Walking the Cosmic Beast (Altar Symbolism 2)

The Cyclic Serpent

The tail devouring serpent, known as the Ouroboros, is unarguably a cyclic symbol. In Norse mythology it is the sea-dwelling Midgard Serpent (Jormungand) that surrounds the world (Voluspa 50; Gylfaginning 34, 48; Skaldskaparmal 4; Hymiskvida 22; Husdrapa 4), making it a symbol of the cosmos, or like the Greek god Oceanos, the ocean deity that encircles the world [according to Homer Oceanos and Tethys gave life to all the gods], functions as a boundary dividing the creative cosmos from the chaotic cosmos, a liminal entity, upon the creative-destructive threshold of existence, embodying both principles, recreating itself through self-devourment.

The Circular Serpent

Ouroboros of time as Well as Space

The Ouroboros is also symbolic of cosmic cyclic time (The Ouroboros was symbolic of time in Ancient Egypt and most likely in China.). The head and the tail of the serpent corresponding with the waxing and waning moons, unification and division of the masculine and feminine (related themes would include the death of a primal androgynous being subsequently transformed into manifold creation and The Orphic and alchemical “All Is One/One is All,”), and the beginning/creation and end/dissolution of the mythic cosmic cycle (example see Cosmic cycles in Hinduism), which I understand to be primarily modelled upon the ever-revolving moon, the measurer of time.

The Universal Soul

The Ouroboros is similar to Plato’s Cosmic being, ever-revolving time in imitation of an eternal divinity as the World Soul/anima mundi (see also Serpent Soul), or the Hindu “Self of the whole world,” the Universal Supreme Self (Atman/Brahman/Purusha), the divine-cosmic manifestation devouring itself for infinity.

Hero and the Serpent

In some myths, this supreme cosmic (often serpentine) entity is paired off (or combined) with an anthropomorphic figure, a representative of humanity (perhaps we can understand this relationship through the lens of Hindu philosophy of a relationship between the self and the Supreme Self), often a divine hero,…

(here we have an overlap with the Near and Middle-Eastern themes of cosmic battle and heavenly kingship, such as the Neo-Babylonian myth of Marduk vs. Taimat or the Ugaritic myth of Ba’al vs. the seven-headed serpent Lotan/Litanu, both battles linked with the ‘long ago’ maintenance of cosmic order, rather than an eschatological dissolution that precedes a new cosmic order)

…as in the case of Thor whose fate is linked with that of the Midgard Serpent, both dying simultaneously at Ragnarok, the Germanic/Norse dissolution of the current cosmic cycle. This human-serpent cosmic relationship is also found in the book of Genesis, the so-called protevangelium or proto-gospel. Here we also find a parallel to the Ouroboros, whose head and tail are conjoined. This symbolism of cyclic cosmic time representing the beginning and end of all things is shared between the cosmic beast and human foe, who joined in a cosmic battle, respectively wound each other on the head (the cosmic beginning) and the foot (the cosmic end). Wounding to the foot is a common motif particular to the so-called ‘dying god’ myth/s.

The Cosmic Double-Death

Hermann Gunkel, in his commentary on the book of Genesis, mentions the possibility of a “faded myth [that] underlies this battle between human and serpent.” As an example he cites the Greek myth of Herakles, whose second labour involved battling and defeating the Lernaean Hydra, which ultimately led to Herakles’ own death.

The Greek myth of Herakles’ conflict with the Hydra also shares a number of parallels with two other narratives from Norse and Celtic mythology: Respectively, Thor’s apocalyptic battle with the Midgard Serpent and Diarmaid’s encounter with the Boar of Beann Gulbain. In all three hero-monster conflicts the double-death of both the hero (killed by the creature’s venom/poison) and the serpentine monster (substituted by a boar in the Celtic variant). Both Herakles and Diarmaid suffered injuries to the feet (while injuring the head/s of the monster), whereas Thor is said to have stepped back nine paces (foot symbolism probably stepping away from the serpent‘s head) after striking the fatal blow. Furthermore, the double-death was foretold concerning all three heroes.

Given that these striking correspondences share a structural resemblance to the second clause of the Protevangelium (“He/It will crush your head, and you will strike his/its heel”), as well as a prophecy relating the events that have not yet come to fruition, the inevitable serpent-seed conflict, resulting in the wounding of both parties…

The Cosmic Double-Death: The Cyclic Re-Creation through the ‘Dying God.’ (Mahud. 1st Draft)

Walking the Cosmic Beast

It was through the study of the relationship between the cosmic hero and the cycles of time that I was able to interpret Thor’s nine steps backwards (see the quotations from Voluspa and Gylfaginning below) as a cyclic return back to the cosmogonic beginning through the act of an eschatological destruction, with Thor in the mythic guise of a cosmic hero walking nine steps (the number nine is symbolic of the Norse cosmos) along the body of the Midgard Serpent from head to tail uniting both in a cosmic circle.

Now comes the son of Hlodyn, comes Odinn’s son, fiercest of warriors
To fight the serpent; He mauls in his rage Midgard’s “veor”,
Men all flee their homesteads;
Fjorgyn’s son steps back nine paces
Retreats from the worm with no fear of being shamed.

Voluspa 56

Thor shall put to death the Midgard Serpent, and shall stride away nine paces from that spot; then shall he fall dead to the earth, because of the venom which the Snake has blown at him.

Gylfaginning 51

waking the Cosmic Beast Parallels

With this hypothetical interpretation (based on a study of comparative mythological themes and, I guess, some intuition) I later discovered that the act of walking the body of the ‘cosmic’ beast is actually played out by Diarmaid in a version of the Celtic-Irish parallel (found in the Fenian Cycle, Book of Leinster and later oral tradition) mentioned above. After killing the boar with a blow to the head, Diarmaid lays out the boar’s skin on the ground and measures it out from head to tail and back again (mortally wounding his heel on the boar’s poisonous bristles). In another version Diarmaid receives a fatal wound from the boar’s tusks, but manages to crush the creature’s head with the hilt of his sword (compare the legend of Hans von Hackelnberg). Another clue to the boar’s cosmic/cyclic nature may be inferred by the supernatural description of the boar (who was actually Diarmaid’s foster brother) as having neither ears or a tail.

The Boar and the Double-Death

As Joseph Campbell recalls, in Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation, many of the deaths of ‘dying gods’ were associated with pigs or boars. Among their number Campbell includes the death of the Buddha (Mahaparinibbana Sutta) who died at the age of eighty, shortly after eating a poisoned meal of sukara-maddava (Pali), often translated as pork (‘sukara’ means pig). There is some disagreement concerning the precise meaning of sukara-maddava, which has also been translated as the food of a pig, such as truffles or mushrooms, however, the pig-boar-death association remains intact. Campbell also mentions the wounding and death of Aphrodite’s lover Adonis by the tusks of a boar (Pseudo-Apollodorus: The Library 3.14.4), and the Egyptian myth of Osiris’s dismemberment by Set, who chanced upon his corpse while hunting wild boar (Plutarch: Isis and Osiris 8).

Attis, the emasculated son and lover of the Anatolian Great Mother Kybele, was also said to be slain by a boar (Pausanias: Guide to Greece). There is also the first death of the divine cosmic hero Okuninushi [according to the Izumo Cycle], already mentioned in chapter iii (along with Osiris in connection with the lunar-cosmic mystery of death and regeneration).

…[according to Homer’s Odyssey: 19.463–521)] Odysseus was also wounded by a boar.

The Cosmic Double-Death: The Cyclic Re-Creation through the ‘Dying God.’ (Mahud. 1st Draft)

The Boar of Cosmic Re-Creation

The boar also has a part to play in Hindu creation myths and the Puranic mythology of successive cosmic periods of creation and destruction, associated with Vishnu in the role of the cosmic sacrifice. In the Hindu epic Mahabharata, the Pandava Arjuna encounters a boar (a demon in disguise) and slays the creature with an arrow simultaneously with the arrow of a wild hunter (Kirata), who is the god Shiva in disguise. A fight breaks out between Arjuna and Shiva over the boar, until Arjuna finally comprehends the hunter’s divinity and is awarded the ultimate weapon of cosmic destruction (Brahmasiras/Pasupata weapon). According to Bharavi in his epic The Kiratarjuniya, based on the Arjuna-Shiva-Boar scene, the boar is likened to the Cosmic Boar of creation, while Arjuna is likewise compared to the cosmic Purusha (Arjuna was a partial reincarnation of Vishnu). According to the epic Javanese poem Arjuna Wiwaha (The Marriage of Arjuna), the two arrows of Arjuna and Shiva merge as one killing the boar.

According to the research of Alf Hiltebeitel (The Cult of Draupadi: On Hindu Ritual and the Goddess), while Arjuna is said to pierce the boar’s face, Shiva’s arrow pierces the boar from the rear, to be blunt “through the asshole”. Hiltebeitel compares shiva’s “back arrow” with the dramatic enactment of Arjuna sitting on top of a (‘cosmic’) pole. He further cites the work of Dr. Brenda Beck in relation to a mythic narrative called the Elder Brothers Story. According to this tale, two brothers whose deaths are bound up in the death of a giant boar called Kompan, who, it is foretold, they would kill (compare the Proto-Gospel and the double-death myths of Diarmaid, Thor and Herakles). The slaying of the boar is similar to that of the slaying of the demonic boar by Arjuna and Shiva. While the brothers attack Kompan from the front, a small female dog attacks the boar from behind, biting the boars testicles (Castration is another wound motif associated with the ‘dying god.’).

The deaths of both the demonic boar from the Arjuna-Shiva-Boar myth and the Elder Brothers Story, from the front and the rear may point to the boar’s nature as a theriomorphic/zoomorphic representation of the cyclic cosmos, whose death via two wounds, one at the beginning of a cosmic cycle and another at the end of the dissolution of the cosmos, like the two arrows of Shiva and Arjuna in the Javanese poem, become one.

Cosmic Beast and the Beginning and the End of the Cosmic Cycle

In the Mithraic Mysteries, we encounter another creature that is attacked and wounded from both ends.

The central mystery involved Mithras slaying a bull within a cosmic cave. Leading up to this image of cosmic sacrifice is a sequence of iconic images of Mithras capturing and wrestling the bull.

The bull slaying scene itself, known as the Tauroctony, depicts Mithras with his left knee pressed down upon the beast’s arched back, while With his left hand the god pulls back the bull’s head by the nostrils, and cuts the creature’s throat with a knife. The posture of the bull is reminiscent of the waxing crescent moon, while the god himself (the eternal god born within the temporal realm), is like the rising sun.

Other creatures accompany the sacrifice, including a crab and scorpion attacking the bull’s genitals (castration motif), and a dog and serpent attacking the bull’s bleeding throat.

Cernunnos’ Path: Lunar beasts (part three)

A Linear Cosmos and the slaying of Two Lunar Bulls

In the Zoroastrian myths of the beginning and end of creation there are two bulls, both, like the Mithraic Bull, having symbolic associations with the moon. It is often said that Zoroastrian Cosmology views cosmic time as linear rather than cyclic (Although I think that Persian mythology previously recognized a series of cyclic world ages as shared by the Greeks, minus Hesiod’s Age of Heroes), and so rather than the killing of a single bull, wounding it from both ends symbolically thereby tying the knot of cosmic existence in a single mythic scene of death and recreation, two mythic bulls come into play at opposite ends of the cosmic continuum.

In the Zoroastrian Bundahishn (The Creation), the cosmic sacrifice is inadvertently performed by the evil Angra Mainyu, who, in the act of corrupting Ahura Mazda’s perfect creation, kills both the primal bull and Gayomart, the primal man. The seed of the bull is purified within the moon, giving birth to all living creatures (10.1-4; 14.1-5), while the seed of Gayomart is purified by the sun, engendering a double-sexed plant (Rivas), that becomes Mashya and Mashyana, the first human couple (15.1-5). At the end of time, the cosmic saviour Saoshyant will sacrifice another bull called Hadhayosh (Sarsaok), and mix it’s fat with haoma (Vedic: soma) to create Hush, the ambrosial food of immortality (30.25).

The Zoroastrian myth of cosmic sacrifice discriminates between the evil slaying of the primal bull, that plays a part in the creation of the cosmos, and the good sacrifice of the ambrosial bull, performed by the eschatological Saoshyant, at the end of the allotted cosmic span of twelve thousand years.

Cernunnos’ Path: Lunar beasts (part one)

Yu: The Wounded Hero and Cosmic Walker (Returning to the Theme of the Nine Steps of Thor)

Returning to the theme of the Cosmic Walker, in the Vedic mythology the deity Vishnu is said to create the universe in three strides. In Chinese mythology it is the character of the maimed and limping Yu who plays the role of cosmic walker in nine steps within a nine fold cosmos, incorporating Daoist philosophy of an ever changing universe through the cyclic processes of yin giving perpetually birth to yang giving birth to yin (and so on), in a lunar-cosmic universe of light and shade (see Yu the great, Accessing the Map of Reality through Divination).

And so, what I saw in the end-time myth of Thor’s death traversing the cosmic serpent in nine steps, completing the process of cosmic re-cycling, is spelled out definitely (in space as well as time) in the myth and Daoist ritual magic associated with Yu the great. Finally, there is another mythic connection between both Thor and Yu…

According to Skaldskaparmal… …the Ragnarsdrapa [and Husdrapa], Thor also had a previous encounter with the Midgard serpent, while on a fishing trip with the giant Hymir. Using an ox head as bait, Thor hooked the sea serpent, much to the distress of Hymnir, who, terrified, finally cut the line, and the serpent sank back down to the ocean’s depths, but not before receiving a blow to the head from the unshrinking Thunder god’s hammer Mjolnir. Comparatively, according to the Huainanzi [Huai-Nan Tzu], Yu, while crossing the Yellow river, was confronted with the appearance of a dragon, causing the boatman’s face to change colour. Yu, as resolute as his Norse counterpart, smiled, perceiving the dragon as a mere lizard. And with that, the dragon departed.

Cernunnos’ Path: In the footsteps of re-creation

Altar Symbolism

Altar Symbolism

1. Death and Rebirth and the Lunar Round
2. Walking the Cosmic Beast
3. Lunar-Cosmic Vessel Part One