the fray with his total reality. ~Carl Jung; Memories Dreams and Reflections; Page 337.
SEEKING THE GRAIL
Whoever speaks in primordial images speaks with a thousand voices. ~ Carl Jung
Everything that man should, and yet cannot, be or do- be it in a positive or negative sense - lives on as a mythological figure and anticipation alongside his consciousness, either as a religious projection or-what is still more dangerous-as unconscious contents which then project themselves spontaneously into incongruous objects.
-Carl Jung, Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
"My fantasies, my symptoms put me in my place. It is no longer to know at which place I belong - at which God - but at what place I belong, on which altar I give myself, my myth by which suffering is transformed into devotion. "- James Hillman
You trust your unconscious as if it were a loving father. But it is nature and cannot be made use of as if it were a reliable human being. It is inhuman and it needs the human mind to function usefully for man's purposes.... It always seeks its collective purposes and never your individual destiny. Your destiny is the result of the collaboration between the conscious and the unconscious. (Jung, 1973, p. 283)
THE ART OF MYTH
Quo Vadis - Alphonse Maria Mucha
Because much of genealogical best-practice includes mythic and fictional characters, the process is best approached with a Jungian orientation, rather than as hard historical fact. In terms of the collective unconscious it has psychic reality, and Jungian and post-Jungian practices allow us to interact with such material in a deeply meaningful way that enhances integration.
Once one withdraws projections and 'sees through' things, then virtually everything becomes myth. This may make the world seem meaningless but that is only so if one only believes in personal and cultural ego power. If one views the human as potentially creative within the context of a mythical world then one can engage with myth and narrative and experience the connection to one's ancestry, to one's physical, intellectual, spiritual roots. Art is rooted in participation mystique.
"Participation mystique." is fusion or merger, the illusion necessary to maintain our unconscious lives in the external world. It is experienced due to "Our knowledge that we are in a fictional world [which] lets us mark off the experience. We know we are reading; we know we will not act. This knowledge allows us to sink into the fiction, to connect to less conscious experience, to reach back into less differentiated or undifferentiated levels of psychic life. We never lose our connection with reality (unless one is psychotic): we know we are reading. In one part of psyche, we are in a state of fusion and, in another part; we maintain our state of ego integrity: in that state, we can link up with the unconscious fantasies that are the ground from which the text emerged."
In the Orient, the realms of the gods and demons, the heavens, purgatories, and hells, are assigned to this sphere and are of subtle matter. They are the macro cosmic counterpart of the microcosmic images of dream. But since we do not encounter on this level the sort of clear distinction between A and not-A that is proper to the field of waking consciousness, micro- and macrocosm on this level are not as different as they seem, and all the gods, therefore, all the powers of heaven and hell, are within us.
Once one withdraws projections and 'sees through' things, then virtually everything becomes myth. This may make the world seem meaningless but that is only so if one only believes in personal and cultural ego power. If one views the human as potentially creative within the context of a mythical world then one can engage with myth and narrative and experience the connection to one's ancestry, to one's physical, intellectual, spiritual roots. Art is rooted in participation mystique.
"Participation mystique." is fusion or merger, the illusion necessary to maintain our unconscious lives in the external world. It is experienced due to "Our knowledge that we are in a fictional world [which] lets us mark off the experience. We know we are reading; we know we will not act. This knowledge allows us to sink into the fiction, to connect to less conscious experience, to reach back into less differentiated or undifferentiated levels of psychic life. We never lose our connection with reality (unless one is psychotic): we know we are reading. In one part of psyche, we are in a state of fusion and, in another part; we maintain our state of ego integrity: in that state, we can link up with the unconscious fantasies that are the ground from which the text emerged."
In the Orient, the realms of the gods and demons, the heavens, purgatories, and hells, are assigned to this sphere and are of subtle matter. They are the macro cosmic counterpart of the microcosmic images of dream. But since we do not encounter on this level the sort of clear distinction between A and not-A that is proper to the field of waking consciousness, micro- and macrocosm on this level are not as different as they seem, and all the gods, therefore, all the powers of heaven and hell, are within us.
The Tao is an empty vessel;
it is used, but never filled.
Oh, unfathomable source
of ten thousand things!
Oh, hidden deep but ever present!
I do not know from whence it comes.
It is the forefather of the gods.
~ Lao Tzu, Tao te Ching
"Those who know, not only that the Everlasting lives in them, but that what they, and all things, really are IS the Everlasting, dwell in the groves of the wish-fulfilling trees, drink the brew of immortality, and listen everywhere to the unheard music of eternal concord. These are the immortals." --Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces
Projection
“Just as we tend to assume that the world is as we see it, we naively suppose that people are as we imagine them to be. In this latter case, unfortunately, there is no scientific test that would prove the discrepancy between perception and reality. Although the possibility for gross deception is infinitely greater here than in our perception of the physical world, we still go on naively projecting our own psychology into our fellow human beings. In this way everyone creates for himself a series of more or less imaginary relationships based essentially on projection. Among neurotics there are even cases where fantasy projections provide the sole means of human relationship. A person whom I perceive mainly through my projections is an imago or, alternately, a carrier of imagos or symbols. All the contents of our unconscious are constantly being projected into our surroundings, and it is only by recognizing certain properties of the objects as projections or imagos that we are able to distinguish them from the real properties of the objects. But if we are not aware that a property of the object is a projection, we cannot do anything else but be naively convinced that it really does belong to the object. All human relationships swarm with these projections; anyone who cannot see this in his personal life need only have his attention drawn to the psychology of the press in wartime. Cum grano salis [Latin for with a grain of salt], we always see our own unavowed mistakes in our opponent. Excellent examples of this are to be found in all personal quarrels. Unless we are possessed of an unusual degree of self-awareness we shall never see through our projections but must always succumb to them, because the mind in its natural state presupposes the existence of such projections. It is the natural and given thing for unconscious contents to be projected. In a comparatively primitive person this creates that characteristic relationship to the object, which Levy-Bruhl has fittingly called ‘mystic identity’ or ‘participation mystique.’ Thus every normal person of our time, who is not reflective beyond the average, is bound to his environment by a whole system of projections.”
Jung, C. G., Collected Works, “The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche,” Volume 8, par. 507.
it is used, but never filled.
Oh, unfathomable source
of ten thousand things!
Oh, hidden deep but ever present!
I do not know from whence it comes.
It is the forefather of the gods.
~ Lao Tzu, Tao te Ching
"Those who know, not only that the Everlasting lives in them, but that what they, and all things, really are IS the Everlasting, dwell in the groves of the wish-fulfilling trees, drink the brew of immortality, and listen everywhere to the unheard music of eternal concord. These are the immortals." --Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces
Projection
“Just as we tend to assume that the world is as we see it, we naively suppose that people are as we imagine them to be. In this latter case, unfortunately, there is no scientific test that would prove the discrepancy between perception and reality. Although the possibility for gross deception is infinitely greater here than in our perception of the physical world, we still go on naively projecting our own psychology into our fellow human beings. In this way everyone creates for himself a series of more or less imaginary relationships based essentially on projection. Among neurotics there are even cases where fantasy projections provide the sole means of human relationship. A person whom I perceive mainly through my projections is an imago or, alternately, a carrier of imagos or symbols. All the contents of our unconscious are constantly being projected into our surroundings, and it is only by recognizing certain properties of the objects as projections or imagos that we are able to distinguish them from the real properties of the objects. But if we are not aware that a property of the object is a projection, we cannot do anything else but be naively convinced that it really does belong to the object. All human relationships swarm with these projections; anyone who cannot see this in his personal life need only have his attention drawn to the psychology of the press in wartime. Cum grano salis [Latin for with a grain of salt], we always see our own unavowed mistakes in our opponent. Excellent examples of this are to be found in all personal quarrels. Unless we are possessed of an unusual degree of self-awareness we shall never see through our projections but must always succumb to them, because the mind in its natural state presupposes the existence of such projections. It is the natural and given thing for unconscious contents to be projected. In a comparatively primitive person this creates that characteristic relationship to the object, which Levy-Bruhl has fittingly called ‘mystic identity’ or ‘participation mystique.’ Thus every normal person of our time, who is not reflective beyond the average, is bound to his environment by a whole system of projections.”
Jung, C. G., Collected Works, “The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche,” Volume 8, par. 507.
Jake Kobrin
Curate Your Genealogy
Genealogy without sources is Mythology
Meaningful Lies
Here, myth as opposed to history is not meant to imply "falsehood" or "lie" but is used in the sense of narratives that reflect and advance specific ways of representing the world and,
along with it, one's place in it
Genealogy without sources is Mythology
Meaningful Lies
Here, myth as opposed to history is not meant to imply "falsehood" or "lie" but is used in the sense of narratives that reflect and advance specific ways of representing the world and,
along with it, one's place in it
No science will ever replace myth, and a myth cannot be made out of any science. For it is not that "God" is a myth, but that myth is the revelation of a divine life in man.
It is not we who invent myth, rather it speaks to us as a Word of God.
The Word of God comes to us, and we have no way of distinguishing whether and to what extent it is different from God.
There is nothing about this Word that could not be considered known and human, except for the manner in which it confronts us spontaneously and places obligations upon us. It is not affected by the arbitrary operation of our will. We cannot explain an inspiration.
Our chief feeling about it is that it is not the result of our own ratiocinations, but that it came to us from elsewhere. And if we happen to have a precognitive dream, how can we possibly ascribe it to our own powers? ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections.
It is not we who invent myth, rather it speaks to us as a Word of God.
The Word of God comes to us, and we have no way of distinguishing whether and to what extent it is different from God.
There is nothing about this Word that could not be considered known and human, except for the manner in which it confronts us spontaneously and places obligations upon us. It is not affected by the arbitrary operation of our will. We cannot explain an inspiration.
Our chief feeling about it is that it is not the result of our own ratiocinations, but that it came to us from elsewhere. And if we happen to have a precognitive dream, how can we possibly ascribe it to our own powers? ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections.
THE TREASURE HARD TO ATTAIN
“In myths the hero is the one who conquers the dragon, not the one who is devoured by it. And yet both have to deal with the same dragon. Also, he is no hero who never met the dragon, or who, if he once saw it, declared afterwards that he saw nothing. Equally, only one who has risked the fight with the dragon and is not overcome by it wins the hoard, the “treasure hard to attain.” He alone has a genuine claim to self-confidence, for he has faced the dark ground of his self and thereby has gained himself. . . . He has acquired the right to believe that he will be able to overcome all future threats by the same means.”—Carl Jung
“In myth the treasure is always guarded by a dragon or monster bigger and more powerful than the Goddess or any trickster. The dragon or serpent is very often the outer symbolic form for the Father figure from which the hero was separated at birth or during childhood. Without his spiritual experience, which is now at a premium, as is his fearlessness and wisdom, he would not be ready for the awesome moment when he comes face to face with his real spiritual self, his inner god. More often than not the dragon or serpent which guards the treasure is a fire-breathing dragon. As we have already seen fire in myth is symbolic of spirit and self-consciousness, and the serpent or dragon isn’t an evil tempter but is a symbol of Eternity and Wisdom. All these symbols together create the well known motif of the fire-breathing dragon – Spirit and self-consciousness co-existing with Eternal Wisdom. This is a composite symbol and so some myths may not use all the motifs contained within the fire-breathing dragon symbol, but use only certain aspects.”--Harry Young
“ . . . before we come to our own hearts we are destined to take endless journeys climbing mountains, swimming oceans and trying to reach the stars. In the process, we inevitably will become lost, stuck or trapped. We take hopelessly wrong turns, try to fly too close to the sun or drown in our own sea of projections. Then somehow, mysteriously our individual lives through the slender threads of fate return us to the source from which we come and find what turns out to be buried treasure in our own back yards, the truth that resides in our own hearts, the golden world. This is the stuff of life. The journey Dr. Jung called the process of individuation.”--Robert A. Johnson, from the foreword to Michael DeMaria‘s book, Ever Flowing On
“In myths the hero is the one who conquers the dragon, not the one who is devoured by it. And yet both have to deal with the same dragon. Also, he is no hero who never met the dragon, or who, if he once saw it, declared afterwards that he saw nothing. Equally, only one who has risked the fight with the dragon and is not overcome by it wins the hoard, the “treasure hard to attain.” He alone has a genuine claim to self-confidence, for he has faced the dark ground of his self and thereby has gained himself. . . . He has acquired the right to believe that he will be able to overcome all future threats by the same means.”—Carl Jung
“In myth the treasure is always guarded by a dragon or monster bigger and more powerful than the Goddess or any trickster. The dragon or serpent is very often the outer symbolic form for the Father figure from which the hero was separated at birth or during childhood. Without his spiritual experience, which is now at a premium, as is his fearlessness and wisdom, he would not be ready for the awesome moment when he comes face to face with his real spiritual self, his inner god. More often than not the dragon or serpent which guards the treasure is a fire-breathing dragon. As we have already seen fire in myth is symbolic of spirit and self-consciousness, and the serpent or dragon isn’t an evil tempter but is a symbol of Eternity and Wisdom. All these symbols together create the well known motif of the fire-breathing dragon – Spirit and self-consciousness co-existing with Eternal Wisdom. This is a composite symbol and so some myths may not use all the motifs contained within the fire-breathing dragon symbol, but use only certain aspects.”--Harry Young
“ . . . before we come to our own hearts we are destined to take endless journeys climbing mountains, swimming oceans and trying to reach the stars. In the process, we inevitably will become lost, stuck or trapped. We take hopelessly wrong turns, try to fly too close to the sun or drown in our own sea of projections. Then somehow, mysteriously our individual lives through the slender threads of fate return us to the source from which we come and find what turns out to be buried treasure in our own back yards, the truth that resides in our own hearts, the golden world. This is the stuff of life. The journey Dr. Jung called the process of individuation.”--Robert A. Johnson, from the foreword to Michael DeMaria‘s book, Ever Flowing On
"The collective unconscious-so far as we can say anything about it at all-appears to consist of mythological motifs or primordial images, for which reason the myths of all nations are its real exponents. In fact, the whole of mythology could be taken as a sort of projection of the collective unconscious. . . . We can therefore study the collective unconscious in two ways, either in mythology or in the analysis of the individual." ~Carl Jung, The Structure of the Psyche, Collected Works 8, Paragraph 325
We can see this most clearly if we look at the heavenly constellations, which original chaotic forms were organized through the projection of images. This explains the influence of the stars as asserted by astrologers. These influences are nothing but unconscious, introspective perceptions of the activity of the collective unconscious. Just as the constellations were projected into the heavens, similar figures were projected into legends and fairy tales or upon historical persons. ~Carl .Jung, Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious.
Everything that man should, and yet cannot, be or do -- be it in a positive or negative sense -- lives on as a mythological figure and anticipation alongside his consciousness, either as a religious projection or -- what is still more dangerous -- as unconscious contents which then project themselves spontaneously into incongruous objects.
--Carl Jung, Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
The Gods have claimed another Victim....
Archetypes are complexes of experience that come upon us like fate, and their effects are felt in our most personal life. The anima no longer crosses our path as a goddess, but, it may be, as an intimately personal misadventure, or perhaps as our best venture. When, for instance, a highly esteemed professor in his seventies abandons his family and runs off with a young red-headed actress, we know that the gods have claimed another victim. ~"Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious" (1935). In CW 9, Part I: The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. P. 62
We can see this most clearly if we look at the heavenly constellations, which original chaotic forms were organized through the projection of images. This explains the influence of the stars as asserted by astrologers. These influences are nothing but unconscious, introspective perceptions of the activity of the collective unconscious. Just as the constellations were projected into the heavens, similar figures were projected into legends and fairy tales or upon historical persons. ~Carl .Jung, Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious.
Everything that man should, and yet cannot, be or do -- be it in a positive or negative sense -- lives on as a mythological figure and anticipation alongside his consciousness, either as a religious projection or -- what is still more dangerous -- as unconscious contents which then project themselves spontaneously into incongruous objects.
--Carl Jung, Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
The Gods have claimed another Victim....
Archetypes are complexes of experience that come upon us like fate, and their effects are felt in our most personal life. The anima no longer crosses our path as a goddess, but, it may be, as an intimately personal misadventure, or perhaps as our best venture. When, for instance, a highly esteemed professor in his seventies abandons his family and runs off with a young red-headed actress, we know that the gods have claimed another victim. ~"Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious" (1935). In CW 9, Part I: The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. P. 62
[The trickster] is a forerunner of the saviour . . . . He is both subhuman and superhuman, a bestial and divine being, whose chief and most alarming characteristic is his unconsciousness. ~Carl Jung, On the Psychology of the Trickster-Figure,” CW 9i, par. 472
The so-called civilized man has forgotten the trickster. He remembers him only figuratively and metaphorically, when, irritated by his own ineptitude, he speaks of fate playing tricks on him or of things being bewitched. He never suspects that his own hidden and apparently harmless shadow has qualities whose dangerousness exceeds his wildest dreams. ~Carl Jung, On the Psychology of the Trickster-Figure,” CW 9i, par. 478
The so-called civilized man has forgotten the trickster. He remembers him only figuratively and metaphorically, when, irritated by his own ineptitude, he speaks of fate playing tricks on him or of things being bewitched. He never suspects that his own hidden and apparently harmless shadow has qualities whose dangerousness exceeds his wildest dreams. ~Carl Jung, On the Psychology of the Trickster-Figure,” CW 9i, par. 478
Grand Ennead of Heliopolis
Joseph Campbell stated that,
"myths are clues to the spiritual potentialities of the human life."
"This is the tale I pray the divine Muse to unfold to us. Begin it, Goddess, at whatever point you will." (Homer, The Odyssey)
As soon as you enter the world of fairy tales or myths, you become aware of recurring types of characters. The Swiss psychologist Carl Jung called these characters "archetypes." He felt that the we have a shared heritage and a collective unconsciousness of understood characters that acted in a certain way. Myths hold important keys to the understanding of why we live and act the way we do. The character types can be herald, threshold guardian, trickster, shapeshifter, shadow, mentor, hero, magician or others. Some characters combine more than one or include further types.
Wise old man:
An archetypal image of meaning and wisdom. In Jung’s terminology, the wise old man is a personification of the masculine spirit. In a man’s psychology, the anima is related to the wise old man as daughter to father. In a woman, the wise old man is an aspect of the animus.
The feminine equivalent in both men and women is the Great Mother. The figure of the wise old man can appear so plastically, not only in dreams but also in visionary meditation (or what we call "active imagination"), that . . . it takes over the role of a guru.
The wise old man appears in dreams in the guise of a magician, doctor, priest, teacher, professor, grandfather, or any person possessing authority.
--Jung "The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairytales," CW 9i, par. 398.
"myths are clues to the spiritual potentialities of the human life."
"This is the tale I pray the divine Muse to unfold to us. Begin it, Goddess, at whatever point you will." (Homer, The Odyssey)
As soon as you enter the world of fairy tales or myths, you become aware of recurring types of characters. The Swiss psychologist Carl Jung called these characters "archetypes." He felt that the we have a shared heritage and a collective unconsciousness of understood characters that acted in a certain way. Myths hold important keys to the understanding of why we live and act the way we do. The character types can be herald, threshold guardian, trickster, shapeshifter, shadow, mentor, hero, magician or others. Some characters combine more than one or include further types.
Wise old man:
An archetypal image of meaning and wisdom. In Jung’s terminology, the wise old man is a personification of the masculine spirit. In a man’s psychology, the anima is related to the wise old man as daughter to father. In a woman, the wise old man is an aspect of the animus.
The feminine equivalent in both men and women is the Great Mother. The figure of the wise old man can appear so plastically, not only in dreams but also in visionary meditation (or what we call "active imagination"), that . . . it takes over the role of a guru.
The wise old man appears in dreams in the guise of a magician, doctor, priest, teacher, professor, grandfather, or any person possessing authority.
--Jung "The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairytales," CW 9i, par. 398.
The Collective Unconscious and Mythic Memory.
Mythic images and tales tell of the creation of personhood and self-agency, whether these myths are heroic (Promethean fire-theft) or punitive (Adam and Eve’s expulsion). Some of Jung’s progeny like Neumann (1954) call upon world mythology as testimony to the defeat of non-conscious instinct (the uroboros) by culture-bringing heroes. Myth and language
have been seen as ‘twin creatures’ which together have allowed us to symbolize our own
experience and thus re-present it to ourselves consciously by such as Cassirer (1946).
Here non-conscious experience would naturally arise from the archetypes of the
collective unconscious (i.e., the experience of the instincts), and conscious experience
from the symbolization and communication of such primary experience as art, myth,
narrative, exposition, and culture.
Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research, April 2010, Vol. 1, Issue 3, 216-233
Nixon, G. M. From Panexperientialism to Conscious Experience
www.JCER.com
Mythic images and tales tell of the creation of personhood and self-agency, whether these myths are heroic (Promethean fire-theft) or punitive (Adam and Eve’s expulsion). Some of Jung’s progeny like Neumann (1954) call upon world mythology as testimony to the defeat of non-conscious instinct (the uroboros) by culture-bringing heroes. Myth and language
have been seen as ‘twin creatures’ which together have allowed us to symbolize our own
experience and thus re-present it to ourselves consciously by such as Cassirer (1946).
Here non-conscious experience would naturally arise from the archetypes of the
collective unconscious (i.e., the experience of the instincts), and conscious experience
from the symbolization and communication of such primary experience as art, myth,
narrative, exposition, and culture.
Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research, April 2010, Vol. 1, Issue 3, 216-233
Nixon, G. M. From Panexperientialism to Conscious Experience
www.JCER.com
Alphonse Cornet - The Taking of the Temple at Delphi by the Gauls (1885)
"...Nature talks in signs and, to understand its language, one has to pay attention to similarities in form. ( The shaman) had also said that the spirits of nature communicate with human beings in hallucinations and dreams -in other words, in mental images. The idea is common in 'pre-rational' traditions. For instance, Heraclitus said of the Pythian oracle (from the Greek puthon, 'serpent') that it 'neither declares nor conceals, but gives a sign.'"
(The Cosmic Serpent, pg. 96-97)
(The Cosmic Serpent, pg. 96-97)
Lady as Diana
Carl Jung on why Life and the moment of our Death is important.
The maximum awareness which has been attained anywhere forms, so it seems to me, the upper limit of knowledge to which the dead can attain. That is probably why earthly life is of such great significance, and why it is that what a human being "brings over" at the time of his death is so important.
Only here, in life on earth, where the opposites clash together, can the general level of consciousness be raised. That seems to be man's metaphysical task which he cannot accomplish without "mythologizing."
Myth is the natural and indispensable intermediate stage between unconscious and conscious cognition. True, the unconscious knows more than consciousness does; but it is knowledge of a special sort, knowledge in eternity, usually without reference to the here and now, not couched in language of the intellect.
Only when we let its statements amplify themselves, as has been shown above by the example of numerals, does it come within the range of our understanding; only then does a new aspect become perceptible to us.
This process is convincingly repeated in every successful dream analysis. That is why it is so important not to have any preconceived, doctrinaire opinions about the statements made by dreams. As soon as a certain "monotony of interpretation" strikes us, we know that our approach has become doctrinaire and hence sterile. ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections
The maximum awareness which has been attained anywhere forms, so it seems to me, the upper limit of knowledge to which the dead can attain. That is probably why earthly life is of such great significance, and why it is that what a human being "brings over" at the time of his death is so important.
Only here, in life on earth, where the opposites clash together, can the general level of consciousness be raised. That seems to be man's metaphysical task which he cannot accomplish without "mythologizing."
Myth is the natural and indispensable intermediate stage between unconscious and conscious cognition. True, the unconscious knows more than consciousness does; but it is knowledge of a special sort, knowledge in eternity, usually without reference to the here and now, not couched in language of the intellect.
Only when we let its statements amplify themselves, as has been shown above by the example of numerals, does it come within the range of our understanding; only then does a new aspect become perceptible to us.
This process is convincingly repeated in every successful dream analysis. That is why it is so important not to have any preconceived, doctrinaire opinions about the statements made by dreams. As soon as a certain "monotony of interpretation" strikes us, we know that our approach has become doctrinaire and hence sterile. ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections
Myths are not inspiring historical stories of notable ancestral lives,
but the transcendent in dynamic relationship to the present. Myth reconciles us with the nature of life. It provides a sense of meaning in existence & an image of the Cosmos. Myth reconciles us with the realization that Life lives on Life and Death. It carries us through the stages of life from cradle to grave. Our body summarizes the history of the myth. We are living mythologies. We have got to recognize it. Mythology stems from the human body itself, from our own experiences. Every mythological story or experience comes from our experiences as human beings in a physical body.
The gods have not become diseases, as Jung and Hillman wanted us to
believe, they have become memories, memories of former modes of man’s beingin-
the-world. I have been speaking of “former lives” and of “discarded, outgrown
elements.” I could also speak of obsolescence. However, this needs some qualification.
What has been discarded are not the elements and contents themselves,
but their, or our, claim to their being in the status of a present reality, of numinosity,
of sacred mysteries. This they had for the fish. For Aquarius, they are all still
there, and to be sure even as a source of inspiration, but only in Mnemosyne. They
are historical presences. --Geigerich
but the transcendent in dynamic relationship to the present. Myth reconciles us with the nature of life. It provides a sense of meaning in existence & an image of the Cosmos. Myth reconciles us with the realization that Life lives on Life and Death. It carries us through the stages of life from cradle to grave. Our body summarizes the history of the myth. We are living mythologies. We have got to recognize it. Mythology stems from the human body itself, from our own experiences. Every mythological story or experience comes from our experiences as human beings in a physical body.
The gods have not become diseases, as Jung and Hillman wanted us to
believe, they have become memories, memories of former modes of man’s beingin-
the-world. I have been speaking of “former lives” and of “discarded, outgrown
elements.” I could also speak of obsolescence. However, this needs some qualification.
What has been discarded are not the elements and contents themselves,
but their, or our, claim to their being in the status of a present reality, of numinosity,
of sacred mysteries. This they had for the fish. For Aquarius, they are all still
there, and to be sure even as a source of inspiration, but only in Mnemosyne. They
are historical presences. --Geigerich
MADMAN OR MYSTIC?
http://www.depthinsights.com/pdfs/JUNGJournal-MadmanOrMystic-BBright-Spring2012cert.pdf
http://www.depthinsights.com/pdfs/JUNGJournal-MadmanOrMystic-BBright-Spring2012cert.pdf
Bruce Rolf
Most people with a lot of New England ancestry descend from one or more ‘gateway’ ancestors – i.e., early colonists who descend, themselves, from English kings, primarily the Plantagenets. The latter, in turn, have their own gateway ancestors, through whom we
derive our longest possible ‘ancestral lines’ – into the Dark Ages (roughly A.D. 450-750),
and perhaps (though far more conjecturally) even the Classical (Greco-Roman) and
Ancient (Egyptian, Babylonian, and Persian) worlds.
ALL such descents are hypothetical – that is, all entail many filiative links that are not, in
fact, attested in writing, but postulated by scholars on the basis of an assessment of the
known chronology, ethno-political situation, and onomastic patterns of the relevant era,
locale, and race. In short, ‘ancient’ pedigrees have many ‘dotted lines,’ which are plausible, even likely, but NOT susceptible to proof.
Warning. Contains spoilers. Have you ever heard these words uttered “I Have My Family Tree Back to Adam and Eve”? When asked if it is possible for living people to extend ancestral lines back to Adam and Eve, Robert C. Gunderson, Senior Royalty Research Specialist, of the Church Genealogical Department, stated:
“The simplest answer is No. Let me explain. In thirty-five years of genealogical research, I have yet to see a pedigree back to Adam that can be documented. By assignment, I have reviewed hundreds of pedigrees over the years. I have not found one where each connection on the pedigree can be justified by evidence from contemporary documents. In my opinion it is not even possible to verify historically a connected European pedigree earlier than the time of the Merovingian Kings (c. a.d. 450–a.d. 752).
“Every pedigree I have seen which attempts to bridge the gap between that time and the biblical pedigree appears to be based on questionable tradition, or at worst, plain fabrication. Generally these pedigrees offer no evidence as to the origin of the information, or they cite a vague source.”
Source: Robert C. Gunderson, “I Have a Question,” Ensign, Feb. 1984, 31.
derive our longest possible ‘ancestral lines’ – into the Dark Ages (roughly A.D. 450-750),
and perhaps (though far more conjecturally) even the Classical (Greco-Roman) and
Ancient (Egyptian, Babylonian, and Persian) worlds.
ALL such descents are hypothetical – that is, all entail many filiative links that are not, in
fact, attested in writing, but postulated by scholars on the basis of an assessment of the
known chronology, ethno-political situation, and onomastic patterns of the relevant era,
locale, and race. In short, ‘ancient’ pedigrees have many ‘dotted lines,’ which are plausible, even likely, but NOT susceptible to proof.
Warning. Contains spoilers. Have you ever heard these words uttered “I Have My Family Tree Back to Adam and Eve”? When asked if it is possible for living people to extend ancestral lines back to Adam and Eve, Robert C. Gunderson, Senior Royalty Research Specialist, of the Church Genealogical Department, stated:
“The simplest answer is No. Let me explain. In thirty-five years of genealogical research, I have yet to see a pedigree back to Adam that can be documented. By assignment, I have reviewed hundreds of pedigrees over the years. I have not found one where each connection on the pedigree can be justified by evidence from contemporary documents. In my opinion it is not even possible to verify historically a connected European pedigree earlier than the time of the Merovingian Kings (c. a.d. 450–a.d. 752).
“Every pedigree I have seen which attempts to bridge the gap between that time and the biblical pedigree appears to be based on questionable tradition, or at worst, plain fabrication. Generally these pedigrees offer no evidence as to the origin of the information, or they cite a vague source.”
Source: Robert C. Gunderson, “I Have a Question,” Ensign, Feb. 1984, 31.
Joseph Campbell (1990a) says that "mythology is psychology, misread as cosmology, history, and biography" (p. 33). While I agree with the important statement that mythology contains psychology, I would suggest that the misreading only occurs when the literal level is taken as an absolute, ignoring the other levels of interpretation as erroneous. I would also suggest that the reverse is possible: Mythology is not only psychology misread; it contains cosmology, history, and biography, as well as other subject matter, within its parameters expressed in layers that can be identified. To interpret the myth as only psychology is to make the same error as interpreting it as having no meaning beyond the literal. It appears necessary to identify the multifarious levels of meaning that converge to express a single meaning. Joseph Campbell (1990d) describes the metaphor in myth as "twofold in its connotation, first it is psychological and second it is universal and it is connotative of both at the same time." I would suggest that this is true of the Genesis myth, which is metaphysical, psychological and physical and is connotative of all three at the same time. In addition, when all three levels are seen, a fourth level is created that contains the first three levels.
http://sulcus.berkeley.edu/flm/SH/MDL/GAL/GalDisChapts/galdis.ENTIRE.html
http://sulcus.berkeley.edu/flm/SH/MDL/GAL/GalDisChapts/galdis.ENTIRE.html
But myth is not fiction: it consists of facts that are continually repeated and can be observed over and over again. It is something that happens to man, and men have mythical fates just as much as the Greek heroes do.
“The Gods and Goddesses of myth, legend and fairy tale represent archetypes, real potencies
and potentialities deep within the psyche, which, when allowed to flower permit us to be more fully human.”
-- Margot Adler, Drawing Down the Moon
"For me, mythology is a function of biology...a product of the soma's imagination. What do our bodies says? And what are our bodies telling us? The human imagination is grounded in the energies of the body. And the organs of the body are the determinants of these energies and the conflicts between the impulse systems of the organs and the harmonization of them. These are the matters of myth". - Joseph Campbell
and potentialities deep within the psyche, which, when allowed to flower permit us to be more fully human.”
-- Margot Adler, Drawing Down the Moon
"For me, mythology is a function of biology...a product of the soma's imagination. What do our bodies says? And what are our bodies telling us? The human imagination is grounded in the energies of the body. And the organs of the body are the determinants of these energies and the conflicts between the impulse systems of the organs and the harmonization of them. These are the matters of myth". - Joseph Campbell
'Once There Were Gods'
Once there were gods, on earth, with people, the heavenly muses
And Apollo, the youth, healing, inspiring, like you.
And you are like them to me, as though one of the blessed
Sent me out into life where I go my comrade's
Image goes with me wherever I suffer and build, with love
Unto death; for I learned this and have this from her.
Let us live, oh you who are with me in sorrow, with me in faith
And heart and loyalty struggling for better times!
For such we are! And if ever in the coming years they knew
Of us two when the spirit matters again
They would say: lovers in those days, alone, they created
Their secret world that only the gods knew. For who
Cares only for things that will die the earth will have them, but
Nearer the light, into the clarities come
Those keeping faith with the heart's love and holy spirit who were
Hopeful, patient, still, and got the better of fate. ~ Friedrich Hölderlin
That religious experiences exist no longer needs proof.
But it will always remain doubtful whether what metaphysics and theology call God and the gods is the real ground of these experiences.
The question is idle, actually, and answers itself by reason of the subjectively overwhelming numinosity of the experience.
Anyone who has had it is seized by it and therefore not in a position to indulge in fruitless metaphysical or epistemological speculations.
Absolute certainty brings its own evidence and has no need of anthropomorphic proofs. ~Carl Jung, The Undiscovered Self.
This is certainly not to say that what we call the unconscious is identical with God or is set up in his place. It is the medium from which the religious experience seems to flow. As to what the further cause of such an experience may be, the answer to this lies beyond the range of human knowledge. Knowledge of God is a transcendental problem.
~Carl Jung, The Undiscovered Self.
A concept applicable to virtually any archetype, expressing the essentially unknown but experienceable connection between psyche and matter. Psyche is essentially conflict between blind instinct and will (freedom of choice). Where instinct predominates, psychoid processes set in which pertain to the sphere of the unconscious as elements incapable of consciousness. The psychoid process is not the unconscious as such, for this has a far greater extension.
["On the Nature of the Psyche," CW 8, par. 380.]
It seems to me probable that the real nature of the archetype is not capable of being made conscious, that it is transcendent, on which account I call it psychoid. [Ibid., par. 417.]
Once there were gods, on earth, with people, the heavenly muses
And Apollo, the youth, healing, inspiring, like you.
And you are like them to me, as though one of the blessed
Sent me out into life where I go my comrade's
Image goes with me wherever I suffer and build, with love
Unto death; for I learned this and have this from her.
Let us live, oh you who are with me in sorrow, with me in faith
And heart and loyalty struggling for better times!
For such we are! And if ever in the coming years they knew
Of us two when the spirit matters again
They would say: lovers in those days, alone, they created
Their secret world that only the gods knew. For who
Cares only for things that will die the earth will have them, but
Nearer the light, into the clarities come
Those keeping faith with the heart's love and holy spirit who were
Hopeful, patient, still, and got the better of fate. ~ Friedrich Hölderlin
That religious experiences exist no longer needs proof.
But it will always remain doubtful whether what metaphysics and theology call God and the gods is the real ground of these experiences.
The question is idle, actually, and answers itself by reason of the subjectively overwhelming numinosity of the experience.
Anyone who has had it is seized by it and therefore not in a position to indulge in fruitless metaphysical or epistemological speculations.
Absolute certainty brings its own evidence and has no need of anthropomorphic proofs. ~Carl Jung, The Undiscovered Self.
This is certainly not to say that what we call the unconscious is identical with God or is set up in his place. It is the medium from which the religious experience seems to flow. As to what the further cause of such an experience may be, the answer to this lies beyond the range of human knowledge. Knowledge of God is a transcendental problem.
~Carl Jung, The Undiscovered Self.
A concept applicable to virtually any archetype, expressing the essentially unknown but experienceable connection between psyche and matter. Psyche is essentially conflict between blind instinct and will (freedom of choice). Where instinct predominates, psychoid processes set in which pertain to the sphere of the unconscious as elements incapable of consciousness. The psychoid process is not the unconscious as such, for this has a far greater extension.
["On the Nature of the Psyche," CW 8, par. 380.]
It seems to me probable that the real nature of the archetype is not capable of being made conscious, that it is transcendent, on which account I call it psychoid. [Ibid., par. 417.]
Birth of Venus; Alexandre Cabanel (1823–1889)
COLLECTIVE MEMORY
Mythological History & Identity Formation
The term mythology can refer either to a collection of myths (a mythos) or to the study of myths (e.g., comparative mythology). A myth is a sacred narrative explaining how the world and humankind assumed their present form, although, in a very broad sense, a mythic character can refer to any traditional story.
Myth is an "ideology in narrative form". Myths may arise as either truthful depictions or overelaborated accounts of historical events, as allegory for or personification of natural phenomena, or as an explanation of ritual. They are transmitted to convey religious or idealized experience, to establish behavioral models, and to teach.
In genealogy, mythology connects with history and identity formation. Group identity can be active and conscious, or gradual and organic. It is a phenomenon closely linked to power, and is a key connection between perceptions of the past and understandings of the present.
Identity is fundamentally linked to other people: Historical representation is built in to the formation and constant re-negotiation of identity. This never-ending process requires the location and embedding of the self or group within a matrix of other fluid identities. All are likewise partially framed by and constituted through temporally extended representations of themselves in relation to others. In genealogy, the frame is intergenerational.
One manner in which to accomplish distinction from the “other” is through the construction and interpretation of historical narratives. Distinct perceptions of the past denote distinct societies, cultures, nations, or other groups.
No historical narrative can ever relate the absolute truth of events as they actually happened.
“History’s epistemological claim is devalued in favor of memory’s meaningfulness.” Memories about most historical events do seem to have some continuous narrative core to them. Culture and memory are key characteristics of group identity. Stories a community tells about its past construct and shape its identity. Its collectivity is experiences of successive generations, the concepts of worldview, paradigm, and ideology.
Myth has a function in history as a mediating function, as a channel that allows communities to reinterpret their identity and perceptions of history. Myth mediates between past and present, between reality and the ideal. We don't need to uncover the ‘historical truth’ behind the myths. Stories reflect the historical setting in which the myth was created and the historical need that the myth fulfilled.
The connection between myth and identity remains strong. Memory is only experiential, while myth is always happening, but never "occurs". Memory is mythologized in the "mythscape", including our drawn genealogies. We cannot physically remember events we didn't participate in but we envision them through narratives that inspire imagination. Memory and myth meet in the mythscape.
Myths subsume all of the various events, personalities, traditions, artifacts, and social practices that (self) define our relation to the past, present, and future. There are orthodox governing myths and heterodox myths that generate their own traditions and stories. Particular types of story are about the community and its importance, a story that resonates with the people emotionally, that glorifies the community, and that is easily transmitted and absorbed.
Recurring themes or motifs in myth can be: 1) diffusion (someone borrowed the story) or 2) psychology (unconscious ideas or situations often recur among humans). For Joseph Campbell, hero myths are "a magnification" of an initiation scheme of separation, transition, and incorporation.
"A hero ventures forth from the world of common day [separation] into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are then encountered and a decisive victory is won [initiation]: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man [return]" (Hero 30).
Campbell says that in his encounter with this region of wonder, the hero learns about his true inner nature and identity, and about the ultimate reality beyond the physical, i.e., "God." For Campbell, the hero's inner and outer journey symbolizes psychic and religious discoveries that all humans ought to make, and hero myths can function even today as guides for humans through various stages of life.
It's perfectly possible that repetitions of structure or motif point to some deep-seated human need or conflict. For example, imagine the psychological reality behind so many myths that tell of fathers trying to do away with their sons (Ouranos, Kronos) or sons who "accidentally" do away with their fathers or grandfathers (Oedipus, Theseus, Perseus)? In rejecting or ignoring our lines of descent, have we done the same?
Theories of myth interpretation are literal and symbolic. If we think of myths as true, if we believe in them , we are thinking in religious terms. But belief is also psychological. Some say we need to believe in some power greater than themselves. Joseph Campbell, see the origins of myth and religion in the psychological response of early man to the trauma of death. Thus, belief in a greater power arises when humans are faced with the mystery of what happens after death.
Literalists tend to seek factual or historical bases for a given mythological narrative while advocates of symbolic approaches prefer to regard the narrative as a code requiring some mode of decipherment. The literal and symbolic exegeses [interpretations] of myths are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Myths can also tell us truths about our own psychology.
Events fall somewhere onto the linear, mythical timeline of an imagined historical progression. Spatially, events are imagined to occur in an “idealized” and “bounded” territory. Genealogy helps us better understand the relationship between myth and history, and identity and history. Myths constructed by all three groups simplify complex relationships and history by altering their depictions of time and space. The resulting creations turn complicated representations of the past into easily digestible and transmittable narratives and place the community in a valorized and privileged position in history.
Genealogy is one way of transforming experience and cultural identity. In periods of crisis, people tend to look to the past for reassurance and hope for the future. Especially in times of momentous and often catastrophic change, people reassess their identities and often reinterpret their history in order to define themselves. They seek stability in the past, though the manner in which the past is portrayed is not absolute.
The importance of “great individuals” or heroes for communal identity construction is a well-explored phenomenon. These figures and the stories told about them frame a community’s consciousness, worldview, and perception of the past. They are seen as exemplars of the community ideal and they attain (semi-) divine status in the worldviews of those who are imagined as their descendants.
Constructing myths around the stories of heroic figures is a straightforward means to streamline a complex history into a simple and instructive narrative. Heroic figures carry preconceived associations that can be easily attached to new narratives, and the form of the epic or other heroic narrative is an entertaining and easily memorable structure to transmit and perpetuate understandings of the community’s past. Every community has heroes that hold positions of special significance in their communal consciousness. These figures are often archetypal founder figures, ideal rulers, lawgivers, explorers, conquerors, kings, and/or warriors.
Continuous with irrational beliefs, delusions are belief states. Delusions can lead to action and they can be reported with conviction, and thus they behave as typical beliefs. The phenomenon of delusions involves the formation of normal or abnormal beliefs. Fixed ideas have an obsessional nature, that is persistently maintained. Overvalued ideas are false or exaggerated beliefs sustained beyond reason or logic but with less rigidity than a delusion, also often being less patently unbelievable. Unreasonable ideas or feelings persist despite evidence to the contrary.
The experiential and phenomenological character of delusions are not as mere representations of a person's experienced reality, but as attitudes towards representations. Delusional realities are modes of experience which involve shifts in familiarity and sense of reality and encompass cognition, bodily changes, affect, social and environmental factors.
ref. http://faculty.gvsu.edu/websterm/ways.htm
Mythological History & Identity Formation
The term mythology can refer either to a collection of myths (a mythos) or to the study of myths (e.g., comparative mythology). A myth is a sacred narrative explaining how the world and humankind assumed their present form, although, in a very broad sense, a mythic character can refer to any traditional story.
Myth is an "ideology in narrative form". Myths may arise as either truthful depictions or overelaborated accounts of historical events, as allegory for or personification of natural phenomena, or as an explanation of ritual. They are transmitted to convey religious or idealized experience, to establish behavioral models, and to teach.
In genealogy, mythology connects with history and identity formation. Group identity can be active and conscious, or gradual and organic. It is a phenomenon closely linked to power, and is a key connection between perceptions of the past and understandings of the present.
Identity is fundamentally linked to other people: Historical representation is built in to the formation and constant re-negotiation of identity. This never-ending process requires the location and embedding of the self or group within a matrix of other fluid identities. All are likewise partially framed by and constituted through temporally extended representations of themselves in relation to others. In genealogy, the frame is intergenerational.
One manner in which to accomplish distinction from the “other” is through the construction and interpretation of historical narratives. Distinct perceptions of the past denote distinct societies, cultures, nations, or other groups.
No historical narrative can ever relate the absolute truth of events as they actually happened.
“History’s epistemological claim is devalued in favor of memory’s meaningfulness.” Memories about most historical events do seem to have some continuous narrative core to them. Culture and memory are key characteristics of group identity. Stories a community tells about its past construct and shape its identity. Its collectivity is experiences of successive generations, the concepts of worldview, paradigm, and ideology.
Myth has a function in history as a mediating function, as a channel that allows communities to reinterpret their identity and perceptions of history. Myth mediates between past and present, between reality and the ideal. We don't need to uncover the ‘historical truth’ behind the myths. Stories reflect the historical setting in which the myth was created and the historical need that the myth fulfilled.
The connection between myth and identity remains strong. Memory is only experiential, while myth is always happening, but never "occurs". Memory is mythologized in the "mythscape", including our drawn genealogies. We cannot physically remember events we didn't participate in but we envision them through narratives that inspire imagination. Memory and myth meet in the mythscape.
Myths subsume all of the various events, personalities, traditions, artifacts, and social practices that (self) define our relation to the past, present, and future. There are orthodox governing myths and heterodox myths that generate their own traditions and stories. Particular types of story are about the community and its importance, a story that resonates with the people emotionally, that glorifies the community, and that is easily transmitted and absorbed.
Recurring themes or motifs in myth can be: 1) diffusion (someone borrowed the story) or 2) psychology (unconscious ideas or situations often recur among humans). For Joseph Campbell, hero myths are "a magnification" of an initiation scheme of separation, transition, and incorporation.
"A hero ventures forth from the world of common day [separation] into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are then encountered and a decisive victory is won [initiation]: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man [return]" (Hero 30).
Campbell says that in his encounter with this region of wonder, the hero learns about his true inner nature and identity, and about the ultimate reality beyond the physical, i.e., "God." For Campbell, the hero's inner and outer journey symbolizes psychic and religious discoveries that all humans ought to make, and hero myths can function even today as guides for humans through various stages of life.
It's perfectly possible that repetitions of structure or motif point to some deep-seated human need or conflict. For example, imagine the psychological reality behind so many myths that tell of fathers trying to do away with their sons (Ouranos, Kronos) or sons who "accidentally" do away with their fathers or grandfathers (Oedipus, Theseus, Perseus)? In rejecting or ignoring our lines of descent, have we done the same?
Theories of myth interpretation are literal and symbolic. If we think of myths as true, if we believe in them , we are thinking in religious terms. But belief is also psychological. Some say we need to believe in some power greater than themselves. Joseph Campbell, see the origins of myth and religion in the psychological response of early man to the trauma of death. Thus, belief in a greater power arises when humans are faced with the mystery of what happens after death.
Literalists tend to seek factual or historical bases for a given mythological narrative while advocates of symbolic approaches prefer to regard the narrative as a code requiring some mode of decipherment. The literal and symbolic exegeses [interpretations] of myths are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Myths can also tell us truths about our own psychology.
Events fall somewhere onto the linear, mythical timeline of an imagined historical progression. Spatially, events are imagined to occur in an “idealized” and “bounded” territory. Genealogy helps us better understand the relationship between myth and history, and identity and history. Myths constructed by all three groups simplify complex relationships and history by altering their depictions of time and space. The resulting creations turn complicated representations of the past into easily digestible and transmittable narratives and place the community in a valorized and privileged position in history.
Genealogy is one way of transforming experience and cultural identity. In periods of crisis, people tend to look to the past for reassurance and hope for the future. Especially in times of momentous and often catastrophic change, people reassess their identities and often reinterpret their history in order to define themselves. They seek stability in the past, though the manner in which the past is portrayed is not absolute.
The importance of “great individuals” or heroes for communal identity construction is a well-explored phenomenon. These figures and the stories told about them frame a community’s consciousness, worldview, and perception of the past. They are seen as exemplars of the community ideal and they attain (semi-) divine status in the worldviews of those who are imagined as their descendants.
Constructing myths around the stories of heroic figures is a straightforward means to streamline a complex history into a simple and instructive narrative. Heroic figures carry preconceived associations that can be easily attached to new narratives, and the form of the epic or other heroic narrative is an entertaining and easily memorable structure to transmit and perpetuate understandings of the community’s past. Every community has heroes that hold positions of special significance in their communal consciousness. These figures are often archetypal founder figures, ideal rulers, lawgivers, explorers, conquerors, kings, and/or warriors.
Continuous with irrational beliefs, delusions are belief states. Delusions can lead to action and they can be reported with conviction, and thus they behave as typical beliefs. The phenomenon of delusions involves the formation of normal or abnormal beliefs. Fixed ideas have an obsessional nature, that is persistently maintained. Overvalued ideas are false or exaggerated beliefs sustained beyond reason or logic but with less rigidity than a delusion, also often being less patently unbelievable. Unreasonable ideas or feelings persist despite evidence to the contrary.
The experiential and phenomenological character of delusions are not as mere representations of a person's experienced reality, but as attitudes towards representations. Delusional realities are modes of experience which involve shifts in familiarity and sense of reality and encompass cognition, bodily changes, affect, social and environmental factors.
ref. http://faculty.gvsu.edu/websterm/ways.htm
"The danger that a mythology understood too literally, and as taught by the Church, will suddenly be repudiated lock, stock and barrel is today greater than ever. Is it not time that the Christian mythology, instead of being wiped out, was understood symbolically for once? ~C.G Jung "The Undiscovered Self," CW vol. 10, par. 521.
"Great art till now has always derived its fruitfulness from myth, from the unconscious process of symbolization which continues through the ages and, as the primordial manifestation of the human spirit, will continue to be the root of all creation in the future.
The development of modern art with its seemingly nihilistic trend towards disintegration must be understood as the symptom and symbol of a mood of universal destruction and renewal that has set its mark on our age. This mood makes itself felt everywhere, politically, socially, and philosophically. We are living in what the Greeks called the kairos – the right moment – for a “metamorphosis of the gods”, of the fundamental princip1es and symbols." --Jung, Collected Works 10
"Great art till now has always derived its fruitfulness from myth, from the unconscious process of symbolization which continues through the ages and, as the primordial manifestation of the human spirit, will continue to be the root of all creation in the future.
The development of modern art with its seemingly nihilistic trend towards disintegration must be understood as the symptom and symbol of a mood of universal destruction and renewal that has set its mark on our age. This mood makes itself felt everywhere, politically, socially, and philosophically. We are living in what the Greeks called the kairos – the right moment – for a “metamorphosis of the gods”, of the fundamental princip1es and symbols." --Jung, Collected Works 10
Dr. Marie-Louise von Franz
(Alchemy, excerpts from p. 94-97)
"A study of primitive civilizations shows their religious attitude towards life as being something completely self-evident. Religion was not separated from the profane, everyday life, but the self-evident basis of everything done, believed, and said. In his primitive condition, man is naturally religious and his religion pervades his whole nature and all his activities. Greek civilization had evolved from that state through the pre-Socratic and the Sophistic philosophy and the various evolutions of Greek philosophy. The upper layer of learned people in Greece, perhaps for the first time, had cut away from the primitive religious attitude which was then projected first onto the Indians and Ethiopians and later, according to late Greek literature, onto the Egyptians and such people, who were then considered to be the highest and closest to God, and in their realm, our text says the alchemical mystery was to be found. A return to the primitive self-evident attitude towards life is a requisite for the experience of the Self, which cannot be found through the conscious mind and with the developed part of the personality but by first returning to that primitive human attitude….
Question: Would the primitive religious attitude have to do with participation mystique?
Dr. von Franz: Yes, it has all the symptoms of primitive religion, namely participation mystique – observation of synchronistic events, observations of signs, not acting without first observing inner and outer symptoms and signs, or as it has been defined, the constant, careful attention towards unknown factors.
According to that definition, religion means never acting only in accordance with conscious reasoning, but with constant attention and consideration of the unknown participating factors. For instance, if someone says: “Let us have coffee together after the lecture,” if I think only that I have time since I don’t have lunch until 12:30, that would be conscious reasoning, which of course is also correct, but if I am a religious person, I will stop for a minute and try to get a feeling as to whether it is right to do that, and if I have an instinctive feeling against it, or at that moment a window bangs shut, or I stumble, then I might not go.
One can laugh at that as superstition, and naturally on that level it is not different from superstition, but it is not just a mechanical thing such as the idea that if a black cat crosses your path you should turn back, but rather that all the time one should concentrate and try to get some sign from the Self, or from inside oneself. In Chinese philosophy, it is tantamount to paying constant attention to Tao, whether what I am now doing is right, in Tao. Naturally there are also personal arguments, and pros and cons, but to live in a religious way would mean being constantly on the alert for those unknown powers which also guide one’s life. If I get no contrary indication, I can decide to have the coffee, since I have time, or because I like it. A bell does not always ring warning us, but if it does and one ignores it, then something goes wrong. The religious and primitive attitude involves constant consideration of these powers.
When Dr. Jung was in Africa, his Safari guide was an Islamic, I believe a Shi-ite. At breakfast every morning all the black carriers discussed their dreams, after which the leader of the group would go to Dr. Jung and say that they would proceed, or not, one that day. Dr. Jung found that when they said they were not going, the general aspect of the dreams had not been favorable, so they felt probably they should stay another day before proceeding. Dr. Jung accepted such decisions and even managed to be drawn into the discussion on dreams, and take part in it, and they were very much impressed to find that he knew something about and was interested in dreams and could even interpret them better, and like that he could observe what was happening. But an Englishman who went to the same place some weeks later naturally did as most white men do – he accused the men of being lazy and insisted that they had to arrive at their destination in five days times and used force, and he was killed.
…
Religion in our definition, in its most basic form, would simply be constant alert attention directed towards these facts, instead of ruling and deciding one’s life by conscious rational decision and reasoning of the pros and cons. Therefore, in primitive societies, religion pervades everyday life. Before primitives go hunting there is a hunting ritual and if during it there is an accident, they don’t go. There is nothing either mystical or transcendent or special about it; the basic religious attitude is linked with the idea of survival, and therefore to be religious is an immediate advantage for it ensures survival.
When we are confronted with the phenomenon of neurosis, when people get stuck in their difficulties, we try to discover what the unconscious has to say and analysands are first guided to attend more to their instincts, behind which is the whole phenomenon of religious insight and experience. Jung, of course, began as all doctors did, on the basis also of his contact with Freud, with the idea of helping people to become more instinctive, in order that they might be healthy, but then he discovered that behind instinct was also religion, or that the latter was something instinctive and completely natural, for the natural man is the religious man. One therefore has to return to the natural, immediate man within and to a religious attitude, for we cannot have one without the other."
(Alchemy, excerpts from p. 94-97)
"A study of primitive civilizations shows their religious attitude towards life as being something completely self-evident. Religion was not separated from the profane, everyday life, but the self-evident basis of everything done, believed, and said. In his primitive condition, man is naturally religious and his religion pervades his whole nature and all his activities. Greek civilization had evolved from that state through the pre-Socratic and the Sophistic philosophy and the various evolutions of Greek philosophy. The upper layer of learned people in Greece, perhaps for the first time, had cut away from the primitive religious attitude which was then projected first onto the Indians and Ethiopians and later, according to late Greek literature, onto the Egyptians and such people, who were then considered to be the highest and closest to God, and in their realm, our text says the alchemical mystery was to be found. A return to the primitive self-evident attitude towards life is a requisite for the experience of the Self, which cannot be found through the conscious mind and with the developed part of the personality but by first returning to that primitive human attitude….
Question: Would the primitive religious attitude have to do with participation mystique?
Dr. von Franz: Yes, it has all the symptoms of primitive religion, namely participation mystique – observation of synchronistic events, observations of signs, not acting without first observing inner and outer symptoms and signs, or as it has been defined, the constant, careful attention towards unknown factors.
According to that definition, religion means never acting only in accordance with conscious reasoning, but with constant attention and consideration of the unknown participating factors. For instance, if someone says: “Let us have coffee together after the lecture,” if I think only that I have time since I don’t have lunch until 12:30, that would be conscious reasoning, which of course is also correct, but if I am a religious person, I will stop for a minute and try to get a feeling as to whether it is right to do that, and if I have an instinctive feeling against it, or at that moment a window bangs shut, or I stumble, then I might not go.
One can laugh at that as superstition, and naturally on that level it is not different from superstition, but it is not just a mechanical thing such as the idea that if a black cat crosses your path you should turn back, but rather that all the time one should concentrate and try to get some sign from the Self, or from inside oneself. In Chinese philosophy, it is tantamount to paying constant attention to Tao, whether what I am now doing is right, in Tao. Naturally there are also personal arguments, and pros and cons, but to live in a religious way would mean being constantly on the alert for those unknown powers which also guide one’s life. If I get no contrary indication, I can decide to have the coffee, since I have time, or because I like it. A bell does not always ring warning us, but if it does and one ignores it, then something goes wrong. The religious and primitive attitude involves constant consideration of these powers.
When Dr. Jung was in Africa, his Safari guide was an Islamic, I believe a Shi-ite. At breakfast every morning all the black carriers discussed their dreams, after which the leader of the group would go to Dr. Jung and say that they would proceed, or not, one that day. Dr. Jung found that when they said they were not going, the general aspect of the dreams had not been favorable, so they felt probably they should stay another day before proceeding. Dr. Jung accepted such decisions and even managed to be drawn into the discussion on dreams, and take part in it, and they were very much impressed to find that he knew something about and was interested in dreams and could even interpret them better, and like that he could observe what was happening. But an Englishman who went to the same place some weeks later naturally did as most white men do – he accused the men of being lazy and insisted that they had to arrive at their destination in five days times and used force, and he was killed.
…
Religion in our definition, in its most basic form, would simply be constant alert attention directed towards these facts, instead of ruling and deciding one’s life by conscious rational decision and reasoning of the pros and cons. Therefore, in primitive societies, religion pervades everyday life. Before primitives go hunting there is a hunting ritual and if during it there is an accident, they don’t go. There is nothing either mystical or transcendent or special about it; the basic religious attitude is linked with the idea of survival, and therefore to be religious is an immediate advantage for it ensures survival.
When we are confronted with the phenomenon of neurosis, when people get stuck in their difficulties, we try to discover what the unconscious has to say and analysands are first guided to attend more to their instincts, behind which is the whole phenomenon of religious insight and experience. Jung, of course, began as all doctors did, on the basis also of his contact with Freud, with the idea of helping people to become more instinctive, in order that they might be healthy, but then he discovered that behind instinct was also religion, or that the latter was something instinctive and completely natural, for the natural man is the religious man. One therefore has to return to the natural, immediate man within and to a religious attitude, for we cannot have one without the other."
Kinuko Y. Craft - Moon Goddess
One of the oldest mythological texts on record is called Inanna’s Decent to the Underworld:
Inanna queen of heaven sets her mind on the great below, Irkalla, Sumerian land of the dead. Before she goes she instructs her trusty female servant that if she does not return in three days, to plead with the Gods to send aid. And thus Inanna sets out for Hell. She arrives at the front gates and demands to be let in. When asked why she is there, Inanna replies she has come to witness the funeral rites of Gulganna, the bull of heaven, Ereshkigal’s consort, whom Inanna caused the destruction of in the epic of Gilgamesh. Ereshkigal is the Queen of Irkalla, and upon being informed that her upper world sister is at the gates demanding to be let in to witness the funeral of a creature she destroyed, Ereshkigal bites her lip and slaps her thigh. She is most displeased. Upon reflection for a moment she instructs her vizier, whose name in our tongue means Fate, to let her in and orders she be brought naked and bowed low to Ereshkigal, as all who enter her domain are.
So Fate admits Inanna, and as she passes through each one of the seven gates of the underworld, he strips her of one piece of her sacred regalia. When divested of her garments, Inanna complains asking what is this? Fates reply is that they ways of the underworld are perfect, and that she should not question them. So at last Inanna is brought before Ereshkigal, naked and bowed low.
As Inanna enters, Ereshkigal rises from her throne, and Inanna attempts to lunge for either Ereshkigal or the throne of Hell. Why is unclear, either Inanna set out to conquer the Underworld, she was so angry at her treatment thus far or, as in the rites of Baal another ancient dying and resurrected God, embodied by a sacred cow, she came to claim the Bull of Heaven. Either way, when Inanna lunges, Ereshkigal fixes upon her the eyes of death, and kills her. She turns her into a corpse and hangs her from a peg, sort of as a trophy.
Three days go by and Inanna’s faithful servant, puts on mourning attire and raises the alarm. She goes to several different Gods all begging that they help, and none will, either out of fear and respect for the Underworld and her Queen, or because they felt Inanna was being greedy in going into the underworld when she was already the queen of heaven, and as such deserves the fate she has met. Finally Inanna’s servant finds sympathy in Enki, a water God associated with the constellation Aquarius.
From the dust under his fingernails he fashions two sexless creatures, and he gives them both the food of life and the water of life, and he instructs them to slip into the underworld unnoticed, and when Ereshkigal moans, to moan with her. He instructs them to empathize with her. He then instructs them that when Ereshkigal offers them something in return for their sympathy, to request the corpse of Inanna, and sprinkle on her the water of life, and feed her the food of life, thus restoring her.
As such the little dust people enter Irkalla and do exactly as they are told, and in return for their empathy Ereshkigal gives them Inanna’s corpse and they restore the Queen of heaven. But as Inanna attempts to leave, the Annunaki, which are the judges of the Underworld say she cannot go unless she provides a replacement, as no one leaves the underworld. So they send Inanna back to the land of the living with in a horde of demons to claim her replacement.
When Inanna gets back her faithful servant is waiting for her, clothed in mourning attire. The demons want to seize her, but Inanna says no, because she did as she was told and she mourned for me. Then they come upon Inanna’s brother who is likewise appropriately mourning, and when the demons attempt to seize him, Inanna’s reply is the same, no.
Finally, they come upon Inanna’s consort Dumuzi. Dumuzi is a mortal who was given dominion as king by becoming Inanna’s consort. When Inanna comes upon him, he is dressed in fine regalia, making merry, not mourning one bit. Inanna fixes upon him, the same eyes Ereshkigal fixed up her, and the Galla demons know they have their replacement.
Now the story continues on to tell that Dumuzi gives chase. Inanna laments the loss of her lover, and when Dumuzi seeks shelter at his sister’s, and the Galla find him there, his sister shares his fate, and offers to spend half the year in the underworld, with Dumuzi doing the other half.
There are several things that stand out about this story to me. One is the fact that Inanna approaches the domain of Ereshkigal quite haughtily, a fact that angers Ereshkigal. Ereshkigal orders her to be stripped naked and bowed low, like everyone else who enters her realm. The dark lady breaks down not only things on a physical level, but on a psychological level. The only way I can think to explain it is that many people think that they have the power to control things. By their arrogance or manipulating or sheer force, they think they can achieve dominion. The dark lady breaks down this illusion, sometimes with great ruthlessness, depending on the severity of offense. The only thing a person can control is themselves, and even that is debatable sometimes.
The next thing that stands out is that Inanna’s journey is the journey of the initiate, or the shamanistic rite of initiation. A person, during childhood or teenage years, is subject of great trauma. This trauma leads to an inward journey that many do not make it back from and results in mental illness such as schizophrenia. The ones that do make it back however, are viewed as being in a position to see and understand things that the average person cannot. Inanna emerges from her experience in Irkalla fundamentally changed as well.
Inanna’s descent has themes that resonate with the wisdom associated with the crown chakra, of openness to divine will, a chakra that only opens in the most spiritual advanced people. It also speaks of the sacrifice for deep feminine wisdom. Shamanism and many natural/organic based spiritual traditions seek wisdom through altered states of perception. This can be taken as forcibly altering ones consciousness with drugs (a form of mediumship) or by rediscovering unity with nature and cosmos that is lost in logos goal orientated society and by letting the dark lady drag us down to the magic, meditative and archaic depths that is before all thought and speech that is quite literally earth-shattering. It is in this broken state we can connect which the flow of the universe and find new perspective. The very process of which flies in the face of patriarchal society and as such can result in loss of social standing, a necessary sacrifice to the dark lady for her wisdom, as Inanna found out the hard way.
It should also be noted that with Inanna she is divested of one piece of her regalia at each of the seven gates, and they are restored to her gate by gate. Transformation is rarely instantaneous, usually it is a slow process of regression through the various layers of consciousness and mechanisms of a persons mind, and it is a slow process of being put back together as well.
Inanna was known as the Queen of Heaven and Earth. She was a Goddess of love and fertility. She was a goddess who would not be owned, she was her own master. Even when she came together with a man, she retained her independence and magnetism as a lover, she was never the dutiful wife or mother. Her priestesses were the dancing girls and temple prostitutes.
Now when I say prostitutes, forget the modern definition. These were not street walkers. These were women that in many cases after a term of service to the goddess, would go on to be married and live a normal life. They lived in the temple and they were not directly paid. A man would come to the temple to make an offering to the goddess of love, and in doing so partake of the boons the lady of love, and her dark sister offered, i.e. renewal, and regeneration. Sexual alchemy is the term for it, and it covers everything from simple pleasure to a path to enlightenment. Inanna is extremely extroverted in this role, in one song inviting Dumuzi to “plow my vulva, man of my heart”
Inanna was a celebrated as a numen of impersonal fertility, much like Demeter who I will get to later. In one story grains and legumes pour forth from her womb. One of her oldest emblems was a grain storehouse and the date God was said to be one of her consorts. She combines earthly bounty with heavenly guidance, and she is the union of earth and sky, matter and spirit, vessel and light. Inanna represents the border regions, the places where things intersect, the liminal place where events emerge. She cannot be contained or made certain and secure. In this aspect she is like Hecate.
Like Isis she is queen of the land and its fertility, it is she who bestows kingship on the mortal man chosen to be shepherd of the people, and promises a good harvest, and regards the people of Sumer as her children, but unlike Isis, she also promises the king the pleasures of her bed. She was also a Goddess of war. Battle was the dance of Inanna. She was more passionate than the Greek Athena and with the wild instincts of Artemis. Hymns to her describe her as “all devouring in power…attacking like the attacking storm” (she was a storm goddess too), having and “awesome face” and “angry heart” she sings with delight “heaven is mine, earth is mine-I a warrior am I. Is there a God who can vie with me?” Accordingly her companion animal was a lion.
Inanna is also mentioned several times in the epic of Gilgamesh. Note that in the story of Inanna’s descent to the underworld, she mentions she has come to see the funeral of the bull of heaven. In the epic of Gilgamesh, Inanna demands the bull of heaven to use it to destroy Gilgamesh and Enkidu. Gilgamesh and Enkidu slays the Bull and in doing so tells Inanna that he would do the same to her if she could. Then there is mention of Inanna and her priestesses leaving Uruk.
I mention this because of a theory I heard from a book I read that is cited at the back of this book. The theory is about the precession of the earth through the astrological constellations. At the time Sumeria was at its peak, the earth was in the constellation of Taurus-the bull. I truly believe the epic of Gilgamesh records the transition from the age of Taurus to the Age of Aries. Taurus is considered a feminine sign, with Aries being as masculine as it gets. One can begrudge patriarchal society till their blue in the face but the truth of it is that it was destined in the stars, just as the age that followed Aries, Pisces had to do with the victim/savior archetype, characterized by the figures of Jesus, Muhammad etc.
Further reinforcing this idea is the story of Inanna and the huluppu tree. The story talks about a tree, planted by the Gods, that Inanna finds on the banks of the Euphrates. She brings it back to Uruk to plant in her holy garden. She tends it in the hopes of using it for a throne and bed. Much to her consternation, a serpent takes up residence in the roots of the tree and will not come out. An anzu-bird takes up residence in the branches, and likewise will not come out, and the dark maid Lilith dwelt in the trunk. She pleads with her brother Utu, to help and he does nothing. But then she pleads to Gilgamesh. He dons his armor and enters her holy garden. He strikes the snake, and as a result not only takes car e of the serpent, but frightens off the Anzu bird and its young, and Lilith. Gilgamesh makes a throne and bed for Inanna out of the tree.
This story speaks of another fundamental truth. In this case I think it is more a historical truth. The serpent and the bird were ancient goddess symbols, both having to do with enlightenment. The serpent is very prevalent in sexual alchemy, the kundalini of tantra, the lunar and solar serpent of the sex magic of Isis. There is also the serpent of Genesis, that initiates woman into knowledge, a story I will dissect in full later. The bird is an ancient symbol of the soul, the wings symbolizing unbound freedom and enlightenment. Lilith, a figure I will cover in greater depth later, was known earlier as the hand of Inanna, the woman who lured men from the streets and fields of war into the Temple of love.
I believe the three’s position in the huluppu tree also is of significance. Look at the caduceus wand (also a symbol of alchemy, before western medicine perverted it) serpents rising up with wings at the top. If you look at the two serpents as being the lunar and solar serpents of the sex magic of Isis and you know that you transpose that over a persons body, the snakes starting in the pelvis and ending with the wings around what is known as the chalice, something that is pretty much located over the brain stem, the huluppu tree becomes a road map for enlightenment through sexual alchemy, and it is through woman, one who is notorious for her refusal to submit.
With the change from the age of Taurus, where tantric rituals were prevalent and the Feminine was considered superior, to the age of Aries where women and their mysteries were considered inferior, the only way Inanna could survive was to divest herself of her power and accept submission to man, hence Gilgamesh, who represents the patriarchal takeover, entering her holy garden, a blatant euphemism for sex, striking the serpent, driving off the bird and Lilith, and then giving Inanna her throne and bed, instead of her creating it herself.
It should also be noted that in the epic of Gilgamesh, Inanna offers herself to Gilgamesh in marriage, a sacred rite called the hierosgamos, that confers kingship. Gilgamesh in essence throws it in her face saying that her previous husbands met unfortunate fates and its because she treated them like crap. He specifically cites Dumuzi. Obviously, in the descent of Inanna, Dumuzi meets his end deservedly, but Gilgamesh twists the truth, true to form of the kind of insults and abuse women often have to deal with from men who do not respect them, and insults and derogates Inanna to claim her power.
Another interesting tidbit from the Epic of Gilgamesh is when Enkidu has the dream telling of his death, at one point he turns on the temple prostitute that originally civilized him, cursing her to be “ without a roof for your commerce, for you shall not keep house with the other girls in the tavern, but do your business in places fouled by the vomit of the drunkard. Your hire will be potter’s earth, your theivings will be flung into the hovel, you will sit at the crossroads in the dust of the potters quarter, you will make your bed on a dunghill at night, and day by day take your stand in the walls shadow. Brambles and thorns will tear your feet, the drunk and the dry will strike your cheek and your mouth will ache”.
But the Gods defend the heirodule asking Enkidu did she not pleasure you and feed you food and drink fit for the Gods, did she not cloth you in magnificent garment and give you Gilgamesh as a companion. Enkidu relents but in my opinion only a little for then he says she will be adored beyond compare, but because of her as Enkidu puts it, “a wife, a mother of seven, was forsaken” As far as I am concerned this is a prophecy because this is exactly what the dancing girls of today face, either brutality and filth, or being a home wrecker.
So if all things may be known by the opposite to which they can be contrasted, Ereshkigal has already been laid bare. Ereshkigal represents the uncontrollable unconscious processes we are all ruled by. Death being her most obvious association, but she rules over all unconscious processes, birth, sex, defecation, mental/emotional illness, all the things that we either would like to ignore or control in some way. She blows through all the pretensions we have about our own power, even grinding down a goddess to a rotting corpse on a peg, she is the life processes to which we must all submit. But like all Death Goddesses, she has rewards for those who willingly submit to her, who face their mortal fear and realize that in the end, we are all worm food, it’s just a question of when.
Ereshkigal was once an upper world goddess, but she was repeated raped by Enlil, a God. The Gods punished Enlil by sending him to the underworld, but out of love she followed him. Ereshkigal is the darkness of Inanna. When her fundamental nature is not respected, Ereshkigal is the result. It is a common theme amongst all the Goddesses I will be discussing, they were horribly betrayed and hurt at the hands of males. Inanna was known for her independence, her power and right to govern her sexuality as she chose. Ereshkigal was the result of her fundamental nature being betrayed. And like those who have suffered great pain and trauma all she wanted was someone to empathize, hence the success of the creatures Enki sent to free Inanna. They mirrored Ereshkigal’s pain, they absorbed it and felt just as she did, and in that small act of empathy, Ereshkigal was freed from her torture momentarily, and in return she released Inanna from her torture. Granted someone had to take Inanna’s place, but that fundamental story of empathy being the release from Hell, is key to the mythos I am building now.
When Inanna returns to the land of the living, with the horde of demons charged with claiming her replacement, she goes to the various people she knows and all of them mourned for her. However when she catches up with Dumuzi, her lover, she finds him in essence dressed up and partying. She fixes upon him the same eyes of death that Ereshkigal fixed on her in Inanna’s haughtiness, and in that look it apparent that Inanna has gained wisdom from the experience, and the light and dark are reconciled.
Ereshkigal’s name means “lady of the great place below”. She was a grain Goddesss before she came to be queen of the netherworld. She is the seed below and dying to sprout again. To a matriarchal point of view she is the continuum in which different states are simply experienced as transformations of one energy. To a patriarchal view she is a rape of life, a violence to be feared and controlled as much as possible with distancing oneself from it and a strict moral order. She is pictured as having life freezing eyes and leeches on her head. In other myths she is associated with the lord of healing(Ninazu) and the god of plagues war and death(Nergal).
She is very primal, full of fury, greed, fear of loss and even self-spite. She is raw instinctually split off from consciousness, the need and aggression that exist in our own personal underworld that is often denied out of social mores. And like the defense mechanisms of our own psyche that react sometime violently to unwanted intruders, Ereshkigal in anger sends her gate-keeper to deal with Inanna the intruder.
Ereshkigal is active destruction but she is also the slow cell by cell processes of decay and gestation, that are invasive and depending on the case against a persons will. She is pitiless and destructive of the individual. She is the hopeless, empty, shattering, numb, barren void and chaos. Her energy can be seen in black holes, infinite gravity and magnetism that even light cannot escape from. Her energy is the energy of X-rays, which see through all to the very core and are also emitted by black holes. Her energy is the disintegration of elements, radioactive decay, cancer, fermentation. She rules the functions of the base chakra, the earth chakra, peristalsis, menstruation, pregnancy. She without remorse grinds down life to its constituent parts, yet heaves forth new life. The abyss of Ereshkigal is both the source and the end, the ground of all being. She is the natural order of things, attended by her vizier “Fate”
Ereshkigal has a right to be a little surly though. She was split from her sister, raped and banished to the underworld. When the Gods have a feast she is not welcome, having to send someone to get her plate. But she is not antagonistic to male power, she merely demands the same respect and to be acknowledged as an equal. She is surrounded by male servants and she gives birth to sons. Her anger arises when she is not accorded the respect she deserves. There is the story of Nergal (God of plague war and death), who angers her by being rude to her emissary. She is turned from fury when he recognizes it was love she wanted from him all along. She offers him marriage and he accepts, and they end up making love for seven days nonstop. In some stories the children she produces are monsters but again this is because they are forces that cannot be controlled.
Chapter two-Lilith/Asherah/Eve
Lilith is arguably as old as the ladies of Sumeria, as mentioned before, she was known as the hand of Inanna, the beautiful seductive heirodule that led men astray from their wives. In Hebrew lore however she became a demoness. The story goes as follows;
Lilith and Adam were created from the dust of the earth. But as soon as they were together they began to quarrel. Neither one wanted to be subservient to the other. Adam demanded that she was to serve him and lie under him in love making, and Lilith refused saying they were both created of the same dust and so she was not inferior to him. Finally Lilith uttered the ineffable name of the creator and flew off. Adam prayed to God, telling him that the woman He had made for him ran off. God responded by sending three angels to fetch Lilith, who at this point had taken up residence by the Red Sea.
The angels found Lilith and told her that if she did not go back to her husband that God would kill a hundred of her children a day. Still Lilith refused, then the angels threatened her with drowning. The response they got was Lilith in essence laughing in their faces, and she said she had been created to punish and weaken little children. The angels were going to drown her but she pleaded to them to let her live, saying whenever she saw an amulet with any of the three angels names on it, on a newborn, she would spare them, and thus she was allowed to live, suffering a 100 of her children being slain by God everyday, in punishment for her refusal to submit. As such she was known as a demon and a child killer.
But with all these ancient tales the patriarchy has mangled with their infantile and clumsy hands, there is much more to the story, which has been omitted over time to further consolidate the males stranglehold on power. The truth starts where the Hebrew Goddess Asherah was struck from the old testament around 500-400 BC.
Asherah or Astarte was directly equivalent to Inanna/Ishtar and she was the wife/consort of God. She was a Goddess of Healing and Lady of the Sea. Her poles, sacred staffs that were carried by Moses and Aaron (remember the magic duel between Moses and the Pharaohs’ priests, the staffs with snakes on them), were placed and worshipped right next to the altar of Yahweh. These were the original caduceus wands again a direct reference to sexual alchemy, with snakes curling around them and it was believed that even looking upon them could heal the sick. Unfortunately with the rise of patriarchal rabid Yahwists, her worship was relegated to Pagan idolatry and was punishable by death. But judging by the angry tone in which her worship was repeatedly made mention of, it is quite obvious that her cult persisted despite persecution. There is also the matter of the ark of the Covenant that in one rendering shows a male and female cherubim, locked in an explicitly sexual embrace. There is the coded reference to the God and Goddess in the star of David, two triangles one facing up (universal symbol of God) and one facing down (universal symbol of Goddess), interlocked. Indeed there is quite sexual alchemical tradition in Abrahamic religions if one is familiar with the Mass of the Holy Ghost, a Kabalistic rite, where the blood of the lion and the tears of the eagle meet to produce the elixir of life. I’m not going to go into gory details, but the lion is female (remember Inanna’s companion animal was a lion), and the eagle is male( the eagle is the solar and as such male equivalent of the lunar associated owl, one of Lilith‘s representative animals), even the uninitiated can figure out what’s going on.
So even to the most skeptical the foundation and evidence exists that there most definitely was a sacred feminine in ancient Semitic religious beliefs. If the model of the bipolar goddess is followed, then Asherah was the light half to a darker patriarchal-despised underworld sister. I propose that this sister was Lilith. Remember Lilith was known as the hand of Inanna, and Inanna and Asherah were the same Goddess in essence, and Lilith was the seductress that “tore” men from their wives (the quotation marks around tore are my way of expressing my cynicism that the men were dragged off against their will, as is true with many of the stories in this book, the patriarchy loves to blame uncontrollable women for all their shortcomings). Just as Inanna and Ereshkigal were rent from each other in a patriarchy induced schism in the Great Goddess, so were Asherah and Lilith rent from each other, and just as Ereshkigal, was cast into exile in the underworld, to be forever reviled as a demoness or evil, so was Lilith exiled.
With the ladies of Sumeria the separation involved their fundamental independent eternal maiden aspect. With their Hebrew counterparts it involved their fundamental nature as wife and mother. Hence the focus in the story of Lilith of her being maligned as a terrible mother. The patriarchy has relegated women into very narrow roles over the years, dutiful daughter, kind and nurturing mother, faithful wife and these roles developed as being acceptable because first off they can be controlled, but secondly out of an infantile, peter pan complex on the part of male society that wants free, total and unlimited access to the “positive” natures of woman. There is no thought that nurturing and childbearing and rearing come at a price, that price being in some cases death. There is only the childish thought of, “I want, I want!”, and the hatred of the child directed at the mother when those demands are not met, regardless of the fact the mother denies out of wisdom and knowledge of what is best for a child. This is especially pertinent in this day and age as we are raising a crop of ill-prepared spoiled brats, because the power of woman to discipline and say no, has been completely stripped.
Lilith represents the other extreme, the hate envy of mother, the terrible rage and raw sadism that can be directed at a child when the emotional dam breaks, as it often does in raising children. Or even the woman who chooses abortion instead of bearing a child, a woman who for good reason or not refuses the mantle of motherhood. These are the things that Lilith has come to stand for, but they are negative only in the divided suppressed role she has been forced into. If taken as a whole, it is the right of every woman to govern herself, not be the chattel of Man/Adam, to be ordered around, underappreciated and subjugated only to be replaced by a more docile and submissive younger woman, who in this case was Eve.
Orthodox Christianity teaches us, that Adam and Eve were the first humans, blithely ignoring Lilith, another archetypal pattern with the much maligned dark ladies. The denial of their existence, thereby stealing their power, and their exile from consciousness. Lilith is the archetypal invisible woman, alone, unacknowledged, cast out and demonized, only to be replaced and forgotten about. But Lilith does have her revenge, and it is not in being a child-killer as the patriarchy would want you to believe, thereby covering up the real Truth. No her vengeance comes in the form of a tree, a serpent and an infamous apple.
Anyone familiar with Christianity or Judaism for that matter knows the story of the fall of man, as told in the book of Genesis. God gave Adam and Eve the Garden of Eden to live in, with fruits and vegetables and nuts and seeds and legumes abounding, all of which they could eat and never had to work for. Adam and Eve were innocents, in some cases like animals in that innocence, and like animals were naked, and blithely unaware of this fact. Everything was perfect and blissful. However there was one tree they were forbidden to eat from and that was the tree of knowledge. Why an all knowing creator would stick this tree right under their nose and then tell them not to eat from it is beyond me but whatever. Either way one day Eve is alone and I guess standing in front of this tree, and there is a serpent in it. The serpent speaks to her to eat of the fruit of the tree. Eve being the good docile little girl that she was refused, but the snake is persistent, saying you shall not die and the only reason God does not want you to eat from this is because he knows you will become like him. Eve gives in, and takes a bite out of that apple and immediately sees that she is naked. She then offers the fruit to Adam who eats of it too. He too realizes he is naked, and they both cover themselves up with fig leaves. Well not to long after this God comes walking through the Garden, and is calling to Adam and Eve, but they hide ashamed. Eventually the truth comes out, and true to form, like a child Adam points the finger at Eve saying she made me do it, and they are both punished by God, cast out from the garden of Eden, with woman being cursed with the pain of childbirth and man being cursed with having to earn his livelihood by the sweat of his brow. It is also stated that the other tree the two were forbidden from partaking of, the tree of life, is hidden and guarded by an angel with a flaming sword, “lest they become like us“, immortal.
So let’s back up here. The serpent, the symbol of Asherah and by association Lilith, tempts Eve to eat the fruit of knowledge. Knowledge of what is unclear. The general consensus is that it is the knowledge of good and evil, but why this would make them realize they were naked I do not know. If we move beyond the concepts of Good and Evil, abstract concepts created by the patriarchal system to control people, what is the true knowledge Asherah/Lilith offered Eve? Looking at what the patriarchal has a tendency to label as evil, it is a safe bet to assume that the knowledge the older wiser woman offered the younger was the knowledge of the Great Goddess, and all of her rites and mysteries, something which the patriarchy most certainly did not want floating around, because it would completely undermine their power if the truth came out that they committed matricide to gain it. The curses God dealt Adam and Eve for their transgression were no coincidence either. Under the patriarchal rule, men were the overburdened providers (yes men lose out in this system too), and woman were relegated to the roles of baby makers and only baby makers, vessels to be filled. The blame woman has had to endure over the years for the fall of man from paradise is also part of an infantile peter pan complex on the part of the patriarchy. They could no long live as spiritual infants, and again hated woman because she weaned them against their will. Finally the angel with the flaming sword guarding the Tree of Life is a direct reference to not only sexual alchemy and it’s promise of eternal life, but the internal journey of initiation, where one goes into ones own underworld of emotion, a process which scares off all but the bravest of souls, a trial by fire if you will that is wielded by an angel, a creature bearing also the “wings“ of a bird, another symbol of the goddess and of the soul. A trial and journey that for those who survive it holds the promise of rebirth and salvation by the knowledge that the cycle of life is eternal, there is no end, only change.
http://wausaupagansociety.org/?page_id=25
Inanna queen of heaven sets her mind on the great below, Irkalla, Sumerian land of the dead. Before she goes she instructs her trusty female servant that if she does not return in three days, to plead with the Gods to send aid. And thus Inanna sets out for Hell. She arrives at the front gates and demands to be let in. When asked why she is there, Inanna replies she has come to witness the funeral rites of Gulganna, the bull of heaven, Ereshkigal’s consort, whom Inanna caused the destruction of in the epic of Gilgamesh. Ereshkigal is the Queen of Irkalla, and upon being informed that her upper world sister is at the gates demanding to be let in to witness the funeral of a creature she destroyed, Ereshkigal bites her lip and slaps her thigh. She is most displeased. Upon reflection for a moment she instructs her vizier, whose name in our tongue means Fate, to let her in and orders she be brought naked and bowed low to Ereshkigal, as all who enter her domain are.
So Fate admits Inanna, and as she passes through each one of the seven gates of the underworld, he strips her of one piece of her sacred regalia. When divested of her garments, Inanna complains asking what is this? Fates reply is that they ways of the underworld are perfect, and that she should not question them. So at last Inanna is brought before Ereshkigal, naked and bowed low.
As Inanna enters, Ereshkigal rises from her throne, and Inanna attempts to lunge for either Ereshkigal or the throne of Hell. Why is unclear, either Inanna set out to conquer the Underworld, she was so angry at her treatment thus far or, as in the rites of Baal another ancient dying and resurrected God, embodied by a sacred cow, she came to claim the Bull of Heaven. Either way, when Inanna lunges, Ereshkigal fixes upon her the eyes of death, and kills her. She turns her into a corpse and hangs her from a peg, sort of as a trophy.
Three days go by and Inanna’s faithful servant, puts on mourning attire and raises the alarm. She goes to several different Gods all begging that they help, and none will, either out of fear and respect for the Underworld and her Queen, or because they felt Inanna was being greedy in going into the underworld when she was already the queen of heaven, and as such deserves the fate she has met. Finally Inanna’s servant finds sympathy in Enki, a water God associated with the constellation Aquarius.
From the dust under his fingernails he fashions two sexless creatures, and he gives them both the food of life and the water of life, and he instructs them to slip into the underworld unnoticed, and when Ereshkigal moans, to moan with her. He instructs them to empathize with her. He then instructs them that when Ereshkigal offers them something in return for their sympathy, to request the corpse of Inanna, and sprinkle on her the water of life, and feed her the food of life, thus restoring her.
As such the little dust people enter Irkalla and do exactly as they are told, and in return for their empathy Ereshkigal gives them Inanna’s corpse and they restore the Queen of heaven. But as Inanna attempts to leave, the Annunaki, which are the judges of the Underworld say she cannot go unless she provides a replacement, as no one leaves the underworld. So they send Inanna back to the land of the living with in a horde of demons to claim her replacement.
When Inanna gets back her faithful servant is waiting for her, clothed in mourning attire. The demons want to seize her, but Inanna says no, because she did as she was told and she mourned for me. Then they come upon Inanna’s brother who is likewise appropriately mourning, and when the demons attempt to seize him, Inanna’s reply is the same, no.
Finally, they come upon Inanna’s consort Dumuzi. Dumuzi is a mortal who was given dominion as king by becoming Inanna’s consort. When Inanna comes upon him, he is dressed in fine regalia, making merry, not mourning one bit. Inanna fixes upon him, the same eyes Ereshkigal fixed up her, and the Galla demons know they have their replacement.
Now the story continues on to tell that Dumuzi gives chase. Inanna laments the loss of her lover, and when Dumuzi seeks shelter at his sister’s, and the Galla find him there, his sister shares his fate, and offers to spend half the year in the underworld, with Dumuzi doing the other half.
There are several things that stand out about this story to me. One is the fact that Inanna approaches the domain of Ereshkigal quite haughtily, a fact that angers Ereshkigal. Ereshkigal orders her to be stripped naked and bowed low, like everyone else who enters her realm. The dark lady breaks down not only things on a physical level, but on a psychological level. The only way I can think to explain it is that many people think that they have the power to control things. By their arrogance or manipulating or sheer force, they think they can achieve dominion. The dark lady breaks down this illusion, sometimes with great ruthlessness, depending on the severity of offense. The only thing a person can control is themselves, and even that is debatable sometimes.
The next thing that stands out is that Inanna’s journey is the journey of the initiate, or the shamanistic rite of initiation. A person, during childhood or teenage years, is subject of great trauma. This trauma leads to an inward journey that many do not make it back from and results in mental illness such as schizophrenia. The ones that do make it back however, are viewed as being in a position to see and understand things that the average person cannot. Inanna emerges from her experience in Irkalla fundamentally changed as well.
Inanna’s descent has themes that resonate with the wisdom associated with the crown chakra, of openness to divine will, a chakra that only opens in the most spiritual advanced people. It also speaks of the sacrifice for deep feminine wisdom. Shamanism and many natural/organic based spiritual traditions seek wisdom through altered states of perception. This can be taken as forcibly altering ones consciousness with drugs (a form of mediumship) or by rediscovering unity with nature and cosmos that is lost in logos goal orientated society and by letting the dark lady drag us down to the magic, meditative and archaic depths that is before all thought and speech that is quite literally earth-shattering. It is in this broken state we can connect which the flow of the universe and find new perspective. The very process of which flies in the face of patriarchal society and as such can result in loss of social standing, a necessary sacrifice to the dark lady for her wisdom, as Inanna found out the hard way.
It should also be noted that with Inanna she is divested of one piece of her regalia at each of the seven gates, and they are restored to her gate by gate. Transformation is rarely instantaneous, usually it is a slow process of regression through the various layers of consciousness and mechanisms of a persons mind, and it is a slow process of being put back together as well.
Inanna was known as the Queen of Heaven and Earth. She was a Goddess of love and fertility. She was a goddess who would not be owned, she was her own master. Even when she came together with a man, she retained her independence and magnetism as a lover, she was never the dutiful wife or mother. Her priestesses were the dancing girls and temple prostitutes.
Now when I say prostitutes, forget the modern definition. These were not street walkers. These were women that in many cases after a term of service to the goddess, would go on to be married and live a normal life. They lived in the temple and they were not directly paid. A man would come to the temple to make an offering to the goddess of love, and in doing so partake of the boons the lady of love, and her dark sister offered, i.e. renewal, and regeneration. Sexual alchemy is the term for it, and it covers everything from simple pleasure to a path to enlightenment. Inanna is extremely extroverted in this role, in one song inviting Dumuzi to “plow my vulva, man of my heart”
Inanna was a celebrated as a numen of impersonal fertility, much like Demeter who I will get to later. In one story grains and legumes pour forth from her womb. One of her oldest emblems was a grain storehouse and the date God was said to be one of her consorts. She combines earthly bounty with heavenly guidance, and she is the union of earth and sky, matter and spirit, vessel and light. Inanna represents the border regions, the places where things intersect, the liminal place where events emerge. She cannot be contained or made certain and secure. In this aspect she is like Hecate.
Like Isis she is queen of the land and its fertility, it is she who bestows kingship on the mortal man chosen to be shepherd of the people, and promises a good harvest, and regards the people of Sumer as her children, but unlike Isis, she also promises the king the pleasures of her bed. She was also a Goddess of war. Battle was the dance of Inanna. She was more passionate than the Greek Athena and with the wild instincts of Artemis. Hymns to her describe her as “all devouring in power…attacking like the attacking storm” (she was a storm goddess too), having and “awesome face” and “angry heart” she sings with delight “heaven is mine, earth is mine-I a warrior am I. Is there a God who can vie with me?” Accordingly her companion animal was a lion.
Inanna is also mentioned several times in the epic of Gilgamesh. Note that in the story of Inanna’s descent to the underworld, she mentions she has come to see the funeral of the bull of heaven. In the epic of Gilgamesh, Inanna demands the bull of heaven to use it to destroy Gilgamesh and Enkidu. Gilgamesh and Enkidu slays the Bull and in doing so tells Inanna that he would do the same to her if she could. Then there is mention of Inanna and her priestesses leaving Uruk.
I mention this because of a theory I heard from a book I read that is cited at the back of this book. The theory is about the precession of the earth through the astrological constellations. At the time Sumeria was at its peak, the earth was in the constellation of Taurus-the bull. I truly believe the epic of Gilgamesh records the transition from the age of Taurus to the Age of Aries. Taurus is considered a feminine sign, with Aries being as masculine as it gets. One can begrudge patriarchal society till their blue in the face but the truth of it is that it was destined in the stars, just as the age that followed Aries, Pisces had to do with the victim/savior archetype, characterized by the figures of Jesus, Muhammad etc.
Further reinforcing this idea is the story of Inanna and the huluppu tree. The story talks about a tree, planted by the Gods, that Inanna finds on the banks of the Euphrates. She brings it back to Uruk to plant in her holy garden. She tends it in the hopes of using it for a throne and bed. Much to her consternation, a serpent takes up residence in the roots of the tree and will not come out. An anzu-bird takes up residence in the branches, and likewise will not come out, and the dark maid Lilith dwelt in the trunk. She pleads with her brother Utu, to help and he does nothing. But then she pleads to Gilgamesh. He dons his armor and enters her holy garden. He strikes the snake, and as a result not only takes car e of the serpent, but frightens off the Anzu bird and its young, and Lilith. Gilgamesh makes a throne and bed for Inanna out of the tree.
This story speaks of another fundamental truth. In this case I think it is more a historical truth. The serpent and the bird were ancient goddess symbols, both having to do with enlightenment. The serpent is very prevalent in sexual alchemy, the kundalini of tantra, the lunar and solar serpent of the sex magic of Isis. There is also the serpent of Genesis, that initiates woman into knowledge, a story I will dissect in full later. The bird is an ancient symbol of the soul, the wings symbolizing unbound freedom and enlightenment. Lilith, a figure I will cover in greater depth later, was known earlier as the hand of Inanna, the woman who lured men from the streets and fields of war into the Temple of love.
I believe the three’s position in the huluppu tree also is of significance. Look at the caduceus wand (also a symbol of alchemy, before western medicine perverted it) serpents rising up with wings at the top. If you look at the two serpents as being the lunar and solar serpents of the sex magic of Isis and you know that you transpose that over a persons body, the snakes starting in the pelvis and ending with the wings around what is known as the chalice, something that is pretty much located over the brain stem, the huluppu tree becomes a road map for enlightenment through sexual alchemy, and it is through woman, one who is notorious for her refusal to submit.
With the change from the age of Taurus, where tantric rituals were prevalent and the Feminine was considered superior, to the age of Aries where women and their mysteries were considered inferior, the only way Inanna could survive was to divest herself of her power and accept submission to man, hence Gilgamesh, who represents the patriarchal takeover, entering her holy garden, a blatant euphemism for sex, striking the serpent, driving off the bird and Lilith, and then giving Inanna her throne and bed, instead of her creating it herself.
It should also be noted that in the epic of Gilgamesh, Inanna offers herself to Gilgamesh in marriage, a sacred rite called the hierosgamos, that confers kingship. Gilgamesh in essence throws it in her face saying that her previous husbands met unfortunate fates and its because she treated them like crap. He specifically cites Dumuzi. Obviously, in the descent of Inanna, Dumuzi meets his end deservedly, but Gilgamesh twists the truth, true to form of the kind of insults and abuse women often have to deal with from men who do not respect them, and insults and derogates Inanna to claim her power.
Another interesting tidbit from the Epic of Gilgamesh is when Enkidu has the dream telling of his death, at one point he turns on the temple prostitute that originally civilized him, cursing her to be “ without a roof for your commerce, for you shall not keep house with the other girls in the tavern, but do your business in places fouled by the vomit of the drunkard. Your hire will be potter’s earth, your theivings will be flung into the hovel, you will sit at the crossroads in the dust of the potters quarter, you will make your bed on a dunghill at night, and day by day take your stand in the walls shadow. Brambles and thorns will tear your feet, the drunk and the dry will strike your cheek and your mouth will ache”.
But the Gods defend the heirodule asking Enkidu did she not pleasure you and feed you food and drink fit for the Gods, did she not cloth you in magnificent garment and give you Gilgamesh as a companion. Enkidu relents but in my opinion only a little for then he says she will be adored beyond compare, but because of her as Enkidu puts it, “a wife, a mother of seven, was forsaken” As far as I am concerned this is a prophecy because this is exactly what the dancing girls of today face, either brutality and filth, or being a home wrecker.
So if all things may be known by the opposite to which they can be contrasted, Ereshkigal has already been laid bare. Ereshkigal represents the uncontrollable unconscious processes we are all ruled by. Death being her most obvious association, but she rules over all unconscious processes, birth, sex, defecation, mental/emotional illness, all the things that we either would like to ignore or control in some way. She blows through all the pretensions we have about our own power, even grinding down a goddess to a rotting corpse on a peg, she is the life processes to which we must all submit. But like all Death Goddesses, she has rewards for those who willingly submit to her, who face their mortal fear and realize that in the end, we are all worm food, it’s just a question of when.
Ereshkigal was once an upper world goddess, but she was repeated raped by Enlil, a God. The Gods punished Enlil by sending him to the underworld, but out of love she followed him. Ereshkigal is the darkness of Inanna. When her fundamental nature is not respected, Ereshkigal is the result. It is a common theme amongst all the Goddesses I will be discussing, they were horribly betrayed and hurt at the hands of males. Inanna was known for her independence, her power and right to govern her sexuality as she chose. Ereshkigal was the result of her fundamental nature being betrayed. And like those who have suffered great pain and trauma all she wanted was someone to empathize, hence the success of the creatures Enki sent to free Inanna. They mirrored Ereshkigal’s pain, they absorbed it and felt just as she did, and in that small act of empathy, Ereshkigal was freed from her torture momentarily, and in return she released Inanna from her torture. Granted someone had to take Inanna’s place, but that fundamental story of empathy being the release from Hell, is key to the mythos I am building now.
When Inanna returns to the land of the living, with the horde of demons charged with claiming her replacement, she goes to the various people she knows and all of them mourned for her. However when she catches up with Dumuzi, her lover, she finds him in essence dressed up and partying. She fixes upon him the same eyes of death that Ereshkigal fixed on her in Inanna’s haughtiness, and in that look it apparent that Inanna has gained wisdom from the experience, and the light and dark are reconciled.
Ereshkigal’s name means “lady of the great place below”. She was a grain Goddesss before she came to be queen of the netherworld. She is the seed below and dying to sprout again. To a matriarchal point of view she is the continuum in which different states are simply experienced as transformations of one energy. To a patriarchal view she is a rape of life, a violence to be feared and controlled as much as possible with distancing oneself from it and a strict moral order. She is pictured as having life freezing eyes and leeches on her head. In other myths she is associated with the lord of healing(Ninazu) and the god of plagues war and death(Nergal).
She is very primal, full of fury, greed, fear of loss and even self-spite. She is raw instinctually split off from consciousness, the need and aggression that exist in our own personal underworld that is often denied out of social mores. And like the defense mechanisms of our own psyche that react sometime violently to unwanted intruders, Ereshkigal in anger sends her gate-keeper to deal with Inanna the intruder.
Ereshkigal is active destruction but she is also the slow cell by cell processes of decay and gestation, that are invasive and depending on the case against a persons will. She is pitiless and destructive of the individual. She is the hopeless, empty, shattering, numb, barren void and chaos. Her energy can be seen in black holes, infinite gravity and magnetism that even light cannot escape from. Her energy is the energy of X-rays, which see through all to the very core and are also emitted by black holes. Her energy is the disintegration of elements, radioactive decay, cancer, fermentation. She rules the functions of the base chakra, the earth chakra, peristalsis, menstruation, pregnancy. She without remorse grinds down life to its constituent parts, yet heaves forth new life. The abyss of Ereshkigal is both the source and the end, the ground of all being. She is the natural order of things, attended by her vizier “Fate”
Ereshkigal has a right to be a little surly though. She was split from her sister, raped and banished to the underworld. When the Gods have a feast she is not welcome, having to send someone to get her plate. But she is not antagonistic to male power, she merely demands the same respect and to be acknowledged as an equal. She is surrounded by male servants and she gives birth to sons. Her anger arises when she is not accorded the respect she deserves. There is the story of Nergal (God of plague war and death), who angers her by being rude to her emissary. She is turned from fury when he recognizes it was love she wanted from him all along. She offers him marriage and he accepts, and they end up making love for seven days nonstop. In some stories the children she produces are monsters but again this is because they are forces that cannot be controlled.
Chapter two-Lilith/Asherah/Eve
Lilith is arguably as old as the ladies of Sumeria, as mentioned before, she was known as the hand of Inanna, the beautiful seductive heirodule that led men astray from their wives. In Hebrew lore however she became a demoness. The story goes as follows;
Lilith and Adam were created from the dust of the earth. But as soon as they were together they began to quarrel. Neither one wanted to be subservient to the other. Adam demanded that she was to serve him and lie under him in love making, and Lilith refused saying they were both created of the same dust and so she was not inferior to him. Finally Lilith uttered the ineffable name of the creator and flew off. Adam prayed to God, telling him that the woman He had made for him ran off. God responded by sending three angels to fetch Lilith, who at this point had taken up residence by the Red Sea.
The angels found Lilith and told her that if she did not go back to her husband that God would kill a hundred of her children a day. Still Lilith refused, then the angels threatened her with drowning. The response they got was Lilith in essence laughing in their faces, and she said she had been created to punish and weaken little children. The angels were going to drown her but she pleaded to them to let her live, saying whenever she saw an amulet with any of the three angels names on it, on a newborn, she would spare them, and thus she was allowed to live, suffering a 100 of her children being slain by God everyday, in punishment for her refusal to submit. As such she was known as a demon and a child killer.
But with all these ancient tales the patriarchy has mangled with their infantile and clumsy hands, there is much more to the story, which has been omitted over time to further consolidate the males stranglehold on power. The truth starts where the Hebrew Goddess Asherah was struck from the old testament around 500-400 BC.
Asherah or Astarte was directly equivalent to Inanna/Ishtar and she was the wife/consort of God. She was a Goddess of Healing and Lady of the Sea. Her poles, sacred staffs that were carried by Moses and Aaron (remember the magic duel between Moses and the Pharaohs’ priests, the staffs with snakes on them), were placed and worshipped right next to the altar of Yahweh. These were the original caduceus wands again a direct reference to sexual alchemy, with snakes curling around them and it was believed that even looking upon them could heal the sick. Unfortunately with the rise of patriarchal rabid Yahwists, her worship was relegated to Pagan idolatry and was punishable by death. But judging by the angry tone in which her worship was repeatedly made mention of, it is quite obvious that her cult persisted despite persecution. There is also the matter of the ark of the Covenant that in one rendering shows a male and female cherubim, locked in an explicitly sexual embrace. There is the coded reference to the God and Goddess in the star of David, two triangles one facing up (universal symbol of God) and one facing down (universal symbol of Goddess), interlocked. Indeed there is quite sexual alchemical tradition in Abrahamic religions if one is familiar with the Mass of the Holy Ghost, a Kabalistic rite, where the blood of the lion and the tears of the eagle meet to produce the elixir of life. I’m not going to go into gory details, but the lion is female (remember Inanna’s companion animal was a lion), and the eagle is male( the eagle is the solar and as such male equivalent of the lunar associated owl, one of Lilith‘s representative animals), even the uninitiated can figure out what’s going on.
So even to the most skeptical the foundation and evidence exists that there most definitely was a sacred feminine in ancient Semitic religious beliefs. If the model of the bipolar goddess is followed, then Asherah was the light half to a darker patriarchal-despised underworld sister. I propose that this sister was Lilith. Remember Lilith was known as the hand of Inanna, and Inanna and Asherah were the same Goddess in essence, and Lilith was the seductress that “tore” men from their wives (the quotation marks around tore are my way of expressing my cynicism that the men were dragged off against their will, as is true with many of the stories in this book, the patriarchy loves to blame uncontrollable women for all their shortcomings). Just as Inanna and Ereshkigal were rent from each other in a patriarchy induced schism in the Great Goddess, so were Asherah and Lilith rent from each other, and just as Ereshkigal, was cast into exile in the underworld, to be forever reviled as a demoness or evil, so was Lilith exiled.
With the ladies of Sumeria the separation involved their fundamental independent eternal maiden aspect. With their Hebrew counterparts it involved their fundamental nature as wife and mother. Hence the focus in the story of Lilith of her being maligned as a terrible mother. The patriarchy has relegated women into very narrow roles over the years, dutiful daughter, kind and nurturing mother, faithful wife and these roles developed as being acceptable because first off they can be controlled, but secondly out of an infantile, peter pan complex on the part of male society that wants free, total and unlimited access to the “positive” natures of woman. There is no thought that nurturing and childbearing and rearing come at a price, that price being in some cases death. There is only the childish thought of, “I want, I want!”, and the hatred of the child directed at the mother when those demands are not met, regardless of the fact the mother denies out of wisdom and knowledge of what is best for a child. This is especially pertinent in this day and age as we are raising a crop of ill-prepared spoiled brats, because the power of woman to discipline and say no, has been completely stripped.
Lilith represents the other extreme, the hate envy of mother, the terrible rage and raw sadism that can be directed at a child when the emotional dam breaks, as it often does in raising children. Or even the woman who chooses abortion instead of bearing a child, a woman who for good reason or not refuses the mantle of motherhood. These are the things that Lilith has come to stand for, but they are negative only in the divided suppressed role she has been forced into. If taken as a whole, it is the right of every woman to govern herself, not be the chattel of Man/Adam, to be ordered around, underappreciated and subjugated only to be replaced by a more docile and submissive younger woman, who in this case was Eve.
Orthodox Christianity teaches us, that Adam and Eve were the first humans, blithely ignoring Lilith, another archetypal pattern with the much maligned dark ladies. The denial of their existence, thereby stealing their power, and their exile from consciousness. Lilith is the archetypal invisible woman, alone, unacknowledged, cast out and demonized, only to be replaced and forgotten about. But Lilith does have her revenge, and it is not in being a child-killer as the patriarchy would want you to believe, thereby covering up the real Truth. No her vengeance comes in the form of a tree, a serpent and an infamous apple.
Anyone familiar with Christianity or Judaism for that matter knows the story of the fall of man, as told in the book of Genesis. God gave Adam and Eve the Garden of Eden to live in, with fruits and vegetables and nuts and seeds and legumes abounding, all of which they could eat and never had to work for. Adam and Eve were innocents, in some cases like animals in that innocence, and like animals were naked, and blithely unaware of this fact. Everything was perfect and blissful. However there was one tree they were forbidden to eat from and that was the tree of knowledge. Why an all knowing creator would stick this tree right under their nose and then tell them not to eat from it is beyond me but whatever. Either way one day Eve is alone and I guess standing in front of this tree, and there is a serpent in it. The serpent speaks to her to eat of the fruit of the tree. Eve being the good docile little girl that she was refused, but the snake is persistent, saying you shall not die and the only reason God does not want you to eat from this is because he knows you will become like him. Eve gives in, and takes a bite out of that apple and immediately sees that she is naked. She then offers the fruit to Adam who eats of it too. He too realizes he is naked, and they both cover themselves up with fig leaves. Well not to long after this God comes walking through the Garden, and is calling to Adam and Eve, but they hide ashamed. Eventually the truth comes out, and true to form, like a child Adam points the finger at Eve saying she made me do it, and they are both punished by God, cast out from the garden of Eden, with woman being cursed with the pain of childbirth and man being cursed with having to earn his livelihood by the sweat of his brow. It is also stated that the other tree the two were forbidden from partaking of, the tree of life, is hidden and guarded by an angel with a flaming sword, “lest they become like us“, immortal.
So let’s back up here. The serpent, the symbol of Asherah and by association Lilith, tempts Eve to eat the fruit of knowledge. Knowledge of what is unclear. The general consensus is that it is the knowledge of good and evil, but why this would make them realize they were naked I do not know. If we move beyond the concepts of Good and Evil, abstract concepts created by the patriarchal system to control people, what is the true knowledge Asherah/Lilith offered Eve? Looking at what the patriarchal has a tendency to label as evil, it is a safe bet to assume that the knowledge the older wiser woman offered the younger was the knowledge of the Great Goddess, and all of her rites and mysteries, something which the patriarchy most certainly did not want floating around, because it would completely undermine their power if the truth came out that they committed matricide to gain it. The curses God dealt Adam and Eve for their transgression were no coincidence either. Under the patriarchal rule, men were the overburdened providers (yes men lose out in this system too), and woman were relegated to the roles of baby makers and only baby makers, vessels to be filled. The blame woman has had to endure over the years for the fall of man from paradise is also part of an infantile peter pan complex on the part of the patriarchy. They could no long live as spiritual infants, and again hated woman because she weaned them against their will. Finally the angel with the flaming sword guarding the Tree of Life is a direct reference to not only sexual alchemy and it’s promise of eternal life, but the internal journey of initiation, where one goes into ones own underworld of emotion, a process which scares off all but the bravest of souls, a trial by fire if you will that is wielded by an angel, a creature bearing also the “wings“ of a bird, another symbol of the goddess and of the soul. A trial and journey that for those who survive it holds the promise of rebirth and salvation by the knowledge that the cycle of life is eternal, there is no end, only change.
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John Gowan on
MYTH
3.41 General Introduction
True myth is defined by Graves (1955:10) as "the reduction to narrative shorthand of ritual mime performed on public festivals. ... Their subjects were archaic magic-makings that promoted the fertility or stability of a sacred queendom, . . ." Graves goes on to point out that magic, supernatural or totem calendar-beasts figured in these rituals, and that to understand Greek mythology we must appreciate the matriarchal and totemistic system which held sway there before incursion of patriarchal invaders. An example of such a mythical beast was the chimera, with a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail.
While Jung believes that myths are original revelations of the preconscious psyche, Graves holds that a "true science of myth should begin with a study of archaeology, history, and comparative religion" (1955:22).
Eliade concludes that the value of myth lies in its ability to evoke a numinous relationship through a priest or by proxy for a believer who is otherwise, however, incapable of any other relationship with the ground of being. He says (1969:59):
The myth continually reactualizes the Great Time and in so doing raises the listener to a superhuman and suprahistorical plane; which among other things, enables him to approach a Reality that is inaccessible at the level of profane, individual existence.
It may be seen that this indeed is the function of all parataxic representation, not only with myth, but also with archetypes, dreams, art, and especially ritual. For whether we consider ritual magic or the Mass of the Church, it is obvious that ritual has the common purpose of gaining merit and personal advantage for the celebrant and his constituency, through approach to the numinous element or some manifestation of it.
The archeology of man's developing social thought is preserved in myth. Recently acquired is the "loose and separate" consciousness of Western man which separates him from the continuum of nature in time, space, and personality. More primitive consciousness was not so differentiated; it was more dreamy and less clear. In myth we find remnants of images now less than precise, whose equivocal ambivalence was once an asset. In the dawning of consciousness, wherein myth abounded, it was easier to believe that man might be metamorphosed into an animal or vice versa, that magical flight could conquer space, and that precognition could reverse time. The vestiges of these motifs in myth is testimony to the development of a conscious ego from a primal self which did not know itself as distinct from nature. The periodic developmental stage theory (Gowan 1972,1974) presents an ontogenic recapitulation of evolutionary phylogeny. The differentiation of ego functioning culminates in stage 5, (the Eriksonian identity crisis), as the individual correlate of the evolution of the personal ego in the species.
Eliade (1969:14) points out that this mythical repository in modern man has been relegated to the attic of the unconscious:
For the unconscious is not haunted by monsters only: the gods, goddesses, the heroes, and the fairies dwell there too; moreover, the monsters of the unconscious are themselves mythological, seeing that they continue to fulfill the same functions that they fulfilled in all the mythologies - in the last analysis that of helping man liberate himself. . . .
But images possess the disadvantage of not being categorical. Says Eliade (1969:15):
Images by their very nature are multivalent (i.o.). If the mind makes use of images to grasp the ultimate reality of things, it is just because reality manifests itself in contradictory ways, and therefore cannot be expressed in concepts.
Eliade (1969:57) tells us:
Myth is an account of events which took place in principio, that is "in the beginning," in a primordial and non-temporal instant, a moment of sacred time (i.o.). The mythic or sacred time is qualitatively different from profane time, from continuous and irreversible time of our everyday de- sacralized existence. In narrating a myth one reactualizes in some sort the sacred time in which the events narrated took place.
Myth, therefore is a way of bringing the numinous to the common man without involving him in an altered state of consciousness. Its sacramental character veils an inner numinous truth which is explicated by the ritual which the myth demands, and which action reaffirms the relationship between the present which is in time, and the numinous which is out of time.
Eliade (1963:18) says:
Myth as experienced in archaic societies:
(1) constitute the history and acts of the supernaturals;
(2) this history is considered to be absolutely true ... and sacred;
(3) that myth is always related to creation (it tells how something came into existence);
(4) that by knowing the myth one knows the origin of things, and hence can control and manipulate them at will (by) a knowledge that one "experiences" ritually, either by ceremonially recounting the myth, or by performing the ritual for which it is the justification;
(5) that in one way or another one "lives" the myth, in the sense that one is "seized" by the sacred exalting power of the events recollected or re-enacted.
Gaster (1950:11) traces the origin of myth as "a sequence of ritual acts, which ... have characterized major seasonal festivities." These as he explains (1950:9) are "derived from a religious ritual designed to ensure the rebirth of a dead world." He elaborates on the central thesis (1950:17) as follows:
Seasonal rituals are functional in character. Their purpose is to revive the topocosm (i.o.), that is, the entire complex of any given locality conceived as a living organism. But this topocosm possesses a ... durative aspect, representing not only actual and present community, but also the ideal of community, an entity, of which the latter is but the current manifestation. Accordingly, seasonal rituals are accompanied by myths which are designed to present the purely functional acts in terms of ideal and durative situations. The impenetration of myth and ritual creates drama. ... What the King does on the punctual plane, the God does on the durative. . . . The pattern is based on the conception that life is vouchsafed in a series of leases which have annually to be renewed.3
It would be difficult to state more clearly and concisely the central motivating elements of myth than has here been done. The concept that the topocosm needs to be renewed like an annual lease, and that since it exists on the transcendental (durative) level, it can be affected as if in sympathetic magic on the temporal (punctual) level, and finally that it is a living organism amenable to the efforts of man, is both good anthropology and excellent psychology regarding man's parataxic relationship to the numinous element.
In contrast to the void of the numinous element, but in no wise the antithesis of it, stands a conceptualization identified by Gaster (1950) as the "durative topocosm." It would be easy to say that this represents nature, seen in her anthropomorphic aspects, but that is too simple; another partial view would equate this conceptualization to the goddess Ceres with all her manifestations of bounty, but even this does not capture the full "durative" aspect. For it embraces not merely the progression of the seasons, and the fecundation of nature, processes which eventuate at a given time and place, but the generative element in these processes which continues as in a procession or ceremony to provide the continual source and origin of what man merely sees as an outcome at a given time and place. It is the numinous clothed and housed in forms which we perceive as natural.
Thus Malinowski (1928:23) says:
We can find among the most primitive peoples and throughout the lower savagery a belief in a supernatural impersonal force, moving all those agencies which are relevant to the savage and causing all the really important events in the domain of the sacred. Thus mana (i.o.) not animism is the essence of "pre-animistic religion," and is also the essence of magic. . . .
The durative topocosm is generally celebrated as Sir James Frazer noted in "The Golden Bough"in cults and ceremonies of vegetation and fertility. As in totemism (Malinowski 1968:45) "This ritual leads to acts of a magical nature, by which plenty is brought about" and man by his rites certifies the renewal of the annual lease of the potential bounty of the topocosm.
Malinowski (1968:73) quotes Codrington as saying:
This mana is not fixed in anything, and can be conveyed in almost anything. (It) acts in all ways for good and evil . . ., shows itself in physical force or in any kind of power or excellence which a man possesses.
Ultimate reality, in the guise of the durative topocosm, cannot adequately present itself through a language of tensed verbs. Hence it must do so through a metaphor of continual recurrence; we should learn to recognize such usage in myth and fable as signifying the advent of the "spacious present" in which clock time is transcended. Such fables as Sisyphus rolling up the stone, which rolls down again, the Medusa which grows two heads when one is cut off, Brigadoon which keeps appearing one day every hundred years, ghosts which keep haunting a castle on an anniversary, are alike examples of an incident which "occur" in durative time, and which, therefore, seem to keep repeating in ours. A second example of the durative nature of this reality is the fact that mortals immersed in it (in fable) are apt to find that a shorter duration in it amounts to a much longer elapse of clock time. Examples which come to mind include Brigadoon, Rip Van Winkle, and many fairy tales.10
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Myth involves explication of psychic tensions which activate archetypes and dreams, but are now expressed in the ordinary state of consciousness in terms of images. Cassirer (1955:11:25-36) points out the development of image in the parataxic mode as follows:
The mythical world is concrete ... because in it the two main factors, thing and signification are undifferentiated. . . . The concresence of name and thing in the linguistic consciousness of primitives and children might be illustrated ... (striking example: name tabus).... But as language develops, distinct from all mere physical existence and all physical efficacy, the word emerges in its own specificity, in its purely ideal significatory function. And art leads us to still another stage of development. . . . Here for the first time the image world acquires a purely immanent validity and truth. . . . Thus for the first time the world of images becomes a self-contained cosmos ... severing its bonds with immediate reality, with material existence and efficacy which constitute the world of magic and myth; it embodies a new step.
Psychic tensions exist in a society as well as in individuals. The parataxic outlet for these tensions in the individual is art; in society it is myth and ritual. Myth of course is an example of the outletting of such tensions: Abell explains (1966:94):
Similarly a myth has not only its "active period of psychic eruption and imaginative overflow, but also its subsequent period of extinction and disintegration." A later form of extinct myth will differ greatly from the earlier expression of the active period and may retain little of the tension-imagery.
He continues (1966:96):
The action of eruptive and erosive forces in the sphere of the near myth can be observed in the phases through which every artistic movement seems destined to pass. An exploratory or "creative" phase is eventually succeeded by a stereotyped or "academic" phase. Artists, participating in the exploratory phase, ... work with feverish intensity and bring forth results that are dazzling, often bewildering and seemingly unreasonable to those who witness their cultural emergence.
Some writers, perhaps metaphorically, see myth as the record of a "social womb" in which primitive man, not yet endowed with full cognition, is protected from reality by a dreamy placental envelope.
Hall (1960: 10) points out that from an occult point of view mythologies and mythological characters may have developed from racial memories of super-identities who helped our species become human.
3.42 Examples of Myth11
Henderson (Jung 1964:101) points out that the "hero myth" is the most common and popular in the world. He says:
Over and over again one hears a tale describing a hero's miraculous but humble birth, his early proof of superhuman strength, his rapid rise to prominence or power, his triumphant struggle with the forces of evil, his fallibility to the sin of pride (hubris) and his fall through betrayal or a heroic sacrifice that ends in death.
Radin (1948) in Hero Cycles of the Winnebago notes four cycles in the evolution of the hero myth, calling them (1) the trickster cycle, (2) the hare cycle, (3) the red horn cycle, and (4) the twin cycle. The trickster sees his environment as a giver or withholder of good things, and craftily exploits it or appeases it to get what he wants. The hare represents a socialization of the trickster for he cooperates with his group instead of exploiting them. The third cycle Red Horn, is a younger brother who has envious brethren and who proves himself through endurance, thus raising his self-esteem. Finally, the twins are a pair of superhuman brothers who conquer heaven and earth, but finally sicken of their power, and either fall out or one betrays the other, and the death of one ensures. It is very easy to see in this hero myth parallels to the development of self-concept in the growing boy from a solitary exploiter of the world (in the third stage), through socialization in the fourth stage to identification with a brother in the fifth stage. Thus does ontogeny in the individual parallel phylogeny in the species.12
Henderson (Jung 1964:130) points out another universal myth that is often found in dreams of adolescent girls who are having difficulty accepting their feminine role as wife and mother. He says:
A universal myth expressing this kind of awakening is found in the fairy tale of Beauty and the Beast. The best known version of this story related how Beauty, the youngest of four daughters, becomes her father's favorite because of her unselfish goodness. When she asks her father for only a white rose, she is aware only of her inner sincerity of feeling. She does not know that she is about to endanger her father's life and her ideal relation with him. For he steals the white rose from the enchanted garden of the Beast, who is stirred to anger by this theft, and requires him to return in three months for his punishment, presumably death.
As Henderson points out, the rose is the (sublimated) sexual love between daughter and father, a love which really belongs to a younger rival (the Beast), whose bestial aspects personify the rejected overt sex from which Beauty is free as long as she is "daddy's little girl." But as the tale tells us, Beauty is required to make an overt sexual advance (kiss the beast), and when she does so, she finds that he is transformed into a wonderful prince.
A third example of universal myth comes from tribal Africa. In Hahn's book on Africa (1961) "Ntu" is the numinous element, never seen but in its manifestations which are Muntu (man), Nommo (the power of the word) Kuntu (Modes and Styles), and Hantu (culture). All of these are part of the topocosm, that durative world of which our own series of events in space and time is only a shadow.
These three examples of myth account for bravery in males, beauty and charm in females, and the numinous quality found in man and indeed in nature.
3.43 Myth and Animals
Because primitive man lived much closer to the animals than we do and had reason to fear and totemize some of them, it is natural to find that animals play a great part in his myths. Myths about animals fall into three categories: (1) the transformation of man into animal or vice versa, (2) the totemization of a feared animal, and (3) the nagual or animal-twin of individual men. These categories are of course interconnected. They all represent attempts to extract the numinous quality from the animal and incorporate it into the individual (in character) or in society (in totem).
One of the environmental penalties of modern urban life is the estrangement of mankind from the animals. We do not realize this until we revert to the farm in the country or visit a game park. Man in simpler times, whether hunter or agriculturalist, lived on intimate terms with the animals in his habitat. He hunted them, he was hunted by them, he used them, he had them round and often in his dwelling, he played with them, lived close to them, and used anecdotes about them in his songs and dances. The importance of animals in the thinking of primitive man can scarcely be exaggerated; it is seen in myth and legend. The importance of animals in the farm life of man during the last millenium can be seen even in the different etymology and plurals of such ancient words as oxen, geese, mice, kine, deer.
One of the most important relationships of man to the animals in the hunting stage was success in finding game upon which sustanence and perhaps life itself might depend. Myth and ritual of the great hunter and the successful hunt thereby came to be very important.
Baumann (1954:149-50) explains the Lascaux Caves hunting magic dance pictures as follows:
These dances seem incredibly wild and grotesque. To an outsider the dancers appear to be quite beside themselves. And that is exactly what they are. Their burning desire carries them away while they are still dancing on the trail of the beast on which their thoughts are concentrated. In the dance their souls reach the utmost height of tension. Suddenly they let themselves go as the hunters' hand lets the arrow speed from the taut bow. They fall down; their bodies lie soulless, while their souls which have become arrows ... fly out and strike the beast.
But man was not only the hunter, he was sometimes the hunted. The universality of fear produced psychic tension which gave expression in myth. The prevalence of wolves as the primary predators upon our European ancestors is nowhere more noticeable than in the myth of lycanthropy as a projective defense mechanism. Wedeck (1961:171) tells us: "The werewolf appears in every culture and in every age. The ancients from Homer to Mela, from Varro and Virgil to Apuleius, Stabo, and Solinus testify to the prevalence of lycanthropy." The major predator explanation is reinforced again by Wedeck (1971:171) who points out that while werewolves are confined to Europe,
in some countries the change from man to animal involves another creature. In Malaya, for example, the human being changes into a tiger; in Iceland a bear; in Africa a tiger, hyena, or leopard; in India a tiger or leopard.
Let us remember that this fear of the supernatural animal is itself a totemization of an even more irrational fear of demons and monsters which plagued primitive man and is revealed in myth. But if animals were first invested with these magic properties of transformation, the fear of them could also be totemized by making the animal a blood brother ("I won't hunt you, and you won't hunt me), and this process eventually led to the myth of nagualism. Let us trace this syndrome in detail.
Abell asks (1966:155):
Was belief in the monster myths a useless though spontaneous result of the tensions of Neolithic life or did it perform some positive psychic function? . . . . Freud observes that "the dream relieves the mind like a safety valve, and that as Roberts has put it, all kinds of harmful material are rendered harmless by representation in dreams." No doubt the same could be said about myth.
He continues (1966:156):
The myth centered tribal fears in a being so formidable that no man could be condemned for fearing him; an indirect way of granting the fears a social sanction.
Abell opines that the positive note in religious belief is a developing function in culture, little seen in early man. He states (1966:158):
It seems evident that the positive aspects of Neolithic tension imagery were relatively little developed, offering nothing comparable in vividness or intensity to the monsters who swarmed around the negative pole.
According to Salar (1964) a nagual has two definitions; (1) the animal alter ego of an individual, a "guardian-spirit" or "destiny animal" (Middleton 1967:71, who gives many other cites), sometimes with astrological significance. Saler states that some believe in an affinity between the human and animal in regard to character traits and destiny; and (2) that of a transforming witch (akin to our werewolf) who is able to change into animal form in order to do evil at night.
Oakes (1951:170ff) reports that the Guatemalan Indians of the highlands show traces of a belief in nagualism (animal co-spirits for humans). According to this belief each child has a nagual animal and their lives are closely connected. From this it is easy to go to the ability of chimans (shamans) to change at will into animal form, and she relates tales of this sort given by the natives. Whereas the animal form in Europe is generally the wolf (werewolves), the animal form in this location is the coyote. For more on nagualism see Brinton (1894).
(page 213)
Radin (1927:343) describes how the bear totem affects ceremonial treatment of the captured animal:
When a bear is caught, it is treated with all imaginable veneration and respect. First the hunter addresses a few words of apology and explanation to the animal. Then it is killed and dressed up in all the finery obtainable. . . . When a dead bear is dressed up, this is done as an offering or prayer to the chief of the bears, that he may send the Indians more of his children. ... In gratitude for the treatment accorded him, the bear forgives his slayers and enters their traps a willing and fascinated sacrifice.
Baumann (1954:152) speaking of the Lascaux cave drawings discusses nagualism as follows:
And just as every Red Indian felt he was bound in some special way to some animal, so also did every ice-age hunter. The guardian spirit dwelled in this one animal. Among the Red Indians the animal is called the totem. The ice-age hunter too had his totem animal, and he also tattooed the picture of his animal on his breast.
This process of "totemizing" the fearsome aspects of experience whether found in the natural world or in the numinous is extremely important as it shows how myth was used to reduce fear and irrational dread and to bring the experience into rational consciousness from the trauma with which it was first associated. It is hence necessary to discuss the totemization of myth.
3.44 Totemization of Myth
3.441 General
For a definition of "totem" we go to Malinowski (1928:24-5):
Totemism, to quote Frazer's classical definition: is an inanimate relation which is supposed to exist between a group of kindred people on the one side and a species of natural or artificial objects on the other, which objects are called the totems of the human group.
Malinowski (1928:25) quotes Durkheim as saying:
"In this the totemic principle which is identical with mana and with the God of the clan ... can be nothing else than the clan itself."
As man ascends in evolutionary development, he becomes more conscious of the numinous element and of himself as apart from it. He also begins the totemization of the more dreadful aspects of the numinous element: indeed, the whole parataxic mode is a kind of veiling of the head of Medusa. There is also a kind of slow change in regard to man's relation to various manifestations of the generalized preconscious.
We thus have a historical progress corresponding to slow evolutionary psychic development which goes somewhat as follows in regard to man's relationship to the numinous element:
1. In the ancient world man is seen as the puppet of the numinous element, which behaves in a capricious and irrational manner toward him.
2. Second, man is seen at the mercy of devils and demons; while menacing, they have only the power to tempt him, and may not punish or torture him unless he sins; furthermore he may at least partially ward off their evil influence by faith in the mother church.
This Christian belief has its pagan correlate in the similar belief about monsters and mythical animals (cf. Beowulf). As time goes on, however, the man triumphs over the monster more often, and remains to tell the tale. Sometimes (St. George and the Dragon) there is fusion of the Christian and Pagan elements.
A further change reduces the Christian numinous element to ghosts and the pagan counterpart to witches, fairies, and animals with supernatural power (werewolves).
3. Third, as the numinous element grows less to be feared, the human will comes more to be respected, and Promethean man is in process of birth.
To trace this progression more clearly let H stand for the human protagonist, and let N stand for the numinous element in some presentation indicated by a parenthesis:
1. H the plaything and puppet of N (gods and demons)
2. H preyed upon by N (mythical animals) (Beowulf)
3. H wars with and sometimes conquers N (animals with supernatural powers (St. George and the Dragon)
4. H plagued by devils who tempt him, but can resist them if faithful to tenets of mother church.
5. H plagued by N (witches, ghosts) whose power is definitely limited, and who may by craft be defeated or limited.
6. H helped by N (saints) who as former humans lived good lives.
7. H helped or hindered by N (fairies) whose magic is severely limited.
8. H aided by N (now a talisman or thing) whose power is beneficent but limited.
9. H uses N in a psychological manner for alleviation of pain (as in hypnotism, biofeedback, etc.).
10. H becomes creative and meditative (section 4.3, 4.6) thus "gentling" the effect of N, and placing it under more control.
11. H understands orthocognition (section 4.5) and gains fuller use of N, now expressed as power over environment.
12. H becomes psychedelic (4.7) and N is expressed in very positive affect and knowledge.
This interaction ranges from the human individual being used and persecuted to his using and exploiting, in other words from passivity to activity. The N variable goes from gods and demons through mythical animals, witches, fairies, talismans, and finally to a broader concept of the numinous element as an impersonal force.
3.442 Talismans
A talisman (Webster's International Dictionary) is a figure of a heavenly sign cut or engraved on a stone, metal, or ring sympathetic to the influence of the star, hence something that (is carried) to produce extraordinary effects, such as averting evil. "Talisman" connotes wider and more positive powers than "amulet." "Charm" may be equivalent to either.
Table VII Mythic Manifestations of Numinous Element
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Whereas a talisman may well be a gem with general powers for good, amulet (Dictionary of Magic) is generally a specific against a particular calamity, such as black magic, imprisonment, loss of property, and the like. "The amulet may be a gem or the tail of a fox, a lizard, a mandrake root, or colored threads, a ring, nail, key, or knot." There are specific amulets against nightmares; also some amulets were considered particularly efficacious on certain days of the week or at certain locations.
The concept of a talisman is an end anchor of a sequence of continued totemization in three factor dimensions: 1) from very malignant to potentially beneficial, 2) from strong and uncontrolled will to weak and residing in an object, and 3) from very active in all aspects, to passive and useful only in certain prescribed instances. Psychologists will recognize these three factors as the three major dimensions of Osgood's Semantic Differential which is a distillation by factor analysis of all the adjectives applied to things, events, and persons. Table VII spells out the details.
Jaffe (Jung 1964:257ff) notes that even when the numinous element has gone through the full cycle from a dreadful and all powerful god to the relative immobility of a talisman, mysterious qualities still remain, making it a powerful symbol. She discusses three of these symbols, the stone, the animal, and the circle, and notes the long history of each as an object, as a talisman, and as a universal art symbol or mandala.
History shows the amelioration not only of the major presentation of the numinous (as noted above), but also in some of its specific forms. Hahn and Benes (1971:17ff) make this point clearly in the case of angels. They show that seraphs in the Bible are described as winged serpents with fiery bites. They further say (1971:21):
The word "cherub" comes from the Babylonian karibu designating a monster looking like the Garuda of Hindu mythology, that is a griffin or cross between a mammal and giant bird. . . . The cherubim of Moses and Solomon were sphinxes or griffins.
They note that Psalm 18 has God riding on such a cherub. These fearsome forms in the guise of mythical beasts are a far removal from the chubby cherubim that float over saints or the pale angels in the heavenly choir of more modern fancy.
While ancient and medieval man saw this process as concerned with the gradual freeing of himself from the onslaughts of gods and demons, we should not forget, looking at it from the stance of modern psychology, that what has happened is the gradual totemization of the numinous element from prototaxic states involving no cognitive
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control from the individual consciousness, through parataxic states, to syntaxic states involving considerable such control. The decrease with respect to time is in numinous entropy, and the increase is in human will.
From a psychological point of view, once the feared and dreaded aspects of the numinous can be totemized, expressed, and externalized in myth, the symbol loses its frightening aspect and becomes benign, being used in intercession and prayer to the extent that it becomes habitual and hence seems friendly.
3.45 Myth and Ritual
Myth and ritual are especially closely connected, since ritual is often the celebration of the myth. Before we turn to ritual, it may be helpful to consider the connection more closely.
Myth is finally connected with ritual as Fontenrose (1966:50-1) states:
We do of course, find some fairly exact correspondence of myth and ritual, both in the Old World and the New. Wherever this happens, the ritual is in fact a ritual drama, and in every instance we may suppose that it was purposely designated to enact the myth. Surely ancient Greek tragedy ... and the Japanese No plays were constructed on previously formed myths.
In general, however, Fontenrose does not believe that the origin of myth is in ritual, for he sees many kinds of myth, some of which are mere story-telling, like folklore.
But as Henderson (Jung 1964:123) tells us, ritual as well as myth recapitulates for the individual, developmental process in the race. He says:
In tribal societies, it is the initiation rite that most effectively solves this problem. The ritual takes the novice back to the deepest level of original mother-child identity or ego-self identity, thus forcing him to experience a symbolic death. In other words, his identity is temporarily dismembered or dissolved in the collective unconscious. From this state he is then ceremonially rescued by the rite of a new birth. This is the first act of true consolidation of the ego with the larger group, expressed as totem, clan, or tribe or all three combined.
The construct of "ritual as the enactment of myth" presents myth as source. This concept is controversial; many scholars posit that the action, the ritual, existed and the tale was created from the need to account for this action.
Nagendra enters the controversy by saying (1972:32):
In fact the controversy whether myth is prior to ritual or ritual prior to myth arises only because the two are taken to be temporal relatives. If they are viewed as atemporal forms, the question of their temporal origin would not arise at all. When we say that ritual is acting out of a myth we do not suggest that the latter is prior to the former in point of historical origin. What we aim to emphasize is that ritual cannot be understood without action. And as the action must be logically prior to ritual, so myth must logically precede ritual.
Fontenrose points out (1966:57)
Myth narrates the primal event which sets the precedent for an institution. It may be a ritual institution or a cult. . . .
MYTH
3.41 General Introduction
True myth is defined by Graves (1955:10) as "the reduction to narrative shorthand of ritual mime performed on public festivals. ... Their subjects were archaic magic-makings that promoted the fertility or stability of a sacred queendom, . . ." Graves goes on to point out that magic, supernatural or totem calendar-beasts figured in these rituals, and that to understand Greek mythology we must appreciate the matriarchal and totemistic system which held sway there before incursion of patriarchal invaders. An example of such a mythical beast was the chimera, with a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail.
While Jung believes that myths are original revelations of the preconscious psyche, Graves holds that a "true science of myth should begin with a study of archaeology, history, and comparative religion" (1955:22).
Eliade concludes that the value of myth lies in its ability to evoke a numinous relationship through a priest or by proxy for a believer who is otherwise, however, incapable of any other relationship with the ground of being. He says (1969:59):
The myth continually reactualizes the Great Time and in so doing raises the listener to a superhuman and suprahistorical plane; which among other things, enables him to approach a Reality that is inaccessible at the level of profane, individual existence.
It may be seen that this indeed is the function of all parataxic representation, not only with myth, but also with archetypes, dreams, art, and especially ritual. For whether we consider ritual magic or the Mass of the Church, it is obvious that ritual has the common purpose of gaining merit and personal advantage for the celebrant and his constituency, through approach to the numinous element or some manifestation of it.
The archeology of man's developing social thought is preserved in myth. Recently acquired is the "loose and separate" consciousness of Western man which separates him from the continuum of nature in time, space, and personality. More primitive consciousness was not so differentiated; it was more dreamy and less clear. In myth we find remnants of images now less than precise, whose equivocal ambivalence was once an asset. In the dawning of consciousness, wherein myth abounded, it was easier to believe that man might be metamorphosed into an animal or vice versa, that magical flight could conquer space, and that precognition could reverse time. The vestiges of these motifs in myth is testimony to the development of a conscious ego from a primal self which did not know itself as distinct from nature. The periodic developmental stage theory (Gowan 1972,1974) presents an ontogenic recapitulation of evolutionary phylogeny. The differentiation of ego functioning culminates in stage 5, (the Eriksonian identity crisis), as the individual correlate of the evolution of the personal ego in the species.
Eliade (1969:14) points out that this mythical repository in modern man has been relegated to the attic of the unconscious:
For the unconscious is not haunted by monsters only: the gods, goddesses, the heroes, and the fairies dwell there too; moreover, the monsters of the unconscious are themselves mythological, seeing that they continue to fulfill the same functions that they fulfilled in all the mythologies - in the last analysis that of helping man liberate himself. . . .
But images possess the disadvantage of not being categorical. Says Eliade (1969:15):
Images by their very nature are multivalent (i.o.). If the mind makes use of images to grasp the ultimate reality of things, it is just because reality manifests itself in contradictory ways, and therefore cannot be expressed in concepts.
Eliade (1969:57) tells us:
Myth is an account of events which took place in principio, that is "in the beginning," in a primordial and non-temporal instant, a moment of sacred time (i.o.). The mythic or sacred time is qualitatively different from profane time, from continuous and irreversible time of our everyday de- sacralized existence. In narrating a myth one reactualizes in some sort the sacred time in which the events narrated took place.
Myth, therefore is a way of bringing the numinous to the common man without involving him in an altered state of consciousness. Its sacramental character veils an inner numinous truth which is explicated by the ritual which the myth demands, and which action reaffirms the relationship between the present which is in time, and the numinous which is out of time.
Eliade (1963:18) says:
Myth as experienced in archaic societies:
(1) constitute the history and acts of the supernaturals;
(2) this history is considered to be absolutely true ... and sacred;
(3) that myth is always related to creation (it tells how something came into existence);
(4) that by knowing the myth one knows the origin of things, and hence can control and manipulate them at will (by) a knowledge that one "experiences" ritually, either by ceremonially recounting the myth, or by performing the ritual for which it is the justification;
(5) that in one way or another one "lives" the myth, in the sense that one is "seized" by the sacred exalting power of the events recollected or re-enacted.
Gaster (1950:11) traces the origin of myth as "a sequence of ritual acts, which ... have characterized major seasonal festivities." These as he explains (1950:9) are "derived from a religious ritual designed to ensure the rebirth of a dead world." He elaborates on the central thesis (1950:17) as follows:
Seasonal rituals are functional in character. Their purpose is to revive the topocosm (i.o.), that is, the entire complex of any given locality conceived as a living organism. But this topocosm possesses a ... durative aspect, representing not only actual and present community, but also the ideal of community, an entity, of which the latter is but the current manifestation. Accordingly, seasonal rituals are accompanied by myths which are designed to present the purely functional acts in terms of ideal and durative situations. The impenetration of myth and ritual creates drama. ... What the King does on the punctual plane, the God does on the durative. . . . The pattern is based on the conception that life is vouchsafed in a series of leases which have annually to be renewed.3
It would be difficult to state more clearly and concisely the central motivating elements of myth than has here been done. The concept that the topocosm needs to be renewed like an annual lease, and that since it exists on the transcendental (durative) level, it can be affected as if in sympathetic magic on the temporal (punctual) level, and finally that it is a living organism amenable to the efforts of man, is both good anthropology and excellent psychology regarding man's parataxic relationship to the numinous element.
In contrast to the void of the numinous element, but in no wise the antithesis of it, stands a conceptualization identified by Gaster (1950) as the "durative topocosm." It would be easy to say that this represents nature, seen in her anthropomorphic aspects, but that is too simple; another partial view would equate this conceptualization to the goddess Ceres with all her manifestations of bounty, but even this does not capture the full "durative" aspect. For it embraces not merely the progression of the seasons, and the fecundation of nature, processes which eventuate at a given time and place, but the generative element in these processes which continues as in a procession or ceremony to provide the continual source and origin of what man merely sees as an outcome at a given time and place. It is the numinous clothed and housed in forms which we perceive as natural.
Thus Malinowski (1928:23) says:
We can find among the most primitive peoples and throughout the lower savagery a belief in a supernatural impersonal force, moving all those agencies which are relevant to the savage and causing all the really important events in the domain of the sacred. Thus mana (i.o.) not animism is the essence of "pre-animistic religion," and is also the essence of magic. . . .
The durative topocosm is generally celebrated as Sir James Frazer noted in "The Golden Bough"in cults and ceremonies of vegetation and fertility. As in totemism (Malinowski 1968:45) "This ritual leads to acts of a magical nature, by which plenty is brought about" and man by his rites certifies the renewal of the annual lease of the potential bounty of the topocosm.
Malinowski (1968:73) quotes Codrington as saying:
This mana is not fixed in anything, and can be conveyed in almost anything. (It) acts in all ways for good and evil . . ., shows itself in physical force or in any kind of power or excellence which a man possesses.
Ultimate reality, in the guise of the durative topocosm, cannot adequately present itself through a language of tensed verbs. Hence it must do so through a metaphor of continual recurrence; we should learn to recognize such usage in myth and fable as signifying the advent of the "spacious present" in which clock time is transcended. Such fables as Sisyphus rolling up the stone, which rolls down again, the Medusa which grows two heads when one is cut off, Brigadoon which keeps appearing one day every hundred years, ghosts which keep haunting a castle on an anniversary, are alike examples of an incident which "occur" in durative time, and which, therefore, seem to keep repeating in ours. A second example of the durative nature of this reality is the fact that mortals immersed in it (in fable) are apt to find that a shorter duration in it amounts to a much longer elapse of clock time. Examples which come to mind include Brigadoon, Rip Van Winkle, and many fairy tales.10
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Myth involves explication of psychic tensions which activate archetypes and dreams, but are now expressed in the ordinary state of consciousness in terms of images. Cassirer (1955:11:25-36) points out the development of image in the parataxic mode as follows:
The mythical world is concrete ... because in it the two main factors, thing and signification are undifferentiated. . . . The concresence of name and thing in the linguistic consciousness of primitives and children might be illustrated ... (striking example: name tabus).... But as language develops, distinct from all mere physical existence and all physical efficacy, the word emerges in its own specificity, in its purely ideal significatory function. And art leads us to still another stage of development. . . . Here for the first time the image world acquires a purely immanent validity and truth. . . . Thus for the first time the world of images becomes a self-contained cosmos ... severing its bonds with immediate reality, with material existence and efficacy which constitute the world of magic and myth; it embodies a new step.
Psychic tensions exist in a society as well as in individuals. The parataxic outlet for these tensions in the individual is art; in society it is myth and ritual. Myth of course is an example of the outletting of such tensions: Abell explains (1966:94):
Similarly a myth has not only its "active period of psychic eruption and imaginative overflow, but also its subsequent period of extinction and disintegration." A later form of extinct myth will differ greatly from the earlier expression of the active period and may retain little of the tension-imagery.
He continues (1966:96):
The action of eruptive and erosive forces in the sphere of the near myth can be observed in the phases through which every artistic movement seems destined to pass. An exploratory or "creative" phase is eventually succeeded by a stereotyped or "academic" phase. Artists, participating in the exploratory phase, ... work with feverish intensity and bring forth results that are dazzling, often bewildering and seemingly unreasonable to those who witness their cultural emergence.
Some writers, perhaps metaphorically, see myth as the record of a "social womb" in which primitive man, not yet endowed with full cognition, is protected from reality by a dreamy placental envelope.
Hall (1960: 10) points out that from an occult point of view mythologies and mythological characters may have developed from racial memories of super-identities who helped our species become human.
3.42 Examples of Myth11
Henderson (Jung 1964:101) points out that the "hero myth" is the most common and popular in the world. He says:
Over and over again one hears a tale describing a hero's miraculous but humble birth, his early proof of superhuman strength, his rapid rise to prominence or power, his triumphant struggle with the forces of evil, his fallibility to the sin of pride (hubris) and his fall through betrayal or a heroic sacrifice that ends in death.
Radin (1948) in Hero Cycles of the Winnebago notes four cycles in the evolution of the hero myth, calling them (1) the trickster cycle, (2) the hare cycle, (3) the red horn cycle, and (4) the twin cycle. The trickster sees his environment as a giver or withholder of good things, and craftily exploits it or appeases it to get what he wants. The hare represents a socialization of the trickster for he cooperates with his group instead of exploiting them. The third cycle Red Horn, is a younger brother who has envious brethren and who proves himself through endurance, thus raising his self-esteem. Finally, the twins are a pair of superhuman brothers who conquer heaven and earth, but finally sicken of their power, and either fall out or one betrays the other, and the death of one ensures. It is very easy to see in this hero myth parallels to the development of self-concept in the growing boy from a solitary exploiter of the world (in the third stage), through socialization in the fourth stage to identification with a brother in the fifth stage. Thus does ontogeny in the individual parallel phylogeny in the species.12
Henderson (Jung 1964:130) points out another universal myth that is often found in dreams of adolescent girls who are having difficulty accepting their feminine role as wife and mother. He says:
A universal myth expressing this kind of awakening is found in the fairy tale of Beauty and the Beast. The best known version of this story related how Beauty, the youngest of four daughters, becomes her father's favorite because of her unselfish goodness. When she asks her father for only a white rose, she is aware only of her inner sincerity of feeling. She does not know that she is about to endanger her father's life and her ideal relation with him. For he steals the white rose from the enchanted garden of the Beast, who is stirred to anger by this theft, and requires him to return in three months for his punishment, presumably death.
As Henderson points out, the rose is the (sublimated) sexual love between daughter and father, a love which really belongs to a younger rival (the Beast), whose bestial aspects personify the rejected overt sex from which Beauty is free as long as she is "daddy's little girl." But as the tale tells us, Beauty is required to make an overt sexual advance (kiss the beast), and when she does so, she finds that he is transformed into a wonderful prince.
A third example of universal myth comes from tribal Africa. In Hahn's book on Africa (1961) "Ntu" is the numinous element, never seen but in its manifestations which are Muntu (man), Nommo (the power of the word) Kuntu (Modes and Styles), and Hantu (culture). All of these are part of the topocosm, that durative world of which our own series of events in space and time is only a shadow.
These three examples of myth account for bravery in males, beauty and charm in females, and the numinous quality found in man and indeed in nature.
3.43 Myth and Animals
Because primitive man lived much closer to the animals than we do and had reason to fear and totemize some of them, it is natural to find that animals play a great part in his myths. Myths about animals fall into three categories: (1) the transformation of man into animal or vice versa, (2) the totemization of a feared animal, and (3) the nagual or animal-twin of individual men. These categories are of course interconnected. They all represent attempts to extract the numinous quality from the animal and incorporate it into the individual (in character) or in society (in totem).
One of the environmental penalties of modern urban life is the estrangement of mankind from the animals. We do not realize this until we revert to the farm in the country or visit a game park. Man in simpler times, whether hunter or agriculturalist, lived on intimate terms with the animals in his habitat. He hunted them, he was hunted by them, he used them, he had them round and often in his dwelling, he played with them, lived close to them, and used anecdotes about them in his songs and dances. The importance of animals in the thinking of primitive man can scarcely be exaggerated; it is seen in myth and legend. The importance of animals in the farm life of man during the last millenium can be seen even in the different etymology and plurals of such ancient words as oxen, geese, mice, kine, deer.
One of the most important relationships of man to the animals in the hunting stage was success in finding game upon which sustanence and perhaps life itself might depend. Myth and ritual of the great hunter and the successful hunt thereby came to be very important.
Baumann (1954:149-50) explains the Lascaux Caves hunting magic dance pictures as follows:
These dances seem incredibly wild and grotesque. To an outsider the dancers appear to be quite beside themselves. And that is exactly what they are. Their burning desire carries them away while they are still dancing on the trail of the beast on which their thoughts are concentrated. In the dance their souls reach the utmost height of tension. Suddenly they let themselves go as the hunters' hand lets the arrow speed from the taut bow. They fall down; their bodies lie soulless, while their souls which have become arrows ... fly out and strike the beast.
But man was not only the hunter, he was sometimes the hunted. The universality of fear produced psychic tension which gave expression in myth. The prevalence of wolves as the primary predators upon our European ancestors is nowhere more noticeable than in the myth of lycanthropy as a projective defense mechanism. Wedeck (1961:171) tells us: "The werewolf appears in every culture and in every age. The ancients from Homer to Mela, from Varro and Virgil to Apuleius, Stabo, and Solinus testify to the prevalence of lycanthropy." The major predator explanation is reinforced again by Wedeck (1971:171) who points out that while werewolves are confined to Europe,
in some countries the change from man to animal involves another creature. In Malaya, for example, the human being changes into a tiger; in Iceland a bear; in Africa a tiger, hyena, or leopard; in India a tiger or leopard.
Let us remember that this fear of the supernatural animal is itself a totemization of an even more irrational fear of demons and monsters which plagued primitive man and is revealed in myth. But if animals were first invested with these magic properties of transformation, the fear of them could also be totemized by making the animal a blood brother ("I won't hunt you, and you won't hunt me), and this process eventually led to the myth of nagualism. Let us trace this syndrome in detail.
Abell asks (1966:155):
Was belief in the monster myths a useless though spontaneous result of the tensions of Neolithic life or did it perform some positive psychic function? . . . . Freud observes that "the dream relieves the mind like a safety valve, and that as Roberts has put it, all kinds of harmful material are rendered harmless by representation in dreams." No doubt the same could be said about myth.
He continues (1966:156):
The myth centered tribal fears in a being so formidable that no man could be condemned for fearing him; an indirect way of granting the fears a social sanction.
Abell opines that the positive note in religious belief is a developing function in culture, little seen in early man. He states (1966:158):
It seems evident that the positive aspects of Neolithic tension imagery were relatively little developed, offering nothing comparable in vividness or intensity to the monsters who swarmed around the negative pole.
According to Salar (1964) a nagual has two definitions; (1) the animal alter ego of an individual, a "guardian-spirit" or "destiny animal" (Middleton 1967:71, who gives many other cites), sometimes with astrological significance. Saler states that some believe in an affinity between the human and animal in regard to character traits and destiny; and (2) that of a transforming witch (akin to our werewolf) who is able to change into animal form in order to do evil at night.
Oakes (1951:170ff) reports that the Guatemalan Indians of the highlands show traces of a belief in nagualism (animal co-spirits for humans). According to this belief each child has a nagual animal and their lives are closely connected. From this it is easy to go to the ability of chimans (shamans) to change at will into animal form, and she relates tales of this sort given by the natives. Whereas the animal form in Europe is generally the wolf (werewolves), the animal form in this location is the coyote. For more on nagualism see Brinton (1894).
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Radin (1927:343) describes how the bear totem affects ceremonial treatment of the captured animal:
When a bear is caught, it is treated with all imaginable veneration and respect. First the hunter addresses a few words of apology and explanation to the animal. Then it is killed and dressed up in all the finery obtainable. . . . When a dead bear is dressed up, this is done as an offering or prayer to the chief of the bears, that he may send the Indians more of his children. ... In gratitude for the treatment accorded him, the bear forgives his slayers and enters their traps a willing and fascinated sacrifice.
Baumann (1954:152) speaking of the Lascaux cave drawings discusses nagualism as follows:
And just as every Red Indian felt he was bound in some special way to some animal, so also did every ice-age hunter. The guardian spirit dwelled in this one animal. Among the Red Indians the animal is called the totem. The ice-age hunter too had his totem animal, and he also tattooed the picture of his animal on his breast.
This process of "totemizing" the fearsome aspects of experience whether found in the natural world or in the numinous is extremely important as it shows how myth was used to reduce fear and irrational dread and to bring the experience into rational consciousness from the trauma with which it was first associated. It is hence necessary to discuss the totemization of myth.
3.44 Totemization of Myth
3.441 General
For a definition of "totem" we go to Malinowski (1928:24-5):
Totemism, to quote Frazer's classical definition: is an inanimate relation which is supposed to exist between a group of kindred people on the one side and a species of natural or artificial objects on the other, which objects are called the totems of the human group.
Malinowski (1928:25) quotes Durkheim as saying:
"In this the totemic principle which is identical with mana and with the God of the clan ... can be nothing else than the clan itself."
As man ascends in evolutionary development, he becomes more conscious of the numinous element and of himself as apart from it. He also begins the totemization of the more dreadful aspects of the numinous element: indeed, the whole parataxic mode is a kind of veiling of the head of Medusa. There is also a kind of slow change in regard to man's relation to various manifestations of the generalized preconscious.
We thus have a historical progress corresponding to slow evolutionary psychic development which goes somewhat as follows in regard to man's relationship to the numinous element:
1. In the ancient world man is seen as the puppet of the numinous element, which behaves in a capricious and irrational manner toward him.
2. Second, man is seen at the mercy of devils and demons; while menacing, they have only the power to tempt him, and may not punish or torture him unless he sins; furthermore he may at least partially ward off their evil influence by faith in the mother church.
This Christian belief has its pagan correlate in the similar belief about monsters and mythical animals (cf. Beowulf). As time goes on, however, the man triumphs over the monster more often, and remains to tell the tale. Sometimes (St. George and the Dragon) there is fusion of the Christian and Pagan elements.
A further change reduces the Christian numinous element to ghosts and the pagan counterpart to witches, fairies, and animals with supernatural power (werewolves).
3. Third, as the numinous element grows less to be feared, the human will comes more to be respected, and Promethean man is in process of birth.
To trace this progression more clearly let H stand for the human protagonist, and let N stand for the numinous element in some presentation indicated by a parenthesis:
1. H the plaything and puppet of N (gods and demons)
2. H preyed upon by N (mythical animals) (Beowulf)
3. H wars with and sometimes conquers N (animals with supernatural powers (St. George and the Dragon)
4. H plagued by devils who tempt him, but can resist them if faithful to tenets of mother church.
5. H plagued by N (witches, ghosts) whose power is definitely limited, and who may by craft be defeated or limited.
6. H helped by N (saints) who as former humans lived good lives.
7. H helped or hindered by N (fairies) whose magic is severely limited.
8. H aided by N (now a talisman or thing) whose power is beneficent but limited.
9. H uses N in a psychological manner for alleviation of pain (as in hypnotism, biofeedback, etc.).
10. H becomes creative and meditative (section 4.3, 4.6) thus "gentling" the effect of N, and placing it under more control.
11. H understands orthocognition (section 4.5) and gains fuller use of N, now expressed as power over environment.
12. H becomes psychedelic (4.7) and N is expressed in very positive affect and knowledge.
This interaction ranges from the human individual being used and persecuted to his using and exploiting, in other words from passivity to activity. The N variable goes from gods and demons through mythical animals, witches, fairies, talismans, and finally to a broader concept of the numinous element as an impersonal force.
3.442 Talismans
A talisman (Webster's International Dictionary) is a figure of a heavenly sign cut or engraved on a stone, metal, or ring sympathetic to the influence of the star, hence something that (is carried) to produce extraordinary effects, such as averting evil. "Talisman" connotes wider and more positive powers than "amulet." "Charm" may be equivalent to either.
Table VII Mythic Manifestations of Numinous Element
(page 216)
Whereas a talisman may well be a gem with general powers for good, amulet (Dictionary of Magic) is generally a specific against a particular calamity, such as black magic, imprisonment, loss of property, and the like. "The amulet may be a gem or the tail of a fox, a lizard, a mandrake root, or colored threads, a ring, nail, key, or knot." There are specific amulets against nightmares; also some amulets were considered particularly efficacious on certain days of the week or at certain locations.
The concept of a talisman is an end anchor of a sequence of continued totemization in three factor dimensions: 1) from very malignant to potentially beneficial, 2) from strong and uncontrolled will to weak and residing in an object, and 3) from very active in all aspects, to passive and useful only in certain prescribed instances. Psychologists will recognize these three factors as the three major dimensions of Osgood's Semantic Differential which is a distillation by factor analysis of all the adjectives applied to things, events, and persons. Table VII spells out the details.
Jaffe (Jung 1964:257ff) notes that even when the numinous element has gone through the full cycle from a dreadful and all powerful god to the relative immobility of a talisman, mysterious qualities still remain, making it a powerful symbol. She discusses three of these symbols, the stone, the animal, and the circle, and notes the long history of each as an object, as a talisman, and as a universal art symbol or mandala.
History shows the amelioration not only of the major presentation of the numinous (as noted above), but also in some of its specific forms. Hahn and Benes (1971:17ff) make this point clearly in the case of angels. They show that seraphs in the Bible are described as winged serpents with fiery bites. They further say (1971:21):
The word "cherub" comes from the Babylonian karibu designating a monster looking like the Garuda of Hindu mythology, that is a griffin or cross between a mammal and giant bird. . . . The cherubim of Moses and Solomon were sphinxes or griffins.
They note that Psalm 18 has God riding on such a cherub. These fearsome forms in the guise of mythical beasts are a far removal from the chubby cherubim that float over saints or the pale angels in the heavenly choir of more modern fancy.
While ancient and medieval man saw this process as concerned with the gradual freeing of himself from the onslaughts of gods and demons, we should not forget, looking at it from the stance of modern psychology, that what has happened is the gradual totemization of the numinous element from prototaxic states involving no cognitive
(page 217)
control from the individual consciousness, through parataxic states, to syntaxic states involving considerable such control. The decrease with respect to time is in numinous entropy, and the increase is in human will.
From a psychological point of view, once the feared and dreaded aspects of the numinous can be totemized, expressed, and externalized in myth, the symbol loses its frightening aspect and becomes benign, being used in intercession and prayer to the extent that it becomes habitual and hence seems friendly.
3.45 Myth and Ritual
Myth and ritual are especially closely connected, since ritual is often the celebration of the myth. Before we turn to ritual, it may be helpful to consider the connection more closely.
Myth is finally connected with ritual as Fontenrose (1966:50-1) states:
We do of course, find some fairly exact correspondence of myth and ritual, both in the Old World and the New. Wherever this happens, the ritual is in fact a ritual drama, and in every instance we may suppose that it was purposely designated to enact the myth. Surely ancient Greek tragedy ... and the Japanese No plays were constructed on previously formed myths.
In general, however, Fontenrose does not believe that the origin of myth is in ritual, for he sees many kinds of myth, some of which are mere story-telling, like folklore.
But as Henderson (Jung 1964:123) tells us, ritual as well as myth recapitulates for the individual, developmental process in the race. He says:
In tribal societies, it is the initiation rite that most effectively solves this problem. The ritual takes the novice back to the deepest level of original mother-child identity or ego-self identity, thus forcing him to experience a symbolic death. In other words, his identity is temporarily dismembered or dissolved in the collective unconscious. From this state he is then ceremonially rescued by the rite of a new birth. This is the first act of true consolidation of the ego with the larger group, expressed as totem, clan, or tribe or all three combined.
The construct of "ritual as the enactment of myth" presents myth as source. This concept is controversial; many scholars posit that the action, the ritual, existed and the tale was created from the need to account for this action.
Nagendra enters the controversy by saying (1972:32):
In fact the controversy whether myth is prior to ritual or ritual prior to myth arises only because the two are taken to be temporal relatives. If they are viewed as atemporal forms, the question of their temporal origin would not arise at all. When we say that ritual is acting out of a myth we do not suggest that the latter is prior to the former in point of historical origin. What we aim to emphasize is that ritual cannot be understood without action. And as the action must be logically prior to ritual, so myth must logically precede ritual.
Fontenrose points out (1966:57)
Myth narrates the primal event which sets the precedent for an institution. It may be a ritual institution or a cult. . . .
Charts from John Gowan, Trance, Art & Creativity
1975, Creative Education Foundation
1975, Creative Education Foundation
Because much of genealogical best-practice includes mythic and fictional characters, the process is best approached with a Jungian orientation, rather than as hard historical fact. In terms of the collective unconscious it has psychic reality, and Jungian and post-Jungian practices allow us to interact with such material in a deeply meaningful way.
Projects tagged with mythology
http://www.geni.com/projects/tag/mythology
http://www.geni.com/projects/tag/mythology
- Ancient Rome Ancient Rome was a civilization that grew out of a small agricultural community, founded on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 10th century BCE. Located along the Mediterranean Sea, and centered at the city of Rome, it became one of the largest empires in the ancient world. In its centuries of existence, Roman civilization shifted from a monarchy to an oligarchic republic to an increasingl...
Scandinavian sagas Project Scandinavian sagas This project has as its aim to create on Geni an accurate representation of the genealogical information present in the parts of the Saga literature that present a reasonably coherent picture. The sagas we work from are: Snorre's "Ynglingesoga" "Hvorledes Norge ble bygget" fra "Flateyarbok" "Orkneysaga" Landnamabok, heimskringla.no The goal is th...
- "Western Finnmark in Norway pre - 1720. Domiciliation. Komsa civilization. Rockcarvings in Alta. Birkarler from Sweden / Finland". This project contains genealogical information about people born in Alta area, Finnmark, Norway. Genealogy / Slektsforskning, wikipedia Stories about Norwegian immigrants to USA and other Norwegian stories, (goldmining in Alaska etc.) Genealogyproject on Geni . Northernlights route, pictures and history, Tromsø University Northernlights observatory on Haldde - Alta - Norway . ...
- Fictional Genealogy Many invented and fictional people have been inserted into genealogical collections, generally as part of an attempt to fill in the blanks, but also to connect cultures and justify claims to an ancient history. Profiles for invented and fictional people often become battleground among genealogists. Purpose This project collects and identifies people for whom no...
- Odin's Kin Am I Descended from Odin? In orther words, can anyone today prove a descent from Odin ? Unfortunately, there is no clear answer. On Geni, we have many different opinions. This project gives a very high-level overview so that individual users can draw their own conclusions. Odin the god Odin (Woden) was the ruler of the ancient Norse and Germanic gods, similar to Zeus in Greek mythology. H...
- Ancient Greece This project collects the profiles related to Ancient Greece, both human and mythological. There are no proven descents from Ancient Greece to the modern world. Descent from the Greek Gods The ancient Greeks believed that their ruling families were descended from their gods. It was this descent that gave kings their right to rule. Some of the divine ancestors of the royal houses were: ...
- Primordials The primeval gods or "Protogenoi" of Greek mythology were the basic components of the universe which were emerged at creation. They included Earth, Air, Sea, Sky, Fresh Water, Underworld, Darkness, Night, Light, Day, Procreation and Time. Primeval gods Aether - Eeter - Aither The Protogenos of the mists of light which fill the upper zones of air. His element lay beneath ...
- Danske sagnkonger - Legendary Danish kings The goal for this project is to clean up duplicates and ensure quality of the involved profiles. Danske sagnkonger Angantyr (Angandeo/Ongendus) før 714 ( Wikipedia ) ([ danmarkshistorien.dk]) ( denstoredanske.dk ) Sigfred nævnt 777, 782, 798 ([ Wikipedia]) ([ danmarkshistorien.dk]) ( denstoredanske.dk ) Harald før 812 ([ Wikipedia]) ([ danmarkshistorien.dk]) ([ de...
- Titanes TITANS I. MAJOR TITANS : THE URANIDES & IAPETIONIDES The most important of the Titan gods were the twelve Uranides (Cronus, Oceanus, Iapetus, Hyperion, Crius, Coeus, Rhea, Tethys, Theia, Phoebe, Themis and Mnemosyne) and the four Iapetionides (Atlas, Prometheus, Epimetheus and Menoetius). Of these only the eight depicted below appear in ancient art. 12 Titanes - Uranides THE TITANES wer...
- Greek Gods The Greek Gods First Greek Gods Theogony Chaos The Titans The ancient Greek people created their own splendid, yet human-like world of gods to account for abstract significances like Love, Birth or Death . The origins of the gods of ancient Greek religion are described in the Theogony , the famous poem of the Greek writer Hesiod (around 700 BC) and the Library of Apollodorus. Ol...
FICTIONAL GENEALOGY
Many invented and fictional people have been inserted into genealogical collections, generally as part of an attempt to fill in the blanks, but also to connect cultures and justify claims to an ancient history.
Profiles for invented and fictional people often become battleground among genealogists.
Purpose This project collects and identifies people for whom no historical evidence exists.
Categories
The Stuart Line back to King Arthur through Fleance & Banquo Fleance and his father Banquo are both fictional characters presented as historical fact by Hector Boece, whose Scotorum Historiae (1526–27) was a source for Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles, a history of the British Isles popular in Shakespeare's time. In the Chronicles, Fleance—in fear of Macbeth—flees to Wales and marries Nesta verch Gruffydd, daughter of Gruffydd ap Llywelyn, the last native Prince of Wales. They have a son named Walter who makes his way back to Scotland and is appointed Royal Steward. According to legend, he fathered the Stuart monarchs of England and Scotland.
The Stuarts used their connection with Fleance and his marriage to the Welsh princess to claim a genealogical link with the legendary King Arthur. This, they hoped, would strengthen the legitimacy of their throne.[3] In 1722, however, Richard Hay, a Scottish historian, presented strong evidence that not only was James not a descendant of Fleance, but also that both Fleance and Banquo never even existed. Most modern scholars now agree that Fleance is not a real historical figure.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fleance
Many invented and fictional people have been inserted into genealogical collections, generally as part of an attempt to fill in the blanks, but also to connect cultures and justify claims to an ancient history.
Profiles for invented and fictional people often become battleground among genealogists.
Purpose This project collects and identifies people for whom no historical evidence exists.
Categories
- Arthurian Fiction - people who are medieval inventions from the many stories of Arthurian romance
- Frankish Fiction - people who are the invention of medieval Frankish chronicles
- Greek Mythology - characters from Greek mythology. These will often, but not always, overlap Roman mythology.
- Irish Mythology - characters from Irish mythology, including the Lebor Gabála Érenn.
- Modern Fiction - people who appear to have been invented in the 19th and 20th centuries, including those invented by genealogical forgers and con men.
- Norse Mythology - characters from Norse (Scandinavian) mythology.
- Roman Mythology - characters from Rome mythology. These will often, but not always, overlap Greek mythology.
- Welsh Mythology - characters from Welsh mythology.
The Stuart Line back to King Arthur through Fleance & Banquo Fleance and his father Banquo are both fictional characters presented as historical fact by Hector Boece, whose Scotorum Historiae (1526–27) was a source for Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles, a history of the British Isles popular in Shakespeare's time. In the Chronicles, Fleance—in fear of Macbeth—flees to Wales and marries Nesta verch Gruffydd, daughter of Gruffydd ap Llywelyn, the last native Prince of Wales. They have a son named Walter who makes his way back to Scotland and is appointed Royal Steward. According to legend, he fathered the Stuart monarchs of England and Scotland.
The Stuarts used their connection with Fleance and his marriage to the Welsh princess to claim a genealogical link with the legendary King Arthur. This, they hoped, would strengthen the legitimacy of their throne.[3] In 1722, however, Richard Hay, a Scottish historian, presented strong evidence that not only was James not a descendant of Fleance, but also that both Fleance and Banquo never even existed. Most modern scholars now agree that Fleance is not a real historical figure.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fleance
Descents from Antiquity
Internet genealogies suffer a well-known defect -- many of them accept as true many lines that are known by scholars to be false. Geni is no exception. In Geni’s early days, many users uploaded GEDCOM files with sleo purious and fantastic genealogies. As users we’ve done a lot of cleanup, merging duplicates and cutting bad connections, but there is a lot of work still to do.
Usually, the term “Descents from Antiquity” refers to modern efforts to find plausible lines of descent. However, it can also include traditional descents that have varying degrees of reliability.
This project is designed to help clean up the many fictitious genealogies and to focus attention on legitimate debate about extending our shared genealogy. You can help us by identifying questionable lines. It is generally unhelpful to simply say something like, “No one can prove a descent from Julius Caesar.” What is most helpful is to identify the specific generations where the evidence fails, search for reliable sources, then start a discussion.
Because Geni is a collaborative environment, you should be cautious about cutting any connections mentioned here without starting a discussion and giving other users ample opportunity to weigh in.
Medieval forgeries A common belief in antiquity and in the middle ages was that tribes took their name from a common ancestor. For example, the Historia Brittonum (Nennius, 9th century) names Alanus as the first man to live in Europe. He had a son Hiscion, and Hiscion’s four sons Francus, Romanus, Alamanus, and Brutus were the ancestors respectively of the French, Romans, Germans, and British. The name of this Alanus was probably a corrupted form of Mannus, the Old Germanic god who was the ancestor of mankind. Some scholars believe that Mannus was another name for Bor, the father of the god Odin in Norse tradition. In English, German and the Scandinavian languages we get our word man from Mannus.
When the Europeans converted to Christianity, they had a problem. Their royal families were only a few generations removed from the old gods. And, worse. Exposed to Roman arts and sciences, they discovered the idea of “historical time”. The world was older than they had ever thought about. Their royal pedigrees weren’t long enough to go back to the creation of the world.
From the Romans they learned that modern science had proved that everyone on earth was descended from Adam and Eve. (It said so in the Christian scriptures, which were absolutely true -- according the scholars.)
The answer was simple and obvious. The old gods had to have been humans, famous men and great warriors who came to worshipped as gods. And, if they were human, they must have been descended from Adam and Eve like everyone else. The trick was to figure out how.
One of the earliest surviving attempts to create this kind of genealogy is the Historia Brittonum by the Welsh monk Nennius (9th century), who recorded the following genealogy:
(1) Noah, his son (2) Japheth, his son (3) Joham, his son (4) Jobath, his son (5) Bath, his son (6) Hisrau, his son (7) Esraa, his son (8) Ra, his son (9) Aber, his son (10) Ooth, his son (11) Ethec, his son (12) Aurthack, his son (13) Ecthactur, his son (14) Ecthactur, his son (15) Mair, his son (16) Semion, his son (17) Boibus, his son (18) Thoi, his son (19) Ogomuin, his son (20) Fethuir, and his son (21) Alanus.
Nennius also tied Alanus to Rome by making him a husband of Rhea Silvia, whose twin sons Romulus and Remus are said to have founded Rome in 753 BCE. The connection is scarcely credible historically, but served neatly to graft the eponymous ancestors of the northern Europeans onto classical tradition by making them brothers of Romulus, the eponymous ancestor of the Romans.
These medieval genealogies connecting ancient kings to Adam are pure invention. They are interesting now because they show the history of history.
England The Anglo-Saxons, forerunners of the modern English, were ruled by kings who claimed to be descended from the god Woden (Odin in the Norse versions). In later Scandinavian versions, Woden was the son of Bor, son of Búri. Some scholars believe that in the Germanic version, which included the Anglo-Saxons, Woden was the son of Mannus, the ancestor of mankind, who was son of Tuisto.
English monks kept Woden, but dumped Bor and Búri. They “discovered” that Woden was descended from Noah, but the process took several tries.
In one place, the 9th century Anglo-Saxon chronicle gives the following line. There are too few generations here, but this fragment might preserve the earliest non-divine version of Woden’s ancestry.
(1) Noah, his son (2) ---, his son (3) Finn, who was born in the ark, his son (4) Freothelaf, his son (5) Frithuwald, his son (6) Woden.
About the same time, Nennius in his Historia Brittonum gives a slightly different version. Here we get two more generations beyond Finn, which might also represent an authentic tradition.
(1) Geat, “who, as they say, was the son of a god”, his son (2) Godwulf, his son (3) Finn, his son (4) Frithuwulf, his son (5) Frithowald, and his son (6) Woden.
Nennius gives us more theology than genealogy. He says that Geat “as they say, was the son of a god, not of the omnipotent God and our Lord Jesus Christ (who before the beginning of the world, was with the Father and the Holy Spirit, co-eternal and of the same substance, and who, in compassion to human nature, disdained not to assume the form of a servant), but the offspring of one of their idols, and whom, blinded by some demon, they worshipped according to the custom of the heathen.”
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is a collection of documents rather than a single document. In another place (855), it gives a fuller line.
(1) Noe [Noah], his son (2) Sceaf, his son (3) Bedwig Sceafing, his son (4) Hwala Bedwiging, his son (5) Haþra Hwalaing, his son (6) Itermon Haðraing, his son (7) Heremod Itermoning, his son (8) Sceldwea Heremoding, his son (9) Beaw Sceldwaing, his son (10) Taetwa Beawing, his son (11) Geat Taetwaing, his son (12) God wulf Geating, his son (13) Fin Godwulfing, his son (14) Frealaf Finning, and his son (15) Woden Frealafing. (Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel, Plummer and Earle (eds.), 66, 67 and note 6).
A note says, “id est filius Noe se waes geboren on þaere earce Noes.” That is, “he [Sceaf] is the son of Noah, he was born in Noah’s ark.” This detail ties the old pagan tradition to the new Christian tradition. Sceaf was a Norse god who arrived by boat as a baby to rule the Danes. Now, he is neatly made the son of the Christian ark builder.
Later monks, perhaps competing for prestige with the Franks, decided to dump Noah and take Woden’s ancestry back to Troy, then connect the Trojans to the Jewish scriptures. This version runs as follows. Note that the names of the new generations, between (10) and (16) have been drawn chiefly from nicknames of the old god Thor. Some of the other names might have been invented in a similar way.
(1) Judah, ancestor of the tribe of Judah, his son (2) Zara, his son (3) Darda, his son (4) Erichthonious, his son (5) Tros, his son (6) Ilus, his son (7) Laomedon, his son (8) Tithonius, his son (9) Memnon, his son (10) Thor, his son (11) Einridi, his son (12) Vingethor, his son (13) Vingener, his son (14) Móda, his son (15) Magi [Noe], his son (16) Sceaf [Seskef], his son (17) Bedwig [Bedvig], his son (18) Hwala, his son (19) Hrathra [Annarr], his son (20) Itermon [Ítermann], his son (21) Heremod [Heremód], his son (22) Heremod [Heremód], his son (23) Beaw [Bjárr], his son (24) Tætwa, his son (25) Geat [Ját], his son (26) Godwulf [Gudólfr], his son (27) Finn, his son (28) Frithuwulf, his son (29) Frealaf [Fridleifr], his son Frealaf [Fridleifr], his son (30) Freawine, his son (31) Frithuwald, and his son (32) Woden.
Attempts to reconcile these genealogies by equating the human Frithuwald with the divine Bor, and the human Frealaf with divine Búri have been problematic, because they end by giving Woden a set of mythical relatives that include the Ice Giants.
France The Franks, a confederation of Germanic tribes that formed the core of modern France, claimed descent from Francus (or Francio). According to one version of the story, Francus and his people were defeated by the Roman general Drusus in 11 BCE. Francus was killed, and they were relocated to the region between the Rhine and the Danube.
Frankish monks linked Francus to the kings of Troy. The Chronicle of Fredegar (7th century) mentions the legend. It was elaborated in the Liber historiae Francorum (probably 727). Successive generations continued adding new details.
In other words, the Franks claimed to be the distant cousins of the Romans (who claimed descent from Aeneas, another Trojan). It was a nice piece of political propaganda because it fit nicely with two things the Franks wanted to emphasize: (1) as cousins of the Romans they were equal to the Romans, and (2) as cousins and equals, they were the legitimate successors of the Roman empire.
The Grandes Chroniques de France (13th - 15th centuries), a vast compilation of historic material, refers to the Trojan origins of the French dynasty.
Johannes Trithemius' De origine gentis Francorum compendium (1514) describes the Franks as originally Trojans (called "Sicambers" or "Sicambrians") after the fall of Troy who came into Gaul after being forced out of the area around the mouth of the Danube by the Goths in 439 BCE (1:33). He also details the reigns of each of these kings—including Francus (43:76) from whom the Franks are named—and their battles with the Gauls, Goths, Saxons, etc.
(Source: Wikipedia, Francus)
Ireland John O'Hart (1824-1902), an Irish genealogist used ancient sources, such as the Lebor Gabála Érenn and the Annals of the Four Masters, to compile a genealogical history of Ireland, Irish pedigrees; or, The origin and stem of the Irish nation (1876). According to his work, the Irish kings are descended from Adam as follows:
(Source: Wikipedia, John O’Hart)
Note: We need to clarify the extent to which O’Hart’s genealogies follow ancient sources, and whether any of it was his own invention.
Ostrogoths The historian Jordanes wrote De origine actibusque Getarum ((The Origin and Deeds of the Getae/Goths, c531), commonly called the Getica. In it, he gives the history of the Goths.
Jordanes traces the Ostrogothic royal family, the Amelungs (Amali), to Hulmul, son of Gapt (Getica, 14). This Gapt is thought to be the same person as the Norse god Gaut or Geat. His son Hulmul was probably the same person as Humli, the ancestor of the Danes in Norse tradition. In a vairant version, Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks (13th century) says, "Of old, they say, Humli over Huns did rule, Gizur the Gauts, the Goths Angantyr, Valdar the Danes, the Romans Kjar, Alrek the Valiant the English people."
The genealogy seems to be artificial. Athalaric (?-534), king of the Ostrogoths in Jordanes time, is presented as the 17th Amal king of the Goths since Gapt, just as there had been 17 Roman kings between Aeneas and Romulus. Thus, the Amal dynasty presented itself as a second gens Iulia, ruling both Romans and Goths. In fact, the Amal dynasty is documented no earlier than Theodoric's father or grandfather, an ally of Attila the Hun. The Goths themselves are documented no earlier than 291.
The legend that Aeneas escaped the Fall of Troy (about 1200 BCE) and journeyed to Italy goes back to at least the 5th century BCE. By 400 BCE, Aeneas was being venerated in Italy as the god Iuppiter Indiges, the tribal ancestor of Latins and Etruscans.
In some Roman traditions, Iulus, the semi-divine ancestor of gens Iulia, was identical with Aeneas’ son Ascanius (Vergil). In other traditions, Iulus was the son of Aeneas by his Trojan wife, Creusa, while Ascanius was the son of Aeneas' Latin wife Lavinia, daughter of Latinus (Livy). And, in still another tradition, Iulus was son of Ascanius, and disputed the throne with Silvius after Ascanius' death (Dionysius of Halicarnasus).
When medieval monks were inventing new genealogies Aeneas was a popular figure. In the Norse saga, the Deluding of Gylfe, he is called Anea. Medieval Welsh genealogies called him Annyn Tro. In one Welsh source he is called a son of Brydain (eponymous of Britain) and a grandson of Aedd Mawr (Edward the Great) who lived about 1300 BCE. These chronologies are too confused to be credible.
Anna, kinswoman of the Virgin Mary The early Welsh royal families claimed to be relatives of the family of Jesus.
According to Harleian MS. 3958, Beli Mawr was husband to Anna (who may be a confabulation of Dôn), a "near kinswoman [consobrina] of the Virgin Mary." A medieval tradition identifies her as a sister (or daughter) of Joseph of Arimathea, but the tradition is not old enough to be authentic. There is no reason to think she was an historical figure.
Dôn seems to have been a Christianized version of the Celtic goddess Anû, the mother goddess of the Celts. In Gaul she was called Belisama. In Ireland she was Danu, the matriarch of the Túatha Dé Danann, who took their name from her. The Mabinogion, a collection of Welsh legends, calls her Dôn, sister of Mâth mab Mathonwy, King of Gwynedd.
"Chronologically speaking, if Anna married a Briton after her father arrived in this country, then we must assume that she was nearer to Jesus' age than her cousin, Mary (ie. born c. 0). Beli is recorded in the Mabinogion and Welsh Genealogies as having been the father of Caswallon (or Cassivellaunus), the leader of the Celtic tribes who repelled Cæsar's invasions of 55 & 54 bc. He could, therefore, not possibly have married Anna of Arimathea. Moreover, the local ruler whom Joseph received his land gift from, is said to have been Arfyrag (or Arviragus), Beli & Anna's supposed great great grandson." (David Nash Ford, "St. Joseph of Arimathea: Ancestor of Kings?" in Early British Kingdoms (visited Nov. 21, 2011).
King Arthur If King Arthur was a real person, as many scholars believe, then he was a war leader in 6th century Britain. Some part of his life might have been authentically recorded by English monks such as Gildas (c500-570), Bede (672/3-736), Nennius (9th century), and Geoffrey of Monmouth (c1100-c1155). However, these accounts are confused and contradictory. Arthur might have been related in some way to the Roman aristocrat Ambrosius Aurelianus, although the relationship is first recorded by Geoffrey of Monmouth, who was writing 600 years later.
There is no doubt about Ambrosius’ existence. He was mentioned in a near contemporary document by the monk Gildas, who says he won an important battle against the invading Anglo-Saxons. Some scholars believe it is possible to sketch a brief genealogy for Ambrosius, perhaps from the Roman usurper Constantine III or from a distant cousin of the Emperor Theodosius I (or both).
In modern times there has been an explosion of genealogies drawn from Grail romances that turn fictional characters from the 11th and 12th centuries into historical people. The seminal works for these genealogies are Holy Blood, Holy Gail, by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln (1982) and Bloodline of the Holy Grail, by Laurence Gardner (1996). They are best characterized as “alternative history”.
Beli Mawr The early Welsh royal families claimed to be descended from Beli Mawr.
Beli Mawr was in fact a Welsh version the Celtic sun god. Among the Brythonic Celts he was Belenus (the Shining One), a fertility god who looked after sheep and cattle. In Ireland, he was Bilé, the god of death. His festival was Beltaine (Fire of Bel), held May 1st. On that day, purifying fires were lit.
According to the Mabinogion his name was Beli son of Mynogan. Wikipedia says, "However, it should be noted that in medieval Welsh tradition, Beli Mawr is often given the patronymic fab Manogan / Mynogan ("son of Manogan"). This appears to derive from a textual garbling of the name of a real historical figure, Adminius, son of Cunobelinus; after being transmitted through the Roman authors Suetonius and Orosius, this name became Bellinus filius Minocanni in the medieval Latin text from Wales, Historia Brittonum. Thus, although Beli became a separate personage in medieval pseudohistory from Cunobelinus (Welsh Cynfelyn, Shakespeare's Cymbeline), he was generally presented as a king reigning in the period immediately before the Roman invasion; his "son" Caswallawn is the historical Cassivellaunus."
According to Geoffrey of Monmouth, his name was Heli, he succeeded his father Digueillus, and he reigned 40 years.
The Mabinogion names his three sons as Lludd, Casswallawn and Nynnyaw, or four sons Lludd, Casswallawn, Llevelys and Eveyd. According to Geoffrey of Monmouth, he had three sons, Lud, Cassivelaunus and Nennius.
Brân the Blessed The early Welsh royal families claimed to be descended from Brân the Blessed and his father Llŷr Llediath.
Brân was legendary king of the Silures, probably originating as a Christianized form of the Celtic god Brân. He is one of the principal characters of the 1st Branch of the Mabinogion, which begins "Bran the Blessed (Bendigeidfran), the son of Llyr and Penarddun, daughter of Beli son of Mynogan, was ruler of Britain. Bran was the brother of Manawyddan and Branwen (Bronwen), and the half-brother of Nissyen and Evnissyen." He is said to have been succeeded by his uncle Caswallawn.
In Christian legend Brân is said to have been baptized in Rome in 36 CE. "Bran was said to have been taken as a captive to Rome where he joined the household of St. Paul. Returning to Britain, with SS. Aristobulus and Joseph of Arimathea some years later, he became among the first to introduce Christianity to the Island, hence his epithet of "the Blessed". This whole story is a late 17th century fabrication based on misinformation." (David Nash Ford, "Bran Fendigaid alias Bendigeitvran: Celtic God of Regeneration" in Early British Kingdoms(http://www.earlybritishkingdoms.com/bios/bran.html, visited Nov. 21, 2011)
The story of Brân's conversion to Christianity is probably a confusion with the historical Cunobelin (Arfyrag's father) who was thought to have been taken captive to Rome where he became converted to Christianity. (David Nash Ford, "St. Joseph of Arimathea: Ancestor of Kings?" in Early British Kingdoms (http://www.earlybritishkingdoms.com/articles/josanc.html, visited Nov. 21, 2011). Brân and Cunobelin both had sons named Caradoc, and the different Caradocs became confused. There is, no doubt an added confusion of Caradocs here, as far too few generations are given.
In Arthurian romance Brân became Bron(s), the Fisher King. He is said to have married Enygeus, a sister of Joseph of Arimathea and of Anna the Prophetess (perhaps the same person as Anna, the near kinswoman of the Virgin Mary. She had 12 sons, including Alain de Borron. This story mangles the earlier version, in which Brân was a grandson of Anna, the sister (or daughter) of Joseph of Arimathea.
In the Arthurian romance 'Bonedd yr Arwyr, Brân is made both a paternal and maternal ancestor of King Arthur.
Brutus The early Welsh kings claimed descent from Brutus, the legendary 1st King of Britain, which is said to have been named for him.
Welsh genealogists called him Brwt. He is said to have founded Troia Nova ("New Troy"), which became corrupted to Trinovantum, and now is London. He is not mentioned in any classical source and is not considered to be historical.
Brutus was first mentioned in the 9th century, by Nennius, who says he was a son of Hiscion, grandson of Alanus (Mannus), and a descendant of Noah. One variant makes him a grandson or great grandson of the Trojan hero Aeneas, great grandson of the legendary Roman king Numa Pompilius, and traces his genealogy to Japheth, son of Noah. Another variant makes him the son of Silvius and grandson of Ascanius, the father of Aeneas, and traces his genealogy to Ham, son of Noah. [Historia Brittonum.]
Geoffrey of Monmouth says Brutus was son of Silvius and grandson of Ascanius. He was exiled from Italy. He went to Greece, and liberated the Trojans enslaved there. Then, he crossed to the island of Albion, which he re-named for himself, and became the first king. After his death, each of his sons received one-third of Britain, Locrinus (England), Albanactus (Scotland) and Kamber (Wales).
Many scholars believe the Hiscion son of Alanus named by Nennius as Brutus' father was identical to the Istro son of Mannus, who appears in Germanic tradition as the eponymous ancestor of the Istvaeones, one of the three divisions of Germanic proto-tribes.
Charlemagne Millions of people in the world today are descendants of the Frankish emperor Charlemagne, and they can prove it. Charlemagne’s family were upstarts, however. There are no proven links between Charlemagne and his predecessors in the Merovingian dynasty. In fact, Charlemagne has only 10 proven ancestors. Using Ahnentafel numbering, his ancestry looks like this:
Some modern scholars, working with original documents, believe they have found evidence to show that Charlemagne’s ancestry can be traced, probably, to an old Roman senatorial family. The reconstruction is plausible, because the Franks who Charlemagne ruled had conquered the old Roman province of Gaul in 486, and the Franks are known to have intermarried with the surviving Gallo-Roman aristocracy.
Using this reconstruction as a starting point, many other scholars have attempted to extend Charlemagne’s ancestry further, with varying degrees of success.
Charles Constantine Charles Constantine (c903-c962), comte de Vienne and de Bellay, was a son of Louis III the Blind (c883-928), Holy Roman Emperor. His mother was either the Burgundian princess Adelais or the Byzantine princess Anna Myakes.
The debate over Charles Constantine’s ancestry is very heated. Anna Myakes was a daughter of the Byzantine emperor Leo VI. There were negotiations to betroth her to Louis III but it isn't clear whether the marriage ever took place. If the marriage did take place, and if Charles Constantine was a son of that marriage, his ancestry would include Byzantine emperors Leo VI and Leo's father, either Basil I or Michael III.
A key part of the debate is whether Charles really had the nickname Constantine. The name was uncommon in the west, so it supports the theory, accepted by Septimani, that his mother was the Byzantine princess Anna. However, the name might refer only to his imperial ancestry. Flodoard (894-966) called him Charles Constantine, but the evidence that he used the name in his lifetime is too weak to be reliable. A diploma of his father and his own charters call him only Charles.
Érimón mac Míl Espáine According to ancient Irish sources Érimón mac Míl Espáine brought his people, the Milesians, to Ireland about 500 BCE, and conquered it from an older race, the Tuatha Dé Danann. (See the Lebor Gabála Érenn, and others.) The story might (very arguably) have some foundation, but cannot be proven or disproven. (See above, under Ireland)
Francus French monks claimed that a Trojan prince, Francus, was the eponymous ancestor of the Frankish kings. Francus is first mentioned in Nennius' Historia Brittonum (8th century) as the son of Hiscion, and eponymous ancestor of the Franks. His Trojan ancestry came later.
In the Renaissance, Francus was generally considered to be another name for the Trojan hero Astyanax (son of Hector), who was saved from the destruction of Troy.
Jean Lemaire de Belges's Illustrations de Gaule et Singularités de Troie (1510–12) has Astyanax survive the fall of Troy and arrive in Western Europe. He changes his name to Francus and becomes king of Celtic Gaul (while, at the same time, Bavo, cousin of Priam, comes to the city of Trier) and founds the dynasty leading to Pepin and Charlemagne.[9] He is said to have founded and named the city of Paris in honor of his uncle Paris.
Gilles Corrozet's La Fleur des antiquitez... de Paris (1532) describes the French king Francis I as the 64th descendant of Hector of Troy.
In Pierre de Ronsard's epic poem La Franciade (1572), the god Jupiter saves Astyanax (renamed Francus). The young hero arrives in Crete and falls in love with the princess Hyanthe with whom he is destined to found the royal dynasty of France.
(Source: Wikipedia, Francus)
Genuissa, wife of Arvirargus Venissa (Genissa, Genvissa, Genuissa) is a fictional person who serves to link the Welsh kings to ancient Rome.
According to Geoffrey of Monmouth's 12th century Historia Regum Britanniae, she was a daughter of the Roman Emperor Claudius, whom he gave in marriage to the British king Arvirargus once he had submitted to Rome.
According to Geoffrey's account she was very beautiful, and so enchanted Arvirargus that he preferred her company to anyone else's. He founded Gloucester, supposedly named after Claudius, in her honour. When Arvirargus fell out with Rome and Vespasian was sent to enforce a reconciliation, Venissa acted as mediator between them.
Venissa cannot be considered historical. She is not mentioned in authentic Roman history; her supposed husband Arvirargus is known only from a cryptic reference in Satire IV, a 2nd century satirical poem by Juvenal; and it is in any case inconceivable that a daughter, even an illegitimate daughter, of a Roman emperor could be given in marriage to a barbarian without attracting comment. Nonetheless, she and her husband, identified with the historical Caratacus, appear in many uncritical genealogies originating in the Tudor period.
(Source: Wikipedia, Venissa)
Joseph of Arimathea The Christian scriptures say that Joseph of Arimathea was an influential member of the Sanhedrin who petitioned Pontius Pilate for Jesus’ body, but give no details about his life or family. According to the Talmud, he was the younger brother of the father of the Virgin Mary. That is, he was Mary's uncle and Jesus' great-uncle.
Some modern writers venture that he might be identified with Josephus (Jewish: Yosef ben Matityahu, Roman: Titus Flavius Josephus), a Jewish historian and an apologist for the Roman empire. However, scholars dismiss the idea. Josephus was born in 37 CE, making him a generation younger than Jesus, so it would not be possible he was Jesus' great uncle.
The first mention of Joseph of Arimathea in connection with Britain is the Life of Mary Magdalene by Rabanus Maurus (766-856), Archbishop of Mainz. Jseoph first appears as the legendary Keeper of the Holy Grail in Robert de Boron's Joseph d'Arimathie (early 13th century), which says he settled in Britain after the Crucifixion of Jesus, bringing the Holy Grail with him. The story spawned a rich literature on the same theme. Later tradition says he was a wealthy merchant who owned tin mines in Cornwall. Some popular fiction has him bringing Jesus with him to Britain to be trained by Druids there.
Lleuver Mawr (to be added)
Llyr Lediaith The early Welsh royal families claimed to be descended from Llŷr Llediath.and his son Brân the Blessed.
The story is not reliable. Llyr was a Celtic sea god, cognate of the Irish god Lir, but perhaps also a historical King of the Silures. As an historical figure, he is said to have been educated in Rome by Augustus Caesar. His home was at Dunraven castle, situated on a hill called Twyn Rhyvan (the Hill of Rome) in Glamorgan.
He was used by Shakespeare as a prototype for King Lear.
Makhir of Narbonne Makhir of Narbonne (8th century) was the leader of the Jewish community of Narbonne, and the ancestor of an important family there. Prof. Arthur Zuckerman suggested that he was the same person as Natronai ben Habibi, an exilarch who was deposed and exiled from Baghdad (A Jewish Princedom in Feudal France, 1972). He also suggested that Makhir was the same person as Maghario, Count of Narbonne.
Zuckerman went further. In the poem Willehalm by Wolfram von Eschenbach (c1170-c1220), the hero Guillem de Gellone is the son of Aymeri de Narbonne by his wife Alda / Aldana, daughter of Charles Martel. Guillem de Gellone's real-life counterpart was Guillaume I, comte de Toulouse, son of Theodoric, a count in Septimania. Zuckerman suggested that the poem changed the names, but memorialized actual relationships. So, Guillaume's father Theodoric must have been the same person as Aymeri. Then, Zuckerman identified Theodoric / Aymeri with Makhi / Natronai / Maghario.
Scholars have dismissed Zuckerman's methodology as flawed. Nevertheless, Guillaume de Toulouse might have been Jewish. He led the Frankish forces when they captured Barcelona in 801. The campaign was memorialized in a poem In honorem Hludovici imperatoris ("In honour of Emperor Louis") (826), by Ermoldus Nigellus. The poem uses Jewish dating and portrays Guillaume de Toulouse as an observant Jew.
Muhammad Modern genealogists have attempted to find a line of descent from the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) through the rulers of Muslim Spain.
There is a possible line, through Zaida, the wife or concubine of Alfonso VI of Castile, but it is disputed.
The first problem with the line is that it comes through Ayesha, the wife of Yazîd I, the 2nd Umayyad Caliph (680-683). The Caliph’s descendants claimed that Ayesha was a daughter of Mohammad, a link that would substantially enhance their legitimacy. However, Muslim scholars say she was Muhammad's step-daughter, not his daughter. The title Sharif is accorded only to descendants of Muhammad’s daughter Fatima.
The second problem is that it is not entirely clear that Zaïda was really descended from Ayesha. Zaïda was a daughter-in-law (and probably also niece) of al-Mutamid, ruler of the taifa of Seville. He was a descendant of Ayesha, and if she was his niece, she shared that descent. Zaïda’s first husband was (her cousin?) Fath al-Ma'mum, the ruler of Córdoba and son of the Emir of Seville. He was killed in 1091 while trying to escape a seige of Córdoba. Zaïda made her way as a refugee to the court of Alfonso VI. He was already mature (age 51), married to a queen who was ill, and was lacking a male heir. Zaïda became his concubine, converted to Christianity, and took the Christian name Isabel. She bore Alfonso his only surviving son Sancho. It is not clear whether Alfonso subsequently married her. Her tombstone, erected long after her death, says, "Aqui descansa la reina Isabel, mujer del rey Alfonso, hija de Aben-Abeth, rey de Sevilla; que antes se llamaba Zayda," which translates as "here lies Queen Elizabeth, wife of King Alfonso, daughter of Aben-abeth, king of Seville; previously called Zaïda."
The third problem is that there are no known descents from Zaïda. Her only proven son Sancho died in childhood. It’s possible, however, that Zaïda might have been the same person as Alfonso’s wife Elisabeth. Elisabeth had two daughters who became the ancestors of many European royal families. Elisabeth’s burial plaque, erected long after her death, says she was a daughter of Louis [VI], but that would be chronologically impossible. She might have been a sister of Louis VI, or the plaque might be an attempt to disguise her non-Christian identity.
Pagano Ebriaci Pagano Ebriaci (?-c1091), of Pisa, ancestor of the Christian Ebriaci family, might have been a convert from Judaism, a son of Joseph of Fustat. The relationship is conjectural, and seems to have originated in the suggestion that the surname Ebriaci means "the Hebrew". Another theory is that the name Ebriaci might derive from a Latin word meaning drunk.
If Pagano Ebriaci was a son of Joseph of Fustat, then he was a grandson of Hezekiah IV, 38th Exilarch and a descendant of King David.
Pagano Ebriaci was an ancestor of Edmund FitzAlan, 9th Earl of Arundel, through Manfredo III, marchese di Saluzzo.
Scota She is a legendary figure from whom the Scots took their name. She is said to have been the daughter of an unnamed Eyptian pharaoh. The context of her story shows that the Irish thought of her as a daughter of the pharaoh of the Exodus and a contemporary of Moses.
There are two different versions of her place in the genealogy. She was the wife either of Gaodhal Glas or of his descendant Míl Espáine.
An 11th century rescenison of the Historia Brittonum menions Scota. She also appears in the Book of Leinster, a 12th century redaction of the Lebor Gabála Érenn, where she married Geytholos (Gaodhal Glas). The earliest Scottish sources claim Geytholos was "a certain king of the countries of Greece, Neolus, or Heolaus, by name", while the Leinster redaction of the Lebor Gabála Érenn calls him a Scythian.
In variant manuscripts of the Lebor Gabála Érenn, Scota's husband was Míl Espáine.
Faced with the discrepancy, modern genealogists have created two Scotas.
There are many guesses about her father, Scota the wife of Gaodhal Glas being (perhaps) daughter of Pharaoh Cingeris, and Scota the wife of Míl Espáine being (perhaps) daughter of Pharaoh Nactabaeus. Both pharaohs are named only in medieval Irish sources, not in Egyptian sources.
Some genealogists make one or both women the daughter of whichever pharaoh they believe was the pharaoh of the Exodus.
Tamar Tephi Tamar Tephi and Teia Tephei are said to have been daughters of Zedekiah, King of Judah, but they are fictitious. Their descents from the kings of Judah is a 19th century fraud, from a misreading of old Irish sources.
According to the colorful story, Tamar Tephi and her sister Teia avoided the fate of their brothers, who were killed by the King of Babylon at Riblah. The prophet Jeremiah spirited them off to Ireland via Egypt and Spain, along with the Stone of the Covenant, which became known as Lia Fail (Stone of Destiny). (We are left wondering why Jeremiah was not equally helpful to the rest of the royal family.)
(Source: Wikipedia, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_legendary_kings_of_Britain#Tea_Tephi, List of legendary kings of Britain])
Resources
Internet genealogies suffer a well-known defect -- many of them accept as true many lines that are known by scholars to be false. Geni is no exception. In Geni’s early days, many users uploaded GEDCOM files with sleo purious and fantastic genealogies. As users we’ve done a lot of cleanup, merging duplicates and cutting bad connections, but there is a lot of work still to do.
Usually, the term “Descents from Antiquity” refers to modern efforts to find plausible lines of descent. However, it can also include traditional descents that have varying degrees of reliability.
This project is designed to help clean up the many fictitious genealogies and to focus attention on legitimate debate about extending our shared genealogy. You can help us by identifying questionable lines. It is generally unhelpful to simply say something like, “No one can prove a descent from Julius Caesar.” What is most helpful is to identify the specific generations where the evidence fails, search for reliable sources, then start a discussion.
Because Geni is a collaborative environment, you should be cautious about cutting any connections mentioned here without starting a discussion and giving other users ample opportunity to weigh in.
Medieval forgeries A common belief in antiquity and in the middle ages was that tribes took their name from a common ancestor. For example, the Historia Brittonum (Nennius, 9th century) names Alanus as the first man to live in Europe. He had a son Hiscion, and Hiscion’s four sons Francus, Romanus, Alamanus, and Brutus were the ancestors respectively of the French, Romans, Germans, and British. The name of this Alanus was probably a corrupted form of Mannus, the Old Germanic god who was the ancestor of mankind. Some scholars believe that Mannus was another name for Bor, the father of the god Odin in Norse tradition. In English, German and the Scandinavian languages we get our word man from Mannus.
When the Europeans converted to Christianity, they had a problem. Their royal families were only a few generations removed from the old gods. And, worse. Exposed to Roman arts and sciences, they discovered the idea of “historical time”. The world was older than they had ever thought about. Their royal pedigrees weren’t long enough to go back to the creation of the world.
From the Romans they learned that modern science had proved that everyone on earth was descended from Adam and Eve. (It said so in the Christian scriptures, which were absolutely true -- according the scholars.)
The answer was simple and obvious. The old gods had to have been humans, famous men and great warriors who came to worshipped as gods. And, if they were human, they must have been descended from Adam and Eve like everyone else. The trick was to figure out how.
One of the earliest surviving attempts to create this kind of genealogy is the Historia Brittonum by the Welsh monk Nennius (9th century), who recorded the following genealogy:
(1) Noah, his son (2) Japheth, his son (3) Joham, his son (4) Jobath, his son (5) Bath, his son (6) Hisrau, his son (7) Esraa, his son (8) Ra, his son (9) Aber, his son (10) Ooth, his son (11) Ethec, his son (12) Aurthack, his son (13) Ecthactur, his son (14) Ecthactur, his son (15) Mair, his son (16) Semion, his son (17) Boibus, his son (18) Thoi, his son (19) Ogomuin, his son (20) Fethuir, and his son (21) Alanus.
Nennius also tied Alanus to Rome by making him a husband of Rhea Silvia, whose twin sons Romulus and Remus are said to have founded Rome in 753 BCE. The connection is scarcely credible historically, but served neatly to graft the eponymous ancestors of the northern Europeans onto classical tradition by making them brothers of Romulus, the eponymous ancestor of the Romans.
These medieval genealogies connecting ancient kings to Adam are pure invention. They are interesting now because they show the history of history.
England The Anglo-Saxons, forerunners of the modern English, were ruled by kings who claimed to be descended from the god Woden (Odin in the Norse versions). In later Scandinavian versions, Woden was the son of Bor, son of Búri. Some scholars believe that in the Germanic version, which included the Anglo-Saxons, Woden was the son of Mannus, the ancestor of mankind, who was son of Tuisto.
English monks kept Woden, but dumped Bor and Búri. They “discovered” that Woden was descended from Noah, but the process took several tries.
In one place, the 9th century Anglo-Saxon chronicle gives the following line. There are too few generations here, but this fragment might preserve the earliest non-divine version of Woden’s ancestry.
(1) Noah, his son (2) ---, his son (3) Finn, who was born in the ark, his son (4) Freothelaf, his son (5) Frithuwald, his son (6) Woden.
About the same time, Nennius in his Historia Brittonum gives a slightly different version. Here we get two more generations beyond Finn, which might also represent an authentic tradition.
(1) Geat, “who, as they say, was the son of a god”, his son (2) Godwulf, his son (3) Finn, his son (4) Frithuwulf, his son (5) Frithowald, and his son (6) Woden.
Nennius gives us more theology than genealogy. He says that Geat “as they say, was the son of a god, not of the omnipotent God and our Lord Jesus Christ (who before the beginning of the world, was with the Father and the Holy Spirit, co-eternal and of the same substance, and who, in compassion to human nature, disdained not to assume the form of a servant), but the offspring of one of their idols, and whom, blinded by some demon, they worshipped according to the custom of the heathen.”
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is a collection of documents rather than a single document. In another place (855), it gives a fuller line.
(1) Noe [Noah], his son (2) Sceaf, his son (3) Bedwig Sceafing, his son (4) Hwala Bedwiging, his son (5) Haþra Hwalaing, his son (6) Itermon Haðraing, his son (7) Heremod Itermoning, his son (8) Sceldwea Heremoding, his son (9) Beaw Sceldwaing, his son (10) Taetwa Beawing, his son (11) Geat Taetwaing, his son (12) God wulf Geating, his son (13) Fin Godwulfing, his son (14) Frealaf Finning, and his son (15) Woden Frealafing. (Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel, Plummer and Earle (eds.), 66, 67 and note 6).
A note says, “id est filius Noe se waes geboren on þaere earce Noes.” That is, “he [Sceaf] is the son of Noah, he was born in Noah’s ark.” This detail ties the old pagan tradition to the new Christian tradition. Sceaf was a Norse god who arrived by boat as a baby to rule the Danes. Now, he is neatly made the son of the Christian ark builder.
Later monks, perhaps competing for prestige with the Franks, decided to dump Noah and take Woden’s ancestry back to Troy, then connect the Trojans to the Jewish scriptures. This version runs as follows. Note that the names of the new generations, between (10) and (16) have been drawn chiefly from nicknames of the old god Thor. Some of the other names might have been invented in a similar way.
(1) Judah, ancestor of the tribe of Judah, his son (2) Zara, his son (3) Darda, his son (4) Erichthonious, his son (5) Tros, his son (6) Ilus, his son (7) Laomedon, his son (8) Tithonius, his son (9) Memnon, his son (10) Thor, his son (11) Einridi, his son (12) Vingethor, his son (13) Vingener, his son (14) Móda, his son (15) Magi [Noe], his son (16) Sceaf [Seskef], his son (17) Bedwig [Bedvig], his son (18) Hwala, his son (19) Hrathra [Annarr], his son (20) Itermon [Ítermann], his son (21) Heremod [Heremód], his son (22) Heremod [Heremód], his son (23) Beaw [Bjárr], his son (24) Tætwa, his son (25) Geat [Ját], his son (26) Godwulf [Gudólfr], his son (27) Finn, his son (28) Frithuwulf, his son (29) Frealaf [Fridleifr], his son Frealaf [Fridleifr], his son (30) Freawine, his son (31) Frithuwald, and his son (32) Woden.
Attempts to reconcile these genealogies by equating the human Frithuwald with the divine Bor, and the human Frealaf with divine Búri have been problematic, because they end by giving Woden a set of mythical relatives that include the Ice Giants.
France The Franks, a confederation of Germanic tribes that formed the core of modern France, claimed descent from Francus (or Francio). According to one version of the story, Francus and his people were defeated by the Roman general Drusus in 11 BCE. Francus was killed, and they were relocated to the region between the Rhine and the Danube.
Frankish monks linked Francus to the kings of Troy. The Chronicle of Fredegar (7th century) mentions the legend. It was elaborated in the Liber historiae Francorum (probably 727). Successive generations continued adding new details.
In other words, the Franks claimed to be the distant cousins of the Romans (who claimed descent from Aeneas, another Trojan). It was a nice piece of political propaganda because it fit nicely with two things the Franks wanted to emphasize: (1) as cousins of the Romans they were equal to the Romans, and (2) as cousins and equals, they were the legitimate successors of the Roman empire.
The Grandes Chroniques de France (13th - 15th centuries), a vast compilation of historic material, refers to the Trojan origins of the French dynasty.
Johannes Trithemius' De origine gentis Francorum compendium (1514) describes the Franks as originally Trojans (called "Sicambers" or "Sicambrians") after the fall of Troy who came into Gaul after being forced out of the area around the mouth of the Danube by the Goths in 439 BCE (1:33). He also details the reigns of each of these kings—including Francus (43:76) from whom the Franks are named—and their battles with the Gauls, Goths, Saxons, etc.
(Source: Wikipedia, Francus)
Ireland John O'Hart (1824-1902), an Irish genealogist used ancient sources, such as the Lebor Gabála Érenn and the Annals of the Four Masters, to compile a genealogical history of Ireland, Irish pedigrees; or, The origin and stem of the Irish nation (1876). According to his work, the Irish kings are descended from Adam as follows:
- Adam
- Seth
- Enos
- Cainan
- Mahalaleel
- Jared
- Enoch
- Methuselah
- Lamech
- Noah
- Japhet
- Magog. Magog's four sons Boath, Faithechta, Jobbath, and Emoth are said to have been ancestors of the Irish kings.
- Baoth ("to whom Scythia came as his lot")
- Phoeniusa Farsaidh (Fenius Farsa), King of Scythia
- Neuil
- Gaodhal (Gathelus), married Scota
- Asruth
- Sruth (who fled Egypt to Creta)
- Heber Scut (returned to Scythia)
- Beouman, King of Scythia
- Ogaman, King of Scythia
- Tait, King of Scythia
- Agnon (who fled Scythia by sea with the majority of his people)
- Lamhfionn (who led his people to Gothia or Getulia, where Carthage was afterwards built)
- Heber Glunfionn, King of Gothia
- Agnan Fionn, King of Gothia
- Febric Glas, King of Gothia
- Nenuall, King of Gothia
- Nuadhad, King of Gothia
- Alladh, King of Gothia
- Arcadh, King of Gothia
- Deag, King of Gothia
- Brath, King of Gothia (who left Gothia with a large band of his people and settled in Galicia, Spain)
- Breoghan, King of Galicia, Andalusia, Murcia, Castile, and Portugal
- Bile, King of Galicia, Andalusia, Murcia, Castile, and Portugal
- Galamh (also known as Milesius of Spain), King of Galicia, Andalusia, Murcia, Castile, and Portugal, married Scota
(Source: Wikipedia, John O’Hart)
Note: We need to clarify the extent to which O’Hart’s genealogies follow ancient sources, and whether any of it was his own invention.
Ostrogoths The historian Jordanes wrote De origine actibusque Getarum ((The Origin and Deeds of the Getae/Goths, c531), commonly called the Getica. In it, he gives the history of the Goths.
Jordanes traces the Ostrogothic royal family, the Amelungs (Amali), to Hulmul, son of Gapt (Getica, 14). This Gapt is thought to be the same person as the Norse god Gaut or Geat. His son Hulmul was probably the same person as Humli, the ancestor of the Danes in Norse tradition. In a vairant version, Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks (13th century) says, "Of old, they say, Humli over Huns did rule, Gizur the Gauts, the Goths Angantyr, Valdar the Danes, the Romans Kjar, Alrek the Valiant the English people."
The genealogy seems to be artificial. Athalaric (?-534), king of the Ostrogoths in Jordanes time, is presented as the 17th Amal king of the Goths since Gapt, just as there had been 17 Roman kings between Aeneas and Romulus. Thus, the Amal dynasty presented itself as a second gens Iulia, ruling both Romans and Goths. In fact, the Amal dynasty is documented no earlier than Theodoric's father or grandfather, an ally of Attila the Hun. The Goths themselves are documented no earlier than 291.
- Gapt
- Hulmul
- Augis
- Amal (from whom the name of the Amali comes)
- Hisarnis
- Ostrogotha
- Hunuil
- Athal
- Achiulf
- Oduulf
- Achiulf
- Ansila
- Ediulf
- Vultuulf
- Hermanaric
- Vultuulf
- Valaravans
- Vinitharius
- Vandalarius
- Thiudimer
- Valamir
- Vidimer
- Thiudimer
- Theodoric the Great (454-526), King of the Ostrogoths
The legend that Aeneas escaped the Fall of Troy (about 1200 BCE) and journeyed to Italy goes back to at least the 5th century BCE. By 400 BCE, Aeneas was being venerated in Italy as the god Iuppiter Indiges, the tribal ancestor of Latins and Etruscans.
In some Roman traditions, Iulus, the semi-divine ancestor of gens Iulia, was identical with Aeneas’ son Ascanius (Vergil). In other traditions, Iulus was the son of Aeneas by his Trojan wife, Creusa, while Ascanius was the son of Aeneas' Latin wife Lavinia, daughter of Latinus (Livy). And, in still another tradition, Iulus was son of Ascanius, and disputed the throne with Silvius after Ascanius' death (Dionysius of Halicarnasus).
When medieval monks were inventing new genealogies Aeneas was a popular figure. In the Norse saga, the Deluding of Gylfe, he is called Anea. Medieval Welsh genealogies called him Annyn Tro. In one Welsh source he is called a son of Brydain (eponymous of Britain) and a grandson of Aedd Mawr (Edward the Great) who lived about 1300 BCE. These chronologies are too confused to be credible.
Anna, kinswoman of the Virgin Mary The early Welsh royal families claimed to be relatives of the family of Jesus.
According to Harleian MS. 3958, Beli Mawr was husband to Anna (who may be a confabulation of Dôn), a "near kinswoman [consobrina] of the Virgin Mary." A medieval tradition identifies her as a sister (or daughter) of Joseph of Arimathea, but the tradition is not old enough to be authentic. There is no reason to think she was an historical figure.
Dôn seems to have been a Christianized version of the Celtic goddess Anû, the mother goddess of the Celts. In Gaul she was called Belisama. In Ireland she was Danu, the matriarch of the Túatha Dé Danann, who took their name from her. The Mabinogion, a collection of Welsh legends, calls her Dôn, sister of Mâth mab Mathonwy, King of Gwynedd.
"Chronologically speaking, if Anna married a Briton after her father arrived in this country, then we must assume that she was nearer to Jesus' age than her cousin, Mary (ie. born c. 0). Beli is recorded in the Mabinogion and Welsh Genealogies as having been the father of Caswallon (or Cassivellaunus), the leader of the Celtic tribes who repelled Cæsar's invasions of 55 & 54 bc. He could, therefore, not possibly have married Anna of Arimathea. Moreover, the local ruler whom Joseph received his land gift from, is said to have been Arfyrag (or Arviragus), Beli & Anna's supposed great great grandson." (David Nash Ford, "St. Joseph of Arimathea: Ancestor of Kings?" in Early British Kingdoms (visited Nov. 21, 2011).
King Arthur If King Arthur was a real person, as many scholars believe, then he was a war leader in 6th century Britain. Some part of his life might have been authentically recorded by English monks such as Gildas (c500-570), Bede (672/3-736), Nennius (9th century), and Geoffrey of Monmouth (c1100-c1155). However, these accounts are confused and contradictory. Arthur might have been related in some way to the Roman aristocrat Ambrosius Aurelianus, although the relationship is first recorded by Geoffrey of Monmouth, who was writing 600 years later.
There is no doubt about Ambrosius’ existence. He was mentioned in a near contemporary document by the monk Gildas, who says he won an important battle against the invading Anglo-Saxons. Some scholars believe it is possible to sketch a brief genealogy for Ambrosius, perhaps from the Roman usurper Constantine III or from a distant cousin of the Emperor Theodosius I (or both).
In modern times there has been an explosion of genealogies drawn from Grail romances that turn fictional characters from the 11th and 12th centuries into historical people. The seminal works for these genealogies are Holy Blood, Holy Gail, by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln (1982) and Bloodline of the Holy Grail, by Laurence Gardner (1996). They are best characterized as “alternative history”.
Beli Mawr The early Welsh royal families claimed to be descended from Beli Mawr.
Beli Mawr was in fact a Welsh version the Celtic sun god. Among the Brythonic Celts he was Belenus (the Shining One), a fertility god who looked after sheep and cattle. In Ireland, he was Bilé, the god of death. His festival was Beltaine (Fire of Bel), held May 1st. On that day, purifying fires were lit.
According to the Mabinogion his name was Beli son of Mynogan. Wikipedia says, "However, it should be noted that in medieval Welsh tradition, Beli Mawr is often given the patronymic fab Manogan / Mynogan ("son of Manogan"). This appears to derive from a textual garbling of the name of a real historical figure, Adminius, son of Cunobelinus; after being transmitted through the Roman authors Suetonius and Orosius, this name became Bellinus filius Minocanni in the medieval Latin text from Wales, Historia Brittonum. Thus, although Beli became a separate personage in medieval pseudohistory from Cunobelinus (Welsh Cynfelyn, Shakespeare's Cymbeline), he was generally presented as a king reigning in the period immediately before the Roman invasion; his "son" Caswallawn is the historical Cassivellaunus."
According to Geoffrey of Monmouth, his name was Heli, he succeeded his father Digueillus, and he reigned 40 years.
The Mabinogion names his three sons as Lludd, Casswallawn and Nynnyaw, or four sons Lludd, Casswallawn, Llevelys and Eveyd. According to Geoffrey of Monmouth, he had three sons, Lud, Cassivelaunus and Nennius.
Brân the Blessed The early Welsh royal families claimed to be descended from Brân the Blessed and his father Llŷr Llediath.
Brân was legendary king of the Silures, probably originating as a Christianized form of the Celtic god Brân. He is one of the principal characters of the 1st Branch of the Mabinogion, which begins "Bran the Blessed (Bendigeidfran), the son of Llyr and Penarddun, daughter of Beli son of Mynogan, was ruler of Britain. Bran was the brother of Manawyddan and Branwen (Bronwen), and the half-brother of Nissyen and Evnissyen." He is said to have been succeeded by his uncle Caswallawn.
In Christian legend Brân is said to have been baptized in Rome in 36 CE. "Bran was said to have been taken as a captive to Rome where he joined the household of St. Paul. Returning to Britain, with SS. Aristobulus and Joseph of Arimathea some years later, he became among the first to introduce Christianity to the Island, hence his epithet of "the Blessed". This whole story is a late 17th century fabrication based on misinformation." (David Nash Ford, "Bran Fendigaid alias Bendigeitvran: Celtic God of Regeneration" in Early British Kingdoms(http://www.earlybritishkingdoms.com/bios/bran.html, visited Nov. 21, 2011)
The story of Brân's conversion to Christianity is probably a confusion with the historical Cunobelin (Arfyrag's father) who was thought to have been taken captive to Rome where he became converted to Christianity. (David Nash Ford, "St. Joseph of Arimathea: Ancestor of Kings?" in Early British Kingdoms (http://www.earlybritishkingdoms.com/articles/josanc.html, visited Nov. 21, 2011). Brân and Cunobelin both had sons named Caradoc, and the different Caradocs became confused. There is, no doubt an added confusion of Caradocs here, as far too few generations are given.
In Arthurian romance Brân became Bron(s), the Fisher King. He is said to have married Enygeus, a sister of Joseph of Arimathea and of Anna the Prophetess (perhaps the same person as Anna, the near kinswoman of the Virgin Mary. She had 12 sons, including Alain de Borron. This story mangles the earlier version, in which Brân was a grandson of Anna, the sister (or daughter) of Joseph of Arimathea.
In the Arthurian romance 'Bonedd yr Arwyr, Brân is made both a paternal and maternal ancestor of King Arthur.
Brutus The early Welsh kings claimed descent from Brutus, the legendary 1st King of Britain, which is said to have been named for him.
Welsh genealogists called him Brwt. He is said to have founded Troia Nova ("New Troy"), which became corrupted to Trinovantum, and now is London. He is not mentioned in any classical source and is not considered to be historical.
Brutus was first mentioned in the 9th century, by Nennius, who says he was a son of Hiscion, grandson of Alanus (Mannus), and a descendant of Noah. One variant makes him a grandson or great grandson of the Trojan hero Aeneas, great grandson of the legendary Roman king Numa Pompilius, and traces his genealogy to Japheth, son of Noah. Another variant makes him the son of Silvius and grandson of Ascanius, the father of Aeneas, and traces his genealogy to Ham, son of Noah. [Historia Brittonum.]
Geoffrey of Monmouth says Brutus was son of Silvius and grandson of Ascanius. He was exiled from Italy. He went to Greece, and liberated the Trojans enslaved there. Then, he crossed to the island of Albion, which he re-named for himself, and became the first king. After his death, each of his sons received one-third of Britain, Locrinus (England), Albanactus (Scotland) and Kamber (Wales).
Many scholars believe the Hiscion son of Alanus named by Nennius as Brutus' father was identical to the Istro son of Mannus, who appears in Germanic tradition as the eponymous ancestor of the Istvaeones, one of the three divisions of Germanic proto-tribes.
Charlemagne Millions of people in the world today are descendants of the Frankish emperor Charlemagne, and they can prove it. Charlemagne’s family were upstarts, however. There are no proven links between Charlemagne and his predecessors in the Merovingian dynasty. In fact, Charlemagne has only 10 proven ancestors. Using Ahnentafel numbering, his ancestry looks like this:
- Charlemagne
- Pepin the Short, father
- Bertrade of Laon, mother
- Charles Martel, father’s father
- Rotrude, father’s mother
- Caribert of Laon, mother’s father
- ---
- Pepin of Herstal, father’s father’s father
- Alpaida, father’s father’s mother
- ---
- ---
- ---
- Bertrada of Prüm, mother’s father’s mother
- ---
- ---
- Ansegisel, father’s father’s father’s father
- Begga, father’s father’s father’s mother
Some modern scholars, working with original documents, believe they have found evidence to show that Charlemagne’s ancestry can be traced, probably, to an old Roman senatorial family. The reconstruction is plausible, because the Franks who Charlemagne ruled had conquered the old Roman province of Gaul in 486, and the Franks are known to have intermarried with the surviving Gallo-Roman aristocracy.
- Flavius Afranius Syagrius, of Lyons; a Gallo-Roman senator
- (Syagria), his unknown daughter; married Ferreolus
- Tonantius Ferreolus, a Gallo-Roman senator; married Papianilla, clarissima femina, a relative of the Papianilla who was a daughter of the emperor Avitus, and who married Sidonius Apollinaris
- Tonantius Ferreolus, a Gallo-Roman senator; married Industria
- Ferreolus, a Gallo-Roman senator; married Dode, abbess of St.-Pierre de Rheims
- Ansbert, a senator; married Bilichilde
- Arnoald, Bishop of Metz
- Dode, probably his daughter; married St. Arnulf, Bishop of Metz
- Ansegisel, probably their son; married St. Begga; daughter of Pepin I, Mayor of the Palace of Austrasia
- Pepin of Herstal, Mayor of the Palace of Austrasia; married Alpais / Alpaida
- Charles Martel, Mayor of the Palace of Austrasia; married Rotrude
- Pepin the Short, Mayor of the Palace of Austrasia; married Bertrada of Laon
- Charlemagne
Using this reconstruction as a starting point, many other scholars have attempted to extend Charlemagne’s ancestry further, with varying degrees of success.
Charles Constantine Charles Constantine (c903-c962), comte de Vienne and de Bellay, was a son of Louis III the Blind (c883-928), Holy Roman Emperor. His mother was either the Burgundian princess Adelais or the Byzantine princess Anna Myakes.
The debate over Charles Constantine’s ancestry is very heated. Anna Myakes was a daughter of the Byzantine emperor Leo VI. There were negotiations to betroth her to Louis III but it isn't clear whether the marriage ever took place. If the marriage did take place, and if Charles Constantine was a son of that marriage, his ancestry would include Byzantine emperors Leo VI and Leo's father, either Basil I or Michael III.
A key part of the debate is whether Charles really had the nickname Constantine. The name was uncommon in the west, so it supports the theory, accepted by Septimani, that his mother was the Byzantine princess Anna. However, the name might refer only to his imperial ancestry. Flodoard (894-966) called him Charles Constantine, but the evidence that he used the name in his lifetime is too weak to be reliable. A diploma of his father and his own charters call him only Charles.
Érimón mac Míl Espáine According to ancient Irish sources Érimón mac Míl Espáine brought his people, the Milesians, to Ireland about 500 BCE, and conquered it from an older race, the Tuatha Dé Danann. (See the Lebor Gabála Érenn, and others.) The story might (very arguably) have some foundation, but cannot be proven or disproven. (See above, under Ireland)
Francus French monks claimed that a Trojan prince, Francus, was the eponymous ancestor of the Frankish kings. Francus is first mentioned in Nennius' Historia Brittonum (8th century) as the son of Hiscion, and eponymous ancestor of the Franks. His Trojan ancestry came later.
In the Renaissance, Francus was generally considered to be another name for the Trojan hero Astyanax (son of Hector), who was saved from the destruction of Troy.
Jean Lemaire de Belges's Illustrations de Gaule et Singularités de Troie (1510–12) has Astyanax survive the fall of Troy and arrive in Western Europe. He changes his name to Francus and becomes king of Celtic Gaul (while, at the same time, Bavo, cousin of Priam, comes to the city of Trier) and founds the dynasty leading to Pepin and Charlemagne.[9] He is said to have founded and named the city of Paris in honor of his uncle Paris.
Gilles Corrozet's La Fleur des antiquitez... de Paris (1532) describes the French king Francis I as the 64th descendant of Hector of Troy.
In Pierre de Ronsard's epic poem La Franciade (1572), the god Jupiter saves Astyanax (renamed Francus). The young hero arrives in Crete and falls in love with the princess Hyanthe with whom he is destined to found the royal dynasty of France.
(Source: Wikipedia, Francus)
Genuissa, wife of Arvirargus Venissa (Genissa, Genvissa, Genuissa) is a fictional person who serves to link the Welsh kings to ancient Rome.
According to Geoffrey of Monmouth's 12th century Historia Regum Britanniae, she was a daughter of the Roman Emperor Claudius, whom he gave in marriage to the British king Arvirargus once he had submitted to Rome.
According to Geoffrey's account she was very beautiful, and so enchanted Arvirargus that he preferred her company to anyone else's. He founded Gloucester, supposedly named after Claudius, in her honour. When Arvirargus fell out with Rome and Vespasian was sent to enforce a reconciliation, Venissa acted as mediator between them.
Venissa cannot be considered historical. She is not mentioned in authentic Roman history; her supposed husband Arvirargus is known only from a cryptic reference in Satire IV, a 2nd century satirical poem by Juvenal; and it is in any case inconceivable that a daughter, even an illegitimate daughter, of a Roman emperor could be given in marriage to a barbarian without attracting comment. Nonetheless, she and her husband, identified with the historical Caratacus, appear in many uncritical genealogies originating in the Tudor period.
(Source: Wikipedia, Venissa)
Joseph of Arimathea The Christian scriptures say that Joseph of Arimathea was an influential member of the Sanhedrin who petitioned Pontius Pilate for Jesus’ body, but give no details about his life or family. According to the Talmud, he was the younger brother of the father of the Virgin Mary. That is, he was Mary's uncle and Jesus' great-uncle.
Some modern writers venture that he might be identified with Josephus (Jewish: Yosef ben Matityahu, Roman: Titus Flavius Josephus), a Jewish historian and an apologist for the Roman empire. However, scholars dismiss the idea. Josephus was born in 37 CE, making him a generation younger than Jesus, so it would not be possible he was Jesus' great uncle.
The first mention of Joseph of Arimathea in connection with Britain is the Life of Mary Magdalene by Rabanus Maurus (766-856), Archbishop of Mainz. Jseoph first appears as the legendary Keeper of the Holy Grail in Robert de Boron's Joseph d'Arimathie (early 13th century), which says he settled in Britain after the Crucifixion of Jesus, bringing the Holy Grail with him. The story spawned a rich literature on the same theme. Later tradition says he was a wealthy merchant who owned tin mines in Cornwall. Some popular fiction has him bringing Jesus with him to Britain to be trained by Druids there.
Lleuver Mawr (to be added)
Llyr Lediaith The early Welsh royal families claimed to be descended from Llŷr Llediath.and his son Brân the Blessed.
The story is not reliable. Llyr was a Celtic sea god, cognate of the Irish god Lir, but perhaps also a historical King of the Silures. As an historical figure, he is said to have been educated in Rome by Augustus Caesar. His home was at Dunraven castle, situated on a hill called Twyn Rhyvan (the Hill of Rome) in Glamorgan.
He was used by Shakespeare as a prototype for King Lear.
Makhir of Narbonne Makhir of Narbonne (8th century) was the leader of the Jewish community of Narbonne, and the ancestor of an important family there. Prof. Arthur Zuckerman suggested that he was the same person as Natronai ben Habibi, an exilarch who was deposed and exiled from Baghdad (A Jewish Princedom in Feudal France, 1972). He also suggested that Makhir was the same person as Maghario, Count of Narbonne.
Zuckerman went further. In the poem Willehalm by Wolfram von Eschenbach (c1170-c1220), the hero Guillem de Gellone is the son of Aymeri de Narbonne by his wife Alda / Aldana, daughter of Charles Martel. Guillem de Gellone's real-life counterpart was Guillaume I, comte de Toulouse, son of Theodoric, a count in Septimania. Zuckerman suggested that the poem changed the names, but memorialized actual relationships. So, Guillaume's father Theodoric must have been the same person as Aymeri. Then, Zuckerman identified Theodoric / Aymeri with Makhi / Natronai / Maghario.
Scholars have dismissed Zuckerman's methodology as flawed. Nevertheless, Guillaume de Toulouse might have been Jewish. He led the Frankish forces when they captured Barcelona in 801. The campaign was memorialized in a poem In honorem Hludovici imperatoris ("In honour of Emperor Louis") (826), by Ermoldus Nigellus. The poem uses Jewish dating and portrays Guillaume de Toulouse as an observant Jew.
Muhammad Modern genealogists have attempted to find a line of descent from the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) through the rulers of Muslim Spain.
There is a possible line, through Zaida, the wife or concubine of Alfonso VI of Castile, but it is disputed.
The first problem with the line is that it comes through Ayesha, the wife of Yazîd I, the 2nd Umayyad Caliph (680-683). The Caliph’s descendants claimed that Ayesha was a daughter of Mohammad, a link that would substantially enhance their legitimacy. However, Muslim scholars say she was Muhammad's step-daughter, not his daughter. The title Sharif is accorded only to descendants of Muhammad’s daughter Fatima.
The second problem is that it is not entirely clear that Zaïda was really descended from Ayesha. Zaïda was a daughter-in-law (and probably also niece) of al-Mutamid, ruler of the taifa of Seville. He was a descendant of Ayesha, and if she was his niece, she shared that descent. Zaïda’s first husband was (her cousin?) Fath al-Ma'mum, the ruler of Córdoba and son of the Emir of Seville. He was killed in 1091 while trying to escape a seige of Córdoba. Zaïda made her way as a refugee to the court of Alfonso VI. He was already mature (age 51), married to a queen who was ill, and was lacking a male heir. Zaïda became his concubine, converted to Christianity, and took the Christian name Isabel. She bore Alfonso his only surviving son Sancho. It is not clear whether Alfonso subsequently married her. Her tombstone, erected long after her death, says, "Aqui descansa la reina Isabel, mujer del rey Alfonso, hija de Aben-Abeth, rey de Sevilla; que antes se llamaba Zayda," which translates as "here lies Queen Elizabeth, wife of King Alfonso, daughter of Aben-abeth, king of Seville; previously called Zaïda."
The third problem is that there are no known descents from Zaïda. Her only proven son Sancho died in childhood. It’s possible, however, that Zaïda might have been the same person as Alfonso’s wife Elisabeth. Elisabeth had two daughters who became the ancestors of many European royal families. Elisabeth’s burial plaque, erected long after her death, says she was a daughter of Louis [VI], but that would be chronologically impossible. She might have been a sister of Louis VI, or the plaque might be an attempt to disguise her non-Christian identity.
Pagano Ebriaci Pagano Ebriaci (?-c1091), of Pisa, ancestor of the Christian Ebriaci family, might have been a convert from Judaism, a son of Joseph of Fustat. The relationship is conjectural, and seems to have originated in the suggestion that the surname Ebriaci means "the Hebrew". Another theory is that the name Ebriaci might derive from a Latin word meaning drunk.
If Pagano Ebriaci was a son of Joseph of Fustat, then he was a grandson of Hezekiah IV, 38th Exilarch and a descendant of King David.
Pagano Ebriaci was an ancestor of Edmund FitzAlan, 9th Earl of Arundel, through Manfredo III, marchese di Saluzzo.
Scota She is a legendary figure from whom the Scots took their name. She is said to have been the daughter of an unnamed Eyptian pharaoh. The context of her story shows that the Irish thought of her as a daughter of the pharaoh of the Exodus and a contemporary of Moses.
There are two different versions of her place in the genealogy. She was the wife either of Gaodhal Glas or of his descendant Míl Espáine.
An 11th century rescenison of the Historia Brittonum menions Scota. She also appears in the Book of Leinster, a 12th century redaction of the Lebor Gabála Érenn, where she married Geytholos (Gaodhal Glas). The earliest Scottish sources claim Geytholos was "a certain king of the countries of Greece, Neolus, or Heolaus, by name", while the Leinster redaction of the Lebor Gabála Érenn calls him a Scythian.
In variant manuscripts of the Lebor Gabála Érenn, Scota's husband was Míl Espáine.
Faced with the discrepancy, modern genealogists have created two Scotas.
There are many guesses about her father, Scota the wife of Gaodhal Glas being (perhaps) daughter of Pharaoh Cingeris, and Scota the wife of Míl Espáine being (perhaps) daughter of Pharaoh Nactabaeus. Both pharaohs are named only in medieval Irish sources, not in Egyptian sources.
Some genealogists make one or both women the daughter of whichever pharaoh they believe was the pharaoh of the Exodus.
Tamar Tephi Tamar Tephi and Teia Tephei are said to have been daughters of Zedekiah, King of Judah, but they are fictitious. Their descents from the kings of Judah is a 19th century fraud, from a misreading of old Irish sources.
According to the colorful story, Tamar Tephi and her sister Teia avoided the fate of their brothers, who were killed by the King of Babylon at Riblah. The prophet Jeremiah spirited them off to Ireland via Egypt and Spain, along with the Stone of the Covenant, which became known as Lia Fail (Stone of Destiny). (We are left wondering why Jeremiah was not equally helpful to the rest of the royal family.)
(Source: Wikipedia, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_legendary_kings_of_Britain#Tea_Tephi, List of legendary kings of Britain])
Resources
- Wikipedia, Descent from antiquity
(c)2013-2015; All Rights Reserved, Iona Miller, Sangreality Trust
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This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
