The celestial shamanic connection: Ancient Japan

Two previous posts have now demonstrated clear and detailed parallels between the use of the universal ancient system of celestial metaphor in the sacred stories from cultures on both sides of the broad Atlantic, specifically in the Norse myths of Scandinavia (also ancient Germania) and those of the Native peoples of North America (in this case the First Nations tribes inhabiting what is today Vancouver Island). To review those common elements, see "Odin and Gunnlod" and "The old man and his daughter."

The purpose of demonstrating those clear and extremely specific details was to provide decisive evidence from mythology for an ancient system which spanned the globe. There is abundant evidence that this common ancient system is part of the universal sacred inheritance of all humanity -- an inheritance which was somehow transmitted to peoples living around the world, regardless of the distances which separated them. While the conventional "isolationist" counter is to argue that these common elements just coincidentally sprung up on their own, independently of one another, we saw evidence of extremely detailed and specific story elements -- such as the "clashing rocks" of the equinox, which are also found in the Greek myth of the Symplegades -- which are present in both the Norse and the Native American stories (in the guise of the Hnitbjorg in the Norse story, and the magical door which snapped open and shut on its own in the Native American story) and which cannot be explained away so easily by these isolationist "hand-waves." 

We shall now examine clear evidence that the exact same pattern can be found in yet another culture separated by great distance and a mighty body of water -- this time, the Pacific Ocean. Because in the sacred traditions of ancient Japan, we find the same elements of the celestial metaphor played out once again -- this time in the important mythological story of Amaterasu, the sun goddess, when she decided to hide herself deep in a cave and plunge the world into darkness.

Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend, the authors of the seminal 1969 book Hamlet's Mill, treat this myth in some detail, and then state directly that it has clear parallels to a corresponding episode from Norse mythology. However, as is so often the case with that book (for whatever reason), they are rather "coy" in their discussion, now hinting about something that they will show you, and then slipping away without fully showing it to you (they do this constantly throughout the book, making it a somewhat tantalizing read . . . and re-read, and re-read, and re-read).

The myth that is the subject of this discussion is found (among other places in the sacred literature of Japan) in the Kojiki, or "Record of Ancient Matters," thought to be the most ancient extant Old Japanese sacred text. A translation of the Kojiki can be found here. The authors of Hamlet's Mill examine the myth of Amaterasu in chapter 11 of their text, a chapter entitled "Samson Under Many Skies." The entire text of Hamlet's Mill can be found online here; chapter 11 is located here.  In that chapter, the authors compare the characteristics of the Japanese god Susanowo to those of Samson (as well as of Ares and of Mars) -- Susanowo's name means "Brave-Swift-Impetuous-Male" (or, as translated in the version of the Kojiki linked above, "His-Swift-Impetuous-Male-Augustness") -- but we are more concerned here with a specific episode involving Susanowo's sister Amaterasu, the sun goddess, whose full name Amaterasu-omikame is translated as "Heaven-Shining-Great-August deity" in the version of the Kojiki linked above.  

In order to understand the connections to the myth-patterns of other cultures (which are hinted at but not fully explained in Hamlet's Mill), and to the universal system of ancient metaphor (which is discussed in greater detail in my most-recent book, The Undying Stars), we will cite the entire episode from the Kojiki, prefacing that citation with the caution that the story is somewhat explicit (as is the episode from Norse mythology to which it is clearly related) -- so readers who might be uncomfortable with those details may want to stop reading here.

The following myth is from Part III, beginning at the section entitled "The Door of the Heavenly Rock-Dwelling." It follows immediately after the section entitled "The August Ravages of His-Impetuous-Male-Augustness" (that is to say, of Susanowo), in which we learn that His-Swift-Impetuous-Male-Augustness has impetuously violated all sorts of boundaries, breaking down the divisions of the rice-fields laid out by the Heaven-Shining-Great-August deity (his sister, the sun goddess Amaterasu), broken a hole in the top of Amaterasu's weaving-hall, and through it let fall a heavenly piebald horse, which he has flayed backwards (the very sight of which causes the women who are weaving the heavenly garments to perish in fright). We pick up the story at that point:

So thereupon the Heaven-Shining-Great-August deity, terrified at the sight, closed behind her the door of the Heavenly Rock-Dwelling, made it fast and retired. Then the whole Plain of High Heaven was obscured and all the Central Land of the Reed-Plains darkened. Owing to this, portents of woe all arose. Therefore did the eight hundred myriad deities assemble in a divine assembly in the bed of the Tranquil River of Heaven, and bid the deity Thought-Includer, child of the High-August-Producing-Wondrous deity, think of a plan, assembling the long-singing birds of eternal night [sometimes translated as crows or roosters] and making them sing, taking the hard rocks of Heaven from the river-bed of the Tranquil River of Heaven, and taking the iron from the Heavenly Metal-Mountains, calling in the smith Ama-tsu-ma-ra, charging Her Augustness I-shi-ko-ri-do-me to make a mirror, and charging His Augustness Jewel-Ancestor to make an augustly complete string of curved jewels eight feet long -- of five hundred jewels -- and summoning His Augustness Heavenly-Beckoning-Ancestor-Lord and His Augustness Great-Jewel, and causing them to pull out with a complete pulling the shoulder-blade of a true stag from the Heavenly Mount Kagu, and take cherry-bark from the Heavenly Mount Kagu, and perform divination, and pulling up by its roots a true cleyera japonica with five hundred branches from the Heavenly Mount Kagu and taking and putting upon its upper branches the augustly complete string of curved jewels eight feet long -- of five hundred jewels -- and taking and tying to the middle branches the mirror eight feet long, and taking and hanging upon its lower branches the white pacificatory august offerings, and His Augustness Heavenly-Beckoning-Ancestor-Lord prayerfully reciting grand liturgies, and the Heavenly-Hand-Strength-Male deity standing hidden beside the door, and Her Augustness Heavenly-Alarming-Female [this is the goddess Ame-no-Uzume-no-Mikoto, sometimes simply referred to as the goddess Uzume] banging round her the heavenly clubmoss the Heavenly Mount Kagu as a sash, and making the heavenly spindle-tree her head-dress and binding the leaves of the bamboo-grass of the Heavenly Mount Kagu as a sash, and laying a sounding-board before the door of the Heavenly Rock-Dwelling and stamping, till she made it resound and doing as if possessed by a deity, and pulling out the nipples of her breasts, pushing down her skirt-string "usque ad privates partes" [for some reason this particular translator chooses to slip into Latin at that point]. Then the Plain of High Heaven shook, and the eight hundred myriad deities laughed together.  

Hereupon the Heaven-Shining-Great-August deity was greatly amazed, and, slightly opening the door of the Heavenly Rock-Dwelling, spoke thus from the inside: "Methought that owing to my retirement the Plain of Heaven would be dark, and likewise the Central Land of Reed-Plains would be all dark: how then is that the Heavenly-Alarming-Female makes merry, and that likewise the eight hundred myriad deities all laugh?" Then the Heavenly-Alarming-Female spoke, saying: "We rejoice and are glad because there is a deity more illustrious than Thine Augustness." While she was thus speaking, His Augustness Heavenly-Beckoning-Ancestor-Lord and His Augustness Grand-Jewel pushed forward the mirror and respectfully showed it to the Heaven-Shining-Great-August deity, whereupon the Heaven-Shining-Great-August deity, more and more astonished, gradually came forth from her door and gazed upon it, whereupon the Heavenly-Hand-Strength-Male deity, who was standing hidden, took her august hand and drew her out, and then His Augustness Grand-Jewel drew the bottom-tied rope along at her august back, and spoke, saying: "Thou must not go back further in than this!" So when Heaven-Shining-Great-August deity had come forth, both the Plain of High Heaven and the Central-Land-of-Reed-Plains of course again became light.

After the sun goddess has come out from the "rock-dwelling," Susanowo is fined and punished (punishments include cutting his beard and pulling out the nails of his fingers and toes), a detail included here for the benefit of readers who are concerned that he should pay some penalty for causing so much trouble, although it does not concern the analysis which follows and which focuses primarily on the specific elements in common with the myths previously examined, those of Suttung and Gunnlod (from the Norse mythology) and of the old man and his daughter (from North America), as well as one other Norse myth which Hamlet's Mill mentions as being connected to this Japanese myth, without showing exactly why (see top of page 170 of Hamlet's Mill).

By now, readers should recognize the common elements: specifically, we have a goddess who represents the constellation Virgo (in this case, it is the goddess Uzume), and we have the presence of a "Heavenly Rock-Dwelling" with a door which can be "shut fast" behind the sun goddess. We have already seen in the two previous discussions that the important zodiac sign of Virgo stands at the very gate of the fall equinox, which was mythologized as a clashing door or clashing rocks through which the sun passes upon its course downwards towards the dark, winter half of the year -- and thus the Heavenly Rock-Dwelling with its shutting door in the Japanese myth clearly corresponds to the Hnitbjorg of Gunnlod, to the snapping door in the Native American story of the old man and his daughter, and to the Symplegades of Greek mythology (for readers who do not accept this clear connection, the significance of the Symplegades as a myth-metaphor for the equinox is treated in more detail in Hamlet's Mill on page 318). 

But here in the story of Amaterasu and the dance of Uzume we have even more elements to examine, elements which parallel the myths from around the world and which argue strongly for the conclusion that a common system unites the ancient sacred traditions.  Most striking, of course, is the method used to bring the sun goddess out of the rock. The authors of Hamlet's Mill describe it this way (refraining no doubt due to delicacy from adding the exact details of the dance of Uzume):

The 80,000 gods assembled in the Milky Way to take counsel, and at last came upon a device to coax the Sun out of the cave and end the great blackout. It was a low-comedy trick, part of the stock-in-trade  that is used to coax Ra in Egypt, Demeter in Greece (the so-called Demeter Agelastos or Unlaughing Demeter) and Skadi in the North -- obviously another code device.  170.

They add a footnote about this dance, which states: "The obscene dance of old Baubo, also called Iambe in Eleusis, parallels the equally unsavory comic act of Loke in the Edda. The point in all cases is that the deities must be made to laugh (cf. also appendix #36)."  The "equally unsavory comic act" to which they refer is an episode from Norse myth involving Loki and Skadi.  Skadi is the beautiful daughter of a jotun named Thjassi.  The Aesir killed Thjassi when he was in the form of an eagle, pursuing Loki who was in the form of a falcon (clearly another myth related to the constellations Cygnus and Aquila, discussed in the previous examination of the story of Odin and Gunnlod), by lighting a fire into which Thjassi flew and perished.  As payment, Skadi was allowed to select a god from Asgard to be her husband, and also as part of the deal it was stipulated that the Aesir would have to make her laugh.  Here is how that episode is recounted by Snorri Sturluson in his Younger Edda (and again, a caution to readers that this myth is equally as graphic as the Japanese myth to which the authors of Hamlet's Mill compare it): 

It was also in her terms of settlement that the Aesir were to do something that she thought they would not be able to, that was to make her laugh.  Then Loki did as follows: he tied a cord round the beard of a certain nanny-goat and the other end round his testicles, and they drew each other back and forth and both squealed loudly.  Then Loki let himself drop into Skadi's lap, and she laughed.  Then the atonement with her on the part of the Aesir was complete. 

This is from the Anthony Faulkes translation, London: Everyman, 1987 -- page 61.

What on earth is going on here?  The answer is that these are not stories about events "on earth" at all, but rather in the heavens. Once we realize that the goddess Uzume allegorizes the constellation Virgo, the connections will become clear. Below is a diagram of the constellation of Virgo, located in the sky just below the constellation Bootes the Herdsman, who can be seen to be smoking a rather long and prominent pipe (as depicted in the outlines suggested by H.A. Rey, whose system for visualizing the constellations I believe to be by far the best). These connections between Uzume and Virgo are supported by the fact that in the Kojiki the goddess Uzume is described as binding together a sash or sheaf of bamboo grass with leaves, just as Virgo was depicted as holding a sheaf of wheat in some mythologies, as well as a sprig of laurel leaves in her manifestation as the Pythia at the temple at Delphi. The connection is also reinforced by the presence of the crows or roosters mentioned in the Kojiki account, which are no doubt connected to the constellation Corvus which is located next to Virgo. But we shall see even more astonishing connections momentarily.

The long pipe of the Herdsman constellation (Virgo's companion in many ancient myths) would appear to be the source of the sexual elements in both the myths (that of Uzume and that of Loki with Skadi). There is another female figure in Japanese mythology associated with Uzume, who is known as Otafuku, who is devoted to the goddess Uzume and who -- like Uzume -- is a fertility symbol in Japan and radiates an open and frank sexuality, as discussed in this post from the website Green Shinto (and which cites a discussion on the subject by Hirata Atsutane, who lived from 1776 to 1843, and who cites older sources to support the connection between Otafuku and Uzume). Otafuku is shown in the nineteenth-century Japanese painting below, along with a character known as Daikoku, who is holding over his head a large gourd which clearly resembles the head and pipe of Bootes (depicted in the star chart to the right, along with Virgo):

As she is depicted, Otafuku is dancing with one hand on her hip and the other extended and holding a wand.  Her posture is clearly illustrative of the constellation Virgo, right down to her two feet and the angle of her body.  See the diagram below, in which the outline of Virgo has been superimposed:

But that's not all: Otafuku (who is associated with Uzume) is often depicted with a red-faced companion named Sarutahiko, who is described here in the blog More Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan as a "phallic kami" (kami are the heavenly beings described in the Kojiki), possessed of a long, red, upturned nose. His mask, that blog tells us, "is often paired with Uzume/Otafuku." 

Now, why should Uzume/Otafuku be paired with a kami who has an unusually long nose which is upturned at the end?  Take a look again at the diagram of the constellations Virgo and Bootes, above, and the answer will immediately become clear.  

The sexual aspect of these two constellations may seem obvious now that it has been demonstrated, but I would venture to argue that it is not obvious at all, and that the vast majority of the readers of this blog could have gone their entire lives looking at the stars, or at charts showing Virgo and Bootes, and never thought of them as depicting any "off-color" or sexually-explicit "low comedy" (as the authors of Hamlet's Mill phrase it) whatsoever. In fact, many readers may even be shocked that anyone would.  And yet we see that this connection was apparently part of the ancient universal system of celestial metaphor, and that it shows up quite dramatically in the myths of both ancient Japan and of the Norse (and, as the authors of Hamlet's Mill point out, in the myths of ancient Egypt and ancient Greece as well).  

The long upturned pipe of the constellation Bootes the Herdsman points right to the handle of the Big Dipper, which was also anciently known as the Wain or wagon of the sky, which in Norse myth is sometimes pulled by goats (Thor's wagon is famously drawn by goats). No doubt this explains the graphic slapstick comedy routine enacted by Loki, who in this particular case is playing the part of Bootes (but this time it isn't a nose which is represented), and who eventually lands in Skadi's lap (you can see how this could happen by referring again to the star-chart of Bootes and Virgo).   

The obscene dance of Uzume (which is paralleled by the obscene actions of Baubo in Greek myth, some descriptions of which can be found here) in which she pulls down the belt of her skirt can also be clearly understood from the diagram of Virgo in the chart above, where the line of her skirt is depicted as running between the two bright stars of Spica and Zeta Virginis.  

Other clear indicators in the Kojiki which alert us to the fact that the story relates to Virgo and the surrounding constellations include the description of the "string of curved jewels, eight feet long" (this is almost certainly the curved arc of the Northern Crown, which can be seen in the chart above just above and to the left of Bootes the Herdsman) and the seemingly-random inclusion of the shoulder-blade of a stag (the connection between a stag and Virgo is also found in myths around the world, and is explained in part in the first three chapters of The Undying Stars which are available to read on the web here). The connection to Virgo is also reinforced by the description of the mirror (which is also eight feet long).

I submit that this mirror represents the faint oval circle of stars which can be seen in front of the face of Virgo and above her outstretched arm -- I have drawn a red oval around them in the diagram below:

I argue that this roughly circular grouping was depicted in ancient Greek myth as the round plate of holy water depicted in the famous portrait of the Pythia at Delphi shown in the diagram below.  Notice that the ancient artist (from the fifth century BC) has located the round platter or shallow basin of water just above the outstretched sprig of laurel in the depiction -- just as the glimmering oval of stars circled in the diagram above are located above the outstretched arm of the constellation. Note also in the diagram below, at bottom right, that the depiction of the goddess Rhea, who is seated upon a throne and who also has one hand out forward, is shown holding some sort of circular object above this outstretched arm. The fact that she is related to the constellation Virgo is further reinforced by the lion crouching at her feet: Virgo follows Leo the Lion in the zodiac procession.

But perhaps the most important aspect of the story is the element of laughter, which the authors of Hamlet's Mill single out as being critical in the footnote from page 170 cited above. The risque dance of Uzume has the effect of making the assembled kami all roar with laughter, and causes the astonished Amaterasu to open the door of her rock-cave and peek out. The obscene actions of Baubo bring a smile to Demeter's face. The ridiculous antics of Loki cause Skadi to smile as well, something she thought the Aesir could never make her do.  What is the meaning of all of this?  The authors of Hamlet's Mill do not tell us, although they indicate that it is "the point in all cases" of this myth as it is found around the world.

The answer can again be found, I believe, by looking to the book of the stars.  There you can see that Virgo's head contains two rather faint stars which, if connected, clearly make the goddess appear to be smiling:

And now the identification with Virgo in all the myths across the centuries and across the two mightiest oceans on the planet is complete!

But one more thing remains to be noted, and it may have already suggested itself to readers familiar with the stories of the Old Testament, and that is the fact that there is a female character in the stories of Genesis who is described as perennially beautiful and who is also famous for laughing: Sarah, the wife of the patriarch Abraham.  This incident is described in Genesis 18:12-15, where we read:

Therefore Sarah laughed within herself, saying, After I am waxed old shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also?

And the LORD said unto Abraham, Wherefore did Sarah laugh, saying, Shall I of a surety bear a child, which am old?

Is anything too hard for the LORD?  At the time appointed I will return unto thee, according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son.

After her son Isaac is born, Sarah then laughs with joy.  In Genesis 21:6, we read: "And Sarah said, God hath made me to laugh, so that all that hear will laugh with me."  

Now, the point of bringing in this Bible story is not to "put down" the sacred scriptures of the Old or New Testaments, as discussed in this previous post entitled "The ancient torch that was lighted for our guidance." It is my conviction that all the sacred scriptures of humanity are a priceless inheritance, and that they are all intended to convey an esoteric message of profound importance and transformative power. When we see that this particular Old Testament story follows the very same universal system of celestial metaphor, we should realize that those who have sought to denigrate the mythologies of the rest of the world as "pagan" and to elevate the scriptures of the Old and New Testament as "historical" and "literal" (as opposed to esoteric) and therefore different from all the other ancient sacred traditions of humanity, are either making a profound error or perpetrating a great deception (and one which has led to the wholesale destruction of much of the world's ancient wisdom and the deliberate suppression and even eradication of many of the sacred texts which had preserved that wisdom through the millennia).

I provide many more explanations and examples of how the stories of the Old and New Testament follow this same world-wide system of celestial metaphor in The Undying Stars. Further, I explore the profound esoteric message that I believe this system may have been intended to convey to humanity. The fact that this system was intended to impart profound knowledge to men and women is very clear from the underlying content of the two "Virgo" stories we have examined prior to this one: in each, divine wisdom is imparted to humanity (the marvelous mead in the Norse myth of Odin and Gunnlod, and the gift of "heavenly fire" in the Native American myth of the old man and his daughter).

In the story above of Amaterasu and the dance of Uzume, the connection to the imparting of divine wisdom to humanity is not so apparent, but it is in fact present. It has to do with the fact that Uzume's dance is described as being that of one who acts "as if possessed" -- in other words, she is in a state of ecstasy, the central importance of which has been discussed in previous essays such as this one.  In his 1983 text Audience and Actors: A Study of their Interaction in the Japanese Traditional Theater, Jacob Raz examines the importance of the dance of Uzume.  On page 11 of that work, he tells us: 

About the dance we are told in the Kojiki that "as if possessed, (she) plucked at her nipples and pushed the belt of her skirt down to her private parts . . ."  The eight hundred myriad kami laughed heartily to see the dance.  The Nihonshoki uses the term wazaogi for the dance.  Wazaogi means 'mimic' or imitative dance or gesture.  This interprets the dance as a dramatic performance.  The Kojiki includes also simple conversation, a "divinity inspired utterance" and even a simple plot.  The Nihonshoki adds that Ame-No-Uzume was the ancestress of Sarume-No-Kimi (literally, Monkey-Female), a family of professional shamanesses, (in Japanese, miko), in the early period.

He goes on to say:

First, the story is thought to have been a description of a shamanic dance. Ame-No-Uzume, by means of an ecstatic dance, stamping on the tub and helped by the cheers of the myriad kami and by her own divinely inspired utterance, is actually summoning a divine spirit and is eventually possessed by it and transfers it to Amaterasu.  By this interpretation, the Sun Goddess not only is in a stage of rage but is also suffering from a kind of ailment.  Ame-No-Uzume is her healer, and the act is a kind of magico-medical treatment.  11.

In fact, I believe that the ancient scriptures of the world used the celestial system of metaphor to convey the knowledge of a sophisticated cosmology which I describe as shamanic and holographic in nature, and which is discussed further in "The undying stars: what does it mean?"

I believe that the close examination of the sacred story of Amaterasu and Uzume in Kojiki reinforces these conclusions, and provides further powerful evidence that this system spanned the globe, appearing in Japan, in the Americas, in the lands of far northern Europe, in the mythologies of ancient Greece, ancient Egypt, ancient Sumer and Babylon, and further east into India and China and the lands of Asia where shamanism survived into the modern period, as well as in Australia, New Zealand, and the scattered islands of the vast Pacific. I believe this examination should also go a long ways towards demonstrating that the exact same system of celestial metaphor was operating in the stories of the Old and New Testaments as well.

This is a conclusion which, if correct, has tremendous ramifications for our understanding of human history, and one which has staggering implications for every man or woman alive today.

    

The old man and his daughter

Overwhelming evidence supports the argument that the ancient mythologies of the world are connected by a common system of celestial allegory. The same system underlies the myths of ancient Greece, ancient Egypt, ancient Sumeria and Babylon, ancient India, the myths of the Norse, and of the peoples of Africa, the Americas, the islands of the Pacific, of Australia, and of the vast lands of Asia -- and the same system underlies the stories found in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible.

Previous posts have discussed some of the evidence for this assertion -- some of which has not, to my knowledge, been specifically demonstrated to have a clear celestial connection before.  See for example the previous post on the Norse myth of "Odin and Gunnlod." Readers who were, at the beginning of that examination, skeptical of the assertion that the Norse myths follow the same celestial pattern as that found in the myths of ancient Greece and ancient Egypt would probably be forced to admit by the end of the post that the evidence is quite compelling (I would say that the evidence is conclusive).

However, even those who come to admit that an identical system underlies the sacred traditions found in the Norse, Greek, and Egyptian myths as well as the stories of the Bible might remain skeptical of the possibility that the same system is found in the sacred traditions of Americas. After all, while the cultures of Egypt or India are quite far removed from the frozen north lands of Scandinavia, they are after all geographically contiguous. However, the supposedly impassable oceans of the Atlantic and the Pacific lie between the lands of the "Old World" and the "New," and conventional historians remain adamant (even in the face of abundant archaeological evidence to the contrary) that there was no ancient cultural contact of any significance between them (this doctrine is known as "isolationism"). 

In addition to the archaeological evidence of ancient and sustained trans-oceanic contact, there is abundant evidence from myth and sacred tradition suggesting either cultural contact and diffusion, or descent from a common world-wide system (perhaps from a common world-wide civilization of great antiquity, predating the earliest known "historical" civilizations such as Sumer and Egypt). The mythological evidence for such a system was extensively documented in the seminal text Hamlet's Mill:  An essay on myth and the frame of time, by Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend (1969).

One of the myths the authors examine in that text is from the First Nations people of Vancouver Island in British Columbia, described in James Frazier's Myths of the Origins of Fire (1930) which itself cites the work of Franz Boas in Indianische Sagen von der Nord-Pacifischen Kuste Amerikas (1895).  Unfortunately, like much else in Hamlet's Mill, the authors hint at the celestial origins of this myth and indicate that it is a very important myth, with echoes in other myths around the world, and yet they stop short of explaining exactly how the specific elements of the story relate to the ancient system of celestial allegory.  An explanation of the connections follows below (perhaps for the first time in print).

The myth is described as follows, on pages 318 and 319 of Hamlet's Mill, all of which is a direct block quotation of the text of Frazier's Myths of the Origins of Fire (found on pages 164-165 of the 1996 Barnes & Noble edition of the 1930 text, ISBN 1-56619-996-4):

The Catlolq, and Indian tribe of Vancouver Island, to the north of the Nootka, say that long ago men had no fire.  But an old man had a daughter, who possessed a wonderful bow and arrows, with which she could bring down whatever she chose. But she was very lazy and slept constantly. Therefore her father was angry with her and said to her, "Sleep not always, but take your bow and shoot into the navel of the ocean, that we may get fire." Now the navel of the ocean was a huge whirlpool, in which sticks for the making of fire by friction were drifting about. The girl took her bow and shot into the navel of the ocean, and the apparatus for the making of fire by friction sprang ashore. The old man was very glad.  He kindled a great fire, and as he wished to keep it to himself, he built a house with a single door, which opened and shut with a snap like a mouth and killed everybody who tried to enter. But people knew that he had fire in his possession, and the Deer resolved to steal it for them. So he took resinous wood, split it, and stuck the splinters in his hair. Then he lashed two boats together, decked them over, and danced and sang on the deck, while he sailed towards the house of the old man. He sang, "Oh, I am going to fetch the fire." The old man's daughter heard him singing and said to her father, "Oh, let the stranger enter the house; he sings and dances so beautifully." Meantime Deer landed and approached the door, singing and dancing. He leaped up to the door as if he would enter. Then the door closed with a snap, and when it opened again, Deer jumped into the house. There he sat down by the fire, as if he would dry himself, and continued to sing.  At the same time he stooped his head over the fire, till it grew quite sooty and the splinters in his hair ignited.  Then he sprang out of the house, ran away, and brought the fire to men.  

This story is absolutely full of evidence of the common celestial system of the world's mythology. First, the identity of the "old man and his daughter" must almost certainly be the constellations Virgo the Virgin and Bootes the Herdsman (shown above). A decisive clue is the fact that the daughter possesses a wonderful bow, but she is very lazy and always sleeping. Anyone familiar with the constellation Virgo will immediately realize that the constellation itself is recumbent in the sky (both Virgo and Bootes are visible now for easy viewing in the hours of darkness prior to midnight, high in the southern sky for observers in the northern hemisphere). We have also seen in previous posts that Virgo has a distinctive outstretched arm (marked by the star Vindemiatrix), which in some of the world's sacred traditions gives rise to the goddess or maiden holding a bow in the act of shooting an arrow.

For example, in the sacred traditions of India, the goddess Durga is sometimes depicted as riding upon a lion and shooting a bow with her bow-arm extended and locked, as in this bas-relief of Durga slaying Mahisasura. The fact that Durga is seen riding upon a lion is a dead giveaway that she is related to the constellation Virgo, who follows in the zodiac directly behind Leo the Lion and who gives rise to goddesses around the world who ride upon the backs of Lions or in chariots pulled by Lions, or who are depicted in ancient art as seated in a throne flanked by a Lion (Virgo is recumbent, but the stars of Virgo also allow her to be envisioned as seated upon a throne). This connection between Leo and Virgo and the Great Goddesses of the world's sacred traditions is discussed in this previous post.

To prove the point that the outstretched arm among the stars of Virgo was depicted as the outstretched arm holding a bow, the outline of Virgo (as diagramed in the system proposed by H.A. Rey) has been superimposed upon the imagery of the goddess Durga, below:

To continue with the celestial clues found in the myth from the Pacific Northwest, we see that the daughter is instructed to shoot her arrow into the "huge whirlpool" at the "navel of the ocean." The authors of Hamlet's Mill demonstrate conclusively that the silent, whirling ocean of ancient mythology around the world is none other than the starry heavens, a fact which is discussed extensively in The Undying Stars and which is touched upon in this previous post as well. The whirlpool at the navel of the ocean, then, would most likely be the north celestial pole, around which all of the firey stars seem to whirl (due to the daily rotation of the earth on its axis). The outstretched arm of Virgo (holding the bow, in the case of Durga and of the daughter of the old man in the myth of the First Nations people of Vancouver Island) does indeed point towards the north celestial pole.

An even more conclusive piece of evidence is the magical door which the old man constructs in order to safeguard his treasured fire: the authors of Hamlet's Mill note the clear connection here to the Symplegades of Greek mythology, and the fact that these "clashing doors" symbolize the equinoxes (and Virgo, as we have discussed before, is stationed right at the gate of the September equinox). Note that the myth of Odin and Gunnlod, which also mythologizes the constellation Virgo, also contains a reference which seems to resonate with the Symplegades, as pointed out by Maria Kvilhaug following the work of Svava Jacobsdottir.

The stealing of the fire by the character of the Deer is another celestial clue. The celestial connections between Virgo and a deer or stag are described in pages 34 through 38 of The Undying Stars, which can be previewed online in the first three chapters of the book, and which are linked here.  The Deer in this story almost certainly represents the constellation Centaurus, the Centaur (not far from Virgo) -- a Centaur who can also be envisioned as a stag with a majestic spreading rack of antlers, and who appears in myths around the world which point to this particular section of the heavens.

Note the clear parallels in the Native American myth and the story of Odin and Gunnlod. In each case, there is the central motif of the giving of some knowledge of tremendous value to mankind: the gift of wisdom and poetry in the case of the mead of Gunnlod, and the gift of fire in the myth of the old man and his daughter. In each case, this divine knowledge has to be stolen and then given to humanity -- in the Norse myth stolen by Odin, and in the First Nations myth by the Deer. And, in each case, there is the centrality of a grumpy old father and a beautiful daughter (in the Norse myth, these are the jotun Suttung and his daughter Gunnlod), and the father wants to guard the precious secret by hiding it behind the mechanism of the "clashing door" or "clashing rocks" which are reminiscent of the Symplegades of ancient Greek mythology. Also, it is notable that in each myth it is the daughter who is sympathetic to some degree of the one who comes to steal the mead or the fire.

It is possible to find this same clear celestial pattern in the fire-stealing stories of the world's ancient traditions (and I am planning an article for future publication that will do just that). While some may argue that these parallels are mere coincidence, or perhaps the result of what Carl Jung called "the collective unconscious," the common occurrence of a rather obscure and esoteric metaphor such as the clashing doors of the equinox, along with many other common details, argues against the explanation that this metaphor simply popped up independently in cultures around the world who were always completely isolated.  

In fact, both of these conventional explanations (sheer coincidence, or the collective unconscious) defy "Occam's razor," and are much more difficult to support than the more obvious possibility that the world's cultures either had ancient contact or (even more likely) a common descent from what we might call for want of a better term the "lost civilization." The reason that "coincidence" or "collective unconscious" are such popular explanations  today probably has more to do with the fact that they allow room for the favored isolationist paradigm than from their ability to explain the evidence.    

The question which then arises is usually, "But why would they be so obsessed with writing myths about the stars?" The answer to this question is discussed in my book, and it involves the shamanic-holographic cosmology conveyed by these esoteric stories, which I have outlined in essays such as this one and this one. The answer can also be discerned in the common elements discussed above between the myths of Suttung and Gunnlod and the myth of the old man and his daughter.  In both cases, we have the bringing down to earth of the secret knowledge of the heavens: in the case of the mead of Gunnlod, some drops fell to Midgard, where they could be of benefit to men and women, and in the case of the old man and his daughter, she shoots her arrow into the very navel of the revolving celestial ocean in order to bring down the sacred fire that has been hidden among the stars.

Special Note: This examination of "The old man and his daughter" is part of a series which currently includes two other related articles . . .

• "Odin and Gunnlod"
• "The celestial shamanic connection: Ancient Japan"

Odin and Gunnlod

In The Undying Stars, I make the argument that all the world's ancient sacred traditions are built upon a common esoteric system of celestial allegory -- and that the message that these esoteric myths intended to convey includes a shamanic-holographic cosmology of tremendous sophistication and profound import.  

Some readers may initially find the claim that essentially all of the world's sacred traditions -- from the Vedas of ancient India to the myths of Osiris and Isis and Horus in Egypt, and from the legends of the North American native peoples to the stories of the Old and New Testaments -- share a common system of celestial allegory to be just too much to swallow.  

However, once one understands the ancient system -- which is expounded in the book as clearly as possible, with accompanying illustrations -- the connections between the ancient sacred traditions are undeniable.

Although Norse myths are not addressed in great detail in The Undying Stars, they are very special and personal to me, having grown up listening to the stories in D'Aulaires' Norse Gods and Giants from before I could read them myself, and reading them over and over once I could read (it is simply one of the best books you can give to a child, and is mentioned in this previous post as well as many others).  Also, of course, my father's father came to America from Norway, and so I always looked upon the Norse myths as the heritage of my ancestors (or, as the Old English word puts it, my "old-fathers").

Currently, the recumbent form of the constellation Virgo is high in the southern sky (for viewers in the northern hemisphere) during the hours of darkness prior to midnight -- it is one of the best times of the year for observing Virgo. Behind her, rising up out of the eastern horizon, one can now see the dazzling sinuous form of Scorpio, and further north along the line of the eastern horizon are now rotating into view the twin forms of the two majestic birds of the Milky Way: Aquila the Eagle and Cygnus the Swan. 

These constellations are incredibly important in the sacred mythologies of the world. Together, they participate in one of the most important stories in the Norse myth-cycle: the stealing of the mead of poetry from Gunnlod, the beautiful daughter of the jotun Suttungr (or Suttung, as his name is rendered in D'Aulaires' version -- the name means "Old Giant," according to a note in the Henry Adams Bellows translation of 1923 of the Elder Edda or Poetic Edda, available to read online here at Project Gutenberg: see note at stanza 104 in the Havamal, on page 49 of the original pagination, which is indicated by numbers inside square brackets, thus [49]).  

The story of the stealing of Gunnlod's mead is told in the Elder Edda in the words of Odin himself, in stanzas 104 through 110. In the Bellows translation linked above, the verses read as follows (Bellows spells Odin as Othin, and Gunnlod as Gunnloth):

I found the old giant, now back have I fared.

Small gain from silence I got;

Full many a word, my will to get,

I spoke in Suttung's hall.

The mouth of Rati made room for my passage,

And space in the stone he gnawed;

Above and below the giants' paths lay,

So rashly I risked my head.

Gunnloth gave on a golden stool

A drink of the marvelous mead;

A harsh reward did I let her have

For her heroic heart,

And her spirit troubled sore.

The well-earned beauty well I enjoyed,

Little the wise man lacks;

So Othrorir now has up been brought

To the midst of the men of earth.

Hardly, methinks, would I home have come,

And left the giants' land,

Had not Gunnloth helped me, the maiden good,

Whose arms about me had been.

The day that followed, the frost-giants came.

Some word of Hor to win,

Of Bolverk they asked, were he back midst the gods,

Or had Suttung slain him there?

On his ring swore Othin the oath, methinks;

Who now his troth shall trust?

Suttung's betrayal he sought with drink,

And Gunnloth to grief he left.

The verses may seem mysterious to one not familiar with the story (again a reason to own D'Aulaires' book!), but some help is found in the so-called "Younger Edda" or Prose Edda of Snorre Sturleson (AD 1178 - AD 1241), which can be found online here. In that translation from Rasmus Anderson, first published in 1879, we find the story of the marvelous mead in Part IV, "The Origin of Poetry."  

The interested reader may wish to follow that link to take in the full account from Snorre, but the short version is that the mead itself traces its origin to a pact of peace between the Aesir gods and the Vanir gods after their terrible battle and subsequent truce, during which truce the Aesir and the Vanir both spit into a jar, out of which mixed spittle they fashioned an entity known as Kvaser, who was so wise that none could ask him any question he could not answer, and who traveled the earth to teach wisdom to human beings. However, two dwarfs treacherously invited him into their house and slew him, letting his blood run into a kettle known as Odrarer (in the anglicization selected by Rasmus Anderson in the Younger Edda translation linked above, or as Othrorir as rendered by Bellows in the translation of the Elder Edda linked above), and into two smaller jars called Bodn and Son. The dwarfs mixed honey with the blood and produced a mead with the magical property of giving to whomever drinks it the gift of becoming a skald and a sage. These three containers of the magic mead eventually came into the possession of the jotun Suttung (who came to avenge the deaths of his mother and father, also killed by the same dwarfs, and who put them on a rock at sea where the tide would rise and finish them; they begged for Suttung to spare their lives and he did so in exchange for the marvelous mead). Here is the rest of the story from the Younger Edda, as translated by Anderson:

Suttung brought the mead home with him, and hid it in a place called Hnitbjorg.  He set his daughter Gunlad to guard it. For these reasons we call songship Kvaser's blood; the drink of the dwarfs; the dwarfs' fill; some kind of liquor of Odrarer, or Bodn, or Son; the ship of the dwarfs (because this mead ransomed their lives from the rocky isle); the mead of Suttung, or the liquor of Hnitbjorg.

[. . .]

Odin called himself Bolverk. He offered to undertake the work of the nine men for Bauge [one of the jotun brothers of Suttung; the nine men were Bauge's field laborers, whom Odin caused to slay one another with a scythe -- probably related to the stars of the Big Dipper], but asked in payment therefor a drink of Suttung's mead. Bauge answered that he had no control over the mead, saying that Suttung was bound to keep that for himself alone. But he agreed to go with Bolverk and try whether they could get the mead. During the summer Bolverk did the work of the nine men for Bauge, but when winter came he asked for his pay. Then they both went to Suttung. Bauge explained to Suttung his bargain with Bolverk, but Suttung stoutly refused to give even a drop of the mead. Bolverk then proposed to Bauge that they should try whether they could not get at the mead by the aid of some trick, and Bauge agreed to this. Then Bolverk drew forth the auger which is called Rate, and requested Bauge to bore a hole through the rock, if the auger was sharp enough.  He did so. [. . .] Now Bolverk changed himself into the likeness of a serpent and crept into the auger-hole. Bauge thrust after him with the auger, but missed him. Bolverk went to where Gunlad was, and shared her couch for three nights. She then promised to give him three draughts from the mead. With the first draught he emptied Odrarer, in the second Bodn, and in the third Son, and thus he had all the mead. Then he took on the guise of an eagle, and flew off as fast as he could. When Suttung saw the flight of the eagle, he also took on the shape of an eagle and flew after him. When the asas [that is, the Aesir] saw Odin coming, they set their jars out in the yard. When Odin reached Asgard, he spewed the mead up into the jars. He was, however, so near being caught by Suttung, that he sent some of the mead after him backward, and as no care was taken of this, anybody that wished might have it. This we call the share of poetasters. But Suttung's mead Odin gave to the asas and to those men who are able to make verses. Hence we call songship Odin's prey, Odin's find, Odin's drink, Odin's gift, and the drink of the asas.

Now, this incident is of tremendous importance, and I would submit that it is also clearly celestial in its major outline. The maiden Gunnlod, placed within the mountain Hnitbjorg by Suttung to guard the precious mead, and whom Odin treacherously deceives into giving him three drinks of her mead (after swearing a troth to her, as indicated in the Poetic Edda, upon his ring), is described in the Elder Edda as sitting upon a golden stool: this detail alone should alert readers of this blog to the possibility that the maiden (or virgin, which the word signifies) is a manifestation of the sign of Virgo the Virgin. See for example the discussion in this previous post (with links to supporting discussions in earlier posts).  

The outline of Virgo in the sky (which you can see this very evening, if you have good weather) clearly resembles a woman seated upon a throne or a golden stool, and goddesses who are related to this constellation are often depicted upon a throne in sacred traditions around the world (see image below of an ancient depiction of the Pythia or priestess at Delphi, seated upon her tripod, along with the outline of the constellation Virgo and a drawing of the titaness or goddess Rhea seated upon a throne):

Further support for the identification of Gunnlod with Virgo comes from the fact that she is described as dwelling within the mountain or rock called the Hnitbjorg, which Maria Kvilhaug (following the analysis of Svava Jacobsdottir) translates as the "Collision Cliffs" or "cliffs which crash together" and identifies them with the Symplegades of Greek mythology, in her important examination of the maiden and mead theme in Norse mythology entitled The Maiden with the Mead (published in 2004; see page 49 for the discussion of Hnitbjorg and the Symplegades).

The Symplegades or "clashing rocks" are almost undoubtedly a myth-metaphor for the equinox, as discussed in some detail in this previous post, and in more detail in Hamlet's Mill (1969; see page 318), by Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend (as well as in my previous book, The Mathisen Corollary -- see page 85).  The constellation Virgo, of course, is located at the very gate of one of the equinoxes: in fact, at the fall or autumnal equinox, where the sun is plunging down from the bright world of the summer half of the year, in which days are longer than nights, to the cold world of the winter half of the year, in which nights are longer than days. In other words, Virgo is located at the gates of the metaphorical "underworld," and so (as Maria Kvilhaug convincingly argues in the text linked above) is Gunnlod.

The image below, discussed in previous posts such as this one (which explains how the lower half of the year is allegorized as Hell or the Underworld in various myth-traditions, including those in the Bible), shows Virgo at the edge of the fall equinox and the gateway to the underworld (she is drawn as a queen in the zodiac wheel shown in the image; the two equinoxes are each marked with a red X):

Note also the point included in Snorre's prose version of the event in which we find that Odin (under the name of Bolverk), worked for Bauge all summer, but when winter came he asked for his pay. A clearer indication that we are discussing the transition point between the upper and lower halves of the wheel of the year could not be asked for.

But the identification with Virgo is supported by much more celestial evidence than even this (in case any readers remain skeptical at this point). It is a clear fact that Virgo is situated directly above a constellation known as Hydra, the serpent (the longest constellation in our skies, according to H.A. Rey), upon whose back sits a constellation known as Crater the Cup. This cup features in many ancient myths from around the world, and it is almost certainly the inspiration for the containers of precious mead in the myth of Odin and Gunnlod.

But that's not all, because in the myth of Odin and Gunnlod, we see Odin transform himself into a serpent in order to bore his way into the cave of Gunnlod, and then into an eagle, in order to fly away with the stolen mead after he betrays the beautiful maiden who gave him her trust and shared with him her bed. It hardly needs to be stated at this point that we find both of these constellations in close proximity to Virgo.  

The serpent of Hydra, of course, has already been stated -- although the slithery form of Scorpio (also nearby) was anciently depicted as a serpent in some myths and sacred stories as well.  

The constellation of Aquila the Eagle rises directly above Scorpio as one traces northward from Scorpio along the shining path of the Milky Way. Clearly, then, the Eagle is very close to the Virgin in the sky, flying as it does above the Scorpion, who follows the Virgin in the zodiac (behind the faint scales of Libra, which are between Virgo and Scorpio and can currently be easily located due to the fact that the planet Saturn is located in Libra in the night sky).

The forms of Aquila the Eagle and Cygnus the Swan, flying in close proximity in the belt of the Milky Way, are very important in ancient myth and legend, and they are breathtaking in the night sky (currently they are rather low in the east until after midnight, but later in the summer they will be high in the sky and together with the bright star Vega in Lyra they form the famous Summer Triangle with each of their respective brightest stars). See a diagram of their outlines, along with the outline of the Milky Way, in this previous post, reproduced below. With this image in mind, the next phase of the myth of Odin's acquisition of the mead, in which Suttung also turns into an eagle and chases after the fleeing thief, becomes quite evident: 

If these celestial connections are not enough to convince the skeptical reader, there is yet one more that can be touched upon, and that is the conclusion to the chase, in which Odin spews out the mead that he has carried inside of him, most of which is collected by the Aesir in pots that they set out on the heavenly fields as they see the pair approaching, but some of which falls to earth for the benefit of anyone who finds it. Here is an illustration from an Icelandic manuscript from the 1700s of the pursuit of Odin by Suttung, and the spewing-out of the marvelous mead:

Knowing that the two mighty birds of the celestial realm are both found flying in the midst of the stream of the shining Milky Way, is it not possible that the story of the spewing forth of the mead in this particular myth is connected to the band of the Galaxy, which can be seen descending to earth in a misty ribbon like a silvery waterfall during the time of the year that the constellations Aquila and Cygnus are aloft?

Now, some readers may object that showing the connections from this profound Norse myth, which is full of tremendous drama and pathos and insights into the human condition, to the constellations of the night sky will somehow rob it of its magic (just as Odin himself robbed Gunnlod of her poetic mead).  But I would argue that the opposite is true! For, as Maria Kvilhaug herself has powerfully demonstrated in The Maiden with the Mead, the import of this myth touches upon deep matters of initiation, shamanic transformation, and ecstatic travel across the boundary of this world and into the "other world" (the ecstatic or mystical or shamanic journey). And, as I labor to demonstrate in The Undying Stars, which I wrote and published before I even became aware of Maria's work, this is exactly one of the esoteric teachings which this universal system of celestial allegory was intended to convey (see this and this previous post). The constellations of Eagle and Swan can also be shown to be quite important in shamanic cultures worldwide, as argued in this previous post.

Not wanting to know the esoteric connections hidden in these exquisite and moving ancient myths is like never wanting to be shown how the trinomial cube (itself a beautiful piece of material artwork) relates to the higher concept of the trinomial equation which it represents and which it was intended to teach (see this previous post, entitled "Montessori and 'thinging'").

Finally, it is important to be able to show these connections between the events in a mysterious and austere Norse myth found in the Elder Edda, and the stories found in other sacred traditions -- including the stories of the Old and New Testament (in which Virgo furnishes the original for many Biblical characters, including Eve, Sarah, and Mary, among others). Some of these stories, the reader may note, also involve a deceiving serpent. He just happens to be named "Odin" in the Eddas.

This fact demonstrates that the ancient sacred traditions, as they were originally intended to be understood, were all close kin. It was only when the literalist tradition arose, and the esoteric understanding of the Biblical stories was rejected in favor of a literalist approach which insisted the stories be read primarily as historical accounts of literal persons who walked on earth, that followers of that literalist path declared their faith to be totally unrelated to all the other sacred traditions of the world.

Special Note: This examination of "Odin and Gunnlod" is part of a series which now includes two more related articles . . .

• "The old man and his daughter"
• "The celestial shamanic connection: Ancient Japan"

Buddha, Odin, Mushrooms

Here is a link to a fascinating scholarly article published in 1995 in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology entitled "Soma siddhas and alchemical enlightenment: psychedelic mushrooms in Buddhist tradition," by Scott Hajicek-Dobberstein.

The study examines some of the texts of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, specifically the collection known as the Stories of the Eighty-Four Siddhas, written as texts in the Tibetan language in the 11th or 12 centuries AD from older oral traditions, and describing the lives of eighty-four "adepts" or seekers known as siddha.  

In these stories, the author believes he finds numerous allegorical references to the use of psychedelic mushrooms, including legends of eating cakes of bread balanced upon the point of a needle, visions of a beautiful woman who emerges from a birch tree, but only from the waist up (perhaps to embody the mushroom, which stands only upon one leg and which according to some analysts of sacred mushroom-lore has a symbiotic relationship with the birch tree), and references to beings or demons or deities with only a single eye (also reminiscent of the mushroom, as can be seen in the images above) -- among many others too numerous to list here.

Interestingly enough, Buddhist art from Tibet sometimes depicts bodhisattvas seated in front of a large, halo-like ring which contains wavy radiating lines very suggestive of the underside view of a mushroom cap, with the radiating lines reminiscent of the gills of the mushroom.  The image above (from this wiki) is characteristic of this iconography.  Here is a link to a very beautiful painting from the nineteenth century with similar iconography (click on the "full resolution" link if your browser can handle it). 

Previous posts have mentioned authors and analysts who discuss the prominent presence of mushroom iconography in the world's sacred traditions, including this previous post which links to some articles by Paul Stamets which mention mushrooms in Buddhist art and iconography (unfortunately, some of those articles no longer seem to appear on Mr. Stamets' website), as well as to books which argue that the manna described in the Old Testament may have been meant to describe mushrooms (possibly psychoactive mushrooms).

A very interesting aspect of the 1995 article by Scott Hajicek-Dobberstein linked above is his discussion, beginning in section 4.4 of his piece which can be found on page 114 of the original publication (Journal of Ethnopharmacology 48 (1995)) of the very strong apparent links between the Tibetan Buddhist tradition of Karnaripa/Aryadeva and the Norse god Odin.  

He points out that Odin is constantly referred to by one of his most-dinstinguishing features -- having only one eye.  He notes that Odin gave away his eye in order to gain mystical powers of seeing and wisdom, which has strong parallels to events described in the lives of the Eighty-Four Siddhas.  He also notes that the epithets of Odin found in the Grimnismal in the Poetic Edda include "Long Hood" and "With Broad Hat," both descriptions which could be seen as esoteric references to the mushroom.  Odin often traveled about under a very broad-brimmed hat, something that readers of D'Auleires' Norse Gods & Giants (one of my very favorite books as a child) will know well.  

This connection between Aryadeva and Odin is in fact very profound.  According to the Eddas, Odin became the supreme Norse god by a process of questing for enlightenment in which he hanged himself on the World Tree for nine days and nine nights.  During this time of intense suffering, Odin gained the gift of written language through the runes, which he saw in the scattered twigs at the base of the great Tree.  He imparted this secret to mankind.  

Note that in the ancient Greek myth tradition, Hermes was the giver of language (he corresponds to Thoth the god of scribes and writing in ancient Egypt, a connection which is borne out in many ancient sources and is practically incontestable), and thus Hermes corresponds to Odin.  This ancient correspondence is borne out by the fact that in the days of the week, Odin's Day is Wednesday -- known in the Latinate languages as Mercury's Day (such as miercoles in Spanish).  As Mercury is the Latin name for Hermes, this analysis supports the correspondence between Odin and Hermes (and thus the connection with Thoth).

Interestingly enough, the Buddha is also associated with Hermes according to many scholars throughout the ages.  In this text published in 1904, for example, author John Garnier points to connections between Buddha and Hermes.  He writes:

Buddha is also known as "Heri Maha," "The Great Lord"; as "Datta," "Deva Tat," and "Deva Twashta"; as "Mahi-man," "man" being probably the same as mens, mind, or intelligence, as in "Menu," or "Men Nuh." "Mahi-man" would thus mean "the great Mind," which is exactly the character given to Buddha.  He is also known as "Ma Hesa" and "Har Esa," "The Great Hesa," and "Lord Hesa." 103.

Note that in the mushroom article by Scott Hajicek-Dobberstein, it is Aryadeva whom the author associates with Buddha and with Odin -- the name contains "Deva," which is discussed in the 1904 text.  The names "Deva Tat" and "Deva Twashta" are very linguistically similar to the names of the Egyptian Hermes, Thoth -- also pronounced "Tawt" and sometimes even "Tahuti," or "Djehuty."

John Garnier continues even further, writing on page 109:

Nor is this the only thing connecting Buddha with the Babylonian Hea, who, as we have seen, is identified with the Egyptian Hermes or Mercury.  For the "Tri-Ratna" of Buddhism, which is called "the three precious symbols of the faith," consisted of two serpents twining round a staff (see sketch), and forming a circle and a crescent, symbolic of the sun and moon, in exactly the same way as the "Caduceus" of Hermes or Mercury, the only difference in the Caduceus being that the staff is placed below the serpents.

Buddha, of course, like Odin is associated with the journey towards enlightenment and inner vision.  So these connections between the Buddha and Odin are not at all as alien as they may at first seem.

This subject also invites contemplation upon the connection between the mushroom and the mind, the search for enlightenment, inner vision, shamanic vision, the power of language and writing, the intertwined serpents, the concept of medicine and healing, and many other vital topics.

A terrific time of year to view the crucial constellation of Aries, the Ram

This is a terrific time of year to view Aries the Ram in the dark hours before midnight, and with the  waning moon rising at 3:25 am (and later as the days go on), the sky is currently giving us the perfect levels of darkness needed to make out the fainter stars in this crucially-important constellation.

Aries may not be a very familiar constellation, because it does not really "leap out" at the casual observer of the night sky.  Most of the stars of Aries are very faint, but it does have two bright stars, and they are very easy to find at this time of year.  In his indispensable book The Stars: A New Way to See Them, the beloved author H.A. Rey explains how:

RAM (ARIES):  This constellation is rather inconspicuous and would be less famous if it were not in the zodiac.  Its two brightest stars, in the Ram's head, can be spotted easily halfway between the Pleiades and the Great Square of Pegasus.  42.

So, to find the Ram, the two landmarks that H.A. Rey gives us are the Pleiades and the Great Square of Pegasus.  Both have been discussed previously in this blog (see discussion below), and both are very easy to find, especially this time of year, when Taurus the Bull along with the Pleiades are prominent in the eastern sky after the sun goes down in the "prime-time" viewing hours before midnight, and the Great Square of Pegasus is almost directly overhead between 10pm and midnight (and climbing pretty close to directly overhead in the hours before that).   

To find the Pleiades, you can use the brilliant constellation of Perseus (use the diagrams in previous blog posts here and here), as well as the constellation Taurus (see the diagram in the second of those two Perseus links).

To find the Great Square, see the diagrams in these two previous posts: "The Great Square of Pegasus (and more evidence for ancient contact across the oceans)" and "Aquarius."

Once you have located those two landmarks (Pleiades and Great Square), you will be able to easily locate the two brightest stars of Aries halfway between the silvery cloud of the Pleiades and the unmistakable Square of Pegasus.  Those two stars make up the head of the Ram.  

In the diagram above,  the size of the dot indicates the brightness of the star.  The two largest dots in the chart of Aries are marked with the Greek letters alpha and beta, and their names are shown as Hamal and Sheratan, respectively.

From here, you may be able to trace out the rest of the Ram, especially if you have a nice dark sky.  The constellation stretches from the triangular head down towards the Pleiades, where the Ram's little tail sticks up towards the upper foot of Perseus.  In fact, locating the upper foot of Perseus is helpful in pointing towards the lower (faint) stars which make up the hind part of the constellation Aries the Ram. You can see both of the feet of Perseus coming into the diagram above from the top-left quadrant of the chart.  The "upper" foot is to the right in that chart, and the "lower" foot is to the left.  

I am calling them "upper" and "lower" here because if you go looking for Aries in the hours before midnight, the foot on the right in this chart will be higher in the sky and the foot on the left as you look at this chart will be lower in the sky, closer to the eastern horizon.

Below is a chart without the outlines of H.A. Rey, oriented with the Ram rising up towards the zenith head-first, as he will appear in the hours before midnight.  Note that the feet of Perseus are now "upper" and "lower" (all descriptions here are northern-hemisphere-centric, with apologies to my brothers and sisters in the southern hemisphere).

(mobile users please keep scrolling down for the rest of the post)

Note that there is one more very recognizable landmark near Aries, and that is the constellation marked "Triangulum" on the charts, located above the shoulder of the Ram (or to the upper left of the shoulder, when Aries is rising through his upward arc across the eastern part of the sky).  This constellation is very easy to find and can also help you to trace out the rest of Aries, using the charts above.

In spite of the fact that Aries is not extremely easy to trace out in the night sky, doing so is very satisfying, both in its own right and because (as H.A. Rey hints in the passage cited above) Aries is actually an exceedingly important constellation.  For Aries is a member of the zodiac -- those constellations occupying the band of the ecliptic, through which the sun appears to pass as we rotate on our axis -- and not just any member of the zodiac, either.  Aries is from ancient times the acknowledged leader of the zodiac band, the first of the twelve constellations who encircle the heavens along the same burning path traced out by the sun during the day.

For this reason, Aries the Ram figures prominently in almost every sacred tradition of the ancient world.    The connections are too many to mention here -- only a few examples from Hamlet's Mill will be cited to give an idea of the importance of this leader of the zodiac.  The authors of Hamlet's Mill assert on page 318, for instance, that the voyage of Jason and the Argonauts in Greek myth, in their search for the Golden Fleece, was "undertaken in all probability to introduce the Age of Aries" (when the inexorable motion of precession brought the heliacal rising on the March equinox into the house of Aries after an age in the house of Taurus).

They also note that Heimdal of Norse myth is in some way associated with Aries, pointing out that:

Grimm rightly says that it is worthy of remark that Hallinskidi and Heimdal are quoted among the names of the ram.  Heimdal is the "watcher" of the much-trodden Bridge of the gods which finally breaks down at Ragnarok; his "head" measures the crossroads of ecliptic and equator at the vernal equinox in Aries, a constellation which is called "head" also by Cleomedes, and countelss astromedical illustrations show the Ram ruling the head (Pisces the feet).  158-159.

In this important passage, we see that the "gateway to heaven" (which Heimdal guards, Asgard in this case being a type of heaven) is associated with the head and with Aries, and (as the authors of Hamlet's Mill point out), Aries is associated with the head.  You can read more about this important subject, and see a diagram in which the zodiac constellations are paired with their associated part of the human body, in this previous post.  It is also worth noting that Heimdal is described as the "son of nine mothers," and we have just seen that the constellation of Aries rises up from a point just above the stars of the Pleiades.

For much more on the importance of the constellation Aries, the interested reader is encouraged to view the numerous enlightening videos of Santos Bonacci, who explores the subject in great detail. 

For all these reasons, it is well worth the effort to get out and view Aries in person at this time of year, if at all possible.  It is a constellation of ancient and enduring significance.

The incredibly important analysis of Petur Halldorsson and "The Measure of the Cosmos"

The above interview on Red Ice Radio with author and researcher Petur Halldorsson has to be one of the most important and exciting discussions I have encountered in a long time.  As with all interviews on Red Ice, the first hour (video above) is free to the general public, and the second hour is for subscribers only -- and well worth subscribing just to hear the second hour (by subscribing, you also get access to all the other interviews, including the extensive Red Ice archive).

Mr. Halldorsson, of Iceland, has -- for the past thirty or so years -- followed up on the work of the late Icelandic scholar Einar Palsson (1925 - 1996), whose work involved locating the terrain and sites of the great Icelandic saga Njalssaga (telling the grim events surrounding the hero Njal and his enemies and his family).  

Dr. Palsson and Mr. Halldorsson discovered that the actual locations of the saga mark out alignments to the rising and setting points of the sun at summer and winter solstice, as well as the crossing point of the two axes between these rising and setting points.  Further, they found that the markers creating these alignments (whether buildings, monuments, or prominent natural features) are located precisely 108,000 feet from the center of this huge circle (over twenty miles in radius, and over 40 miles in diameter).  

Also, from this center point, buildings or monuments or features frame a smaller square or "sacred cube" in a very specific way -- see some of the excellent diagrams from Mr. Halldorsson's book, The Measure of the Cosmos, which are reproduced at the Red Ice site here. 

What makes this discovery so important is the way it sheds light on many other sites worldwide. Mr. Halldorsson has found the same pattern at significant sites at other places on our globe, including England, France, Jerusalem and Italy.  Here are the links: Iceland, England, France, Italy.  Mr. Halldorsson's website, here, also contains papers describing these and other sites, including this one on the Holy Land.

Passing reference is made during the second hour of the interview to the fact that the numbers involved in these sites (usually diameters of 108,000 feet but sometimes diameters of 216,000 feet) are precessional numbers.  The conversation does not dwell on that fact for very long, but 108 and 216 are two of the most important and prominent precessional numbers, found in legends worldwide (even preserved in China).  Here is a video I made explaining the precessional numbers in greater detail and discussing the importance of 108 and 216.

The work of Dr. Palsson and Mr. Halldorsson goes well beyond the prominent use of the precessional numbers, however, and helps tie together many extremely important threads from mankind's ancient past.  In the interview, for example, some time is spent discussing the concept of the cube and the hexagon (and how a hexagon is a two-dimensional representation of a cube), a very important theme which ties in with the work Ross Hamilton has done regarding the Great Serpent Mound in Ohio (see also the discussion here). 

Interestingly enough, a mighty hexagonal cloud pattern has been found on the planet Saturn, and as Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend discuss at length in their essential 1969 text Hamlet's Mill, the ancients (including the Pythagoreans) often associated Saturn with the geometric shape of the cube.  Note that Saturn is the sixth planet from our sun (something that the ancients should not have been able to figure out, according to most conventional versions of history, since most conventional historians assert that the ancients did not know that the earth even went around the sun and thus would not have thought of earth as the third planet from the sun or Saturn as the sixth).

Further, de Santillana and von Dechend cite numerous ancient traditions associating the figure of the cube with a "stopper" that either started a worldwide flood (when it was pulled out) or ended the same flood (when it was put in place) -- and that some other ancient traditions don't refer to a cube but rather to a nail (which, when pulled out, started the flood).  What was the name of the hero of that Icelandic saga again?

During the Red Ice interview, Mr. Halldorsson describes this sacred cube area found within the center of these monumental circles as an area of peace, and goes on to discuss the measurement of the "king's girth" in England, as ordained by King Athelstan -- a very important connection.  The "king's girth" of King Athelstan is discussed in this previous post.  That post argues that the measurements in Athelstan's proclamation may preserve a precise understanding of the size of our spherical earth -- something that other evidence shows was known by ancient civilizations long before conventional history teaches it could have been known.

Mr. Halldorsson certainly indicates that the evidence he has found may support the conclusion that seafarers knew the location of Iceland and visited those shores long before the traditional date of settlement of AD 864.  In fact, in their excellent book How the SunGod Reached America, c. 2500 BC (discussed in this previous post), Dr. Reinoud M. de Jonge and Jay Stuart Wakefield provide revolutionary analysis of the stone arrangements and the spiral patterns and circular patterns of ancient megalithic art which supports the conclusion that many of these patterns function as accurate maps to cross the Atlantic, and indicate the location of the Azores, the Cape Verde Islands, the Canary Islands, Iceland, Greenland, and the coastline of North America and the Caribbean.  On page 5 of that book, for instance, they analyze a drawing from around 2700 BC from south Brittany (in France) which indicates the location of Iceland and Greenland (although not yet the Americas, according to those authors).

Finally, Mr. Halldorsson discusses the origin of the peoples who left these ancient "Measures of the Cosmos" all over Europe, and the possibility that they might have come from ancient Egypt -- pointing out that the name of Iceland (and some locations there) may well derive from the word "Isis" rather than "Ice" as we normally assume.  Since the goddess Isis is one of the stars and central figures of the precession-rich myth of Osiris, and since the Osiris myth contains the precessional number 72 which relates directly to the 108 and 216 of these circles discovered by Dr. Palsson and Mr. Halldorsson, the possibility of such a connection should not be neglected.

In sum, there are numerous intriguing possibilities suggested by the important work of Dr. Palsson and Mr. Halldorsson (far too many to mention here).  It is very likely that many other ancient sites around the world will be found to conform to the pattern they first noticed in Iceland.  The world owes them a debt of gratitude, and researchers and analysts from many different fields and backgrounds should contact Mr. Halldorsson to discuss ways to help him with his ongoing research and ways that his findings connect to their own areas of interest or expertise.

If you have not yet done so, be sure to check out his excellent interview, his website, and his book.

"Five feet high the door and three may walk abreast"

In Hamlet's Mill, the seminal 1969 examination of the transmission of ancient wisdom through myth, written by Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend, the authors cite the Grimnismal, the "sayings of Grimnir," in the Old Norse Poetic Edda, as an example of esoteric myth containing a surprising hidden precessional number.

They write:

It is known that in the final battle of the gods, the massed legions on the side of "order" are the dead warriors, the "Einherier" who once fell in combat on earth and who have been transferred by the Valkyries to reside with Odin in Valhalla -- a theme much rehearsed in heroic poetry.  On the last day, they issue forth to battle in martial array.  Says the Grimnismal (23): "Five hundred gates and forty more -- are in the mighty building of Walhalla -- eight hundred 'Einherier' come out of each one gate -- on the time they go out in defence against the Wolf."  That makes 432,000 in all, a number of significance from of old.  162.

You can read the passage yourself online in the 1936 translation by Henry Bellows here.  His translation is slightly different from that used in Hamlet's Mill, and reads:

23. Five hundred doors | and forty there are,
I ween, in Valhall's walls;
Eight hundred fighters | through one door fare
When to war with the wolf they go.

Interestingly enough, that translation has always reminded me of a significant passage in the beloved tale by J.R.R. Tolkien (1882 - 1973) which first came to the attention of a publisher in the same year (1936), none other than The Hobbit: or There and Back Again.   

As everyone knows (or almost everyone, and the rest will soon enough, with the release of a much-anticipated movie version by Peter Jackson), the plot of that adventure involves regaining the mighty halls of Thror (King under the Mountain) from the dragon Smaug.  Vital to the plans of the thirteen dwarves and the hobbit Bilbo Baggins is the knowledge of a secret door, disclosed on a map made by Thror which is revealed to Thror's grandson Thorin by Gandalf inside the parlour of Bilbo's hobbit-hole.

Take a look at the runes above and listen to Gandalf's translation and see if they do not remind you somewhat of the cadence of the description of Valhalla's doors in Grimnismal 23:

"Five feet high the door and three may walk abreast," say the runes, but Smaug could not creep into a hole that size, not even when he was a young dragon, certainly not after devouring so many of the dwarves and men of Dale.  26.

While it may not seem like a direct parallel, it is a fact that in addition to authoring The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Tolkien was a respected scholar of Old English and an Oxford Professor, and he acknowledged the influence of Old Norse and Old English sources upon his own fiction, including the influence of the Poetic Edda. 

I believe it is highly likely that this important passage from the Grimnismal lent its cadence to the description of the size of the secret door in The Hobbit.

The encoding of the important precessional number 432 in the ancient Eddas is discussed in context in the video "Precession = The Key" if you want a fuller discussion of the connection between the doors of Valhalla and the celestial mechanics of the circling skies above us.

As it turns out, Professor Tolkien used another clear reference to a very important "precessional" figure in his Middle Earth books, and that is his reference to Earendil, who -- it turns out -- is none other than Orion, who is Osiris (for more on those connections, see also "Leo, the Lion King, Hamlet and Osiris."  The fact that Tolkien clearly borrowed the name Earendil lends some support to the assertion that his runic description of the secret door in the Lonely Mountain may also have had influences from early poetic texts, texts which he clearly loved and devoted much study towards.

Incidentally, it is also clear that he created the story of The Hobbit prior to the publication of the 1936 translation of the Grimnismal quoted above, so it is almost certain that he had his own personal translation of the Eddas, perhaps even including the formulation of "eight hundred can walk abreast."

In any event, it is an interesting connection for anyone who loves The Hobbit, and it makes one wonder how much else J.R.R. Tolkien knew about precession and the esoteric encoding of ancient knowledge in the stories of "myth."