JANGLELAND

BLACK BILE ON FIRE

2008-03-11T15:34:00.000-07:00

Black Bile on Fire

A most intriguing explanation for the importance of the figures of Arcadian shepherds in the Renaissance relates to the occult philosophy of the period. It must first be realised that there was at that time a necessity of finding a sanction within the traditions of the then dominant religion – Christianity – for reclamation of the beautiful treasures of the culture of pagan Greco-Roman Antiquity that were coming to light. If a validation for elements of that culture could be found of sufficient elegance, brilliance, and superhuman interconnectivity, it would seem to have divine support. Such an idea was found, still potent enough to fill the body with shivers, and I shall do my best to explain it as well as I can here.
A text named Aristotle's Problem XXX was considered until the 17th century to have been written by Aristotle himself. It was next assigned to the non-specific authorship of a “Pseudo-Aristotle”, and more recently it has been thought by some to be the work of Theophrastus, Aristotle’s successor. Working from the idea expressed in Plato’s Phaedrus that “frenzy, provided it comes as the gift of heaven, is the channel by which we receive the greatest blessings”, the “Artistotle” text described how the humor of melancholy could become this kind of frenzy. This idea was taken on by Marsilio Ficino, founder of the Platonic Academy of Renaissance Florence, who wrote, in De vita triplica, that there is a type of melancholy that ignites and burns in a spiritual way. This melancholy ignited into a fiery ecstasy, incidentally, was the explicitly stated aim of the song Feel So Sad by the retro indo-rock band Spiritualised, and although Jason Pierce did not, in the interview, reference Ficino, the song provides a clear experiential understanding of the state Ficino was talking about. But what has this to do with the Shepherds of Arcadia?

Shepherds of Arcadia I

Virgil : New Ager

The concept of inspired melancholy was taken on by Henricus Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim, and expressed in his De Occulta Philosophia. Developping Ficino’s ideas, he spoke of three types of gift-giving melancholy. “The humor melancholius, when it takes fire and glows, generates the frenzy which leads to wisdom and revelation, especially when it is combined with a heavenly influence, above all with that of Saturn.” We are told how through this inspired melancholy people have become, variously, prophetic Sybils, poets, and other types of genius. The first type of melancholy was said to attract Earth spirits, i.e. elementals, or faeries, resulting in “wonderful instruction in the manual arts; thus we see a quite unskilled man suddenly become a painter or architect.” The second type involves different types of spirits, and results in skills of philosophy and oratory, we are told, while the third kind attracts beings from the angelic realms and results in inspired spiritual wisdom. In this model all three types involve prophesy, and it is the type of philosophy that comes through in the third type that is of interest with regard to the Shepherds of Arcadia. This type of prophesy could show us “approaching prodigies, wonders, a prophet to come, or the emergence of a new religion, just as the Sybil prophesied Jesus Christ long before he appeared,” according to the text.

This was a direct reference to Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue, which was believed to refer to a prophesy of the coming of Christ. I’m using here the rendering into English prose by Lonsdale and Lee first published in 1871.

“Now has come the latest age of the Cumaean hymn,” wrote Virgil, referring to the Italian oracular sibyl of Cumae, “the mighty line of cycles begins its round anew. Now to the maiden Astraea returns.” Astraea is the personification of justice; it was said that she had left the Earth and gone into the stars as the constellation of Virgo holding Libra, the Scales of Justice. The return to Earth represents a return of justice, of good men rewarded. Virgil continues: “The reign of Saturn returns.” Saturn was said to have ruled during the ancient Golden Age; the age before bronze and iron – before weapons and warfare, in other words. The people of Arcadia, the oldest and most aboriginal of people, were thought to have maintained their simple culture from that time. “Now a new generation of men is sent down from heaven,” continues Virgil. “Only be thou gracious, Lucina,” (the Roman goddess of childbirth), “to the birth of the child, beneath whom the iron race shall begin to fail, and the golden race to arise in the world.”

Shepherds of Arcadia II

But these vague connections between a figure who shares divine child symbolism with Christ and a people loosely associated with Arcadia are just the beginning of the complex, beautiful Renaissance idea of which I am speaking. The key idea of which to take note is that the Arcadian Academy of Rome saw it as particularly significant that shepherds watching their flocks in the fields had been the first to hear word from the angel of the birth of Christ. Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue is just that - one of the Eclogues - pastoral poems sung by shepherds in rustic settings. Hearing word of the coming birth of Chirst, as when the shepherds received word from the angel Gabriel, is, in fact, prophetic insight. Furthermore, pastoral poems were traditionally melancholic in nature, the most obvious theme being yearning for love, and in Virgil the shepherds display a poetic skill seemingly more civilized than their general way of life, and the influence for this could easily be ascribed to the nymphs, the elementals of the Earth. In the earliest known examples of the genre, by Theokritus, the shepherd Daphnis actually died for love. Their simple lifestyle is of the type that goes back to the age before bronze and iron, back to the age of Saturn, who in the Renaissance view was their obvious ruling planet anyway, as they were inspired melancholics. The people of Arcadia were held to be the most skilled in the playing of country music, and this again could be seen as being a result of this same type of inspiration. And so we move on to the big BINGO moment.

Jerome in his Cell

Poussin: New Ager

How does this connect in particular to Poussin and his own depiction of the Shepherds of Arcadia? It has been observed that for the figure of the kneeling bearded shepherd in The Shepherds of Arcadia II, Poussin simply borrowed a figure from another of his paintings as the model. But wait ‘til you hear which figure he used - that of a shepherd kneeling in adoration of the new born Jesus in his painting of the Adoration of the Shepherds! Here then is an Arcadian shepherd who is also one of the shepherd-prophets of Christ. But what of the skull on the tomb in his earlier Shepherds of Arcadia I?

This skull in fact simply confirms that the painting relates to the tradition of inspired melancholy, for it goes back to Dürer’s engraving St Jerome in His Cell, which was sold as part of a pair with his engraving Melancholy I.

St Jerome in His Cell shows the melancholy genius at work, with a skull prominently displayed on the window sill, a memento mori, by this time a symbol of a melancholic contemplation of the shortness of our stay in this realm.

So the Shepherds of Arcadia are divinely inspired melancholic prophets of a coming Golden Age. But what then of the river god who pours out water from a jar in The Shepherds of Arcadia I? The simplest reading of the symbolism is that the coming age is not that of Pisces, which was already three quarters through in Poussin’s time, but of the Age of Aquarius, making Poussin or his commissioners the earliest of the New Agers looking forward to the Age of Aquarius.

The poetic products of the Arcadian Academy of post-Renaissance Rome are not judged to be any match for the works of, for example, Virgil, but that is not really the point. The real value of the brilliant Renaissance Arcadia idea is that it allowed elements of the beautiful culture of Classical Antiquity, vessels of the European Dreamtime, to be sanctioned and thus continued even during the dominance of the anti-pagan Christian religion, like the ark allowing the animals and plants to sail over the flood and plant themselves now in less restricted and contrived forms in these more liberal times, at the end of what astrologers call the Age of Pisces.

Dionysiac Double Solomon Seal

2008-02-28T13:47:00.000-08:00

first the pics, for the lazyites:

Roman theatre and its essential construction geometry, as described by Vitruvius

The Greek Theatre, with geometry based on four squares

The Greek Theatre, with geometry based on interlocking triangles and a geometrically interrelated square

Then the extract from Amazement Arcadia [last part of chapter 2]:

Let us follow a different lead. We’ve seen how Titian’s Bacchus and Ariadne depicts the Boötes constellation, and have mentioned that, as observed by Phillip Coppens, Poussin’s Shepherds of Arcadia II also depicts Boötes, as well as the nearby figure of Hercules. We know that another name for the Boötes constellation was Ikarios, who is the archetypal Dionysian initiate in that he is raised from the tomb, and passes on the Dionysian gifts and celebrations, perhaps also the accompanying Mysteires. We may note that it was not Poussin’s Arcadian Shepherds paintings that first carried the phrase Et In Arcadia Ego, but a painting by Guercino. This same painter also painted a raising of Lazarus that is strongly suggestive of the raising of the initiate in the Third Degree of Freemasonry. In this Masonic initiation the candidates are raised from the tomb; are asked to consider their mortality, and also the rising of their spirit from the grave to shine eternally like the stars. This, of course, is what happens to Ikarios when he rises up as the Boötes constellation. Could it be that this Freemasonic raising goes back to Dionysian initiation? Well funnily enough, there is a Freemasonic tradition which claims that the proto-Freemasons of ancient times were a group called the Dionysiac Artificers. These were said to be a group with Greek roots who lived in the Phoenician city of Tyre in the Lebanon, and who were employed by Solomon in the construction of the Temple of Solomon. Their chief architect was said to be a figure called Hiram Abiff, who suffered a fate similar to Ikarios, even being buried at the foot of a tree, as Ikarios was. So those masons at work in the Temple of Solomon were Phoenicians from Tyre, according to the Masonic tradition, and as it happens the ancient novel Leucippe and Clitophon by Tatius provides us with a version of this very Ikarios story that is set in Tyre. Paraphrasing from the recent translation by Tim Whitmarsh (Oxford World's Classics):- The inhabitants of Tyre consider Dionysos to be a local god.... They say they were the first to receive the gift of wine...the original mother of wines had her birth there. They tell a story of a local hospitable shepherd who they claim to be an equivalent of the Athenian figure of Ikarios. Dionysos visited this herdsman, who gave him gifts of all the pastoral produce he possessed. Dionysos thanked him, and gave him a cup of wine out of gratitude. He drank it and went into a rapture of ecstasy at the taste, asking what it was."This is Autumn's Liquid," replied the god. "This is the blood of the grape cluster." What could a group of artisans devoted to Dionysos have had to do with the Temple of Solomon? We may recall here that over the years Solomon has come to be associated with a particular geometric figure – the Seal of Solomon, also known as the hexagram made from interlocking equilateral triangles. We shall see soon that this geometry does in fact link into the heart of the traditions of the Artisans of Dionysos in Antiquity. Freemasonry evolved amongst guilds of stonemasons. Turning our attention to the guilds present in the earlier period in Athens, we note that they could have their own Mysteries. So, for example, the Praxiergidai who carried out some secret ceremony during the festival in which a sacred statue of Athena on the Acropolis in Athens was given a new robe were probably an ancient guild, according to R.J.Hopper in The Acropolis, p.65. Turning our attention to the Greek stonemasons, there are some myths that seem to have been particularly favoured by them. The Battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs was carved in many places: onto the Parthenon on the Acropolis, the Hephaestum temple in the Agora in Athens (formerly called the Theseum perhaps for this reason, since Theseus is a prominent figure in the story), and also the Athenian Treasury of Delphi, all of which might not seem so strange with Theseus being a legendary figure important to the Athenians. However the myth is not set in Athens, but in Thessaly, and scholars have long puzzled over the question of why this same myth should also have been carved onto the Temple of Apollo in Bassae and to have pride of place also on the pediment of so important a building as the Temple of Zeus in Olympia, especially since it is a myth which received very little attention from those who put pen to paper rather than lifting chisel to stone, and was certainly not as famous as others of Theseus’ exploits. Perhaps it should cause us some interest that versions of the story feature the figures of Boötes and his daughter, like the Ikarios myth, and that it is in fact a version of that same myth, namely of figures who became drunk and abusive when misusing the gift of wine. In this version Daidamia a daughter of Boötes is marrying Perithouos, best friend of Theseus. The centaurs are sat with various others of the guests in a cave. The motif of the Thessalian cave normally crops up in connection with the Centaur Cheiron, and sometimes in the context of Mystery Initiation, as with Aristaeus. When the wine is brought round the Centaurs overdo it, drinking it unmixed, and then run riot, and Theseus leaps into the fray to drive them off. Robert Graves couldn’t accept that such a story would be used on so many temples unless it was connected to some ceremony. He imagined a coronation dance in which the new king danced in mock battle with silenus-figures representing the Centaurs. For me, the connection is through the Ikarios myth, and through that to the Dionysiac Artificers of Tyre since that city had its own version of the Ikarios myth. Considering this and the way that the Lapiths and Centaurs story seems to have been a stock myth of the temple builders, I being to wonder whether the story was in fact part of a Mystery Initiation of a temple-builder guild. It is best to imagine that the purpose of this initiation was the opening of the Sight and through that the understanding of the initiate to the beauty of the Realm of Forms, this being perception and knowledge which must be possessed by any architect engaged in classical design. “Temples were built to access the laws of perfection in higher worlds and to imprint these laws in the minds of the people.” Alchemy of Nine Dimensions, Barbara Hand-Clow Socrates’ as mentioned in Chapter 1 is thought to have come from a family of stonemasons, and I suggest again that this was one possible origin for his philosophy of Forms, which does not in this case have to contradict the theory that he received the knowledge from priests and priestesses, since such figures could, and did, preside over the guilds. So then we may perhaps imagine the initiate in the cave undergoing a symbolic mock death at the hands of the horse-totem figures in Silenus costumes representing the Centaurs; a raising would follow and somewhere would be included the sight of figures of the fixed constellation animals placed onto the cave walls as in the Persian initiations described by Porphyry, and the Simile of the Cave in The Republic, presumably also depicting the Boötes region connected with this myth. Through this they would hopefully sense the subtle light of the totemic Akashic Records, M-fields, the Realm of the Eternal, and activation of this perception would then become the continual purpose underlying all their architectural activities, “keeping the Eternal in mind and using it as the model of the form of their productions” as Timaeus advises – great advice for stone masons. So it would have been practical knowledge for the stonemason, the least speculative type of initiation. We just noted that the myth had its counterpart in Tyre, and so a variant of the initiation was probably carried out there, rather as with the Freemasonic traditions of the Dionysiac Artificers of Tyre. So let me get more to the point, for in fact there really were guilds in antiquity with this name, Dionysou Technitai, “Artisans of Dionysos”. These guilds were companies of artists and musicians who worked in and for the theatres from at least the 3rd century BC. It is intriguing that each of these guilds of Dionysos was headed by a priest of Dionysos, for this tells us that there must have been some kind of ceremonial, cultic, initiatory element to membership. As students of music they may well have learnt about harmony and proportion. In Geometry and the Liberal Arts by Dan Pedoe, who was a professor of Mathematics at the University of Minnesota, we read how Vitruvius, the Roman architect of Augustus who studied in Athens, said that an architect “should be skilful with his pencil, instructed in geometry, conversant with history, should have followed the philosophers with attention, should understand music…and be acquainted with astronomy and the theory of the heavens.” We can reasonably connect the Dionysou Technitai, surely, directly to the architecture of these theatres, which was formal and geometric as I mentioned briefly in the last chapter. Vitruvius recorded the standard geometry underlying the Roman theatre. It was, we read in Pedoe’s book, based on a dodecahedral structure formed from four equilateral triangles. The connection with the Zodiac is implicit in the geometry, and Vitruvius made it explicit in his description. “In the [main] circle, inscribe four equilateral triangles at equal distances apart, as the astrologers do when constructing the Zodiac,” wrote the ancient architect.

Already we may note that this pattern is simply made of a double Seal of Solomon, with four equilateral triangles rather than the simple two. This is rather interesting, for here we have an architectural structure deriving from the real, historical Artisans of Dionysos yet relating geometrically to that same pattern with which their legendary equivalents are associated in Freemasonic tradition. Put another way, the theatres of Dionysos were in a sense temples of the Seal of Solomon. The Greek theatre was similar to the later Roman in its sacred geometry, being again based on dodecahedral geometry, but with features that indicate the presence of a square within the underlying pattern. Dan Pedoe has the Greek theatre geometry as being formed from three squares rather than four triangles.

However, there is in fact an interesting way in which the square relates to the same pattern made of the four equilateral triangles described by Vitruvius, as shown below. [actually above]

And this too is intriguing, for it leads us back to Poussin, and his Shepherd’s of Arcadia. There is a book called The Tomb of God which concerned the part played by Poussin’s paintings in the “Rennes-le-Chateaux” mystery. Its ultimate conclusion was a big leap from its initial detective work. The conclusion had to do with interpretations along the lines of a map indicating the location of the tomb of Jesus in the South of France. Here we are concerned only with the initial detective work, for the presence of this geometry in the “discovered” parchments can hardly be denied. It was geometry the writers Andrews and Schellenberger also found in Poussin’s two Shepherds paintings. Does this indicate that the link between those paintings and the old Dionysian Mysteries was not just astronomical, but also geometric? If so, the evidence for continuity of those Mystery Traditions in some form is certainly beginning to mount up. In the final chapter we shall return to these French Mysteries of the Seal of Solomon.

For the moment, before we go on to the next chapter, perhaps we may also reasonably connect the Dionysou Technitai, the artisans who worked in the theatres, with the skene, the large paintings that often formed the backdrop for the plays. This is of interest as these paintings may well be the origin of the ekphrasis-based novelistic Mysteries we examined in the first chapter, which fits with the hypothesis we had begun to form at the end of that chapter, namely that those Mysteries of constellation-based ekphrasis had been passed on in the Dionysian Mysteries. Rather more confident about this, we proceed now to Chapter 3.

Scott Creightonesque treatment of massive Thornbourh henges

2008-02-19T09:56:00.000-08:00

Long Man comparisons

2008-02-19T04:32:00.000-08:00

Comparisons with animated Was-bearing ankhs from a piece in Tut's tomb treasures, and with the Egyptian serpent-wand bearing Hekka in a ceiling image

Marlow Thameside Floodplain Round Barrows : Telescopic Image of Orion's Belt

2008-02-19T03:24:00.000-08:00

The three round barrows are located on a floodplain just north of the Thames, just west of Marlow, Bucks, UK, Archaeologists say they would originally have been surrounded for much of the year by water. They now only show up as crop marks in aerial photos because they were ploughed flat by a farmer. In terms of size, configuration, and comparison with a telescopic photo they bring to mind Orion's Belt, which then further brings to mind the Giza Orion correlation, those 'burial mounds' also being next to a river. Then we recall Thornborough, same configuration (bigger scale), on floodplan next to a large river in North Yorkshire.

FROGS COMEDY FIRST PART ABRIDGED

2008-01-27T09:01:00.000-08:00

It’s a midwinter evening in 393 A.H. (After Homer), and we’re sitting about midway up, somewhat to the left in the audience of the Theatre of Dionysos in Athens, awaiting the start of Aristophanes’ new play, The Frogs.

Two figures come on stage. One has a Dionysos mask, but seems to have thrown a Hercules costume over his clothes – he wears what looks like a lion-skin and he carries a club. The other follows behind riding a donkey and carrying a lot of luggage on his back. This second character speaks to the first:-

“Dionysos, Sir, I’ve just remembered a gag that suits our present situation.”
“Oh dear Heaven, what’s coming now?”
“It’s a good one.”
“Really? Are you sure it’s not just the one where you shift your bags around on your back and then complain that you really need to dump your load?”
“No, no, it’s completely different to that.”
“Which one is it then?”
“It’s the one where I ask for someone to take over the task for me, except I use the phrase ‘relieve me.’ ‘Won’t somebody relieve me?’ you see, then I can say ‘before I relieve myself.’”
“Er…right well Xanthus I’ll tell you what: if at any point it suddenly becomes necessary for me to vomit, I’ll get you to do that gag.”
“Hmm. Well you’re not suggesting I go to the trouble of carrying these props without even getting a joke out of it? There’s an amusing baggage scene in every comedy these days.”
“Yes, well there’s not going to be one in this play. Let’s leave all that frightfully witty stuff to those other playwrights, shall we? Anyway, what’s the problem – the donkey is doing the hard work.”
“What? I’m the one carrying the bags!”
“How can someone be the bearer of something, if something else is bearing them?”
“Well that sounds a bit too philosophomological to me, all I know is we’ll have to stop.”
“Why?”
“Because I need to dump my load.”
“Ah, here we are anyway, at Hercules’ house.”

Dionysos knocks on the door of a house façade on stage. Hercules answers it.
“My word,” says Hercules with a chuckle, “what on Earth are you doing dressed as me?”
“I want to emulate one of your feats, I need to go down into the Underworld and bring someone back. So I need your advice.”
“Who do you want to fetch back?”
“Well the other day I was sitting on deck, reading the script of Euripides’ Andromeda, when I thought to myself what a shame we haven’t got any classy poets like that alive in Athens any more. I had a craving.”
“A craving?”
“Yes. How can I put this in terms you’ll understand? You know that feeling when you really want a big bowl of pea soup?”
“Yes.”
“Well it feels like that, except I want some decent poetry. So first of all tell me, how do I get down to the Underworld?”
“There are many ways. Here’s one.”
“Just a minute, let me make a note of this.”
“You go straight up the road.”
“…up road.”
“Left into Potter’s Row.”
“….Potter’s, yup.”
“Climb up the tower.”
“…..up tower, got it.”
“Then jump off.”
“Then jump…hang on! No that’s not for me. I’ve always hated minced brains. What way down did you take?”
“I crossed the bottomless lake. There is an aged ferryman. Xanthus will have to go the long way round though, no slaves on board I’m afraid.”
“You mean I’ve got to carry these bags all that way?” says Xanthus.
Suddenly a funeral procession comes across the stage, with a corpse being carried. Xanthus has an idea.
“Why don’t we get that stiff to take them across – he’s going that way anyway. I say, excuse me, could you take these bags down to the Underworld with you?”
The corpse sits upright: “I might, for two drachmas.”
“You’re joking,” says Dionysos.
“Onward!” says the corpse to his bearers.
“How about for nine obols?” Dionysos suggests.
“Nine obols! Frankly, I’d rather live. Onward!” He lies down again.
“Pah, to Hell with him then!” says Xanthus. “I’ll take the bags myself.”
Opening scene of The Frogs, Aristophanes, abridged

EAVESDROPPIN' AT THE FESTIVAL OF THE VINTAGE

2008-01-27T08:50:00.001-08:00

Athenian girl being pushed on a swing

Now it is the day of the Festival of the Vintage and we are in a small town a few miles outside Athens. (We’re back in Ancient Greece, later in the same year of 393 A.H. (After Homer). Aristophanes’ Frogs was so well received at its first showing in the Lenaia festival that it was performed a second time, at the Great Dionysia.) Girls are being pushed on swings and libations poured to the shepherd Ikarios, first to receive the gift of wine. Nearby we hear a young boy who is standing holding his grandmother’s hand and watching his sister being pushed on a swing. “Yeya, when was the first Festival of the Vintage?” he asks the benevolent old woman. “That was when King Aristaeus (“The Best”) came back to his kingdom on Ceos from the Oracle at Delphi having consulted his father Apollo. He came back and found the three herdsman from Attica who had killed Ikarios, and he brought them to justice, then he raised a shrine to Ikarios to honour him for sharing the gift of wine, and then he organised the first Festival of the Vintage.” “When will I taste wine, Yeya?” “Today, little one!” “But Yeya, who was King Aristaeus?” “Well, little one, they say his mother was a water nymph called Cyrene. But when he was just a little child, younger even than you, Aristaeus was given into the care of a group of myrtle nymphs and he was fed on nectar and ambrosia by Mother Earth. These fairies of the myrtle bushes taught young Aristaeus useful arts such as how to make cheese from milk, to keep bees and to cultivate the olive, but winemaking was still unknown.”

“And, why did the three herdsman kill Ikarios?”

Dionysos and Ikarios

“Well, Ikarios received from Dionysos the wonderful gift of wine. But it has to be used sensibly. Moderation in all things. Ikarios used to ride around the countryside of Attica carrying wine skins to share the drink with the people, and teach them the Dionysian dances. But this was before people had learnt to mix neat wine with water, and there were some shepherds who drank much too much, which is never a good thing, little one. Some friends of these drunken shepherds met them and did not understand what was happening, and thought they had been poisoned, and attacked Ikarios who, unfortunately, died as a result. Don’t act rashly because appearances can be deceptive. When the drunken shepherds sobered up the killers realised what they had done, and they buried the body under a certain pine tree and left the scene of the crime hoping not to be found out. But no crimes go hidden from the eyes of the Furies, as you shall hear in a moment. Seeing what had happened to his friend, Dionysos arranged with Zeus for the image of Ikarios to be set into the stars as Boötes, the Ideal Shepherd, and put Ikarios’ daughter Erigone next to him as Virgo, and raised their dog Maira into the stars also as Canis Minor, honouring her for having found the place where the shepherd was buried. Ikarios was reborn at the same time at the foot of the pine tree as a vine that wound its way up around the trees' trunk in true Dionysian fashion.”
“Oh. But why did Dionysos chose to give the gift of wine to Ikarios?”
“Well, as I said before, King Aristaeus shared with people the arts he had learnt from the myrtle nymphs, but these didn’t include making wine. Aristaeus was initiated into the Mysteries of Chiron the wise centaur in his mountain cave. Whether it was because of the wisdom he learnt from Chiron, or because his father was an immortal, when he grew to manhood Aristaeus became king of the island of Ceos. He married Autonoe and together they had a daughter called Macris, a nymph like her grandmother.”
“Cyrene.”
“Kala! Well done little one, that’s right. So, when Macris was old enough she joined a group of nymphs called the Hyades, and they were to receive an amazing child into their care, for the great god Dionysos had decided to have an incarnation in Greece.”

“The plant realm rejoiced when this child was born, and he was brought up in a cave by these nurses, and fed on honey. As the child grew up along came a jolly fellow with more than a little horse blood in his veins, who became Dionysos' mentor. His name was Silenus and he rode on a mule. His chops were often bespattered with the juice of myrtles and others of the berries of the hedgerow upon which he loved to feast.

“Before long Dionysos decided it was time to present the gift of wine to mortals, and so he waited to meet a worthy recipient. One day he was walking in the countryside of Attica outside Athens when he met the shepherd called Ikarios out looking after his sheep and goats. The shepherd was very friendly and hospitable, and gave Dionysos gifts of many kinds - milk, honey, different types of fruit. Aha, thought Dionysos, here’s just the sort of fellow who would really appreciate my gift. So Dionysos thanked him warmly and then told him that he had a gift of his own by which to reciprocate the shepherd's generosity. So don’t forget, Dionysos loves the countryside with its hillsides covered with thyme echoing to the rattle of the bells of the flocks and the din of the cicadas as much as he loves the city with its theatres dinner parties, and he likes honest country folk from the hills as much as sophisticated poets from in town. So, this is when Dionysos gave Ikarios a cup of wine, and the good shepherd was sent into rapture as the exquisite taste flowed over his tongue. Dionysos shared also the art of making this beverage, even the cultivation of the vine, and from this time on Ikarios would ride around the hills of Greece in his cart carrying wineskins and introducing the populace to this wonderful drink and to the winemaking process he had also learnt, together with the sacred ceremonies and festivals that went with it.”
“So Ikarios did all the hard work then, while Dionysos was relaxing on the cloud-pillows up in Olympus?”
“Heavens, don’t say such a thing! No, Dionysos went all the way to India and back via Egypt as well, spreading the arts of vine growing and winemaking. He picked up quite a following as he travelled. As well as his mentor Silenus who still travelled with him on his mule there was also the goat-legged Aegipan, "Goat Pan" and a group of satyrs, and also serpent-bearing women called Maenads who picked up in India the idea of clashing little cymbals as they followed behind the god. Even though the closest thing this band had to a weapon was the Dionysian staff wound with ivy or vine and topped with a pine-cone, the grape conquered all India, and then they turned for home, Dionysos leading the band of revellers in a chariot drawn by two leopards, followed by the serpent bearers, the satyrs, Silenus and the rest of the band. The train stopped a while in Persia where Dionysos grew his beard long and learned to wear it in the pointed Persian style. Then the went to Egypt and the maenads added the tambourine to their list of instruments. They almost got into trouble in Egypt when they got thirsty in the desert, but a ram appeared and lead them to the river in Thebes.”
“Where is India, Yeya?”
“Oh, it’s a long, long, long way away, little one.”
“But not if you are a god, though!”
“Well, maybe so, but it wasn’t plain sailing for Dionysos either. Shortly after he had arrived back in the Mediterranean he was wandering down on a beach when a band of pirates captured him and sailed off intending to sell him as a slave, not realizing he was a god. We must be hospitable to strangers, as Ikarios was, but also a little wary, especially little ones like you. But the story also shows how crime doesn’t pay. Dionysos made wild flute music sound in the air and wine flow on the deck, and he made a vine wind up around the mast and ivy twine into the rigging, and he made a roaring lion appear on the deck, causing the pirates to jump ship realising in mid leap that he was, after all, a god, and as they hit the water Dionysos felt compassion and turned them into dolphins so that at least they would not drown. Kidnapping someone to sell them as a slave is one of the most horrible crimes, but we may even feel some compassion for the worst of criminals, little one. Dionysos then took this ship with a vine wound around the mast as his own, and sailed to the island of Naxos.”
“I’ve seen a statue of him there!”
“Yes you have, that’s right. You were there with your father last autumn. And can you remember what happened when Dionysos arrived on Naxos?”
The little boy contorted his face in concentration.
“I can’t remember.”
“Well, a princess from Crete was wandering alone on a beach. Dionysos decided to approach her. At first she just heard the music in the woods inland, the flutes, cymbals and tambourines. She gazed into the dappled shade of the woodland and began to feel the presence of the arriving god. Then the foliage next to the beach began to shudder and suddenly there appeared the young wine god, ivy wreathing his temples, standing on the chariot drawn by the two leopards with the distinctive train of revellers following behind. Dionysos asked her to marry him, but she said she was already married. Don’t you know, said Dionysos, that a lot of mortals have two spouses, one from the land of mortals, and one from the landing of the Shining Ones?
“So she spoke to her family and everyone agreed it would do the island no harm to have this kind of affiliation with a god. And that is why we too, in Athens, have a special day every year when the wife of the Holy King of the city gets married to Dionysos as a second husband.”

THE BRITISH DIONYSOS

2008-01-12T02:55:00.000-08:00

An Examination of Romano-British Material Locked Up
in the Taliesin Tradition of Wales

The Taliesin tradition has been imagined romantically to be a repository of pre-Roman druidic ‘shamanism’. It would be nice if it were so. Others have attempted to show off a harder nosed and more cynical approach by imaging Taliesin to be simply a medieval and Renaissance invention. My intention here is to show that by far the greater part of the tradition has its origins in neither of these periods, but in the agricultural and wine cults of Roman Britain, the Mysteries of Ceres and Bacchus.

Before we look at the details, here in the broadest terms are just a few of the correspondences between Taliesin and Dionysos that cause me to suspect very strongly that the Romano-British element of the Taliesin tradition has been drastically underestimated. Both traditions have:-

· the chase of the infant by an angry goddess and
· animal transformation as disguise to escape this goddess,
· the going back into the belly of the goddess and being born a second time from her,
· the identity as child in the winnow basket and as fermented liquor,
· the common motif of the newly reborn child being sewn in the leather sack
· the floating adrift on the sea followed by the finding of the infant in bag or box,
· the identity as teacher of the art of fermentation,
· the etymology of the name,
· the common motif of inspiration derived from the liquor,
· the rebirth followed by concealment in ivy.
. the rescue of the god's favorite from a prison in which he has been imprisonned by a king, by summoning a tempest to destroy the prison

Taliesin is the centre of an intriguing body of Welsh literature. The consensus of the various sources places Taliesin in Wales somewhere around the beginning of the 6th century AD, that is to say not long after the official Roman withdrawal, and in a region into which the Anglo-Saxons had not moved. Commentators on the material do not yet seem to have acknowledged the source of the majority of the motifs of the tradition. Identifying this source leads to one of the strongest and to my mind most fascinating cases of comparative mythology I have ever seen, and proves direct rather than vague connections. The certainty of these connections we shall now examine, and it is worth doing because it sheds much new light and grants a fascinating new perspective on the Mysteries behind the Taliesin material, one that in no way undermines its Britishness.

The earliest written reference known is in the Historia of the monk Nennius, writing in the 9th century, and he says that Taliesin was ‘famed in British verse’ at the time of the invasion of the Anglo-Saxons, along with other figures similarly famed such as Talhearn and Aneirin. A major source of Taliesin material is the book of seventy-seven poems written down in the 14th century and known as The Book of Taliesin. In the 16th century a version of the Story of Taliesin, named as such, was written down from oral sources by a Welsh writer named Llewellyn Sion, then subsequently variant traditions were recorded by Owen Jones and Lewis Morris. Many of the poems are revealed as things Taliesin will have said at particular stages of dramatizations of this story, though the known sources of the story are later than the poems. And as John Mathews notes in his book Taliesin : Shamanism and the Bardic Mysteries in Britain and Ireland p.20, in agreement with scholars such as J.Wood in an article ‘Versions of the Hanes Taliesin’, there are also enough differences in the spellings of personal names between the manuscripts to tell us that the work was ‘widely diversified’ through various oral traditions by the time these versions were recorded.

To comprehend the material, one can only first approach via the myth itself, which deals with the birth, or rather births of Taliesin, together with an interesting subsequent life story that is believed to have been tacked on the end later on. Taliesin in his myth transforms into various animals while fleeing from an angry goddess, Ceridwen, who opposes his arrival because she favors her own son. In the poetry many of these transformations are mentioned - more than in the core myth - and they include bull and goat. We wouldn’t need to make much of the fact that Dionysos also took the forms of bull and goat if it wasn’t for a further curious similarity: in his myth he was turned into a goat to disguise him from an angry goddess, Hera, who opposes his arrival, because he is not her own son, but the son of Zeus by another mother, sometimes called Semele. So in both myths there is the disguise in animal form to escape the angry goddess, and the names Hera and Ceridwen clearly have a similarity.

At Hera’s behest, Dionysos was killed, but only seemed to die. From his heart a drink was made; this was given to Semele, and she became pregnant from it, and subsequently gave birth to him, so that he was born a second time, earning his name of the Twice-Born. Similarly, Taliesin, having finally turned into a grain of corn, is swallowed by Ceridwen, ‘the Harvester’, on one level certainly a symbol of the Earth taking the grain within herself then giving rebirth to the plant, for similarly she then gave him second birth, there now being less animosity between them since he is born from her he is her own son. But the seed was also used as a symbol for matter suitable for poetry, for Ceridwen is called ‘the goddess of many seeds, the seeds of poetic harmony’ in the Taliesin poem Cuhelyn’s Song. These two interpretations work synergistically to give the image of beautiful foreign matter that is reworked until it becomes resonant with the local land, and so may be accepted into the national cultural canon. I call this the Hera Bypass, since Hera stands for local cultural integrity in opposition to the exotic interests of Zeus. Ceridwen had a son for whom she intended the gift of bardic inspiration, but he was ugly, and the gift went instead by fortuitous accident to the beautiful arrival, Taliesin. It seems from this metaphor that the bards of Druidic accepted some foreign mythology as suitable matter for their poetry because it was too beautiful to shun. How did it arrive? Who brought it?

In the poetry this seed was found in a place where grain was being toasted to release its essence, in other words it was to be used for making beer, just as the drink Semele drank was obviously either wine from the grape or ale from grain, since the killing of Dionysos is actually the harvesting and cutting back of the vine. Taliesin says in The Hostile Confederacy:
“I rested nine months as a child in her belly
I have been matured
I have been offered to a king.”

Here, like Dionysos, he is the fermented drink. In fact, in the poetry Taliesin actually describes himself, after the rebirth from Ceridwen, as having been ‘created a second time’, in other words Twice-Born, just like Dionysos. Dionysos as an infant was sometimes called Liknites after the basket in which he was carried, and this seems to have been a basket used for sieving wheat, similar to a winnow, and Dionysos was the child in the winnow, (Virgil tells us of the “Mystic Winnow Fan of Iacchos”, the infant Dionysos). This is of course directly equivalent to Taliesin becoming a grain and, in the poetry, (The Consolation of Elfin) saying he was ‘small in his basket’.

After he was reborn from Ceridwen, Taliesin was tied up in a leather bag, and in this set adrift. Similarly, the traditions of Dionysos make mention of the leather sack, which was in fact a container called a korykos in which wine or mead was fermented. A rite of mead fermentation was carried out in Crete in a cave called the Korykos Antron, ‘the Cave of the Leather Sack’, we learn in Kerenyi’s Dionysos.

So a leather sack as a container for the god is another motif common to both the Dionysos and Taliesin traditions, and since on Crete Zeus was a bull god (e.g. the Europa story) the ‘thy of Zeus’ into which Dionysos was sewn is revealed as the bull-skin sack. In the Taliesin story this bag was set adrift upon the sea, and even this feature is similar to one present in a Greek version of the arrival of Dionysos, which comes from Pausanias. Here the young Dionysos, yet to find a nurse, was washed ashore in a chest at Prasiai in the Peleponnese.

Dionysos was of course the wine god, the inventor of the wine making process, one of his gifts to humanity. Similarly, in the version of the Taliesin story told by Lewis Morris Taliesin arrives on the shore of Wales and teaches two witches how to ‘boil liquor without heat’, in other words the art of fermentation. Anyone who has ever tried home brewing will know of the furious riot of bubbles that manifests seemingly out of nowhere.

Taliesin himself, in the myth, became inspired after drinking liquor from a cauldron, which reminds us of the Greek Dionysian initiation known as the Kraterzein, in which initiates drank wine from a crater as part of the preparation for the Mysteries. (Kerenyi, Dionysos p.363) The name of Taliesin is given in Latin as Telesinus by Lewis Morris, and this form, I suggest, was the original one, with the Welsh Taliesin, ‘Shining Brow’ or ‘Fine Value’, being a later version. The word teleo is a Latin and Greek word used to mean ‘to initiate’, and was used as a part of Greek names used for one ‘initiated’ into the Mysteries. Taliesin repeatedly refers to himself as initiated. What of the second part of the name, -sinus? Here a Latin scholar is required, but I notice there was a type of Roman drinking vessel called a sinum. Interpreting the name as he who was inspired from the chalice would make sense within the context of the myth of Taliesin. (There was a Roman consul in the time of Nero named Telesinus; he is mentioned in the novel Apollonius of Tyana by Philostratus.)

In Greece a type of song was sung in honour of Dionysos in which the most common theme was the birth of the god. This song was called the dithyramb, and wine was revered as its inspiration. For example, the earliest known composer of dithyrambs is Archilochus, who said that he had first been inspired to do this “when the wine shook his mind with its lightning”. This refers to the birth of Dionysos from Semele after she was burnt up by the light of Zeus, the god of lightning. It shows that Archilochus sought inspiration from wine, while also linking to the Orphic variant in which it was the drink given to Semele which caused her to become pregnant with the god. In other examples the labor pains of Semele were performed by the singer. This is ‘male’ pregnancy – the fertilizing of the mind by the god in the liquor leading to creative incubation and poetic birthing. So poets of Dionysos in Greece claimed their inspiration came from the wine, just as the Taliesin material repeatedly honors the liquor in the cauldron as a source of inspiration.

As just mentioned, in the most common version of the birth of Dionysos, Semele, pregnant with the god, asked to see Zeus, the father of her child, in his full splendor, but in doing so she was burnt up by his light. Zeus rescued the infant from her womb and protected him from his light with a covering of ivy. And in the Taliesin poem The Hostile Confederacy, translated by D.W. Nash, the bard says ‘I have been dead, I have been alive, I have been hidden in the ivy bush.’ On top of all the correspondences we have looked at, this reference not in the Dionsysos but in the Taliesin material to rebirth and concealment within ivy must be taken as a total confirmation. Taliesin or Telesinus is a Romano-British Dionysos; his song of his origins could even be called a Welsh dithyramb. According to Jenifer Laing in her book Art and Society in Roman Britain the Bacchus cult became very popular in Britain, and one of the artefacts she discusses has, as well as Bacchus himself, figures of the group associated with Dionysiac initiation: panther, maenad, satyr and Silenus on his mule.

The nine maidens who kindle the cauldron of inspiration in the Welsh poem attributed to Taliesin, The Spoils of Annwwn, are almost uniformly referred to by modern commentators as the Celtic Muses, yet the full ramifications of the fact that this Roman idea (it was the Romans not the Greeks who made the Muses nine in number) is so central to the Taliesin tradition has perhaps not hit home. Rather as in myth the Twice-Born is hidden in the covering of ivy, so too has he, historically, been concealed within the body of Welsh myth, his true identity as the beautiful Old World plant god of wine, pleasure and ecstatic creativity being largely unrecognized. If part of the reason for this has been a desire for him to have been the product solely of native creativity, then this is surely misplaced, for the Twice-Born is no less Welsh than he was ever Greek, arriving too as he did in Greece from elsewhere. The Twice-Born is characteristically the arriving god, the god who navigates past the opposition of the goddess of indigenousness because he is so beautiful, so naturally an augmentation of her treasures. Greece does not claim his origin, yet none would deny that as Dionysos he became Greek.

For the Greeks it was Hera who was the goddess of that which is indigenous to Greece, the true wife of Zeus, making her the only possible choice of opposition to his arrival. Similarly the Roman Hera, called Juno, opposes the arrival in Italy of the Trojans in the Aenead unless they will not obliterate the native Italian culture and way of life; only if Jupiter (Zeus) agrees to this will she consent to the arrival. So too had it been Hera who was opposed to the affair between Trojan Paris and Greek Helen.

The Romans brought the vine to Britain, so it is logical that they would also have brought its cult, which they had themselves adopted from Greece as well as, quite possibly, from the heavily Hellenized Etruscans, but the Romans themselves were inventors of neither wine nor the cult. Resentment about the Roman ‘conquest’ of Britain may have helped to conceal Taliesin’s origins, but the idenity of the agents of his arrival have little to do with the nature of an idea that was Greek long before it was Roman and Egyptian long before it was Greek. ‘I carried the banner before Alexander’, says Taliesin in his poetry, and ‘I know who fills the river in the Land of the Pharaohs’. Taliesin’s poetic boasts about having been in such places as Ancient Greece and Egypt take on a whole a new light.

The Dionysian cult involved initiations where the candidate was raised from a mock death, an ascension associated with the rise after sunset of Dionysos in his lion-drawn chariot, that is to say Boötes, ‘He who drives the cart’ lead by Leo and Leo Minor, for these were, and still are, the stars of the rebirth of the plants, since these constellations are high in the evening skies during the greening of spring. He is followed by, as Lucius wrote, “the Maeanads, serpent-wreathed” (the Serpent-Bearer constellation), half-horse half-man Silenus on his mule (half-horse Sagittarius), and “Goat-Pan, shaggy in the underpinnings” (Capricorn). Virgil writes in the Georgics that Liber and Ceres (Dionysos and Demeter) are the brightest of the luminaries that guide the sky through the year, referring to Boötes and the adjacent Virgo, who ride high, like the crops of the fields, in the evening skies of summer. Taliesin for his part sings “My home country is in the region of the summer stars” in his poem Primary Chief Bard in the translation of J.Mathews (following Idrisson), and chastises uninitiated bards for not having made the journey of ascension into the stars.

The rebirth initiation featured strongly in the Dionysian cult that made its way into the Roman world, and this fits with the importance of initiation in the Taliesin poems. The initiation is to the status of poet, and there are several explicit references to this. For example, in Culhelyn’s Song, this Culhelyn is described as having ‘the exalted speech of the initiated poet’ (Mathews’ translation). Ceridwen herself in The Chair of Ceridwen sings “I am an initiate of the court of Don. I and Euronwy and Pryderi.” In Taliesin’s Bardic Law Taliesin sings “I have been with the initiates, with Math and the smiths.” Some sort of initiation to a bardic degree was clearly going on in ancient Wales. It is also clear that Satyr was a degree of initiation within the thiasos or Dionysian group, at least by Roman times, and this fits with another detail mentioned in Lewis Morris’ account of the Taliesin story, for he says that a contemporary of Taliesin in Wales at the time was a figure called ‘Aneurin the Satyr’. Initiates believed they would join the great Dionysian thiasos in the sky after death, the men identified with Dionysos as Boötes and the women as Ariadne who wears the Corona Borealis as her wreath, the two riding together in their chariot. And sure enough we find a similar funerary element in the Taliesin material: “Those who read my bardic books will find sanctuary in the Otherworld”, sings Taliesin in Taliesin’s Bardic Law.

To sum up the theory put forward here, I would simply say that the Taliesin tradition takes as its primary source neither pre- nor post-Roman matter, but Roman matter itself. Another connection to the Romans in the Taliesin material comes from the mentions of Virgil as Fferyllt, but one of these can only be of medieval origin. This is a Taliesin poem Cad Goddeu which makes reference to Christ and then immediately after says that Taliesin will be bedecked in gold because of the prophesy of Virgil. By this time Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue with its talk of the coming of a divine child and an age of peace according to some prophecy of the Cumaean sibyl had been interpreted as a prophesy of Christ. The Eclogue concerns the return of Astraea (“Justice”) from the stars (where she ascended as Virgo) back onto the Earth, in other words the return of the Golden Age. If Taliesin says he will be bedecked in the gold of this coming age then he presumably implies that by then his time will have come, his genius justly recognized, or something along those lines.

The second mention of Virgil in the Taliesin material is in the Hanes, the Story of Taliesin. Here Ceridwen “resolved to boil a Cauldron of Inspiration according to the books of Virgil, and the method of it was this: she must first gather certain herbs on certain days and hours, and put them in the Cauldron.” This might cause us to wonder exactly which book of Virgil is referred to. It is The Georgics which describe in poetry how the farmer times his activities to movements of the seasons, stars and heavenly bodies. “The Moon herself has appointed some days in one degree, some in another, as lucky for work. The fifth day eschew…The seventh is lucky to plant a vine….Observe the months and stars of heaven; noting wither the cold planet Saturn retires; into what circles of Heaven the fiery Mercury wanders.” So we are told in Part I of The Georgics. Also in this part is a passage about activities that may be done as one “sits by the late fire of wintry night, watching the hours through” while “the goodman’s wife with song beguiles her labour long…over Vulcan’s fire boiling down the sweet must, and scums with leaves the water of the bubbling boiling kettle.”

The Georgics could have been read in Britain at any time ranging from the Roman occupation, through the Dark Ages and into the Middle Ages. Further proof that these poems in particular were a strong influence comes from the fact that a passage from Part II turns up in a Taliesin poem. In both of these passages the respective poet asks about the cause of the swelling of the sea and of the darkness of night.

Virgil:
“May the lovely Muses…they whose Mysteries I bear…show me …what force it is by which the deep seas learn to swell and burst their barriers, and again of themselves sink back into their place; why winter suns make so much haste to dip in Ocean, or what obstacle it is that clogs the course of the lingering nights.”
(Georgic Part II)

Taliesin:
“Whence comes night and day?
Why is the eagle grey?
Why is night dark?
Why is the linnet green?
Why does the sea swell?”
(Taliesin’s Bardic Lore)

The resemblance is far too close to be coincidental. It is interesting that both the Virgil passage and the Taliesin poem in question, Taliesin’s Bardic Lore, also commend the invocation of the Muses. Both claim initiation into the Mysteries of the Muses. The burning question is whether or not Taliesin made this claim simply in emulation, or whether some such initiation actually took place in Britain. The frequency of references to deriving inspiration from the cauldron as well as the cultic feel of the myth of Taliesin’s flight and transformations both suggest to me the latter.

The claim of initation into the Mysteries of the Muses itself is also highly reminiscent of a verse by that other great Roman poet, Horace, in Ode III.1 :-

I shun and keep removed the uninitiate crowd.

I require silence: I am the Muses' priest,

And sing for maidens and boys

Songs never heard before.

Though by Horace, that verse would sit perfectly comfortably in the Taliesin material. In Taliesin's Bardic Lore, for example, we read:-

Common men do not receive my knowledge....

I am a bard. I do not vouchsafe

My secrets to slaves.

Some have assumed that the later part of the Taliesin story, the events after Elffin has found the magical child, are a later addition, and that the earliest core of the myth is the series of magical animal transformations. I wonder, however, whether the reverse may be true. Elffin went to the court of Maelgwn Gwynedd and boasted that Taliesin was a better bard than any there. Elffin was thrown into prison, but released when Taliesin, knowing these things at a distance, summoned a tempest to shake down the prison. This parralels similar events in Euripides' The Bacchantes. A stranger, a priest of Dionysos, arrived in Thebes, and was imprisonned by king Pentheus. Dionysos, however, shook the prison to the ground and freed the stranger. Since this would appear to be another reference to Taliesin’s real identity as Dionysos, a pagan god, it seems easier to image these elements being composes in Late Antiquity, around the time of the end of the Romano-British period, than it is to imagine it during the fully Christian, even the Renaissance.

Another direct parralel is to be found in a late version by Iolo Morganwg, 1747-1826. Taliesin was out fishing off the Welsh coast when he was captured by Irish pirates. He escaped and floated ashore into Elffin's salmon wier. Iolo was surely drawing on one of the most famous stories of Dionysos - his capture by and escape from the Tyrhenian pirates.

As regards the series of transformations into various animals, a direct parralel to this is to be found within the Arabian Nights. This is curious. The actual animals are not the same, but the overall motif is. Are both based on some earlier protoype? The Arabian Nights were not published in Europe until much later than versions of the Taliesin tradition containing thus motif. Possibly the motif had been heard by visitors to the Holy Land, being brought back to Late Medieval Wales. A passing similarity - Taliesin changing to hare, Ceredwen to greyhound - may then have been observed and developped using the newly acquired motif. Why do I suppose that these to animals - the hare and the hound - were already part of the story?

This is part of a final argument for the classical origin of the Taliesin tradition, comiong from the connection to the stars. The first animal that Taliesin turns into when fleeing Ceridwen is a hare, and when he does this Ceridwen takes the form of a black greyhound, and chases him. The constellation of Canis Major has Sirius as its bright eye, with its long snout pointing westwards. It strains eagerly towards the West, and of course moves west over the course of the winter on the southern horizon, and over the course of the night if you stay up watching for long enough. Just to the west of it in the sky, the neighboring constellation is Lepus, the Hare. These are very suitable for mythologizing in Britain, for at this latitude they are not too far above the horizon when they pass to the south, so that they can be seen to be running over the hills.

Another of the southern constellations is Crater, which in Greece was seen as a wine-mixing jar. In fact this can be said to be the neighboring constellation of Canis on the eastern side, (with Lepus on the western). This of course corresponds very closely with the cauldron in the Taliesin story, for it was indeed used for mixing the liquor. In it Ceridwen was mixing the beverage with various flowers and herbs. It was because Taliesin had drunk from it that Ceridwen chased him, and he changed to a hare to flee from her. The constellation next to the wine-mixing crater is Corvus, the crow, and the name of Ceridwen’s ugly son, for whom she had intended the beverage in the cauldron, is Morfran, which Celtic seer/scholar John Mathews says means ‘Great Crow’. In fact in the Welsh dictionary morfran, literally ‘sea crow’, is a cormorant, but Morfran as the Corvus constellation next to the Cauldron is not an unhappy placement. While running as a hare Taliesin came to a river, and dived into it, becoming a fish. The constellation towards which Lepus the Hare is running is Eridanus, the River. So there is great potential for a painting of this scene, with Corvus, Crater, Canis Major, Lepus and Eridanus all in their respective places.
Corvus, Crater, Canis Major, Lepus and Eridanus

Old drawings of the Cauldron of Ceridwen and the Taliesin Hare being chased by the Ceridwen Greyhound

The image of Canis chasing Lepus is also found in Ancient Greek art, as in the detail above, on a dish painted by Nikosthenes, on which Corvus, Hyrda and Scorpio can also be seen.

Another Greek image of this scene is more interesting still, for it was uncovered from Highdown Hill near Worthing in Sussex. Again it shows the Hare being chased by the Hound. It has a Greek inscription, and the glass vessel is believed to have been made in Alexandria in Egypt, which again argues for a classical origin for this part of the myth.

The Hare and Hound Vase in the Worthing Museum, with transcribed image, right

Vegetarianism and the Elixir of Life : The Persian Prophecy

2008-01-01T14:11:00.000-08:00

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Sacrifice of ox, with Crater containing the elixir

A recent study showed that the life-span statistics for vegetarians taken en mass is longer than that for meat eaters en mass. How will such statistics affect our culinary choices? A Zoroastrian text, the Greater Bundahisn (34) prophesied that “in the millennium of Aushedar-mah, the strength of appetite will so diminish that men…will desist from meat food, and will eat vegetables and drink the milk of animals”.

However, this same part of the Greater Bundahisn also prophesied that a figure called Soshyant would in this future time sacrifice an ox, and from some of the constituents of its body he would be able to make a drink which would confer immortality upon the drinker. The people would drink this and cease to age. Roman Mithraism took up this theme: the Mithraic temples, such as the one unearthed in London and which in fact dotted the Roman Empire, had depictions of the sacrifice of the bull in the primeval cave and the sacred meal, and after purification with fire the initiates held feasts within the temples.

It might seem strange that beef should be stated as the source of a life-enhancing elixir, after all we are usually told that if we want to be healthy we should cut down on red meat and increase our intake of fish, fruit and vegetables, particularly those high in antioxidants. The fats that come with red meat, on the other had, increase oxidative stress and clog up the arteries. We may be aware that such meat contains energy-releasing chemicals, but we don’t tend to associate them with anti-aging, and certainly few people at the moment think of red meat as a rich source of a particularly useful antioxidant.

However, there is in fact an elixir which has been described as “one of the superstars of alternative anti-aging medicine”, namely acetyl-l-carnitine (ALCAR) plus Alpha Lipoic Acid (ALA). This combination is already sold in health food shops. It featured recently in an article in the New Scientist on life extension. Carnitine is so-named from Latin “carnus” flesh, because it was from red meat that it was first isolated, and this is the richest natural source. Generally speaking, the redder the meat, the higher the levels of carnitine. ALCAR has been shown to reverse symptoms associated with mental decline in the elderly. It appears to reverse some of the age-related damage to mitochondria. It also increases energy levels, making people feel younger. It assists in making fatty acids available to cells to be burnt for energy. This burning, however, is oxidization, and this is where the ALA comes in. Alpha Lipoic Acid is an antioxidant, but it is different from the others because it is both fat and water-soluble and so is easily absorbed and transported across cell membranes. This enables it to protect against free radicals inside as well as outside the cell, which allows it to clean up after the ALCAR, as it were. This Persian prophesy said that there would be a fire which for some would feel like molten lead but for others nothing more harmful than warm milk. Could this be the fire in the body – the burning of fatty acids for energy in the cells?

And red meat is a rich natural source not only of carnitine, but also of alpha lipoic acid. Just as Soshyant made the elixir out of some of the constituents of the ox, these two chemicals are both found in high levels in red meat, and when isolated from the more harmful fat of the meat, and used as high dose supplements, they form an anti-aging formulation. This does not mean of course that meat has to be the source of the supplements, but it is enough in a sense to validate this part of the ancient Persian prophesy.

LIZARD IN THE KITCHEN!

2007-12-09T07:35:00.000-08:00

Staying in Westmeston Place, near Ditcling, there have been a number of surprising encounters of the animal kind. There was the Robin in the kitchen. There was the wallaby sighted by my landlady's daughters. The panther spotted by Dermot who lives next door. I shrink from mentioning the other kind of visitors who came to the kitchen looking for some nibbles. There was even the incident a few weeks back when an old man in Lewes high street called me over and told me:-

"I can't go back into my house because there is an enormous red snake in there."

I offered to tell the police, and then went and did so, to their surprise. I left my details and the address of the man with the snake, and they said they'd send someone round.

The next day the people I'm staying with in Westmeston told me there was a strange messsage for me on the answerphone. I pressed the button.

"Mr Glyn-Jones it's Lewes police station. We're calling to tell you that there wasn't an enormous red snake in the man's house."

I can understand why my house-colleagues would have found this a little strange. And the police hadn't really enlightened me as to why the old man had thought that there was an enormous snake in his house, although thoughts of Weston's Strong Vintage Organic Cider come to mind.

None of this, however, prepared me for the creature that crawled along the kitchen floor a couple of days ago in Westmeston Place.

"Oh my god! What is that!" cried Alina, one of the landlady's daughters.
I went over to have a look.

"It's a lizard!" I said, and suddenly the enormous red snake in the man's house in Lewes didn't seem so impossible after all. "That's the wierdest animal we've had in here yet!" Then I wondered if that sounded a bit rude.

I thought about the matter for a moment, not very clearly.
"Maybe it's a slow worm," I said. "They're actually snakes but they look like lizards."

I thought about it a bit more.

"Oh no, hang on, they're actually lizards but they look like snakes. They haven't got any legs."

This fellow, however, did have legs. What on Earth was he doing walking around the place in December?

"What shall we do with him?" asked Alina.

I responded by placing a bowl over him and said "First I'm going to finish my dinner."

I wondered whether the newly built swimming pool shed in the orchard at the end of the garden might be the safest place for a lizard to hole up during the night.

"What about the swimming pool shed?" Alina suggested, just after this thought.

"I was just thinking the same thing!" I said.

So after my dinner I took the little fellow down to the shed, although not without misgivings. What if he had a perfectly good home which he had been on his way back to before I put the bowl over him? And how would he find enough to eat and drink before he settled back into hypernation? Still, it seemed the only way forward.

Shortly after when I was back in the kitchen my landlady returned.

"It wasn't a newt?" she suggested when I informed her about the recent goings on.

A newt! Of course it was a newt!

"There are lots of newts in the pond," she added.

Yes indeed there were, and now I recalled Dermot telling me how at night after it has rained the newts go crawling around the fields. This was such a night - the grass all lovely and wet for a newt to go crawling around in.

Using my phone as a torch I hunted around the shed to try and find the poor little fellow who I had cut off from the moisture a newt loves and needs. But nowhere was he to be seen. I had another look the following day, and left the door open for an hour or so to give him a good chance of escape. Let's hope he's doing fine, and has found his way back to the pond.

THE MYSTERY CALENDAR

2007-12-09T07:29:00.000-08:00

(click on above image to enlarge it)

EXTRACT FROM BOOK IN PROGRESS : "AMAZEMENT ARCADIA"

The Mystery Calendar : The Maiden and the Chariot Rider throughout the Year

Before we go any further, it will serve us well if we get clear on what Virgo and Bootes do throughout the year. I’ve taken the date of 600BC, and a latitude of 38°, that of Athens and so also close to that of Eleusis and indeed Sicily, the home of Daphnis and the place where Persephone goes down in some versions. These then were the figures I fed into my astronomy software. The main time of day that concerns us is evening; we want to know which constellations were revealed when the curtain of sunlight was drawn back after sunset and the stellar performance commenced. What was happening at dawn is also of significance at particular times. (For an idea of what the constellations do in the current period, add a month or so to each event.)

Let’s start in mid October, shortly after the time of the Eleusis Mysteries, and follow the year through to the next Mysteries. In October 600 BC Virgo was already set before sunset, and Bootes the Herdsman (and in the Eleusinian context the Ploughman?) was setting (ploughing?) on the western horizon. Virgo in fact remained absent from the evening skies from October through to February (the Maiden back with Hades during the Winter?), with Bootes also being partly set by sunset, and effectively completely so in Midwinter – “Dionysos descent into the Underworld” as in the Athenian festive calendar, and expressed in Dionysos’ visit to Hades in Aristophanes’ comedy The Frogs, performed at the Lenaia festival in January.

But in March they were both, Virgo and Bootes, visible just after sunset, not in the West anymore but rising on the eastern horizon, just as nature warmed up and plant growth burgeoned. This was the time of the Anthesteria (28th of February), the festival in which the Athenians celebrated Dionysos’ return from the Underworld. So in Longus’ novel Daphnis and Chloe (Bootes the ideal shepherd and Virgo the virgin) “wait for the end of Winter as for a resurrection from Death).

From March through to June Bootes and Virgo were (and still are) seen higher and higher and further across the sky (from East to West) when the Sun-curtain went up in the evening, and Bootes actually reached the very top of the evening sky in June, “Daphnis at Heaven’s Gate” in Virgil’s Vth Eclogue (now in July).

The two constellations then began to get lower in July and August, i.e. as the Dog Days set in, Daphnis on the wane as in the First Idyll of Theokritus, and perhaps also Daphnis going down to the stream in the Virgil Eclogue. In August Virgo was only visible for a short time in the evening before she set in the west.

Then in September at sunset Virgo was setting with the Sun (going into the Underworld in the Golden Chariot as the Hymn to Demeter?), indeed the Sun was in Virgo, and at Dawn too the majority of Virgo was not yet risen. Only the stars Beta Virgo and Epsilon Virgo may have glimmered dimly through the pre-glow of Dawn, but not the bright star of Virgo, Spica. So at this time the Maiden was absent both in the morning and in the evening, and indeed all through the night – “The Disappearance of Persephone” during which Demeter searched in vain for her beloved daughter.

“Then for nine days queenly Demeter wandered
over the Earth with flaming torches in her hands.”

Some of Bootes was risen before Dawn at this time, but not yet his bright star, Arcturus.

By middle of September, however, bright Arcturus rose just before the Sun, as if heralding the immanent return of the Maiden.

“But when the tenth enlightening Dawn had come, Hecate, with a torch in her hands, met her, and spoke to her and told her news…”
“And the daughter of rich-haired Rhea answered her not, but sped swiftly with her, holding flaming torches in her hands. So they came to Helios, who is watchman of both gods and men, and stood in front of his horses.”
Then by the end of September, at last, Demeter’s wait was over as the bright star of Virgo, Spica, rose before the Sun, “The Return of the Maiden from the Underworld” celebrated by the initiates at Eleusis. The day of initiation at Eleusis was Boedromion 20, October 1st. And that brings us back to where we started.

“And Aidoneus, ruler over the dead, smiled grimly and obeyed the behest of Zeus the king. For he straightway urged wise Persephone, saying:”
"Go now, Persephone, to your dark-robed mother, go, and feel kindly in your heart towards me: be not so exceedingly cast down; for I shall be no unfitting husband for you among the deathless gods, that am own brother to father Zeus….
And when Demeter saw them, she rushed forth as does a Maenad down some thick-wooded mountain, while Persephone on the other side, when she saw her mother's sweet eyes, left the chariot and horses, and leaped down to run to her, and falling upon her neck, embraced her.

Being clear on this cycle will greatly help us in understanding the Greek agricultural Mysteries, both those of the Grape that we look at in this chapter, and those of the Grain that we shall look at in Chapter Four. For the full Athenian calendar with festival dates, see http://www.antonineimperium.org/athenian_calendar.htm

WOLSTONBURY / THE FLIGHT OF TALIESIN

2007-11-27T05:23:00.001-08:00

Above: Wolstonbury Hill seen looking south, the hill I had in mind for The Flight of Taliesin : A Downland Chase, below.

The Flight of Taliesin : A Downland Chase

Following a request to give some info as to what this painting is about: during the story of Taliesin, the Welsh mythical/magical bard, he is chased by the witch/giantess Ceridwen, just after he has received his powers of inspiration from the liquor in the cauldron. He changes into a hare to run away swiftly, but she changes into a grey hound and takes up chase. This is repeated every Winter in the stars as Canis Major the Hound with bright Sirius for eye chases Lepus the Hare, located just below Orion. These are low constellations and so the chase can actually be seen running over the tops of hills of the southern horizon, such as the Downs. I live in Westmeston on Black Dog Hill from which the chase can be viewed over the high ridge of Ditchling Beacon, but in my painting the hill recalls nearby Wolstonbury, chosen because the dome shape echoes the curve traced in the sky by the constellations as they move from East to West.

I've written a poem about this mythological episode:

At first I was a normal lad like you
My gift was knowing how to make ale brew
The art of making liquor froth and foam
Then one day I wandered from my home
And met two witches round their cauldron seated
I showed how, without it being heated,
Liquor can be made to boil and rise
Seeing this the two showed great surprise
They turned to me and then began to ask
If I would do for them a certain task
They had to go and gather herbs of power
And to find a soothing yellow flower
While away they could not tend their brew
This simple task I then agreed to do
The purpose of the brew I’ll now explain
One of them, Ceredwen her name,
Had a crow-child, harsh upon on the eyes,
To compensate she thought she’d make him wise
Once imbibed the potion would impart
Great beauty to his words, and great art.
Ceredwen was clear as she could be
The contents of the cauldron weren’t for me
But while they were away the bubbling broth
Spat drops onto my thumb, which I licked off
At once an eloquence instilled my mind
And knowledge of a strong prophetic kind
Such that on returning they could see
What had occurred, and I was forced to flee
I changed into a hare and quickly raced
She, a black grey-hound, angrily chased
I dived, a darting fish, into a lake
And she an otter-bitch’s form did take
Then, a little bird, I rose in flight
She followed as a hawk of piercing sight
I saw a barn and flew in through the door
And there I saw a pile upon the floor
Of winnowed wheat for use in making beer
I quickly hatched a plan to disappear
I shrunk down to a grain of tiny size
And fell into the pile in this disguise
Ceredwen came in, a fire-red hen
She searched and searched until she found the grain
Now there was no place for me to hide
She gulped the grain down into her inside
As this seed I journeyed through the gloom
And found my way into the witch’s womb
Seeding myself there inside the hen
And in this chamber I was formed again
And so, grown from that little seed of corn,
I, of second mother, was reborn
A mother’s kindness cooled the witch’s wrath
Towards the one who’d drunk her magic broth
But still she would not raise me as her own
Into a leather bag I was now sewn
This bag she placed inside a little boat
There upon the river’s flow to float
In that darkness secrets I was shown
A wisdom without words was then made known
And just as I was running out of air
Suddenly, fair Elffin, you were there.

MASTERPIECES FROM THE TEFL WHITE BOARD vol 3

2007-11-27T05:16:00.000-08:00

DOWNSPOEM & DOWNSPICS

2007-11-27T04:57:00.000-08:00

DOWNSPOEM: Lines Composed Upon Recalling that Mammoths Actually Roamed the Slopes of the Downs, as did the Magdalenians (Cave-Painter Types)

This, too, is Arcadia

Where the Woolly Ganesh became the hills

Long-haired trumpeters sat down and said:

“We shall become this place;

It shall become us, dream us,

And we it.”

Mount Caburn, East Sussex, seen from the floodplain south of Lewes. One seems to see the upper profile of a mammoth, the long back, the hump of the head, the trunk extending off to the right.
Magdalenean Cave Painting from Roufignac, around 15,000 BC

A similar profile is presented by Wolstonbury Hill, further west along the Downs, (due North of Brighton) when seen looking west from Ditchling. For a beautiful but rather small photo of
this see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolstonbury_Hill

Mammoth piece in ivory, one of the oldest pieces of art ever found, about 35,000 years old.

MORE PAINTINGS (CLICK TO ENLARGE)

2007-11-14T05:54:00.000-08:00

Above: Sainte-Victoire Mountain : Leonine Guardian of Atlantis

Above: Aithiopika Book Ten : The Divine Interruption

Above: Taurokathapsia

NEW BULL LEAPER PAINTINGS

2007-11-09T06:21:00.001-08:00

a close up of Camelopardalis from my painting: Aithiopika Book 10 - Divine Interruption

a close up of Theagenes and the Bull of the Sun from my painting: Aithiopika Book 10 - Divine Interruption

Mini Bull-Leaper Painting

My Painting Aithiopika Book 10 - Divine Interruption

THE EDGE OF THE AMAZON

2007-11-09T06:03:00.000-08:00

Poetic musing written a few weeks back in what must have been, oo, mid Octoberish, somewhat in the style, it now occurs to me, of Alex "Henry":-

Here on the edges of the Amazon the cacophany is not great

A distant squeak -

A hedgehog?

- Is all the Sussex jungle manages,

An outer ripple from an epicentre half a planet distant.

One tiny call is the sole vivfier of a landscape that answers with silence.

But the night is alive.

My lamp casts a soft golden glow upon the wall as I pen this diary entry of sorts,

And objects thickly strewn on my bedside table make a still life -

They will not be ordered until well into tomorrow.

My laziness tonight is at least artistic,

My eye sharing the contentedness of my yoga-happy limbs.

I shall put down my pen,

Lamplight shall give way to candlelight,

Candlelight to darkness,

I shall sleep in comfort in this shelter of wood and tile bivouacked these several centuries since,

In this quieter northern zone of the Amazon.

- - -

That's that one, then there is a short thing that I wrote in goodness knows what kind of a mood, and which, I now notice, has something of the turn, counterturn and stand structure of an Epode:-

X-Mass Soup

And so the fires return to the pubs,

Cheering my heart.

But what is this about X-Mas bookings?

With such notices they cast their stinking nets across Autumn

As if their subservience to competition has beaten all dignity from them.

Once, some intelligence brooding over the slow-evolving primordial sludge

Found need of immense patience,

Waiting amid the slow popping and slurping of the sleeping slime.

It seems sometimes that patience is needed still

For this prattle about Xmas is to me little more than a continuance

Of that same-old tame-old popping and slurping

The belching of that old soup still not ready to assume a higher order.

But I shall feel better no doubt after I have had my dinner.

Soup, I think.

More Masterpieces from the TEFL Whiteboard

2007-11-09T05:55:00.000-08:00

Escape from Time's Labyrinth?

2007-11-05T06:22:00.000-08:00

In the acknowledgements of her most recent book, Barbara Hand-Clow expressed her gratitude to me for helping her "understand about Theseus and Ariadne and the light in Galactic Centre." What did she mean by that? An article by myself on the subject was published in The Sedona Journal of Emmergence, but it is possible to give the outline in a concise manner, as in the following.

Arthur Koestler, in his insightful philosophical book The Act of Creation, noted that breakthrough ideas in science and art, in common with jokes, tend to come as the result of links being made between previously unlinked horizons of reference. Archimedes wanted to find a way to determine if an object was solid gold. He took a bath to relax, displaced his body's volume, 'bissociated' between this and the question on his mind, and the rest is history. It is in light of this that we can cast our minds across a certain mind-boggling curiosity. We were long told that black holes were hungry monsters swallowing all around them, and that they were prisons from which nothing could escape, not even fleet-footed light, hence "black". We were also told, in the hypothetical 'second conditional' tense, that if light could escape, it might do so in rather an interesting way, since time, relatively speaking, slows down as gravitational field increases. For example, in fact the field in a black hole is so strong that, some hypothesized, the light, if it could escape, might somehow do so 'before' it went in, somehow changing the past.June 2004 was noteworthy not only because Venus transited the Sun in the constellation of Taurus, but also because Stephen Hawking made known that hewas now of the opinion that superstrings inside a black hole might not be destroyed, but only tangled, and there was speculation that radiation emitted from black holes might contain some information about these superstringsinside.Then we take our metaphorical Archimedean bath, for meanwhile, in the Ancient World, Greek children are being told by their grandmothers about a dark stronghold called the Labyrinth from which no-one had ever escaped, and within which there was a hungry bull-headed monster called the Minotaur which swallowed everyone who went in. But, they were told, a certain hero called Theseus managed to find his way out again by following the path of an unravelled string that had been given him by a Minoan princess through the maze of passages.But the point where it gets really interesting is where we recall that Theseus' father placed certain tokens under a rock, saying that when the lad was strong enough to lift it and recover them he was to come to Athens with them to be recognised as the future king. He grew strong, managed the feat, retrieved the tokens, went to Athens and was recognised by them in a moment that was 'the happiest there had ever been in Athens.'Why is this so mind-boggling? Well, in human terms, how could it be proved that information had come from a future time? This could be achieved if theinformation was only available in that future time, such as information from future science, for example. In other words, were an ancient story to be shown to contain encoded information based on science that did not then exist, we might conclude that it had come from the future, and of course it would not be until that future time that it could be decoded. In precisely the same way, Theseus's father told his mother that their child could not be recognized until that future time when he was grown to manhood and the rock could be lifted and the tokens of recognition uncovered. How amazing to find this metaphor for timed-release tokens within the very same myth that has the black hole and superstring allegory.But there are more amazing tokens still. The hungry Minotaur, spiralling labyrinth and the super-string of Ariadne are just the start. Enter Plutarch.Plutarch was a Greek from the time when Hadrian was Roman emperor, and he was a high priest of Delphi, that sacred site of the Ancient World more famed than any other for receiving information from the future, and his essay on the Greek hero in his book Lives is a primary source for us of the Theseus myth. According to Plutarch the name Theseus is based on an etymological pun in Greek where it refers to both the 'Tokens Deposited' under the rockand also to his 'Acknowledgement' when he arrived in Athens. But that's not the half of it; this Delphic priest also noted, quoting Hesiod via Hereas,that there was a version of the story in which the princess with whom Theseus had escaped from Minos' realm was named 'Aegle', which means, simply, 'Light':-There are yet many other traditions about these things. Some relate that he fell in love with another:-"For Aegle's love was burning in his breast"; a verse which Hereas, the Megarian, says was formerly in the poet Hesiod's works, but put out by Pisistratus.So not only do we have the spiral prison, the hungry monster at the centre and the unravelling string, but we even have the escape of light.Then there is the black sail. It was a white one which was supposed to be flown on the return journey to signal success, but from the mainland a blackone was seen, just as those Ancient Greeks could not themselves possibly have decoded the story to reveal its light, since they knew nothing of blackholes or relativity, and just as back holes seem to be black in the sense of not letting even light escape.We, however, have, demonstrably, the scientific strength to lift the rock, but what on Earth are we to make of it all? How should we rethink our conception of time? And may we consider this some kind of validation of Delphi's oracular process, or more generally of the potentials of the intuitive faculty? Delphi itself features prominantly in the Theseus myth. His father had been to ask the oracle how he might have a child. By way of answer the Delphic priestess gave him a wine sack and told him not to open it until a different time. This can now be seen to represent the story itself, which would one day reveal its significance, but not until after a certain time.

Or will we prefer exclusively left-brain explanations for this, according to which the myth must have been given to the Greeks by E.T.s or technologically advanced Atlanteans or some such? Ask any archaeologist: Delphi was an oracle site, not a landing pad for alien craft, and no technological Atlantis has been found. An acknowledgement of intuition seems a great deal more sane to me, not least because this was how this extraordinary decoding of the myth occurred to me in the first place. I shall not, however, be asking the Athenians to crown me as their king.

HTP SONG

2007-09-27T03:01:00.001-07:00

for pharaonic chronology and other key Jangleland links see Chronology of Jangleland Pharaohs

Such is the nature of the blog that posts get shoved down when new material is uploaded, so this is just a repeat to get the song link back to the top.

LISTEN WHILE YOU EXPLORE THE BLOG: The most recent version of the song Hathor In Tranquility with Papyrus can be found, thanks to the hosting of Andrew Cowper, at http://www.bloat.plus.com/WillSong.mp3

LYRICS:

5-HoTeP

I have tasted satisfaction from my head down to my toes
Contentment like cows munching where the tall papyrus grows
My love her beauty’s like the flowers that grace the heavens’ lawns
Beauty like the goddess with the Sun between her horns

[This verse connects to the Egyptian conception of the Field of Satisfaction as the afterlife paradise of the West where the goddess Hathor was depicted as a bovine (with Sundisk between her horns) amongst the papyrus plants, just as the Egyptians observed cows munching contentedly in the papyrus marshes beside the Nile.)

Hathor in Tranquillity with Papyrus
Hathor in Tranquillity with Papyrus
(Encircling Ra)
Hathor in Tranquillity with Papyrus
Hathor in Tranquillity with Papyrus
(The Morning Star)

[Hathor = Egyptian goddess of dance, joy, sensuality, and inhebriation. Not Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, (LSD) but Hathor in Tranquility with Papyrus - HTP, which is both the written form of the Egyptian word for satisfaction/contentment, "Hotep", while also being the chemical name of the amino acid which is a precursor to the chemicals of satisfaction and relaxation, serotonin and melatonin. The Morning Star, Venus, encricles the Sun, Ra being the Egyptian Sungod and an essay later in this blog explains how quite probably Hathor was associated with this star of morning even before her assimilation with Venus-Aphrodite. See The Serpent Path Around the Sun ]

In Fields of Satisfaction where the grass is high as trees
Have you heard it whisper when it’s blowing in the breeze
Or seen the ibis wading where the blue green water flows
Down amongst the marshes where the tall papyrus grows?

Hathor in Tranquillity with Papyrus
Hathor in Tranquillity with Papyrus
(Encircling Ra)
Hathor in Tranquillity with Papyrus
Hathor in Tranquillity with Papyrus
(The Morning Star)

HoTeP is a seed of joy held in the griffin’s claw
5-HoTeP is up for sale down in your local store
Hathor makes the milk of flowers and of the sycamore
And makes the jewelled dancers dance around the dancing floor

[The Griffin here is the African plant with Latin name Griffonia from which the chemical 5L-HTP is extracted. This is a potent form of HTP, one which is highly effective in entering the brain. Sold in high street health food stores.]

Hathor in Tranquillity with Papyrus
Hathor in Tranquillity with Papyrus
(Encircling Ra)
Hathor in Tranquillity with Papyrus
Hathor in Tranquillity with Papyrus
(The Morning Star)

See their lightly stepping feet and hear the sistrum shake
Make jubilance at twilight for the Sun-encircling snake (encircling Ra)
Tonight we shall attain HoTeP just like the night before
Tasting satisfaction every eve forever more.

[Reference here to Hathor as goddess of dance. The sistrum was a rattle with metal disks attached as with a tamborine. It was sacred to the goddess Hathor, and she was oftern depicted holding it. Additionally, sistrums were often made decorated with the head of Hathor. "Make jubilance at twilight" comes from an Egyptian song sung at a festival of Hathor (see essay later in blog) The Sun-encircling snake is Hathor in her form of the Eye of Ra. Again, see essay later in blog.]

Sister shakes the sistrum and snakes her way around the Sun
Sister shakes the sistrum and snakes her way around the Sun
Sister shakes the sistrum and snakes her way around the Sun
Sister shakes the sistrum and snakes her way around the Sun

The Beatle rolls the Rolling Stone of fire across the sky
The Beatle rolls the Rolling Stone of fire across the sky
The Beatle rolls the Rolling Stone of fire across the sky
The Beatles and the Rolling Stones and Hathor in the sky
Hathor in Tranquillity with Papyrus
Hathor in Tranquillity with Papyrus
(Encircling Ra)
Hathor in Tranquillity with Papyrus
Hathor in Tranquillity with Papyrus
(The Morning Star)

[Reference here to the myth of the scarab god Kheper who pushes the Sun disk across the sky. You may recognize the deliberate musical Stones reference in the guitar riff: "You never listen to my advice..."]

Lotus blue, et Lavendarum
Valerian Passiflora
Salvia Griffonia Somniferum

(repeat ‘till fade)

[A Faux-Latin Gregorian chant, referencing various relaxing and euphoric plants, such a Egyptian Blue Lotus, Lavendar oil, Valerian root, Passion flower leaves, Salvia (sage - I'm thinking of Calry Sage oil, not "Salvia Divinorum"), Griffonia (source of L5-HTP), and Sominferum, used to denote the sleepiest kind of poppy but here used as a suffix for Griffonia, with the same meaning - "Sleepy Griffonia".]

JANGLOMETRY - ALL IS REVEALED !

2007-09-26T03:03:00.000-07:00

The primary foundation of the British geodetic scheme is defined by the 2 by 1 rectangle with corners at East Point and West Point, the diagonal established by the landscaping of Burrowbridge Mump (minor Golden Section of line) and Glastonbury Tor, construction of Silbury Hill, of Dorchester Big Rings Henge&Cursus (Major Golden Section of line), Whiteleaf Chalk Cross and Barrows. The Pyramid Plan is established by the construction of Cerne Giant (Orion at end of Orion Shaft), the equivalent being (at the same position) in the northern pyramid, the massive Orion's-Belt henge+cursus trio of Thornborough; Wilmington Long Man ("Balance of Upper and Lower" line (lotus-upper and papyrus-lower staffs) due West to Cerne Giant, as with King's Chamber level height ratio), and the Slope Line is established by the Tump of Lewes, Pool Bar Cursus of Lewes floodplain - dead-straight reed-filled, ditch-bordered and exactly at G.P. angle, Landport Bottom ridge Orion-belt G.P angle-orientated tumuli trio Lewes, Woking tumuli, Marlow floodplain Orion-belt tumuli trio.

Phoenix Fire

The plans of Khufu’s chambers hide
Amid our British greenery.
The form is printed far and wide
Where slopes of gold on either side
Run down to meet the sea.
The Mansion of Osiris stands
Upon the Balance-of-the-Lands.
The Earthly and the Oceanic Powers
Are measured in the scales equally.
The Mansion stands amid the Field of Flowers
Enduring like the stars, eternally.

The Triangle Egyptian boasts
Harmonious geometry
Which spans the land from coast to coast
Invoking Beauty by the most
Aesthetic alchemy.
And I would like to build again
Not with stones but with my pen
That pyramid, from fragrant words of rhyme
By the poet’s deft technology
To stand in the collective human mind
Enduring like the stars, eternally.

In times of quiet contemplation
Neither pen nor book in hand
I like to let my meditation
Fly to sites around the nation
Beautifully planned
As a man in drugged inertia
Feeds his gaze on rugs of Persia
Peacefully observing the design
While phoenix-fire flickers in the hearth
So I let the eye within my mind
Journey out along some ancient path.

Come inside, drop gard’ning things
Unfurl the feathers of your mind
When teatime’s four o’clock bell rings
Sit you down and spread your wings
With your course aligned
At Khufu’s Angle ‘cross the southern Weald
Over Plumpton’s plain to Lewes town
Osiris’ road traverses many a field
Leading onward over vale and down.

Why the Great Pyramid? :-

Four Golden Rectangles, with diagonals. Cut along diagonals, stick together adjacent against adjacent, to make four faces Stick four faces together, add a suitable covering, et voila! The Great Pyramid. Arial photo of Great Pyramid - notice same line down middle is present, indicating these half-Golden Rectangle triangles.

So, the reason why the Great Pyramid is such a harmonious form is more readily apparent when considering the faces than the cross section, for these are derived directly from the Golden Rectangle.

Original Glastonbury Pyramid Stage

(Foundation of "Jangleland" is 2 by 1 Rectangle whose diagonal, from East Point to West Point, passes through Glastonbury, Silbury Hill, Dorchester on Thames)

Pharaoh of Pop : McCartney Set 2004 Pyramid Stage Glastonbury

HTP SONG / SCYRING BOWL INCIDENT

2007-09-21T07:11:00.000-07:00

Eye of Horus on an Egyptian Bracelet

SCRYING BOWL

While I'm sipping coffee outside a cafe in Burgess Hill, an inner nudge directs me to a nearby bookshop, and there I find a book about Egyptian magic. I open it and read about a spell for seeing the future by gazing into the swirling patterns of oil on the surface of water in a bowl.

Staying true to the original Egyptian papyrus, the spell requires the use of a copper bowl, and mentions that in the original papyrus text this bowl was also to be inscribed with an image of the god Anubis.

I decide it sounds like fun, and wander off to have a look in the local second hand shops for some kind of copper bowl. Ten minutes later, having handed over mere pennies to the shop assistant, I hold in my hand a small copper bowl inscribed with Egyptian lotus flowers, a Sphinx, three pyramids and a serpent. My feeling: delightfully spooked.

It can be seen, by cross-referencing various Egyptian sources, that the wounding that was called the injuring of the Eye of Horus has to do with the influx of agressive Sethian energies in the male adolescence, which could mean that the injuring of the testicles of Seth may represent male grumpiness when testosterone levels drop in later years.

The message then is that there is an optimum, healthy level of testosterone for a male, not too much, but not too little - both of which extremes can lead to agression and depression. How can we say that the story related to such matters? The Egyptians believed that children had intuitive mediumistic abilities. It is not only from Plutarch's essay on Isis and Osiris that we know this. It is an Egyptian text called the London-Leidon Papyrus that describes the method for seeing the future by 'scrying'. It involves looking into a bowl in which oil is floating on the surface, illuminated only by a candle, and with incense wafting about. The text says that the procedure is to be peformed by a young boy, accompanied by a priest. This is surely what is refered to in the story of the god Ra looking into the eyes of the young Horus to see the future. The London-Leidon Papyrus is from a date when one might suspect an influence from Greek oracular methods, which were certainly similar in nature, but the story of Ra telling the future by looking into the Eye of Horus dates from back in the Egyptian New Kingdom long before the rise of Classical Greece. In one sense then the scrying bowl itself is the Eye of Horus, akin to a crystal ball, and in the other sense the Eye represents the mediumistic abilities of the young boy who is not yet a man.

A key question then is how a man might recover the Sight, how Horus might heal his eye. In the Roman novel the protagonist recovers and has his vision of Isis after eating roses. In Egypt, in the original Mysteries, the flowers were surely those of the sacred Nile lotus. When planted in the ground in the Egyptian story Horus' eyes sprouted as lotus flowers.

The petals of the Egyptian lotus flower - which is actually a type of waterlily - are edible and are to be seen all over the place in the sacred art of the Egyptians. Herodotus describes their being eaten by the Egyptians in his Histories. The Egyptians made beautiful drinking chalices in the form of lotus flowers. The dried petals are available for purchase in the UK and can be infused slowly with wine which is then drunk.

From personal experience I can say that the result is a pleasant vibe, subtle but graceful. To say that the effect seems more aromatherapeutic than narcotic is certainly not to diminish its potency. Floral oils can have marked effects, such as the relaxing, sleepy feeling induced by lavender, or the profound muscle relaxation that clary sage oil can bring about. Each of these has a certain feeling to it, and the feeling that comes from wine infused with Egyptian blue lotus petals is that of a gentle, feminine harmony - just what one needs if feeling aggravated by the aggressive agitation of too much Sethian 'yang'. There is no reason why this feeling might not be thought of as a healing of the Eye and a vision of Isis.

In the Egyptian story it was the goddess Hathor, the Egyptian Aphrodite-Venus, the feminine as lover rather than mother, who healed Horus' sight. In the story she did this with gazelle milk. Did she milk the gazelle in the evening, when the milk is full of melatonin? Either way, milk is a good source of the amino acid tryptophan, a precursor to both melatonin and seratonin. Milk is also a high source of calcium, which has a relaxing effect on the body. This is why warm milk is drunk at night as a sleep aid. In the sleep state, when melatonin levels are high, we see visions called dreams. High melatonin levels in the waking state seem to be linked to the ability to see images when slipping into a kind of trancelike daydreaming, the same state needed for scrying with a bowl. This is not hallunication since it can be ended easily just by snapping out of the day dream. It is difficult to imagine achieving this with milk alone, but we now have a stronger source of this precursor to the brain chemicals of relaxation and satisfaction.

5-HTP, derived from an African plant, is available in healthfood shops. This form of tryptophan is particularly effective in entering the brain, when combined with a small amount of B-vitamins, a little carbohydrate, and, in my experience, a glass of good organic cider. A cup of tea in addition may help you go more towards the awake state where seratonin predominates. Serotonin is the chemical of physical satisfaction. Serotonin levels in the brain are higher when St John's Wort - also available in healthfood shops - is taken. People taking St John's Wort report an improved sex life, and this may be because a more satisfied state is a less out of control one. Now to go to a rather different level of reality.

The Egyptian word for satisfaction was written with the hieroglyphic equivalent of the three consonants H, T, and P, in that order, which seems to me to be something of a revelation, as if the present abbreviation for Hydroxy Tryptophan has somehow gone back into the past to form the ancient Egyptian word for the physical state which it induces. Egyptologists guess that the vowel sounds (not included in written Ancient Egyptian) would have made pronunciation of the word something like Hotep or Hetep, but what we actually have to go on is H T P. Some 5-HTP, some blue-lotus infused wine, a little milk (goat if you can't get gazelle), candle, scrying bowl, and incense (the latter really being ancient equivalents of lava lamp and joss stick) - yoga poses and trance inducing classical Indian sitar music will also help - and away you go. You'll have the Eye of Horus healed in no time.

What about the testicles of Seth? Research continues apace. Apparently resistance excercise - weights - two to three times a week increases testosterone levels in the body. Of human folk it was big-muscled Heracles who, for the ancient Greeks, beat death - by sheer strength - and got away with it, but at the same time too much excercise - particularly of the endurance kind - is detrimental to longevity. From the plant world, Long Jack has met the challenge of scientific experiment. From the labratories, ZMA 'supports the male hormonal environment' and something called 6-OXO is supposed to be effective in restoring the testosterone-oestrogen balance. A world with less young male aggression and less older male cantankorousness is a more peaceful world, a world with less war. Sort this out and we can return to the how things were in that time, as described in the Pyramid Texts:-

When no anger had yet arisen

When no noise had yet arisen

When no conflict had yet arisen

When no confusion had yet arisen

When the Eye of Horus had not been injured

When the testicles of Seth had not yet been made impotent.

LOOP pschedelic eye

THE FOUNDING PHARAOHS OF BRIT ROCK

2007-09-21T06:36:00.000-07:00

The diagram shows progressive Brit-rock homes and origins all on a single line - a songline - the slope of the Great Pyramid of Khufu in the Jangleland Plan - Beatles, Moody Blues, Harrison, Lennon, Starkey, Robert Page (Zep), Charlie Watts (Stones). The Henley, Ascot & Plumpton residences all had recording studios built in.

Re Henley: (From Wikepedia) Friar Park is the 120-room Victorian neo-Gothic mansion built by the eccentric Sir Frank Crisp near Henley-on-Thames and bought by the musician George Harrison as his new home on January 14, 1970. Harrison immortalised the building in his song "Crackerbox Palace" (his nickname for the mansion, after Lord Buckley's home in California). A further powerful song, The Ballad Of Sir Frankie Crisp (Let It Roll), was also inspired by the mansion's history. Harrison loved tending to the gardens personally, and among the groundskeepers were his older brothers Peter and Harry. George Harrison was photographed amongst the many garden gnomes for the cover of All Things Must Pass, and again with his father Harry a few years later (with the photo appearing in his album Thirty Three & 1/3).

Re Ascot: in September 1973 as John and Yoko were about to separate, Tittenhurst (Ascot) was sold, to Ringo Starr. Ringo lived here until early 1988. For more info see http://homepage.ntlworld.com/carousel/pob41.html

Re Plumpton: from wikepedia: In the early 1970's Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page purchased Plumpton Place, an Elizabethan manor, with C.20 alterations by Sir Edwin Lutyens, surrounded by a moat and extensive gardens. Because of its proximity to the Plumpton Racecourse the grounds also include stables for horses. Page outfitted the manor with a recording studio. The credits for the Led Zeppelin album In Through The Out Door indicates that album mixing was done there. The manor can be seen briefly near the beginning of the Led Zeppelin concert film, The Song Remains the Same where the camera walks up to Page, playing a hurdy gurdy, to inform him of the North American tour dates.

Re Brum: Moody blues originally from Birmingham. Creators of the song Nights In White Satin, they inspired and evolved the progressive rock style. Among their innovations was a fusion with classical music, most notably in their seminal 1967 album Days of Future Passed. Used sitars, inspired by George Harrison. Definiately pharaoh's of Brit prog.

more mod than rock, the Jam formed in Woking, one of the locations of the Great Pyramid of Khufu.

Equinox Ma'at in Jangleland

2007-09-20T01:03:00.000-07:00

(OK it's not quite the equinox, but I'll be away from the computer on Sunday, so posting today)

O Kehpre, winged-scarab, you who establish Solar Ra in the Place of Balance this morning, vivify Jangleland!

This day as Khekper in the Field of Reeds and Atum in the Field of Satisfaction you stand between the Two Pillars of North and South. You are at the Balance of that which is to the North and that which is to the South. You are the unifier of the Two Lands.

Irradiate the glassy dewdrop in the hedgerow, O Ra, on this day of your ordered rising and setting. Bejewel Jangleland.

Ra, bring Ma'at to Jangleland on this your day of glorious, orderly rising in the East, the Field of Reeds, and your setting West in the Field of Satisfaction. Bring Ma'at in your glorious rising and setting to the orientated Square of Jangleland.

Irradiate the glassy dewdrop in the hedgerow as you radiate Ma'at, O Ra, through Jangleland.

Radiate Balance, O Ra, through Jangleland.

Radiate Good Order, O Ra, through Jangleland.

The H.T.P. Hieroglyph

2007-09-19T05:43:00.000-07:00

Extract from The Little Book of EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPHS (L&R ADKINS) :"The last two consonants of a trilateral could be repeated by phonetic complements...An example of a trilateral is (heiroglyph of loaf on mat), which represents the letters 'htp', and this could be accompanied by the phonetic complements [of] the letter 't' and the letter 'p'."

HTP in Egyptian hieroglyphs

Chronology of Jangleland Pharaohs

2007-09-09T00:31:00.000-07:00

Hathor song: http://www.bloat.plus.com/WillSong.mp3

pre 3100 BCE (Before Current Era)
- Upper Jangleland ruled by King Scarab Beatle
Lower Jangleland ruled by Rolling Stone King

see The Scarab Beatle, the Rolling Stone and the Monkeys

3100 BCE - Unification of Upper and Lower Jangleland
under King Scarab Beatle

see Equinox Ma'at in Jangleland

3050 BCE - King Moody Faience Blues

see THE FOUNDING PHARAOHS OF BRIT ROCK

3000 BCE - Pink Floyd

2700 BCE - Intermediate Period - incursion of Punk warrirors,
known as the Nomadic Princes, from the deserts

2500 BCE - Expulsion of Punks, reunification of Jangleland as
prog kingdom under King Ozrick Tentacle

2200 BCE - Jangleland established as "A Gilded Eternity" under Loop. Institution of initiatic soceity The Guild of Eternity (A Gilded Fraternity)

2000 BCE - King Stone Roses

1800 BCE - King Orb

1700 BCE - Dread Zone

1500 BCE - Cold Play

1000 BCE - incursion of Shite

Current Era - Renaissance of Jangleland under The Hapi Monkeys featuring Bes
see
HTP SONG
&
Meet The Hapi Monkeys
&
HTP SONG / SCYRING BOWL INCIDENT
&
5-HTP
&
The H.T.P. Hieroglyph
&
The Scarab Beatle, the Rolling Stone and the Monkeys

The Scarab Beatle, the Rolling Stone and the Monkeys

2007-09-08T13:08:00.000-07:00

Thinking about the Beatles and the Stones with part of my mind, and about ancient Egypt with another part of my mind, I bissociated. Upper and Lower, the Southern and the Northern.

The foundation myth of Egypt was that of how the Two Lands became a United Kingdom, the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt, mythologized as the pacification of the two powers of Set and Horus.

In Britain in the Sixties the Pharaohs from the North were the Beatles; those of the South were the Rolling Stones. How to unify the two, making the United Kingdom?

Ok, well the Beetle of Egyptian mythology is the Scarab which pushes the Sun. Here comes the Sun, the Sun King. In myth the Sun was seen as a sphere pushed by the Scarab Beatle, Khepr. The Rolling Stones take their name from the proverb about rolling stones and moss. To unify the Two Lands, the Two Powers, is therefore easy: the Scarab Beatle rolls the Rolling Stone of Fire across the sky. Call it the foundation myth of Jangleland.

In this peace from Tutankhamun’s treasures we see the Beatle and the Rolling Stone, and even the Monkees! They are together in the Sun Boat at dawn (when baboons warm their paws in the Sun’s first rays), riding on the water hieroglyph (the Sea of Green? - actually the Egyptians called a region the Great Green and a portion of Egyptologists believe this was region was the Aegean Sea), and two Was scepters act as the Northern and Southern pillars holding up the Sky hieroglyph containing stars which shine before them like a million Suns. Now we’re rocking. And who’s this raggle taggle fellow comes dancing along from across the Water? Well if it isn’t Mr Sistrum Man! Hey, Mr Sistrum Man, play a song for us!

Left: Beatle, Rolling Stone and Monkees. Above: The Sun-Marine on the Pepperland Pyramid

The Serpent Path Around the Sun

2007-09-08T13:05:00.001-07:00

The Serpent Path Around the Sun : A Planetary Perspective on the Eye of Ra

The cobra goddess encircles Ra, the Sun disk, throughout his journey across the sky. This cobra, Wadjyt, was equated with the Eye of Ra, linking her to Hathor and more specifically Hathor-Sekhmet, who was also given this name, Eye of Ra. As we shall see in a moment, Hathor, in this role of she who surrounds, encircles, protects the Sun god, was said to shine as a star in the twilight periods of dawn and dusk, in the direction of the eastern and western horizons respectively, and to be with the Sun at his rising and setting. There is a hypothesis that may be formed from this, because the bright heavenly body that continually circles the Sun in a snaking movement, and is never too far from the Sun, from our perspective on Earth, and who also shines brightly as either a morning or evening star in the East and the West, is Venus.

A clear and unambiguous reference to Hathor shining in the twilight of dusk may be found in the lyrics of a song to the goddess inscribed in the tomb of Kheruef at Thebes, an important official of Amenhotep III. This song includes the lines:

Come, rise, come
That I may make
Jubilation at twilight for you
And music in the evening
Oh Hathor, you are exalted in the hair of Ra…
Adoration of Gold [Hathor] when She shines forth in the sky…
Oh my lady, come and protect king Nebmaatre, given life.

Hathor as bovine goddess is frequently shown in association with the cobra, and Egyptologist Alison Roberts went so far as to write that Hathor is “the venomous cobra coiled around the …[Sun god’s] head.”1 The similarity of Hathor’s characteristics to those of Greek Aphrodite and Roman Venus is obvious, and the Greeks of the Hellenistic period were quite happy with the assimilation of the two sensual goddesses of sexuality and attraction, but whether a shared connection to the planet Venus derives from coincidence or contact is not a question we shall look at here.

From at least the Middle Kingdom, according to Egyptologists Shaw and Nicholson2, the five planets from Mercury through to Saturn were recognized and depicted sailing in boats across the heavens. Venus was known as God of the Morning and The One Who Crosses, and it has been speculated that this ‘crossing’ shows that the Egyptians knew that it was the same planet that appeared as the Evening Star that then crossed over to become the Morning Star. The crossing may have referred to the intermediary period where Venus transits (crosses) or passes near the Sun so as to be swallowed by the brighter light for a time, appearing neither in the morning nor the evening.

The retrograde movements of Venus, when the relative movement of Earth causes her to appear to move backwards in her course, are distinctly serpentine in shape and call to mind the patterns produced by serpents snaking their way across desert sands, and indeed the looping shape of the cobra hanging down from the Sun disk in the Egyptian representations. The serpentine s-shaped pattern occurs when the Earth-Venus alignment (type 1, central in the diagram) is near one of the Venus nodes (when Venus is crossing the plane of the ecliptic). The four other retrograde movements are like coils or loops and still serpentine in nature.

The cobra continued to encircle the Sun morning, noon, and evening. Roberts tells us that in the coronation “only after the palace snake has coiled herself around…[the Sun king’s] brow does he make his ‘glorious rising.’”3

In Papyrus Chester Beatty I there is a poem in which the beloved is associated with this goddess of attractiveness and with a morning star, and though in this context it sounds more like Sirius, it is still worth mentioning since it fits into the matrix of a general association between the beautiful goddess and a morning star:-

The One, the sister without equal
The most beautiful of all
She resembles the rising Morning Star
At the beginning of a happy year.

At noon the following was sung of Ra, the Sun god:

It is your uraeus snake who has enchanted your enemies4

Then in the evening, as we read in the Book of the Dead, they would sing:

Hail Ra-Atum at your beautiful crossing…
You set in life in the holiness of the western horizon
Your uraeus snake surrounds you.5

In conclusion, there does appear to be a distinct possibility that the Egyptian goddess of beauty and sensuality, in her more fiery Eye of Ra aspect of the cobra encircling the Sun protectively, was in fact a personification of the same planet later identified as the goddess she would finally be assimilated with in Ptolemaic and Roman times, namely Venus.

5-HTP

2007-09-08T12:57:00.000-07:00

The Fields of 5 - HoTeP

hymn to Hathor from the 18th Dynasty:

The beauty of your face

Glitters when you rise

Oh come in peace.
One is drunk

At your beautiful face,

O Gold, Hathor.

The above pictures show Hathor, in her bovine aspect, with Sun-disk between horns amongst papyrus plants in the Western Paradise in a picture from the Book of the Dead, and in he female aspect shaking the rattle known as the Sistrum

Egyptian writing didn’t use vowels, but we add them in to make the words easier to pronounce. So htp is usually written as hotep or hetep. It means ‘satisfaction’. It was used in phrases like ‘The Field of Satisfaction’ - the paradise of the Afterlife.

So anyway, I’d gone to the gym, which on this occasion had required the consumption of a certain amount of coffee to boost my motivation, and then afterwards I was thinking about how to ‘come down’ a bit, to smooth off the caffeine vibe. I decided upon a combination of cider, St John’s Wort and 5-HTP. 5-HTP, or 5-Hydroxytryptophan, is sold by health-food shops as a precursor to melatonin, the brain's natural relaxation / sleep chemical, and is also a chemical precursor to serotonin, the brain chemical that causes feelings of satisfaction. High melatonin levels at night are related to high serotonin levels during the day, and visa versa. Seratonin makes the body feel satisfied. When you’ve had some carbohydrate, for example, your brain signals to your body “Now we are sated”, and the body relaxes, enjoying the release of serotonin. Also after orgasm. And the chemical abbreviation actually spells out this Egyptian word for satisfaction, htp. I like that. So there I was, having taken my 5-hotep, sitting supping cider in the Bull in Ditchling, and they were playing a compilation of ambient lounge classics, you know the sort of thing. “If your fond of sand dunes….” I started to feel quite blissy - maybe it was the fusion of the coffee, the HTP and the post-gym endorphins. The one thing to bear in mind with HTP is that it is also a precursor to the sleep chemical; it can go either way. In fact I usually just take it to help get a restful night’s sleep. But it seems from my experience that perhaps the caffeine can be enough to signal to the body not to fall asleep, enough to tip the 5-HTP towards the serotonin pathway.

So I’m sitting there and suddenly this htp / satisfaction thing really starts to speak to me, like I’ve entered the Field of Satisfaction. Cosmically satisfied. Forget L-ucy in the S-ky with D-iamonds, we’re talking H-athor in T-ranquility with P-apyrus. Hathor is the Egyptian cow goddess of beauty, dance, sensuality, alcohol - in short, pleasure. She was often depicted standing amid the papyrus thickets of the Afterlife paradise. Picture yourself in a boat on the Great Waterway. Look for the girl with the Sun between her horns. Let me take you down, cos’ I’m going to the Fields of Satisfaction. I CAN get my… Sa-tis-fac-tion. You get the general idea. Reminds me of a post-St John’s Wort poem (actually song) I wrote a while back (St John's Wort increases the accumulation of serotonin in the brain):

I have tasted Satisfaction from my head down to my toes
Contentment like cows munching where the tall papyrus grows
My love her beauty's like the flowers that grace the heavens’ lawns
Beauty’s like the goddess with the Sun between her horns

In fields of Satisfaction with the grass as tall as trees
Have you heard it whisper when it’s blowing in the breeze?
Or seen the ibis wading where the crystal water flows
Down amongst the marshes where the tall papyrus grows?

It now occurs to me that this song could have a chorus:

Hathor in Tranquility with Papyrus!
Hathor in Tranquility with Papyrus!

Meet The Hapi Monkeys

2007-09-08T12:20:00.000-07:00

Above: The Fab Four Sons of Horus

(Ape-headed Hapi bottom right)

Above: Bes, Egyptian Protective Dwarf God

Bes playing Harp and Tamborine, Ape playing Lyre, Hathor Sistrum

Welcome to the Jangleland Blog, the official blog of The Hapi Monkeys, featuring Bes.

To listen to their song, Hathor in Tranquillity with Papyrus:

http://www.bloat.plus.com/WillSong.mp3

The Hapi Monkeys featuring Bes

In the pictures above we see, from left to right, the Egyptian dwarf god Bes dancing and playing the harp in honour of Hathor, the cow goddess of joy, dancing and drunkenness, from the Temple of Philae in Upper Egypt; Bes again playing the tambourine (this must have been before he joined the Happy Mondays (In a striking echo of his Ancient Egyptian namesake, the lanky Manchester anti-hero Bez, of course, danced with the Mondays while shaking maracas and tambourines and things); an ape playing a lyre from the same temple, perhaps this is Hap[i himself, Hapi being the ape-headed god of the North, one of the Four Sons of Horus each assigned to a cardinal direction) thi siamge also from Philae; and far right the sistrum, a type of rattle with metal disks like a tamborine, decorated with the head of Hathor.

The blog will feature a series of posts which shed some light on the mysteries of which this song sings.