The above picture, the frontispiece of Giambattista Vico’s New Science, comes from a time and place of an oral tradition. Persons would discuss picture elements and talk about the meanings of the various symbols. By learning the symbols and their meanings in this way, writing was not needed. Secret wisdom has been passed on like this for a very, very, long time.
As you may know, my “Bardic Astronomy” thesis is that Joseph Campbell’s monomyth fits the sky as described in the web site simulations. The monomyth is a cycle of ordered motifs related to the decanates. Some stories fit the monomyth. Sometimes we have only fragments of stories that can be better understood by fitting the fragment into the monomyth and using other monomyth story parts for the rest of the story. I call this “sequencing” a fragment. Sequencing fragments can be a gold mine when it comes to getting a better understanding of old stories.
THE OLD PATH OF SPIRITUALITY
Let us take an easy story fragment, the Capricorn story, and “sequence” it. Pan was sitting on the beach when Zeus came running by being pursued by the Typhon, a terrible beast. Pan, as you know, was a goat. He decided to dive into the water and become a fish to escape the Typhon. Pan was in such a hurry he jumped into the water while he was still changing forms. When he entered the water, he was only halfway changed to a fish, and the name Capricorn or “goat fish” describes this episode. After the Typhon left, Pan resurfaced and changed back into his old form. He found Zeus ripped to pieces. Pan put Zeus back together and Zeus went on to defeat the Typhon.
HUMAN CYCLE
As an example, in my early adult life, I used to confuse the word “stagnant” with the word “polluted.” When I was growing up, those around me used both words to describe a foul and local pond. Much later, they still meant the same to me. I thought something stagnant had to be polluted. One day in early adulthood I took the time to look both words up in a dictionary. Through contemplation and a little book study, I removed some confusion picked up at an earlier time.
If a person in early adulthood is sitting on the shore, observing life like Pan, perhaps thinking of god, he or she will realize that god has a problem. God is usually a belief taken on in late childhood, when we never heard about the bad things done in his name. God has baggage. There have been so many wars and killings in the name of god that one begins to question in early adulthood whether or not it’s a good idea to even believe in god. There are really two problems. The person thinking about god has a problem with being associated with the god and the baggage, and the god has a problem with the baggage chasing him around. This is the situation of Pan! Pan flees both Zeus and the Typhon for the time being; he then returns to put his friend, the god, back together. Zeus actually gets repaired at Capricorn. Zeus--god--then goes on to overcome the wars and the killings and the Typhon.
Consider a nearby decanate of the Capricorn constellation, the Eagle. The Eagle can fly and has good eyes. The Eagle flies back to childhood. The Eagle is the young adult searching out childhood sources of confusion. Let us look to where the eagle flies in the constellations.
EAGLE’S PATH
The decanate constellation Cetus (the sea monster) is directly across from the eagle. Cetus is a Titan of adolescence. It may have been the crazy uncle that sodomized you after a Christmas party when you were 10 years old or some other force or person during adolescence. The Eagle is a symbol of the early adult going back to late childhood or adolescence and studying what happened. Dante’s third work, called the “Pergatorio,” names this third (the Eagle’s) quarter in life. It is a time of purgatory. James Joyce’s third work is similarly about this time. This is why it (Finnegan’s Wake) ends with the same sentence with which it begins. One stays in purgatory until one purges the confusion. In The Odyssey, the third quarter is the part after Odysseus returns from Troy until the final purge of the usurpers. The final Odysseus vs. usurper battle begins with him shooting an arrow--Sagittarius.
Let’s look at Sagittarius, the next zodiacal constellation after Capricorn.
PATH OF ARROW
At the end of early adulthood, you move on to late adulthood only after you purge ALL possible BULLSHIT (Taurus) from your adolescence. This final purging is in the sky symbolized by the archer, Sagittarius, shooting his arrow across the circle (following the path of the Milky Way) to the area of Taurus. Another example of this from mythology is Paris shooting Achilles (Orion--a decanate of Taurus) in the heel. This may be one finally getting past the crazy uncle episode or whatever. Whatever the event, it HAS some sort of ACHILLES HEEL. Achilles was dipped into the river Styx by his mother Thetis. Achilles was “baptized.“ This baptism gave Achilles both his strength and his weakness. To some cultures, the zodiacal constellation after Sagittarius--what we call the Scorpion--was an Eagle. The Scorpion similarly moves into the past and purges confusion. The Scorpion also had problems with Orion on the other side. The stinger of the Scorpion is around and above its head and it appears to be able to sting itself in some way.
I believe Mercury’s wings and his ability to fly comes from the Eagle being at the Sagittarius/Scorpio boundary as found in the cherub symbol. The path of the eagle and the arrow to the other side is the Milky Way, the boundary between material and spirit. This boundary is associated with Mercury or Hermes. Symbols of Mercury are the wings on his feet and helmet and the caduceus. Mercury and his caduceus are symbols describing the change at the Milky Way boundary when applied to the individual, the civilization and the Cosmos. The age of the civilization is marked by the spring equinox; it is currently changing to an adult at Pisces/Aquarius. Mercury and his caduceus at the Milky Way boundary means that the civilization will finally purge the effect of ITS crazy uncle in 6,000 years. It also means that the cosmos will overcome its materialistic science in the more distant future.
THE CHAKRAS
Above is sort of a Rosetta Stone for the Hindu chakras and planetary correspondences of this old spiritual system described by world mythology. It connects the sky system (the outer circle) with the old path toward spirituality described by the Hindus as climbing the chakras (the spinal ladder of the chakras in the middle). Stories from different parts of the old world cultures describe the steps. The picture above can map the adult beginning at the bottom chakra, at Pisces/Aquarius, then (in the sky system) performing the purging up and around on the right to the Milky Way which is the “heart boundary” in the chakras and then after realizing all is spirit, crossing this boundary and going further up and around to the left until one learns Compassion at Virgo/Leo at the top. The left side of the circle is the child descending from heaven and becoming a young adult at the bottom at the root chakra. The map anciently applied to the individual, the civilization, and the cosmos.
The old stories were a great body of wisdom taking thousands of years to construct. Our civilization has trivialized these stories and has reduced them to a simplistic one god vs. another battle because it served cruel rulers to do so. The civilization broke the underlying structure of our precious mythology around three zodiacal ages ago. (This was the mythology's crazy uncle!) It became an adolescent. I think James Joyce uses 4,004 BC for the date. The goal of this old mythology was to impart COMPASSION at Virgo/Leo and as the goal of life. This is what Parzival learns at the end of his story. He learns that all the people he has been fighting are his relatives. The last knight he fought in the story was his brother. The first was an uncle. Compassion was not useful to the war-like “civilization” that began three zodiacal ages ago.
