*
PROCESS
AS DESCRIBED IN MYTH
Arthur
M. Young
The
preceding chapters have been devoted to constructing a theory of
process. Drawing on science as much as possible for details, we have
sketched in its broad outlines a theory describing the interaction of
the creative with the inevitability of the laws of matter. This
interaction (or what the ancients called intercourse) produces a
progressive development manifesting in seven stages or kingdoms. We have
not attempted to find sanction for this overall thesis from science,
mainly because current science does not recognize the positive role of
uncertainty in cosmology. Science, in fact, has become so fragmented
into separate disciplines that it has lost sight of the unifying
principle that the word "universe" implies.
Such
a unifying principle was not lost on the ancients, for their
speculations were motivated by a powerful urge, if not to explain, at
least to describe the stages of creation and the fall of man. Their
accounts in myth and legend, seemingly naive, have an amazing sense of
wholeness, of integrity, and contribute in a way that science, with its
emphasis
on the explicable and on the detailed development of successful
techniques, has lost. Science, like a map, can furnish information, but
it cannot provide a compass. Myth supplies this compass. With its help
we can discover how to orient the map.
There
is no compulsion in this - everyone can still go where he pleases. We
should realize that the compass reading that orients the map does not
dictate or even concern one's own personal destination; it has only to
do with how to orient the map, which is essential for any use of
it.
Myth can help with the orientation we seek, for it is in rapport with
nature with which modern man has lost touch. This rapport with nature
- with
the unconscious; with the mysteries of life and death, of generation and
transformation; with that area of knowing which linked man with life
instead of holding him off, separately, as an observer permeates the
literature handed down to us in myth and legend, in art and symbol.
Approaching
myth
Many
important myths deal with the descent and ascent of man. If we include
cosmologies as a pertinent and necessary preface for the descent, and
hero myths as dealing with the ascent, unquestionably the more important
myths do fit the description. Indeed, if we get behind their superficial
expression, their content is surprisingly profound and rich in meaning.
Perhaps that is why they have survived. They echo in palatable form the
deeper truths of existence and have survived because of this alignment
with universal meaning. At this point a difficulty arises. Who is to
interpret this meaning? For myths, of course, must be interpreted - as,
indeed, they are, and in quite different ways.
Old
interpretations
Here
it is interesting to note the way in which Plutarch, as G. R. S. Mead*
pointed
out in 1906, considered the various theories of his day which professed
to explain the ancient myths and theologies. Among them was Euhemerus'
theory that the gods were nothing but ancient kings and worthies.
Plutarch dismisses this as an insufficiently satisfactory explanation.
The theory that gods referred to "daimons" (as exemplified in
Homer when the gods inspire men to act in certain ways, or otherwise
assist, punish, or reward them) he considers to be an improvement. He
also takes into account the theories of the physicists or natural
phenomenologists (who claim that Osiris represents the Nile, etc.) and
the "mathematicians" (who think of the gods as references to
the heavenly bodies, Osiris to the moon, etc.). From all of these,
Plutarch concludes
that no simple explanation by itself gives the right meaning.
*Mead, G. R. S. Thrice Great Hermes (vol. I, pp. 257, 318).
London: John M. Watkins, 1906.
"But,"
to quote Mead, "of all the attempted interpretations, he [plutarch]
finds the least satisfactory. . . those. . . content to limit
hermeneutics (explanation) of the mystery myths simply to the operations
of ploughing and sowing." With this "vegetation god"
theory Plutarch has little patience, and stigmatizes its professors as
that "dullcrowd."*
*Plutarch's criticism applies to many of the current theories stemming
from Frazer, who in The Golden Bough promotes the "vegetable
god" theory.
The
new: Freud and Jung
Now,
seventy years later, we have some new schools of interpretation, the
psychological, both the Freudian and the Jungian. Freud's attitude
amounts to a dismissal of myth from serious consideration. It reduces
all symbolism to the level of sex (instead of raising sex to a universal
principle of creativity). It is true that Freud made an important and
necessary contribution by exposing the hypocrisy of Victorian attitudes.
But in regard to a myth which openly states that the phallus of Osiris
is
its central theme, no such crusader is necessary. In fact, the myths
about Osiris - and, for that matter, the Greek myth of Uranus - are so
patently sexual that we may reasonably suspect the sex symbols conceal a
deeper meaning, and thus reverse the situation to which Freud's theory
of censorship applied.
Coming
to the Jungian interpretation, we draw closer to the true content of
myth. Jung, building on the rubble left by Freud, recognizes a deeper
layer, the collective unconscious, which is a repository not only for
the past or repressed memories of the individual, which lurk in Freud's
subconscious, but for the much more universal race memory. Here,
according to Jung, lie all the memories of mankind in a kind of
universal sleep, raising themselves from time to time in dreams or
flashes of surmise, possibly to warn us at some important crisis, but in
any case available as subliminal undertones that enrich us and provide
that curious resonance from the inner being that makes it possible to
"recognize" the true and the good, as well as to be
invigorated by old tales and legends. With regard to sex, the Jungian
theories again go a step
beyond Freud by elevating the feminine symbol to the status of the soul
rather than the immediate object of animal passion.
We
cannot, however, rest here. The Jungian concepts, though they go a long
and important way toward it, do not reach the true center of the myth. A
more extended study of the language of symbols reveals a much greater
variety of meaning than it is accorded by most Jungians. In the light
of the theory of process, the archetypes comprise a whole dimension
(level) of existence. They are the inhabitants of the psychic world and
the variety of their manifestations is almost unlimited. This variety
runs the gamut from universal archetypes to personal dream symbols,
cartoons - even ordinary language. They provide the substance of life.
The
translation of symbols tends to be limited by the range of understanding
of the translator. We, of course, run into the same limitation; but
progress is often like the group velocity of waves, in which the
individual waves arise at the rear of the group and push forward until,
just as they are merging at the front, they fade and disappear,
contributing to the general motion but vanishing as they get
"too far out."
The
grid theory and myth
Our
thesis at this point is the pertinence of myth to grid theory and of
grid
theory to myth. Readers still skeptical of the validity of grid theory
will naturally enter this new territory with a certain reserve,
withholding judgment until further proofs are furnished.
Unfortunately,
this reasonable reticence will not make any sense in the areas we have
entered, where proof is especially hard to come by. This chapter is not
intended as a proof of grid theory. Such proof as exists of grid theory
has already been given in earlier chapters. Since we are therefore
assuming that grid theory is more or less valid, the function of this
chapter is to draw on myth for guidance in the application of grid
theory to man, for orienting the map. We propose, therefore, to go ahead
and assume a correspondence between grid theory and myth. Our
justification is that we are thus able to draw from myth greater meaning
and pertinence.
There
is, however, besides the grid theory, a second hypothesis whose validity
must be assumed: that primitive myth was in rapport with the basic
workings of the cosmos and did correctly depict cosmological truths.
This hypothesis does not state why myth should be correct. It does not
tell us whether man invented fantasies which had validity because his
intuition perceived the truth, or whether there might not have been in
some remote age great leaders who taught theology and cosmology in a
form that could be grasped and retold by simple people.
For
example, even the quite remarkable instance of Swift's description of
the moons of Mars is susceptible to a double interpretation. Swift, in Gulliver's
Travels, explains that Mars has two moons, and gives their period of
revolution as very short - quite close to the actual periods of 7 hours 39
minutes, and 30 hours 18 minutes which is not what one would expect on
the basis of the fact that our own moon takes 27 days to revolve. Yet
Swift wrote his fable two hundred years before the moons of Mars were
actually discovered by Asaph Hall in 1877. Did Swift "intuit"
this remarkable bit of information, or did he learn it from some ancient
or forgotten source? Some maintain the latter, instancing the fact that
the Mars of mythology has his chariot drawn by two steeds, Phoebus and
Deimos (the names, incidentally, which astronomers later chose for the
red planet's two moons).
In
this connection, I will mention here that I have seen references to
the effect that the ancient Hindus held that neither Mercury nor Venus
rotates on its axis with respect to the sun. If this is true, it implies
a knowledge of astronomy surpassing that of the present time, for modern
astronomy, with the help of present-day instruments, has only recently
confirmed this lack of rotation for Mercury. Furthermore, temperature
measurements of the clouds of Venus disclose that its period of rotation
is very slow and thus confirm the Hindu teaching. Thus ours may not be
the first advanced civilization and, if this is so, myth may be the
remnant of ancient teachings rather than the result of intuitive wisdom.
Apologia
for symbols
As
we have said, myths demand interpretation, and our hypothesis is that,
since the universe is governed by and exhibits the attributes of
process, myth will recount this process in symbolic form. The question
might
still be raised: why symbolically? why not directly? This is an
interesting question. It thrusts back into the nature of language
itself, for what would a direct description of cosmology be? Recognize,
if you will, the great difficulty of the physicist in describing the
atom. First he had the picture of a billiard ball; then of a minute
solar system, with electrons like planets flying around a central sun;
then the Bohr atom, with orbits mysteriously regulated by quantum laws,
revealing that they must be in some special numerical relation to one
another; then the orbits giving way to a "probability fog."
The effort of the physicist to correctly interpret the atom, we noted in
Chapter VI, is like the effort of Scripture to describe the truth of
revealed religion: both have to draw on the sensible world for their
images.
This
is also true of a cosmogony, whether the beginning be described as the
creation of matter out of light, or as the intercourse of Sky and Earth,
or as the separation of the waters above from the waters below. The
images and words used are only a device to assist the mind. There are no
actual "things" at the level of electrons or in the first
steps of creation, and there is no image except one that will have to be
translated or erased. This is where the language of symbolism triumphs
in the end. It reminds one of that wonderful story, now decades old,
about Noel Coward sending a telegram and signing it
"Mussolini." When the telegraph operator saw the signature,
she cited a ruling that false signatures were not allowed. So Noel
Coward signed it "Noel Coward." The operator rebuked him
again. He replied, "But I am Noel Coward!" "Oh, in
that case," said the operator, "it will be all right for you
to sign it 'Mussolini.' "
Herein
is the defense of anthropomorphism. We translate the meanings we
discover in nature into more and more abstract entities and then, at
last, realize that however we translate them, we can understand only
that which is human, and we might just as well say the electron
"attracts" the proton. But let us examine symbolism further.
A
symbol is something that stands for something else and, according to the
modern view, the assignment is arbitrary. Thus, while in algebra the
letter x stands for the unknown, any other letter would serve as
well. In ancient times, to the contrary, there was an immediate and non
arbitrary connection between the symbol and its meaning, thus rendering
translation possible. Indeed, the language of symbolism, like
the language of dreams, can be translated precisely because the assignment
of symbols is not arbitrary, but guided by the inherent rapport between
the abstraction and the object symbolizing it.
Let
us give as an example the painting representing the judgment after
death. It depicts the weighing of the heart or soul of the dead. In the
picture, the dog-headed god, Anubis, operates the scales; the mandrill
god, Hapi, makes the pointer reading; and Thoth, the ibis-headed god,
records the result. The "heart" is weighed against a white
feather, and Amenait, a hybrid monster with the head of a crocodile and
the rear of a hippopotamus, crouches nearby waiting to devour any
leftovers disqualified by the test. The message is quite clear even
without translation. But it is interesting to know some of the
particulars. Thoth, whose function is depicted not only by his holding a
pen and writing down the results, but by the ibis beak springing from
his head, symbolizes the power of the mind. Curiously enough, the name
Thoth is close to our word "thought," which describes his
role. But the Egyptians, having no abstract words like
"thought," gave Thoth an ibis head to symbolize his function.
Anubis, the dog-headed god, is man's faithful helper and guide.
With his exaggerated nose and ears, depicting heightened sensitiveness, Anubis represents the powers of discrimination. Hapi,
who watches the pointer, has the head of a mandrill. To anyone who has
observed a mandrill and noticed the extraordinary power in its
concentrated gaze, this way of emphasizing the accurate reading of the
pointer is brilliant.* The white feather symbolizes truth, for the most
interesting reasons. As we shall later see, air is, in general, the
symbol of
mind (as we use the term "to air" in the sense of making
known), and
as a feather moves air, so does truth move mind. The crocodileheaded
Amenait represents the physical world that recycles the debris.
*In some versions, the mandrill has degenerated into what seems more like
a decoration on top of the scales than an active member of the team.
Contrasting
with this very ancient "household of the self," we might
instance Walt Kelly's Pogo. Pogo's immediate circle includes Albert, an
alligator, Owl, and Churchy (from Cherchez la femme), a turtle.
Now Pogo, ostensibly a possum, is drawn with a round face from which
lines radiate, a symbol that everywhere represents the solar or central
principle, the spirit itself. Owl is clearly mind, and Albert, like
Amenait, the physical (body).
Comparing
Pogo and his friends with the four functions of Jung - intuition,
intellect, sensation, and emotion - we note that all are accounted for
except emotion, so Churchy must be correlated with this function. This
is borne out by Churchy's fondness for song and from his name, Cherchez
la femme. But why should emotion be represented by a
turtle? What is a turtle? A turtle is an animal with an armored shell
into which it withdraws under threat of danger. So the story depicts
modern man as wearing an emotional armor. Again, Pogo, or spirit, is
depicted as a possum since a possum is an animal that pretends to be
dead.
Now,
I'm sure Kelly had no such roles in mind when he created Pogo and his
friends. Indeed, if he had had such a notion consciously, it would
probably not have emerged with the telling conviction that the
unpremeditated version has. Whether in Kelly's cartoons or Egyptian
papyri, we have before us a language that is in rapport with the basic
truth of nature, not because it is highly conscious, but because it is
not. It is as unconscious as digestion or those other physical processes
that our
body is able to carry out with no assistance from the mind - such as the
healing of wounds, immunization against disease, growth of an embryo
and, for that matter, all growth. This instinctive functioning is
perfect and provides a sort of built-in compass that guides the
"natural" person, just as the sense of equilibrium,
established by a mechanism in the inner ear, enables us to walk upright.
The
grid and myth
Our
theme is that myth, in general, symbolically describes the arc of
process, which begins with the "descent into matter." In the
grid, process begins with undefined purpose or impulse, initially
completely free, and then takes on a series of limitations that
eventually tie it down to complete determinism. In myth, the
synthesizing or return half of the arc is sometimes a continuation of
one and the same saga; in other cases, it may be described in separate
myths.
The
real difficulty is in translation. Not only are myths in a special
language, i.e., the language of symbols, but in the final analysis, there
is
no language for the ultimate nature of things. The
physicist resorts to mathematical formulae, but never really knows what
he is talking about. He trains himself to avoid visualization, to
navigate through the darkness by the use of instruments. Only
occasionally does some flash of genius - like a stroke of lightning -
illumine the path for a moment and permit a new sighting to be
made on the goal.
Translation,
then, is our problem. Among other things, we must also translate what we
mean when we say the universe is process. Perhaps the most apt
expression of this thesis is the formula of quantum theory due to Dirac (a
and b are operations, h is Planck's constant, i is
imaginary) :
ab
- ba
= ih
This
is the celebrated equation which expresses the breakdown of the law of
commutation; that the operation a times b is the same as b
times a, or ab = ba. But even this has to be
translated; it is not enough to say that ab - ba doesn't
commute. We must so translate the formula that every element is
accounted for. Clearly, ab is one operation, and ba is its
inverse,
like going to town and returning. Going to town and returning gets us
back where we started, so the result is zero geographically. But when in
town, we signed a contract, we did something, and this was in
no
sense a geographical change of position. That it is not geographical is
signified by the letter i, which in the quantum formula
represents the square root of -1. It describes the action of h as
of a different nature from
the change of position described by ab and ba. The i is
imaginary, that is to say, in a different dimension, just as signing a
contract is different from moving from place to place, since one is a
value transaction, the other a physical transaction. So our reduced
formula, ab - ba = ih, says that process is an
involvement with matter (ab) and an evolvement from matter (-ba),
to produce a "nonmaterial" unit of action. The
matter, then, is means; the imaginary part, the end achieved, as in the
arc.
The
beginning of things
Judaic
It
is our thesis that myth, in its complete form, says the same. To begin
on familiar ground, let us start with Adam and Eve. Adam is the first
man, the first cause. By itself, first cause is as nothing; it
lacks something. So to it is added Eve, "the mother of all
living," the desire principle (Eve,
as desirable, epitomizes desire). Then comes the step that makes them
conscious of themselves and thus responsible for their acts - the eating
of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, the deed
that will make them wise as gods, and represents their involvement,
their contract with necessity, their enrollment in the school of life.
Next follows their expulsion from the garden, their descent into the world
where, the Lord says, "in sorrow shalt thou eat of it (the
tree) all the days of thy life." But we still do not have the whole
story. The emergence, or evolvement from matter, is not described in
Genesis. Perhaps it is best exemplified in the New Testament by Christ
himself, the hero who suffers crucifixion in matter and emerges
triumphant. And it is also exemplified by Christ in his teaching of rebirth.
Rebirth in Christ is, again, a symbol. It describes awakening, the
consciousness of the divine within
the self and of our ultimate potential, the capacity to be sons of God.
Egyptian
Such
interpretation brings another curious and important myth into place; the
Egyptian myth of Osiris, darling of the gods, against whom his brother
Set plots downfall. Set prepares a magnificent casket, encrusted with
gold and jewels, to the exact measure of Osiris. Then he invites all the
gods to a party, promising the casket to the one who fits it best. Each
of the gods tries it, and when Osiris gets in, Set slams down the lid
and throws the casket into the Nile. The waters of the river carry it as
far as Byblos, where it comes to rest by a tamarisk tree, which
eventually grows around the casket, enclosing it.
This
double emphasis on enclosure and restraint (first by the casket, then by
the tree) may be correlated with the progressive loss of freedom we have
come to expect at the second and third stages of process. The next
development, in which Osiris' sister, Isis, obtains possession of the
casket, only to have Set discover it and cut up Osiris' body into
fourteen pieces, which he scatters in the marshes, emphasizes that now
freedom is completely lost: Osiris is disintegrated and descends into disordered
fragments. This correlates with the fourth, or deterministic, stage
of process,
where the entity is fractured into parts lacking self-energy.*
*To define high and low in terms of unity versus fragmentation is
probably more basic and valid than in terms of literal height, because
order-disorder is a true "invariant" and not dependent on the
arbitrary direction of gravity.
The
next part of the myth begins the "return." Isis searches for
the fragments of Osiris and finds all but one, the organ of generation.
She nevertheless joins the fragments together, reanimates the corpse
and, by
union with it, conceives a son, Horus. Horus, represented with a falcon's
head, returns us to the "higher" or upper level, from which
Osiris descended. Horus is also the infant Sun God, reborn every morning
and, as a manifestation of Ra (the Sun God), returns the cycle to where
it commenced (since Osiris was the son of Ra).
The
reason for the overlapping manifestations of Horus lies in the fact
that he is both the beginning and the end of the cycle whose middle
is,
in effect, Osiris, God of the Lower World, the dismembered man-god.
What
is most interesting here is that the detail of the lost member of
Osiris,
and the conception of Horus, is another way of describing a virgin
birth. Neither Christ nor Horus has a physical father, a prior cause,
and the great lesson these myths teach is that the final essence, the
ultimate cause of life, is not a thing, but is cause itself. When we
come to the complete fragmentation and entombment in matter, to the
rock bottom, we cannot depend on any outside thing to lift us up. We must
do it ourselves and, in that act, we are reborn.
Greek
Our
next example is that most wonderful of myths, the Greek account of
the beginning of things. Actually, this is more a cosmogony than a myth
of man, but since both man and the universe are processes, the Greek
myth may be profitably examined in juxtaposition to the two we have just
considered. It tells that in the beginning, Gaia, or Mother Earth, was
made pregnant by Uranus, God of the Sky. So burdened was she with
frequent childbearing that she craved relief and, to this end, gave her
son, Cronus, a sharp sickle and persuaded him to use it. Cronus did so
and cut off the testicles of Uranus and threw them into the sea. From
the blood came the Furies, and from the sea foam was born Aphrodite, or
Venus. Cronus became king but, having been told he would in turn be
overthrown by a son, he ate his own children as fast as they were born.
His wife, Rhea, by the stratagem of wrapping a stone in swaddling
clothes and presenting it to Cronus, succeeded in saving her son, Zeus,
who overthrew and succeeded his father as predicted.
In
Cronus, we have the principle of determinism, which cuts off and regulates
not only his father, but his own children. We would, therefore,
relate Cronus to the fourth principle, and Zeus to the fifth, since he
escapes from the regulation of Cronus as vegetation "escapes"
from determinism through its progeny. Note the emphasis on stratagem as
the way to get around the "law" of Cronus.
"Stratagem" is another way of viewing this "escape"
to regained freedom. The "Wily Ulysses" is the Greek
representation of the hero who escapes the restraint of determinism.
This may seem a far cry from the Christian virtues until we
recall that Christ as a child was spirited out of Bethlehem to escape
the decree of Herod.
The
seven stages
Greek
The
Uranus-Cronus-Zeus myth, which is an account of the generation of the
universe, lends itself to interpretation in terms of the actual stages
of process. The myth depicts a succession: Cronus is the son of Uranus,
and Zeus is the son of Cronus. Investigating further, we find that
Uranus is the son of Gaia (Earth). Note the sequence:
|
|
|
|
|
Stage |
|
Gaia |
Mother
Principle
|
= |
Substance
|
2 |
|
Uranus |
Son
of Gaia
|
= |
Seed Principle (identity) |
3 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Cronus |
Son
of Uranus
|
= |
Determinism |
4 |
|
Zeus |
Son
of Cronus
|
= |
Escape
from determinism |
5 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Gaia,
or Mother Earth, conforms to substance. She supplies the substance, and
correlates to Eve, "the mother of all living," in the Adam
and Eve story (Genesis 3:20).
Uranus'
seed impregnates Mother Earth. This seed principle correlates with
identity, stage three.
Cronus
eats his own children, and thus he represents limitation by law, or
determinism. In emasculating his father, Cronus had similarly
delimited his father. Cronus is time* (chronometer, chronic,
chronology), or, again, Father Time with his scythe.
*Francis Bacon gives this interpretation in Wisdom of the Ancients.
Zeus'
escape from being eaten by Cronus, from limitation by time, correlates
with the fifth stage of process, the power of vegetation to project
itself through its seed, and thus conquer time. Zeus is also known for
his progeny.
Zeus,
however, is but one of many heroes in Greek mythology. Hercules, Jason,
Theseus, Perseus. Each one is significant in the context of the arc.
The
Greek myth of creation gives us no clear correlation to the first
stage,
though we can definitely say that there was something before Gaia. Some
accounts give Chaos as the origin of all. To quote Kerenyi:
Ancient
night conceived of the Wind and laid her silver egg in the gigantic
lap of Darkness. From the Egg sprang the sun of rushing wind, a god
with golden wings. He is called Eros, the God of Love. But this is
only one name, the lowliest of all the names this god bore.*
*Kerenyi, Carl. The Gods of the Greeks. Translated by Christopher
Holme. London: Thames & Hudson, 1951; New York: Grove Press, 1960,
and Greenwood Press, 1962.
It
would be consistent with other accounts if we could claim that Eros set
the whole thing in motion and was the father of Gaia, but we cannot.
Hesiod places Chaos first, with Eros born after Gaia, as a brother or
co-equal with Gaia. Perhaps the Greeks, as the first materialists, just
did not give to light and fire that primal function that is their right.
Judaic
To
obtain a correlation with the first stage, we may turn to the account in
Genesis:
1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
1:2
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the
face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the
waters.
1:3
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light . . . . the first
day.
Iranian
The
Iranian legend of the beginning of the world is as follows:
In
former times the two realms of Light and Darkness. . . constituted
a
complete and balanced Duality. This equilibrium was disturbed when the
Prince of Darkness was attracted by the splendor of the realm of Light.
Before the threat of his onrush the Father of Greatness evoked a number
of hypostatic powers of light. Their defeat and subsequent disappearance
into darkness lies at the origin of the state of mixture.*
*Dresden, N.J. "Mythologies of Ancient Iran." In Mythologies
of the Ancient World. Edited by Samuel Noah Kramer. Garden City,
N.Y.: Doubleday, 1961.
The
word "hypostatic" means "having substance," so the
ancient myth seems to be describing an aspect of light which has only
recently come to be recognized, i.e., that light exists in the form of
finite bundles or photons, each having a particular energy.
Dresden
goes on to say that "among the first hypostases which were absorbed
by darkness was primeval man or Ohrmizd, as he is known in Iranian
sources."
The
complete Iranian account as Dresden gives it* can be correlated to the
grid stages as follows:
*Ibid., pp.
338-339.
Stage
First,
he created the sky, bright and manifest. . . in
1
the form of an egg of
shining metal. . . . The top of it
(Light)
reached to the Endless Light; and all
creation was
created within the sky. [The expression "reached to
endless light" seems to anticipate modern ideas of the
electromagnetic spectrum.]
Second,
from the substance of the sky he created
2
water. . . . [We have
frequently mentioned the
(Substance)
resemblance of nuclear particles to water and
substance.]
Third,
from the water he created earth, round, poised
3
in the middle of the
sky.
(Having a center)
(Number
omitted) And he created minerals within the earth. . . .
Fourth,
he created plants. . . .
4
Fifth,
he fashioned the . . . bull. . . .
5
Sixth,
he fashioned Gayomart (the first man). . . .
6
(The seventh was Ohrmizd
himself.)
7
In
this Iranian account, plants actually are numbered as coming fourth and
animals fifth, instead of at the fifth and sixth stages. Minerals fall
in the fourth stage, but are not numbered. It would be my opinion
that
the writer confused two of the earlier stages and combined them because,
although the names are different, the descriptions resemble the
corresponding stages of the grid. The third stage, although called "earth,"
is described in a third-stage way ("round, poised in the middle of
the sky. . ."), which sounds like the third stage of the
grid-"having its own center." Since the next numbered stage is
the creation of plants, the stage that is missing is that of minerals,
which we include in the molecular
kingdom.
Mayan
Less
widely known, but one of the most interesting, is the myth in Popul
Vuh, the
16th-century manuscript, written in the Quiche Indian language, which records
fragments of the mythology of the Mayans.* As the Popul Vuh recounts
it, the story begins with the twin brothers, Hunhun-ahpu and Vukub-Hunhun-ahpu
playing ball in Heaven. The twelve Princes of Xibalba (gods) send their four owl
messengers to Hunhun-ahpu and Vukub-Hunhun-ahpu, ordering them to appear for
their initiations. Failing these, the two brothers pay with their lives, and the
head of Hunhun-ahpu is placed in the branches of the sacred calabash tree, which
becomes laden with luscious fruit. Xiquic, the virgin daughter of Prince
Cuchumaquic, learns of the sacred tree and, desiring some of its fruit, journeys
to it. When Xiquic puts forth her hand to pluck the fruit, some saliva from the
mouth of Hunhun-ahpu falls into her palm and the head speaks to her, saying,
"This is my posterity. Now I will die."
The
young girl returns home. She becomes pregnant and is questioned by her father,
who refuses to believe her story. At the instigation of Xibalba (the gods), the
father demands her heart in an urn. Xiquic persuades her executioners to spare
her life. In the urn, instead of her heart, they place the fruit of a certain
tree whose sap is red and has the consistency of blood.** In due time,
she gives birth to twin sons, Hunahpu and Xbalanque, who grow up and do great
deeds. The Princes of Xibalba hear of them and summon them to the mystery
initiations, which take seven days and are intended to destroy them. These are
the same initiations at which their father failed, but Hunahpu passes all the
tests
and Xbalanque fails only in the last, in the Cave of Bats, where his
head is cut off by the King of the Bats. Hunahpu, however, has by this
time attained magical powers and restores his brother to life.
*Popul
Vuh. Translated by
Delia Goetz and S. G. Morley. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1950;
London: Wm. Hodge & Co., 1952.
**Note
here too the ruse to escape the law of the fourth stage.
Having
passed their initiations, Hunahpu and his brother become itinerant
magicians! They go about giving performances in which they do
extraordinary tricks: one carves the other into pieces and puts him back
together, and so on.
This
is most interesting, for it supplies what is often neglected in other
myths, the sixth stage. Of the fifth we have had many examples: it is
the birth of the hero and his "passing of tests" (as with
Hunahpu and Xbalanque), the twelve labors (as with Hercules), the
slaying of dragons (as with Perseus), etc. The seventh, or final, stage
is where the hero reaches god-like status (Horus becomes the Sun God,
Christ "sitteth at the right hand of God the Father," and
Hunahpu and Xbalanque become the Sun and the Moon). But the sixth is
not often clearly enunciated.
Let
us recall what character the sixth stage, by its relation to the second,
must have. The second is attraction, the spell of illusion.* So
we could expect the sixth to be similar; but in the case of the Popul
Vuh, the self projects illusion, rather than being entrapped
by it. We have referred earlier to "transformation" as the
more generalized reading for the mobility appropriate to this stage and
in the reference in fairy tales to the magicians who change into mustard
seeds, and into hens who eat them, etc. In any case, in this myth we
have magic or the creation of illusion, the inverse of entrapment
by illusion.
*Mircea Eliade, in Images and Symbols (translated by Phillip
Mairet, New York: Sheed & Ward, 1969), gives a full chapter to
"The God Who Binds." Binding for Eliade is by magic spells,
but we generalize the concept to include the loss of freedom due to
"attraction by substance," that is, the second stage.
To
return to Hunahpu and his brother, their performances of magic reach the
attention of the twelve Princes of Xibalba, who invite them to perform.
After causing the palace of the princes to vanish and reappear, they
cut up the pet dog of the princes and restore it to life again.
Intrigued, the princes ask if they could be cut up and restored. The
brothers assent, and cut up the princes, but do not restore them!
This
concludes the drama. Hunahpu and Xbalanque become the celestial bodies,
the Sun and Moon.
The
twin brothers play ball in
Heaven.
1
They
fail their initiations (deceived by illusion*).
2
Hunhun-ahpu's
head is placed in the calabash tree and the
Lords
of Xibalba say, "Let none come to pick of its
fruit."
3
The
maiden, Xiquic, comes to pluck the fruit and becomes
pregnant.
By a ruse she escapes
execution.
4
Twin
sons are born to her, Xbalanque and Hunahpu. They
take 5
the
initiations and succeed.
The
twins perform magical tricks and decieve the twelve
gods, 6
cutting
them up and not restoring them.
The
twins become the Sun and Moon.
7
*In the first test the brothers are deceived by a wooden figure in the
likeness of one of the gods. Note that in stage six, this is reversed;
the twins deceive the twelve gods.
Summary
Comparing
these several accounts, the resemblance is especially striking in the
recurrence of the tree at the third stage. This is curious because the
tree in each case seems to have a different meaning. In the myth
of
Osiris, the tree grows up around the coffin. In Genesis, it is the tree
of the knowledge of good and evil. In Popul Vuh, it is the sacred
calabash tree in which the head of Hunhun-ahpu is placed. The only
explanation I can find for this reference to a tree is to draw on the
theory that at this stage, process becomes capable of relationship (this
is the form, or conceptual, stage), and relationship is expressed by a
tree, as
in the term "family tree." This is the third stage, spirit
trapped in mind, represented by a tree because a tree with its many
branches (ramifications)
suggests the many kinds of relationships with which the mind deals.
The
"trap of mind" is exemplified by the myth of Perseus slaying
the Medusa. Medusa is depicted with a head from which snakes grow like
hair (the powers of mind). Her effect on people is to turn them to stone
(the mind "objectifies," i.e., makes inert). To deal with this
difficulty and avoid being himself turned to stone, Perseus looks at her
in a mirror,
itself a symbol of mind ("Mind is the slayer of the real; only the
mind can slay the slayer," as the teachings of Zen put it).
At
the fourth stage (complete loss of freedom) there is emphasis on
difficulties ("in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy
life," Genesis 3:17; in the Greek myth, Cronus eats his own
children; in Popul Vuh, the princess Xiquic must be sacrificed).
The problem is resolved only by the virgin birth of the hero. In the
Osiris myth, Isis conceives Horus from the corpse of Osiris; in Popul
Vuh, Xiquic is impregnated by a dead head. But this similarity is
not imitative, is not such as to suggest a transmission from Egypt to
America. Superficially, there is no resemblance between the myths. It is
only at the deeper level, when correlated to process, that the
similarity emerges.
To
discover this basic correspondence, let us note that all these examples,
including the cosmogonies, deal with a descent, followed, after a
virgin birth or a ruse, by an ascent or, in the case of Cronus,
an escape from limitation (determinism). Thus the birth of Zeus,
famous for his amours and his progeny, restores the power of generation
that Cronus terminated in Uranus.
I
1 Freedom (potential)
7 Freedom (actual)
II
2 Binding
6 Unbinding = Motion
III
3 Form
5 Growth = Zeus
IV
4 Determinism
Again
in the Osiris myth, Horus at stage four conquers Set, the principle that
first trapped Osiris and imprisoned him in the jewel-encrusted casket at
stage two. In Popul Vuh, the twin sons pass the initiations their
father failed. As magicians, they cause the Lords of Xibalba to become
victims of the same weapon (illusion, stage six) that was used against
their father at stage two.
Thus
we can place the seven stages of myth on four levels and discover that
at each level the right-hand side frees itself from the limitation that
arose on the left at this level. The levels for myth too have the
meaning we found for the kingdoms: level I is freedom, level II is
binding, level III is form, and level IV is determinism.
The
Reflexive Universe
Mindfire