QUEST
FOR MEANING
by Aubrey Cole Odhner|
[This primiere publication
represents many years of the author's work teaching mythology
at the Academy of the New Church in Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania. See
Introduction.]
|
Overview
of
papers and addresses of Part One. [NOTE: Links to papers
and addresses follow this overview.] Strangely, the very word "mythology" seems to illustrate the deterioration of meaning of some important concepts, from ancient to modern times. "Muthos," in Homer's time (c. 800 B.C.) meant 'the telling of Truth." Logos" had a similar meaning at that time, having to do with speaking truth, from which many words like "logic" and "legend" come. "Logos" was the Greek word for "Word" in the New Testament where, in the Book of John we read the familiar words: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." There are no loftier concepts! And yet, today, sadly, the word "Myth" has been perverted to mean the exact opposite of "telling of truth" to "not true", as in "It is only a myth!" Not so extreme, and yet a deterioration from the highest spiritual concept of truth as "the Truth Itself," we use this word as an ending to describe external, natural or scientific studies such as Bi-ology, Ge-ology, Physi-ology. Hopefully our study of Mythology will recapture some of the original joy in the deeper meanings of Myths and Legends as they were understood in the early days of the Ancient Church. Suggested Readings: TCR 279; AR 11 The Ancient Word. B. THE ANCIENT WORD AND CORRESPONDENCES Like the Christian search for the Holy Grail, the New Churchman's response to the challenge to find the Lost Word has been wholehearted since the beginning. There is something deep within us longing to follow the Path and to discover the Treasure, to "take up the bed" and "follow the Gleam." We respond to the challenge instinctively. Although we recognize that the external lure to find hidden cities and recover lost civilizations may be merely the outer representations of an internal challenge, that does not negate the importance of experiencing and responding to the charge of that outward journey. What mysterious manuscripts we may find in the mountains of Tibet or in the now liberated provinces of Siberia, or hidden in the back rooms of the libraries and museums of the Western world! But while we do not belittle the external quest, our emphasis here will be in recognizing and understanding the Ancient Word if, or when, it is found. Perhaps it is already here buried deep in the archaic language of ancient myths and legends. Certainly parts of it are here in the first chapters of Genesis. The challenge we mean to address here is that of better understanding that "most ancient style of writing." The earliest New Church publications show that the study of Correspondences and interest in the idea of the Ancient Word was a prime mover in the very publications of such magazines as the Halcyon Luminary and the Intellectual Repository. After the introductory editorial in the very first publication in 1812, plans for a Dictionary of Correspondences were presented, to be published in serial form, and later in one volume. A cursory look at the indices of these magazines shows over two hundred references to articles on Correspondences alone, before 1879: Correspondences of Trees, Winds and Atmospheres, -of Sun,-of Names, -gender words; articles abound on such topics as Astrology and Magic, 1812; Ancient Temples in Africa, 1822; Egyptian Hieroglyphics, 1828; Correspondences in Language, 1841. In 1852, there is an extensive account of a German scholar, "who knows all Asiatic languages," researching in European libraries: and the next year, French monks searching in Tartary, Tibet and China. One cannot help but be impressed by the enthusiasm with which New Church scholars in London kept abreast of the exciting archeological discoveries of the 19th Century, so much of which, was centered around the British Museum. It is heartening to note that the external search for the Ancient Word continues to this very day, (See NCL August 1995.) We pray that our young people will always spark to the quest which externally supports the deeper search for meaning, in Truth and in Life. TCR 279: "Seven years ago, when I was collecting what Moses wrote in the twenty-first chapter of Numbers from the two books called the Wars of Jehovah and Enunciation, some angels were present who told me that those books were the Ancient Word, the historical parts of which were called the Wars of Jehovah and the prophetic, Enunciations; and they said that this Word is still preserved in heaven, and in use among the ancient people there who had this Word when they were in the world. These ancient people, among whom that Word is still in use in heaven, were in part from the land of Canaan and the neighboring countries, as Syria, Mesopotamia, Arabia, Chaldea, Assyria, Egypt, Sidon, Tyre, and Nineveh; the inhabitants of all of which kingdoms had representative worship and consequently the knowledge of correspondences. The wisdom of that time was from that knowledge, and by it men had interior perception, and communication with the heavens. Those who knew the correspondence of that Word were called wise and intelligent, and afterward diviners and Magi. (2) But because that Word was full of such correspondences as remotely signified things celestial and spiritual, and consequently began to be falsified by many, in course of time by the Lord's Divine Providence it disappeared, and another Word was given, written by correspondences not so remote, and this through the prophets among the sons of Israel. In this Word many names of the places, both in the land of Canaan and round about in Asia, are retained, all of which signified things and states of the church; but the significations were from the Ancient Word. For this reason Abram was commanded to go into that land, and his posterity through Jacob were led into it. (3)Of that Ancient Word which existed in Asia before the Israelitish Word, I am permitted to state this new thing, namely, that it is still preserved there among the people who dwell in Great Tartary. In the spiritual world I have talked with spirits and angels from that country who said that they a have a Word, and have had it from ancient times; and that they conduct their Divine worship according to this Word, and that it consists solely of correspondences. They said, that in it also is the Book of Jasher which is mentioned in Joshua x. 12, 13), and in 2 Samuel (i. 17, 18); and that they have also among them the books called the Wars of Jehovah and Enunciations, which are mentioned by Moses (Numbers xxi 14, 15, and 27-20); and when I read to them the words that Moses had quoted therefrom, and they searched to see if they were there, and found them; from which it was evident to me that the ancient Word is still among that people. While talking with them they said that they worshipped Jehovah, some as an invisible god, and some as visible, (4) They also told me that they do not permit foreigners to come among them, except the Chinese, with whom they cultivate peaceful relations, because the Chines Emperor is from their country; also that the population is so great that they do not believe that any region in the whole world is more populous, which is indeed credible from the wall so many miles in length which the Chinese formerly built as a protection against invasion from these people. I have further heard from the angels, that the first chapters of Genesis which treat of creation, of Adam and Eve, the garden of Eden their sons and their posterity down to the flood, and of Noah and his sons, are also contained in that Word, and thus were transcribed from it by Moses. The angels and spirits from Great Tartary are seen in the southern quarter on its eastern side, and are separated from the southern quarter on its eastern side and are separated from others by dwelling in its eastern side, and are separated from others by dwelling in a higher expanse, and by not permitting any one to come to them from the Christian world, or if any ascend, by guarding them to prevent their return. Their possessing a different Word is the cause of this separation. A.R. 11----Concerning this Ancient Word which was in Asia before the Israelitish Word, it is fitting to relate this news: That it is still reserved there among the people who are in Great Tartary; I have spoken with spirits and angels in the spiritual world who came thence, who said that they possess a Word, and have possessed it from ancient times; and that their Divine worship is performed according to this Word; and that it consists of mere correspondences. They said that it also contains the book of Jasher, which is mentioned in Joshua x 12, 13, and Sam i. 17, 18, and also, that with them are the books mentioned by Moses, as the Wars of Jehovah and the Propheticals, Num. xxi. 14, 15, and 27-30; and when I read them the words quoted thence by Moses, they examined whether they were extant there, and found them. From these things it was manifest to me that the Ancient Word is still with them. While speaking with them they said that they worship Jehovah; some as an invisible, and some as a visible God. Moreover they related that they do not suffer foreigners to come among them, except the Chinese, with whom they cultivate peace, because the emperor of China is from their country. And further, that they are so populous, that they do not believe any region in the whole world to be more populous; which is very credible from the wall so many miles long, which the Chinese formerly constructed as a safeguard against invasion from them. Seek for it in China, and peradventure you will find it there among the Tartars.. Since the Grimm Brothers published their first collections in 1812, the systematic study of patterns in fairy tales has become a recognized science. Methodologies have been proposed by scholars in major universities in order to probe the meaning of myth. Symbols , motifs and "tale types" have been collected, analyzed and compared the world over in order to draw out the truths from ancient story forms. A vast network of folklore studies has centered in Copenhagen; The Stith Thompson Index of Motifs and Tale Types includes thousands of themes, numbered and organized for efficient reference. Computerization is increasing the speed of gathering and disseminating data. The survival of recognized forms through the ages prompts the New Church scholar to ask why these common and typical structures have survived? What is their deeper significance ? Are they remnants from the Ancient Word, clues to our search for that Word.? Two very common motifs demand attention as clues popular throughout Myth and Folklore, and most importantly prominent in the first chapters of Genesis. Besides the common symbols of Life Tree, Walled Garden and Serpent, a common theme which ties symbols together is the "Vulnerable Spot Motif." We are all familiar with the story of Achilles and how his mother held him by the heel and dipped the baby into the River Styx. The magic of the waters made him invulnerable to mortality except where her fingers covered his heel. The famous hero withstood all efforts to slay him until finally the arrow of Paris found its mark. The Northern hero Siegfried had similar protection and a similar fate. When he slew the dragon Fafhir he bathed in the dragon's blood which covered him everywhere but where a Linden leaf had fallen on his shoulder. Like the water of the Styx, the dragon's blood had rendered him impervious to harm save in the one spot. Perfect save for an ill starred love affair this Germanic hero was felled by the secret of his vulnerability passed to the villain by his jealous lady love. Most beautifully tragic is the fate of the Sun God Baldur of Norse Myth. He was invulnerable because he was so much beloved. Because of an ominous dream that haunted his mother Frigga, she traveled around the world and asked all things to promise not to harm Baldur. She neglected to extract the promise from the Mistletoes atop the Oak tree "because it was so small." The gods made sport hurling sticks and stones at Baldur and rejoiced as each deflected; this game was called "Honor to Baldur." But the jealous Loki made an arrow of Mistletoe and gave it to the blind god Hodr, directing his aim to the then vulnerable god. This brought about the End of the Age, Gotterdamerung, the Twilight of the Gods. Sleeping Beauty was temporarily protected from the predicted death sleep by the order of the king, her father, that all spindles should be banished from the kingdom. But one day she explored the tower and found an old lady spinning. Curious, she handled the spindle, pricked herself, and fell into the sleep of one hundred years. The common symbol in all these stories is the poisonous arrow/thorn/spear/spindle fatally finding its vulnerable spot. The significance becomes apparent when we read the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. whose idyllic happiness was torn from them when, running through the grass in their garden of love, the new bride was bit in the heel by a serpent. She was propelled into Hades where Orpheus sought to bring her back. Forgetting the command not to look back, he turned to assure himself and she was drawn back into Hades forever. Arrow/Spindle/Serpent, Thorn and Heel immediately bring up the images in Genesis 3:, describing the Fall, which is also the first prophecy of the Messiah to come. "I shall put enmity between thee and the woman and between thy seed and her seed. He shall tread upon thy head and you will bruise his heel" There could be no more important theme, therefore accounting for its persistence through the ages. Encoded in the portions of Genesis from the Ancient Word and forever remembered by the human race, the significance is explained in the Writings: The heel represents the lowest part of man, the pervertable, vulnerable proprium. The serpent is clearly the Sensual, the means of our wounding. A.259. Thorns, thistles, briars, brambles, and nettle signify the curse and vastation. A. 273.Man fell and was cast out of Eden for assuming life to be his own. The Lord promised to come as the Son of Man, but was rejected and wounded again on the Cross. The spiritual sense of the Word tells of man and the Church, the Celestial sense tells of the Lord. The Forbidden Fruit Motif draws us into a deeper spiral of understanding meaning. Within the Judao-Christian tradition we immediately think of Jehovah's first prohibition to Adam in Genesis 2:17: "But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die."The command comes echoing down to us through countless myths and legends: One of the oldest and clearest versions comes out of the Homeric Hymns, dated at c.1000 B. C. In the story of how Persephone, the daughter of Demeter, the Goddess of the Harvest was wandering in her lovely garden and uprooted an especially beautiful flower. Roaring up from the Underworld came Hades or Pluto, God of the Underworld and carried off the innocent girl. Her mother wandered over the earth looking for her daughter, not allowing anything to grow in her state of mourning. The people of Earth cried out to Father Zeus to save them from famine. He sent Hermes to find her where she had been honored by Hades as his Queen of the Underworld. But because she had eaten six seeds of the Pomegranate fruit she could only return to her mother for six months of the year and had to remain with her Underworld husband for the other six months. This has long been told as an explanation for the change of seasons, but for the deeper meaning, let us explore other related stories. One is reminded of the story of Rapunzel, whose mother craved the Rampion vegetable in the witch's garden next door. The obliging father climbed in and stole it but only after the witch had demanded that the child to be born would be given to the witch. This story is full of our important symbols such as the craving for forbidden fruit in the walled garden and the isolation of the princess in the tower surrounded by brambles, through which the wandering hero-prince must climb in order to save the princess. The story of Beauty and the Beast presents itself. This time the Fruit is a Flower, but it is the only thing that Beauty wants. The father wanders, climbs into a special Garden and steals the rose. The only way he can spare his life is to promise the beast that he will return and give Beauty to him. These stories relate to the curiosity stories like that of Pandora, the first woman and wife of Epimetheus. His brother Prometheus steals fire from the gods for man and is cursed. Part of the curse lies in the command to Pandora, not to open the box out of which evils came to mankind. Like Eve, this first woman seems to be related to man's fall. Eve, the Proprium, was originally "the Bride of the Lord" until mankind began to attribute what was his "own" to himself rather than to the Lord. Believing her sisters that she had married a terrible beast, Psyche was beloved by Cupid until she showed her lack of trust. She tried to shine her lamp light on him and burnt him with the oil. This drove him away and she had to wander and go even to the Underworld, to the now Queen, Persephone, in order to get special oils to preserve Aphrodite's Beauty. Even in this trial she repeated the mistrust, curiosity overcame her and she opened the box which was meant for Cupid's mother. This story told by Ovid appears to be a direct ancestor of Beauty and the Beast. Why do we perpetuate, repeat, rearrange certain symbols, plots and patterns? We have Forbidden Fruit, Pomegranate Seeds, Walled Gardens, Curiosity; the main character in our stories seems to have everything but seeks the one forbidden thing for himself. As a result of snatching the Forbidden Fruit there are Brambles and the Rose has Thorns. Wounded, there is suffering: and there are trials before the happy ending, Paradise Regained. The symbols seem to cluster
around each other as the bright fragments of glass in a kaleidoscope, tumbling
and rearranging themselves in beautiful patterns, interrelating, each a
beautiful story in itself, but with infinite variety. What is the nature
of the Unseen Force which orders these fragments as a magnate hidden beneath
the blank sheet of paper orders the iron filings on top? The wonders of
the scientific world suggest even greater wonders to be seen by the human
mind and spirit.
Part Two: Discovery and Decipherment Overview of papers and addresses of Part Two. [NOTE: Links to papers and addresses follow this overview.] Near the end of his life Swedenborg wrote a challenging letter to friends at the Royal Academy of Sciences in Stockholm . He presented it as an Appendix to his Treatise on the White Horse so it was bound in with that work by the printers. In many ways this letter seems to be an exciting precursor for that adventurous Nineteenth Century of archeological discovery and Herculean scholarship, a century of external discovery and intense searching for meaning within the writings on ancient stones and scrolls. It is commonly known that in Egypt there were hieroglyphics, and that they were inscribed on the columns and walls of the temples and other buildings; it is acknowledged, however, that at this day, no one is able to determine their signification. These hieroglyphics were no other than the correspondences between the spiritual and the natural, to which science, the Egyptians more than any people of Asia, applied themselves, and according to which, the very early nations of Greece formed their fables; for this, and this only, was the most ancient style of composition; to which I can add the new information, that every object seen by spirits and angels in the spiritual world, is a mere correspondence; and the Holy Scripture, is on this account, written by correspondences, that so it might be the medium of conjunction between the men of the church and the angels of heaven. But as the Egyptians, and along with them the people of the kingdoms of Asia, began to convert these correspondences into idolatry, to which the children of Israel were prone, these latter were forbidden to make any use of them, This is evident, from the first commandment of the decalogue, which says, "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness (of any thing) that is in the heavens above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the waters under the earth. Thou shall not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them, for I, Jehovah thy God, am a jealous God" (Deut. chap. 5, verses 8,9). Besides this, there are in other parts, many passages to the same purport. From that time, the science of correspondences became extinct, and successively to such an extent, that at this day it is scarcely known that the science ever existed, and that it is an object of importance. But the Lord being now about to establish a New Church, which will have its foundation in the Word, and which church is meant by the New Jerusalem in the Apocalypse, it has pleased Him to reveal this science, and thus to disclose what the Word is in its bosom, or spiritual sense. This I have done in the works entitled Arcana Celestia, published in London, and Apocalypse Revealed, published at Amsterdam. As the science of correspondences was esteemed by the ancients, the science of sciences, and constituted their wisdom, it would surely be of importance for some one of your Academy to devote his attention to it, and for this purpose, he may begin, if it is agreeable, with the correspondences disclosed in the Apocalypse Revealed. Should it be desired, I am willing to unfold the meaning of the Egyptian hieroglyphics, which are nothing else but correspondences; these being discovered and proved from the Word, in the Apocalypse Revealed, and to publish their explications, a work which no other could accomplish. Em. Swedenborg. EGYPTOLOGY It is interesting to note that Egyptology blossomed shortly after Swedenborg sent the above challenge. The chronology speaks for itself:: 1797 Georg Zoega, after innumerable bungling attempts by others, for the first time undertakes a serious study of Egyptian hieroglyphs. He recognizes the significance of cartouches. 1798 Bonaparte embarks at Toulon for Egypt. The researches and collections of his scientific Commission form the foundation of modern Egyptology. 1799 In the Nile city of Rosetta the trilingual Rosetta Stone is found-the basis for decipherment of the Egyptian hieroglyphs. 1809-1822 Publication of the Description de 1'Egypte , the scientific harvest of Napoleon's expedition. , 1822 J F.Champollion, utilizing the Rosetta Stone deciphers the Egyptian hieroglyphs. In 1828 alert New Churchmen in England begin the publication of articles on Egyptian Hieroglyphics in the Intellectual Repository /New Jerusalem Magazine. The 1842 Intellectual Repository publishes Swedenborg's letter together with a definitive article distinguishing between the interior meaning of the hieroglyphics and the phonetic translations: The decyphering of the hieroglyphics of Egypt, has of late, much engaged the attention and ingenuity of the learned. The discoveries ofChampollion and of Young have, no doubt, tended to throw considerable light on the hieroglyphics, viewed in their relation to natural things and events. The discovery of a phonetic alphabet among the hieroglyphics, has enabled these distinguished men to decipher many series of these extraordinary characters, and to show that they possess sense which / relation to historical and natural event. However true this may be, we are inclined to think, that originally, these hieroglyphics were intended to convey a spiritual sense only and that they were images or symbols, such as are seen in the world of spirits, representative of the moral and spiritual ideas, affection, sentiments, passions, and of the human mind, of which the science of correspondences is the only interpreter. This knowledge and the practice of it constituted the wisdom of the ancient Egyptians, and of the people of Asia, long anterior to the times of Moses. The soul was then more thought of than the body and the life of the soul, and its states of spiritual improvement and happiness, were paramount to every other consideration. As the mind of men became more and more external, they began to feel a disinclination to contemplate purely spiritual states and things; hence hieroglyphic language, which in its most ancient form was the language of correspondences, became gradually obscured, and, at length, as a science, entirely lost.--The reasons, therefore, are abundant evident, why Swedenborg in the above extracts, pressed the "science of correspondences" both upon attention of the Royal Academy of Sciences in Stockholm, and his friends in England. It was on acccount of its immense use and importance in raising the church and the human race from that naturalism and sensualism in which all the higher perception of the human mind lie buried in respect to every thing in relation to the human soul, to the spiritual world; and above all, to the rational and spiritual understanding of God's Holy Word, and the genuine doctrine of Christianity.
THE DYNAMIC MR BENADE Seldom, I believe, are the workings of the Divine Providence as apparent as in the life and preparation of an enthusiastic young scholar, William Henry Benade. Before he was introduced to the Writings, this son of a Moravian bishop became intensely interested in Egyptology. In a series of lectures to the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia in 1842, so thorough was his preparation for his talk on the Ethnography of the ancient Egyptians that he asked a friend, the American Consul to Cairo, to plan a search to Nubia as far as the second cataract to recover some crania of ancient Egyptians! He must first determine who these people were, racially, before he proceeded to study their culture. 17 crania were sent to Benade by the surgeon in chief to the Viceroy of Egypt. "Some were sent in their original wrappings first opened by me" records Benade, and in his fine hand: "5 from Thebes, 4 from Abydos"~so many Semitic, Negroid or Caucasoid. Imagine, then, Benade's thrill when he was introduced to the teachings of the Writings about the presence of the Ancient Church in Egypt! The Potts Concordance has nineteen pages on the religion of ancient Egypt. The vigor with which Benade embraced the Writings must have been partially fueled by his consuming passion for all things Egyptian. Here was the truth at last about which subject he had piercing intuition. His drive was incredible as he questioned Egyptologists. Richard Gladish, in his comprehensive biography of Benade, tells a charming story of how, when Benade met the later renowned author of Religion and Mythologie der alten Aegypter (1885), Heinrich Brugsch, that gentleman remembered Benade as the first subscriber to his Dictionary of Hieroglyphics! Benade and Brugsch talked about correspondences until two in the morning, with no doubt some affect on Brugsch as his later publication shows " a more spiritual line of interpretation than other scholars of his day." NCL 1917, 523f. It was on this fabulous journey to Europe with Mr. John Pitcairn in 1877 that Benade skillfully arranged for the Academy's seminal collection of Egyptian mythological figures. In Turin, Italy, he conversed with a Professor Lanzone, author whose illustrations were used in Wallis Budge's publications on the Book of the Dead. Writing to Mr. Pitcairn, Benade told him that Lanzone was willing to sell his collection for funds to publish his works. If we could not afford it, his friend Mr. Drexel would probably buy it for his institute in Philadelphia and our students could use it. Needles to say, Mr. Pitcairn found the funds and this was the beginning of our Academy Museum. Here was the Academy's first work of publication, that of Lanzone's beautifully rendered facsimile of a Papyri, purported to be a rare version of a Book of the Dead, entitled The Book of that which is in the Domicile of the Spirits, so interesting to New Churchmen who saw in it confirmation that the AncientChurch, with its knowledges of heavenly Correspondences, had recorded truths about the spiritual world and the life after death. In the bibliography of Budge's Book of the Dead you will find the above referenced for 1878, an important contribution to the scholarly world and an enormous impetus to our own studies. Are we as diligent and vigorous as Benade and the early Academicians? The faithful maintenance of the Academy Museum and the renewal of the the work at Glencairn give new hope of recapturing some of that energy, of our students climbing onto the shoulders of that giant, William Henry Benade. B. Ancient Near East and Cuneiform
Mythologists agree on a basic theme of all Flood legends. Removing the cultural flesh from the structural bones they see the simple story of a god destroying all mankind by flood or fire, because of their evil ways. Only one good man and his wife remain to start a new civilization with their progeny. That is the story in its simplest form found in all world mythologies. PYRRHA AND DEUCALION We readily recall the story of Pyrrha and Deucalion: Zeus saw nothing but evil and corruption as he looked down from Mount Olympus on mankind. In sorrow he called an assembly of the gods and told them of his plan to destroy men because they were too far gone to try to be ' improved. He told them of a trip he took to earth in the form of a man when he was jeered at and insulted by King Lycaon of Arcadia, and finally served the boiled limbs of a hostage for his meal! He promptly dashed the house with lightning and Lycaeon ran off howling like a wolf, finally taking on that permanent shape which more closely represented his real self. Some of the gods were concerned about destroying all mankind, so Zeus allayed their fears by promising a better race. He thought the whole earth might catch fire if he used his thunderbolts so he persuaded his brother Poseidon to combine a rush of ocean waves with Zeus' own torrents of rain from the sky. Warned of the flood by his father Prometheus, Deucalion and his wife built themselves a boat, filled it with provisions and sailed for nine days and nine nights finding land only on the top of Mount Parnassus in the land of Phocis where they disembarked and knelt down and prayed. Zeus was so impressed by their humility and innocence that he and his brother stopped the flood . Poseidon ordered his son Triton to sound his trumpet to signal the return of the waters to a peaceful condition. Deucalion and Pyrrha wept to see that all mankind was destroyed and they were the only survivors. They were too old to have the power to renew life, but the goddess Themis heard their prayers and told them, in the form of an oracle, to depart from there, cover their heads and cast behind them the "bones of their mother." Realizing that the oracles were often ambiguous they guessed that the bones of their mother were the stones of the earth. They obeyed and the stones that Deucalion cast behind him became men and the stones that Pyrrha cast behind her became women and thus a hardy race came into being. BAUCIS AND PHILEMON One of the most beautiful and beloved stories of all time is that of Baucis and Philemon; Swedenborg frequently mentions Ovid, who wrote around the time of the Lord's life on earth, as an ancient story teller who had some awareness of Ancient Church remnants. "There stand in the Phrygian hill country an OAK and a LINDEN-tree side by side, surrounded by a low wall. I have myself seen the spot; **Not far from the place I speak of is a marsh, once a habitable land, but now water, the haunt of divers coots, Hither came Jupiter in the quise of a mortal, and with his father came Atlas' grandson, he that bears the caduceus, his wings laid aside. To a thousand homes they came, seeking a place for rest; a thousand homes were barred against them. Still one house received them, humble indeed, thatched with straw and reeds from the marsh; but pious old Baucis and Philemon, of equal age, were in that cottage ' wedded in their youth, and in that cottage had grown old together; there they made their poverty light by owning it, and by bearing it in a contented spirit. It was of no use to ask for masters or for servants in that house; they two were the whole household, together they served and ruled. And so when the heavenly ones came to this humble home and, stooping, entered in at the lowly door, the old man set out a bench and bade them rest their limb, while over this bench busy Baucis threw a rough covering. Then she raked aside the warm ashes on the hearth and fanned yesterday's coals to life, which she fed with leaves and dry bark, blowing them into flame with the breath of her old body. Then she took down from the roof some fine-split wood and dry twigs, broke them up and placed them under the little copper kettle. And she took the cabbage which her husband had brought in from the well-watered garden and lopped off the outside leaves. Meanwhile the old man with a forked stick reached down a chine of smoked bacon, which was hanging from a blackened beam, and cutting off a little piece of the cherished pork, he put it to cook in the boiling water. Meanwhile they beguiled the intervening time with their talk **a mattress of soft sedgegrass was placed on a couch with a frame and feet of willow. They threw drapery over this, which they were not accustomed to bring out except on festal days; but even this was a cheap thing and well worn, a very good match for the willow couch. The gods reclined. The old woman, with her skirts tucked up, with trembling hands set out the table. But one of the three legs was too short; so she propped it up with a potsherd When this had leveled the slope, she wiped it, thus leveled, with green mint. Next she placed on the board some olives, green and ripe, truthful Minerva's berries, and some autumnal corn-cherries pickled in the lees of wine; endives and radishes, cream cheese and eggs, lightly roasted in the warm ashes, all served in earthen dishes. ***Besides all this, pleasant faces were at the board and lively and abounding goodwill Meanwhile they saw that THE
MIXING BOWL, AS OFTEN AS IT WAS DRAINED, KEPT FILLING OF ITS OWN ACCORD, AND
THAT THE WINE WELLED UP OF ITSELF. The two old people saw this strange
sight with amaze and fear, and with upturned hands they both uttered a
prayer, Baucis and the trembling old Philemon, and they craved indulgence
for their fare and meagre entertainment. ***Then the gods told them not
to kill the goose. We are gods,' they said, 'and this wicked neighborhood shall
be punished as it deserves; but to you shall be given exemption and come with
us to that tall mountain yonder." They both obeyed and, propped
on their staves, they struggled up the long slope, When they were a bowshot
distant from the top, they looked back and saw the whole country-side covered
with water, only their own house remaining. And, while they wondered at this,
while they wept for the fate of their neighbors, that old house of
theirs, which had been small even for its two occupants, was change into
a temple. *** 'Now ask of us, thou good old man, and thou wife, worthy of
thy good husband, any boon you will. When he had spoken a word with Baucis,
Philemon announced their joint decision to the gods: 'We ask that we may be
your priests, and guard
your temple; and since we have spent our lives in constant company, we
pray that the same hour may bring death to both of us-that I may never see my
wife's tomb, nor be buried by her.'
KEY PIECES OPEN MEANING: Again suggestive symbols and well chosen words cluster around --something! ? I have highlighted certain words and phrases carefully chosen by this ancient Roman writer. We know that Conjugial Love is the center of every civilization, and that it goes hand in hand with the concept of Eternal Life; they are inseparable! Oak trees represent Eternity because they seem to last forever. The qualities of Humility and Innocence are treasured in this story. In search of the true meaning of flood stories, I went to the Writings where the Noah story tells of JUDGMENT at the end of an age, an "evening" or REFORMATION state, just before night falls; evil is destroyed and the good remnant is salvaged. The image of the two gods, Jupiter and Hermes coming in disguise to Baucis and Philemon in connection with a story of destruction by flood/ fire bring to mind the two angels in the Lot story, appearing just before the destruction of Sodom and Gommorah.. "The angels appeared to Lot at evening time." I looked back at the Baucis story for mention of evening. It was filled with symbols of an evening state: two old people at the end of their lives, autumn, yesterday's ashes, a decrepit hut, worn covers, a three legged table,-everything but the word "evening," and then, thrilling to behold, my eye was caught by a footnote to the Latin on the facing page: "This word could also be translated "evening!" Here was a final piece of confirmation that the internal sense was still there in this ancient myth, not in its perfect form as in Genesis, but still to be seen in this "ancient style of writing" by those who study correspondences! And more, the Lot story took place in the evening, just before the destruction of Sodom and Gommorah by fire. Mythologists see destruction by FLOOD or FERE as interchangeable. The Writings distinguish: FERE representing the destroying of EVIL, whereas, FLOOD has to do with destruction of FALSITY, as in the drowning of the Egyptians in the Red Sea. The Egyptians represented knowledges, external truths, in the best sense, and in their perversion, falsities. It is also interesting to note that the burning of Sodom and Gomorrah represented the End of the Ancient Church in Canaan, and the drowning of the Egyptians represented the end of the Ancient Church in Egypt. This leads to interesting speculations in dating the end of that church since Egyptian chronology may indicate the time of the Exodus. The clues for interpretation of myths are all there in the Writings!. The story of three angels visiting Abraham comes just before the Lot visitation. Note that this took place at HIGH NOON! The TRINITY within the Lord was represented by the THREE angels, at high noon, at the height of the Church. In the evening state there are only TWO ANGELS, the Second and Third Person, because the Divine Esse, the Father, Divine LOVE, is no longer seen, is forgotten, as the Church is falling ..Mythologists also see importance in noting the time of day for clues as to the meaning of myths. Museum Report
to Open Meeting, ACO
SYNCHRONICITY Our little group of school girls had just come in to London from the West Country of Britain where we had been searching for the roots of the King Arthur legends; we kept running in to evidence of Knights Templar establishments wherever there were "Arthur sites." There seemed to be a mysterious connection; after all, we recalled, one 12th Century German writer had said that the Grail heroes were the Knights Templar. Ambling down Fleet Street after our tour of St. Paul's Cathedral, we noticed an old oaken gate across the street. Out of place in modem London, it tempted us to investigate before meeting the rest of our party for lunch. We crossed the street and cautiously pushed open the creaking gate. We were transported into a large park reminiscent of past eras; flagstone courtyards were surrounded by ancient vine covered buildings. One seemed to be a chapel, others beckoned with centuries-worn stone steps and winding passage ways; doors were identified with brass name plates. Some small carved animal symbols above stone archways caught my eye. One was a WINGED HORSE, another was a LAMB. Months later, when describing our adventure to my lawyer brother, he told me that was called the "Inns of Court," where barristers and other dignitaries have their offices. I looked it up in a guide to London. The old city area was built as a hideway by the KNIGHTS TEMPLAR in the 12th Century! Coincidence became SYNCHRONICITY * when a year or so later I was researching the great English sculptor, John Flaxman, famous as the designer of the classical white friezes on the blue Wedgewood pottery. We have several of Flaxman's sculptures in the Glencairn Museum, among them, HERMES AND PANDORA, and we own sets of his drawings including illustrations of the ILIAD and the ODYSSEY. I was astonished to read that he and the first New Church society of Robert Hindmarsh, of which he was a devoted member, had their first meetings in the Inns of Court, 1797! William Blake, another member of that society had written his Marriage of Heaven and Hell and his LITTLE LAMB there! It is a matter of record that the gentle Flaxman had nursed and cared for Samuel Taylor Coleridge, another avid reader of the Writings, famous for his symbolic imagination. There are two special copies of the first English Divine Love and Wisdom, one secured in the British Museum, and the other treasured in a private collection; one contains the notes of William Blake and the other of Samuel Coleridge! The images of the carved LAMB and theWINGED HORSE BLAZE ACROSS MY MEMORY'S EYE! INSPIRATION: Surely these founders of the Romantic Movement in England were inspired by such teachings as in A. 2762: "From the Ancient Church the signification of the HORSE as being the faculty of UNDERSTANDING, was extended to the wise round about, even into Greece. From this it came to pass that when they described the SUN (by which was signified LOVE) they placed in it the GOD of their WISDOM and INTELLIGENCE, and gave him a CHARIOT AND FOUR HORSES of fire; and that when they described the GOD OF THE SEA, because by the SEA were signified KNOWLEDGES in general, they gave HORSES also to him; and that when they represented a FLYING HORSE which with his hoof broke open the FOUNTAIN, where dwelt the VIRGINS that were the SCIENCES; and by the TROJAN HORSE nothing else was signified than a contrivance of their UNDERSTANDING for destroying city walls. Even at this day the INTELLECT is often described, according to the custom received from those ancient people, under the figure of a FLYING HORSE, or PEGASUS; and LEARNING is described as a fountain; but scarcely any one knows that a HORSE, in the mystic sense
The human spirit had awakened after the Judgment of 1757. American Independence and the French overthrow of the tyranny of Church as well as State, had liberated the European soul and mind. The early Greek Revival in England was heralded by a young champion of the romantic who, literally , laying his life on the line for Greek independence, had scratched "Byron" on the pillar of the temple of Poseidon at Sounion. In one stroke he immortalized the classical Greek spirit by noting that it had been immobilized on the Grecian Urn! Out of the turmoil and reorganization marked by the mini-revolutions in central Europe, gargantuan minds revolutionized the exploration of the mental treasure troves of human language. The brothers Muller followed the brothers Grimm from their explorations of the Black Forest to the shores of the Ganges! "Grimms Laws* which showed the sisterhood of Germanic Languages, including the mighty English, to Romance and the Greek languages, honed in on their Indo-European great aunt, Sanskrit, as the British Empire encompassed India. In many ways, the scientific study of Mythology started with Karl Gotfried Muller in 1825, but became immensely popular with the publication of the massive volumes of his genius brother, Max Muller. Into a fifty one-volume publication he translated from the Sanskrit what we know as the Sacred Books of the East. * Finding no one to translate his German into English, he did it himself, giving the English speaking world his Chips from a German Workshop and launching a tremendous linguistic crusade with a science of COMPARATIVE MYTHOLOGY. Muller's theories developed along the lines of a NATURAL explanation for the similarities of myths, from Iceland to Greece and India. He says that the ancient Aryans developed their myths around the Sun, the Dawn and the Sky and that diversity of deities is simply a matter of renaming. Everyone, the world over, sees the same Sun and Moon, and even some of the same constellations. The assumptior here is that different cultures tell similar stories by renaming and modifying according to local conditions: the Sun Chariot with horses in Greece; the Solar Disk in the Boat of Ages in the Egyptian world river. Although bringing new life to the study, in many ways, Muller lowered the high perception of meaning in myth to the mere changing of names as races migrated. He described this denigration so well when he said: "Myths are a disease of language!" Seeing Dyaus Piter, the Sky God of the Hindus change to Zeus Piter, Father Zeus, in Greece; and Zeus Pater in the Latin, becoming Ju-Piter one can readily see on what strong linguistic grounds this theory was based. With the exciting parallels of elements in the Grimms' Laws we can see the consonant changes from the Latin "P" to the Germanic "F", and "d" to "t" ce : Pater/Fader, Pisces/Fish, Ped/Foot. We see some truth in each theory about the origin of the myths,but there is MORE! From the height of the Ancient Church where the ONE GOD, Jehovah (JOVE?*) was worshipped, we can trace the deterioration into the worship of separate Attributes of the One God, and finally into the worship of the many qualities as multiple gods in later Egypt and Greece. In spite of this there still remained, in ancient Greece even to the time of Homer, the idea that the Myths were the telling of TRUTH. By Plato's time and with the Neo Platonists, there was still an idea that there was an IDEAL work above, where everything was Good and True, which flowed into the things of this world to which they corresponded. Swedenborgians can properly be called Neo Platonists in this sense. The Sophists of the Greek Enlightenment attempted a reconciliation between rational philosophy and myth by interpreting the myths as ALLEGORIES revealing naturalistic and moral truths. The atheistic Epicureans said the myths were fabrications concealing purely naturalistic and historical events to bolster the authority of priests and rulers. This led to EUHEMERISM in the third Century which states that historic leaders and heroes took were "mythologized" and took on the role of gods in the myths. We can see this taking place in modern times, where heroes become super heroes over the years, beyond the realm of human credibility. Ugly as is the expression "Myth is a disease of language," we cannot over estimate the close relationship between myth and language. Spoken language, the very expression of humanity, existed before written language. In the beginning, God was the Word. The written Word was left with us as a Substitute for the God whom we rejected. Oral Tradition and the written Word become our link with the interior essence of earliest religion. "Archeology, archeological evidence, is limited to material remains. But human culture is not confined to material artifacts alone. The reconstruction of vocabulary can offer a fuller, more interesting view of the culture of a prehistoric people than archeology precisely because it includes non material culture.' -"Consider the case of religion. To form an idea of the religion of a people, archaeologists proceed by inference, examining temples, sanctuaries, idols, votive objects, funerary offerings and other material remains". -"The reconstructed words 'deiwos and dyeu-pater' alone tell us more about the conceptual world of the Indo-Europeans than a roomful of graven images. 'Am Her Diet p. 1498. Illustrative of this is the fact that we know almost nothing about the TRUE nature and culture of the Israelitish Church APART from the written word/Word, precisely because the Jews were commanded not to make for themselves graven images! The Tabernacle model in the Glencairn Museum is reconstructed from written descriptions, but very little surrounding it is physically representatives of that culture. Ironically it is surrounded by such ancient artifacts as were expressions of the FALSE religions of the land of Canaan which the Children of Israel were not to worship; there is a hideous, dramatically illustrative, little black Baal, who could only have been worshipped from fear, never from love. What amusing and yet tragically limited assumptions might be made about our Church today if all that remained were frying pans and telephone wires! PROTO- INDO-EUROPEAN Linguistic studies of the 19th Century have developed recently into a fascinating reconstruction of what is assumed to have been the spoken Great Grandmother of all Indo-European languages. It is theorized that somewhere just above the Black Sea lived a people and a culture c.5000 B.C. The miracle of this discovery is that there are no material remnants or artifacts whatsoever! The supposition is based on comparing all known Indo-European languages and drawing concentric circles from the outermost circumference, Iceland to India, Scandinavia to Greece, and lesser circles, backwards in time, relating the development of the languages, following the spokes of a wheel to their hub, an assumed homeland, two thousand years before Hieroglyphics and Cuneiform! Similar pastoral words, snow, Birch trees, boats and oars, but not seas, have survived, indicating a mountainous homeland with inland lakes. War words are different on the outer circles, and therefore developed later, after. 2000 BC. as races moved out in a third wave, when Indra rode into India on a storm cloud carrying a lightening bolt like Zeus', and Thor/Donner with his Hammer. The American Heritage Dictionary of 1969 includes ancient common roots of Indo European languages, spoken by more than half the people in the world, and growing as noble English becomes the "Lingua Franca!" Of one hundred most used English words, all go back to these roots! Constant conquest and migration changed cultures in central Europe, but on the far Western and Eastern Circumferences , with less change, we see, through language, similar traditions. Celtic myth has mystical elements more reminiscent of Hinduism than of Greek or German. The Druid * like the Hindu Brahmin, recalls the priests at the end of the Ancient Church, who used correspondences, some for good but most for their own power. REINCARNATION, mostly associated with Hinduism, surely a material remnant of Ancient Church belief in the Afterlife is central to Celtic Cauldron Rebirth. THEORIES BASED ON COMPARING MYTHOLOGIES-POPULAR IN NINETEENTH CENTURY ALLEGORICAL THEORY. This was popular as far back as with the Neo-Platonists who, with the Stoic Philosophers of the Hellenistic Period, tried to reconcile the old theology with the rational philosophy; their compromise was to say that all myths contain some moral, religious, or philosophical truth, but came in process of time to be taken literally. PHYSICAL THEORY. (SOLAR, NATURAL, ASTRAL) Very popular in the Nineteenth Century, and originating with the Epicureans, the most common explanation today. The assumption is that the elements, earth, water, sun, moon and stars were originally objects of adoration, and the deities were personifications of the power of nature. Man desired to account for natural phenomena which he could not understand. HISTORICAL THEORY. "Euhemerism" after the Greek Euhemeris, proposes that all deities in myths were once human beings, heroes, whose stories were enlarged and "Mythologized" as time went on. The MIGRATION THEORY piggybacks on some others, stating that as races spread throughout the world they told and retold their stories, changing names and words as in "whisper down the lane." The SCRIPTURAL THEORY is popular with Fundamentalists who believe that all myths and legends are derived from narratives of Scripture, especially the Old Testament, the real facts disguised and altered. TWENTIETH CENTURY THEORIES: The MYTH AND RITUAL THEORY. Ancient rituals included actions, chants and incantations-spoken words. The part of the ritual which was spoken became the myth and survived to tell the tale! The PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY. The assumption here is that, just as man everywhere has similar physical characteristics, so does he have similar mental characteristics. He wishes for the same things; he cares about similar things, across the world, and therefore produces the same stories. ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORY, there is a balancing need in the human mind to mediate opposites, to resolve apparent contradictions. Myths pull together in one conceptual package what might otherwise be fragmented and contradictory. So we find myths of Night and Day marrying, Father and Mother. We see and understand things in terms of their opposites or contrast, but also have a need to resolve differences. The STRUCTURALISTS THEORY is in search of the invariant elements among superficial differences, of order behind apparent disorder. Claude Levy-Strauss expresses this best: "It is, I think, absolutely impossible to conceive of meaning without order-there is something very curious in semantics, that the word "meaning" is probably, in the whole language, the word the meaning of which is the most difficult to find, What does "to mean' mean? It seems to me that the only answer we can give is that 'to mean' means the ability of any kind of data to be translated in a different language." p. 12,13. We see some truth in each theory. It is interesting to note how secular mythologists, climbing on the shoulders of earlier theorists, are seeming to probe deeper and more interiorly into the meaning of myths. Now let us sample some treasures that New Church scholars have gleaned from the Writings. D. NEW CHURCH SCHOLARS SEE CORRESPONDENCES AS THE KEY TO MEANING JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON 1812-1899 This great and good medical doctor devoted his life to the service of man's mind and soul. His insights were incredible as, when only twenty seven years old he sensed the spiritual Source and value of William Blake's imagery and, at his own expense published the first printed edition of Songs of Innocence. Devoted husband and father of twelve, the untiring, Dr. Wilkinson translated Swedenborg's work on the Brain, and befriended the literary world's "greats," always urging them to read the Writings. Through his beloved friend, Henry James Sr., he was conversant with Longfellow, Emerson and Hawthorne. His letters to and from his own English notables are archival treasures. Robert Browning, Alfred Tennyson and Thomas Carlyle show their affectionate delight in the Swedenborg books Wilkinson had shared with them. Toward the end of his life of healing, translating and writing, Wilkinson developed a keen interes in Mythology, authoring Revelation, Mythology, and Correspondences, Oannes According to Berosus, in which he shows the inspired nature of a Chaldean Flood story. In 1898, intrigued by the Mythology of his Nordic ancestors and, as a student of Icelandic, he translated and interpreted the ancient poetic Edda Voluspa. Writing to the end, strength failing, he demonstrated by Correspondences the internal meaning of an ancient Egyptian Scroll, published posthumously as Isis and Osiris in the Book of Respirations. Something of Garth Wilinson's gentle intelligence and innocence is felt in his own words: "Remains of good, tenderly remembered from innocent times, are the uncorrupted dwelling of the Lord in men, and the fresh starting points of salvation." Struggling to interpret the mysterious Voluspa he wrote "All I can say is that I proceed, praying that some of the wisest and simple little children above may be sent to open my mind." If Use is Influence, Garth Wilkinson was a great man of Use. SIR JOHN DANIEL published The Philosophy of Ancient Britain in 1927. Recognized by secular Celtic scholars as a comprehensive and definitive study of Druidism, it was totally devoted to the thesis that this Cymry possessed extensive knowledge of the Ancient Church. Sir John sees correspondences everywhere, in Doctrines and Rites: strict Monotheism, poetic Triads, three priesthood degrees, significant colors of robes. He quotes Aristotle that much of Greek philosophy was derived from the Celts. He convinces his readers that the Druids had a "bad press" from their prime enemy and sole reporter, Julius Caesar. It is likely that Roman reports of Druidic horrors of human sacrifice were exaggerated if not mistaken observations of public executions. This book is a gold mine for any New Church lovers of Celtic lore THE INTELLECTUAL REPOSITORY, FROM 1812-1880, AND NEW CHURCH LIFE TO 1900 contain over two hundred studies pertaining to Mythology and Correspondences: Astrology, Hieroglyphics, Correspondences of Winds and Atmospheres, Trees and Plants, Names and Numbers; Searches for the Ancient Word, the Book of Enoch, Great Tartary; Myths of Diana, Osiris and Ashtoreth Thoughts on Job, Symbols and Language. Many authors are merely initials, but we note Vedic and Chaldean studies by Andrew Czeray; Greek and Ancient Church studies by the Rev. E.J.E. Schreck, Bu none so prolific as: THE REV. CARL THEOPHlLUS ODHNER, editor of New Church Life, Academy teacher of Sanskrit, Greek, Hebrew, Ancient History, and Mythology. His enthusiasm was so catching, his style so grand that generations of teachers of Mythology are still feeling the effect of his engulfing love of Ancient Church studies. Fortunately for posterity, many are in book form: The Golden Age, Correspondences of Canaan, Correspondences of Egypt, and The Mythology of the Greeks and Romans. THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE GREEKS AND ROMANS by C.Th. Odhner is rich with sincere dedication comprehensive with its massive theological references: "Mythology, being the science of ancient religions, is a sacred science and must therfore be handled with reverence and care. Two things are needed for its interpretation: correspondences and rational doctrine. Without correspondences Mythology will never open up its buried temples and treasuries, but correspondence is merely the key; within are labyrinthine passages and chambers where unguided imagination may easily go astray. A guide is needed and this guide we have in the systematic theology of the New Church, which is one with the Doctrine of the Ancient Church, and which not only points the way but at the same time warns against false interpretations. But with bom the key and guide at hand we may sagely explore the labyrinth, and our journey will then serve most important uses. It will place our mind in communication with the celestial and spiritual heaven of the Lord's Ancient Churches. It will store the imagination with noble and beautiful images, the representative ultimates of heavenly thoughts and affection, and, above all, it will show that the Religion of the ancients is one with the Religion of the New Church, teaching the same Divine truths, inculcating the same lessons of moral and spiritual good, and leading the mind to the worship of the same and only supreme God, the God of the Ancient Church who is the Lord of the New Church." Mythology of the Greeks and Romans, from the Preface. From the more than one hundred fifty references to the Writings in The Mythology of the Greeks and Romans, a few in the subject of the origin of Polytheism are particularly relevant to our study: "From ancient times they designated the Supreme God, or the Lord, by various names, and this according to the attributes, or according to the goods that were from Him, and also according to the truths, which are manifold. Those who were of the ancient Church by all these denominations understood but one God, namely, the Lord, whom they called Jehovah, but after the Church had descended from good and truth, and at the same time from that wisdom, they began to worship so many gods as there were denominations of the one God, even to such a degree that every nation and at last every family acknowledged as their god one of these." A. 3667. "That they distributed the Divine into so many persons, was because, from what was insown, they saw God as a man, and they, therefore, regarded as persons all the attributes and qualities of God, and thence also virtues, affections, inclinations and sciences. "A. E. 1118. "- those whose mental sight depended upon the senses of the body, and who still wished to see God, formed for themselves, as idols, images of gold, silver, stone, and wood, that under these, as objects of sight, they might worship God, while others, who rejected artificial images from their religion, formed for themselves ideal images of God in the sun. the moon, and the stars, and in various things upon the earth." T.C.R. 11. "The statues that were
erected in ancient times were either for a sign or for a witness or for
worship; those which were for worship were anointed, and thence they were
considered holy, and by them also they had their worship. Thus, in temples, in
groves, in woods, under trees, and in other places. This ritual derived its
representation from this, that in most ancient times stones were erected on the
boundaries between the families of the nations, so that no one should pass over
them to do any evil.--But when internal things altogether perished, together
with the Ancient Church, and when they began to hold external things holy and
Divine, and thus to worship them idolatrously, then they erected statues for
thei separate gods." A Papers and Address The Divine Human Imprint on Myth Ovewrview of papers and addresses of Part Four. [NOTE: Links to papers and addresses follow this overview.] Toward the end of the Nineteenth Century exciting things were happening at Oxford and Cambridge in the development of Myth studies. There was an outright rebellion against the old Solar and Vedic schools. Most dramatic were the challenges made by Sir James Frazer, Jane Harrison and Gilbert Murray whose general conclusions paralleled in Anthropology and Sociology what the Darwinians had demonstrated in Biology: that social forms and cultures had evolved from primitive structures to more advanced, and that spoken and written myths had developed out of ancient rites and ceremonies. JAMES G. FRAZER was a classicist at Cambridge who, in 1885 published articles on customs, including indications that children's nursery rhymes and games were derivatives of ancient rituals. In 1890 he published the monumental twelve volume study of ancient ritual and magic, The Golden Bough. Revised and adjusted, this remains the grand foundation for modern Anthropology. Frazer had uncovered hints of a terrible ritual practiced with Diana worship in a lonely woodland near Lake Nemi in Italy. It appeared to be a deterministic fertility rite in which a grim Priest-King of the Wood, who, protecting the well-being of the community, guarded a certain tree with golden branches, night and day, until he was exhausted; when his strength gave way the old king was slain by the young challenger who replaced him as king, and who in turn, repeated the relentless practice, forever! We can readily see a remnant in "the king is dead, long live the king," and perhaps even the "child's" game, I'm the king of the castle and you're the dirty rascal." Perhaps this is a decadent cultural derivative of the ever more ancient truth that the Lord would come again, that life is continually renewed, and that the spiritual man is reborn. Of Frazer's gatherings of ritualistic patterns, one of the most familiar, and central to our discussion, is that which forms the basis of sympathetic magic: homeopathy, that like produces like, and that things which have once been a part of or in contact with one another continue ever after to act on each other. A piece of hair or an image of an enemy can be destroyed from a distance and by magic overpower the enemy. This natural relationship of cause and effect reflects spiritual principle of Correspondences. Frazer described the beautiful origins of harvest and spring planting festivals, tracing the incorporation of folk customs into authorized ceremonies of the Christian Church: the ancient Iranian Festival of Light into Christmas, Seed time festivals into Easter. He traces the perpetuation of the Scapegoat custom, and tracks All Hallows Even back to the Osiris festival in Egypt, and through Europe in the Celtic Samain. Although pruned and modified, in the history of ideas the Golden Bough has become more of a massive cluster of roots than a branch; it suggests thoughts of Ancient Church Ceremonial origins of later perverted customs. These first origins may explain why our child hearts are filled with joy when we celebrate the harvest moon, pumpkin, and abundance of first fruits at Halloween and Thanksgiving, and why the joy of Resurrection is accompanied by a wistful sadness because the Old King is dead. JANE ELLEN HARRISON, a Cambridge colleague of Frazer, thought she saw in the clay seal of the Minotaur, the King of Crete in a bull mask! The ceremonial origin of myth could account for the story of Theseus telling of ritual games involving the wasp waisted men and girls springing over bulls as depicted on the murals of the palace walls; "devoured" by the Minotaur in the sense of never returning to Athens. GILBERT MURRAY saw epic characters like Achlles and Helen as ceremonial cult leaders. THE WOUNDED KING AND THE HOLY GRAIL FROM RITUAL TO ROMANCE, first published by JESSE LAIDLEY WESTON in 1912, tells it all! With deep feeling and reverence she traces the Quest for the Sangraal by Arthurian Knights of Medieval legend, back through two branches of an ancient "underground stream," to pre-literate fertility rites. One branch is through early Christian Tradition where the Grail was the Cup of the Last Supper; the other branch she sees coming through the mists of Celtic Legends of the Cauldron which restores the wounded hero to life. The familiar Romance form of our Christianized quest for the Holy Grail tells of Percival/ Gawain, wandering through a Wasteland, finding a ruined castle where a mysterious ceremony is taking place. Through a veil, in a dreamlike stupor, he watches a procession of WEEPING WOMEN, carrying lamps, a Chalice and Lance, following a bier upon which lies a wounded, dying KING. He knows that the wasting of the land and the wounding of the king are connected, and feels he must help by attaining spiritual enlightenment; but he is paralyzed, and does not know the answer, nor even what question to ask!.. Tracing many versions through 12th and 13th Century France, Germany, Spain, Portugal and Wales she finds the Grail or Talisman Object which comes and goes without visible agency, sometimes a Stone endowed with food and life giving properties, sometimes a Holy Object of precious substance emitting a brilliant light; a reliquary, the Last Supper Chalice with which Joseph of Arimathea received the Blood from the Crucified Lord; always appearing and disappearing mysteriously. Not satisfied with either a Christian or Celtic origin of the Grail Legend, Weston traces her "underground river" back to ancient fertility rites, concluding that the only theory that will fit the case is that the Grail was something pre-Christian but an object of great reverence, that it was Christianized because it was already basically religious internally rather than forced into a Christian mold from without. She finds ancient ceremonies involving the Babylonian fertility god, Tammuz, the Greek hero Adonis. Adonis was a fair youth beloved of Aphrodite. Dying a violent death from a bite in the THIGH by a wild boar, Adonis went to Hades where he became the lover of Queen Persephone. Aphrodite prevailed upon Zeus to allow Adonis to return to her every Spring; his return was celebrated with rejoicing; "this annual departure to the shades was the signal for widespread MOURNING, of a character and intensity that has left a peculiarly enduring mark upon popular tradition." Weston cites celebrations throughout the world, but stresses essential elements of the Grail legends which correspond to those in the earliest rites: the Maimed King on the litter, like the god, wounded in such a manner that he is deprived of his reproductive powers. This, she explains, is an analogy which has hitherto been ignored; the use of the term "maiming" or the "wounding in the thigh" simply a well known euphemism for the loss of reproductive powers. This explains the mystery in the legends; how the wounding of the King connects with the 'wasting of the Land," how achieving the Quest, restoring the King to health or youth by 'sympathetic magic' restores fertility, 'causing the dried up rivers to flow;" The ancient higher mysteries had two main grades; in the lower were shown the mysteries of generation, or physical birth and death in the higher, the mystery of regeneration, of spiritual birth and death. Weston says it is the Living, not the Dead King which is the important factor: "The grail is a living force, it will never die, it may indeed sink out of sight, and for centuries even, disappear from the field of literature, but it will rise to the surface again, and become once more a theme of vital inspiration even, as after slumbering from the days of Malory, it woke to new life in the 19th Century, making its fresh appeal through the genius of Tennyson and Wagner." Note how close Weston is to the truth: A. 3021 "The thighs themselves together with the loins, correspond to Conjugial Love. These things were well known to the men of most ancient times; and therefore they had a number of rites based on this correspondence. "E. 6:30; 14 "To weep between the court and the alter represents lamentation over the vastation of Divine Good in the Church." Deeper and deeper delve the mythologists in their searches for the origin of Myth. While the English scholars were proposing their Myth and Ritual theories, Viennese psychoanalysts were exploring their beloved myths from their own field of expertise. THE REALITY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND SIGMUND and MARTHA FREUD attended the theater one night in the Vienna of 1887 with their close friends, the Josef Breiers. The play was Oedipus Rex of Sophocles, but it was the drama of the after theater Cafe discussion that set the stage for one of the greatest events of conscious awareness of the nature of the human mind. Quietly pulling out his Greek copy of the play, Sigmund half audibly translated some lines into German. Puzzled, he asked Josef if he understood that Jocasta had known that she was the mother of her present husband Oedipus, because she had killed herself before Oedipus himself had known the truth. Josef reflected, then said slowly that she had not really known consciously, and yet the truth had been growing on her unconsciously. And so the truth began to grow on Dr. Freud that there was an UNCONSCIOUS MIND which can harbor feelings so violent as to cause suicide when ye the conscious mind is not aware of them. Here was the myth of Oedipus, which had become a scientific master key to the opening of the workings of the human mind, the explanation of the otherwise inexplicable behavior of some of Dr. Freud's hysteria patients. Today it is so much a part of our culture that it is difficult to believe that before the time of Freud the secular scientific world was hardly conscious of the often conflicting drives of an unconscious mind or will over which we have no control because we have not acknowledged it, consciously. Before that time obsessive behavior was very little discussed unless it was attributed to spin possession or commitable lunacy. To a New churchman, the influence of spirits is recognized, but we can give credit to Freud and his friends for bringing it into the open, putting it on the laboratory table, and teaching us skills for dealing with the nebulous demons. Clearly the Second Coming has provided the unseen spiritual impetus for this scientific recognition and acknowledgment which must come before repentance and reformation. Myths and legends were of great interest to Freud and his colleagues. Freud took immense deligh in collecting mythological statues and figurines and in contemplating the depth of MEANING in myth. He recognized what appeared to be mythological characters and episodes as he interpreted his patients' dreams. Unfortunately for us, he allowed himself to become absorbed in the" Oedipus complex" and the degree to which he believed behavior to be sexually driven. But perhaps it is we who have allowed our appreciation of the magnificent contributions of Sigmund Freud to be subsumed by our own obsession with the overpowering influence of sex. Perhaps we are proving his point about the deep nature of the sexual drive. After all, he was only looking at the natural underside of the highest motivating force of the Universe, the Conjunction of Love and Wisdom in the Lord. Some of Freud's insights into the use of mythology offer up thrilling material for plumbing the depth of the human mind. "Psycho neurotics do no more than reveal to us by magnification, something that occurs less markedly and intensively in the minds of the majority of children. Antiquity has furnished us with legendary matter which corroborates this belief and the profound and universal validity of the old legends is explicable only by an equally universal validity of the above mentioned hypothesis of infantile psychology" One of Freud's most fascinating insights is in his comparison of what he sees as the deep common theme of Hamlet and Oedipus, both having their "source in material of immemorial antiquity". His, and later studies have lead us to the conclusion that ancient myths and the work of modern geniuses appeal to us because they have tapped those deep common human loves which are the responses to the Lord's Attributes and Image in which we were created. MYTH AND DREAMS KARL ABRAHAM was a member of Freud's group of psychoanalysts in Vienna who applies Freud dream interpretation methods to the search for the origin of the myths. He saw the process of dream formation by individuals as the same process of myth formation by the race: "So is the Myth a retained fragment from the infantile psychic life of the race and the Dream is the myth of the individual." THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS CARL GUSTAV JUNG, once a loyal junior member of Freud's Vienna group, broke away from Freud and founded his own school of psychoanalyses in Zurich. One important difference was that Freud seemed to focus on his patients' pathological conditions whereas Jung saw the psyche as a whole, always working toward healing, building up and repairing, rather than breaking down and destroying. Most interesting was his vision of a Collective Unconscious, (which someone once told me Jung himself identified with Swedenborg's Spiritual World), a Grand Man as it were, in which were seed characteristics or spiritual causal types which he called ARCHETYPES. An active group of psychoanalysts gathered around Jung and today they represent some of the most prolific and active Mythologists because of the dynamism of the concept of the Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious. They have seen and documented in the memories and dreams of their patients, mythological images, seeing a racial heredity in the unconscious recollections of individuals. The term "Archetype" was used by ancient philosophers of the Platonic Idealist school who assumed that every idea in this world was a representation of an original idea or type in the Ideal world, the world of Causes. Swedenborg's "Correspondences" seem at first to fit into this ancient concept very well, but I believe that one of our most important studies should be in trying to understand Jung's different concept of the Archetype, because I think his concept develops our understanding of the true nature of correspondences better than the ancient use of "Archetype" by the Neo Platonists, which was derived from, but not the reality of, the understanding in the Ancient Church. Because the understanding of spiritual things is so difficult, sometimes ineffable we need to stretch our minds upward and upward in order to get a true picture of revealed spiritual things. Jung himself had great difficulty in explaining what he saw, but because he strained to put what he saw in modern scientific terms, and because he was a great and good man who read widely, had incredible perception, and not least, who was a avid reader of Swedenborg, I feel that the his writings an< his followers' works provide a rich and exciting field for us. Anyone who appreciates Swedenborg's difficulty in translating what he saw and heard in the Spiritual world into natural, rational language; anyone who realizes our blindness in getting above the literal sense, who wishes to understand Correspondence and who believes there are important secrets to be found in the study of Mythology, will be richly rewarded and inspired by studying Jung and his colleagues and followers. The editor of the Basic Works of Jung says that Jung's most lofty concern was his study of the religious function of the soul. About the soul Jung says, "I have been accused of 'deifying the soul'. Not I. but God Himself has deified it! I did not attribute a religious function to the soul. I merely produced the facts which prove that the soul is naturaliter religiosis, i.e., possesses a religious function. For it is obvious that far too many people are incapable of establishing a connection between the sacred figure and their own psyche; that is to say, they cannot see to what extent the equivalent images lie dormant in their own unconscious." "Since the stars have fallen from the heavens and our highest symbols have paled, a secret life holds sway in the unconscious. That is why we have a psychology today, and why we speak of the unconscious. All this would be superfluous in an age or culture that possessed symbols." JUNG ON MYTH AND ARCHETYPE "So far mythologies have always had recourse to solar, lunar, meteorological, vegetal and various other ideas of the kind. The fact that myths are first and foremost psychic phenomena that reveal the nature of the soul is something they have absolutely refused to see until now. -- All the mythological processes of nature, such as summer and winter, the phases of the moon, the rainy season, and so forth, are in no sense allegories. (An allegory is a paraphrase of a conscious content, whereas SYMBOL is the best possible expression for an unconscious content whose nature can only be guessed, because it is still unknown); rather they are SYMBOLIC expressions of the inner, UNCONSCIOUS drama of the psyche which becomes accessible to man's consciousness by way of projection -- that is, mirrored in the events of nature "Primitive man impresses us
so strongly with his subjectivity that we should have guessed long ago| that
myths refer to something psychic. His knowledge of nature is essentially the
language and outer [dres??] of an unconscious psychic process. But the very
fact that this process is unconscious gives us the reason why man has thought
of everything except the psychic in his attempt to explain myths. He simply
didn't know that the psyche contains all the images that have ever given rise
to myths, and that our unconscious is an acting and suffering subject within a
drama which primitive man rediscovers, by means of analogy, in the processes of
nature both great and small." JUNG ON THE CONCEPT OF THE ARCHETYPE: As he puts it, the Archetype is essentially undefinable because it is not a conscious idea and therefore the minute we try to draw it out of its unconscious realm in order to surround the concept, we have lost it! "The archetype is essentially an unconscious content that is altered by becoming conscious and by being perceived, and it takes its color from the individual consciousness in which it happens to appear." "-archetypes are among the inalienable assets of every psyche. They form the TREASURE in the realm of shadowy thoughts of which Kant spoke, and of which we have ample evidence in the countless treasure motifs of mythology. -In themselves archetypal images are among the highest values in the human psyche." "An archetypal content expresses itself first and foremost, in metaphor." One must, for the sake of accuracy, distinguish between 'archetype' and 'archetypal ideas.' The archetype as such is a hypothetical and irrepresentable model, something like the 'patterns of behavior' in biology.'" "Archetypes are typical forms of behavior which, once they become conscious, naturally present themselves as ideas and images, like everything else that becomes a content of consciousness. Because it is a question of characteristically human modes, it is hardly to be wondered at that we can find psychic forms in the individual which occur not only at the antipodes but also in other epochs with which archeology provides the only link." "The archetype is a symbolic formula, which always begins to function whenever there are no conscious ideas present --. The contents of the collective unconscious are represented in consciousness ii the form of pronounced tendencies, or definite ways of looking at things. They are generally regarded by the individual as being determined by the object -- incorrectly, at bottom - since they have their source in the unconscious structure of the psyche and are only released by the operation of the object. These subjective tendencies and ideas are stronger than the objective influence; because their psychic value is higher, they are superimposed upon all impressions." "These products are never
myths with a definite form, but rather mythological components which HUBRIS, the fateful challenging of the gods by lowly mortals was the most terrible crime for the ancient Greeks. ATHENA AND ARACHNE. Arachne was a mortal maiden famous for her weaving, who challenged the great goddess who "wove Hera's garment, the garment of the Universe". Athena was goddess of Wisdom and Defensive War, Defender of Cities, Ships and Sailors at Sea, of Philosophers, and of Women's Household Arts, particularly Spinning and Weaving. She was born fully armed with helmet, spear and shield, directly from her father Zeus' head. C. T. Odhner reconciles these apparently contradictory attributes in a masterful interpretation of her representing DIVINE DOCTRINE, coming forth directly from the Lord without human intermediary. Doctrine defends the City, is represented by Ships, is the Weaving of parallel threads (Truths) into the fabric of the Church (Hera, Zeus' wife.) Athena disguised herself as an old woman, challenging the young girl to a weaving contest, witnessed by all. Of course the great goddess won and exacted a terrible price for Arachne's stubborn pride in daring to compete with a goddess. When the poor girl hung herself in shame, Athena cried: "Stubborn girl, live, yet hang! And - to make you more anxious for the future - may the same punishment be decreed for all your descendants." Arachne's body shriveled and turned black, her hanging rope became the web thread spun by a spider. (Arachnids) Although unnecessarily cruel from appearances, from essentials this story seems to illustrate the danger when Divine Doctrine is challenged by man-made reasoning. In Isaiah: "They hatched adder's eggs, and wove spider's webs;"A.E. 581' - their deceitful falsities are signified by 'the spider's webs which they weave;" PHAETON AND THE SUN CHARIOT Phaeton, son of the great God of the Sun, Helios /Apollo was teased by his friends for having no visible father. Returning home, his mother urged him to travel to the abode of the Sun God and exact proof of his parentage. Arriving at the magnificent palace of the Sun God, he is overawed by its magnificence and grandeur and dares not to get too close. Seeing his son hesitating, the great god lays aside his brilliant sun rays, embraces him and swears by the River Styx that the boy may have any gift he wants in order to dispel his doubts and prove to his friends that he is indeed the son of Helios. Impulsively the boy asks for permission to drive the great Chariot of the Sun. After trying to dissuade him, with terrible dread, the god must keep his solemn oath. Helios anoints the boy's face again: the burning sun's rays, places his crown of sun's rays on his head and advises him how best to guide the fierce horses who draw the Chariot of the Sun. With great sadness the god watches his inexperienced son as the horses race to great heights and then uncontrolled, scorch the earth into desserts. Mother Earth cries out to father Zeus who hurls his thunder and lightening destroying the chariot and dashing the boy to his death. The River Eridanus bathe him, the nymphs laid him to rest and his sisters turned into trees from whose bark tears flowed, which were hardened into amber by the sun and then dropped into the river. DAEDALUS AND ICARUS Daedalus was an Athenian prince who was also a skilled craftsman and inventor. In a fit of jealously he killed his young apprentice and was exiled to the Island of Crete. Poseidon had sent a beautiful white bull to King Minos for sacrifice, but the covetous king had kept the bull and sacrificed a lesser bull. As punishment, Poseidon had caused Queen [Pasiphae??] to fall in love with the bull! Daedalus helped the queen to satisfy her passion for the bull and the horrible Minotaur was her resulting offspring. Daedalus constructed the intricate maze, the Labyrinth to house the monster, featured in the story of Theseus. Tiring of his imprisonment on the island, Daedalus constructed wings for himself and his son Icarus out of birds' feathers glued together with wax. As they flew upward into the sky, Icarus disobeyed his father's warning: "Icarus, I advise you to take a middle course. If you fly too low the sea mil soak the wings; if you fly too high, the sun's heat will burn them. Fly between sea and sun!" (This sounds like the famous Greek 'Golden Mean, balance. Is it describing the beautiful balance of Love and Wisdom, Good and Truth?) Of course the reckless youth flew
too close to the sun and fell headlong into the sea. Some say this is how the
sea became known as the Icarian Sea. Some Archeologists say that the very word,
Labyrinth comes from the word 'Labrys' 'Double Axe' which sign is carved everywhere
on the winding passages walls of the ruins of the Palace of Minos at Knossos;
that the intricate nature of the "palace of the double Axe" gave us
the concept of the maze like figure! METAMORPHOSIS TRANSFORMATION ENCHANTMENT ARCAS AND CALLISTO: Zeus loved the Arcadian huntress, faithful follower of the Virgin Diana. When Callisto's son Areas was born, Juno took revenge and turned her into a bear. Her human mind remained but she could not speak to warn her son, now grown, that the bear he was about to slay was his mother! But watchful Father Zeus stayed his spear hand, and mercifully changed the boy into a small bear and placed them forever together in the starry heaven. Juno, angered at her husband's interference, urged Poseidon not to allow the new constellations ever to rest in the sea. That is why the Big Bear and the Little Bear rotate forever around the Polar Star, but never rest below the horizon. APOLLO AND PHAETON: Apollo, flushed with pride over slaying the Python, mocked young Cupid for carrying a brave man's bow. "Although your arrows pierce every target, Apollo, mine will pierce you. Just as all animals yield to you, so your glory is inferior to mine." Cupid then shot a leaden arrow into the heart of Daphne, the River god's daughter, and a golden arrow into the heart of Apollo. Apollo immediately fell in love with her, but as he approached she dashed off. "Driven on by love he followed at full speed When her strength gave out she called on her father: 'Help me, change me and destroy my beauty which has proved too attractive'--her limbs grew heavy and sluggish -- her hair grew into leaves, her arms into branches. Her feet which until now had run so swiftly, held fast with clinging roots. Her face was the tree's top; only her beauty remains. Embracing the newly formed Laurel tree, the distraught Apollo covered it with kisses, plucked a leafy branch and crowned himself with the Laurel wreath, dedicating all future honors to her memory." Ovid's Metamorphosis.I DIANA AND ACTAEON-Metamorphosis 3. Actaeon was a young hunter who ruthlessly tracked down his prey. Seeking the coolness of a forest glen at midday, he suddenly came upon the great Huntre goddess Diana, bathing with her nymphs. "Just as the clouds are tinged with color when struck by the rays of the setting sun, or like the reddening Dawn, Diana's face flushed when she was caught naked." Raising a pitcher of water above her head, the chaste goddess dashed the water headlong at the bold hunter; instantly stags' horns arose on his head, his neck grew long, his ears pointed. While he stood stunned and undecided his own dogs caught sight of the stag and ran him down, over craggy hills and rocky terrain; "the heavens echoed to the baying hound" who ran him down and tore him limb from limb Thus was the affront to Diana's chastity avenged. UNDERWORLD JOURNEY PERSEPHONE AND HADES. This story is first told in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, recorded around 800 B.C. It tells of beautiful daughter of the Golden haired Goddess of the Grain, playing with her maidens, tugged at a particularly enchanting and deep rooted flower. With a terrible roar the Fearful Ruler of Hades emerged in his chariot of fire. Seizing the lovely girl he carries her to dwell with him in his gloomy kingdom under the earth. Hearing her daughter's screams the passionate Demeter searches the world for her daughter, in mourning, refusing to allow any growth upon earth. The starving earth cries out to Zeus, who sends Hermes, his Messenger, to Brother Hades, imploring him to return Persephone. Hermes discovered that the hungry girl had eaten six Pomegranate seeds, and he knew that the rule of the universe dictated that Hades' Queen must spend six months in Hades and could only join her mother for six months above ground; six months when Demeter would once more allow flowers to bloom and the harvest to be gathered. CUPID AND PSYCHE. In the Second Century A.D. Apulius tells one of the most influential tale of how the Goddess of Love, Venus/Aphrodite realizes that her shrines upon earth have been neglected because earthlings have become enchanted with the beautiful princess, Psyche, Sending her son Pluto to wound her with his arrow to make her fall in love with the first, hopefully ugly, person she sees. Instead, Cupid, stunned by her beauty, wounds himself, and falls in love with Psyche. Because she was more worshipped instead of sought after by potential mortal husbands, her father consulted Apollo's Oracle. The news was terrifying: Psyche was to be placed on a mountain top to be claimed by a horrible serpent/husband. Amid funeral rites the oracle was obeyed and the resigned girl was led to the mountain top. The sleeping girl was carried by the gentle breeze, Zephyr, to a mysterious palace where she was surrounded by beauty and every thing was done for her by invisible hands. An anonymous bridegroom visited her every night and left before dawn. Warned by her husband of the treachery of her older sisters, she only gave in to their requests for gifts the on their first two visits; but the third time she succumbed to their advice, to look at the monster while he slept, knife ready to slay him. Instead of the monster, she saw the sweet and gentle Cupid. But alas, oil from her lamp fell on the god's right shoulder and he fled from her distrust. The rest of the story is one of toil and suffering, of beseeching Venus for aid in finding Cupid, in trying to fulfill impossible tasks set by Venus: sorting seeds, retrieving golden wool from sheep and a cool drink from an Underground stream guarded by a dragon, and the final terrible task of taking a Journey to Hades to bring some of Persephone's beauty in a jar, back to Venus. Each time she despairs, and each time she is aided by various helpers. Finally Cupid rescues her, they are married and she is raised up to live among the immortals. INNANA/ISHTAR. One of the most ancient and dramatic accounts of a journey to the underworld is that of the powerful goddess Innana of the Sumerians, Ishtar of the Babylonians. This story of the Fertility Goddess tells of her love for Tammuz/Attis. When Tammuz died of her devouring love, she wailed bitterly thinking to retrieve him from the kingdom of death. She had to journey through the seven portals to the underworld, at each portal leaving one of her garments or pieces of jewelry until at last she stood naked before the Queen of the Dead. She was imprisoned and assaulted with sixty illnesses during which imprisonment the earth withered and became desolate. Finally she was released by the God of Wisdom, Ea. She returned through the gates one by one, gathering her garments and jewelry as she went, accompanied by Tammuz, who was allowed to stand guard by the gates of heaven. Spring returned to earth. Mysteries of Faith
Part Five:. Cycles and Paradigms Overview of papers and addresses of Part Five. [NOTE: Links to papers and addresses follow this overview.] A. THE HERO MONOMYTH "From behind a thousand faces the single hero emerges, archetype of all mythology." Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a thousand Faces. "THE MYTH OF THE BIRTH OF A HERO" by OTTO RANK. Otto Rank, like Jung, was one of Freud's most brilliant and beloved students, but also like Jung, Rank believed that Freud had gone too far in what Rank called "his philosophy of despair." As later developed by Jung, Rank argued that there is a creative impulse in each person dedicated to the task of character formation and integration. He believed that man's every urge, particularly in the production of art, is centered around the main overpowering wish to put death to rout, to attain immortality, and to perpetuate himself physically and spiritually. Today some might term his philosophy, in the negative, as the denial of death, but we can also see in it a positive, though faint hope or recognition of the reality of an afterlife. Der Mythus van der Gebert des Heldon, first published in 1914, can bee seen as a seminal work in the now popular "hero" studies. Although Rank himself is little known, this work is a classic referred to in modern scientific studies of education, of religion, anthropology, and depth psychology, especially 'psycho-mythical' studies. He felt that psychology was merely a transitional discipline to a discovery of something that lies beyond psychology and it was in this spirit that he persued his work. Summarizing work that had preceded his, Rank notes three main theories accounting for the existence of similarities and wide distribution of the hero myth: 1. the human mind is uniform and therefore the unanimity of myth. - 2. that there was once an original community (He thought that was India.) 3. Migration and borrowing-After summarizing these ideas, he concluded: "There is really no sharp contest between the various theories or their advocates, for the concept of elemental ideas does not interfere with the claims of primary common possession or of migration. Furthermore the ultimate problem is not whence and how the material reached a certain people; the question is: Where did it come from to begin with?" "Even granting the migration of myth the origin of the first myth would still have to be explained." In searching for the source of myth, he questions the adequacy of the motivation on the part of ancients or primitives who were said to have created myths as explanations of natural phenomena, (a sun god drives the sun across the sky in a chariot or boat.) And why, he asks would they talk so much about it?! He thought it more likely that the myths originated in the human psyche, and were projected onto natural objects or happenings. "It is evident", he says," that human beings even in the earliest times and with a most naive imagination, never saw incest and parricide in the firmament on high, but it is far more probable that these ideas are derived from another source, presumably human. At any rate, besides the astral conception, the claims of the part played by the psychic life must be credited with the same rights for myth formation, and this argument will be amply vindicated by the results of our methods of interpretation." He then compares the stories of the births of many heroes finding a consistent universal pattern beneath each, relating to necessary but traumatic events as children separate from their parents. OTTO RANK observed a consistent pattern of stages in the birth and early life of heroes of history and myth. Here are just three examples: a. LEGEND OF SARGON, (Now identified as historic figure c. 2360-2305
BC.) 1. THE HERO IS THE CHILD OF DISTINGUISHED PARENTS USUALLY SON OF A KING. "MY MOTHER WAS A FESTAL, MY FATHER I KNEW NOT." Sargon. 2. HIS ORIGIN IS PRECEDED BY DIFFICULTIES, SUCH AS PROLONGED BARRENNESS. Danae's father, Acrisius, had locked her in an iron tower. 3. ORACLES, DREAMS OR PROPHECIES WARN OF HIS BIRTH. The oracle had said that Danae would have a son who would kill his
grandfather. 4. AS A RULE HE IS SURRENDERED TO THE WATER IN A BOX. "IN A HIDDEN PLACE SHE BROUGHT ME FORTH, LAID ME IN A VESSEL MADE OF REED, CLOSED MY DOOR WITH PITCH, AND DROPPED ME INTO THE RIVER.." Acrisius enclosed Perseus and Danae in a box and cast them into the sea. The vessel broke on the rocks, 5. HE IS SAVED BY ANIMALS OR LOWLY PEOPLE (SHEPHERD, FISHERMAN AND WIFE.) "AKKI THE WATER CARRIER LIFTED ME UP IN THE KINDNESS OF HIS HEART,
6. WHEN GROWN HE FINDS HIS DISTINGUISHED PARENTS. Thinking to rid himself of Perseus, the king sends him off to fetch Medusa's head. Mimir sends Siegfried of to be killed by Mimir's brother Regin., the dragon. 7. HE TAKES REVENGE ON HIS FATHER AND IS ACKNOWLEDGED AS HEIR. In throwing the discus at his grandfather's court , Perseus accidentally kills his grandfather. Siegfried conquers the dragon, then kills Mimir. 8. FINALLY HE ACHIEVES RANK AND HONORS. "I BECAME THE KING, AND FORTY-FIVE YEARS I HELD KINGLY SWAY." Perseus becomes king of Argos, and the builder of Mycenae. Siegfried finds Brunhilde who names his parents to him. FTTZROY RICHARD SOMERSET, LORD RAGLAN was an ardent "Myth and Ritualist." In his 1935 book entitled simply "The Hero, he, whimsically and audaciously declares that that which we wish to be true we tend to call "history" in the literal sense, but that at least with most ancient legends, their truth is not historical. "It is at least possible," Raglan says in his Preface, "that Homer, though he meant all he said, may have intended it to be understood in a religious and not in a historical sense." About myths he says: "What a myth really is a narrative linked with a rite." Raglan notes that most hero circumstances cluster around BIRTH, INITIATION, and death, and that many heroes are wounded in the leg or set afloat in baskets or boxes. Is it a sort of pretense (rite), he asks, like a burnt offering sacrifice, to kill the eldest son at birth or send him away? He observes the clustering of sacrifice "props" around stories of exiling or displacements. A ram was offered in place of Isaac, Jacob appeared before his father wearing a kid skin; Joseph wore a special garment soaked in goat's blood. These studies offer a thrilling challenge to New Church scholars to reconcile theories of the origin of myths under the Guidance of Doctrine. Surely these rites can be traced to ceremonies of the Ancient Church. Surely the faithful perpetuation of rites can be observed in the history of Israel, but the ritual element which appears to be non-historical can be seen in the service and preservation of the spiritual sense. Because we are created in the Lord's Image, historical events and natural objects will be organized by our souls and viewed through the lens of our upper unpervertable minds and interpreted to verify spiritual as well as natural truth. So history can be seen to be "true" on the natural plane as well as "mythologized" in order to provide MEANING to otherwise barren facts. History isn't just a chronology of everything that happened before today; history is a cluster of facts selected and organized by an individual human mind and soul. Raglan uses many amusing examples to explain his reasoning about the "non-historicity" of most myths: "If the Egyptians were really looking around for a high god, why would they latch on to a defeated king like Osiris?" He believes that the story of the Irish hero Cuchulain is part of a sevenyear religious cycle; else why would he have seven toes and fingers; why did he accomplish early feats when seven years old, great victories when he was seventeen, and death at twenty seven.? He believes the story of the siege of Troy came from a nine year religious cycle: Why did all the action takes place in the first and tenth year? Why would a powerful High King abandon home and family, travel just a few days sail from home, encamp on a beach in misery and squalor for ten years and not even go home for a weekend?! He saw the Trojan Horse as a ritual, mythical horse, like Pegasus, coming to the aid of a princess imprisoned in the heart of a maze. Archeologists believe they have found Troy and Mycenae, King Arthur's grave, Minos' palace on Crete, even the Ark in a glacier on Ararat. As Bishop de Charms once explained, they may have found an ark; the ancients had to have seen ark-like ships in order to tell about them, even though what they wrote was for the purpose of preserving spiritual meaning. Similarly, ancient cities are found resembling what is described in Greek myths. But the gold mask which they call "Agamemnon's" or the building which they call the Labyrinth, may have been the natural, objective occasion to ultimate or ground a spiritual concept. Mythographers like Raglan, or Psychoanalysts like Jung are approaching the meeting place of the spiritual and the natural in the human mind. We need to gear up New Church scholarship to meet their brilliant insights with organizing Doctrine. LORD RAGLAN'S HERO PATTERN 1. The hero's mother is a royal virgin; Raglan applies his pattern to the stories of twenty one heroes, to each of whom he gives a score based on how many of the points match. For instance, although Oedipus was not a legislator, he gets full marks otherwise. Theseus scores twenty, Perseus eighteen, Moses twenty, and Robin Hood only thirteen. This is the way he gives Arthur nineteen points: His mother, Igraine is (1) a princess, and his father is (2) the Duke of Cornwall. He is, however (3) reputed to be the son of Uther Pendragon, who (4) visits Igraine in the Duke's likeness. At birth he is apparently in no danger, yet is (7) spirited away, and (8) reared in a distant part of the country. We hear (9) nothing of his childhood, but on reaching manhood he (10) travels to London, (11) wins a magical victory, and (13) is chosen king. After other victories, he (12) marries Guinevere, heiress of the Round Table. After this he (14) reigns uneventfully, and (15) prescribes the laws of chivalry, but later there is (16) a successful conspiracy against him while (17) he is abroad. He meets with (18) a mysterious death, and his children do not (20) succeed him. His body is (21) not buried, but nevertheless he has (22) a holy sepulchre at Glastonbury. JOSEPH CAMPBELL has been the most pupular and inspiring Mythologist of our times. Famous for his Hero with a Thousand Faces, The Mythic Image and comprehensive four volume encyclopedic Masks of God, developed the concept of the "Monomyth," relating the hero pattern to the individual psychological journey. With incredible knowledge and a joyous manner he has energized a generation of young mythology students. A brilliant literature teacher at Sarah Lawrence College, he felt that the best way to uncover the truths hidden under the figures of religion and mythology was to learn the grammar of the symbols as reported in psychoanalysis. Listing the remarkable contributions that discoveries of archeologists, ethnologists, and orientalists have made toward the unveiling of the mysteries of mythology, Campbell says "most remarkable of all, are the revelations that have emerged from the mental cinics." He believed that Freud and Jung and their followers had demonstrated irrefutably that the heroes and the deeds of myth survive into modern times because they are patterns of human behavior. He describes the standard path of the mythological adventure of the hero as a magnification of the formula represented in the rites of passage: x. SEPARATION, y. INITIATION z. RETURN. He calls this the "nuclear unit of the monomoyth," a "COSMOGONIC ROUND" It is interesting that Campbell credits Otto Rank for contributing ideas, but not Raglan who emphasized ten years before that the rites around which myth tended to cluster were birth, initiation, and death. Campbell has inspired the present generation with a renewed interest in the importance of mythology because he seems to have tapped the very energy of which he speaks: "It would not be too much to say that myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human cultural manifestations. Religious, philosophical arts, the social forms of primitive and historic man, prime discoveries in science and technology, the very dreams that blister sleep, boil up from the basic, magic ring of myth," Citing a number of clinical cases of dreams which hauntingly resemble myths, together with their primitive counterparts in ritual, Campbell states his conviction that the purpose and actual effect' of these rituals and dreams was to conduct people safely across those difficult thresholds of transformation that demand a change at crucial times in life, the rites of passage: birth, naming, puberty, marriage, burials; times of severance and change whereby the mind is radically cut away from their attitudes, attachments, and life patterns of the stage being left behind:" It has always been the prime function of mythology and rite to supply the symbols that carry the human spirit forward, in counteraction to those other constant human fantasies that tend to tie it back." Campbell describes the purpose of the hero's adventure as the unlocking of life's forces into the world by x. journeying courageously to the Center of the Earth, y. capturing the prize and z. returning to give his gift to mankind. Around each stage of the journey Campbell sees a clustering of myths dramatizing the archetypal importance of each stage. For example, the archetype of the power at the Center of the earth may be represented by the Tree of Life in the Center of the Garden, a Cosmic Mountain, Mimir's inexhaustible Well, a Fountain in the Midst of the Wood, the World Navel at Delphi; circular enclosures, a coiled Dragon guarding Golden Apples, Gardens or Cities surrounded by walls. Without comment Campbell includes a picture of the Captive Unicorn Tapestry, so popular, I believe, because it gives out the archetypal energy of the Center. B. THE HERO CYCLE AND THE UNIVERSAL PATTERN. In his unpublished missionary book You Are the Hero, Sanfrid Odhner saw the journey of the typical hero as a spiral which parallels physical and individual psychological spirals, regenerative paths, and the collective story of the human race. "Our first explorations," he says, "will be of the scientist's discoveries about myth and mind, to find the allegorical dimensions of the hero's story. There is ample evidence of meaningful analogies. The makers of the myths spoke not of mundane confrontations and itineraries, but of the mind's own journey to fulfillment. And the modern shaman -- the psychoanalyst has unmasked the personifications and read the symbols, and affirmed the astonishing accuracy of myth as a description of our mental processes." "But," he says, "there is a grievous loss in these reconstructions. The modern theories restore to the heir in us his lost pantheons, but stripped of meaning and purpose. Our visions of ideals and destinies, of values and a beckoning perfection, are (to them) "fantasies": shimmerings on the waves of mindless instinct." Sanfrid illustrates in detail how the hero pattern is a universal design seen in the history of the human race, in Swedenborg's descriptions of recurring cycles of the "churches", and the meaning of the Biblical Allegory of the Israelites'journey. Physical, Biological, Psychological, Educational growth follow that pattern so impressed upon the universe that all creative acts, and the very double helix of the DNA can be seen to take this two tracked spiraling form. Rhythms can be seen everywhere: in the creativity of poets, in human emotions, marriages and births, in the frequency of electrical currents, earthquakes, sunspots, tree rings, dream cycles, economic rhythms, waxing and waning of moon, ebb and flow of tides, and in the unconscious human creativity of the Tellers of tales. As Odhner puts it: "Completely unrelated phenomena have been found not only to have the same wavelengths for no apparent reason, but to peak and dip together as though riding the same bus." This universal pattern is not a circle but a spiral: "But no journey of the mind can return the hero in you to his starting point: time, growth, experience, change cannot be undone. We circle the center of the earth each day, a journey of nearly 24,000 miles at the equator, In fact, however, we "return" to a point in orbit more than a million and a half miles from our starting place. If we begin at high noon, we will in a day's time arrive again at noon, but a different noon that is one full turn of spiral closer to whatever season we are approaching." "All physical laws are analogous to the laws of the mind. When we "turn things over in our minds" we are also moving them forward toward what ever purpose we have for thinking about them. This turning while advancing process plotted graphically, describes a spiral whatever phenomena are involved. Prenatal growth takes a spiral course; all parts do not grow at once simultaneously. Growth touches one part at a time, in specific sequence - then the whole series over again, and again." Jung observed how our minds obey, unconsciously, the balancing law, continually fluctuating and alternating in our thoughts between flights of imagination free from the constraints of time and space, and then a "down-to-earth" concern with the hard facts and solid realities of this world -- one state brings about the need for the other." In a final grand analogy Odhner relates all these rhythms and spirals to the living human pulsing of love, wisdom and use, reflections of the Purpose and Meaning in the Divinely Human Trinity. THE MYTH OF THE ETERNAL RETURN or, COSMOS AND HISTORY Mircea Eliade's original essay of 1949, was entitled in French, Le Mythe de I'eternal retow: archetypes et repetition. "Retour" seems to express Eliade's thesis better than the English "return" because "tour" implies perpetual movement whereas "return," as we use it today, seems to imply coming back and staying here. Mircea Eliade begins his essay with a treatment of the differences of attitude of archaic societies and modem societies in their concepts of time. Modern, "western" man tends to view time as a linear•, chronological spectrum, in a straight line, from early times to the present; primitive, archaic and Oriental man tends to see time as circular and repetitive. Rites and ceremonies to those traditional societies seem often to recapture past cosmic events, like the creation of the world: to re actualize, bring back, or relive past important events. The performance of ceremonies and recollection of myths not only symbolize, but actually bring back the reality of early events, outside of time as we know it. The sun returns the moon returns, spring returns, why does not the "past return? This concept is very hard for some of us Westerners to grasp, and yet we need to try; therapists say we need to live more in the present, rather than in the past or future, in order to be happy; after all, the spiritual world is apart from time and space. In many ways, time is our fearful master; eternity sets us free. Eliade explains something of the relationship of myth, cosmos, time and history in his own words: "The essential theme of my investigation bears on the image of himself formed by the man of the archaic societies and on the place that he assumes in the Cosmos. The chief difference between the man of the archaic and traditional societies and the man of the modern societies with their strong imprint of Judaeo-Christianity lies in the fact that the former feels himself indissolubly connected with the Cosmos and the cosmic rhythms, whereas the latter insists that he is connected only with History." "But this "history" of the Cosmos and of human society is a "sacred history "preserved and transmitted through myths More than that, it is a history that can be repeated indefinitely, in the sense that the myths serve as models for ceremonies that periodically re actualize the tremendous events that occurred at the beginning of time. The myths preserve and transmit the paradigms, the exemplary models, for all the responsible activities in which men engage. By virtue of these paradigmatic models revealed to men in mythical times, the Cosmos and society are periodically regenerated." Two hundred years before Eliade, the Writings threw Their Light on the relationship of Historic and Cosmic time: "The Divine is in all time, apart from time. As the Divine, apart from space, is in all space, so also, apart from Time is it in all TIME. For nothing which is proper to nature is measurable, and so is Time This is measured by days, weeks, months, years, and centuries; days are measured by hours; weeks and months by days; years by the four season; and centuries by years, Nature derives this measurement from the apparent revolution and annual motion of the sun of the world. But in the spiritual world it is different, the progressions of life in that world appear in like manner to be in TIME for those there live with one another as men in the world live with one another; and this is not possible without the appearance of TIME. But TIME there is not divided into periods as in the world, for the sun is constantly in the east and is never moved away; for it is the Lord's Divine Love that appears to them as a sun. Wherefore they have no days, weeks, months, years, centuries, but in place of these there are STATES of life, by which a distinction is made which cannot be called, however, a distinction into periods, but into STATES. Consequently, the angels do not know what TIME is and when it is mentioned they perceive in place of it STATE; and when state determines TIME, time is only an appearance. For joyfulness of state makes TIME seem short and joylessness of state makes TIME seem long; from which it is evident that TIME IN THE SPIRITUAL WORLD IS NOTHING BUT QUALITY OF STATE. It is from this that in the Word, hours, days, weeks, months, and years, signify STATES and progressions of state in series and in the aggregate; and when times are predicated of the church, by it 'morning" is meant its first state, by "mid-day" its fullness by "evening" its decline, and by "night," its end. The four seasons of the year, "spring," "summer", autumn," and "winter,: have like meaning."DLW 73. AC. 10133. -2. That "Continually" denotes all, and in all, that is, all of worship and in all worship, is because it involves TIME, and in the heavens, where the Word, is not understood in the natural sense, but in the spiritual sense, there is not any notion of TIME but instead of times are perceived such things as belong to state, Here therefore by "continually" is perceived a perpetual state in worship, thus all worship, and in all worship. C. Northwestern European Mythology, although comparatively recent in time and familiar in culture, preserves for us essential remains from the Ancient Church and Ancient Word. The Science of Correspondences was first cultivated in Egypt and Greece, but the themes of hope of an Afterlife, the Last Judgment, the heroic Rebirth and the Eternal Return of the King seem to resound in a grand crescendo in the land where roots of the New Church would be planted. The Scandinavian and Germanic gods, Odhin/Wotan, Thor/ Donner, Frigga/Freya and the mischievous Loki, have deep roots in ancient Indo European myth, paralleling the Greek and Hindu pantheons in many ways: however, characteristics shift and change and recombine: From the ancient Sky god Dayus Piter we first find Tyr/Tui as the chief god of the North, he who courageously sacrificed his right hand to the jaws of the Fenris wolf in order to save the gods; later there is a split into the duo of Thor the Thunderer, and Odin, god of Wit and Wisdom. It is not Odin-All Father, however, who like Father Zeus, flashes the thunderbolt, but it is Thor/ Dormer who rides into the North from the Eastern Iranian Plateau, brandishing his Hammer (like thunderbolts, a symbol of power). Thor is accompanied by a mystical Shaman-like Odin, wearing a grey cloak, hat over one eye, riding Sleipnir, the eight-footed horse .These recombinations of attributes are confusing unless we remember that God is One but His Attributes are perceived in various kaleidoscopic ways by different people. We inherit this Norse culture through the Anglo-Saxons, from whom we get Tui's day, Woden's day, Thor's day and Freya's day. Also, great artists have kept alive the spirit of Northern myth : Shakespeare reflects the Norns in the three weird witches of Macbeth; C.S. Lewis describes passionately the longing twinges of joy he experienced as he read about anything "Northern;" his friend Tolkein, made perpetually popular the dwarfs and underground treasures of the Nibelung: Lewis' mentor, George Mac Donald and his Princess and the Goblin tapped the ancient archetypes. Richard Wagner's genius translated northern motifs in the Ring Operas and the heroic Lohengrin and Parsifal. The legends first came to us from the Scandinavian Volsunga Saga and the German Nibelungenleid. Fortunately traveling westward, the Nordic lore was "frozen" in Iceland where its purity was preserved from the changes in mainland Europe. The ancient racial memory was stored in the Eddas, not to be translated into English until the 19th Century. Behind all the hammering and thundering are the dark clouds of JUDGMENT: Ragnarok/Gotterdamarung Twilight of the gods. There are grand archetypal images of the World Tree, Yggdrassil, whose roots extend into all reaches of heaven and hell; the Grand Man, Ymir, from whose body the whole universe was created; and the Rainbow Bridge, Bifrost, heroically guarded against Chaos; and only the courageous carried to Valhalla. After the Beautiful Sun God was mortally wounded by the mistletoe, all the world became dark. Odin, who gave his RIGHT EYE to drink deep of Mimir's Well of Wisdom, sent Helmud on his great HORSE on the terrible journey down to Hela's underworld realm to bring back Baldur. But because there was still one pair of eyes (Loki's) who would not weep for Baldur, he could not return. It was promised, however, that one day, at the end of time, the beautiful Sun God would return and there would be a new heaven and a new earth. The EYE and the HORSE provide the way back for the Sun God. "Now it is permitted to enter Intellectually into the Mysteries of Faith." REBIRTH. The CELTIC FAIRYLAND of ancient Wales, Ireland, Scotland, Cornwall and Brittany, still preserves on its mists, mystical dreamlike elements which assure us of the REALITY of the SPIRIT WORLD: There is Reincarnation in the MAGIC CAULDRON, quest for the fountain of ETERNAL LIFE and the restorative power of the GRAIL all testifying to belief in the AFTERLIFE. Perhaps more than any other, our own Celtic Mythology preserves the idea of the two worlds existing simultaneously. There is no doubt here of the presence of elves, fairies, banshees and leprechauns. The cottage doors must be left open, front and back so the fairies can walk through freely on the cosmic lines of force. There are spirits all around. The great stone circles of Stonehenge and Avebury, the underground Mazes of Tara and, surely picture the same spiral pattern of the spiritual journey as the Cretan Labyrinth and the hero's trials of regeneration. Like the Hindu in the East, this far Western Mythology keeps alive the idea of the afterlife; though naturally perceived, the concept is preserved in the idea of Reincarnation. The Druid priests, like the Brahmins, certainly knew Correspondences; sometimes perverted for their own power; but preserved as a receptive remnant to be reactivated in the Second Coming. The Twilight of the Gods Behind all the hammering and thundering are the dark clouds of JUDGMENT: Ragnarok/Gotterdamarung Twilight of the gods. There are grand archetypal images of the World Tree, Yggdrassil, whose roots extend into all reaches of heaven and hell; the Grand Man, Ymir, from whose body the whole universe was created; and the Rainbow Bridge, Bifrost, heroically guarded against Chaos; and only the courageous carried to Valhalla. After the Beautiful Sun God was mortally wounded by the mistletoe, all the world became dark. Odin, who gave his RIGHT EYE to drink deep of Mimir's Well of Wisdom, sent Helmud on his great HORSE on the terrible journey down to Hela's underworld realm to bring back Baldur. But because there was still one pair of eyes (Loki's) who would not weep for Baldur, he could not return. It was promised, however, that one day, at the end of time, the beautiful Sun God would return and there would be a new heaven and a new earth. The EYE and the HORSE provide the way back for the Sun God. "Now it is permitted to enter Intellectually into the Mysteries of Faith." The Celtic Fairyland REBIRTH. The CELTIC FAIRYLAND of ancient Wales, Ireland, Scotland, Cornwall and Brittany, still preserves on its mists, mystical dreamlike elements which assure us of the REALITY of the SPIRIT WORLD: There is Reincarnation in the MAGIC CAULDRON, quest for the fountain of ETERNAL LIFE and the restorative power of the GRAIL all testifying to belief in the AFTERLIFE. Perhaps more than any other, our own Celtic Mythology preserves the idea of the two worlds existing simultaneously. There is no doubt here of the presence of elves, fairies, banshees and leprechauns. The cottage doors must be left open, front and back so the fairies can walk through freely on the cosmic lines of force. There are spirits all around. The great stone circles of Stonehenge and Avebury, the underground Mazes of Tara and, surely picture the same spiral pattern of the spiritual journey as the Cretan Labyrinth and the hero's trials of regeneration. Like the Hindu in the East, this
far Western Mythology keeps alive the idea of the afterlife; though naturally
perceived, the concept is preserved in the idea of Reincarnation. The Druid
priests, like the Brahmins, certainly knew Correspondences; sometimes perverted
for their own power; but preserved as a receptive remnant to be reactivated in
the Second Coming. The heroic Arthur of Britain is wounded on Mount Badon, is taken to the Isle of Avalon where he is tended by lovely ladies and restored for the eternal return: the Once and Future King.
Quest in Ancient Essex- Museum Lecture(Newsletter)
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