The shamanic foundation of the world's ancient wisdom

image: Wikimedia commons (link).

The previous post on "The sacrifice of Odin" presented abundant evidence that the important Norse god Odin is a shamanic figure, frequently depicted as undertaking journeys in search of hidden knowledge, and knowledge which specifically can only be obtained through shamanic methods. 

The most central and most shamanic of all of these vision-quest journeys undertaken by Odin is undoubtedly his ascent to hang himself upon Yggdrasil, sacrificing in his own words "myself to myself," wounded with "the spear" which we can assume would likely mean deliberately and with his own spear Gungnir, and through a nine-night-long ordeal eventually obtaining a breakthrough into another reality in which he sees with non-ordinary vision the secret of the runes.

We saw that the power of the runes is far more than "just writing" (as if the power to write, which most of us take for granted, is not incredible enough in and of itself): the ability to see and know and use the runes implies the ability to create worlds through the power of words, sounds, language, speech, and mind. In a very real sense (as Shakespeare, George Orwell, and a host of other thoughtful writers have perceived) we are composed of our thoughts and thought-patterns and narratives, and those thoughts and thought-patterns and narratives are ultimately composed of words and of language, that is to say of symbols -- and we could say of runes.

Students of Old English will know that the very word "spell" which in modern English means a formula to alter reality was the Old English word spel that meant generally "word" or "message" (and hence the English word gospel is derived from the combination of the Old English words god  pronounced "gode" and meaning "good" and spel  meaning "word"). This fact reflects and illustrates the reality-altering power of words, language, and runes. 

Interestingly enough, in light of the tremendous reality-altering power of words (and runes) is the fact that in order to obtain the knowledge of the runes, Odin had to undertake a journey that is clearly shamanic in its elements, including the ascent up a pole or tree: examples abound of the use of a pole or  "tree" in the ritual shamanic journeys described in Mircea Eliade's compendium of shamanic observations from around the world entitled Shamanism: Archaic techniques of ecstasy (originally published in French in 1951). It is quite clear from the details of many of these shamanic poles that they represent the celestial pole, which is in fact the World-Tree, and thus they correspond directly to the "pole" upon which Odin had to ascend during his own ordeal to transcend ordinary reality and obtain the power of runic reality-creation and reality-manipulation.

Eliade offers numerous examples of shamanic rituals which involve, "as an essential rite, climbing a tree or some other more or less symbolic means of ascending to the sky" (123) including the "South American consecration, that of the machi, the Araucanian shamaness," who undergoes an initiation ceremony centered upon "the ritual climbing of a tree or rather of a tree trunk stripped of bark, called rewe. The rewe is also the particular symbol of the shamanic profession, and every machi keeps it in front of her hut indefinitely" (123). Eliade informs us that the rewe is always nine-feet tall in this particular culture, and that the multi-day ceremony involves drumming, drum circles, dancing, stripping naked, the sacrifice of lambs, falling into trance or the state of ecstasy, and the ritual cutting of the fingers and lips of both the shamaness candidate and the initiating shamaness, using a white quartz knife (123-124).  Eliade then goes on to describe a shamanic initiation rite among the Pomo of North America involving "the climbing of a tree-pole from twenty to thirty feet long and six inches in diameter," and similar (and sometimes even more dangerous) symbolic ascents among shamanic cultures from the regions of Hungary, Iran, Australian aborigines, the Sarawak of Malaysia, and the Carib shamans of Dutch Guiana (125-131).

If the reader is not thoroughly convinced that this most central vision quest undertaken by Odin indicates his shamanic nature -- and is thus additional powerful evidence that all the ancient sacred mythologies are in fact shamanic in their core message -- there is the additional evidence that he is known for riding through the heavens upon his eight-legged horse, Sleipnir (shown in the upper section of the carved runestone above). 

While other Norse gods and goddesses of course had horses too, Odin's was the horse most well-known, most unique, and most associated with his wild journeys through the heavens in the company of the wild band of the Valkyries (in this he resembles Dionysus, who was often accompanied by Maenads -- and whose rites in the hills and wilderness were described in terms indicating that they involved ecstasy). As the authors of Hamlet's Mill point out, the shaman's drum was described as the "horse" that serves to carry him or her into the state of ecstasy and to enable the shaman's soul to ascend to the sky (Hamlet's Mill, 122).

Odin's horse, Sleipnir, was notable for having eight legs -- four in the front and four in the back -- making him twice as fast as any other horse. Celestially, since Odin embodies the characteristics of the planet Mercury (who was also a transcendent god associated with breaking through barriers and with language, as explored in this important previous post), the fact that his swift steed Sleipnir had eight legs may be a mythological embodiment of the fact that Mercury is the swiftest of the planets (by virtue of its being so close to the sun). In fact, as you can easily confirm for yourself, the orbital period of Mercury is . . . 88 earth days! So, of course, Odin's steed would be expected to have eight legs -- what other number would have been appropriate?

But, if we see that Odin is clearly a shamanic figure, and that the shaman's horse is his or her drum, then the rhythmic drumming that would be produced by the hoofbeat of an eight-legged steed would be quite rapid, and quite apropos of the very rapid drumbeat used to produce a state of ecstasy in shamanic cultures around the world. So, the eight-legged nature of Odin's steed works to convey esoteric knowledge to us on many levels.

The previous post also demonstrated that the shamanic nature of Odin's sacrifice upon the Tree has direct parallels to the sacrifice of Christ upon the Cross. In The Undying Stars, I explore the ways in which the realization that all the myths of the world (including those found in the Old and New Testaments) unites the world's ancient wisdom, and leads to the possible conclusion that they were all at their very core conveying a message that is essentially and profoundly shamanic (that is, in fact, what I call shamanic-holographic).

This assertion is bolstered by the evidence that the celestial Tree which Odin must ascend (and which the shamans ascend in the ceremonies cited by Eliade) corresponds to the Djed-column of Osiris which must be "raised up" and to the Ankh or Cross of Life of ancient Egypt which has a horizontal component representing the "cast down" nature of our material existence (in which we must go about in an "animal" body), but which also has a vertical component representing our spiritual nature which comes down from above and which is immortal (a fact emphasized on the Ankh itself by the unending loop at the top of the cross), and which represents both the motion of our rise and return to the spiritual realms after each incarnation and also the motion of the raising of the inner spiritual component or fire which we can perform during this life as an essential part of our mission in this earthly existence. 

We have also seen evidence that this "divine spark" in each individual man or woman is associated with the fire brought down from heaven by Prometheus in the ancient Greek mythos, and with the Thunderbolt or Vajra found in the ancient Vedic texts, and that the mission of recognizing this inner divine element and of raising it up is central to our overcoming our cast-down state. 

And -- although "orthodox" (a word that means "straight-teaching" or by implication "right-teaching") and literalist Christianity would strongly object to such an assertion -- this mission of recognizing and the of raising up the divine inner spark can clearly be seen to be a possible interpretation of the message  taught by Paul in some of his early letters urging his listeners to recognize the Christ within (Galatians 1:16,   Colossians 1:27, 2 Corinthians 13:5) and to realize that they themselves undergo the process of being crucified and raised by virtue of this mystical identification with the Christ within (Galatians 2:20). 

This connection advances the strong possibility that the patterns found in the ancient scriptures preserved in the Bible were actually the very same patterns found in the myth-system of ancient Egypt and the Djed-column and Ankh-Cross imagery associated with the Osiris, and the very same patterns found in the myth-system of the Norsemen and the World-Tree sacrifice associated with the shamanic questing of Odin. 

It also supports the conclusion that -- like those other world-myths -- the symbology and esoteric message of the Bible scriptures is in fact deeply shamanic, and pointing towards the same individual ascent and breaking free of the bonds of the material body and the material world undertaken by shamans in the rituals recorded by Eliade and other researchers in the early twentieth century and in the centuries immediately preceding.

Powerful evidence, perhaps even conclusive evidence, to support this conclusion -- the conclusion that the imagery employed by Paul and the other early pre-literalist teachers was actually composed of exquisite metaphors designed to teach a message closely aligned with the message embodied in the Osirian imagery of "the Djed-column cast down" and "the Djed-column raised up," the same message found in the sacrifice of Odin and the Thunderbolt of Indra (the Vajra) and in the ascent to the heavens by the shaman along the celestial tree -- can be seen in the fact that the traditional symbology surrounding the Crucifixion of Christ quite clearly reflects the imagery surrounding the Osirian imagery of the Djed cast down and the Djed raised up.

Below is an image from the temple of Seti I at Abydos which comes from a series of images depicting scenes from the myth-cycle of Osiris, Isis, Set and Horus. Specifically, the image shown below depicts Isis retrieving the casket containing the slain body of Osiris from the King of Byblos. 

image: Wikimedia commons (link).

Significantly (as I discuss in some detail in my first book), the casket containing the body of Osiris had lodged in a tamarisk bush and then been concealed when the tamarisk grew into a tree around it, which the King of Byblos then cut down to use as a pillar in his palace, thus connecting the body of Osiris to the World-Tree which is cut down in many myths around the world (including to Yggdrasil, which ultimately cracks apart and falls at Ragnarokk) and thus to the unhinging of the world-axis and to the precession of the equinoxes. 

This aspect of the story links the Djed-column (also called the "Backbone of Osiris") even more strongly to Yggdrasil and the sacrifice of Odin as alleged in the previous post -- and we can see that, sure enough, in the image above the column that the King of Byblos is handing over to Isis has the horizontal "vertebrae" lines that indicate it is a Djed-column and the Backbone of Osiris.  

Although you may see or hear some people describe the image above from the temple of Seti I at Abydos as depicting the "raising of the Djed-column," it actually is not showing the raising of the Djed. In fact, it is showing the "bringing down" of the Djed and the corpse of Osiris, preparatory to his being laid in the tomb (in later scenes). Only later will Osiris be "raised up."

This fact is very important, because it is my assertion that the above scene is analogous to the taking down of the body of Christ from the Cross (sometimes called "the Descent from the Cross")! 

If all the foregoing discussion and analysis is correct, and the myths from around the world (including those found in the Bible) are actually closely connected, and that they teach a shamanic message, and that they often use the absolutely central symbol of the Djed-column/Cruciform Cross/Ankh Cross/World Tree/Shamanic Pole to embody that message (a message of the "divine spark within" or the "Christ in you," as Paul phrases it), then the symbology of the "casting down" of the Christ into the tomb prior to his subsequent "raising up" is another manifestation of the same pattern, and the taking down of Christ from the Cross would parallel the taking down and giving to Isis of the Djed-column containing the corpse of the now-dead Osiris.

The imagery surrounding the Descent from the Cross supports this connection in absolutely breathtaking fashion. See, for example, this collection of images taken from art through the centuries of this event.

Even more striking, however, is the Christian art in the category known as Pietà and depicting the Virgin Mary holding the body of Christ after the Crucifixion.

Below is perhaps the most famous such Pietà, that by Michelangelo situated in the Vatican:

image: Wikimedia commons (link).

If we remember from previous posts that the "Djed cast down" corresponds to the horizontal line between the equinoxes, then the imagery of Isis and of Mary receiving the "cast down" or "nearly-horizontal" body of Osiris (ancient Egypt) and of Christ (New Testament) makes perfect sense: the sign of Virgo is positioned at the point of the fall equinox -- when the sun is declining down towards the grave, but just before the exact horizontal point of the equinox!

The "Virgo imagery" in both the above images (of Isis from the temple of Seti I, who died in 1279 BC and of the Virgin Mary from the work of Michelangelo who died in AD 1564) should be quite clear by now to anyone who has read The Undying Stars or looked at some of the images provided in previous posts about the constellation Virgo in the world's mythology (see for instance here, here, here, and here). 

Specifically, look at the "outstretched arm" -- which is one of the most characteristic aspects of the Virgo constellation and which is embodied in ancient myth (and ancient art depicting Virgo-connected figures) over and over and over again. It is most evident in the image of Isis receiving the tilted (descending towards the horizontal) Djed-column from the King of Byblos, but the exact same outstretched hand is also present in Michelangelo's masterpiece:

Now that it is pointed out, you can see that the outstretched arm in the Isis image is over-elongated -- as if to ensure that you do not fail to notice it.

For those who may not be as familiar with the constellation Virgo (again, they can go check out the Virgo discussions above, or any of the others linked on this extensive index of constellations) and the way this constellation overlays on ancient sacred art, take a look at the image below from ancient Greece, circa 440 BC, depicting the Pythia: a priestess whose very role was to go into a trance or state of ecstasy in order to obtain knowledge from the other realm which could not be obtained in "ordinary reality." The outline of Virgo (with distinctive outstretched arm) is superimposed:

What does all this mean?

I would submit that it proves the connection of the world's ancient myths -- from ancient Egypt, to ancient Sumer and Babylon (who also had a central story of a "World-Tree" in the mighty cedar whose top reached to the heavens), to ancient India, to ancient Greece, to the myths found in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, to the myths of the Norse, and the list goes on and on (to Africa, North and South America, the islands of the Pacific, Australia, east Asia . . . ). 

It also proves the connection and close kinship of all these myths, their central symbology, and most importantly their esoteric message with each other and with the world's surviving shamanic cultures and traditions.

This connection suggests an even more radical and even more transformative ramification for what we have discovered above, because the esoteric and shamanic nature of the world's ancient wisdom-texts and traditions indicates that these teachings are meant to be put into practice by each man and woman who is incarnated in a body: by each man and woman who, these ancient scriptures teach, embodies a divine spark, a divine Thunderbolt, a divine "Christ within." 

This evidence above suggests that it is part of our purpose here in this incarnation (perhaps even our central purpose) to recognize and to raise

that inner spark of divinity, that "vertical portion of the Ankh," that Djed-column which we each share with Osiris, along that central axis that inside the human microcosm reflects the celestial axis of the World-Tree found in the macrocosm.

Perhaps this can be done through the practice of Yoga(whose name itself we have seen to be connected to the Ankh and hence to the Djed). 

Perhaps this can be done through the practice of Kung Fu (whose name may also be related to the "name of the Ankh," and which is most definitely related to the precession of the equinoxes and the other celestial cycles which allegorize our divine spark cycling back upwards after first plunging downwards). 

Perhaps this can be done through art and the creative force (as eloquently argued by Jon Rappoport, who connects that activity to the smashing of artificial realities embodied by trickster gods including Hermes, and by John Anthony West, who demonstrates that the ancient Egyptians appear to have had strong ideas about the transformative and consciousness-raising power of the artistic process of creating itself).

Perhaps this can be done through meditation, which science has shown can send the brain into a altered state -- perhaps even akin to a shamanic state -- when performed by those who have spent long hours practicing the discipline.

Perhaps this can be done through rhythmic chanting, which appears to have been a central component in the ancient wisdom and which amazingly seems to share a fairly similar form or pattern across many cultures and languages around the world.

Perhaps this can be done through the use of special plants and organisms such as mushrooms, which can be ingested or brewed into teas (please note the strong words of warning regarding the dangers of mistakenly consuming the wrong mushrooms posted on the website of mushroom expert Paul Stamets and repeated on this blog post here).

And certainly this can be done through the practice of what we commonly label as shamanic techniques (deliberately inducing states of ecstasy or the experience of non-ordinary reality, through a variety of methods available to humanity, including shamanic drumming): as we have seen, there is strong evidence to believe that all of the world's ancient wisdom was at one time shamanic, a fact which suggests that part of the world has been deliberately robbed of its shamanic heritage. In other words, the ancient myths were not intended to teach that Osiris "raised the Djed-column" so that we don't have to. The ancient myths were not intended to teach that Christ "raised the Djed-column" so that we don't have to. The ancient myths were not intended to teach that Odin "raised the Djed-column" so that we don't have to.

They contained those stories, and showed that pattern so many times, because it is what we are here to do.

image: Wikimedia commons (link).

The sacrifice of Odin

image: Wikimedia commons (link).

For the third edition of the "Ankh trilogy" of posts (which began with "Scarab, Ankh, and Djed" and continued with "The name of the Ankh"), let us continue our investigation of this most central theme by looking at the connections to another manifestation of the Cross of Life (which the Ankh and the Djed represent, as does the Scarab with its upraised arms): Yggdrasil, the Tree of Life found in Norse and Germanic mythology.

The World-Tree Yggdrasil is described in the Elder Edda and the Younger Edda as a mighty ash-tree whose roots penetrate to the deepest underworlds and whose branches reach to the highest heavenly realms. At its base is the holy fountain of Urd, associated with the Norns who tend to the Tree and who, the Younger Edda tells us in Chapter VII, "shape the lives of men." 

The waters at the foot of the tree are also associated with Mimir's Well. In the Younger Edda, as part of the question-and-answer session between Odin in the guise of Ganglere (might we not read the same "root sound" of "the name of the Ankh" here as well?) and three divinities who are simply named Har ("High"), Jafnhar ("Equally High") and Thride ("Third"), we read:

Then said Ganglere: Where is the chief or most holy place of the gods? Har answered: That is by the ash Ygdrasil. There the gods meet in council every day. Said Ganglere: What is said about this place? Answered Jafnhar: This ash is the best and greatest of all trees; its branches spread over all the world, and reach up above heaven. Three roots sustain the tree and stand wide apart; one root is with the asas and another with the frost-giants, where Ginungagap formerly was; the third reaches into Niflheim; under it is Hvergelmer, where Nidhug gnaws the root from below. But under the second root, which extends to the frost-giants, is the well of Mimer, wherein knowledge and wisdom are concealed. The owner of the well hight Mimer. He is full of wisdom, for he drinks from the well with the Gjallar-horn. Alfather once came there and asked for a drink from the well, but he did not get it before he left one of his eyes as a pledge. Younger Edda, Chapter VII.

This famous incident, of course, is responsible for Odin's having only one remaining eye. But there is another episode in Norse myth in which Odin had to undergo tremendous sacrifice in order to gain wisdom, an episode also closely associated with the holy ash Yggdrasil, and an episode which clearly connects the World-Tree with the concepts and symbology that has been discussed in the previous two posts surrounding the Ankh or Cross of Life, and the Djed-column or Backbone of Osiris: the famous sacrifice of Odin in which he hangs himself upon the tree, described in a somewhat fleeting passage found in the Elder Edda, in the portion known as the Havamal or Hovamol, beginning in stanza 139 (in the online edition of the Elder Edda linked above, it begins on page 59 -- that online text is a little difficult to navigate: the best way is probably to look for the "page numbers" contained within brackets, scrolling down until you reach [59]):

I ween that I hung on the windy tree,

Hung there for nights full nine;

With the spear I was wounded, and offered I was

To Othin, myself to myself,

On the tree that none may ever know

What root beneath it runs.

None made me happy with loaf or horn,

And there below I looked;

I took up the runes, shrieking I took them,

And forthwith back I fell.

This passage describes Odin "raised up" upon the Tree, hanging upon it in a sacrifice or crucifixion, Odin sacrificed to Odin, and through this ordeal after nine full nights he obtains a new vision which he did not have previously -- the vision to see the runes, and to take them up. It is in many ways analogous to the ordeal he had to go through in order to obtain the wisdom of Mimir from the well, and also to the adventure he had to undertake in order to obtain the mead of poetry from Gunnlod, and yet this incident is at once more primordial and defining of the Alfather Odin than any of the others.

It is through this sacrifice that Odin obtains the gift of the runes, the gift of encoding information in symbolic form, the gift of the manipulation of language. We can begin to realize the depth of power that this gift truly contains when we recognize the ordeal Odin had to undergo in order to obtain it.

Previous posts have examined the concept that it is in many ways through language that reality is created and that worlds are shaped. In Genesis, of course, it is through the word of God that all Creation is spoken into existence. Modern science tells us that it is through the combination of the four "letters" (dare we call them "runes"?) in the strands of DNA that all our body's characteristics are spun-out in the cells of our being (perhaps these are the strands that the Norns are spinning?).

And Odin wins the ability to see the runes by his hanging upon the Tree. 

Many other researchers have observed that the double-helix shape of the DNA strand recalls quite strikingly the two serpents of the caduceus staff (carried, of course, in Greek and Roman myth by Hermes or Mercury, who is in many ways associated with Odin, interestingly enough). But we have seen in the previous two examinations of the Ankh and Scarab and Djed that the caduceus staff is clearly a "Djed-column" type of symbol, representative of the Backbone of Osiris "raised up," and of the vertical column of the year which reaches from the very lowest pit at the winter solstice to the very summit of the year (highest heaven) at the summer solstice. 

Clearly, Odin's hanging upon the Tree relates to this same concept.

This profound episode also relates to the concept of "the shamanic," in that Odin by his ascent to hang on the World-Tree penetrates beyond the realm of the ordinary to bring back knowledge that can be obtained by no other means. This is one of the defining characteristics of the shamanic techniques of ecstasy described in the work of Mircea Eliade (see for instance here and here), and in fact it can be easily demonstrated that shamans around the world often use a vertical pole or "climbing the tree" as part of their shamanic travel. There is clearly a powerful stream of connectivity which flows between the ancient wisdom preserved and conveyed in the myths of Osiris and the Djed, the myths of Odin and the World-Tree, and the shamanic practices of the world.

Finally, we must notice the clear connections between the sacrifice of Odin described above and the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross described in the New Testament. Most obviously, both involve a crucifixion upon a Tree (and the Cross is literally referred to as "the tree" in Biblical verses such as Acts 13:29 and 1 Peter 2:24). 

Additionally, in Odin's description of his own sacrifice, he declares that "with the spear I was wounded," which is obviously an element that is present in the sacrifice described in the New Testament as well. Critics might argue, because our records of the Norse myths were written down after Christianity was already known and was spreading throughout Europe, that this element was "imported" into Norse mythology from Christianity, but there is absolutely no evidence that this is the case, and there is no need to assume such an importation. Odin is very closely associated with his powerful weapon the Gungnir, the mighty spear which never misses its target and which Odin used to indicate which force would be victorious when two contending sides met on the field of battle. That he would be wounded by his own spear when he sacrificed himself to himself is clearly not inconsistent with the tenor of what is taking place.

There is also the shout or shriek which Odin utters at the end of his ordeal, when he has finally won the victory and obtained what he sought. 

By this episode, and by other arguments I present in The Undying Stars, I would argue that the verses preserved in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible are actually shamanic in nature, and were originally intended to be regarded as such. By the aggressive literalizing that has taken place in history, this shamanic vision (and their connection to the myths of Osiris and Odin) has been covered-over and obscured.

And yet, like the hidden runes which Odin found, which have the ability to carry world-changing information to faraway places and even to distant times (to those not yet born, even), the words and letters preserved in the Bible itself continue to patiently carry their message down through the centuries. Their kinship with the myths of the world, from Egypt to Greece to the lands of the Norse, and to the shamanic practices found across so many cultures, from North and South America to Siberia and Mongolia and Australia and Africa, is undeniable.

Hamlet, Hamlet's Mill, and Astro-Theology

image: From Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, E. A. Wallis Budge, 1911 (link). Labels added to show correspondence to characters in the story of Hamlet. 

The previous post, entitled "Shakespeare and the Creation of Reality," examined aspects of Shakespeare's plays, and in particular Shakespeare's love of language and of playing with multiple meanings of words and phrases, relating to the concept of "reality creation" and human consciousness.

That post especially focused in upon one of the most famous scenes from Hamlet, which may well be Shakespeare's most famous play. It is particularly fitting that Shakespeare's Hamlet is so overtly concerned with the question of reality and epistemology (the subject of knowing, and the question of how we know what we know, or whether and what we can know), as well as the extent to which words and thoughts shape and even create reality, because the fundamental storyline of Hamlet is a celestial storyline, connected to the ancient sacred traditions of many cultures. 

As I endeavor to demonstrate in my latest book The Undying Stars, these ancient myths -- to which the plot of Hamlet is so closely connected -- are almost certainly deeply concerned with the exact same issues: the creation of reality, the nature of human existence, and the degree to which reality and in fact the entire cosmos is in some sense contained and even created inside the head of each individual man and woman (and thus the well-known scene of young Hamlet contemplating the skull is a beautiful dramatization of this very question).

The fact that the basic plot outline of Hamlet is a very ancient one, hearkening all the way back to the myths of ancient Egypt, is thoroughly established in the seminal 1969 study of ancient wisdom and astro-theology, Hamlet's Mill: An essay on myth and the frame of time, by Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend. In that text, they demonstrate that the legend of Hamlet (or Amlethus, as he was called by Saxo Grammaticus, a Danish historian and scholar of myth and poetry who lived c. AD 1150 to c. AD 1220) in which a king-father is killed by a treacherous brother, and whose murder must be avenged by his son, corresponds directly to the outline of the myth of Osiris (murdered by his treacherous brother Set) and Horus.

The connections between these myths (and the connection to the plot of The Lion King) is discussed in this previous post, among others. 

Hamlet's Mill also demonstrates that this ancient myth -- like so many others from around the globe and across the millennia -- is based upon a common system of celestial allegory that can be perceived underneath the different costumes and cultural trappings of all the various sacred stories. 

However, as many readers of Hamlet's Mill are no doubt aware, it can be difficult to follow the argument at times, due to the book's tendency to come right up to the edge of making the connection before suddenly dancing away to take up a different angle or a myth from a different culture, always promising to come back and "close the loop" later on (the reader can be the judge of whether or not that promise is completely serious). 

This is not to say that Hamlet's Mill is not a valuable text that rewards multiple readings and careful study: it absolutely is and it absolutely does, and it has been seminal to my own understanding and to the work of many other researchers who cite it favorably and indicate its importance to their analysis. Contrary to the extremely biased entry on the text in Wikipedia

(and the rambling and completely negative essay that is the only "External Links" source that Wikipedia has featured in the bottom section in their misleading and unfair Hamlet's Mill page for some years now), Hamlet's Mill has not been "debunked," and I believe that its arguments are not only sound but are supported by so much evidence from ancient myth that the conclusion is practically undeniable at this point. My reply to the arguments in that sole reference selected by Wikipedia in their "External Links" for Hamlet's Mill can be found in the previously-linked blog post here.

All that aside, due to the fact that Hamlet's Mill is a somewhat difficult work which generally requires a few complete read-throughs, it may be helpful to read some more straightforward and systematic explications of the ancient system of celestial metaphor prior to tackling Hamlet's Mill itself (although I will say again that it is absolutely worthwhile to eventually tackle it, with the idea that you may have to tackle it again once you've tackled it once!). 

One such book, focusing particularly on the Osiris-Set-Horus conflict isThe Death of Gods in Ancient Egypt (originally published in 1992), by Jane B. Sellers.

Another, I would respectfully submit, is The Undying Stars, in which I endeavor to explain the ancient system in a clear and thorough fashion, as well as to examine the possible purpose and meaning for the widespread presence of star-myths at the heart of virtually every sacred tradition in the cultures of our planet. The outstanding teaching videos of Santos Bonacci, available on the web in various places including his website here, are also an excellent source and were fundamental to my own analysis as well, as are some of the texts he has listed on his site. 

Many previous posts (probably over fifty now) have treated specific myths and traced the connections to the motions of the heavenly bodies (sun, moon, stars and planets). Some of these have been listed in previous posts such as this one. Here is another convenient compilation, grouping them this time by general culture or ancient civilization, for those who would like a handy index to past posts dealing with star-myths and astro-theology:

ANCIENT SUMER AND BABYLON

• Gilgamesh and Enkidu (see here, here, and here). See also further discussion in my first book, The Mathisen Corollary.
• Ishtar (here).
• The Scorpion Goddess Ishara (here).
• The Oannes (here and here).

ANCIENT EGYPT

• Isis (see here, here, and here).
• Osiris (see here, here, here and here).
• Horus (see here and here).
• Set (see here, here, and here). See also further discussion in my first book, The Mathisen Corollary.

ANCIENT INDIA

• Indra, Vishnu, and the Vajra (hereand here).
• Agni (here).
• The Seven Rishis (here).
• Rahu (here).

OLD TESTAMENT

• Sarah (here).
• Jacob and Esau (here).
• Moses (here). 
• A land flowing with milk and honey (here).
• Samson (here).
• Noah and the Ark (here).
• Elisha the Prophet (here).

NEW TESTAMENT

• The Cross (here, here and here).
• Apostle Peter (here).
• The Scorpion and the Smoky Abyss of Revelation 9 (here).
• Hell (here).

ANCIENT GREECE

• Demeter and Eleusis (here).
• Delphi and the Pythia (here).
• Okeanos or Oceanus (here).
• Hercules (here and here).
• Atlas (here).
• Prometheus (here).
• Ares and Aphrodite (here).
• Ares and the Brazen Cauldron (here).
• Zeus and Aphrodite (here).
• Hermes and Aphrodite (here).
• Zeus-Jupiter (here).
• Pan (here).
• Asclepius (here).
• Amaltheia (here).
• Phaethon (here and here).

NORSE MYTHOLOGY

• Odin and Gunnlod
• Loki
• Skade
• Freya
• Sif
• Heimdall
• Valhalla
• Gefjon and her Plow

JAPANESE MYTHOLOGY

• Amaterasu and Uzume

SACRED TRADITIONS AND MYTHOLOGY OF THE AMERICAS

• The Old Man and his Daughter
• The Lucky Hunter
• The Hero Twins
• Tezcatlipoca
• Mother Scorpion

SACRED TRADITIONS AND MYTHOLOGY OF THE PACIFIC

• Maui and the Jawbone
• Wahine Taweka
• The hairy man who fetched the Sun

ANCIENT CHINA

• The Magpie Bridge
• The Bow of the Emperors

Many more in addition to these are discussed in The Undying Stars as well.

Atlas and Hercules

image: Atlas bringing the golden apples to Heracles, who is temporarily holding up the sky, from the Temple to Zeus at Olympia, built between 472 BC and 456 BC. Wikimedia commons (link).

The Undying Stars presents evidence that the ancient mythologies of cultures around the globe are all built upon "star myths" which follow a common system of celestial allegory, and that the original intended purpose of all these star myths was to convey a shamanic-holographic vision of our universe and mankind's place within it: a liberating vision which invites us to break through artificial barriers, and to reach into the "seed realm" to bring back information and to effect transformations that cannot be achieved any other way.

Previous posts have provided detailed examinations of specific myths from around the world -- including the stories found within the scriptures which made their way into what are often called the Old and New Testaments -- in order to demonstrate that the evidence supporting the above assertion is so prodigiously vast as to be almost irrefutable.  

This previous post provides a lengthy list, with links, to more than twenty such detailed examinations of star myths from around the world, with clear ties between the details from the myth or story and the characteristics of the constellation or constellations that the story is allegorizing into myth.  

Several previous posts discuss the reason that the ancient sages who gave these myths to humanity chose to use the motions of the celestial realm in order to convey profound and otherwise difficult-to-grasp truths (see for instance: "Wax on, wax off," "Like a finger, pointing a way to the moon . . ." and "Montessori and 'thinging'").

The ancient myths of the world provide an inexhaustible supply of additional examples of the heavenly and celestial foundation of nearly every ancient scripture and sacred story. One memorable Greek myth worthy of explication to further illustrate the undeniable stellar basis of the ancient sacred corpus comes from the Twelve Labors of Heracles (Roman Hercules): the mission to retrieve the golden apples of the Hesperides (the Eleventh Labor of Heracles).

The Greek scholar Apollodorus of Athens (born around 180 BC and lived until some time after 120 BC) gives us a good version to examine, which can be found in its entirety online here, as translated by James George Frazer (1921). Below is an extended quotation of some of the pertinent details of the Eleventh Labor, which actually involved numerous other encounters by Heracles with other beings and demigods along the way (not all of which will be examined, although each could provide rich material for study and celestial unraveling). Since Frazer chooses to use the Roman form of the hero's name, we too will refer to him as Hercules for the rest of this particular discussion:

When the labours had been performed in eight years and a month, Eurystheus ordered Hercules, as an eleventh labour, to fetch golden apples from the Hesperides, for he did not acknowledge the labour of the cattle of Augeas nor that of the hydra. These apples were not, as some have said, in Libya, but on Atlas among the Hyperboreans. They were presented to Zeus after his marriage with Hera, and guarded by an immortal dragon with a hundred heads, offspring of Typhon and Echidna, which spoke with many divers sorts of voices. With it the Hepserides also were on guard, to wit, Aegle, Erythia, Hesperia, and Arethusa. [. . .][Various adventures ensue, primarily with Heracles defeating different sons of Poseidon][. . .] 

And traversing Asia he put in to Thermydrae, the harbor of the Lindians. And having loosed one of the bullocks from the cart of a cowherd, he sacrificed it and feasted. But the cowherd, unable to protect himself, stood on a certain mountain and cursed. Wherefore to this day, when they sacrifice to Hercules, they do it with curses.

And passing by Arabia he slew Emathion, son of Tithonius, and journeying through Libya to the outer sea he received the goblet from the Sun. And having crossed to the opposite mainland he shot on the Caucasus the eagle, offspring of Echidna and Typhon, that was devouring the liver of Prometheus, and he released Prometheus, after choosing for himself the bond of olive, and to Zeus he presented Chiron, who, though immortal, consented to die in his stead.

Now Prometheus had told Hercules not to go himself after the apples but to send Atlas, first relieving him of the burden of the sphere; so when he was come to Atlas in the land of the Hyperboreans, he took the advice and relieved Atlas. But when Atlas had received three apples from the Hesperides, he came to Hercules, and not wishing to support the sphere he said that he would himself carry the apples to Eurystheus, and bade Hercules hold up the sky in his stead. Hercules promised to do so, but succeeded by craft in putting it on Atlas instead. For at the advice of Prometheus he begged Atlas to hold up the sky till he should put a pad on his head. When Atlas heard that, he laid the apples down on the ground and took the sphere from Hercules. And so Hercules picked up the apples and departed. But some say that he did not get them from Atlas, but that he plucked the apples himself after killing the guardian snake. And having brought the apples he gave them to Eurystheus. But he, on receiving them, bestowed them on Hercules, from whom Athena got them and conveyed them back again; for it was not lawful that they should be laid down anywhere.

This story is full of fascinating detail, as well as a certain amount of humor. First, it is fascinating to note that the story involves plucking fruit from a tree . . . plucking fruit from a tree . . . now where have we heard something about that before . . . ? (It sounds familiar somehow). 

Prometheus warns Hercules that it is somehow dangerous (possibly fatal) for Hercules to pluck the apples himself (this also seems vaguely familiar for some reason . . . plucking fruit might cause one to "surely die" . . . hmmm). There is also a guardian serpent -- in this case, a dragon -- which again seems to be something I remember from another myth about fatal fruit.

Perhaps the most memorable aspect of this particular myth-sequence is the battle of wits between Hercules and Atlas. Atlas was the Titan condemned for eternity to uphold the entire sphere of the sky upon his shoulders. This was a punishment for having sided against the Olympians in the primordial battle between the Titans and the new gods. 

Hercules gets himself into a tight spot when he agrees to hold up the sky while Atlas retrieves the dangerous apples: when Atlas returns, the Titan decides he kind of enjoys his newfound freedom, and announces to Hercules that the hero seems to be doing such a good job that Atlas will be taking a permanent vacation and leaving the task of holding up the sky to Hercules from now on.

Hercules slyly agrees (in the version from Apollodorus cited above), but asks for a moment in order to cut a pad for his shoulders before he gets down to the task of supporting the sphere for the rest of eternity. Atlas agrees, and relieves Hercules for a moment, at which point the hero takes the apples and departs, leaving the hapless Atlas back where he began, supporting the sky. 

In some versions (at least in the wonderfully-illustrated version of the Labors of Hercules presented in the Sullivan Programmed Reading workbooks I had the pleasure of reading in elementary school during the 1970s), Hercules actually prepares to shoulder the sky again after cutting the pads for his shoulders, before Athena helpfully reminds the hero not to fall for his own trick, and advises him not to take the burden of the heavens back from Atlas now that he has the Titan back where he belongs.

In footnote number three from Frazer's 1921 translation, we see the kind of analysis found among conventional scholars, who resolutely refuse to interpret the ancient myths of the world as celestial allegory. There, we read some scholarly discussion as to where on earth these gardens of the Hesperides might be located -- along with some consternation that Apollodorus seems to have located them in "the far north" rather than in the "far west" as the name "Hesperides" would seem to imply (the word has connections to the evening star or Venus when appearing in the west, rather than when appearing in the morning in the east). 

The details of the story, however, make it clear that we are dealing again with celestial allegory. The Titan who is holding up the vault of the sky in this case is none other than the hulking constellation of Boötes -- a constellation whose form is fairly close to the North Celestial Pole as well as to the Big Dipper which circles it. The fact that the constellation of Hercules is very close to Boötes (and is also located close to the North Celestial Pole around which the entire heavens revolve) and that Hercules in the story temporarily takes over the task of supporting the sky-sphere from Atlas should be enough to identify the two main actors in the myth with these two northern constellations.

The diagram below, a screenshot from the delightful browser-based Neave Planetarium program created by programmer-developer Paul Neave, shows the two constellations in relationship to one another:

The above diagram includes my own addition of bold yellow lines to indicate the outlines of the constellations as imagined by the indispensable H.A. Rey; to see the diagrams as they appear on the Neave Planetarium app if you wish to run it yourself, the screenshot below shows the same section of sky, but removes my added yellow outlines:

Note that the myth as presented by Apollodorus contains several clues which aid in the conclusion that we are dealing with the northern section of sky around which the entire celestial sphere revolves. First, of course, is the very nature of the punishment of Atlas: he is condemned to hold up what Apollodorus refers to as "the sphere" and "the sky." The best explanation for this punishment is that Atlas must be holding up the inside of the celestial sphere -- he is holding up the dome of the sky that we see when we look up into the heavens at night, a dome which revolves around a central point at the north celestial pole. Thus, he must be a constellation fairly close to the north celestial pole, and Böotes certainly qualifies.

Secondly, we note that the apples in this myth are guarded by a dragon -- and there is clearly a dragon which winds its way around the north celestial pole, in the form of the constellation Draco, the Dragon. The diagram below includes the north celestial pole, and the sinuous form of Draco:

I have only added the outline to Hercules in the above image: the outlines of Draco, the Big Dipper, and the Little Dipper are easy enough to see using the outlines included in the Neave Planetarium online app.

There is some reason to believe that the "tree" from which the Titan plucks the apples must be the invisible axis of the sky itself, the central "pole" around which the entire heavens turn. I present arguments in my first book, The Mathisen Corollary, that ancient myth and sacred tradition envisioned this central axis as a tall tree, which in many myths (such as the Gilgamesh epic) is cut down or otherwise unhinged to begin the motion of precession. Other evidence for this identification is presented in Hamlet's Mill.

Based upon this reading of the celestial aspects of the myth, it is possible that the golden apples themselves can be identified with the circlet of stars that make up the Corona Borealis, or Northern Crown. This constellation, allegorized in other myths as a necklace of jewels, can be seen to be located directly between the constellations of Hercules and Boötes in the first diagrams shown above. The stars of the Northern Crown certainly sparkle like golden jewels, and other myths make it clear that these golden apples were coveted by the goddesses, and we can see in the text of the myth as described by Apollodorus that these apples somehow originated from Hera but as a gift that was given away -- just as the stars of the Northern Crown are now located apart from the form of the constellation Virgo, located below Boötes.

Other details in the myth as related by Apollodorus include the fact that the apples are found among the Hyperboreans (a word which means "far north" or "above north"), as well as the fact that in the supplemental adventures of Hercules, he is described as encountering a "cowherd" (the constellation Boötes is known as the Herdsman) who drives a "cart" or wagon (the Big Dipper was often described in myth as a wagon, a cart, or a "wain," as well as being allegorized in other myth as a plow). It was, in fact, almost certainly the billy-goat cart of Thor, who is associated with Jupiter (note that Thor's-day and Jove's-day are the same day: our modern Thursday), and remember that in the myth above as described by Apollodorus we have Hera giving the apples as a gift to Zeus (who is Jove and Jupiter).

When Hercules sacrifices one of the oxen from this cart, the Herdsman can only curse -- and we have seen that in myths around the world, the relationship between Boötes and his cart is somehow associated with off-color speech or antics (see the discussion of the lewd dance of Uzume in the Japanese myth of Amaterasu, or the behavior of Loki when he is trying to coax a smile out of the jotun maiden Skade, both of which are described in this previous post).

The outlines of both the constellation Boötes and the constellation Hercules can be envisioned as large men crouching down to support the burden of the very peak of the vault of heaven (located at the north celestial pole, which is located above both of their backs). The ancient art depicting the mighty Titan Atlas bending down to support the ponderous burden of the entire sphere often depicts him as having one knee out forward, in a manner somewhat reminiscent of the shape of Böotes, who also has a prominent crooked knee on his one leg. Below is an image of the famous "Farnese Atlas," with an outline of Böotes for comparison:

Here is a link to the original image on Wikimedia commons. Is it possible that the sculptors of such ancient statuary envisioned the outline that we normally think of as the head of Böotes as the globe in this case (when Boötes is playing the role of the Titan Atlas, that is)?  The general shape of the outline seems to suggest that the ancients did understand the correlation of Atlas with Boötes, particularly as the right (rear) leg of the statue would correspond to the "pointed" side on the left of the constellation outline, while the raised left-leg of the statue (on the right side as we look at Atlas) corresponds to the bent leg of the constellation. The illustration below shows how the general shape does seem to correlate to some degree:

Note as an intriguing aside that the Farnese Globe in the second-century AD sculpture shown above is an important clue to the level of ancient astronomical knowledge, as discussed in this previous post from 2012.

Yet further support for the identification of Atlas with Boötes comes from the fact that he is clearly described as having daughters, the Hesperides, whose names are given by Apollodorus as Aegle, Erythia, Hesperia, and Arethusa. While the image below is from a modern-era piece of artwork from the well-known trailblazing (and occasionally scandal-generating) artist John Singer Sargent (1856 - 1925), it incorporates ancient conventions regarding the depiction of Atlas. His 1925 depiction of the Hesperides as reclining beneath the burdened figure of their father the Titan is significant, in that the constellation Virgo is located in just such a recumbent pose in relationship to Boötes:

image: John Singer Sargent, Atlas and the Hesperides

(1925). Wikimedia commons (link).

Notice that the artist has depicted Atlas with one arm extended, and the hand of that single extended arm in a rather curious (albeit graceful) upturned angle -- exactly as if he were aware of the correspondence between Boötes and Atlas, and imagining the "pipe" of the constellation Bö

otes as the single extended arm of the crouching Atlas in his painting.

Below is the now-familiar diagram of Boötes in relationship to Virgo which has been featured in several previous posts including this one and this one, reproduced here in order to show that Virgo in the sky reclines beneath the hulking form of Boötes in exactly the same way that John Singer Sargent has depicted his Hesperides as reclining beneath the burdened form of his Atlas:

All of these correspondences, plus the fact that the constellation Hercules itself is located immediately adjacent to Boötes, makes it fairly clear that this is the section of the celestial sphere which is being allegorized in the star myth of Hercules retrieving the golden apples from the Hesperides, with the assistance of the Titan Atlas.

Having established this, what does it all mean? Does identifying the players of the famous Eleventh Labor of Hercules as constellations in our night sky (constellations you can go identify this very night) somehow "rob" the myth of its grandeur, its human drama, and its air of reverence for the things of the gods (including the apples which cannot be picked by human hands and which, we are told at the end of the account, cannot remain in the world of men and women but must be taken back to the world of the gods)?

While some might see it that way, I would argue the opposite: like the other myths we have examined  such as the stealing of the mead of poetry from Gunnlod or the stealing of fire from the Old Man in the tipi (and like the myth of Adam and Eve plucking the forbidden fruit from the tree in the Genesis account which shares so many elements with this labor of Hercules), there are aspects of what we could call "the shamanic" in this myth. The myth involves obtaining something from the world of the gods, of "crossing over" into the divine realm and borrowing something that is "not of this earth," something that elevates Hercules at least for a time into the numinous world of the primordial powers and the gods. He takes the place of Atlas, supporting with his own human back the very axis of the heavens (and in doing so uniting the microcosm and the macrocosm, as well as "ascending" for a time to the very realm of the stars).

It is a story of transcending boundaries -- and the fact that the mission is ultimately accomplished by means of trickery and the breaking of his word (Hercules lies to Atlas when he asks him to shoulder the sky for just a few more minutes), which is a common element in the myths surrounding the shamanic figure of Odin in the Norse pantheon, recalls the importance of the "trickster-god" found in almost every ancient myth-system, whose absolutely crucial importance is articulated by Jon Rappoport in many of his writings and speeches.

I would argue that the Eleventh Labor of Hercules conveys the message of the importance of "transcending realities" and of creating "new realities," and that seeing the myth's undeniable celestial foundation enables us to grasp this higher and deeper message, hidden in the delightful tale.

Jon Rappoport's talk on the trickster-god and creating reality

image: Seated Hermes, found in the Villa of the Papyri, Hurculaneum. Wikimedia commons (link).

One of the most important talks at the recent Secret Space Program -- among a lineup of talks that were all extremely important, each in its own way and also in conjunction with the others and with the larger thesis that was being explored from many different angles -- and one of the most memorable was undoubtedly the theatrical tour de force delivered by Jon Rappoport.

It was "theatrical" in the sense that Jon Rappoport seamlessly "channels" the voice and persona of whatever character he needs at any moment in order to illustrate his message, at times more than one character at a time (for instance, when depicting a dialogue or a debate), and at other times (after the fashion of the classical orators of antiquity) he will declare: "But I hear someone saying . . . " and then he will deliver the imagined counter-argument or challenge to his thesis, before he takes up his own voice again and demolishes their objection.

It was also theatrical in the sense that the heart of his message involved the use of "a little theater" -- as in, Let's show that the entire construct of reality is nothing but theater, a willful "suspension of disbelief" by those who have bought into it as if it were actually real. According to his argument, theater is a powerful tool by which we can "upset the apple cart," and demonstrate a different reality than the one that everyone is accepting as "the only reality" by unthinking default.

His talk was so successful in its theatricality and its delivery of his powerful message that it deserves to be seen and heard -- and I've been waiting to see if it would show up on YouTube or some other public outlet, so that I could link to the video of the presentation itself, allowing readers to go watch and listen to Jon Rappoport for themselves. However, so far it has not shown up in any public outlet that I have found, although it is available on the Secret Space Program official website, where those who purchased tickets to the event (either tickets to attend in-person or tickets to watch the streaming videos from the conference) can log in and see all of the videos of the presentations. 

So, I will discuss what I felt to be the most important points of Jon's talk, along with some quotations from the talk itself -- with the hope that if the video does become public at some point in the future, readers can go check out the entire thing.

The core of his message is at once both simple and profound . . . and so challenging that it is difficult to face, so challenging that it invites all the "defense mechanisms" of the brain to find a way to bury the message somewhere that we won't see it or have to think about it. 

His message is that imagination produces "reality."

This message is exactly what I am trying to articulate when I say that the unified message of every ancient mythology is shamanic and holographic at the same time -- but Jon Rappoport articulates this message without using either of those two terms, and in a way that is perhaps more direct, more profound, and more eloquent.

Let's "listen" to some of the most important parts of his lecture, to hear him in his own words. First, his argument that, in the most profound way possible, you are not material: that is, the part of "you" that actually makes you "you" is not the material part -- and the implications of that fact will be seen to be enormous, and will lead right into the most paradigm-upending pronouncements of quantum physics, and the "holographic universe" models that theoretical physicists have been proposing for the past forty or fifty years:

OK – so let’s take the materialist’s view of life: by conventional physics – conventional physics, OK? Everywhere’s particles. Tiny little particles. Call ‘em whatever you want: say they’re matter, say they’re energy, whatever you want – but that’s it! As far as you can go in the universe, that’s it, that’s what you’ve got when you boil it all down, you’ve got these little particles, right? Quarks and the things and the wavicles and the bah-bah-bah-bah. OK. And a conventional physicist will tell you, if you (you know) press them far enough, that none of these particles contain consciousness (what?) or the ability to understand anything – you know, what we ordinarily take to be understanding. They’re just particles, right?  This thing here? Particles. Particles, particles, particles, particles, particles, particles.  Brain? Same particles. No different! Don’t give me that – same particles.  Sorry!  So, how is it possible, then, that I’m talking and you understand what I’m saying? It’s not. Something impossible is happening here right now. Your brain is made out of the same particles mine is, same as the chair is, same as that camera, same as her lipstick, same as that strap, same as that thing you’re wearing, a bracelet. It’s all the same particles. Brain? Same particles. [. . . ] So by conventional physics (materialism, that’s the philosophy aspect of it) there’s no possible way that I could be talking and you could be sitting there understanding what I’m saying. But yet, it’s happening! Impossible! Therefore . . . you’re not material. Hate to break it to you. Neither am I. We’re inhabiting these things, but we’re not material. These things are material, but we’re not . . . and we possess this capacity to understand each other. Yes, the physical vehicle has a part to play, in the theatrical this and the that and the blueah-yuh-yuh-yuh, but that’s it. The actual understanding is non-material.  Somebody says, “WAIT a minute! I don’t like that. Don’t try to pull that one on me. I’m not non-material, my good friend.” Well, too bad. So if that’s the case, here, what we’re really looking at is a roomful of non-material beings inhabiting bodies, who are basically being confronted with the idea that they have extremely powerful imagination and creative power . . . That doesn’t seem like a stretch to me anymore. “Well, Hey! If I’m not really made out of matter, some pretty wild things are goin’ on here! You know? And if imagination happens to be one of those things, well why not? Yeah, I could see that! I create something, I create something!” Now somebody says, “Well, can you snap your fingers and make an elephant appear over there?” Nope! Nope! I can make him appear to me (hey, Bozo), but . . . if we go back into ancient Tibet, which is a whole other topic, I think we can see that they were on the trail of making an elephant that everybody could see – that’s another story for another time, perhaps – but the point is: it’s non-material you, asking yourself the question, “What can I do?” It’s not John Q. Patterson, of 63 Gobby-gooby Drive in San Jose, California, blah-blah, with a phone number of this, and a cell, and a pair of glasses, and a fence around his yard, and a thing, saying “What can I do?” . . . That’s not it! Because that dude has absolutely no chance! He has no answers -- he has no clue! He’s the wrong character in the play to be dealing with that issue. [Beginning at 01:10:46 into the presentation from Sunday, June 29, 2014].

In other words, once we have established that you, your consciousness, is non-material and that it is not being produced by the material physical universe of particles (it cannot be), then some pretty incredible ramifications immediately begin to force their way to the front of the crowd and start demanding we address them -- ramifications such as, "if my consciousness is not actually being generated by these particles, then is it actually dependent upon these particles, or is it somehow above and beyond them?" and "if I am not dependent upon the particles, then does that mean I can create realities with this non-material consciousness I've got? What about creating an elephant?" and "If this is true, then to what degree do we have to accept the tidy little boundaries and structures that seem to give meaning  and identity to everything?" (these questions are my extrapolations of some of the implications raised by the subject which Jon is discussing in the quoted segment above -- they are not quotations from the talk but I put them in quotation marks to point out that these are the kinds of questions that the point that Jon is making above should cause us to start asking).

These are implications raised by what I would call the holographic part of the formula "shamanic-holographic." But Jon Rappoport's real gift to the world is his articulation of what I would label the shamanic -- but what he calls the artist. 

The artist (and the shaman) transcends the artificial boundaries of what most of us accept as "reality" -- and in doing so they actually create a new reality.

This is the message that I believe to be at the heart of all of the ancient myths of the world -- a shamanic message, a shamanic-holographic message. And, in a profound and memorable part of his talk (the most profound and memorable part, to me) Jon Rappoport made this very point by invoking the trickster god -- specifically Hermes. Listen as he describes the process by which certain people who want to control others have become very adept at "creating reality" and handing it off to people who don't know that they can transcend the limitations of those so-called realities, and how the message that the trickster god desperately wants to get through everybody's head is that this reality is just one big giant construct, and that we should be using our imagination to transcend it and to create our own!

But it is, unfortunately, the answer: Imagination. You would think, uh, well . . . I was hoping it wouldn’t be that.  [. . .]  To look at it another way: the bad guys are already using their imagination. They’ve been doing that for a long time. And what they have created is this strange thing called “reality.” Who knew, right? That’s what they do. In my book The Secret Behind Secret Societies, I go into this at, you know, excruciating and painful length. The bad guys have been painting the mural of reality for a long time, but they’re not interested in looking at it themselves, unlike an actual painter. They just want to turn it the other way and show it to everybody else and say: “This is reality! OK? This is it!” And the last thing they want other people to then do is to say: “Well, who painted that?” No -- they want to make it so convincing that people are just gonna say, “Yeah! OK! That’s reality! Yeah!  It looks like a reality – Uh, you know . . . I don’t know what to compare it to (maybe a ringing cellphone) – uh, it is, it must be reality! And I will accept it because . . . it’s here! You see, this is the requirement. We’re all intelligent people, and, so, well, we all know: Let’s see -- what’s the definition of reality? What’s here! Anything else?” What else could it be? Now, if you’re a particularly perverse artist and you produced that painting, you’re going – “Man! You see this guy? He comes up to us in the museum and he goes: ‘Uh huh, yeah, that’s reality!’” In fact, in fact – this is very important – he doesn’t just look at the painting: he walks into the friggin’ painting.  And he takes a left, and a right, and he finds a little cottage, and he says: “Can I move in?” and everybody says: “Sure!” And he moves in, and he stays there. That’s how convinced . . . So somebody else, not just one person, of course, but . . . the mural is being painted. Right? Has been, for a long time. That’s called imagination. Now we can say, “Well, we just don’t have what it takes to do a better, different mural. You know. We gotta go with the one that we got.” And what I’m saying is, “That’s all wrong, you see.” But it kind of depends on you, saying, actually, “You know, I have an imagination, and I’m going to imagine a different reality, and some means of getting there. I’m gonna do something big.” All right? Theater – let’s have a little theater. Let’s upset the apple cart for example with some theater. Poke a hole in the status quo. This is what the trickster-god, Hermes or Mercury, was all about in the ancient Greek culture. He had enough firepower to be the king of the Olympians, in that mythology, but he didn’t wanna be, because he could see that everybody else was glued to this single reality, and he wasn’t. He was passing through buildings, and cars, and planes, and whatever they had back then, he would just go through it and around it and he would look at everybody hypnotized by the, you know, the reality and he would say: “Man! Wake up! Don’t you see?” and if necessary he would resort to stealing things from people – go into their houses at night: “OK, so he put the TV here, let me move it over here – this is gonna be good, you know. And then let’s go into the kitchen cabinet, and let’s take all of the cereal, and put it underneath with all the, you know, the cleaners and the crap, right? And then, let’s see, what else, let’s take his wife’s clothes and put ‘em in his closet, and his clothes and put ‘em in his wife’s . . . yeah, right!” And that guy wakes up the next morning and he gets up and he goes: “Wha- wha- What happened!” You know? “What happened to the reality that’s been painted for me, that I’ve accepted? Everything is different! Were the clothes . . . honey, did you change the clothes?” “No, you must have done it: I didn’t do anything.” “What happened, where is this, why is this, why is the cereal under the sink, with the Clorox? Are you now putting Clorox in my cereal?” Imagination, creative power. This is what consciousness is about. And part of the so-called, you know, paranormal – that word – it really means “imagination and creative power.” So that imagination produces reality. [00:30:44. The passage at the end introduced by "This is what the trickster god . . ." begins at 00:35:27].

This is incredibly powerful stuff. This is exactly the message (I believe) of "the hidden god." That message, you recall, portrayed in countless ancient myths of the world, is that when we plunge into incarnation, we are given a "drink of forgetfulness," causing us to forget our divine nature (and what is a divine nature, if not a "reality-producing" nature?), and the message of all the myths (from the hunt by Isis for the chopped-up pieces of Osiris, to the parable of the prodigal son, eating among the swine and forgetful of who he really is) is this: "Wake up!" (or, in the words inscribed upon the stones at Delphi: "Know thyself!"). 

It is a message that we are prone to forgetting, even after we have learned it once -- we may have remembered at one point that we could be an artist, transcending boundaries and creating new realities, and then somehow forgotten it and settled down inside the boundaries of someone's artificial construct again, and accepted our circumscribed little identity inside of it. That's why we need the trickster god to come "upset the apple cart" and show us that those "realities" are actually nothing more than a bunch of conventions that everyone is giving power to by their acceptance of them, but that once such acceptance is withdrawn, the conventions will melt away into the insubstantiality they always were to begin with.

The trickster-god in mythology is like the "clown" in the plays of Shakespeare (whoever he was, or whoever she was, or whoever they were . . . if the plays of Shakespeare are the products of someone or "someones" other than the Bard of Avon). The clown (or fool) is allowed to say things to those in power (including and especially the king) that no one else dares to say -- and the king welcomes it -- in fact needs it. The clown shows that the entire structure, which certainly seems to have a "reality" of its own (and a reality that is enforced by real steel bayonets and the real threat of death for those who try to resist it), is nothing more than a great big social construct, a fabrication given its power by the very acquiescence of everyone who subscribes to it. It is a power that is derived, for the most part, from words themselves -- and the clown characters of Shakespeare are past masters at playing with words, punning upon the ambiguous meanings of words, taking words too literally or otherwise twisting their meaning around to subvert their original intention, and otherwise showing that the whole thing is a great big artificial reality to which the clown refuses to subscribe and in which the clown refuses to settle down like everybody else.

In other words, the clown is trying to wake us up from our doltish acceptance of the artificial structures that limit us -- that may, in fact, have been "realities" that were spun for us by wielders of "mind control," as Jon Rappoport indicates in the quotations above. A delightful modern movie in which a "clown" character illustrates the concept of "mind control" is (appropriately enough), entitled The Court Jester.

What's more, virtually every ancient myth-system around the world has a trickster-god, and (as Jon Rappoport indicates in his discussion of Hermes quoted above), that trickster-god is an extremely important god: in many ways, the most important of all of them (think, for example, of the fact that the tradition of Hermetism or Hermeticism and Hermetic wisdom have an origin attributed to Hermes, or more specifically to Hermes Trismegistus: Hermes recognized as the Greek god who is identified with Thoth of ancient Egypt). 

In Norse myth, for example, the god associated with Hermes is in fact the most powerful of all the gods: Odin himself. "Odin's day" (or "Wotan's day") is our Wednesday, which is the day of Mercury (or Hermes) in the Latin languages (for example, it is Miercoles in Spanish). Odin is a boundary-crossing god: he famously (shamanically) transcends the boundaries of the physical body by hanging himself on the World-Tree of Yggdrasil for nine days and nine nights, until he has a vision and "sees" the twigs on the ground turn themselves into runes (remember that Thoth, the Egyptian god associated with Hermes and hence with Odin, was the god of writing and of scribes and the giver of the gift of writing to humanity also). Odin passes through the boundaries to retrieve knowledge from the "other side" -- he brings into being "new realities." He is also constantly depicted in Norse myth as having to break his word and having it trouble him very deeply.

Not only that, but Odin is blood-brother to a sort of evil twin, the real trickster-god of Norse myth: Loki. If one were asked which Norse god was the counterpart of the trickster-god Hermes, the most obvious answer would seem to be Loki, not Odin. But the Norse myths tell us that Odin and Loki each opened a vein in their arms, and Odin let his blood and the blood of Loki flow together: hence, in a very real sense, Odin and Loki are actually both two sides of the same god. 

Loki, like Hermes, is a distinctly hermaphroditic god: we are told that of all the gods, his shape-shifting abilities are such that he can even take on the form of female creatures (Loki once famously turned himself into a mare in order to distract the work-horse of a threatening jotun -- and then when Loki became pregnant by that jotun's stallion, Loki became the dam of Odin's marvelous eight-legged steed, Sleipnir). So, Loki is a "boundary-crossing" god as well. In fact, Loki (like Odin) is constantly breaking his word, although unlike Odin he never seems to feel any remorse about it.

It is also interesting to note that, while Hermes is often portrayed as a slender, beardless youth (such as in the famous Seated Hermes statue shown above, which was discovered in the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum in Italy, a town like Pompeii on the slopes of Vesuvius, and which was horribly buried under fiery volcanic ash on that fateful day in AD 79), he is also portrayed in earlier art such as the Greek red-figure cup shown below as a bearded man with a wide-brimmed hat. Odin also famously wears such a hat in Norse mythology as well. In the scene below, Hermes is the one holding a caduceus staff -- the one topped with the twinned serpents intertwined into a figure that almost looks like a "figure eight."

image: Attic red-figure cup thought to date to the period 480 BC - 470 BC. Wikimedia commons (link).

Other trickster-gods in mythology are no less central and no less important. Among the tribes of North America, the most-important god is often Coyote, a famous trickster. When it is not Coyote, the trickster-god is often Raven. Significantly, these trickster-gods of the Native American myth-systems are the ones described as creating the world: in other words, they are creators of realities. But then, in the myths that follow the creation series, they are also the subverters of realities: the one who, by his actions, seems to say to the rest of the gods and to humanity, "Don't take this reality that you say I've created too seriously! Don't fall into the trap of imprisoning yourself inside of its artificial boundaries! You're supposed to take my example and then go forth and do likewise for yourselves!"

Among the Polynesians, including the Hawaiians and the Maori of New Zealand (Aotearoa), the central god is Maui, and he too is a trickster god. Once again, in both Hawaii and in Aotearoa, Maui is the one who creates the islands themselves, fishing them up out of the deep with his magical prepotent fishhook. But, once again, he is also a trickster, and as such he can be seen to be trying to wake everyone up to the same message that Hermes wants to convey, or Loki, or Coyote, or Jon Rappoport! In Maori mythology, too, Maui is more specifically also a shamanic god: frequently turning himself into birds, an attribute of shamans around the world, and an especially common transformation used by both Odin and Loki in the Norse mythologies.

Interestingly enough, all of the constellations which most likely find their mythical personification in the trickster-gods of the various world mythologies (such as Loki, Coyote, Raven, Maui, and the rest) seem to be located in a particularly significant portion of the sky (and boundary-line in the annual zodiac wheel).

The double-hemisphere "full sky star chart" shown below is not as helpful as it perhaps could be, in that it "curves" the constellations near its edges to replicate the curve one would find on an actual globe or celestial sphere (click here for an enlargement, but without my added constellation labels), but in it one can see that near the constellation Virgo there is a prominent "Coyote" constellation (that is to say, Lupus the Wolf constellation is my informed opinion as to the origin of the trickster-god Coyote) and not far from that Corvus the Crow (that is to say, my informed opinion as to the probable stellar origin of the trickster-god Raven; to see Corvus a bit better and to get some help in locating him in the night sky, see this previous post).

Note that I have already established (to my own satisfaction, at least) the identification of Loki with the constellation Boötes -- see the arguments put forward in this previous post. The myth that most firmly establishes Loki as the embodiment in myth of Boötes is, in my opinion, his antics that bring a smile to the lips of Skadi (who is clearly playing the role of Virgo, as that post demonstrates: the stars of Virgo having a famously coy smile and one which appears in many other world star-myths, including the myth of Amaterasu in Japan and of Sarai/Sarah in the Old Testament). However, the identification is strengthened (I would even venture to say, proven) by the myths of the theft by Loki of the necklace of the goddess Freya and of the theft by Loki of the hair of the goddess Sif, both of which are next to the constellation Boötes and also, of course, to Virgo (whom each of these goddesses is portraying in her turn). These theft-myths are discussed in this previous post: "Brisingamen, the necklace of Freya." 

Maui too can be identified with Boötes, for he has as his consort Hina, who is almost certainly Virgo. Thus, we can see that a great many of the most-important tricksters of the world's mythology (including Loki, Maui, Coyote, and Raven) are located in one very specific part of the sky.

Why would this particular part of the sky furnish the trickster-gods of the world's star-myths?

I would argue that the answer lies in the fact that these constellations are all very near to Virgo and to the crossing-line of the fall equinox (the equinox that lies, in the ancient system, at the juncture point between the sign of Virgo and the sign of Libra): 

This would be the point marked by the red "X" on the right-hand side of the above zodiac wheel, which (for observers in the northern hemisphere) is the equinox at which the days begin to be shorter than the nights, the equinox which marks the point of descent into the nether regions -- on the way to the very Pit of Hell at the winter solstice at the bottom of the wheel.

I would argue that the reason all of these "trickster-gods" are clustered around this part of the sky is that this juncture was mythologically portrayed as the very "crossing point" or "boundary" at which the soul (metaphorically speaking) plunges into incarnation (the ancient myth-systems allegorized this point on the wheel as the point of descent from the realm of the spiritual into the realm of the material and the incarnate -- see the discussions here and here for more on that concept). 

This boundary is critical to the trickster-god, because it is at this juncture (in the mythological system of using the majestic motions of the sky as a sort of Montessori teaching-aid to convey profound and abstract truths) that consciousness is robed in a physical body (made up, as Jon Rappoport so memorably told us, of "particles, particles, particles, particles, particles, particles"). It is thus at this very point (and during the incarnate life which follows the point of incarnation, when we toil through the "underworld" of this human existence in a body) that we are most vulnerable to being tricked into believing that the structures themselves are real and insurmountable! (By the way, as an important aside, I do not believe that boundaries are inherently bad or evil: boundaries can actually enhance creativity, as discussed in this previous post. The boundaries on a tennis court, for example, give the structure that enables the players to display their skills and their "artistry." When boundaries are agreed-upon as a positive enhancement of human liberty and creativity and freedom, then they can serve a very positive purpose. But, when artificial boundaries are created to limit human freedom, and when these artificial limiting boundaries take on an air of "reality" and insurmountability, then they are harmful).

But they are not ultimately real, and they are not ultimately insurmountable! This is the universal message of the trickster-god (who will go to great lengths to try to convey this message to us, subverting the apparently rigid "order" of the universe in whatever way he needs to in order to get his point through our thick skulls). 

Mainly, he will get this point across using jokes, ridicule, the ridiculous -- just like the clowns of Shakespeare are wont to do.

And here we see another important reason why the trickster-god comes from this particular point in the zodiac wheel (the point of incarnation): because incarnation itself, in many ways, is something of a gigantic joke that is played upon us! As Jon Rappoport so powerfully put it in the portion of his talk cited first above, "what we're really looking at is a roomful of non-material beings inhabiting bodies." 

That's funny! That's a situation that is just fraught with all kinds of potential comedy.

And, although he was addressing the roomful of non-material beings inhabiting bodies that happened to be physically there and listening to his talk at the moment, he could have just as easily said: "what we're really looking at is a world full of non-material beings inhabiting bodies."

And to return for just a moment to the symbology of Hermes discussed briefly above, we see that Hermes of course is the bearer of the caduceus, that staff up which run the intertwined serpents, which has become the symbol of medicine (the treatment of the human body). If he, like the other trickster-gods, is associated with the point of incarnation (the point where all the non-material beings get their bodies to inhabit for a time), then the caduceus (symbol of the profession that treats those inhabited bodies) would be the perfect symbol for Hermes. 

But that's not all, because of course it has been pointed out since the era of the modern model for the DNA molecule that the double-helix structure of this information-carrying self-replicating molecule resembles nothing in the world of symbol so much as it resembles the caduceus of Hermes. We could almost say that the wand carried by Hermes represents the DNA by which the trickster-god reminds us of our incarnate state -- and at the same time reminds us that this body (this product of DNA) is not all that we are, that even though it does limit us in certain ways it does not ultimately define us -- and that we can and must transcend those limits, and that in fact we will.

What a message!  

(And, of course, Hermes is after all the divine messenger).

Jon Rappoport has done humanity a tremendous service by framing this message so powerfully, and by bringing to bear every metaphor and every theatrical technique he can muster to convey this message to our hypnotized minds. It is a message that we all need to be reminded of, again and again (the ancient mythographers knew this, and told us we have amnesia, in no uncertain terms). If you have access to the video stream from the Secret Space Program conference, I would suggest you watch his talk several times, once every few days or every week, so that you remember it and so that it can penetrate our natural "defense mechanisms" that want to push this message out of sight and out of mind. If his talk is put up on any public video forums, I would suggest you do the same thing -- watch it again and again, at regular intervals.

Finally, Jon Rappoport has been articulating this very same message in several of his blog posts on his website since the conference (and some of those leading up to the conference). Some of these include "The Church of Progammed Perception," "And God appeared on a mountain; or maybe it was an actor," and "Beyond all structures" (in this one he discusses the role of Hermes). 

I can personally say that his message has greatly sharpened my own understanding of the concept I am trying to articulate as the holographic and the shamanic (or "shamanic-holographic"). The fact that he has done it using the trickster-god reinforces my conviction that the ancient sacred scriptures of the world were a legacy to humanity to promote "consciousness," the awareness that the universe is in a very real sense "holographic" and made up of vibrations, and that we can and must transcend those  boundaries (the "shamanic"). The ancient sacred scriptures were meant to point the way to human freedom. 

But somewhere along the way they were subverted by people who knew their message, and how to use their knowledge of the shamanic and the holographic to create artificial constructs for others, artificial realities, that did the exact opposite of what the scriptures were originally intended to do. To enslave rather than to liberate. The fact that Jon Rappoport sees the deliberate creation of an enslaving artificial reality as the root of the problems we face today reinforces the conclusions that I have also reached, conclusions which involve history going back at least to the early Roman Empire and the creation of the Flavian dynasty. And, if those conclusions about history are correct, we should expect different analysts to arrive at them from all kinds of different avenues of investigation.

Thank you, Jon Rappoport, for your courageous pursuit of the truth for decades as an investigative reporter, for your ongoing investigations and articles, and for your clarity in articulating the message we all need to hear: that imagination creates reality, and that the antidote and solution to those who want to use their imagination to enslave is this -- for people, en masse, to become artists:

But if people, en masse, began to say: “Oh! Oh – I see: you guys are artists, right? You’re artists, and you’ve got your own museum and your own theater, and you’re making reality because you think that’s what I want! You think you can sell me your infomercial about the cosmos! I get it! No thanks.  Not interested.” 

“Why? Ultimately, because I’m making up my own. Yeah, I’m making up my own. I don’t need yours. Yeah, it’s pretty impressive – I’d like to take the tour, I’ll give you a buck, whatever, you know . . . does lunch come with that? You have a ticket I can have? You know?  But as far as enrolling? And becoming a . . .? Nahhh. Because, come into my studio – you see what I’m painting here? Come into my office – you see what I’m building here? Come into my . . . whatever, my pasture, you see what I’m creating here? Come into my world – you see what I’m creating here? This is far more interesting to me than what you’re making for everybody.”

[Jon Rappoport, Mind Control, the Space Program, and the Secret Theater of Reality, June 29, 2014, Secret Space Program and Breakaway Civilizations Conference, San Mateo, California. Quotation begins at 1:07:38].

Gefjon and her plow

The Prose Edda of Snorri Sturluson (AD 1179 - AD 1241) remains one of the most important compendiums of Norse mythology. Snorri was an accomplished poet and the probable author of Egil's Saga, considered one of the finest Icelandic sagas, and his Prose Edda contains major sections which explain the construction and poetic techniques used by skalds and poets, illustrated by verses from other poets. Snorri clearly had an ecyclopedic knowledge of the poets and poetry of his people, and of the construction of eddas and sagas and verse of all types.

Based on this fact, we can conclude that his choice of opening lines for the Prose Edda was no accident. How did Snorri choose to begin his master work? With what myth does he begin the Edda?

The Prose Edda begins with a section called the Gylfaginning, or the contesting or tricking of Gylfi (Snorri wrote an important prologue to the Gylfaginning, in which he converses with the reader about the origins of the myths and other worthwhile subjects, but the his formal recital of the sacred stories really begins at the opening the Gylfaginning itself).M

Here is how he commences the Gylfaginning, and how he introduces and describes King Gylfi:

King Gylfi was ruler in what is now called Sweden. Of him it is said that he gave a certain vagrant woman, as a reward for his entertainment, one plough-land in his kingdom, as much as four oxen could plough up in a day and a night. Now this woman was one of the race of the Æsir. Her name was Gefiun. She took four oxen from the north, from Giantland, the sons of her and a certain giant, and put them before the plough. But the plough cut so hard and deep that it uprooted the land, and the oxen drew the land out into the sea to the west and halted in a certain sound. There Gefiun put the land and gave it a name and called it Zealand. Where the land had been lifted from there remained a lake; this is now called lake Mälar in Sweden. And the inlets in the lake correspond to the headlands in Zealand. Thus says the poet Bragi the Old: Gefiun drew from Gylfi, glad, a deep-ring of land so that from the swift-pullers steam rose: Denmark's extension. The oxen wore eight brow-stars as they went hauling their plunder, the wide island of meadows, and four heads.

The above translation is from that of Anthony Faulkes (1987) from the 1995 Everyman paperback edition, page 7. Some of the names have been Anglicized in that edition, including that of the goddess Gefjon or Gefjun, as well as the name of Jotunheim (which is rendered "Giantland"). For another translation of Snorri's Prose Edda, available online, see here.

Regardless of the exact wording of the translation, however, if we are familiar with the system of celestial allegory which underlies the world's sacred mythology (discussed at length in The Undying Stars as well as in numerous previous posts including "Odin and Gunnlod," "The old man and his daughter," "The celestial shamanic connection: Ancient Japan," "Summer solstice, 2014," and "A land flowing with milk and honey . . ." among others), we might suspect that this myth of the creation of Sjaelland (or Zealand) by the action of the plowing in a single day and a single night by a goddess and her four oxen sons, has a celestial component as well.

In fact, this myth is fairly easy to sort out: the clues given are abundant, and the appearance in mythology of ploughing by celestial oxen is well established, and refers to the familiar constellation of the Big Dipper (in Ursa Major). The stars of the Big Dipper circle the north celestial pole, and they make a full circuit in "a day and a night" (that is to say, in twenty-four hours), due to the rotation of the earth upon its axis. That this motion may correspond to the plowing in a circle of a piece of land by the goddess Gefjon and her sons seems quite likely.

In their seminal work Hamlet's Mill, Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend do not specifically address the myth of Gefjon and her sons, but they do address the many appearances of the Dipper (which in fact is also known as the Plough) in the sacred myths of the world. After first addressing texts from as early as AD 150 which describe the turning of the stars in the region of the northern celestial pole as the turning of a heavenly mill-stone in the descriptions of the ancient Greek astronomer Cleomedes and the Persian or Arab astronomer and writer al-Qazwini (spelled al-Kazvini in Hamlet's Mill), they continue:

Farther to the east, in India, the Bhagavata Purana tells us how the virtuous prince Dhruva was appointed as Pole star. The particular "virtue" of the prince, which alarmed even the gods, is worth mentioning: he stood on one leg for more than a month, motionless. This is what was announced to him: "The stars, and their figures, and also the planets shall turn around you." Accordingly, Dhruva ascends to the highest pole, "to the exalted seat of Vishnu, round which the starry spheres forever wander, like the upright axle of the corn mill circled without end by the labouring oxen."

The simile of the oxen driven around is not alien to the West. It has remained in our languages thanks to the Latin Septemtriones, the seven threshing oxen of Ursa Major: "that we are used to calling the Seven Oxen," according to Cicero's translation of Aratus. 138.

Thus, there is mythological precedent for seeing the stars of the Big Dipper as celestial oxen, as early as the poetry of Aratus (c. 315 BC - 240 BC), who was versifying the earlier work of Eudoxus (408 BC - 355 BC), as well as in the Hindu Bhagavata Purana (whose original date of composition is difficult to know, and which probably incorporates much material from far earlier than its own date of composition). These oxen are seven in number according to Aratus. However, when we look at the Big Dipper itself, it is certainly understandable that it might also be encoded in star-myth as four oxen, the Dipper's remaining stars making up the handle of the plow:

The clues in Snorri's description of the myth of Gefjon (and that of Bragi the Old, which he quotes, citing a poem which has not survived except in fragmentary form such as these quotations by other authors) that we are talking about the Dipper and its daily circling of the pole are numerous.

First, as already mentioned, is the fact that Gylfi promises Gefjon as much land as "four oxen could plough up in a day and a night." She is not offered as much as could be plowed in a single day, or a single night, but rather as much could be plowed up in "a day and a night." The Dipper makes a full circuit as the earth makes its full circuit, and thus it cannot be said to plow a complete "ring" of space until a whole day and night have passed -- and neither, then, could Gefjon and her four sons, if they in fact represent the motion of the Dipper.

Second, we are specifically told that Gefjon took "four oxen from the north," who also happen to be her sons, fathered by a jotun. Of course, the constellation of the Big Dipper is associated with the north, circling closely as it does the north celestial pole.

Finally, as has just been noted, Snorri chooses to cite here a snippet from an older poem, and in those lines which he chooses to quote, we hear that, "The oxen wore eight brow-stars as they went hauling their plunder." This is very interesting: the oxen are specifically described as "wearing stars" as they perform their labor. Further, the stars are described as being eight in number. The Big Dipper, of course, is usually described as having seven stars (we have already seen that Aratus -- and Cicero's Latin translation of Aratus -- describe the stars of the Big Dipper as the Seven Oxen).

However, it has long been known that sharp-eyed observers can see eight stars in the Dipper. If you look carefully at the Big Dipper in the star-chart reproduced above, you will see that at the position "one in" from the end of the Dipper's handle are two close-together stars: Alcor and Mizar, sometimes referred to as "the horse and rider" and sometimes as a bride and groom or married couple. The two have sometimes been said to act as a celestial test of vision. In any case, while it is certainly appropriate to describe the Dipper as having seven stars, the fact that Snorri chooses to cite a poem which tells us that the oxen in question are wearing stars and that they are eight in number would also seem to be a very strong clue that the myth is referring to the circling stars of the Big Dipper around the north pole.

Considered together, all of these clues almost certainly indicate that the myth of Gefjon and her four "oxen from the north" plowing a hole in Sweden and creating Sjaelland or Zealand (the largest island in the Baltic Sea, and the island upon which Copenhagen is located) really refers to a plowing that takes place in heaven, among the stars.

But, some might object that Snorri (and Bragi, whom he quotes) identify the plowing with a piece of undeniably terrestrial real estate: the island of Sjaelland, or "Denmark's extension" in the words of Bragi. Snorri even tells us that the removal of the island by the action of the plow left a large lake, whose inlets correspond to the headlands of the new island. This fact should not really throw us off the scent of the celestial origin of this myth: the authors of Hamlet's Mill demonstrate time and again that star-myths which ostensibly have terrestrial counterparts almost invariably refer to a heavenly location first, with the earth-bound location having been seen by the ancients as an earthly copy fashioned after the heavenly model (they cite as examples the Biblical Mount Ararat, the Babylonian Eridu, and the Greek Mount Ida).

Further, as modern commentators invariably remark, Snorri somewhat confusingly tells us that the place where the land was lifted out by the action of the goddess left a large lake whose shape corresponds to the outline of Zealand, and identifies this lake as lake Mälar in Sweden. But (as can be seen from the map above) the outline of Zealand much more closely resembles in both size and shape the outline of the lake Vänern in Sweden instead! The map above shows an arrow going from this larger lake to Zealand. The much smaller and narrower lake Mälar is indicated by an orange arrow (it is much closer to Stockholm as well, and farther from Zealand itself).

Was Snorri simply confused, or is he perhaps by this device telling us that the simple geographic fable is not the real meaning of the myth? There is no way of knowing at this late date what exactly was going through Snorri's mind, but it is undeniable that Snorri was a master of the riddle, of the hidden meaning, and of the cryptic saying which causes the listener to exercise advanced levels of abstract "connecting the dots."

To return to the thought with which we opened this discussion, it would probably be a mistake to believe that a craftsman of the caliber of Snorri Sturluson did anything by accident.

And this brings us back to the question of why Snorri chose to begin the incredible treasure of Norse mythology that is his Prose Edda with this particular myth. I believe that the answer may lie in the fact that this myth is almost transparently celestial: the metaphor of the Big Dipper as a plow composed of heavenly oxen (or even "northern oxen") was well established, and unmistakeable to anyone with even a passing familiarity with the system of celestial metaphor. By beginning his magnum opus with this particular story, Snorri may be hinting to his listeners and readers that this story sets the pattern for all that will follow.

All of the myths, in other words, have their celestial counterparts and metaphors, although they may not be so easy to spot as the plowing oxen making their heavenly circle in a day and a night.

We have already seen this to be the case with the myth of Odin and Gunnlod and the theft of the marvelous mead of poetry (and the pursuit of Odin in eagle-form by the jotun Suttung, the father of Gunnlod), as well as with the story of Loki and Skadi and the smiling of Skadi, and the story of Loki and the theft of Freya's necklace the Brisingamen, and the story of Loki and the theft of Sif's hair (both of these discussed here in the post about Brisingamen).

We can further speculate that, as the northern celestial pole is the center point around which all of the stars make their silent circles in the sky, Snorri's choice of the myth of the heavenly plow which is located so close to that central pole was a way to "begin at the very heart" of the issue, and to indicate that all of what follows has to do with this motion in some way -- a motion which the ancients considered to be so very important that it was also at the heart of all their sacred myths, whether those of ancient Egypt or of ancient Greece or the Maya or Inca or the Maori of New Zealand.

The stars which circle the pole, including in fact the stars of the Big Dipper, were described in the ancient myth-system as "the undying stars" or the "imperishable stars" or "the never-setting stars," and they are part of the key to the meaning of the entire system (see for example the previous post entitled "The undying stars: what does it mean?"). For, just as the myths themselves have a metaphorical connection to the motions of the stars, the motions of those stars in turn have a deeper meaning, one which relates to the human condition, the nature of the cosmos, and the "ultimate mystery of life" itself!

It is tempting to believe that Snorri was indicating all of this as he chose to open his Edda with the story of Gefjon and her plow.

image: Gefionspringvandet of Anders Bundgaard, Copenhagen (1908). Wikimedia commons (link).

Brisingamen, the necklace of Freya

Freya and Brisingamen sketch based on image in Ingri and Edgar D'Aulaire's Norse Gods and Giants

Now is a particularly good time of year to go out after dark and enjoy the spectacular constellations visible along the zodiac band in the hours after nightfall and leading up to midnight (and the next week and a half will be particularly excellent, as the moon is waning and rising later and later in the night -- that is, closer and closer to sunrise -- as the sun prepares to "overtake" the moon and give us another new moon on June 28th, after which there will still be a few nights of good star-gazing while the moon sets relatively soon behind the sun).

High in the center of the sky you can locate the constellation Virgo, one of the most important constellations in the sky, and one who plays numerous roles in the ancient mythologies of the world, as demonstrated in the previous series of posts which presented some of the connections between the mythical stories of cultures as widely diffuse as those of ancient Japan, of the Indians of North America, and of the Norsemen of Scandinavia.

Virgo is easy to spot if you can locate her brightest star Spica, which Corvus the Crow is constantly staring at as described in this previous post, and her directly outstretched arm which is very prominent and which is described in this previous post.

Above her (all relative positions described from the perspective of a viewer in the northern hemisphere; please adjust for your own latitude on our planet) you can now easily make out the stars of Bootes the Herdsman, featuring the brilliant red-orange star Arcturus. A commonly-cited memory aid for locating both Arcturus and Spica tells us to follow the sweep of the handle of the Big Dipper and draw an "arc" to Arcturus, and then to continue along the same general direction and draw a "spike" to Spica. This method works quite well, especially as the well-known constellation of the Big Dipper is now high in the sky for observers in the northern hemisphere.

Another aid to locating Bootes which always helps me to find him is the fact that his long pipe reaches very nearly to the tip of the handle of the Dipper. Once you locate the Dipper's handle, you can trace the Herdsman's pipe back to his large (but faint) head, and then continue to trace out the rest of the constellation.  Both Virgo and Bootes are depicted in the star chart below, which is now familiar to readers of the three articles linked above which make the case that all the myths discussed utilize a common system of celestial metaphor, one that connects virtually all the world's ancient sacred traditions no matter how widely dispersed across the globe (including those in the Old and New Testaments).

If the night is dark and Bootes is high in the sky, you can clearly make out the beautiful semicircle of stars known as the Corona Borealis, or Northern Crown, which can be seen in the diagram above just to the left of the Herdsman's head, and which is labeled "Crown." It really is very close to the outline of the head of Bootes, and the best way to locate it is to look right at his head and it will be seen to be almost touching him. The diagram in the previously-linked post on Arcturus shows both Bootes and the Crown, and labels the brightest star in the Crown, which is known as Gemma or Alphekka or Gnosia.

We have seen from the examination of the mythology of ancient Japan that the Northern Crown was described in the Kojiki as an "augustly complete string of jewels eight feet long," which should give us a clue that another marvelous string of jewels belonging to a beautiful goddess may also be connected to this semicircle of stars next to Bootes and above Virgo: the dazzling fire-gold necklace of Freya, the Norse love-goddess.

Freya's necklace is called the Brisingamen, and it is featured in the Norse poetic Edda in the section known as the Thrymskvitha (or "Lay of Thrym"), which can be found beginning on page 173 of this online version of the poetic Edda. The Brisingamen is also featured in the prose Edda of Snorri Sturluson, particularly in the section known as the Skaldskaparmal, in which the theft of the necklace by Loki is alluded to although not described at length.

Other early Norse poetic compositions outside of the Eddas describe the theft of the Brisingamen by Loki with more detail, saying that Loki (who is a master of shape-shifting) turned himself into a fly in order to steal into Freya's bedchamber while she slept, buzzing around her face until she batted at him with the hand which even in sleep rested upon the clasp of her precious necklace. The moment she did this, Loki transformed in a flash into his normal self and stole the necklace. Snorri also refers to the theft of the necklace, citing passages from other poets which refer to the theft as well, showing that the episode was well-known by his day and probably much earlier.

If any doubt remained about the identification of Loki with Bootes in the episode of Skadi's laughter described in that post on the mythology of ancient Japan, the fact that Loki is described as the thief of the Brisingamen from the sleeping goddess and the fact that the starry necklace in the celestial realm is located not on Virgo where it belongs but next to Bootes who hovers over Virgo's recumbent form should "put those doubts to bed" once and for all (so to speak).  

Additional evidence comes from the fact that Snorri mentions that it was Heimdal who challenged Loki over the suspected theft, and who fought Loki for the necklace and eventually beat Loki and returned the necklace to Freya.  The authors of Hamlet's Mill present extensive evidence that Heimdal, the "son of nine mothers" and the one who, Snorri tells us, is also referred to by the name Vindler (which the authors of Hamlet's Mill tell us is associated with turning, or a turning handle).  The authors of Hamlet's Mill argue that these clues tell us that Heimdal is associated with the "handle" that turns the entire night sky around the central pole -- and that he is in fact associated with the entire "equinoctial colure," which stretches from Ares to Virgo through the north celestial pole (and around from Virgo to Ares through the south celestial pole as well, although this half of the colure is less appropriate to this discussion about the northern constellation Bootes and the northern myth of Loki).

Based upon their arguments, if Heimdal is associated with the handle of the Dipper and the north celestial pole, we can surmise that it is only natural that Norse myth might describe him as the arch-rival of Loki, if Loki is associated with the nearby constellation of Bootes the Herdsman, who appears to be tied to the handle of the Big Dipper. For discussion of those characteristics of Heimdal, see this previous post.

The fact that Virgo's arm is raised as if in the act of "swatting away" the thief of her necklace should be even further proof that this set of constellations furnished the material for this particular episode from Norse myth.

Any doubts which still remain regarding the identification of Loki the thief who steals from the goddess her most precious possession with the constellation Bootes above Virgo can be laid to rest by noting another nearby asterism seen in the star chart above, located just above the head of Virgo and to the right of the figure of Bootes the Herdsman, the constellation known as Coma Berenices or Berenice's Hair (and marked as such on the diagram). In his outstanding book The Stars: A New Way to See Them, author H.A. Rey says of Berenice's Hair:

Small and very faint. Contains a group of dim stars, visible only on clear, moonless nights when the constellation is high up [like, right now].  36.

He goes on to explain that:

The constellation owes its name to a theft: Berenice was an Egyptian queen (3rd century BC) who sacrificed her hair to thank Venus for a victory her husband had won in a war.  The hair was stolen from the temple but the priests in charge convinced the disconsolate queen that Zeus himself had taken the locks and put them in the sky as a constellation.

This story as related by H.A. Rey almost certainly has it backwards: the story of the queen who sacrificed her hair to the goddess Venus is most likely a legend inspired by the constellations Virgo and Coma Berenices (and not an original event that happened on earth and which later inspired the naming of constellations in the sky).

Those familiar with the Norse myths will immediately be reminded of yet another theft by Loki of the treasured possession of a beautiful goddess: this time, the theft of the golden-red hair of Sif, the wife of the thunder-god Thor. The myth of the theft of Sif's hair by Loki is clearly a dramatization of these three constellations: the disembodied hair of Coma Berenices, floating above Virgo and just next to Bootes.  In all of this, it can be seen that our identification of Loki with Bootes has ample reinforcement.

This analysis provides further support for my assertion regarding the identity of Loki and Skadi in the episode of the laughter of Skadi (Loki is again Bootes, and the beautiful Skadi is Virgo, who takes on the female role in a great many of the world's myths). It also further supports  the connections we saw, discussed in the post entitled "The celestial shamanic connection: Ancient Japan," between the Norse myth related in the Eddas in which the gods must make the beautiful jotun maiden Skadi laugh, and the Japanese myth related in the Kojiki that brings laughter to the assembled gods when the goddess Amaterasu hides herself in a cave. In the Japanese myth, it is the sexually explicit dance of the goddess Uzume which brings the laughter, and in the Norse myth it is the equally graphic antics of Loki which finally bring laughter to Skadi.

In the discussion, I make the argument that both of these myths clearly involve the constellation Virgo the Virgin and and the surrounding constellations in that region of the sky, and that in the Norse myth Skadi plays the role of Virgo and that Loki is Bootes the Herdsman -- a correlation I have not seen explicitly put forward anywhere else before (although the authors of Hamlet's Mill were clearly aware of some relation between the myth of Skadi and the myth of Uzume and Amaterasu, they never tell us directly that the connection specifically involves Virgo and Bootes, or trace out the connections between these myths and those stars).

The details which indicate that Loki's role in the tale come from the location of Bootes are conclusive, in my opinion, particularly the fact that Loki eventually precipitates himself into Skadi's lap in order to finally bring a smile to her lips -- a detail which can be readily understood from the relative location of Bootes and Virgo shown in the star chart. But the further evidence we have seen for Loki as Bootes in the myth of the theft of the necklace of Freya and in the myth of the theft of Sif's hair should put the matter beyond any doubt.

And so, if we have established that Loki is Bootes in numerous episodes from Norse myths, this serves to reinforce the assertion that the episode in which Loki makes Skadi laugh and the episode in which Uzume makes the assembled gods laugh and the goddess Amaterasu come out of her cave share a clear celestial connection, in that both the Norse and the Japanese myth use many of the exact same celestial components.

Further, the fact that we have now established the Northern Crown as the celestial counterpart of the mythical Brisingamen, the gorgeous necklace of Freya, reinforces yet another connection between the Norse and the Japanese myth-systems, in that the oldest surviving Japanese text containing these myths, the Kojiki, describes a jeweled necklace in conjunction with the episode in which Uzume dances for the assembled kami. Both systems are clearly employing many common elements in their myths involving the constellations surrounding Virgo in this particular part of the night sky.

Be sure to note also the fact that both myth systems, from Japan and from Scandinavia, are doing so in texts which can be shown to date from long before the conventional paradigm would allow for contact between cultures situated so far from one another on the globe. The Kojiki was composed no later than AD 711 or AD 712 (and probably contains myths that are centuries older than that). The age of the Poetic Edda is debated among scholars, but its original composition probably predates Snorri's Prose Edda of about AD 1220, and it may contain material that had been passed down for centuries before it was ever written down. In any case, contact between the cultures of Japan and Scandinavia prior to AD 711 is not consistent with the dominant conventional narrative of history, so what can explain the existence of a common system of celestial metaphor in the mythologies of such widely-separated peoples?

There are many possibilities, but almost all of them set the conventional historical paradigm on its ear.  One possibility is that there was ongoing transoceanic contact between these cultures during the centuries that these works were composed, or at some time prior. Another possibility is that both cultures (and the many others around the world whose mythologies share the same universal allegorical system) are descended from some even earlier common predecessor civilization, perhaps one which left this ancient esoteric system as a precious inheritance for all humanity.

In any case, if it is at all possible for you to do so, now is an excellent time to head outside in the hours after nightfall, and to identify the constellations discussed, such as Virgo, Bootes, the Northern Crown, and even (if the night is dark enough and the sky clear enough) Berenice's Hair. As you do so, you can think of the legends of the beauty of Freya, and of her dazzling necklace, the Brisingamen. And as you contemplate the theft of the heavenly necklace by Loki (and his theft of another heavenly treasure, that of Sif's hair), you can reflect on the possibility that this once-universal system of celestial metaphor, which Aritsotle himself referred to as the "ancient treasure" and which may represent the legacy of some far older and possibly far more advanced predecessor civilization, has effectively been stolen from humanity, and knowledge of it suppressed, for at least the past seventeen centuries.