Beowulf and the Sky

If an archaeologist finds an old statue, it might be dirty and grown over with mold. Perhaps the statue has a broken part. The old statue may become something for study and rethinking over the years. Beowulf appears to have bardic elements in it that were preserved by an oral tradition. It may have originated in or was influenced by some bardic culture but seems to have switched or migrated away from it.

Very long ago, 6,000 years ago, I believe a good bard knew how to navigate with his or her understanding of the sky. During the bard’s youth, they likely learned the zodiacal and decanate constellations by finding them at the same time each morning or evening. I think they had to study a different decanate constellation for each 10 day week. Later as an adult in a different land, they would observe the same constellation at the same time and note the difference in the constellation’s location. They could then derive the angular distance between the different land and home.

Beowulf is a much more recent story, thought to be composed between 600 AD and 1100 AD. People were writing at the time. Beowulf also does not have the abundance of reference to the sky as found in the older stories. However, in terms of Campbell's monomyth, it follows the thresholds and boundaries well and there are quite a few constellations that do fit the story. That is why it needs study and rethinking. Beowulf is a mystery. Let me present some of the mystery.

Let us first look at the name “Beowulf.” It could mean "Bear-Wolf," the story from the Bear constellation around to the Wolf constellation.
 

Below is how Beowulf fits into Campbell’s monomyth and Bardic Astronomy boundaries and thresholds.

Now for the story:

Trouble with a monster in Denmark (Hrothgar's Kingdom) reaches king Hygelac in the land of the Geats. Hygelac's warrior, Beowulf, heads in a ship for Denmark having chosen 14 other warriors to travel with him.

The path is Hydra and the ship is Argos. Hydra is the third decanate of Leo and Argos is the first decanate of Cancer.
 

Argos

(The number 14 is a cosmological reference, there are seven steps of coming into existence and seven steps going out of existence. Seven steps down Jacob's Ladder and seven steps back up Jacob's Ladder. Cosmological stories usually go half way through the 14 steps, they end at Pisces/Aquarius. This is where the Beowulf story ultimately ends.)

Beowulf meets Hrothgar and identifies himself a hero and as the son of Ecgtheow, a man that Hrothgar once helped. The Geats join the Danes for a feast. One of the Danes, Unferth, confronts Beowulf about his performance in an old swimming contest.

(The Danes standing around Beowulf testing him is probably the constellation Cancer (The Crab) which is three stars around a central nebula.)

Cancer

Beowulf said he won the contest but also had to fight off sea monsters while he was swimming.

(This is a reference to a sequence of constellations. First, Orion (The Hunter) which looks like a person--Beowulf--diving into the water. The near-by constellation Eridanus (the River) would be Beowulf's path in the swimming contest and Cetus (the Sea Monster) one of the conquered sea monsters).

Queen Wealhtheow enters the feast with a mead cup, offering it to Hrothgar, the Danes and then to Beowulf.

Crater

(To expand the system of 12 zodiacal constellations and 36 decanates, bards developed "expansion techniques" of re-using sections of the sky. There is often a signal that we can recognize that tells us a part of the sky is being re-used. The mead cup is Crater (The Cup). This was already passed but we can use it again by just rewinding to that section of the sky. The next zodiacal constellation after Crater is Cancer.)

The party winds down and Beowulf and his men will sleep in the hall and wait for the monster Grindl. In those days a warrior would often sleep with his pages or men around him so that they were the "trip" system. If Grindl shows up later, one of his men could inform Beowulf if needed.

Cancer (Beowulf with his men around him.)

Grindl comes rips the hall's door off (possibly Gemini) and eats one of Beowulf's men and kills another. Beowulf battles the creature and rips its arm off.

(In another story Dionyus was probably born from Zeus's thigh in this area. This thigh was probably Ursa Major or Ursa Minor. In this story, I believe one of these bear constellations is Grindl's severed arm.).

Ursa Minor

Grindl leaves a bloody trail and retreats to the marshes. A minstrel comes singing tales of Sigemund and Beowulf. (The minstrel in his song can follow the thresholds and constellations too--this can be another expansion technique. The Sigemund story follows the Orion, Eridanus, Cetus sequence. Gunther and his sister in that story are are Cepheus and Cassiopae.)

The Geats and the Danes celebrate. That night, Grindl's mother comes for vengeance. She kills a number of Geats and Danes. Beowulf and Hrothgar slept away from the hall. They are summoned and follow the blood stained path of Grindl's mother to a lake. We re-use the Milky Way, Orion, Eridanus, Cetus sequence. This time, Beowulf will put on his armor and dive into the lake after Grindl's mother.

(The lake is the Milky Way and is a boundary or threshold from Campbell's monomyth structure. Beowulf diving into the water is the constellation Orion. If you go out and get a good look at Orion it looks like Beowulf splashing into the lake or perhaps Osiris's coffin splashing into the Nile.

The ancients knew the Milky Way went all the way around the sky so they sometimes used its circle as a lake of fire or burning water--like the circle of fire around Brunhilde. Canis Major is often a dependable friend or female like Penelope or Brunhilde and is probably Wealhtheow in this story. In the Lord of the Rings it was likely Frodo’s good friend Sam. Tolkien was instrumental in popularizing the Beowulf story. Tolkien was also studying these symbols. I quote the Beowulf story in a few paragraphs and you will see it refer to Beowulf as a “Lord of the Ring.”)

Unferth offers Beowulf his sword, named Hrunting. Beowulf swims down and is attacked by Grindl's mother.

Orion

Beowulf with sword Hrunting and Armor

Beowulf’s Path Down to Grindl’s Mother

Grindl’s Mother Waiting Below Surface

(We have re-used the Milky Way, Orion, Eridanus, Cetus sequence as in the earlier swimming contest, but now Beowulf is after Grindl’s mother and will pursue her further to the end of Eridanus below the world tree and below Pisces/Aquarius. The bards sometimes moved around the sky with a sort of “3 steps forward and 2 steps back” method. In the web site and blog I try to avoid this as much as possible because of the complexity.)

Beowulf's path swimming and grappling down to the “grotto” is the Eridanus (river) constellation. The attack of the mother starts at Cetus, about halfway between the Milky Way threshold and the grotto at the bottom of the monomyth diagram at Pisces/Aquarius. The river constellation path takes them all the way down to the circle of constellations that never rise--to the underwater grotto of Grindl and his mother.)

On the way down, people in Hrothgar’s court are waiting for Beowulf to return to the surface. Hrothgar and Wealhthow are probably Cepheus and Cassiopeia. This is why old stories began to be called a monomyth, because versions of the same constellations show up in different stories. For example in the Siegfried story, after Siegfried kills the dragon he goes to Gunther and Gunther’s sister’s court. The Siegfried story is an isomorph of the Beowulf story and Gunther and his sister are probably the result of a different bard using the same Cepheus and Cassiopeia constellations. Of course, the names Cepheus and Cassiopeia come to us from a third (Persian) story of Perseus and Andromeda where another monster, named Cetus gets killed.

 

Hrothgar and Wealhthow

Gunther and Kriemhilde

Cepheus and Cassiopeia

From the Gummere translation about the battle:

Then bore this brine-wolf, when bottom she touched,
the lord of rings to the lair she haunted
whiles vainly he strove, though his valor held,
weapon to wield against wondrous monsters
that sore beset him; sea-beasts many
tried with fierce tusks to tear his mail,
and swarmed on the stranger. But soon he marked
he was now in some hall, he knew not which,
where water never could work him harm,
nor through the roof could reach him ever
fangs of the flood.

Beowulf’s battle with Grindl’s mother takes him into her underwater grotto and his sword is useless against her. A magic sword appears and he uses it to behead her.

'MID the battle-gear saw he a blade triumphant,
old-sword of Eotens, with edge of proof,
warriors' heirloom, weapon unmatched,
-- save only 'twas more than other men
to bandy-of-battle could bear at all --
as the giants had wrought it, ready and keen.

(The grotto is the circle of constellations that never rise. It is the monomyth boundary area of death and resurrection at the bottom of the world tree. At this place, monsters die and then Beowulf returns the hero. The beheading is the constellation Aquarius--normally bent over holding a jug but now bent over severing the monster's head.

Beowulf with a Monster’s Head

To those skeptical about Aquarius being a beheader of monsters, in the sky chart above notice by the jug a part of the horse constellation Pegasus. The horse Pegasus came into existence from blood dropped when Perseus beheaded the Medusa.

Beowulf beheads both the mother monster and her dead son Grindl. The magic sword dissolves leaving only the hilt. Beowulf then swims back up to the surface past the fish constellations, the Southern Fish, the Dolphin and Capricorn.

The Hercules constellation is Beowulf emerging from the lake, possibly holding the head of Grindl and the hilt of the magic sword.

Beowulf brings Hrothgar the head of Grindl and the hilt of the magic sword.

Beowulf then returns Unferth’s sword, named Hrunting. I believe the “Snake Handler” constellation Ophiucus was thought to be a person holding something across the front their body, like a man holding a snake or perhaps presenting a sword.

Ophiucus

Hrothgar is pleased with Beowulf. He divides up treasure for him using the scales of Libra.

Hrothgar then studies the engraving on the magic sword’s hilt. The remaining part of the sword looks like the cross constellation Crux.

Hrothgar advises Beowulf on how to be a good king. The northern crown constellation, Corona Borealis reminds us of this part of the story. Beowulf then returns to the land of the Geats.

The Crown

Libra has three decanates, the remaining one is Lupus, The Wolf, which completes my mapping of the story of Beo-wulf, the story from the Bear to the Wolf.

The wolf constellation is on the edge of my Burrit sky chart so I’ll switch to Hevelius. I've included the Centaur here below the wolf constellation. Also, Hevelius made his chart like it was on the surface of a globe, with the perspective from outside of the sphere looking in. I’ll reverse Burrit’s image and the reader can then see the Wolf as it may appear in the sky.

When I started this post on Beowulf, I stated:

“If an archaeologist finds an old statue, it might be dirty and grown over with mold. Perhaps the statue has a broken part. “

Beowulf has a part that does not fit into the pattern of more ancient stories--I have described two types of bardic stories in the simulations and on the blog. The first is cosmological which moves only halfway around the zodiacal circle and the second is a complete life which moves all the way around the zodiacal circle.

Beowulf fits all the monomyth boundaries and thresholds until 50 years after Beowulf returns home and becomes king. Then there is a second ending--he decides to fight a dragon. The creator of Beowulf seems to have put both kinds of endings on the story, a complete life ending and then a cosmological type ending where Beowulf dies at Pisces/Aquarius.

This violates the phase knowledge of the ancient world. We need to remember that Beowulf is a more recent work. To the ancients, the Pisces/Aquarius boundary was the half-way point in life. The Gemini/Taurus boundary was the boundary between early childhood and adolescence.

By looking at the stories this way, the Isis, Osiris and Set story is not only cosmology but also child psychology. It is also ancient history. One can go back three zodiacal ages in the civilization and get the story of what happened.

Looking at the cycle knowledge in this way WAS the ancient culture thousands of years before Beowulf.

Here, I mapped the Beowulf story until he safely returned home. I’ll leave the reader to map the last part as a cosmological story from Virgo/Leo through Gemini/Taurus to Pisces/Aquarius. It maps like the swimming contest in the beginning. Cetus is the dragon and Eridanus is the path of Beowulf etc..)

The James Joyce Connection (2)

I am getting more involved with Finnegan’s Wake. I’m just a guy reading the book--those are my credentials. A lot of people have trouble reading it; so, I am going to put some Bardic Astronomy entries here as I am reading that may be helpful to others.

I have also started reading Joseph Campbell’s Skeleton Key to Finnegan’s Wake. Because some believe that Giambattista Vico’s cyclic view of old science and culture influenced Joyce, I ordered Penguin’s version of Vico’s The New Science. For now, I plan to look through The New Science just enough to get an idea of Vico’s thoughts.

I should first here go back to Joyce’s Ulysses while I re-read the first chapter of “Finnegan” so that the Bardic Astronomy aspect of Joyce’s earlier work gets clarified.

Ulysses vs. Odyssey

Homer’s Odyssey begins with Telemachus inquiring about his father and meeting Helen--probably the constellation Canis Major--then it switches in its second part to Odysseus and his return-trip past the Cyclops--probably the constellation Cetus--to Ithaca, then moves to a third part where Odysseus and Telemachus conspire to throw out the usurpers and then there is a last part where the usurpers are actually destroyed. Sagittarius is Odysseus shooting arrows toward Ursa Major and Ursa Minor which are probably the last two axe heads in the last part‘s contest. Joyce’s Ulysses is mainly a trip across Dublin. In the Odyssey, the path of the ship is the river constellation Eridanus. In Ulysses the path across Dublin is also Eridanus. We can use this constellation to get our bearings in both works.

The Odyssey went completely around the zodiac using the methods of Bardic Astronomy I have described. In Ulysses, Joyce used only the parts of the Odyssey from Gemini/Taurus to Pisces/Aquarius to tell his own story related to that part of the sky. He was pointing us to the old four-fold division of storytelling and the sky and the way it was used by the ancients. This explicitly describes the main difference between Joyce’s Ulysses and Homer’s Odyssey. The Odyssey was a complete four part bardic story but Ulysses is the second part of a story that never had its fourth part written. Joyce was planning HIS four part adventure but died after writing the third part, Finnegan’s Wake.

The Cosmic Egg

In movies and stories like Indiana Jones or in A Journey to the Center of the Earth there is sometimes a motif of an adventurer that is in a cave when a big rock starts rolling down the path behind the hero. The hero runs for his life and at the last moment jumps out of the way while the rock flies past and smashes to pieces against the cave wall. This rock can be the rock that Sisyphus keeps pushing in his torture or the Cosmic Egg rolling down from the Cosmos above. The egg rolls down the path of the river constellation Eridanus too. It hits the stone of south polar precession at (and below) Pisces/Aquarius. This is the old story of the Cosmic Egg. The cosmic egg rolls down from Gemini/Taurus to Pisces/Aquarius. A reference in the early part of Finnegan’s Wake to “Humpty Dumpty” is about this cosmic egg that smashes open at Pisces/Aquarius. Noah’s Ark makes its journey from Gemini/Taurus to Pisces/Aquarius also. The Ark has genetic material in it. Joyce’s earlier book Ulysses had genetic material at Pisces/Aquarius. The Ark has two of each animal. When the Ark lands, this genetic material starts to come out and grow. First there is chaos like the first sentence in Finnegan’s Wake then the two giraffs find each other and then the bull finds the cow and then things start to fit together into a slightly more coherent state. Soon in Finnegan’s Wake we get Shawn, Shem and Issy. The first decanate of Aquarius is Cygnus (the Swan) but in stories it can also be a stork bringing a child. In the story of Perseus and Andromeda, Perseus and Andromeda get together after Pisces/Aquarius and have a child named “Shah” which could have been brought by a stork--the Cygnus constellation. This child was the first of the “Shahs of Iran.”

Water then Air

In a human birth, the baby has its lungs full of watery fluid. It coughs out the water and starts breathing. It then starts eating and growing. In the first chapter of "Finnegan" the reader is starved for air. One is reading words but there is no spirit.

                                                             Beowulf

In this area of the sky, just after Pisces/Aquarius, Beowulf has just cut the head off of Grindl’s mother. The bent over Aquarius holding a jug is Beowulf severing the head of Grindl’s mother. This takes place in the grotto--the circle of constellations that never rise (below Pisces/Aquarius). He finds the body of Grindl too and cuts its head off. Beowulf then swims up from the grotto under Pisces/Aquarius. Beowulf emerges from the water later at the decanate Hercules (in terms of the year, around the fall equinox of Sept 21).  He has crossed the spirit boundary of the Milky Way and is now on the spiritual or cold or "yin" part of the year.

The Milky Way between Sagittarius and Scorpio is the water boundary in the Beowulf story and the constellation Hercules is Beowulf climbing out of the water. Today’s date is September 22. Do you feel the spirit in the year returning? It is like a big fresh breath of air at this time of the year. Its early, but Spirit has returned.

The quarters of the sky I give the following correspondences.

Water puts out a fire. You heat the water and it turns to a gas (air). At the end of the year it freezes and becomes a solid (ice). You melt the ice with fire and start over again.

Similarly at the end of Finnegan's Wake HCE and ALP are waiting for the sunrise at Sagittarius/Scorpio. They are not waiting for the return of some material "Sun God" of Saturn but for Sol or Soul, the spiritual part of the day, month, year, life, Great Year or Cosmos.

Here is a diagram of coming up out of the water.

When reading old adventure stories, there are often few references to the fish decanates near and just past Pisces/Aquarius because it is hard to fit a fish story into an adventure story. The medieval “Fisher Kings” were at Pisces/Aquarius. Their castle is the world tree. You go in and upstairs find the family--perhaps Guenevere and the Grail--Virgo and Crater (the Cup) are up the ladder on the other (spiritual) side of the world tree. Meanwhile the Fisher King is the“uber-materialist” at Pisces/Aquarius.

After the resurrection of Finnegan at Pisces/Aquarius, one could say that one of the first decanates that Joyce uses (if he is consciously using them) is the Southern Fish. This is the confusing language in the beginning. People liken the Finnegan’s Wake story to a dream. The fish is swimming around under water. It is like a subconscious activity. A little later in the story one gets to the Dolphin decanate. This is the fish that breathes real air. It periodically swims to the surface and breathes air. It can even swim up to the surface fast enough to jump out of the water and get a look at the water paradigm--the matrix.



The James Joyce Connection (1)



I finished “Portrait” fifteen years ago, completed Ulysses about four months ago and soon started reading Finnegan's Wake. There is clearly a Bardic Astronomy connection to all three books. After two chapters of “Finnegan” and reading into a few commentaries like Campbell’s Skeleton Key to Finnegan’s Wake I can begin to see what Joyce is doing with it. I don’t have the cultural and linguistic abilities to just sit down and read “Finnegan” from cover to cover. It is going to take a long time to get through it. Here, I’m giving the Bardic Astronomy connection to the story‘s beginning.

James Joyce is one of the greatest literary masters ever to have lived on the face of the earth. Near the end of his life he spent much of his time writing what seems to be gibberish. This was a major part of the humor of his last work, Finnegan‘s Wake. He had such excess capacity that he could apparently put it to no useful purpose better than thwarting those who could not or would not climb the snowy peaks on which he lived. He’s sort of a “good man gone bad” that manages to redeem himself in the end. He’s like a hermit, all one has to do is finally get up there with him and look at the view.

Bishop James Ussher deduced around 1654 that the first day of creation began on the nightfall preceding Sunday, October 23, 4004 BC. This is a time horizon of about 6,000 years. Joyce was looking back and forward at least twice this amount. Joyce’s time horizons were probably related to the Great Year. Joyce was planning a fourth work after Finnegan’s Wake but he died soon after completing “Finnegan.” This cut his dream short. We are left with a classic story like the Illiad or Odyssey but a story in which the usurpers are never completely thrown out. The story we are left with consists of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses, and Finnegan’s Wake taken together. My commentary here is limited to those three works.

If you are reading Finnegan’s Wake then expect to be going around to different sources, suffering and struggling for each little shred of understanding. It’s a rocky climb. No human being can read that strange book without the help of others and spending lots of time. Even the seemingly mundane plot has been painstakingly extracted by persons over generous periods of study. The “meat” of the work appears to be to grasp a relatively small number of motifs (perhaps ten or twenty) and how they relate to A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses and classic literature in general.

There are commentaries on the cultural and linguistic parts of Finnegan‘s Wake. Here I will attempt to present a few aspects of the “Bardic Astronomy” connection. The bards thought in symbols and I may be able to diagram most of this.

The ancients thought in cycles. The year is a cycle that can be presented by drawing a circle. The year has the four seasons of Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall. Harmony with the seasons was very important to the ancients.

It was important for them to have good stories about each of the four seasons. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a winter story, Ulysses is a spring story and Finnegan’s Wake is a summer story. Joyce’s missing last work was to be a “fall” story. James Joyce was a big fan of Dante Alighieri and this is the same structure of four of Dante’s works: La Vita Nuova, Inferno, Pergatorio and the Paradiso. Finnegan’s Wake corresponds with Dante’s Pergatorio.

Let me say at the very beginning that one stays in purgatory until one’s sins are washed away. This is why Finnegan’s Wake begins half way through the same sentence that ends it. A person stays in that mode of life--in early adulthood--until one understands the spiritual nature of the world. One stays in this purgatory until one sees the self and others as spirits.

Bardic literature uses or follows the ancient methods of the bards. Joyce’s works use the same framework as the most ancient stories. Before writing, the bards would go around the sky and use constellations and parts of old astronomy as “memory jogs” to help in remembering their stories. Joyce appears not to use the constellations so much as follow the thresholds, boundaries and underlying astronomical framework of the old stories. Because writing has been invented one is now free to do this and move away from using the constellations. Homer crafted the Odyssey before writing and constellation motifs can be found in the modern written versions that can lead one back to the old methods of remembering the story. Joyce writes like the ancient bards but without the constellational motifs. This ability to use the old framework came from Joyce reading many old stories and knowing old cosmology. This is also why it takes a lot of background to understand James Joyce.

Ancient bardic stories that went from Virgo/Leo past Gemini/Taurus and then on to Pisces/Aquarius were old cosmology. The world around us was thought to be about half way through its life cycle. In most of these stories, there was some great spirit that died or was killed and the spirit’s carcass became the world. The stories with death in them postulated “dead matter.” Other stories presented alternate cosmologies and left the cosmos asleep or imprisoned at Pisces/Aquarius. Matter in these cosmologies was like “mother earth” and thought to be still alive but somehow dormant. Either way, because we grew up out of this cosmological being or it‘s carcass, we were thought to inherit it’s qualities. The dead or dormant cosmos was thought to be like our father or mother. The death and resurrection in the beginning of Finnegan’s Wake is a reference to old cosmology.

In Finnegan’s Wake, Finnegan the hod carrier climbs up a ladder to do some work on a castle. The ladder is the World Tree. He falls down the ladder and hits his head. The people think he’s dead. His wife puts his body out to “feed the people” and for a wake. During the wake there is an argument and some whiskey gets splashed on Finnegan and he returns to life. Soon after this in the story, Finnegan is replaced with HCE (Here Comes Everybody) otherwise known as Humbolt C. Earwicker. HCE is an ordinary man like Horus is the ordinary man version of the cosmos Osiris. Finnegan was the Cosmos and HCE his resurrected son, like an Adam. The death of Osiris occurs in this same area (Pisces/Aquarius) as does the death of Ishtar and others. The ladder that Finnegan climbs is the Djed Pillar or World Tree that grew out of Osiris’s coffin.

Early adulthood is when people have children and work toward their own spiritual destiny. Joyce’s Adam and Eve story (Finnegan’s Wake) tells us the original Adam and Eve story from the bible took place after a death and resurrection. Joyce is helping us reconstruct some very old mythology. Finnegan's Wake is a modern Adam and Eve story written by an authentic bard. Adam and Eve in this story are HCE and his wife ALP. They have two sons Shem and Shaun and a daughter Issy.

Through inheritance HCE and his descendants are going to be like HCE’s predecessor; the Cosmos Finnegan. What do we know about Finnegan? From his friends and work we know he was a hard drinking, hard working, rowdy and fun loving man. Are there other clues about what Joyce thinks about the nature of the Cosmos? Yes! They are in his previous book, Ulysses. Ulysses ends with a similar sort of cosmological death and resurrection.

Forgive me everyone for I’m going to try and explain what this madman was thinking. Children please leave the room. The world tree at the end of Ulysses was the fireworks that entertained Leopold Bloom in his flirting with Gerty McDowell. A sexual climax is known as a “petite morte.” After this little death below the world tree, the resurrection is at the hospital in the next scene with the babies. There’s an old Egyptian myth about Atum, masturbating the world into existence. Joyce is telling us that his way of viewing this old Egyptian myth is like the episode with Leopold and Gerty in the park. Joyce places this variation of cosmology in the old bardic scheme. Again he is helping us to reconstruct some very old mythology while telling a bizarre and entertaining story. Joyce is implying that our (or perhaps HIS) cosmological ancestor is like a Finnegan or a Leopold Bloom!


Earlier I wrote: “The essence of the work is to grasp a relatively small number of motifs and how they relate to A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses“ and classic literature in general.” The placing of the Adam and Eve story in the 3rd quarter of the sky and placing the cosmology just described at Pisces/Aquarius are examples of this. Joyce’s ideas are madly humorous and very profound.

A Second Example

The river constellation Eridanus is Ishtar’s path down into the underworld to visit her sister. When the spiritual time of the year, winter, was over (around Easter) Ishtar entered a cave to visit her sister. The Auriga constellation looks like a cave. There were gatekeepers within the cave and each time she went to a lower level, the gatekeeper demanded that Ishtar remove an article of clothing. When she finally got to her sister, her sister killed her and Ishtar became “naked earth.”

In the Odyssey, Odysseus has an adventure where he encounters the sirens. The sirens are usually portrayed as being naked. Here is Ulysses and the Sirens by Herbert James Draper.

The Odyssey was from old bardic times when the constellations were still used to help remember stories. Here a plate that shows the way it was remembered.



My point is that there is a nakedness motif identified with Pisces/Aquarius that goes back to the ancient world. The Jesus story also goes back into the ancient world. The path Jesus took when carrying his cross was also Eridanus, “The River.” This path ends at Pisces/Aquarius where he was crucified. He is today usually portrayed as having a cloth covering himself but this was changed in modern times to fit our modern moral ideas about nudity.

A significant part of Finnegan’s Wake is that early in the story HCE was rumored to have exposed himself in a park to two young women. The name of the place was called Phoenix Park. The exposure after the death and resurrection is an unmistakable bardic reference. By including this James Joyce is in harmony with the ancient stories like The Odyssey and the Ishtar story.

Earlier I wrote: “The essence of the work is to grasp a relatively small number of motifs and how they relate to A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses and classic literature in general.” The nakedness reference is one of these motifs included by Joyce because he was aware of very ancient cosmology.