(PDF) Guardians of the Sundoor by AK Coomaraswamy - DOKUMEN.TIPS (2024)

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Foreword — On Ananda K. CoomaraswamyRama Coomaraswamy.............................................................................vi

IntroductionRama Coomaraswamy...........................................................................viii

PrefaceRobert A. Strom..................................................................................... xiv

I. The Early Iconography of Sagittarius — Krsanu .............................. I

II. The Guardians of the Sundoor and the Sagittarian Type................. 21

III. Concerning Sphinxes............................................................................65

IV. The Concept of “Ether” in Greek and Indian Cosmology:

“Ether” in Plato..................................................................................... 71

“Ether” in Philo..................................................................................... 75

V. Philo’s Doctrine of the Cherubim....................................................... 83

VI. The Greek Sphinx................................................................................. 97

VII. The Immortal Soul as Psychopomp................................................... 123

VIII. Conclusion............................................................................................141

Appendix:

I. On the Etymology of “Cherubim” ..............................................145

II. The Rotation of the Earth..........................................................146

III. On “Stephanos” .............................................................................152

Bibliography.................................................................................................... 156

Other Related Fons Vitae and Quinta Essentia Titles................................ 156

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■*· F o r e w o r d — O n A n a nd a K. C o o m ara sw am y

Rama Coomaraswamy

An a n d a C o o m a r a s w a m y , b o t h a s a p e r s o n a n d a s a s c h o l a r , is hardly remembered in our day. To some degree, this is how he would have it — for he constandy held that, if he were to be remembered, it would only be for his works and not as an individual. He repeatedly

refused to indulge in autobiographical details and felt that such was aswarga, and as such against the very principles in which he believed and to which he devoted his life. In this, he was like the true artist and craftsman, whose products have always carried the stigma of anonymity. While giving a talk at the University of Hawaii, a Ph.D. candidate informed me that his request to do his thesis on Ananda Coomaraswamy was rejected because “Coomaraswamy said nothing new.” This would have delighted him, though it in no way contradicts the fact that he was able to give expression to what had already been said in clearer and better ways — better in being more suitable to our times.

It is, however, of value to provide some historical background. Born in Colombo, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in 1877 to an English mother and a Sri Lankan father, he returned to England at the age of three when his father passed away from Bright’s disease (now called glomerulonephritis). He schooled at Wycliffe College (college being a term used for private schools in England), where he first manifested his interest in both geology and language. After graduation he proceeded to London University, where he took his degree in both Geology and Botany. At the age of twenty-three he returned to Sri Lanka, where he conducted a geological survey which is still of value and in use today.

During the course of his geological studies, he became interested in the arts and crafts of Sri Lanka, which were rapidly being destroyed by the inroads of ugly and cheaply-produced products from the west, as well as by the corruption of the tastes and values of consumers as a result of both modern education and their desire to imitate the English. It was but a short step from this to his developing interest in the nature and meaning of art itself.

He then traveled extensively throughout India, both studying and collecting examples of Indian art, offering his collection to the government if they would build a museum to care for it. This offer was refused, and hence it was that the collection returned with him to England. During this period he published many articles on Indian and Buddhist Art, as well as on Buddha and the Gospel of Buddhism, myths of the Hindus and Buddhists, etc. Back in England, he continued his studies and published, among other items, his classical two-volume work on Rajput paintings and Mediaeval Singhalese art, and The Dance of Shiva.

During the first World War (1914-1918), he refused to fight in the British Army on the grounds that India was not a free nation. As a result he was “exiled” to the United States, where he was given the appointment at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts as Curator of Indian and Mohammedan Art, and where he lived for the rest of his life. It was here that his many works on art were

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published, such as The Origin ofthe Buddha Image and the History of Indian and Indonesian Art. However, with the course of time his interests in the meaning of art — and hence in metaphysics — became increasingly consuming. From about 1933 on, while he continued to publish articles dealing with art, he was able to bring to his knowledge of metaphysics both his Eastern experiences and his extraordinary linguistic abilities, producing a corpus of works which can only be described as extraordinary. While his bibliography lists over a thousand items, one might mention in passing as it were, A New Approach to the Vedas, The Darker Side of Dawn, Angel and Titan, The Christian and Oriental Philosophy of Art and many significant articles, some of which were gathered together by Roger Lipsey and published in a two-volume collection by Princeton University Press, Bollingen Series LXXXIX, under the title of Collected Papers.

In 1947 Ananda Coomaraswamy retired from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts with the intention of returning to India, where he hoped to finish up some of his writings, translate some of the Vedas, and take Sanyasa. God, however, had other plans, and he passed away peacefully and alertly shortly thereafter.

It was only his ashes, carried by his wife, which returned to both India and Ceylon.

Needless to say, many of the unfinished writings were left in disarray. His wife did yeoman work in bringing much of the material together, but the material on the Sagittarius was so complex that she made no attempt to deal with it. In the course of several moves the text, notes and photographs were further disrupted. Several scholars to whom the collected material was shown felt that they could not deal with it in an adequate manner. For a time, I felt that his final works would probably never see the light of day.

Fortunately, Robert Strom — who is probably the only person alive who has the capacity to deal with this material — undertook the task. The result, a work of several years, is truly remarkable. Not only has he presented the finished product much as Coomaraswamy himself would want it done, but he has done it with the same spirit of anonymity and virtue that the original author embraced. It has been both a search for truth and an exposition of truth which leaves one a little breathless. It is no exaggeration to say that without the work of Robert Strom, this material would probably never have become available to us.

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■*· GUARDIANS o f t h e S u n d o o r

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Rama Coomaraswamy

A nanda K. Coomaraswamy s Guardians of the Sundoor is one of the last remaining unpublished group of essays of this prolific author; it is also in many ways the culmination of his life’s work. Although the material is presented in a scholarly manner, it is also the story of a

spiritual journey: his, and possibly ours. As he wrote in an earlier essay, “When the deceased reaches the Sundoor, the question is asked, ‘Who art thou?”’ Depending upon the answer, one is either allowed to enter in or “be dragged away by the factors of time.” The present work aims at providing us with the correct response and at teaching us how to negotiate the difficult passage between this world and the next.

A.K.C. was by vocation a scholar, who dedicated the last decades of his life to “searching the Scriptures” — something made possible by his extraordinary linguistic ability. He read and spoke some thirty languages, which enabled him to seek out the original sources. Because he wrote primarily for fellow scholars, it has been suggested that an introduction — providing the potential reader with a brief outline of some of the issues under consideration, while avoiding the multiplicity of unfamiliar linguistic references — would be o f use. Without this simplification — hopefully, one that does not violate the depth of content — many who would greatly benefit from the text itself would perhaps be frightened off. It is because the content is of such spiritual importance — that our very souls depend upon both our understanding and following the paths set out by the author — it is of equal importance that a few “sign posts” be provided to enable us to follow in his footsteps.

The ideas and concepts discussed go back to prehistoric times, but show a consistency of meaning that those imbued with evolutionary ideation would find difficult to accept.1 Metaphysical ideas, however, are best expressed by analogy and hence by symbolism. Indeed, as A.K.C. has elsewhere explained, “symbolism is a language and a precise form of thought; a hieratic and metaphysical language and not a language determined by somatic or psychological categories . . . symbolism can be defined as the representation of reality on a certain level of reference by a corresponding reality on another . . . traditional symbols are the technical terms of a spiritual language that transcends all confusion of tongues and are not peculiar to any

1 This is not surprising. Augustine, as a Christian, said that the very thing that is now called the Christian religion was not wanting among the ancients from the beginning o f the human race, until Christ came in the flesh — “after which the true religion, which had already existed, began to be called ‘Christian'.” (Stephen Cross, Avaloka, VI, 1992, p. 56.) And Origin says, “There has never been a time when the saints did not have the gift of spiritual salvation pointed towards Christ. The Word became man at the final hour; He became Jesus Christ. But before this visible coming in the flesh, he was already, without being man, mediator for humanity.” (Commentary on Gospel o f John, 20.12).

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one time and place. Indeed, they are the technical language of the philosophic! perennis." As Professor S.H. Nasr has said, “The symbol is the revelation of a higher order of reality in a lower order through which man can be led back to the higher sphere. It is not accidental that Christ spoke in parables.”

What could be more common than a doorway? To quote Gray Henry: “It is more than coincidental that many doorways throughout the world exhibit a corresponding set of symbolic motifs that point to the One manifesting itself as duality — a duality and a world that must return to that One.” One must pass through the duality of the door jambs to the unity which is only to be found in the centre. As Christ said, “I am the door,” and “No one comes to the Father but through Me.” The passage through the door is always a passage that at least symbolically involves a change of state, and what is required metaphysically is a casting off of the “old man” much as a snake casts off his skin. In our prosaic lives we easily forget that the door both allows us “in” and keeps us “out.” We forget that the husband carrying his wife over the threshold symbolizes a psychopomp carrying the soul to another world — hopefully a paradise where the couple will be “happy ever afterwards.” Should the husband stumble, it is a sign of bad luck or impending misfortune. On the other side of the door is the “One” or “centre” which is represented by the Tree of Life, the Axis Mundi, the Fountain of Immortality, a throne, a mountain, royalty, a sun disc, and so on. Also, the centre can refer to the garden of Paradise where the tree and fountain are located.

The entrance is, however, not open to everyone — as mentioned above, the door functions both as entrance but also as an excluding barrier. And so it is that the Door or the Tree is guarded by “cherubim” who each hold “a flaming sword, turning every way, to keep the way of the tree of life” (Genesis III.24). The affronted cherubim are themselves the “contraries” (of past and future, ruling and creative powers, etc.), of which the wall is built — and, therefore, the appropriate ornaments on the wall of the Temple as in Ezekial XLI.18. Each and every pair of affronted cherubim represents the clashing jambs of the living door through which the strait way leads — “strait,” because the line that divides past from future, evil from good and moist from dry is — literally — what is so often called “a razor edge.” Thus it is that sacred structures — churches and temples — almost invariably place flanking guardians at their entrances. As Gray Henry has pointed out, “One finds paired lions at the door of each Burmese Buddhist shrine, sphinxes at the entrances of Egyptian temples (not to be confused with the famous Egyptian Sphinx), and affronted male and female griffins over the gates to Christian churches. The configuration still continues to be used for secular doorways, which often exhibit palmettes (representing the Tree of Life) and urns or vase motifs (indicating the Font of Living Waters). The threshold of thc yurt in Central Asia is decorated with the image of the Tree of Life flanked by two mountain sheep, which are represented by their horns.” Such is appropriate and understandable when one conceives of the home as a mini-shrine or church — for a genuine “home” is a sacred enclosure. (This is why in many

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cultures one leaves one’s shoes at the doorstep.) One even sees an appropriate secular reminder of this in libraries (presumably the depository of wisdom), whose entrances are flanked by lions. Through time, these guardians have been of various types, including “Scorpion-men, sleepless and baleful serpents or dragons, centaurs (notably ‘Sagittarius’), Gandharvas, cherubim and in many cases armed Automate" (Symplegades).

Every sacred enclosure is representative of Paradise. The central point of a Christian church, as traditionally conceived, is either the Cross — the upright stem of which is the Tree of Life — or the Dome open to heaven, under which is the Tabernacle containing the Body of Christ — Who is Himself the Door. The very cruciform structure of the church repeats this principle, as does the maze found in many mediaeval cathedrals. Again, every genuine Catholic altar has as its prototype the altar in the Holy of Holies guarded by the cherubim. Between the cherubim is the Shakina, or the Divine Presence now replaced by the Tabernacle. Similarly the well of Zam Zam situated in the sacred precincts of the Kabba in Mecca represents the Divine Centre, where is to be found the Fons Vitae, a pattern repeated in the fountains of mosques around the world. The water functions to wash the “old man,” and hence to purify the worshipper. And of course our bodies are also sacred enclosures, for the Kingdom of Heaven is within the human heart.

The well-guarded doorposts also represent the duality — the past and future, regret and anticipation, etc. — which must be overcome if one is to enter into the Present or the presence of God — a place where, to use the words of Eckhart, “neither virtue nor vice ever entered in.” Such statements may confuse, but not if one listens to Nicholas of Cusa, who tells us: “The walls of Paradise in which Thou, Lord, dwellest, are built of contradictories, nor is there any way to enter but for one who has overcome the highest Spirit of Reason who guards its gate.” This would seem to be a common doctrine recognized throughout the history of the world. I f we are to reach the other shore — which is in Dante’s words, a place “where every where and every when are focused,” (Paradiso xxLx.22) we must pass through this Door of duality, though “here, under the Sun, we are overcome by the pairs” (xxii.67). As the Maitri Upanisad teaches: “Every being in the emanated world moves deluded by the mirage of the contrary pairs, of which the origin is our liking and disliking . . . but only those who are freed from this delusion of the pairs .. . freed from the pairs that are implied in the expression ‘weal and woe’ reach the place of invariability.” As Boethius said, “Truth is a mean between contrary heresies” (Contra Eutychen vii). Another word for this duality is Maya, which both points to unity and at the same time obscures it. As Coomaraswamy explains, the “Vedantic maya-veda doctrine must not be understood as meaning that the world is a ‘delusion’, but that it is a phenomenal world and as such a theophany and epiphany by which we are deluded if we are concerned with nothing but the wonders themselves, and do not ask ‘O f what’ all these things are a phenomenon.”

Coomaraswamy explains the process each of us must undergo. The passage through the Door is always a “Middle Way” and is frequently symbolized by the “clashing rocks” of mythology through which the “hero” must pass. As A.K.C. said in his essay on the Symplegades, “the severing Logos (itself symbolized by a flashing sword) is at once the narrow path which must be followed by every Hero, the door that he must find, and the logical Truth and Highest Spirit of Reason that he must overcome if he would enter into the eternal life of the land ‘East of the Sun and West of the Moon’. This is also the ‘Logos of God’, the trenchant Word that like a two-edged sword ‘sunders’ soul from spirit (Hebrews IV.12); ‘sunders’, because whoever enters must have left himself, his Achilles heel’, behind him; our sensitive soul being the ‘mortal brother’ and the ‘tail’ or ‘appendage’ of which the Master surgeon’s knife — the Islamic Dhul-fiqar — relieves us, if we are prepared to submit to his operation.”

Again, this desired locus is described as a place where “shine no stars, nor sun is there displayed, there gleams no moon; (and yet) no darkness there is seen.” It is here that Dionysius’ “Divine Darkness is entered and where one is ‘blinded by excess light,” ’ where the Darkness and the Light stand not distant from one another, but together in one another. Darkness and Light, Day and Night, are contraries that must be overcome and passed through — which can only be done at dawn and dusk, when these archetypal contraries that were divided “in the beginning” are surpassed. Christ said He was the door through which we must pass, but having done so, united to Him, we are also united to the Father — for as He said, “I and the Father are one.” Rumi wrote, “Our Soul is, as it were, die day and our body the night: We, in the middle, are the dawn between our day and night.”

The well at the world’s end is not to be found by walking, for it is within us. It is the Spirit within us that, having shaken off our bodily attachments (and above all our attachment to our little self or ego), can make the journey. The priest in approaching the altar prays for the joy of his youth, which as Eckhart says is the casting off the “old man.” He also prays that God will lead him to the light, the truth and the Mountain in which He dwells. Reverting to the symbolism of the “clashing rocks,” it is clear that one must pass them in a “flash.” This “moment” of transition corresponds to the “single moment ot full awakening” (The Buddha is not by accident called the “Wake”), for all spiritual operations are necessarily “sudden.”

Clearly the Hero’s quest is never meant to be a one-way street — The Holy Grail must be brought back to the world of manifestation. The Hero becomes a “soma-thief,” where Soma is the waters of life, the Golden Fleece or the golden apples of Jason. It is also called the “vessel of plenty.” “No dweller on earth partakes of the true elixir, but only of substitutes ‘made to be Soma’ by rites of transubstantiation, participation being a prefiguration or anticipation of the blessed life of the deceased.” This transubstantiation is achieved in a ritual sacrifice that allows the sacrificer to identify himself with

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the Hero who is always a Christ figure, and who as it were crosses over and brings back the Soma. It is the Catholic priest, who identifies himself with Christ, who crosses over or through the clashing rocks — between the Cherubim — and brings back Bread and Wine, (both crushed like the soma branches), the Body and Blood, for others to participate in.

Space only allows us to but touch upon some of the basic ideas in this work. Tied in with these are a host of treasures explaining the symbolic meanings of a variety of associated ideas, drawn from all the genuine traditions of the world — such as the meaning of “Sacrifice,” “Ether,” “Space,” “Solar Symbols,” etc. The Sphinx, then, which Philo identifies with the Cherubim made of the creative Fire, is also identified with the Logos and with Wisdom. The Sphinx is also represented by the Eagle or the Indian Garuda. This explains the symbolism of the “rape of the Nagi” — or of Ganymede, which is the inverse of the “Rape of the Soma.” Here, as A.K.C. explains, “the Sphinx represents the Psychopomp who bears away the soul of the deceased, as she bore away the Thebans ‘to the inaccessible light of the Ether’.” Here we have a further elucidation of the traditional symbolism — for as A.K.C. explains, quoting Euripedes: “The spirit dies away into Ether” which is nothing but its return to God Who gave it. This is at once the background for Philo’s pronouncement that when, at our death, the four lesser elements are returned to their origins, “the intellectual and celestial species of the soul departs to find a father in Ether.” In the words of A.K.C.: “We have seen in the mythological formulations, verbal and visual, that winged pneumatic powers, whether we call them sirens, sphinxes, eagles or angels, convey the soul to the heavenly realms of ethereal light. The soul itself not being winged, only clings to its bearer.” On the other hand, Plato in the Phaedrus speaks of the soul itself as growing her wings; Philo, similarly, says of souls that are purified from mundane attachments that “escaping as though from a prison or the grave, they are equipped for the Ether by light wings, and range the heights for ever” (Somn. 1.139).

In the same way, Dante speaks of those who are — or are not — “so winged that they may fly up there” (Paradiso x.74). In India, likewise, both formulations occur; on the one hand, it is the eagle that conveys the sacrificer, who holds on to him (TS. III.2.1.1), by means of the Gayatri, whose wings are of light and that one reaches the world of the Suns. On the other hand, it is asked what is their lot who reach the top of the Tree (of Life)? The answer is “the winged, those who are wise, fly away, but the wingless, the ignorant, fall down (PB. XIV.1.12.13). Uplifted on wings of sound, “the Sacrificer both perches fearless in the world of heavenly light, and also moves” i.e. at will, “for wherever a winged one would go, all that — it reaches.”

A.K.C. points out: “We are ourselves the Sphinx. Plato himself implies as much by his ‘etc.’ when he discusses the problems of man’s relation to Chimaera, Scylia, Cereberus and other composite animals. Plato equates the two parts of the composite creature with the two parts of the soul, the better

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and the worse, immortal and mortal; the composite represents the whole man, the human head the Inner man, the lion or dog, the mettle.” He might even have gone further and pointed out that the serpent tails of these creatures correspond to the appetites — equating the two animal forms, those of the lion and the snake, with the two parts of the mortal soul, as Philo assuredly would have done. In any case, Plato says, that man is one who can be described as just (or in Christian terms, is justified), in whom the Inner Man prevails and is not pulled about by the beasts, but makes an ally of the lion or dog and so cares for the other beasts as to make them friendly to one another and to himself. On this basis, one might say that the composite animal that he really was carries him off at last, either to punishment in case the beasts have prevailed, or to the beatific life if the Man in the man has prevailed: The question is really just that of the Prasna Upanisad: “In which, when I depart, shall I be departing?”

In concluding these introductory comments I must, first of all, express my admiration for the work of the Editor, Robert Strom — who when faced with a confused mass of notes and illustrations, was able to collate and bring together this difficult material. Equally remarkable has been the work of Rebecca Renzi who, working from the notes of Mr. Strom, has typeset a text involving several languages with great accuracy. One must also be grateful to Gray Henry, for whom this has been a work of love as well as spiritual growth. Her contributions are by no means limited to the role of publisher, for she has been responsible for the collating of illustrations — many of which she has herself found and replaced when they were missing from the original text. Finally and most important, thanks are due to Peter Schroeder, whose patronage made the entire work possible.

Chimacra. Attic, 6,h century B.C.

P r e f a c e

I

Robert A. Strom

T HE WIDELY AND PROFOUNDLY LEARNED ANANDA KENTISH COOMARASWAMY (1877-1947), art historian and metaphysician, is not as well known as he deserves to be. In the East he is best known for his earliest works, in which the critique of the colonial economic system and the advocacy

of traditional arts and crafts tend to predominate. Those who are most willing to commend his work too often exhibit a discreet silence, or have been unable to fully access and evaluate his latest and most important writings. In the West, where he lived most of his life, academia has been very slow to welcome the grand Coomaraswamian scientific synthesis.

Coomaraswamy would have asserted that his work was only a beginning at restoring a fully integrated world view of the ancients. Moreover, he would have said that it leaves out the entire regimen of practice — without which any theorizing, however comprehensive, is little more than the raising of dust. On the other hand, the serious problem posed by the absence of spiritual masters in the modern world is easily overrated where the theory is not understood. The restoration of the primordial vision of man in the cosmos as offered in these essays — which are published for the first time — is another such beginning and can lead to the manifestation of a seasonally spoken, creative and life-giving Word.

As for the practicum, Coomaraswamy knew the need for this very well as an ideal or not, and seriously intended to retire to a Himalayan hermitage where the truth he so assiduously pursued could be fully realized. Before that was to occur, probably in 1949, the essays presented here — along with a number of others he had been working on for years — would very likely have been brought to finish and found their way into print somewhere in the world. We believe they favorably augment his already published oeuvre and are important additions to the study of iconographic traditions in East and West, a field to which he had given many of his best years and for which these essays were doubtless intended to be both a literal and a figurative capstone.

Π

Coomaraswamy probably began working on the first essay in this volume, “The Early Iconography of Sagittarius,” in the spring of 1943. How'ever, it was the appearance in 1937 of Willy Hartner’s “Pseudo-Planetary Nodes of the Moons Orbit,” a study dedicated to Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy on his sixtieth birthday, which must have set his mind on course. The earliest reference to the work in his surviving correspondence dates from 4.8.43 in a letter to J.C. Cuttat:

. . . Your mention of Scorpio (who was originally a celestial janitor) is curious, because I am just now working

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“Symplegades” and can be dated from late October and November of 1943, though it would not be published until 1946. From bibliographic references in both early and late “Sagittarius” manuscripts, it is clear that the “Symplegades” was under way towards the terminus ad quern of the earliest and probably completed before the composition of the latest “Sagittarius” manuscripts.

In the early summer of 1944, there was a discussion of many “Sagittarian” themes in the correspondence to G. Carey. This material, beginning with the card dated 6.13.44, was never precisely incorporated in A.K.C. s formal work:

. . . One might also say that as red agrees with the “ardor” of the seraphim, so blue with the cooler “knowledge” of the cherubim. But this would be a moral rather than metaphysical explanation.

The topics were continued in a letter to Carey dated 6.14.44:From the Indian point of view (dark) blue and black

are equivalent. The three, blue, black and white, correspond to the tamasic, rajasic and sattvic qualities. Indian images can be classified in these terms as ferocious, royal and mild or spiritual in aspect. Now while knowledge and love are the characteristic qualities of cherubim and seraphim, their primary functions are defensive and apotropaic and looked at purely from an Indian point of view, one would think of the colors blue and red as corresponding to this militant function. God Himself would be white — or what is essentially golden. Gold being the regular symbol of light, life and immortality.

From within the Christian-Hebrew tradition one would recall that Seraphs are “fiery serpents” and connect the red with this as well as with their characteristic ardor.

I am just now writing the part o f the “Early Iconography of Sagittarius” which deals with Cherub and seraphs. They are both militant and fierce types that “keep the way of the Tree of Life” — and nearest to God (with the Thrones) in knowledge and love because they are his “bodyguards,” a sort of “King’s own” regiment, an elite of the angels.

I am not quite able to explain the blue from the Christian-Hebrew sources. Possibly the blue is for the Virgin; considered in her aspect as Sophia . . . From my outlook blue or black is appropriate for the Virgin in view of her identity with the earth (Goddess), the Mother — of which I was reminded the other day when seeing the film, The Song of Bernadette. (Which is very fine and you

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must see.) This is the accepted explanation of the “ Vierges Noires” (of Durand-Lefebure, Etudes sur /'origine des Vierges Noires, Paris 1937 and Rowland s article on the Nativity in the Grotto, Bulletin ofthe Fogg Art Museum, III,1939 (cf. p. 63).

In conjunction with the above, we excerpt here a small portion of a letter to Ms. Bethune from 7.26.43:

. . . I was for the moment surprised by Maria as Janua coeli (since Christ s words are “I am the door”), but at once remembered that both Sun and Moon are the doors and no doubt it is in her lunar aspect that Mary is the door.

The color symbolism would also be the subject of the letter to Carey, dated 7.29.44:

. . . Answers on the color symbolism are not quite so easy. On the whole I agree with your remarks: However,I suggest that essentia is only apparently modified by matter, in the same way that space is only apparently modified by its enclosure in, say, a glass jar. We see this when the jar is broken: In the same way with Essentia when the material conditions determining Esse are dissolved. So I would say “God created the universe by revealing whatever of Himself is susceptible of manifestation.” Over and above this remains all that is not susceptible of manifestation. I do not like the expression “passing Esse through Posse.” As you say:

Pure Being — White both invisible

Pure Potency— BlackBetween these two lies the colored (red) world of

action. These are the 3 “gunas” of Indian cosmology: Cf.Paradiso 29.31-6. These are the “3 worlds” of tradition — all under the Sun and other than the otherworld. Blue, black and green are more or less the same traditionally: The implication of emptiness is right, but this is also potentiality, since emptiness demands ful/z/ment.

The four castes and four quarters are white, red, yellow, black. The “high lights” (as you imply) are representative of higher values. Purple rightly associated with black:Purple connected with royalty [also mourning], as black is with death.

Prism: So “life stains the white radiance of eternity.”I hardly think the light returns to God by the rotation of

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the wheel, but rather when it is stopped, i.e., when the circumference is reduced to the centre: Then die centrifugal ray by which the circumference was, so to say, pushed out, returns on itself to its source. As Heracleitus says: “The way up and the way down are the same.” The wheel continues to turn until the circumference is contracted to the motionless centre ([the] “rolling up” of time and space).

I wonder if you are not using Esse (existence) where you mean Essentia (being),. . . Essentia apparendy modified by matter = Esse.

Only a month later, as we see in this quotation from a letter to Marco Pallis dated 8.20.44, Coomaraswamy was still at work on the “Sagittarius”:

. . . I am rather appalled by your suggestion of my writing a book of the nature of a critique of Occidentalism for Indian readers. . . . In die long run the long piece on the “Early Iconography of Sagittarius” on which I have been engaged for over a year, with many interruptions, seems to me more important than any direct addition to the “literature of indictment” . . .

From a letter to Bernard Kelly dated 12.30.44, we know that the work on the “Sagittarius” had continued up to that time, but now we also find mentioned the earliest reference in the extant correspondence to the “Ether” essay, the fourth of those presented in diis volume.

I am just now working on two rather difficult papers, one on aiqhr, akasa as quinta essentia and name of God, the other on the early iconography of Sagittarius who is ultimately a Cherub or Seraph, guardian of the sources of life.

Only a month later, in a letter to R. Parker, dated 1.27.45, we find a similar picture:

I am still deep in Sagittarius and have started a piece on Gr. aiqhr and Skr. akasa, both = quintessentia — fascinating material! But I get so much interruption . . .

It was much the same a few days later in a letter to G. Sarton, dated 2.6.45:I have a number of things in the press that will

interest you. I am still working on the “Early Iconography of Sagittarius,” but am almost bogged down in the mass of material (cherubs, centaurs, Janua coeli, Rape of soma, etc.); and on the concept of Ether in the Greek and Sanskrit sources.

·*· Preface ·*■

As it turned out, he was stymied and both manuscripts of “Early Iconography of Sagittarius” end at that point where the material corresponds to and is continued in the “Ether” essay. This is possibly reflected in a letter to Gretchen Warren dated 4.2.45, which incidentally contains the earliest reference in the correspondence to the “Sphinx” essay, the third of those presented in this volume:

Both “Sagittarius” and “Ether” became so extensive that I paused to write up the material on the Sphinx (not the Egyptian “Sphinx”) separately and hope at least to finish that this month.

Less than a week later, on 4.7.45, he would send this pertinent card to E. Goodenough of Yale, the prominent Philo scholar, with whom many of these subjects had been explored:

. . . Re the Hermetic 2 dorajoroi diat a comparison with Rep. and with Phaedo lo ji. shows that both are called hgemwn and daimwg and one is the guardian angel of the past life and one the guardian angel of the new life. Representing dius the soul’s past and future they correspond to the Cherubim, the opposites, between which (as Symplegades) stands the Now through which our Way — the very strait leads.

We see in a letter to Ethel Mary Coomaraswamy Mairet, dated 6.1.45, state of these manuscripts at that time:

At the present time I have long been working on the early forms of Sagittarius; I have had to separate from that a discussion of “ether”’ in Greek and Sanskrit doctrine; and from that again to separate out a long paper on the Sphinx (not the so-called Egyptian variety, of course), which may get finished this summer. All this has to do widi cherubim, and with the distinction of Destiny from Necessity — i.e.Dharma from Karma.

I, too, hope to live a number of years more; at the same time I do prepare for death, as far as possible, in the Platonic manner. In a few years more we plan to go home to India (northern) permanendy, when I will in a certain way retire, rather than dying in harness; that is, I want to contact and realize more immediately the actuality of the things of which my present knowledge is more “intellectual” than direct.

The contemporaneous letter to Walter Shewring, dated 6.5.45, will be extensively quoted:

As to moira (“share,” qismet and bhagam) and eimarmenh these represent our participation in die divine

G u a r d ia n s o f t h e S u n d o o r

nature, and our “freewill” is as to whether or not we shall consent to and cooperate with the will which these imply, whether we seek or not to reach our destination. Nothing could be more un-happy than to be amoira. Moira as will and destiny then corresponds to dharma, of which each one’s allotment is his sva-dharma, vocation, the natural means of his entelechy. On the other hand, anagkh represents the ineluctable operation of mediate causes, and corresponds to kharma, which may help or hinder our destiny, but with respect to which we can only submit widi a good grace, endeavoring to fulfill our destiny as best we can. This endeavor itself becomes a mediate cause in turn and thus creates a better anagkh — kharma for tomorrow. Thus our lives are actually determined in part by our intentions and in part by our environment. . . . [Note] the valuable treatment of moira, etc. in Philo and Hermetica, etc. As Philo maintains God alone is truly free, but we are given a share (moira) in this freedom: And all such shares are in amounts proportionate to our receptive capacity — all is offered

I am still at work on Sagittarius, Ether, and Sphinxes, and shall try to complete articles on these three closely related themes, in the reverse order, i.e., Sphinxes first. The concept is ridiculous. Sjiggw has practically never this sense, but = dew (in desmos and det) and is almost always used with respect to die Golden Chain that unifies all things. On the other hand the verb of which Sphinx is most often the subject is arpaxw, to carry off: And you know how and of whom this verb is used in NT. In other words, the Sphinx, like the Eagle, appears in tombs chiefly in the capacity of psychopomp — who, as Euripedes says “carries off the Cadmena kin to the untrodden light of Ether” — or as Philo says, “to find a father in Ether” (a reminiscence of the early equation Zeus estin aiqhr). That is a very brief outline of what the Sphinx article is to be. After I had got this far I was delighted to find that Clement of Alexandria explains the Sphinx in precisely the same way. (Of course, I am talking about the Gk. and Western Asiatic Sphinx only, not the so-called Egyptian Sphinx of which the origins are different, although there is, as biologists would call it, a “convergence.”)

I recendy came across this admirable aphorism: “Our choice is (as it always was) between metanoia and paranoia.”

P r e f a c e · *

The summer of 1945 may have been occupied widi other tasks so that by September 25, in a letter to Helen Chapin, Coomaraswamy would confess that “[his] work on Sphinxes, etc. seems rather slowed up.” One of these new projects was the composition of the essay “Rgveda” 10.90.01 uaty atifsfhad dcsan guldm," later published in the spring of 1946 by the JAOS. This excellent work has never been republished and is in need of careful editing. It contains many echoes of the essays we publish in this volume, with “Note 36” especially relevant to the “Ether.” We believe that most of the first three sections of the “Sphinx” presented below were probably composed by the late summer 1945. A new effort to order and refine the material presented itself with an imitation to lecture at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, early in 1946. A.K.C. would write to his host, James Marshall Plumber, on 11.26.45 as follows:

. . . I think my talk for you must be on “The Riddle of the (Greek) Sphinx” because I have worked on that last •and have good material for slides, which I must get made in time.

This lecture was given at the university’s Student Religion Association, Lane Hall, on January 2,1946. It survives in two manuscripts with indicated illustrations in the margins. Both manuscripts are closely related, and appear to have been composed “back-to-back” over a short period of time. As in the manuscript published below, the main concern is with the Greek iconographic and literary traditions. The “riddle” itself is given short shrift; Coomaraswamy saw the answer in the nature of die Sphinx herself. We have used part of the latter of these two versions in a “Conclusion” to the essay. After returning to Boston, the “Sphinx” manuscripts may not have been worked over again, as we can infer now from letters dated 5.13.46 to Mrs. Roger Foster and Willy Hartner from 8.1.46. By that date, Coomaraswamy s last book [published in his lifetime], Time and Eternity, was in preparation and would occupy his attention for a few months. Towards the end of 1946, the project of a book tided Reincarnation would develop in which Coomaraswamy would return to the study of “ether’ “for the early but finally only tentative chapters. A portion of this material, our Section I of the “ether” essay in this book, tided “‘Ether’ in Plato,” was completed and sent to the Journal of the Hellenic Society early in 1947 but was apparendy not accepted. Later that spring, Coomaraswamy s heart condition worsened and he was able to do very litde in finishing the essays printed in this volume. On the morning of September 9, 1947, Ananda Coomaraswamy passed away at his home outside Boston. His ashes were returned to Ceylon and the Ganges eighteen years later, in September 1965.

♦ xxi ♦

-*· Chapter I ·*·

“L'Asie Occident ale applique les lois d'une iconographie rigoureuse" G . Conteneau, Manuel d ’Arcbeologie orientate, p. 377.

W HATEVER ASTRONOMER’S PURPOSE THEY MAY SERVE, THE ACTUAL FORMS of the signs of the Zodiac are of mythological rather than astronomical origin.2 It is proposed to discuss the older background of the sign Sagittarius (τοξότης), of which the surviving type is that of the

centaur-archer whose place lies between Scorpio and Capricomus and below Aquila and Serpentarius — collectively a significant ensemble.

The fundamental questions to be asked will be, At what is the archer shooting?, and What is he defending? Intimately connected with these questions is the problem of die Islamic iconography in which the centaur-archer’s tail is not that of a horse, but that of a snake or dragon (Fig. 1). This problem has already been ably discussed by Dr. Willy Hartner, who remarks that “This combination . . . evidendy originates not in a doctrinal astrological conception, but in a purely mythical, or rather metaphysical one”; while as regards the dragon tail he says that “the question remains entirely unsolved as to why this dragon was combined with the constellation of Sagittarius . . . some of the features belonging to the scorpion also seem to have passed over to Sagittarius; and, still, we must not forget that the scorpion itself had always been closely related to the snake, symbol of the inferior, antisolar world, the region of the dragon.” He is, in fact, entirely on the right track in going on to say that “the solution of the problem has to be sought in the ancient oriental mythology — indeed, there certainly exists a connection with the ‘scorpion man’ watching, in the Gilgamesh epic, at the entrance of the inferior world.” ' Except that we should have preferred to say “other” rather than “inferior” world,4 this is a

T h e E a r l y I c o n o g r a p h y o f S a g it t a r iu s — K rsan u [x]

I* The present tide, expanded by the addition of “Krsanu,” follows that given in Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamys “Symplegades,” see R. Lipsev, Ed., Coomaraswamy: Traditional Art and Symbolism, Princeton, 1977, Note 29, p. 534. — Ed.]

2 Hardly any of the Greek, Chinese or modem signs of the Zodiac are recognizably manifested by the actual arrangements of the stars; they cannot have been derived from, but have been imposed upon the visible starry sky.

3 Willy Hartner, “Pseudoplanetary Nodes o f the Moon’s Orbit,"Ars Is/amica, V. pp. 138,149.4 The “inferior” and “superior" worlds, Zeus and Hades are very often in the Greek sources only

different aspects of one and the same “othcrworld” of the dead; and the like is true in Celtic mythology, and even Christian eschatology. For Greece, cf. Heracleitus ft. 127, “One and the same arc Hades and Dionysos”; Plato, Laws 727 D, “Hades . . . realm of the Gods yonder"; Repiti/ic 363 C, D; Phaedo 68 B, “Hades, where and only is true wisdom to be found”; Timaeus 44 C; Apology 29 B, 41 A, 80 D; Euripedes, Nauck, ft. 912 “Ruler o f all . . . by whatsoever appelation thou wouldst be called, or Zeus or Hades thou”: J. Harrison, Prolegomena . . . p. 17; “Zeus-Hades”: G. H. Macurdy, Troy and Paeonia, 1925, ch. VIII “Hclios-Hades"; also Justin, Cohort, c. 15, “One Zeus, one Hades, one Helios, one Dionysos, Yea, in all three things One God, why speak 1 his name asunder?”

W.A. Nitze, in PM LA. XXIV, 1909, rightly speaks of the “Hades-Paradise” myth of the Babylonians. Arallu, “the land of no return” (an expression often used of the Indian Brahma/oka

(Continued onfollowing page.)

♦ I ♦

· * · G u a r d ia n s o f t h e S u n d o o r ·*■

conclusion that only needs to be reinforced and extended by a more detailed examination of the “ancient oriental mythology” both Western Asiatic and Indian; this it is proposed to undertake without pretending to add anything to Dr. Hartner s very able treatment of the purely astronomical aspect of the Nodes of which the knots in the serpent’s tail are an indication.

As Jerphanion remarks, “Ce que I ’archeologue cherche dans la monument, c’est Γexpression d ’une penseeV and though it involves what may seem to be, at first sight, a lengthy digression, it will be indispensable to provide a background for the history of the iconography of Sagittarius by outlining the myth of the Quest for Life, or Rape of Soma from which we learn where and what it is that the archer defends, and against whom, and why it is that the Archer is so often armed not only with arrows but with a sting.

In India, Soma is at once a “person” and die tree, plant, food or Water of Life of the gods, especially Indra, on whose behalf it is defended by dragons and an “active door.” In Greece, the source of life is Dionysos, Semele’s son who “though a god, is poured out as a libation to the gods, so that through Him men may win good things,’ · or is represented by the Golden Apples, or Golden Fleece that is guarded by a dragon and stolen by a hero. In Hebrew, this is the Tree of Life, or Suftung’s “Mead,” the blood of a sacrifice, that Odin wins.3 In Grail and Celtic folklore, the source of life is a Vessel of Plenty or other talisman won by the Hero of a Quest who crosses a bridge or ford and overcomes the defender of an “active door.” In Christianity, Soma is represented by the “living water” of John IV.10-14 and die “bread” of VI.50-51 — “The sweetness which is hidden from all has truly come into this heavenly vessel.”4

(Continuedfrom preceding page.)and of the Irish Otherworld) is the “Land of Darkness” to which “went the souls of all men” and where the good reposed in peace and the wicked in bondage (Langdon, Semitic Mythology, pp. 161, 162.) There Ningiszida or Nergal rules. This Land of Darkness in which so many traditions locate the Fountain of Life becomes the Divine Darkness of Christian mystics and the subject of the Contemplatio in Caligine. In Celtic mythology Joyous Garde and Dolorous Garde are one as places, but differ according to our point of view; on this dual aspect of the Otherworld, cf. Josef Baudis in Folklore XXVII, 1916, pp. 39, 40, “one of a beautiful blessed country and the other of a dangerous region." There could be no better proof of the real identity of the empyrean Otherworld with the world ot the dead “from which there is no return" (except for the living hero who achieves the Quest for Life) than is afforded by the convivium of die deceased with the Gandaharvas and Yama (God of Death) in Rgveda IX.113 and Atharva Veda IV.34.4. As Eckhart [also says]: “The Kingdom of God is for none but the thoroughly dead.”

So in the Boehme’s dialogue of Heaven and Hell it is emphasized that the fire is one, but experienced as love or wrath according to the nature of the cxpericnt. The distinction of Heaven and Hell as places is purely esoteric, and however inevitable on this level can have no place on the metaphysical level of reference to which our symbols refer and in which the distinction is not of places but of states of being.

1 G. dc Jerphanion, La voix des monuments, 1930, p. 16. In the present state of our science it might have rather been said that “doit chercher" than "cherche”'.

2 Euripedes, Bacchae 284.3 G. Vigfiisson and R. York Powell, Corpus Poeticum Boreale, I, pp. 20-3 and 463-6. For these authors

“son” or “soma” is the root in Suftung (Suptungr = Sum-t-ung)·, the remark that “the Holy Mead was fetched from Hades beyond the outskirts of the inhabited earth.”

4 Meister Eckhart, Pf 'eiJJer, p. 215.

■*- T h e E a r l y I c o n o g r a p h y o f S a g i t t a r i u s — K r s a n u

King Soma’s place is in the Otherworld, “the third heaven from here,” or “highest heaven,” an arcanum of which the equivalent in Sumerian mythology is Ea-Anu’s “secret chamber.”1 No dweller on earth partakes of the true elixir, but only of substitutes “made to be Soma” by rites of transubstantiation.2 Soma, guarded by and assimilated to his gaoler, Vrtra-Varuna, is “in the rock,”3 that is, behind or within the rockwall or mountain that must be pierced or opened by whoever would reach him, or in odier words, within the “casde” or behind the “murity” of the Sky that divides this world from the hyperuranian Empyrean than can be entered only by way of the guarded Sundoor. That is “the wall of the Paradise in which thou, God, dwellest, built of the coincidence of contraries, and none may enter who has not overcome the Highest Spirit of Reason who guards the entrance,”4 viz. the “harsh divinity” whose name is “Truth” and who keeps the door against all who are unqualified to “pass through the

Figure 2: “Rape o f Soma.” Relief from Badami, Cave IV, 6,h century A.D. [Drawing by Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy. — Ed.]

1 RV. IX.86,15, 2 y, TS. IU.5.7.1; SB. III.6.2.8, etc.: S. Langdon, The Legend ofE/anti, Paris, 1932, p. 3.2 RV. X85.3.4; AB. VH.31; SB. III.4.3.13; XII.7.3.11.3 In which he is enclosed or imprisoned, RV X.68.8 and from which he is wrung, RV. I.93.6, like

“honey from the rock," Deut. XXXII.13.31. Soma was set or hidden in this rock by Varuna (RV V.85.2 varuno. . . adadhat somam adrau), to whom he belongs and to whom he is assimilated before his purification (RV IX.77.5; TS. I.2.10.2 varuno 'si dbrtavrato, vaninam asi, VL1.11 varuno iva\ TB. I.7.8.3 somomja vanmah.; SB. III.3.4.25, 29, 30 vltrunya), or sacrificial disenchantment, as he is to Mitra after it. It is similarly that Agni is Varuna at birth, and becomes Mitra when kindled (RVV.3.1; AB. ΠΙ.4). These two, Agni and Soma, are the “dry and moist” principles of life. To say diat they arc in or in the power of Varuna is to say that they are in or in the power of Vrtra, as they arc explicidy in TS. II.4.12. So it is “for Agni and Soma” that Indra smites Vrtra, TS. VI.1.11.6.

In the Soaa-barana (Rape of Soma) reliefs at Badami (Fig. 2), Varuna and his makara are seated beside Soma as guardians. Varuna’s enclosure of Soma is paralleled in the Younger Edda by die shutting up of the Holy Mead in the Lockhill (Knitberg), to which there is no access bur through its solid rockwall.

4 Nicolas of Cusa, De vis. Dei. Ch. 9.

midst of the Sun”1 — “I am the door: By Me if any man shall enter in, he shall be saved.”2 Of this Janua Coeli the leaves or jambs are those very contraries of which the wall is built, and through which none can pass but the Hero who can dart between the “Clashing Rocks” of every dialectical alternative — inter genas saevantium dentium... draconumf'

The associations of Soma are in particular with Varuna, Yama (the God of Death), Tvastr (the Titan Smith) and the Gandharvas (of whom more later). Priests are said to “lap the rich milk of the Asvins, by their inspired-contemplations, there in the Gandharvas stronghold” (RV 1.22.4); the sacrificer “drinks Soma in a symposium with the gods” sadhamadam devaim somampibati, TS. II.5.55); and these participations are a prefiguration or anticipation of the blessed life of the deceased who “sits by Yama, goes to the gods and drinks with the Soma-loving Gandharvas” (AV. IV.34.3), with Yama and the gods (RV X.135.1). In Yama Vaisvavata’s realm of immortality, where Soma flows, every desire is fulfilled in yonder realm of Heaven’s gate (RV IX.113.8 f.).’' King Soma is ever guarded by the Gandharva (RV IX.83.4), who stands up pointing his bright weapons at the Eagle as he approaches Yama’s seat to carry off the elixir (RV X.123.6,7). A typical version of the myth of the Rape of Soma begins: “Soma was in the Sky, and the gods were here (below).5 They desired, “Would that Soma might come to us; then might

* · G u a r d ia n s o f t h e S u n d o o r

Jaimimya Upanisad Brahma na 1.5.1.John X.9.Apuleius VI.15. Cf. the formula >m nut saniaptam, “Do not bum me up” (VS. V.33 etc.) addressed by the sacrificer to the door-posts (diksa and lapas, ζΒ. III.6.2.9) ot the sadas as he enters this ritual equivalent of the Otherworld; and further, in my “Symplegades,” to appear in the Festschrift for Professor George Sarton.“Heaven’s gate”: The avarodhanam divah (Sayana, bhutandm pranvesanam) is the Sundoor (Janua Coeli) of Mund. Up. I.2.II and MU. Vl.30, etc., and the World-door of which CU. VIII.6.5 speaks as “a way-in for the gnostic, and a barrier for the agnostic” (lohadvaram, vidusam prapadanam, nirodho' vidusam) [; cf.] Parmenides in Adv. Dog. It is with reference to this defense that the “celestial penetralia” (diva arodhariani, RV IV.7.8), with which the Firebird (Falcon or Eagle) is so well acquainted (ih. vidutarah,; IV.8.4 vidvan) are so called.

The convivium of R V IX.113.8 and TS. II.5.5.4 (sadhamadam), (cf. XI.4; II.3 and Vl.5.5.2) corresponds to the Greek conception of a συμπόσιον τώυ όσιων in the Otherworld, cf. Plato, Republic 363 C, D and Phaedrus 247 B; and in G. Weicker, Der See/enogel, 1902, Fig. 9, vase painting of five drinkers reclining round the Tree of Life.Soma’s descent is for the sake of “all gods,” ancestors and men, i.e. all sacrifices (SB. ΙΠ.9.3.6, TS.Vl.4.3.1). “All gods” may be said with particular reference to the sensitive powers of the soul (pranah) “in which one sacrifices metaphysically” (TS. VI. 14.5) in what is called the “Interior Burnt-Offering."

The intellectual superiority of the Gandharvas to the gods whose natural preoccupation is with pleasure is often emphasized; diey know and repeat the Vedas and arc expert in the Sacrifice, at the same time that they are the original possessors and guardians of Soma (RV X.177.1., 2\AV II.I.I, 2; BU. ΠΙ.3.1; SB. III.2.4, 5; XI.2, 3, 7; TS. VI.1.6.6; etc.) When Pururavas, to whom the immortal Asparas Gandhanl has condescended, is admitted to their palace (as in Celtic mythology, Heroes are admitted, or succeed in entering Otherworld casdcs) the highest boon that he can ask for is to become one of themselves; it is only by sacrificing that he is at last able to do so. Pururavas (who is represented in ritual by the upper fire-stick (pramanthana) may be compared to Prometheus, but is given and docs not steal the sacred fire. There is, nevertheless, additional evidence for the equation Pramanthana = Prometheus in the fact that the production of fire by attrition is called an upavarohana, literally “making descend.”

The Gandaharvas of our text correspond to the lgigi of the Etana myth, and the gods to the Annunaki; the former, or “Gods of heaven and earth, hated mankind,” while the latter or “Gods of the lower world, planned good things for him” (S. Langdon, Legend of Etana . . . , pp. 1-10).

4 -

■»· T h e E a r l y I c o n o g r a p h y o f S a g i t t a r i u s — K r i a n u +

we sacrifice with him (as our offering) . . . ” The Gayatn (metre, becoming the Falcon, or Eagle) stole (aharat) Soma from the Sky. He was concealed behind two golden leaves that were razor-edged and closed together at every winking of an eve . . . ’ Moreover, yonder Soma-guardians (soma-raksah)2 watched over him” (S.B. HI.6.2).

Iconographically, Soma can be represented either by a plant or a tree, or by the full and overflowing chalice (kalasa = κυλιξ) from which a plant is growing; or can be thought of as an inexhaustible spring. The Fountain of Life or Plant of Life can be represented as springing from the open jaws of a makara (Figs. 3,4). Soma as an extracted fluid, originally mixed with blood,3 is at once the ichor of a dragon and the sap of a tree; in other words, the life-blood of a Dragon-tree.4

Soma’s original nature is ophidian. He is the “brother of die snakes” (RV I.191.6), and his procession is an emergence from the old snake-skin (RV IX.86.44), or resurrection of the body of death (VS. XIX.72). His sacrificial passion is thus “not really his death, but the death of his ‘evil’” (S.B. III.9.4.17,18) and a release or disenchantment by which he is brought into his kingdom as a guest and

Figurej (top), Figure 4 (bottom): Lotus and makara. Bas-reliefs from Amaravati, 3"1 century A.D.From A.K . Coomaraswamy, Yaisas, Π, 1931, pi. 38.1.2.

1 Again, the Symplegades, see page 4, Note 3, above. Represented in ritual by the jambs of the door of the sadas, which the sacrificer must be qualified by initiation and ardor to enter; they' are addressed as divine, and invoked not to injure him, cf. page 4, Note 2, above.

1 Raisa (root rats, protect, guard; αρέω, arceo) corresponds to Greek αλκα (the “fire-breathing, three-bodied” Chimaera, guardian of Euripedes, Ion 202-4), cf· Clement, Strumala V.7.2 αλκής (sphina). Raisa, raksas, raksasa acquire their pejorative sense of “demon” only from the fact that in their capacity as Soma-guardians the raksa is inimical to the Sacrifice; this is especially clear in SB. 111.9.3.15, and 18-22 in connection with the recover)' of the “ichor (rasa) of the sacrifice,” i.e. Soma, from die water.

’ The mixture of blood and Soma in Vrtra’s veins (SB. Xll.7.3.4) is similarly indicated for the Gorgon, in Euripedes, Ion 1003-15, where the old nurse has two drops of Gorgon’s blood, one of deadly venom, the other “for the healing of disease and the fostering of life.” Hence the Vedic “separate drinking” (vipanam, US. XIX.72, Comm, viviktam lohitat somapanam)·, cf. M. Fowler, “The Role of Sura in the Myth of Namuci,” /AOS. 62.36-40, and C.R. Lanmann, “The Milk-drinking Harhsas of Sanskrit Poetry,” JAOS. 19 (2), 150-8. Vrtra, Namuci, etc. are designations of one and the same ophidian principle, the first possessor of the sources of life.

4 “Dragon-tree” and “dragons blood” are traditional designations of various balsam-yielding trees, and of wine. These conceptions underlie the symbolic connotations of amber, resins, gums, vegetable oils and incense as preservatives from corruption. Greek άμβροαία, Arabic 'anbar and Sanskrit amrta are of cognate meaning and probably cognate etymology.

· * · G u a r d ia n s o f t h e S u n d o o r ■*·

Figure5 : Soma guarded by Varuna and makara. Relief from Badami;Cave IV, 6th century A.D. [Drawing by Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy. — Ed.]

made a friend.1 In other words, as we are repeatedly told, Soma was Vrtra (Ahi, Namuci, Papman, Mrtyu) [in] that he is sacrificed, but [it is] as Mitra (Friend) that he comes forth (SB. III.9.4.2 etc.). As Lord of the World he is urged to move forward to his stations, becoming a Falcon and evading the Gandharva Visvavasu (TS. I.2.9), thus assuming a form identical with that of the Firebird, Falcon or Eagle, who carries him off — “Thee for the Falcon, the Soma-bearer!” (TS. I.2.10.1) (Fig. 5). That carrying-off is the “Rape of Soma (soma-harana), and the Falcon is the “Soma-thief” (soma-harin) who overcomes or eludes the “Soma-guardian” (soma-raksa). But from the sacrificer’s point of view Soma is not so much stolen as rescued from the magicians, thieves and misers by whom he is imprisoned; and Soma himself is a hero who turns against his “brothers”2 and is praised as a Dragon-slayer (RV. IX.88.4, etc.j As von Schroeder expresses it: “Dergefangens, streng behutete Soma-Haoma sucht sicb zu befreien, sucht zu entfliehen."2.

Similarly in the Sumerian mythology the “Plant of Birth” and bread and water of immortal life grew in the third or highest heaven, the abode of Anu, thought of as a hidden garden or secret chamber. As the Kiskanu tree it flourishes “in an undefiled dwelling like a forest grove: Its shade spreadeth abroad, and none may enter in”; in its depths are Shamash and Tammuz, while as an elixir or living water it is represented by the “overflowing vase” in the hands of Anu or

1 SB. ΙΠ.3.2.6, ΠΙ.3.10; TS. Vl.i.n, etc.J In Vedic mythology, the Gods (Devas) and Titans (Asuras) are both the children of Prajapati; but the

Gods are the younger brothers of the Titans, and this “brotherhood” is synonymous with "enmity,” e.g. of men with “snakes” (SB. IV.4.53) or with Namuci, Papman in particular (έΒ. ΧΠ.7.3.4). See further my Spiritual Authority and Temporal Power in the Indian Theory o f Government, 1942, Note 22. [New edition, IGN CA and Oxford University Press, 1993, Note 37.]

3 L. Von Schroeder, Herakles und Indra, Vienna, 1914, p. 45.

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Ea,1 who corresponds to the Indian Varuna. King Soma, the sacrifice, is, in fact, no other than the Sumerian Dumuzi (Tammuz) who, by his epithet usumgal is not merely a vegetation spirit, plant or tree, but a “great serpent”;2 and at the same time the Greek Dionysos, the true vine whose blood is wine and who may be called a man, a bull, a lion, or a many-headed serpent. ’

The myth of the Rape of Soma is briefly formulated in RV. IV.27.3.4; “When the Falcon (syena = Avestan saeno) screamed and left the Sky, he bore away the Plenisher (Soma), and when Krsanu, the foodess (ophidian) archer loosed the string and let fly at him . . . then, as he sped in middle course, a winged feather of the Bird fell down.”4 Krsanu is literally arcitenens, “Sagittarius”; and that in RV X.64.8 he is associated with the constellation Tisya, the arrow, suggests an astrological association.3 The epithet “foodess” is an unmistakable indication of

1 S. Langdon, Semitic Mythology, pp. 94-96; H. Frankfort, Seal Cylinders, p. 124; R.C. Thompson, Gods and E vil Spirits of Babylonia, I.200 ff. (Tab.K.n.183-95); E.D. Van Buren, The Flowing Vase and the God with Streams, 1933.

The Foils Vitae is a fountain both of Life and Knowledge or Truth. (Cf. Philo, Fug. 97.197-9.1.) The great result achieved bv Indra’s defeat of Vrtra-Namuci (to whom arc applicable the words of Ezekial XXXIX.3, “the great dragon, which hath said, ‘My river is mine own’ ”) is the release of the waters” or opening of the sluices (khiini) of the “seven rivers” (RV. II.15.3; IV.28.1; TS. II.3.14.5; etc.); i.e. seven streams of consciousness that pass through the doors of the senses to reach their objects (/IV. X.2.6; KU. IV.i). “Our senses and perceptions, such as they are, are (but) a single drop in those rivers" (Rfimi, MathnavA I.2719). The meaning of this release of living waters from their still but inexhaustible source is nowhere better indicated than in die talc o f“Cormac’s Adventures in the Land of Promise” where Manannan explains that “the fountain which thou sawest, with the five streams out of it, is the Fountain of Knowledge, and the streams arc the five senses through which knowledge is obtained. No one will have (true) knowledge who drinks not a draught (both) out of the Fountain itself and out of the streams” (T.P. Cross and C.H. Slover, Ancient Irish Tales, 1936, p. 507.)

The streams are of Soma (RV. I.32.12). The place of “the inexhaustible fount of Mead,” milked by the Naruts (the aforesaid powers of perception) is “where the servants of the God rejoice" (rnadanti), identified by Sayana with Brahmaloka (RV. I.64.6; 1.154.51), as it must be also with Varuna’s dwelling “where the rivers rise” (RV VIII.41.2). In all these contexts the Hero of the Quest is Indra, and it is by his achievement that the Waste Land is renewed.

2 S. Langdon, Tammuz andIshtar, 1914, pp. 114 f.3 Euripedes, Bacchae 284 and 1017-20; J. Harrison, Prolegomena to Greek Religion, 2nd ed., 1908, pp. 410-53.4 The motive of the “fallen feather" is an inseparable part of our myth, and essential to any understanding

of the iconography of feather crowns and cloaks and the use of feathers in rites of healing, a subject that demands much fuller treatment elsewhere. In many of the SB. versions the fallen feather (or leaf) becomes the Palasa, tree of life and knowledge on earth. In the Mbh. version Indra casts his bolt at Garuda as he flies off with Soma, and though Garuda cannot be injured even by this cosmic weapon, of his own freewill he lets a feather fall, saying: “You shall never find its end." In the Persian Mantiqu 't-Tair it is the Simurgh (Saeno Muruk, Vercthragna), equivalent of the Indian syena and Garuda, that drops a feather, and we are told that it falls on Chinese soil, and that “the saying, Seek knowledge even in China, points to this” (E.G. Browne, Literary History of Persia, II, p. 512). In the well-known version in Grimm’s Kinder und Hausmarchen, there is a king in whose garden grows a tree that bears golden apples, which are stolen as soon as they' ripen; armed with a bow and arrow, the gardener’s youngest son keeps watch; when the robber appears, he lets fly, but only a single golden feather falls to the ground.

For some characteristic later representations of the archer and the robber bird, in their mythological pertinence, see Karl von Spiess, “Der Schusse nach dem Vogel' in Jhrb.f. hist. Volkskunde, II, 1926, p. 102 and V, VI, 1937, pp. 212 f.; and for another good illustration, my Mediaeval Sinhalese Art, pi. XVI.

5 In astrology Ninurta was identified under various names with the complex of stars under Sirius, called “the arrow,” the Bow-star composed of ε, δ, τ of Canis Major, and κ, λ of Puppis and Orion, wherein the Babylonians probably saw a gigantic hunter drawing an arrow on his bow (S. Langdon, Semitic Mythology, p. 135). Ninurta is an ophidian or draconian deity of fertility, the opponent of Zu (Imgig,

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ophidian nature,1 of which there is another indication in VS. V.34 where the words “Look ye not upon me with the eyes of a Friend,” i.e. not with a serpent s or “dragons” naturally “evil” eye, are addressed to the sacrificial fires which represent, in ritual, Krsanu and die other Soma-guardians. Grassman (Rig-Veda II, 1877, p. 499) plausibly equates Krsanu with the Ahis'uva of RV. X.I4 (an adversary elsewhere associated with Vrtra, Arbuda and other of Indras ophidian or draconian enemies), where he “leers at” or “watches for”2 the Falcon Soma-thief. ’ Krsanu appears again in TS. I.2.7 (cf. VS. IV.26, 27) where, in another phase of the myth Soma is “bought” from his guardians Svana (“Hiss”), Bhraja (“Glare,” φλοξ,

flamma, Blitz), Krsanu and four others; and analogically (ib. I.3.3. and $B.IH.6.2.18) these are the names of the Fire-altars by which the Soma is guarded on earth,4 the main (akavamya, sacrificial) after being addressed as “King Krsanu” In TS. V I . i . i o the episode of the purchase of Soma is more fully developed; in the mimetic file the Vendor is represented by Sudra,5 who is cheated of his price,6 cursed with darkness, and struck with a black knot of

(Continued from preceding page.)Aquila) and associated with or to be identified with Ningiszida (Siru, Hydra, one of the warders of Anu’s gates), Ningirsu, Ab-u and Dumuzi (Frankfort, “Gods and Myths on Sargonid Seals,” Iraq I, 1934, pp. 10, II, 16, 27; E.D. Van Buren, “The God Ningiszida,” Iraq I; and further discussion below).

In Chinese astrology Sagittarius has three parts or aspects of which that one associated with the unicorn (hsieh, 4423, or chat hsieh, 245-4423, or read as chi = reptile) is the genius of military matters. The chai hsieh distinguishes right from wrong and gores the wicked; it eats fire and is furious. In the Boston painting 11.4001 Sagittarius appears with the other zodiacal signs surrounding the “Buddha of the Blazing Crest" (Prajvalosnisa) who must be regarded as the Sun (cf. RV. X.149).

1 “Footless,” Sanskrit apad, like Philo’s τό άπουγ, De migr. 65. In SB. 1.6.3.9 Indra’s adversary is Vrtra “in that he rolled” and Alii (serpent) “in that he was foodess.” Cf. my “Darker Side of Dawn," Washington, 1935; “Angel and Titan," JAOS., 55,1936; “Atmayajfia,” HJAS., VI, 1942, pp. 390-1; and “Sir Gawain and the Green Knighr, Indra and Namuci,” Speculum, XIX, 1944.

1 Ava didhet = dipyati, implying a scorching glance, cf. JSC. XHI.50: Netrag-ninaswisavaddidhakauh.3 On Krsanu (and also Savitr, Rudra, Tvastr, Varuna, Vnra, Gandharva as Soma-guardians, and in

this sense from the human point of view maleficent) see further A. Bergaigne, La religion vedique, 1883, III, pp. 30-67; and on the significance of the epithet Asura, ib. pp. 67-88, with the conclusion that this term “doit designer dcs etres concu comme les maitres des sources de la vie et comme habitant un sejour mysterieux." As Bergaigne clearly saw, the subjcct of our Quest is not of “life in the popular and empirical sense, but of the sources of life, in other words the Fans Vitae itself.” I take this opportunity to say that in my opinion Bergaigne remains to this day the greatest of all European students of die mythology of the Rgveda.

4 The Gandharvas propose to the Gods: “Even as in yonder world we were Soma’s keepers (goptarah), so also will we be his keepers here” (SB. 111.6.2.18). For analogous reasons the doors of the Indian temples arc even now guarded by Janitors (dvarapala) in the shape of Raksases or Nagas.

5 Representing the Asuras of Kdth. Satii. XXXVII.14. One infers from RV. where the word Sudra occurs only in X.90.12, not that there were originally only three castes but that the Asuras, Dasyus, Panis etc. are die “iSudras.” This is explicit in TB. I.2.6.7 and PB. VI.1.6-11 where Brahmans, Ksatrivas and Vaisyas are Aryans with corresponding gods, and the Sudras to whom none of the gods corresponds are consequendy excluded from the Sacrifice. This division of men into two classes, corresponding to a distinction of Gods and Titans, and each having its own functions (dharma, TS.I.8.3), ‘s niet with in many cultures: Cf. A.M. Hocart, Les castes.

” Just as in Odin's Mead, won from Gunfled is “fraud-bought" (vel-kiptz), in the Indian versions Soma is bought at the price of Vac (dear to the Gandharvas because they are “fond of women”) who is really the messenger of the gods and given by them only that she may return to them with the stolen Soma (TS. 1.2.4.2. etc.); a form of the widely disseminated motive o f “La fausse fiancee" (see G. Dumeznil, Lefestin d'immorta/ite, 1924, pp. 21, 25, 224, 228).

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wool,1 in the twisting of which the buyer says: “Thus do I entwine the necks of the biting serpents,”2 and “O Svana, Bhraja” — for “they indeed, in yonder world guarded the Soma.”

The seven Soma-guardians of TS. I.2.7, together with Visvavasu and others, are described in ΤΑ. I.9.3 as “a company of Gandharvas” by whom the gods are poisoned. In Kath. Sam. XXXVTI.14 Soma is with the Asuras, notably iSu sna (the Scorcher), and Indra, himself becoming the Falcon, snatches him from Susna’s jaws. ’ JB. 1.287 describes the jealous Soma-guardians, Agnis and Gandharvas, as Asivisah, venomous serpents or basilisks.4 In the

1 “With lead, with mind, and woolen thread the thoughtful poets (sacrificing priests) weave a thread” (VS. XIX.80). On the apotropaic qualities of lead or alternatively “river foam” cf. AV. 1.16.24; PS- XXI.36; TB. I.7.8.2; and Bloomfield in JAOS. 15 p. 158. The knot may have been tied in the form of the nodus herculaneus discussed below and o f which the caduceus is another type.

2 Visvavasu, the “All-wealthy,” the celestial Gandharva, Savitr, the Sun, opposed by Indra who opens the rocky doors, though “full well he knew the serpents’ power” (RV. X.139, cf. TS. VI.1.U.5).

1 Susna’s may ah, RV. VT.20.4 (= Vrtra’s in RV. X.111.6) mentioned in a Rape of Soma context are no doubt ot the same word as ya me mayah of the Suparnadhyaya 25.1 where these are the devices or “engines” protecting Soma for Indra; just as the cakra (wheel) of 25.3 corresponds to the amrtasya yat raksakam cakra-yantram of Katha Sarit Sagara Vl.3.47. Of much the same sort must have been the “net and trap” that seems to have been made by Enki, the “carpenter god” to protect the entrance to the underworld of the dead, whither Gilgamesh goes in search of Enkidu (Langdon, Semitic Mythology, pp. 263, 265), and the “net and trap" of Shamash (Sun-god, Marduk) which in the myth of Etana are respectively Earth and Sky and a defence against Zu (Langdon, Legend o f Etana, 1932, pp. 22, 23). We cannot, of course, agree with Langdon that the Gilgamesh epic is historical, but much rather equate Gilgamesh with Etana, and consider both as “kings of Erech" only by euphemerisation. For the great antiquity and Sumerian origin of the Gilgamesh epic see S.N. Kramer in Bull. Am. Sch. Or. Res., No. 94,1944.

That the Otherworld is defended by automatic devices, armed automata and self-operating gates is one of the most characteristic features of our myth not only in its Eastern, but also in its Western, and notably Celtic forms; cf. J.D. Bruce, “Human Automata in Classical Tradition and Mediaeval Romance," Modem Philology, X, 1913, pp. 511-26; M.B. Ogle, “The Perilous Bridge and Human Automata,” Modem Lang. Notes XXXV, 1920, pp. 129-36; and my “Symplegades” to appear later; and for the Bridge, D.L. Coomaraswamy, “The Perilous Bridge of Welfare,” HJAS. VIII, 1944.

4 On Asivisa (“poison-fanged”) sec HJAS. IV, p. 131; and page 9, Note 2, above. Asivisa corresponds to Avestan Azhivishapa and the ophidian Azhi Dahaka, [of] the Zohak epic, who is represented in human form with a pair of serpents growing from his shoulders, and in whom we shall later on recognize the old Sumerian deity Ningiszida. Azhi Dahaka is described as a three-headed and six-eved Druj (Sanskrit drub), “treacherous,” Vedic epithet of Ahi, Susna, etc., and in AV II.10.X of Vanina and in XVI.6.10 of Namuci) conquered by Thraetona ([of the] Faridun epic) Yasht V.34, just as the three-headed Visva-rupa, brother or doublet of Vrtra, is overcome by Trita (RV. Π.Π.19, X.8.8). This Trita (Artya, cf. RV. X.45.5), friend of Indra, is a form of Agni (or Soma) and may be compared with Zeus Tritos, Pantocrator, Soter, Oikophulax (Aeschylus, Cho. 245, Suppl 25 and Eum. 759); cf Macdonell, Vedic Mythology, pp. 67 ff.; K. Ronnow, Trita Aptya, Uppsala, 1927, and M. Fowler, “Polarity in the Rig-Veda,” Rev. o f Religion VII, 1943, pp. 115-23.

Again, the Avestan Atar, Fire, overcomes Azhi Dahaka in a contest for the possession of the “Glory that cannot be forcibly seized” (hvareno, Yasht XIX.46 f.); and there can be no doubt that this Glory (in [the] New Testament “the kingdom, the power and the glory”) is the same “unconquerable Glory” (anapa/ayyarn yasas) that was won by the Vedic Gods from the Asur-Raksas, or from Makha-Soma (SB. III.4.2.8; TA. V.1.1-5; PB. Vll.5.6), cf. D. II.259 “the Varuna deities with Vanina and Soma with Glory” (yasas).

Again, Kercsaspa ([of the] Garshasp epic, Sanskrit krsasva) overcomes Azhi Dahaka together with the horse-eating serpent Srvara and the green-heeled Gandarewa (archtype of Khwaja Khidr, the Master of the Water of Life) in the aerial sea Vouru-Kasha (Yasht V.38; XIX.38-41; etc.); and since Gokard, the “Tree of the Falcon" (seno), i.e. the White Haoma (Soma) tree grows there

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Suparriadhyaya, 1 23.X-6 and 29.6, the first-names and probably chief of the Soma- guardians is the “footless Bhauvana, the ready archer,”2 while among the other ophidian and Gandharva defenders of the “deathless food” are Arbuda, Nahusa, Pipru, Namuci and Rahu·, ’ of whom Namuci is Vrtra and the Buddhist Gandhabba Mara, Death; Rahu is the dragon of the eclipses discussed by Hartner, and Arbuda must be the Arbuda Kadraveya4 of AB. VI.1 and KB. XXIX.1 (cf. PB. IV.9.5; IX.8.2) where he is an Aslvisah (cf. page 11, Note 4), i.e. poison-fanged, evil-eyed5 (cf.

(Continuedfrom preceding page.)(Bundabish X lV.n etc.), and the Falcon is one of the forms of Verethragna ([of the] Bahram epic, Sanskrit vrtrban), “slayer of Vrtra," characteristic epithet of Indra and sometimes of his allies), it can hardly be doubted that all these batdes were fought for the possession of Sources of Life that were originally jealously guarded be Serpents and/or Gandharvas. As M. Dumev.il has shown, the Avestan Gandharewa and his congeners are at home in the waters, and “en rapports (hostiles d'ail/eurs) avec le mondedes marts' (Leproblemedes centaures, 1929, p. 85).

On these matters see further E. Benvenistc and L. Renou, Vrtra et Vereoragna, Paris, 1934; L. von Schroeder, “Heracles und Indra,” Denkscbriften d. k. Akad. Wiss. Wein, 58 Bd., 3 Abth., 1934, pp. 43-8.

1 “Book of the Eagle” (or “Falcon"). Sec K.F. Johanson, Solfa*geln i Indien, Uppala, 1910; and J. Carpentier, Die Suparruisage, Uppala, 1920.

2 Again the ophidian archer, probably Krsanu. There is a radier intimate and semantic connection of serpents with archery, connected with the facts that there are actually species of snakes that spit poison, aiming at their victims’ eyes, and that arrows are often poisoned Sanskrit isu, from [the] root is, to project or shoot, appears also in visa, poison e.g. in visa-dhara, poison bearer, serpent. Isu and visu are cognates of ιός, which is (1) “arrow,” and (2) “poison,” especially of serpents (Eur., Ion 1015). Ιοβολέω is (1) to shoot arrows and (2) to emit poison. Ιοβόλος, “shooting arrows,” and τά ιοβόλοι “venomous beasts” suggest that in Ion 997, Οώρακ’ έχίδγς, περιβόλοις ώπλομένον, and Phoen. cf. Illiad V.739 περί. . . εστεφάνωται is not exacdy Way's “fenced with ring on ring of snakes” but rather “fenced with a ring of Echidna’s (poison-) darters," i.e. snakes. The iconography never shows us ring on ring of snakes, but only a fringe of open-mouthed snakes on the shield of Heracles described by Hesiod, who said that they clashed their teeth when Heracles fought. All these contexts arc significant for the apotropaic significance of a number of “decorative" motifs to be discussed later, cf. my “Iconography of Diirer’s ‘Knots’ . . . ," Art Quarterly, Spring 1944, p. 127, Note 43.

The equation o f arrows with snakes occurs in Indian contexts and also in Aeschylus, Hum. 181-2, Apollo speaking: “Get ye gone . . . lest ye may be even smitten by a winged glittering snake shot forth from the golden bowstring.” The whole connection moves in a circle; arrows are like snakes because their heads are poisonous, and snakes like archers because they strike as if with poisoned arrows; cf. our “toxin,” from τόξον, bow, and τόξα, arrows.

3 These are all well-known opponents of Indra in RV, but now appear as Soma-guardians on Indra’s behalf. We have seen already that once the Soma has been carried off, its former defenders exercise their original functions, but now as vassals of the conqueror and on his behalf. The “thief,” moreover, either restores it to Krsanu by offering on the fire-altar called after him and addressed as “King Krsanu,” or by drinking it makes an offering of it to the fire in his belly which is really Vrtra’s. The myth is not, in fact, concerned with an unique or one-way event, but with an unending cycle, that of the “circulation of die Shower of Wealth.”

4 Matronymic from Kadru, the Earth Goddess, and mother of all serpents, terrestrial, and celestial, by Kasyapa their father; Kasyapa being also die father of Garuda (Tarksya) by Vinata. Thus Eagle and Serpent, although opposed to one another, are sons of the same father by different mothers. With Kadru may be compared the Babylonian Mother Ummu (Vedic ambaf) Khubur, “the mother of venomous serpents, as though divine, so that fright and horror might overcome him who looks upon them," and of eleven other monsters including die Scorpion-man (girti-bi/i = Sagittarius) and the Horned Dragon (mushussu), Viper, Ravening Dog, Fish-man (ku/i/u = Aquarius).

5 Arbuda himself plays the part of Grava-stut in the Sacrifice of Soma, but because of his baleful glance must be blindfolded, and it is after him that the Grava-stut priest in the human ritual mimesis, in which the original Sacrifice is “extended” or “continued,” is likewise blindfolded as a protection against the evil-eye.

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page 9, Note 3) and a maker of “incantations” (mantra-krt), die last with reference to RV. X.94, a hymn in praise of the Soma-pressing stones. The situation is further clarified by the battle hymns A V X I.9 and 10, where serpents Arbudhi and Nyaroudi (sons of Arbuda, and like their father, ophidian) are enjoined, by their agreement made with Indra when they had been overcome in the beginning, to “conquer on this side, not on that,” i.e. to batde now on behalf of the Devas and against the Asuras. They are accordingly called upon to employ their arrows and other weapons; and, what is of particular interest in connection with the “serpent knots” to be discussed below,1 to “bind themselves together” (samnahyadhvam) and to “fasten upon die armies of our unfriends widi knottings-up and knottings-together” (adana-samdanabhyam),2 and to “surround them with their coils” (bhogebhih pari varayah);3 the enemies of the devas will be destroyed when their venomous vassals “strike and bite” (hate . . . radite). It is perfecdy clear that the serpents, once opposed to the gods, having been overcome by them, are now dieir sworn allies, who poison and “constrict” their enemies.

Perhaps the fullest and most interesting version of the Rape of Soma is that of Mahabharata (in the Puna edition, 1.29). Soma is in the sky and guarded as in the closely related Supanmdhyaya by a whole company of warlike gods, including Indra and a regiment of Gandharvas. The only Soma-guardian explicitiy so-called is Bhaumana, “the incomparable archer,” whom we naturally identify with die “foodess archer” Krsanu of RV, “the foodess Bhauvana4 the ready archer” of the Suparnadhyaya, the “foodess archer” of $B. I.7.1.1, and with the Asura Maya, the Titan Craftsman of the Katha Sarit Sagaraf and in the last analysis

1 Cf. also my “Sarpabandha” in /AOS. 62, pp. 341-2.2 Sariidana is ctymologically σύνδεσμος.’ We can only note in passing that bhoga can be cither “coil” (of a serpent) or “enjoyment” and that in

the same way for Philo the “serpent,” as a psychological principle, is de/ectatio, ήδονη, pleasure.4 Bhaumana and Bhauvana are adjectival, and both are epithets of Visvakarman, the “All-maker” and

“All-sacrificcr” of SB. XIII.7.1.14, 15 and KB. VHI.21, and elsewhere also of Indra or Agni. RV. VTII.48.2 (AV. I].2.2) speaks of the cclestial sun-skinned Gandharva as “the remover of the theft of the gods” (avayata haraso daivyasa), i.e. as solar Soma-defcnder, while AV. II.2.2 calls him also “Lord of the World” (bhuvanasya pal!), which is RV IX.86.36. In sum, Bhaumana-Bhauvana can be regarded as the “Divine Architect.”In KSS. VI .3, Somaprabha, daughter of Maya, exhibits a variety of automata, and explains that diese “crafty engines” (mdya-yantra) were “made by my father of old.” Five kinds are based on the five elements, “like that great engine, the world,” “but the Wheel-engine (cakra-yantra) that guards the Water of Life (amrtasya yat raksakani), that only he comprehends.” This wheel is, of course, a form of the well-known “Active Door,” which can appear as a wheel also in many Celtic contexts, notably Wigalois (cf. in A.C.L. Brown, Iwain, 1903, pp. 80, 81).

It should be observed that the word “automaton,” for the Greeks and Indians applicable to persons, properly means “one who acts of his own will and power,” an independent and intelligent agent, kamacarin. An almost exact equivalent is τόξαυτου κινειν, and this “self motion,” implying “authentic power,” (ένκράτεια, svaraj) is the essential character of living things and notably of “soul” (Plato, Laws 895 D, 896 A), and “it is regards the best in us that we are really God’s toys” (ib. 644, 803, 804). Something of this survived in the seventeenth century, when Robert Boyle could still speak of “these living automata, human bodies” (cf. MU. II.6). “Automaton” in the modem sense has an almost opposite meaning, that of “one who follows a routine without active intelligence" (Webster 3); while the traditional automaton has nothing in common with the “mechanism" of the materialists, whose belief in a mechanical universe represents a revival of the fallacy of the perpetual motion machine.

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with Tvastr (maya vet in RV. X.53.9) and other mythical smiths, Hephaistos et al. The footless Bhauvana defends the Active Door;1 and this is described as a revolving, razor-edged, sun-bright wheel, an engine (yantra) “fitly devised by the gods for the cutting to pieces of Soma-thieves.” Garuda, the Eagle, strikes him down, and darting between the spokes of the Wheel finds the Soma within still defended by “two great serpents glowing like blazing fires, with tongues of lightning, most awful; whose fiery mouths spat venom, and whose eyes never closed, but were ever on the watch; to be seen by either would be to be reduced to ashes. But all of a sudden he filled their eyes with

Figure 6 : Combat o f the bird and serpent.This exemplar from the Beatus tradition retains the ancient form. [From Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy’s file, probably eleventh century French. — Ed.]

(Continuedfront preceding page.)Hence, if the Golden Gates are called “automata,” said to “roar," and represented in art as “winged,"

all these verbal and visual symbols mean the same, viz. that the Divine Doors (devi dviirau) arc living beings, empowered and ensouled and such that only the Divine Architect could have made them; while the automata that have been made by hands are, like all human works of art, imitations of the divine artificiata {AB. VI.27) and only “as if” self-moving.

1 The Active Door (= Symplegades) recurs in all the traditions both of the Old and New Worlds. In Iliad V.749-50 and VIII.393-4 it is said that “Sky’s self-moving portals roared (αύτόμαται δέ πύλαι μύκον ajpavoo), cf. TS. V.I.n.2 kavayah. . . dvtiro devih), which the orae keep, to whom arc entrusted Great Sky and Olympus, whether to throw open the great cloud (νέφος, Sanskrit nabha\ nimbus) or shut it to”; and one can hardly doubt that these automata had been made by Hephaistos for Zeus. The interest of this passage is increased for us by the fact that the Horae are “Seasons” (or sometimes “Fates”), since in JU B. III.14.1, cf. JB . 1.18, it is precisely the Seasons that drag away from the Sundoor whoever has reached it but cannot make the right responsum to the watchman’s signum (“Who goes there?”). The “roaring” of the doors is indicated visually on many Babylonian seals by the representation of open-mouthed lions on the jambs, while their self-moving power is indicated bv the attachment of wings to the doors themselves. In the Suparnadbyaya 25.1 the Active Door that keeps the way of Soma, and that Indra calls his “magic” (maya), is “von eigen IViHen leuchtend' (Charpentier’s rendering). Similarly in Egypt: For the justified Pharoah, who ascends to heaven, (lying like a bird, “the gates of heaven open, the bolts slide of themselves, the door-keepers make no opposition” (A. Moret, The Nile and Egyptian Civilization, 1927, p. 180).

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dust,1 and unseen, attacked them from ever}' side and cut them to pieces; the strong son of Vinata rushed up to the Soma between them, then swiftly flew off with the Water of Life.” On the other hand, in the Suparnadhyaya (XXXIV.2,3) the leaves of the Active Door itself are sleepless, razor-edged lightnings, that strike from every side; in Apuleius the Eagle darts between the jaws of raging dragons (Met. VI. 15, 18); in Genesis ΠΙ.24 the “way of the Tree of Life” is guarded by Cherubim “and a flaming sword which turned every way,2 in the Book of Enoch (LXXI, 7) there are “Seraphim, Cherubim, and ‘Ophannin (wheels); and these are they who sleep not, and guard the throne of His glory.” These are important variations; what we are concerned with is rather the nature and function of the guardians, than their precise numbers or positions; though it may be noted that the Mbh. account is in agreement with Gudea’s vase (Fig. 7 [page 14]), where there are both external janitors and paired serpents within. The “flaming sword” of Genesis has been regarded by many as a “lightning,”3 or identified with the fiery solar Logos,4 Nicholas of Cusas “highest spirit of Reason,” whom all must overcome who would enter into the Paradise of God, of which the walls are built of the contraries,’’ i.e. the Sundoor, Janua Coeli, “all covered over by rays” and of which it is asked “Who is able to pass through it?”6 By the same token, it is as the Active Door that “one sees Him (Brahma), as it were, a sparkling wheel of fire, of the color of the Sun”;' and that way in which the Logos, Christ himself, identifies himself, when He says that “I am the door: By me if any man enter in, he shall be saved . . . no man cometh unto the Father but by me.”s

’ Cf. MI. 159, where a monk, by the power of his contemplative practice, “puts a darkness on the foodess (ophidian) Mara, and so blinds him” thereby passing him safely. An illustration of the subject appears in a ninth century Spanish Beatus manuscript in the Rylands Library (R.VV. “Miraculous Birds,"/ Warburg Inst. 1.253-4 and pi. 33); the text explains that there is an oriental bird that when fighting with a snake covers himself with dust in order to deceive his opponent, and makes this a type of Christ putting on the flesh. In the picture, however, in R.W.’s words, “one secs over the bird a blue mass signifying the dirt which the bird has thrown off in order to pierce the brain of the snake,” and this interpretation accords more nearly with the Indian formula. R.VV., admitting the possibility of Mozarabic or even Indian influence, suggests a derivation of the motive from the habits of the Ichneumon; and in any case, gua “snake-fighters,” Bird and Ichneumon, are equivalent and interchangeable symbols, cf. HJAS. Vl, pp. 393-8. Another illustration of the same subject, from an unspecified French XI'1’ century source, is published by A. Leroi-Gourhan in Revue des Arts Asiatiques Xll, 1938, p. 166, Fig. 285, [and our Fig. 6 in this Chapter. — Ed.]

2 One of the forms of the Active Door in Celtic folklore (cf. A.C.L. Brown, Iwain, Boston, 1903, pp. 54,55, 66,67,77, 80, 81) is that of a whirling wheel set with sharp swords.

’ T.G. Foote, “The Cherubim and the Ark.” JAOS., 25,1904, p. 283, cf. Zech. IX.14 where the arrow of the Lord is a lightning; and Ezekial 1.13, “out of the fire went forth lightning.” C f BU. Π. 3.6: (Brahma) yathngny-arcih . . .yatha sakrd-vidyut, and V 1.2.15 vaidyutam; Kena Up. 29 yad etad vidyur,JUB. I.26.8 vidyutipurusas. . . tad brahma tad amrtam. Vi-dyut, “lightning" corresponding to vi-bhava (έξ-ουσία) and vi-rdj (dominion), and illuminating all things simultaneously. “Lightning” is one of the primary symbols of Brahma.

4 Philo, Cher. 26-28. Philo identifies the “fiery sword” (1) with the whirling Sun and (2) with the burning Logos.

5 De vis. dei Ch. IX, ad. fin .JUB. I.5.6 ft; Philo, Opif. J i, Spec. 37.Maitri Up. VI.22.

8 John X-9 and XTV.6. On die Door and the Door-God see more fully my “Svayamatrnna: Janua Coe/Γ in Zalmoxis 11, 1942; also see “Selected Papers.” In architectural symbolism the Sundoor is represented by the oculus or lufter of the dome and in that of the body of the bregmatic fontanel, sec my “Symbolism of the Dome,” I HQ. XIV, 1938. Whatever underlies this open door is open too and can receive the Light-stream from above, which is the significance of all “hypaethral” structures.

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Figure y : Vase o f Gudea — libation vase from Girsu (modem Tello), dedicated to Ningiszida. Neo-Sumerian period, ca. 2120 B.C. Dark-green speckled steatite, 9 1/, inches in height. Paris, Louvre.

The God Himself, whose throne the Cherubim protect, is the Fons Vitae, Sapientiae et Veritatis1 or, alternatively, the Tree of Life2 and Wisdom. In the iconography, for the most part — Gudea’s vase is exceptional — we do not see the door itself or any fountain, but only the affronted Cherubim — Philo calls them δορυφόι, “guardsmen”3 — and between them (ένμέσψ, madhye) the Tree of

1 Philo, Fug. 97 and 197-9.2 Philo, Mut. 140, “the Tree of his Eternal Nature," and LA. III.52-79); Irenaeus, “the Tree which

is itself also called Gnosis” (Adv. Haer, I.27), cf. $A. XI.2 Brahman, “as it were, a great green tree, standing with its roots moistened,” cf. M aitri Up. VI. 4; Svet. Up. III.9, VI.l; Agni as Vansapati, RV. passim.

3 The affronted Cherubim are themselves the “contraries" (of past and future, ruling and creative powers, etc.) of which the wall is built, and therefore the appropriate ornaments of the wall of the Temple, as in Ezekial XLI.18. Each and every pair of affronted Cherubim represents the clashing jambs of the living door through which the strait way leads — “strait,” because the line that divides past from future, evil from good and moist from dry is literally, what it is so often called, a razor edge (TS.II.555.6 “the Sacrifice is razor-edged,” KU. III.I4 “the sharpened edge o f a razor, hard to

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Life, generally represented by a pillar with Ionic volutes.1 The formula, illustrated by our Fig. 8, is ever repeated, and is more fully treated below. In the later Christian angelology the Seraphim are regarded as “excelling in ardor,” the Cherubim in “fullness of knowledge,”2 but it is never forgotten that their primary function is one of guardianship, for, as St. Bernard says, the Seraphim covering the feet and face of the Lord “were so placed, I think, in order that, just as the entrance to Paradise is forbidden to sinful men by Cherubim, so a bound may be set to thy curiosity by Seraphim.”3 The Seraphim of [the] Old Testament are “fiery flying serpents”; the root meaning of saraph is to “bum,” and the word can be used in qualification of or apposition to, or by itself as a synonym of nahash, serpent,” as

Figure 8: Mycenean (Late Hellenic) ky/ix. [Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy s rendering from the Bulletin of the Museum, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, Rhode Island, XXVII, 1939, p. 12. — Ed.]

(Continued from preceding page.)be traversed”), or bridge of light, no wider than a hair (cf. D.L. Coomaraswamy, “The Perilous Bridge . . HJAS. VIII, 1944). Philo’s Logos Tomeus and Sunagogos (Fug. 100) in the midst, is Cusa’s “highest spirit of Reason," the solar Truth of JU B. I.5, whom the perpetrator must overcome, if he is to enter into the world that is really “but not logically." Now — the “now without duration” — is the appointed time; brahma-bhuti, literally “thcois,” is therefore also "twilight," that is the timeless interval that intermediates night and day.

1 Genesis 28.16-18 “Surely the Lord is in this place . . . And Jacob . . . took the stone . . . and set it up for a piUar";/t/S. 1.10.9 “They called the Sun a sky-supporting pillar.” Clement of Alexandria, Misc. I.24 “The ancients erected pillars, and reverenced them as statues of the Deity." A.J. Evans, Mycenean Tree and Pillar Cult, London, 1901; A.J. Wensinck, Tree and Bird as Cosmological Symbols in Western Asia, Amsterdam, 1921; Uno Holmberg, Finno-ugaric and Siberian Mythology, Siberian Ch. Ill, “The Pillar of the World.”

■ Dionysius, CoeI. Hier. VII; St. Thomas Aquinas, Sum. Theol. 1.108.5. “Ardor” and “knowledge" parallel the “glowing” (tapas) and “initiation” (diksa) — both are “fires" — that “the weal-asking prophets, the finders of the Light (rsayah svar-vidah), besieged (upanisedub) in the beginning” (.AV. XIX.41.1) and that identified with “the ever-clashing Gandharva guardians of Soma,” represented in the ritual bv sacrificial fires (SB. ΠΙ.6.2.9). Like the Seraphim and Cherubim, to whom the)' correspond, the Indian Gandharvas are so distinguished by their equally erotic and intellectual powers and by their guardian function.

3 De grad, humiltatis X .35.

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in Numbers XXI.8, 9 “Make thee a fiery serpent (saraph) . . . Moses made a serpent (nahash) of brass.”1 For Dante, seraphim, cherubim and thrones are all “loves.”2 The description of these fiery powers as “loves” is of interest because our modem Cupids (.Amori, Erotes) with their bows and arrows are by no means accidentally but properly Sagittarii, forms of Sagittarius himself, who is not merely ardent but also venomous. Already in Apuleius, we find Amor described by the Milesian oracle, foretelling Psyche’s marriage, as an “evil, fierce and savage Viper, who flies on wings in the high firmament and doth subdue all things with his flame, and sap the strength of each with his iron dart,” while Psyche’s sisters warn her that her husband is “a great and venomous serpent who will swallow her up”; until at last, so bewildered she is, that in eodem corpore odit bestinm, diligit maritum? We cannot overlook that in all traditions Love and Death are contrasted aspects of one and the same power; He is one and the same who slays and makes alive.'' That he devours as well as generates his children can be said as well of Krishna’’ as of Death;6 while the Gandharva, whose aspects are manifold, is at the same time “inexorable Death” (Mrtyu) and the “fair love” (Kama) whose consorts are “burning longings-/ a situation that survives in Buddhism, where the Gandhabba Mara is also Kamadeva. In the Greek tradition, the special connection of Eros with Psyche, parallel to that of the Gandharva to the Apsarases, is rather late; the winged human figure, originally armed with a dart or javelin, had originally been a more generalised fertility spirit and daimon of generation, a Ker “of double nature, good and bad . . . fructifying or death bringing.”8 The Keres in turn are closely related to such other winged beings as harpies, sirens and gorgons; the latter was originally male, as the beard denotes, and almost certainly a solar type, while as regards Medusa it is noteworthy [that] she can be represented as a Centauress.9 Keres or harpies can also be represented in the form of the Sphinx, lion-bodied like the Syrian Cherubim, watchdogs o f the Tree of Life. An old gloss on Euripedes, Phoen. 1760 attributes a snake’s tail to the Sphinx[.] A two-headed type from Carchemish, having the heads of a man and a lion, is also known (Fig. [72 in Chapter III, “Concerning Sphinxes, page 68.” — Ed.]).10

The Greek Sphinx must not be confused with the Egyptian, to which the name is applied only by analogy. The type is of Oriental origin; originating in Babylonia and by way of the Hittites the type was transmitted to Asia Minor, Phoenicia, Syria and Crete. The Greek type is almost always feminine, but there are examples

' Cf. also Deuteronomy Vffl.15, Isiah XIV.29 and XXX.6. For Philo, the Serpent set up by Moses represents “self-mastery,” and is the natural opposite of the serpent of Pleasure, and of brass so as to resemble gold (LA. II.79 if.).Paradiso XXVIII, 94-105.

3 Apuleius, Met. IV.33, cf. V.18.4 I Sam. 2.6; I Kings 5.7.5 BG. XII1.6.6 PB. XXI.3.1.7 TS. III.4.7.2.s J. Harrison, Prolegomena, pp. 175, 631.H Boetian vase in the Louvre, Bull, de Corr. Hell·, XXII, 1898, pi. V; J. Harrison, Prolegomena, Fig. 21.

Cf. Roland Hampe, Friihe griecbischer Sagenbilder, 56 £ and pis. 36,38.10 Hittite examples [in] E. Kasmuth, Het. Kunst, pis. 14, 15 [and] Moortgart, Bi/divert und Volkstum

Vorderasiens zur Hethiterzeit, Fig. 35.

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Figure <): Bearded sphinx from a fragmented vessel. From Van der Osten, Alisher Huyiik, III, 1937, F>g· 73> a 824. Second half first millennium, B.C.

of bearded sphinxes from Alisher Huyiik and Cyprus (Figs. 9,10).1 It may be asked, byway of introduction to Philos penetrating interpretation of the Cherubim, what was the fundamental significance of the Greek Sphinx?2 In the first place, the word itself derives from σφίγγω, and is understood to mean the “Throttler” or “Strangler,” with reference to the slaughter of the Thebans and others; but I should prefer to say “Constrainer,” rather in a favorable than in a pejorative sense, though there is nothing against a double entendre. For if we collate Empedocles fir. 185 (σφίγγει), Plato, Timaeus 58 A, B (σφίγγει) and Philo Fug. 112 (σφίγγει) and Heres 188 (σφίγγεται) it will be found that a “constraint” is exercised by Titan Ether, i.e., Father Zeus, by the circumambiance of Heaven, or by the fiery Logos — the Wisdom (σοφία) of God[.]·’ 141

Figure 10 : Bearded sphinx from the Hubbard amphora.Cyprus Museum, ca. 900 B.C. Ann. Brit. Sch. Athens, XXXVII [1940], pi. 7. Cf. G . Weicker, Der Seelenvogel, 19 02, Fig . 48. [Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy s drawing. — Ed.]

1 Van der Osten, Alisher Huyiik III, 1937, Fig· 73 and pi. 21 “winged sphinxes, each wearing a cidaris."Ann. Brit. Sch. Athens, XXXVII, 1940, pi. 7 (Hubbard Amphora, Cyprus Museum).

1 See, in general, Roscher, Lexikon, s.v. Sphinx, discounting the Egyptian derivations.5 This last is a common identification in Philo, e.g. LA. I.65 and cf. E.R. Goodenough, By Light.

Light, pp. 22-23. From this point of view it may be assumed that Philo (who must have been familiar with the Syrian representations of cherubim as sphinxes), had he been interpreting the pagan iconography, would have called the Sphinx a symbol of Σόφια.

*4 The manuscript ends here with a comma. Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy turned at this point to the composition of his “Ether.” Our continuation, which follows, is based on three typed pages related to the manuscript of “Ether,” either partially excised or scattered in the Princeton archive. We believe that Coomaraswamy probably intended to somehow transfer this material back to the “Sagittarius,” where it perfecdy serves to conclude this work. — Ed.]

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What results from these collations is that the fiery etherial Logos that unites and constrains all things is in fact the Sphinx (σρίγξ); and this conclusion is in perfect agreement with Philos interpretation of the Cherubim as made of the creative Fire, and as representing the Creative and Ruling Powers of “the median Logos," “the third uniting both” (τρίτον δε συναγωγόν μέσον . . . λόγον);1 and equally with the Western Asiatic iconography in which the Cherubim are affronted sphinxes, with a palm tree between them.2 It has been argued very plausibly that this Tree of Life as it occurs on painted pottery and elsewhere is a representation of the Mother Goddess, Nutrix Omnium? Certainly, from Philo’s point of view, this would not have hindered it from representing -also the Logos, since he identifies the Logos with Sophia,4 and as he says “the Tree of life, that is, of Wisdom (τό τής ξωής ξύλον, τοντέστι σοφίας).5 Now the Greek Sphinx, whose qualities are fundamentally those of enigmatic wisdom, love and death, is typically represented seated on the top of an Ionic pillar exacdy like the pillars that are guarded by the paired sphinxes (cherubim) of Palestinian art; it is certainly in her oracular capacity and as σοφήπαρθένος that such a sphinx must have been dedicated at Delphi6 and in her riddling and enigmatic capacity diat the type is represented with Oedipus.' If the same form was set up on graves, the symbol is surely not simply one of Death but — like that of the Eagle, raptor of Ganymede, or like that of the Indian Garudas — the representation of the Psychopomp, who bears away the soul of the deceased, as she bore away the Thebans “to the inaccessible light of the Ether” (αιθέρος εις ’άβατον φα'ίς).9 Mors janua vitae! For when we give up the ghost, as Euripedes says elsewhere, “the spirit dies away into the Ether” (απέσβε πνεΰμ άφέίς ές αιθέρα),10 which is nothing but its return to God Who

1 Chtrr. 27, cf. QE. II.66-67; Dec. 6,7; Goodenough, p. 31, sc. “in bonds of love,” as with dtics; Prolog. 322 C; and cf. Timaeus 32 C, Eur. Phoen. 537-8.

' As on the walls of Solomons temple, Ez. XLI.18, ig[.] On the representation of cherubim as sphinxes see W.F. Albright, in The Biblical Archeo/ogist, 1, 1938, p. 2, and E. Conn-Weincr, Diejudischc Kunst, 1929, pp. 40, 41, “Cherubim . . . Sphingen . . . Damonen-gestahen" and Abb. 20 (“Stilisierter Baum zwishen Cherubim" or in the text “zwei einander zugewandte Sphingen zu seiten eines Baumstammes saulenartiger Form”).

Plato would surely have seen in these Cherub-Sphinxes those “terrible guards of Zeus” that Prometheus could not evade (Protagoras 321 D). [Cf.] Aesch. Prometheus 803-4.

3 H.G. May, “The Sacred Tree on Palestine Painted Pottery,"7/705. 59,1939, pp. 251-259.4 E.R. Goodenough, By Light, Light, pp. 22-23 (“Philo flatly identifies the Logos with Sophia"), cf.

Fug. 51, 52 where “the daughter of God, even Sophia, is not only masculine but father, sowing and begetting.” In Scholastic philosophy, Christ can still be called the “art” of God, since it was by him as Logos that “all things are made.”

s LA. III. 52; cf. Genesis III.6. Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. I.27 “the Tree which is itself also called Gnosis." Brahma as eko svattha . . . eko' sya sambodhayitr, MU. VI.4.

6 Darenberg et Saglio, Diet, des Ant. Grec. et Rom., Fig. 6544, [which is a] representation of Eur., Phoen.Darenberg et Saglio, toe. cit., Fig. 6547.

8 See my “Rape of a Nagi,” Boston M.RA. Bulletin, nos. 209, 210,1937.9 Euripedes, Phoen. 809. Cf. Philo, Heres 282, 283 “to find a father in Ether.”10 Euripedes, Fr. 971 (in Plutarch, Mor. 416 D where, in the Loeb Library edition. Babbit makes the

mistake of rendering αιθήρ by “air”). The wording is of particular interest because σβένυνμι (with or without a prefixed particle) is regularly used of wind, fire, and passion and so of Man, whose life is kindled and quenched like a candle, Heracleitus Fr. LXXII; and employed with reference to the fire of life, corresponds exacdy to Sanskrit udvS and nirva; the return of the spirit to its etherial source is its nirvana, a quenching of the fires of its existence in the quintessential “Ether, that holy Fire and unquenchable αοβέστοσ) flame,” the celestial Fire of which the Sun is a portion (Conf. 156-157, with almost literal equivalents in MU. VI.35 and VII.Il).

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gave it,”1 since Ζευς εσπναίθηρ.2 This is at once the background for Philo’s pronouncement that when, at our deaths the elements are returned to their origins, “the intellectual and celestial species of the soul departs to find a father in Ether,” the fifth and purest of essences and that of which itself was a spark or offshoot (απόσπασμα)3 or apportionment (μοΐρα);4 and the equivalent of the Indian entering of the Spirit into Ether akasam atrrn apyeti? The Sphinx may be called the Hound6 ofHeaven-or-Hades, the Otherworld, but we are nowhere told that she “dirotdes” her victims, only that, like the Indian Garuda, she devours them or carries them off, assimilates and ravishes them; and the “constraint” implied by the name of “Sphinx” is simply diat of the “bonds” (δεσμοί) sc. of love (φιλίας, Timaeus 32 C), that are laid upon all things by the Logos, to keep them in being and that they may not be lost/ The Sphinx, in other words, is the single form of Wisdom, Love and Death, and corresponds to Philo’s “intelligible light,” whence proceed the contraries visible to sense, represented by the affronted Cherubim;8 these three, of which only the two are actually represented as sphinxes in Palestinian art, composing Philo’s “Trinity.”9

1 Eccl. III.20, 21, ΧΠ.7; perhaps the most significant cschatological pronouncements to be found in the whole of [ the] Old Testament.

2 Aeschylus, Fr. 65 A; cf. Empedocles' Titan Zeus and Titan Aither, and Cicero, De. nat. deor. 11.66, Jove = Ether.

3 Hens 282-3. -πάν related to Sanskrit sphur, “sparkle," cf. MU. VI.24 (Brahma like a sparkling wheel, of which the sparks are living beings).

4 LA. ΠΙ.161.BU. III.2.13, cf. CU. 1.9.1 aka'sahparayanam[.\

6 Aeschylus, Fr. 129 (236) κώνα [and] Prom. 803-4.“Taking wise forethought that the things bound (δεθέντα) and pendant, as it were, from a chain (σειρά), and should not be loosed,” Migr. 167, 181; BG. VII.7 “All this is strung on Me, like rowsof gems on a thread”; Tripura Rahasya, Jnana Khanda V.122-123, “Without Him [the proceeding Breath, prana-pracarah, the guardian of the ‘city’] the citizens would all be scattered and lost, like pearls without the string of the necklace. For He it is that associates me with them all, and unifies the city; He, whose companion 1 am, is the transcendent Holder-of-the-Thread (sutra-dharah, ωευρο-σπάστης, puppeteer, also stage-manager, architect) in that city.” Cf. Philo, Fug. 46 “Know thyself and the parts of thyself... who it is that invisibly pulls the strings and moves the puppets.”

9 Philos though t[:] The Logos is actually thought of as the “turning fiery sword" of Genesis [III.24]; and in the art it is actually represented either by the pillar with its Ionic capital or by the occupant of a throne.

9 E.R. Goodenough, By Light, Light, 33 f., 364-365.

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Sarcophagus lid from Clazomenia (Western Turkey, situated between Izmir and Ephesus). Sixth century B.C. Greek.

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Chapter II

In a l a t e r , B u d d h is t r e c e n s io n o f o u r m y t h 2 [o f t h e G u a r d ia n s], t h e essential features are retained; the medicinal waters are possessed and guarded by a serpent or dragon, and won by a hero who flies through the air and overcomes the Defender. Maha Sumana, a youthfully precocious saint,

has become the pupil of the Buddhist elder Anuruddha. The latter, having fallen sick, asks his accomplished pupil to bring him a jar of the healing waters of Lake Anottata.3 The lake is guarded by the Nagamja Pannaka,4 who covers it with his hoods, and is “of fierce fiery-energy (tejas) and mighty strength.” Maha Sumana flies through the air, and on reaching the lake explains his errand. The Serpcnt-king refuses to let him take the water, and Sumana says that he means to have it with or without consent. To that the serpent replies, “My congratulations: B y all means cam' off (harassa, ‘steal’) my water, if diere be in thee the manhood of a hero!” Sumana then tramples on the serpent’s hoods, and as they are displaced, fountains of water rise between them; he fills his jar and returns through the air to his Masters hermitage, where the cure is effected. In the meantime, Pannaka has been vainly pursuing Sumana, and follows him to the hermitage; there Anuruddha remonstrates with him until he realizes the error of his ways and asking for pardon becomes Sumana’s friend and promises to supply him with the living water whenever it is needed. That is, of course, the normal sequel of a successful quest; the Defender of the sources of life remains dieir guardian, but now for and no longer against the victorious Hero, who was in effect “so winged that he could fly up there.”

In another Buddhist myth,5 five hundred “merchants” are journeying through a waste land and at the point of death for want of food and water; they find a Banyon tree invested with a dragon (nagapariggahitam nigodha-rukkharti) that proves to be for them a veritable tree of life, for its branches yield them water, food and treasure; in this case, the dragon is a willing benefactor, but in another version of the story, told in the same context, the greedy merchants cut down the tree with the hope of obtaining greater treasure, and a host of dragons fall upon them and cast them into bonds from which they cannot escape. In these two versions, the two possible denouements of our myth are represented.

[T h e G u ard ian s o f t h e S u n d o o r a n d t h e S a g it t a r ia n T y p e 11

11 This essay, the first full version of the “Early Iconography” above, is here given a new title. Coomaraswamy only based his latest manuscript on the first eighteen pages and not the last two of this work; our editing preserves just that part not used elsewhere. — Ed.]

2 Dhitmmapada Atthakatha IV.129-137. For snakes and dragons as guardians of fountains and deities of rain see J.R Vogel, Indian Serpent-Lore, passim.

3 An-ottata = ana-avatapta, “not shone upon,” i.e. in the Land of Darkness, not under the Sun; in accordance with all later traditions.

4 Ambiguously, the “Feathered” (“Winged") or the “Leafy”; a “Dragon-Tree,” Pama often palastr, and in iatapatha Brdhmana VI.5.1.1 is identified with Soma and the Moon.

s pataka No. 493 (J. IV.350 ff.). The story is illustrated in a well known relief from Barhut (2nd century' B.C.), and at Bodhgava; see my Yaksas, Pt. II, 1931, pi. 25, Figs. I and 3.

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It may have been noticed that in the Dh. A. version, the Hero is pursued as he flies away with the booty, as is also the case in many of the older Indian versions, especially those in which the motif of the fallen feather appears. The same pursuit takes place in the Eddie version. The Hero, in other words, is never safe, even if he has successfully carried off the Plant of Life, until he reaches his destination. There are Greek and Assyrian versions in which the Hero is finally unsuccessful just because the Plant is stolen from him on his way back; and it is noteworthy that in both cases the Plant is recovered by a snake connected with a pool or spring. In the Gilgamesh epic, die Hero takes a bath, and “whilst there a serpent discovered the whereabouts of die plant through its smell and swallowed it. When Gilgamesh saw what had happened he cursed aloud, and sat down and wept. . . over the waste of his toil.”1 In the “Ogygian Myth” related by Nikandros, “Zeus sent a load of youth to mankind, who put it all on the back of an ass. Man, being thirsty, went to a spring for a drink, but found a snake there. The snake asked for his load as the price of the water, and the ass consented; hence a snake can cast his skin and grow young again, but man grows inevitably old.”2

The Indian Asivisa, referred to above, corresponds to Avestan azhi-vishapa and the ophidian Azhi-Dahaka, [of] the Zohak epic, who is represented in human form with a pair of serpents growing from his shoulders, and in whom we shall recognize die old Sumerian serpent-god, Ningiszida, defender and “Lord of the Tree of Truth.”3 Azhi-Dahaka is described (Yasht V.34) as a three-headed Druj (Sanskrit druh\ fiend, deceiver)4 conquered by Thraetona ([of the] Faridun epic); just as the three-headed VisvarCipa, brother of Vrtra, is overcome by the Vedic Trita, the friend of Indra (RV II.11.19, X.8.8).3 Atar (Vedic Atri, fire) also overcomes Azhi-Dahaka in a contest for the possession

1 British Museum, Babylonian Legends o f the Deluge and the Epic o f Gilgamesh, 1920, p. 55.2 H.J. Rose, Handbook o f Greek Mythology, 1933, p. 340B, summarising Nikandros, Theriaka 343 ft.

Nikandros wrote in the 2nd century B.C. Langdon, Semitic Mythology, pp. 227-8, cites the legend of the serpent’s theft of the plant from Aelian, and also finds a reference to the story in a Sumerian incantation in which the words occur, “the serpent in the water, the serpent at the quay of life, seized the watercress: O woe, the dog-tongue, the watercress it seized”; and he remarks that “the myth explains the annual rejuvenation of the serpent, and adds to the legends of Adapa and Tagtug still another legend of how man lost eternal life" — of which, throughout the traditions that we are studying, the sloughing of the inveteratcd skin is symbolic.

3 On the term Asivisa (which survives in Buddhism as an epithet of the Ahi-naga of the Jatilas’ Fire-tcmplc), see HJAS. IV.131. Arbuda plays the part of Grava-stut in the Soma-sacrifice, but because of his baleful glance must be blindfolded, and it is after him that the Grava-stut priest in the rimal is blindfolded, as a protection against the evil eye. Cf. the American Indian monster “Starry-eyes-that-kiU" whom the Hero Nayenezzani blinds (Wheelright, Navajo Creation Myth, 1942, p. 54); and more generally. A.H. Krappc, Bator with the E v il Eye, 1927; A.C.L. Brown, “Arthurs Loss of Queen and Kingdom,” Speculum, XV, 1940; and Origin of the Grail Legend, 1943, p. 233 (Balar, “a god of the dead whose look kills”). Cf. Polyphemus and Sira’s “third-eye.”

4 In Rgvedz a designation of Susna and Raksases generally; in Atharva Veda II.10.8 and XV.6.IO, an epithet of Varuna and of Namuci from whose bonds the sacrificer would be liberated.

5 On the Vedic Trita see McDonell, Vedic Mythology, bj(:, K. Ronnow, Trita Aptya, Uppsala, 1927; M. Fowler, “Polarity in the Rig-Veda," Rev. o f Religion VII, 1943, pp. 115-23. As the “Son” Trita can be equated with Agni or Soma, or both (Agnisomau); and with Zeus Tritos (Pantocrater, Soter, Oikophulax), cf. Aeschylus Cho. 245, Suppl. 25, and Eum. 759.

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of the “Glory that cannot be seized” (Yasht XLX.46 f.).1 In the same contexts, Keresaspa ([of the] Garshasp epic; Sanskrit Krsasva, “having a lean horse”) overcomes Azhi-Dahaka, the horse-eating serpent Svara, and the green-heeled Gandarewa2 (Sanskrit Gandharva) in aerial sea Vouru-Kasha (Yasht V.38; XIX. 38-41). And inasmuch as the tree Gokard, the “Tree of the Falcon” (seno, Sanskrit syena), viz. the White Haoma (Sanskrit soma) grew in this sea,3 and the Falcon is one of the forms of Verethragna ([of the] epic Bahratn, Sanskrit vrtra-han) “Smiter of Vrtra” (an epithet of Indra and some of his allies), it can hardly be doubted that all of these battles were fought for the possession of a “Life” that was originally jealously guarded by ophidian or draconian “Gandharvas” or “cherubim.”'4 Guarded, that is to say, against all but the spiritual Hero who can evade the Clashing Rocks and overcome “the highest Spirit of Reason who wards the gate of the Paradise in which thou, God, dwellest”;5 “to keep the Way of the Tree of Life” against the fallen whose thinking is in terms of “good and evil,” the types of the very contraries of which, as Cusa also says, the wall of the Paradise is built, and from which man must be delivered if he would reenter there where, as Meister Eckhart says, “neither vice nor virtue ever entered in.”

The forms, or as Indians would express it, avataras, of Verethragna, “the most victorious of those to whom sacrificial worship is due” are those of the Wind (vata), Bull, Horse, Boar, Youth, Bird Varaghna, Ram, Buck and Man with the Golden Sword made by Ahura Mazda.6 Yasht XIV.7.19 refers to the Bird (a form of Verethragna, as the falcon is of the Indian Vrtra [ . . . ] ) as “the swiftest of birds, the lightest of all flying creatures,” significandy adding that “he alone of all living things outflies the arrow, however well directed.” In almost the same words Dante says that “before the eyes of the full-fledged in vain the net is spread or the arrow shot” (Purgatorio XXXI.62-3). All that is as much to say that die “flight” is intellectual; what “flies” so fast is “that swiftest of things in us, swifter than the flight of birds, the understanding” (Philo, Sacr. 65). “Mind (manas = νους) is the swiftest of flying things” (Rgveda VI.9.5 etc.). Agni is “mind-swift” (Jaimiriiya

1 Presumably the “glory” (yasas) for which the gods compete in PR. VTII.5.6, cf. SB. XIV.I.I; and the “unconquerable victory and glory” won by the gods in their conflict with the Asura-Raksas, SB. ΕΠ.4.2.8. For the connection of “glory” with Soma, cf. D. II.249, “the Varunya deities with Varunya and Soma widi Glory (yas'as).”

1 Archtype of Khwaja Khizr, die green-heeled Master of the Fans Vitae who is often equated with Elias, see An Islamica 1, 1924, p. 181. As demonstrated by M. Dumezil, the Avestan Gandarewa and his congeners are at home in the waters, and moreover “en rapports (hostiles d'ailleurs) avec le monde des marts' (Leprobleme des centaures, 1929, p. 85).

3 Bundabisb XlV.n, XVIII.9, XXIV.11.29; Zad-Sparatn VIII.4.5; Rashti Yasht X.4 Cf. G. Dumezil, Le probleme des centaures, Paris, 1929 (ch. II on the Gandarewa, etc.); P. Beneviste

and L. Renou, Vrtra and Vragna, Paris, 1934; L. von Schroeder, “Herakles und Indra,” Denkschriften d.k. Akad. Wiss, Wien, 58 Bd., 3 Abth., 1934, pp. 43-8.

! Cusa, De vis. Dei IX, ad Jin . Cusa’s “wall," like the Islamic “murity,” (jidariyya, see Nicholson, Studies in Islamic Mysticism, 1921, p. 95), and the “thick cloud" (νέπος = Sanskrit nabha, cf. nimbus) of ftWV.751, is that of the Sky dividing what is under the Sun from what is beyond. The significance of the “contraries” or “pairs of opposites” is discussed in my article on the Symplegades (Sanskrit mithastum), [available in Volume I of Selected Papers o f Ananda Coomaraswamy, edited by Roger Lipsey, Princeton University Press, 1977].

6 Yasht XIV SBE. ΧΧΠΙ.231 f.); J. Charpentier, Kleine Beitrage zur indo-iranishen Mythalogie, Uppsala, 19η, p. 27 ff.

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Brahmana I.50 etc.), and a “divine vehicle,” that is to say the mind, for “it is the mind that most of all conveys him that hath mind to the gods” (Satapatha Brahmana 1.4.3.6); it is always in a mental (manomaya) body, never in the flesh, that in Hinduism and Buddhism one ascends to the Brahma world, from which there is no return. It is important to bear in mind that our Bird is primarily a Firebird rather than a Sunbird; and that the universality of its form is essentially that of the Phoenix described by Lacantius, combining in itself every kind of flying creature — contrahit in caetum sese genus omne volantum.

In connection with the animal forms of the Hero, Langdon (Semitic Mythology, p. 281) cannot understand how the ancient combat of Marduk (Sagittarius) with Zu (Aquila) can have been represented as one of Marduk with “such harmless animals as mountain deer.” But not only are deer by no means harmless from a gardeners point of view; an even weaker animal, the hare, is also a recognized type of the thief, and this is the theme of the old and so widely diffused theme of the pursuit of the hare by a hound or hounds (Fig. xi), protectors of the garden.1 The point is that it is not so much by mere brute force, but far more by his speed, lightness, courage, or wit that the master-thief succeeds. The Defender is the proprietor of a “garden”; and consequendy, the Hero may be represented by any of the creatures, large or small, or strong or weak, that are the kinds that naturally devour the fruits or leaves that are grown in gardens. As it is typically a fruit-bearing tree that is guarded, so it is typically against a bird that it is protected, the Defender in this case appearing in the form of the natural enemies of the bird, i.e. as an archer or as a

Figure 1 1 : [Hare with hounds. Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy s drawing o f a capital from the transcript o f the Zurich Munster, I2 lh century' A.D. in K. Von Spiess’ “Die H a se n ja g d Jahrb. f Hist. Volkskunds V, VI, 1937, pi. 3, Fig. 13. — Ed.]

1 Cf. E. Potter, “L ’bistoire d'une b ite ” Revue de / ’art ancien et moderne, t. XXVII, 1910, pp. 419-436, and Bull, de Corr. Hellenique, 1893, p. 227; L. von Schroedcr, Arishe Religion, II, 1923, p. 664; and especially K. Von Spiess, “Die Hasenjagd? Jahrb. f. Hist. Volkskunde V, VI, 1937, P- 243 D'Arcv Thompson, (Science and the Classics, p. 91), citing the Phaenomena of Aratus, says that the poem tells “how under Orion’s feet the Hare is seen, and how she is hunted every day; and evermore the great Dog Sirius follows on her track. And so it is, for every morning as the Hare rises, close behind her comes the Dog; and still the Dog presses close upon her as she goes down at evening in the west.’ ”

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Figure 12 : Centaur archer from a I3 ,b century casket. French or German, Bargello, Florence in Von Spiess’ “Der Schuss nach dem Vogel,” Jahrb. f .Hist. Volkskunds V, VI, 1937, pi. 7, Fig. 22.

snake.1 Whether in purely human form, or as a centaur, the archer survives into Mediaeval European art (Fig. 12) and is finally secularised; a notable example can be cited also from Ceylon.2 Whether as archer (with poisoned arrows) or as a snake, etc., the Defender is characteristically venomous; the Robber Bird, on the other hand is a master of anti-venins.3 On the other hand, if the source of life is thought of rather as a plant (Lebenskraut, Herb of Life, etc.) than as a tree, then the thief will naturally be represented by such animals as the horse, deer, elephant or hare that do in fact feed on leaves or grasses, and the Defender, if not in human form and armed with a bow or other weapon, will be a lion or a dog or any of the dangerous creatures whose food is flesh. I f there are many respects in which die Thief and Defender may resemble one another (both, for example, are typically winged) this is because, like Christ and Anti-Christ, and “the two Agnis that hate one another” (cf. TS. V.2.4.1 “hatred” of Agni, for the “Agni” that was not), they are stricdv antitypal; one might, for example, cite the case of the Buddhas conflict with the Ahi-naga (described as asiviso gboraviso, etc.), in which he assumes the counterform of a “human Naga" and “fights fire widi fire” (Mahavagga 1.24-25), diough in the fight about the Tree with Mara {Death, a Nagaraja and is identified with Kamadeva = Eros4), whose arrows fail to reach him, the Buddha remains the victor solely by his impassibility (Jdtaka 1.73). The bow itself, however characteristic of Sagittarius = Krsanu (Buddhist Mara, etc.), is not infallibly an attribute of the Defender; there is, for example, an exceptional group of seals (Fig.13 [page 26]) representing] an archer aiming at a horned serpent (= Ningiszida), and there can be no doubt that the former is die Hero and the latter the Defender. The one infallible sign by which the Defender can always be recognized is his venomous ophidian character, of which die scorpion or serpents tail is the most conspicuous indication; this is, indeed, the bared tail that survives, together with the serpent’s horns, in Mediaeval representations of the Devil, whose iconography in these respects is perfecdy correct, since it is the Devil that opposes Christ who, in his despite, aperuit nobis januatn coeli.

1 Cf. Euphoria III, where the keeper of the garden is a snake.2 My Mediaeval Sinhalese Art, 1908 [reprinted by Pantheon Books, New York, New York, 1979], pi. 16.

a Paradise garden with central Sun and flowering trees, archer detenders and bird and rabbit thieves. For the motive generally see the admirable discussion by Karl von Spiess, “Der Schuss nach dem Vogel' in Jahrb. f. Hist. Volhkunde V, VI, 1937, pp. 204-235.

3 So notably the Peaco*ck, Rgveda I.191.14.4 Cf. Apuleius, Met. IV.33 describing Cupid as of no mortal birth, sedsaevum atque vipereumque malum,

quodpinnis volitans super aethercr, and (ib. V .17,18) a venomous serpent “with manv-knotted coils" (multinodis volumininibus) by whom she [, Psyche,] will be devoured. Love and Death are one divinity (cf. references in JAOS. 6o.47)[;] accordingly the dragon (makara) vehicle and ensign are common to Varuna and Kamadeva (cf. MFA. Bulletin No. 202,1936, “An Indian Crocodilc”). “The terrible cherubim are also “Loves,” and Cupid is righdy represented as a cherub.

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Figure i j : Archer, sacred tree and homed serpent from M oo rtgart, Vorderasiatische Ro/lsiegel, 1940, No. 691, cf. Weber No. 349 and also M oortgart Figs. 689-695.

The myth confronts us with the problem of the so-called “jealousy” (φθόνος) of the High Gods of Life. Langdon {Semitic Mythology, p. 185) speaks of the “gods of fertility, probably Ningizsida and Tammuz, of whom the serpent was symbolic” as “jealous of that man who would attain immortality like themselves.” Similarly in the Rgveda, the Asura possessors and guardians of Soma or other treasures are often referred to as “misers” or “traders,” and we find, too, that the sacrificing (terrestrial) deities, when they reach the other world, actually invert the sacrificial post, and so block and bar the way against the after-comers who would follow them (Taittiriya Samhita III.4.6; Aitareya Brahmana Π.Ι, 2, etc.). Darmetester observes that “in the Vedic mythology, the Gandharva is the keeper of the Soma, and is described now as a god, now as a fiend, accordingly as he is a heavenly Soma-priest or as a jealous possessor who grudges it to man” (SBE. XXXIII.63, Note 1). It would, nevertheless, be a great mistake to think of this “jealousy” as actually “miserly” in any human sense, however it may be contrasted with Indra’s “bounty.” To do so would be to accuse the Cherubim of Genesis 3.24, the “harsh deity” of the Jaiminiya UpanisadBrahmana I.5.I, Rumi s “friend” (MathnawlI.3056-65), Cusa’s “highest spirit of reason,” and likewise St. Peter and every other Janitor of the Golden Gates of simple avarice — not to mention him who shuts the door on the foolish virgins and keeps them from the wedding feast (Matthew XXV). The mythical level of reference is metaphysical; and we shall not understand its formulae unless we recognize that the derogatory terms employed by the contesting powers are as purely symbolic as the weapons of the visual iconography Or does anyone suppose that in these aerial batdes fought at the Sundoor, “bows and arrows” of human manufacture were employed, or that the Cherubs sword in Genesis had been made on Earth before the first forge had been built? This would be no more intelligent than it would be to ask, “What was God doing before He made the world?” The door is guarded, not to keep out those who can overcome the “highest spirit of reason” or to exclude any of those who are “so winged that they can fly up there” and are so eagle-eyed that they can fix their gaze upon the Sun (Paradiso X.74 and passim or the perfected τελέαι, etc.) who can and will follow through the ακπαν άψΐδα to participate in the supercelestial convivium (Plato, Phaedrus 247 B, cf. Philo, Opif. 71), but only those who are unable or unfit to enter. Unable and unfit are not two different, but one and die same qualification; it is precisely “by their ability-and-fitness (arhana) that the gods attain their immortality” (Rgveda X.63.4). All the dragons, walls, and

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inactive doors of the myths are nothing but the symbols of our own inadequacies and failures. Whoever has the key receives a royal welcome.

The myth itself announces the opposition of contrasted powers and the possibility, therefore, of taking sides with one or the other, or with neither. The story will be colored in accordance with our point of view; far more often than not, of course, our sympathies are with the (human or semi-divine) Hero, whom we applaud, while the (superhuman) Defender becomes a fiend, and in the last analysis die Devil himself. Appolonius Rhodius (Argonautica IV.1432 f.) tells the story fairly: The Argonauts regarded Hercules, in that (like Indra) he had freed the waters, as a hero and saviour, but from the point of view of the Hesperides, the slaughter of the guardian serpent and the theft of the Golden Apples were acts of wanton violence, and Hercules himself a ruthless brute. The Celtic myths are almost always told from the Hero’s point of view, with which we identify ourselves. In the Rgveda die slaughter or dismemberment of Vrtra and the Rape of Soma are glorious feasts, for which die heroic Indra and the Eagle can never enough be praised; nevertheless it is explicit that the Rape of Soma is a “dieft,” and the dismemberment or decapitation of Vrtra is an “original sin” from which the ritual Sacrifice, in which “the head of the Sacrifice (Vrtra, Soma, Makha, Visnu, Prajapati, etc.) is put on again” and the dismembered deity thus made “whole and complete,” is a deliverance.1 If we are to understand the myth and the raison d ’&tre of its variant and yet inconsistent iconography, it must be realized that the opposition of the powers of light and darkness to one another is stricdy relative and valid only under the Sun. It is, in fact, our attachment to one or the other of these contradictories diat shuts the “active door” in our face, for this is the door diat leads beyond the good and evil2 that occasioned our Fall. We must take this point of view, who is not sub jected to or distracted by these contrary predicaments, and for whom “in all these conflicts, both sides are right” (Rgveda II.27.15). I f we mean to stay on the metaphysical level of reference to the marvels themselves, we must interpret them in the terms of immutable justice, not in those of equity.

A designation of one or the other of die opposing Champions as “good” or “evil” can only lead to unnecessary confusions. For example, Frankfort (Seal Cylinders, pp. 133 ff), taking Ninurta’s side, refers to Zu, led captive before the enthroned Ea, as “an evil being.” The capture and judgment of the Bird-man is, indeed, a common subject on Akkadian seals3 and die crime for which the “evil bird” is tried is, of course, diat of the “illegal possession” of stolen property.

1 See my “Atmayajiia” in HJAS. VI, 1942, pp. 358-98 [reprinted in Volume II of Selected Papers of Ananda Coomaraswamy, edited by Roger Lipsey, Princcton University Press, 1977], and “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: Indra and Namuci” in Speculum [XIX, Jan.] 1944, [pp. 104-125].

2 These arc “the lion and the lamb” that lie down together. We need hardly say that the doctrine of a “beyond good and evil” has been taught for millennia, and was not invented by Nietsche; or that it does not contravene the validity of their distinction here and now!

3 I must strongly dissent from Frankfort’s remark (p. 135) to the effect that “the primitive mind” thinks of everything “concretely',” e.g. of “life” and “death” as objects in the text:

“ . . . the gods, in their first creation of mortals, Death allotted to man, but life they retained in their [keeping.](R.C. Thompson, Epic o f Gilgamesh, p. 4&[.])

(Continued on following page.)

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Elsewhere, however, (Frankfort, “Cretan Griffin . . . ” pp. 128 ff.)^ the “Griffin” (the Defender) is “a terrifying power, against which the GrifFin-demon [the Bird-man, Hero and Thief] affords protection”; the griffin-demon “appears throughout as beneficial to man.” It is he, indeed, who brings down from above, at the risk, or even the price, of his life, the gifts of life and knowledge that are necessary to mans very existence. But if so, why call him a “demon”? In the last analysis the Defender is the “Father” and the Hero is the “Son,” whose cosmic crucifixion parallels the punishments of Zu and of Prometheus and the decapitation of Dadhyanc.

We are now in a better position to investigate the archers iconography. It must, however, be premised that the designation “dragon” has too often (e.g. by Langdon, Legrain and Frankfort) been misapplied to the Hero; it should be reserved for the Defender, whose alone is the “evil eye,” as the word δράκων itself implies.2

The surviving type of Sagittarius is, as we remarked above, that of a centaur armed with bow and arrow, like Dantes centaurs “armed with arrows, as they were wont on Earth to go hunting” Inferno VII.56).3 But, as Hartner points out, in the Islamic iconography the centaur-archer has a knotted serpents tail,

(Continuedfrom preceding page.)We need hardly say that the symbols with which we think are necessarily, both for us and for the “primitive,” concrete, visible things standing for invisibles (cf. Romans I.20). The assumption is quite unwarranted (and contrary to all we know of the abstract and algebraic quality of “primitive” mythology and art) to assert that in using concrete terms the “primitives" are referring only to concrete things! This is the error into which we fall when we call the early Ionian philosophers “naturalists,” forgetting that the “nature" of which the Greek philosophers speak was not our own natura naturata, but natura naturans, matrix. As Edmund Potter says (and coundess anthropologists could be cited to the same effect), “a l’origine tout representation grapbique repond a une pensee: . . . Plus tard . . . en bien de eas, le sens primordial est obscurci, attenue ou e'touffe par /'element decoratif (Ceramique peinte de Susa, 1912, p. 52). Similarly Walter Andrae, in Die Ionische Saule, Bauform oder Symbol, 1933, p. 65, "Smnvolle Form, in der Pbvsiscbes und Metaphysisches ursprunglich polariscb sich die Waage hielteb, wird auf dem IVege zu tins her mehr und rnehr entleert; w ir sagen dann: siesei ‘Ornament’." Ours is the world of “impoverished reality” and of forgotten meanings.

11 H .L. Frankfort, “Cretan Griffin . . . ,” Ann. Brit. School at Athens, XXXVII, 1936-37, pp. 106-122. — Ed.]

1 The one essential and distinctive quality of a “dragon” is his baleful glance, as the root (Δερκ = Sanskrit drs, cf. drg-visa, “poison-eyed," drsti-bana, “eye-arrow," “leer," drsti-dosa, “evil eye”) implies. We arc apt to diink of “dragons” as four-footed saurians rather than as snakes, and of any' winged monster as a dragon; but in the Greek sources, “dragon” usually, if not always, means a snake (cf. Iliad XXII. 93-5, “terribly he glareth”; Eur. Bacchae 1017-26, Ion 21-6). The same “evil eye” is characteristic of the Indian Nagas, whether we call them dragons or snakes; Arbuda has to be blindfolded (AB. VI.i), while the Naga Campeyya “whose glance could reduce a city to ashes” closes his own eyes when he would be harmless (J. lV.457.460). Many philologists similarly derive apt? from [the] root oit in of, οφ, οφις “aspect," “eye,” on the analogy of δράκων.

1 In this connection, it is of interest that Dante (Inferno XXV.17-24) describes Cacus (the cave-dwelling robber who recovered some of the cattle taken by Hcrakles from Geryon, but was slain by I icrakles, see Vergil. Aen. VIII.190 ff., etc.) as a centaur with many serpent tails and “over his shoulders, behind his head" (suggesting a bicephalous type) a winged dragon, breathing fire; thus almost exacdy in the form of Marduk combined with Mushussii.

Descriptions of composite monsters abound in Greek sources. Amongst these, [that] Appolordorus (Lib. II.7.7) speaks of the centaur Nessus as a Hydra with venomous blood is important for our iconography, for it implies precisely that combination of human, equine and ophidian characteristics that we are investigating. Euripides, Madness o f Herakles 880, 881) speaks of the many-headed

(Continued onfollowing page.)

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ending in a snakes or a dragons head.1 In some cases, (Hartner, Figs. 20, 21) the archers body is leonine, and the trunk so turned that the arrow is aimed direcdy at the open jaws of the serpent that forms the tail; Hartner describes this form as a combination of the original Sagittarius centaur with “Jupiter as lord of the domicile, and the dragons tail having its exaltation in this zodiacal sign”: I hesitate to differ, but it seems to me that the lion is solar and that this is a Sagittarius descended from the Assyrian type of lion-bodied Defender. For in what is actually Scythian art of die 7th century B.C., but purely Assyrian in style, viz. upon a scabbard of the Melgunov sword2 we find a sequence of four archers, all with lion-bodies and two with scorpion-tails but respectively with leonine (Fig.14 [page 30]), human, bird and one unrecognizable head. These have a further peculiarity in that their wings are in the form of fish. All are shooting towards the hilt of the sword, on which there is represented a Tree of Life, and two smaller trees and a pair of winged genii·, and it can hardly be doubted that the four leonine archers (whose types are rather suggestive of those of the Four Evangelists) are the Defenders of a garden.

In die great Zodiac at Denderah, of which one is now in the Louvre, Egyptian or the Roman period, Sagittarius is a winged, two-headed centaur, one of the heads being that of an animal (perhaps a leopard), and one of the tails that of a scorpion (Fig. 15 [page 30]). Hartner’s Fig. 36, taken from Jeramias, has a snake-like rather than a scorpions tail, but although no very good reproductions are available,3 there can be no possible doubt that the uplifted tail is that of a scorpion. This Hellenistic-Egyptian archer is itself a reflection or survival

(Continued from preceding page.)Lemean Hydra as a murderous “dog.” Bull, polycephalous dragon, and flaming lion are forms of one and the same Dionysos (Eur. Bacchae 1017-19). Bcrosus, writing in Greek at Babylon, ca. 280 B.C., describes a great variety of primordial monsters, amongst them some combining the forms of men and horses with tails of fishes, and dogs with tails of fishes (by which we may understand, in all probability, tails of snakes, “snakes” and “fishes” being generally interchangeable in our mythology; but fish-tailed water-horses appear in India in the 2ml century B.C., see my Yaksas, Π, 1931, pi. 43, Fig. 2).

It is significant also that Dantes centaurs and serpents are proper to that part of Hell in which thieves and robbers are punished.

1 Classical references to the “knots” of serpents include Apuleius, Met. V.17, coluber multinodis voluminibus serpens and V.20 noxii serpentis nodum cervicis et capitis (here nodus must be “joint”); Vergil, Aen. V.279 nixantem nodis seque in sua membraplicantem\ Athenagoras, two snakes knotted together). For Indian references see my “Sarpabandha" in JAOS. 62,1942, pp. 341,342 (add S. I.134,135; and Vikramacarita in HOS. 26, p. xci; also Manu VHI.82, “Varuna’s fetters,” glossed “snake-bonds”).

None of the foregoing references are proof that the body of a single snake has ever been thought of as actually knotted; neither can I cite any Classical or Early Indian representation of a single knotted snake but only of two snakes knotted together.

That Appolonius (Lib. U.7.7) speaks of die centaur Nessa as a Hydra, with venomous blood, is, however, rather important for our iconography, as it implies a combination of human, equine and ophidian characteristics, and it is precisely such a type that we are investigating.

2 From the Lit0j Kurgan barrow, opened in 1763, and now in the Hermitage Museum; see E. H. Minns, Scythians and Greeks, 1913, pp. 171-2 and Figs. 65-7.

5 The tiny photographic reproduction of the circular Zodiac in C. Boreux, Guide-Catalogue, Antiquities Egyptiennes (Musee du Louvre), 1932, 1, p. xiv is better than the large drawing of the rectangular Zodiac in the Description de I ’Egypte (generally known as “Antiquities”), 1822, vol. IV, pi. 21. For a general description of Denderah see Baedeker’s Egypt, 1929,261 ff.

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• Detail o f one o f four similar archers with various types o f heads — lion, human and bird, etc. — all shooting towards the hilt o f a sword on which is depicted a Tree o f Life, flanked by two winged genii and two smaller trees. century B.C., Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg. The style reflects overwhelming Assyrian influence, but was found in the barrow o f Litoj Kurgan in 1763. From E.H . Minns, Scythians and Greeks, 1913, Figs. 65-7, pp. 171-2.

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of the almost identical type that occurs on the British Museum kudurru of Meli Sipak, ca. 1200 B.C. (Fig. 16);1 here the two-headed centaur appears to be shooting at a bird on a pillar, at which the dog is also springing; the centaur has both horse and scorpion tails, as before, and a complete scorpion is represented below the forelegs. An almost identical type occurs on another kudurru of die same period from Babylon,2 and a similar type, but with only one (human) head, one (scorpion) tail, and armed widi a club instead of a bow, on a late Kassite or Assyrian seal [is] dated by Frankfort ca. 1450 B.C. (Fig. 17 [page 32]).3 Here the Defender, a winged centaur with a single bearded human head and scorpion tail (one might as well say a horse-bodied scorpion-man) is driving off a number of deer.

Iconographic evidence at present available does not enable us to follow the type beyond, at earliest, the 14th or 15th century B.C. The form is unmistakable on a late Helladic seal from Prosymna.4 What seems to be the oldest occurrence of the archer-centaur appears on a Kassite tablet from Nippur, ca. 1350 B.C.

1 L.W. King, Boundary Stones, 1912, pp. 19-23 and pis. ΧΧΊΠ-ΧΧΧ; Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania, vol, 14; M. Jastrow, Bildermappe . . . , p. 17 and Fig. 33; A. Jeramias, A/tcrienta/ische Geistesgeschichte, Fig. 127.

1 Jeramias, loc. cit., Fig. 146.3 H. Frankfort, Seal Cylinders, pi. XXXI f. dated 1450 in his Chronological Index; W. Schaefer and

W. Andrae, Kunst des Alten Orients, p. 548.4 C.VV. Blegen, Prosyma, 1937, p. 277 and Fig. 589. The seal is dated to “Late Hclladic ΙΠ,” i.e. before

1100 B.C.

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(Fig. 18);1 the type is winged, the tail is divided up, and part of the equine body is covered with a panther skin; the head or heads are not clearly preserved; the arrow is aimed at a tree on which a bird may have been perched. Baur holds that while the centaur type of kudurrus is “the symbol out of which the Sagittarius of the Zodiac developed,” the original function is apotropaic rather than astrological.2 Hartner (p. 148) says that “one gets the impression that the centaur’s body is thought to be fused with the body of a monster of which only the head and the scorpion tail are visible to the eye. Is this monster related to, or even a modified version of, the Mesopotamian double-horned dragon, well known from the kudurrus, which, when appearing on seals, is usually represented with a scorpion tail? The probability of such a hypothesis can hardly be denied.” These two pertinent observations provide us with the clue to the mythological sources of our iconography; the archer’s primary function is one of guardianship, and we shall be able to distinguish the component parts of the monstrous archer from one •another, whose two heads, facing in opposite directions, already suggest the Marduk type of the Janus or Janitor.3

Figure 17 : W inged centaur with a scorpion tail, the late Kassite period in Assyria. From Fran kfort, SeaI C ylinders, pi. X X X I f, dated to ca. 1450 [B.C.] in his Chronological Index.

1 W.H. Ward, Seal Cylinders o f Western Asia, Fig. 21; University o f Pennsylvania Babylonian Expedition, vol. 14, p. 15; P. V. C. Baur, Centaurs in Ancient Art, 1912, Fig. 2.

2 P.V.C. Baur, !oc. cit., p. 2. I cannot, of course, agree with Baur’s view that the legends of Greek geometric art were “purely decorative” and that the legends “arose in connection with and in explanation of the art type.” Primitive art is never meaningless, or merely “decorative” in our quite modern sense (cf. my “Ornament,” Art Bulletin, XXI, 1939); nor are myths “poetic inventions," but much rather as Euripedes says, “the myth is not my own, 1 had it from my mother.” As even Frankfort is aware, “divine symbols . . . are based on something more definite than a poetical simile” (Seal Cylinders, p. 95)!

3 For Marduk as Janus, four-eyed, etc., see Langdon, Semitic Mythology, pp. 68, 69-294. Just as in India the Sun is also Death (£># X.5.2.3,13) so is Marduk with Nergal, Death who, like the Indian Yama “is often called the twin god” and has for symbol “two lion heads, dos a dos, looking right and left.” In the building of the Indian Fire-altar, the gold plate (with 21 knobs, representing rays) representing the Sun (solar disk) is laid face downwards, for the Sun shines downwards; and upon it is laid the figure of the Golden Man, the Person in the Sun facing upwards, “the one so as to look hitherwards, and the other so as to look away from here” (ίΒ . VII.4.1.10, ιη, l8) — thus, and more naturally looking outwards and inwards radier dian to the right and left, though the Sanskrit sources emphasize that the Solar watchman really faces every way and sees all things.

For the Janus type cf. also P le Gentilhomme, “Les Quadriga/ Nutnmi et le dieu Janus" Rev. Numismatique, IV, 1934, Ch. III. “Les doubles tetes dans /'art asiatiqu"e·, G. Furlani, “Dei e demoni bijronti e bicefali dell'Asia occidentale antica,” Analecta Orientalia 12,1935. pp. 136-62; Rene Guenon, “Le symbolisme solstitial de Janus" Etudes Traditionelles, 43,1938, pp. 273-77· [Reprinted in Fundamental Symbols by Rene Guenon, Fons Vitae, 1995.]

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Figure 18 : A rchcr-centaur from •an impression on a clay tablet from N ippur, Kassite period, ca. 1350 B.C. In P.V.C. Baur, Centaurs in Ancient Art, Fig. 2.

We shall now have to consider a series of seals, mosdy Assyrian and of average date about 1000 B.C., on which the conflict with Marduk (Ninurta, etc.) with Zu (Imugud) is represented in various ways, but more often than not as that of a dragon with an eagle or griffin. Rather near to the kudurru type is Ward’s seal No. 631 (Fig. 19) where the Defender is a winged archer centaur, with one bearded human head and two tails, one equine and the other a scorpion, the latter shifted forward to the middle of the back; and three forelegs, of which one is human and two seem to end in scorpion-claws.1 The main body, hind legs and true tail are unmistakably equine. O f the same sort is Ward’s No. 632 ([our] Fig. 20).

In other versions of die same subject the figure of the bearded archer is separated from its winged draconian vehicle, now lion-faced and horned, and breathing fire, and scorpion-tailed and without any recognizably equine features.121 Our

Fig. 19

Figures 19 and 20: Archer-centaur and winged lion from Ward, Sea/ Cylinders o f Western Asia, Figs. 631 and 632. Fig. 631 is from an agate cylinder-seal, dates from the Neo-Babylonian period (m id-first millennium B.C.) and is from the Pierpont Morgan Library, N. Y.

1 This “clovcn hoof” might be more significant than it appears at first sight. P.D. Krieschgauer (“Die Klapptore am Rande der Erde in der altmexikanischen Mythologie und einige Beziehungen zur A/ten Welt," Anthropos, X1I-XIII, 1917-18, pp. 272-312) shows, with reference to the figure of a scorpion-tailed quadruped with clovcn feet (p. 278 and Abb. 2a) or, in his own words, “rnit deut/ichen Symplegaden- Hockem ausgestattet,” must be regarded as significant of the Active Door.

12 The type is to all intents and purposes an illustration of die text of Psalms XVIII.10, “He rode upon a cherub and did fly, yea he flew swiftly upon the wings of the wind."]

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Figure 2 1:

Fig. 21 illustrates a fine example in Philadelphia; and very like it are Moortgart s No. 595,1 Wards No. 575, and Webers No. 295.2 In the last mentioned the tree which the archer is defending against the aquiline robber-hero is clearly shown. In one of the finest seals extant, now in Berlin (Fig. 22),3 the bearded archer is dismounted and preceded by his draconian vehicle or attendant, a homed monster whose hind-quarters are decidedly equine; the tree is again clearly shown, and the Defenders draconian assistant is taking part in the battle. On still another seal4 the Defender and his vehicle are again compounded.

It will be observed, too, that our type of Marduk approximates that of the Chimera and that of the bicephalous Cerberus with the serpents tail (Figs. 23 [and] 24). We know that all these, together with Geryon and others, are from one lineage (Hesiod, Theog. 270-86). The composite type of the monstrous archer corresponds, in fact, very nearly to that of the composite man whom Plato compares to such syncretic figures as those of the Chimera, Scylla or Cerberus: The outer form of a man, he says, embodies at the same time a many-headed

Figure 22: Archer with dragon-vehide and Zu from Babylon, Assyrian ca. 1000 B.C. In Moortgart, Vorderasiatische RoIIsiegel, Fig. 616; and Franfbrt XXXIV a. Staat. Museum, Berlin.

A. Moortgart, Vorderasiatitische RoIIsiegel, 1940, No. 595; seal of Ninurta-bel-asur, S. Langdon, Semitic Mythology, Fig. 81.O. Weber, Altorientatische Siegelbilder, 1920; in the Pierpont Morgan Library, not the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Ward, No. 565.Moortgart, No. 616 (note that Moortgart always confuses the aquiline Zu with Tiamat).Frankfort, Seal Cylinders, pi. XXIV a, cf. d.

“Marduk and a dragon,” as described in Langd on , Sem itic M ythology, Fig. 81. C f. also Frankfort, X X X V b and M oo rtgart, Vorderasiatische RoIIsiegel, Fig. 595.

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and various beast, a lion. The Inner Man we think of [as] a man, a just man and master of himself when the latter is in full control of the beast (appetites), and has made an ally of the lion (boldness, courage), the beast and the lion in this context {Rep. 580 B £) corresponding to the two horses diat elsewhere represent, in the bodily team, the worse and better parts of the mortal soul. We can state die parallel at once from the Indian and Plutarch’s point of view, if we say that Marduk himself is die Inner Man of the Sun, or Person in the Sun, or “Apollo as distinguished from Helios”; and that he is also our own Inner Man, to be distinguished from the composite psycho-physical vehicle of which he is the rightful lord and Master.

A double parallel with Indra can be recognized here. For, in the first place, we must suppose that Marduk or Ningszida has originally, like the man who is master of himself, subdued the dragon on which he rides or sits1 or with which he is

Figu re2j: Chim acra, drawing by Lindsley F. Hall o f a Corindiian plate. M e t r o p o l i t a n Museum, New York, MM9946.

Figure24: H erakles and Cerberus from Daerenberg et Saglio, Diction. A nt., T. I ll , p. 98.

1 On die kudurru of Melisipak “the throne of Marduk with spade is supported bv the dragon which he subdued in his victory' overTiamat” (Langdon, Semitic Mythology, p. 137).

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incorporated; these two expressions amounting to the same thing where, as in Indian and Platonic contexts, the body is precisely the vehicle and standing-ground of the Spirit. There survive, in fact, several early (Sargonid, ca. 2500 B.C.) seals representing the conflict of God or gods with a horned or seven-headed dragon. One of these (Fig. 25) is righdy described by Langdon as “Ninurta pursuing the Mushussu,” though the principal deity might well have been called Adad, the god of storms whose distinctive weapon is the thunder bolt.1 On the second seal of the same kind the dragon is seven-headed, and four of the heads have already been smitten, while the dragons body is going up in flames.2 A stone relief from Malatya (Fig. 26), dateable [to] about 1000 B.C., is of the same type.3 I cannot but see the same conflict in the many representations of Marduk as an archer shooting at a homed dragon, evidendy the protector of the tree that is seen between the combatants (Fig. 13 [page 26]); alternatively it is with the scorpion that Marduk fights,4 and in both cases it is to be understood that what is shown is Marduk’s

Langdon, Semitic Mythology, p. 129 ff., and Fig. 57; Frankfort, Seal Cylinders, p. 216; Moortgart s Nos. 680, 681 (Vorderasiatitische RoIIsiegel, pi. 80) are of die same type. Langdon is altogether mistaken in equating Mushussu and “Azhi (= Ahi)” with Zu (!), who is certainly not the “poisonous tooth” of the Hymn to Ninurta, p. 129) but one of Tiamat’s hosts (cf BM. Seven Tablets, IV.53), and probably Mushussu himself. One can hardly identify· the dragon with that very Zu against whom Marduk and the dragon fight together.

The God of Storms who, like Marduk rides the dragon or in a dragon-drawn chariot on so many seals is only another aspect of Marduk himself, who is expressly “the driver of the chariot of storms" (BM. Babylonian Legends. . . , Seven Tablets II.I18, IV.50, pp. 46,56) cf. Langdon Fig. 56. Frankfort, Seal Cylinders, p. 122 and plate ΧΧΠΙ j; C.H. Gordon, The Living Past, seal 14, pp. 124-5; cf. Weber, Altorienta/ische Siegelbilder, No. 347; and J.H. Levy, “The Oriental Origin of Herakles,” JH S. 54,1934, Fig. I (hero in conflict with a five-headed Hydra and a scorpion-tailed dragon).E. Herzfeld, in Arch. Mitth. aus Iran II, 1930, pi. XII; A. Moortgart, Die Bildenden Kunst des Alten Orients, 1932, pi. LXXXII.For the types o f Fig. 13 see Weber, Altorientalische Siegelbilder, No. 349; and Moortgart, Vorders. RoIIsiegel, pi. 82 (where the scorpion-man of No. 696 corresponds to the horned Mushussu of Nos. 689-95.

Figure 25: “Ninurta (Marduk, Ashur) pursuing Mushussu” in Langdon, Semitic Mythology, p. 131; cf. Ward, 19 10 , No. 579. First millennium B.C. In the British Museum 89589, serpentine.

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original conquest of the deadly powers that he subsequendy rides or incorporates. These types form, accordingly, the only exception to the truth of Frankfort’s observation that “the scorpion tail is never quarry but always support” (Seal Cylinders, p. 216), a proposition diat holds good absolutely for the conflicts of Marduk with Zu, who can never be equated widi the scorpion-man.

In these representations of the fight of a god with Mushus'su, die dragon whom he afterwards rides or incorporates, many scholars have recognized the archtypes or equivalents of “the Grecian myth of Heracles and the seven-headed Hydra,”1 of the Hebrew myth of Yaw’s (Yahveh’s) batde with Leviathan (a “serpent” in Isaiah XXVII.i), and of Indra’s victory over Ahi-Vrtra2 and it would be remarkable if this entire Indian and Iranian legend was not ultimately Sumarian.

We have stressed the words “rides or incorporates” above, because it is just in this connection that some of die oldest parallels are to be found in the Indian accounts of Indra’s fight with Ahi-Vrtra. It is true, indeed, that we do not find Indra actually riding a dragon. But we do find that his vehicle, especially as a Storm-god, is the elephant Airavata (Eravana); and here it is not at all insignificant that the word for “elephant,” naga, is also the word for “dragon.” For Airavata is Dhrtarastra, the Regent of the East, originally a King of the Dragon-Nagas but sometimes also king of the Gandharvas;3 and there can be no

Figure 26: The slaying o f the serpent Illuyankas by the Sky or Weather God, Malatva. Present Turkey, Hittite orthostat, 1050-850 B.C. In the Archeological Museum, Ankara.

1 C.H. Gordon, !oc. cit., p. 125.2 Langdon, Semitic Mythology, pp. 129 ff. Cf. E. Siecke, Drachenkampfe, 1907; my “Angel and Titan,”

JAOS. 55,1935, p. 390, note 244 L. Von Schroeder, “Heracles and Indra,” Denkscbrifien d.k. Acad. IViss., Wien, 28, 3 and 4, 1914; Von Schroeder (3, p. 92); in connection with Atlas who, in that he holds apart Sky and Earth (Pausanias), corresponds to the Indian skambha (AV. X.8.2. etc.) and atman (CU. VlII.4.4), and plays the part of Indra in this respect, remarks that "Alle dieser Mytben weisen, wie nir scheint, auf einen Urmythos zuruck." It is, in fact, only to the extent that this oecumenical Urmythos has been grasped that the iconography of its widely disjecta membra can be fully understood. Cf. EM . Cornford, “A Ritual Basis for Hesiod’s Theogony,” reported in JU S. LX, 1940, p. xi (“The opening of the Gap (Chaos) reappears in Hesiod’s myth as the forcing apart of Ouranos and Gaia by Chronos . . . the incidents, though blurred, are recognizably parallel to the exploits of Marduk in the Babylonian hymn (miscalled ‘Epic’) of Creation." References to the separation of Sky and Earth, who were originally one, abound in R V and in many other mythologies.

3 Notably in D.I1.257-8, where Dhattarattha is the king of the Gandhabbas, but also (with Eravana) classified amongst the dragons (naga) such as eagles prey upon. On the other hand in Sn. 379 nagaraja eravano narna, “naga" remains ambiguous.

G u a r d ia n s o f t h e S u n d o o r

possible doubt that all four Regents of the Quarters were originally dragons and only later “elephants”;1 and so it is that lndra’s vehicle is, after all, originally a dragon. Again, it is true that Indra is hardly ever represented with ophidian parts,2 but always anthropomorphically, though he is said to assume all forms. Nevertheless, he certainly “incorporates” Vrtra, whom he even “devours,”3 or who enters into him “to kindle thee,'4' that thou mayest eat,” so that “Vrtra is the belly, hunger is man’s enemy,” and Vrtra remains to this day the consumer of food within us, viz. the digestive fire;5 and furthermore, having thus literally incorporated Vrtra, Indra “is now what Vrtra was” (TS.II.4.12.6; $B. I.6.3.17). The acquisition of powers and properties, and in fact of a new “character,” by eating of the victim’s flesh is, of course, a very familiar mythological formula, and one that underlies the philosophy of all eucharistic meals.6 In the present case Indra, having devoured the lunar Vrtra, is “born again of the sacrifice” and “becomes Mahendra.” Is it not in the same way that Marduk “incorporates” Mushussu?

It is in the present connection, that of the double sense of the designation naga, that the explanation o f the flying elephant with knotted serpent’s tail (Fig. 27) is to be found. This literally elephantine bird paraphrases on the one hand the centaur with the knotted serpent’s tail, and on the other the two-headed eagle type of Marduk7 and the corresponding Indian

References are summarised in J. Ph. Vogel, Indian Serpent-Lore, pp. 212-14. Further evidence for the elephant and reptile can be cited in the fact that at Barhut and Amaravati the elephant, yaksa, fijll-vessel and makara (“crocodile,” Varuna’s vehicle = Ea’s “fish-ram”) occur interchangeably as the source of life. See my Yaksas, Pt. II, 1931 [second edition published bv IGNCA and Oxford University Press, 1993], comparing pi. n, Fig. 1 and pi. 37, Fig. 4 with pis. 38,42, Fig. 1, etc.The reservation is made with reference to the remarkable image from Mathura described by J. Ph. Vogel, La Sculpture de Mathura, 1930, p. 46 and pi. XXXIX; the figure is anthropomorphic and identified as indra by the typical crown (kirita) and the thunderbolt (vajra). A quiver full of arrows having heads of serpents is worn and, even more remarkable, the head and shoulders arc surrounded by figures of semi-anthropomorphic Nagas, one holding a cup, and two of which spring from the shoulders. It is, then, a representation of Indra as a draconian archer.RV. X.113.8 (vrtram ahim. . . avayat); TS. Π.4-Γ2.3 (anansyavab, $B. 1.6.4 (grasitva, Indra here being the Sun and Vrtra the Moon — like Marduk and Tiamat, cf. Pauly-Wissowa s.v. Sterne, p. 121, and Jeremias, Hdbk. Altor. Geistesgeschichte, p. 29).The burning of Vrtra by Agni, who thus consumes his “evil,” in XI.1.5.8 corresponds at the same time to die representations on the seals, and to the burning of the Lernean Hydra bv lolaus, in aid of Herakles. In some contexts the burning is expressly of the “sixteen coils” in which Vrtra entangles Indra (TS. II.4.1.6, V.4.5.4).]The meal is eucharistic, and in terms of cannibal philosophy, necessarily endows the eater with the powers of the eaten; and “what is eaten is called by the eater’s name and not its own" ($B. X.6.2.1), for “whatever is received into anything is, thereinafter, of the recipient” (St. Thomas Aquinas, Sum. Theo. Suppl. 92.1). It must not be forgotten that “Soma was Vrtra" (έΒ. passim), and is the sacrificial victim.Hence, as “grace" before meals, one should say, “Kindle the fire” (samintsvagnim). The reference is to that Agni who may not be safely touched, i.e. the Varunya Agni o f AB. III.4 (cf. TS. V.1.6.1) who must be "made a friend” (Mitra); “and verily he of the gods is the most voracious, this Agni . . . Verily, if one eats while the voracious one docs not eat, he would be likely to fasten upon him (abhisariktoh), like a snake." So, then, when the meal is announced, one would say, “Let our superior be ingested first (parivestavai, cf. Mbh. II.40 agniiii vastrena parivestayan), even so it is” (JUB. Π.15.1-3).Langdon, Semitic Mythology.

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gatjda-bherundaWe shall not discuss the motive here at any length, but only point out that in our picture (Fig. 27) die ophidian-elephantine- bird is attacked by the Simurgh, the Islamic equivalent of the Indian Garuda. We read, in fact, in KS. of a flying elephant attacked by a garuda\ and it is evident that the conflict of the Simurgh with the flying elephant is really an exact equivalent of the conflicts of the Simurgh with a dragon, as illustrated, for example, in our Fig. 27; in both cases the battle takes place in a Paradise landscape, of which the ophidian-elephantine-bird must be regarded as the Defender.

Returning now to a further consideration of the seals, we shall find another group of types on which the bearded deity, armed with a bow, club or sickle, and sometimes but not always winged, fights alone, unsupported by any vehicle or associate. In our Fig. 282 the Defender wields a club, and as Langdon remarks, “Zu has become a

Figure 27: Mughal carpet with the elephantine- headed lion aUacked by Simurgh. Boston Museum 93.1890.

Figure 28: Combat o f M arduk and the dragon Zu, cf. Langdon, Semitic Mythology, p. 82. Here the Zu bird has become a Pegasus (Langdon, ib. p. 279) “ [as] based on an ancient astronomical association” (ib. p. 283). Cf. Ward, Fig. 580.

1 Full references to the types of the flying elephant and to the literature will be found in my Catalogue of the Indian Collections VI. Mughal Painting, Boston 1930, pp. 90-3; to which should be added Dh.A. I.164 where a skyfaring elephant-bird (hatthUinga-sakuno aknsena gacchanto) carries off a woman, and an incorporated glossary explains that “these birds” are as strong as five elephants, and can therefore carry' off their victims through the air to be devoured at leisure, i.e. in the branches of their tree, in this case a nigodhcr, and that it is their custom to keep watch (oloketi) upon the road that leads to their home. The elephant-bird is a Defender, and not (as in my Catalogue mistakenly) to be identified with the Simurgh or Garuda, the Hero.

2 Ward, 580; Langdon, Semitic Mythology, p. 82.

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Figure jo : Marduk, Zu and the Tnx· of Life. In Philadelphia, Museum of Fme Arts.

Figure 29: Marduk and the winged-οχ. In Moortgart, Fig. 706.

Pegasus . . . the winged horse is a form of Zu, based on an astronomical identification”;1 while in our Fig. 29 the Defender of the tree is an archer, and Zu is a horned Pegasus or winged Unicom or perhaps a bull.2 In the case of two fine seals, one in Philadelphia (Fig. 30) and one from the Brett Collection (No. 129), now in Boston,3 the bearded Defender (Marduk-Ashur) is winged, and the tree is a Pillar of Light, candelabra-like and supporting a flaming Sun. In these, and in most of the cases referred to above, it is clear that Zu is repulsed.

Figure j i : Scorpion-man on kudurru o f Nebuchadnezzar 1. Babylonian, 1300B.C. [Drawing after Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy. — Ed.]

1 Langdon, ib. pp. 279, 283. The “astronomical explanation” may be doubted. Zu = Pegasus, just as the Indian Syena [and] Suparna = Dadhyanc.

2 Moortgart 706. Cf. Weber, Altorienhdiscbe Siegelbilder, 1920.3 MFA. 41.479; H.H. von dcr Osten, Ancient Oriental Seals in the Collection o f Mrs. Agnes Baldwin

Brett, 1936, p. 55 and pi. VI, no. 129. For the candelabra types of the Tree o f Light, cf. L. Legrain, Culture of the Babylonians, 1925, nos. 594,598, 845; Frankfort, Seal Cylinders, pis. XXIII a and XXXV d; Weber, Altorientalische Siegelbilder, 1920,328,336,475,476, 477,481, etc.

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Our archer appears on some of the kudurrus (Fig. 31) and on many seals1 in the form of the “scorpion-man” (girtab-i/i). Where (Fig. 32)2 the scorpion-man is accompanied and assisted by a dog, this dog is no doubt the same that accompanies the scorpion-tailed centaur (Fig. 16 [, page 31]). To have recognized at last that “Sagittarius appears in the . . . Kassite period as a scorpion-man or centaur shooting with bow and arrow”131 takes us far on the way to a solution for our problems, for we know a good deal about scorpion-men, whose forms already appear in the third millennium B.C.·* We know from the Gilgamesh Epic that scorpion-men, or rather man and wife, are stationed at the ends of the Earth as guardians of the Sun — “Scorpion-men guard his gate . . . whose

F ig u reJ2 : Scorpion-man corresponding to Marduk. Ward 630.

' The scorpion-man is one of Ummu-Khubur's brood of snakes and other monsters whom Kingu, her first born son, commands (British Museum, Babylonian Legends of Creation, 1931, 3rd tablet, Is.23-6). Kingu, cf. Frankfort, Seal Cylinders, p. 156, is later sacrificed for the creation of man (6’h tablet, is 19-26), and can be compared to the Indian Ahi (Vrtra), “the first born of the serpents, or dragons," slain by Indra (Rgveda I.32.1-4).

Clay and wooden figures of scorpion-men, spotted dogs, Mushussu, Ugallu, etc. have been found buried beside the doorways of Babylonian houses, with evidendy apotropaic intention (L.C. Woolcy, “Babylonian Prophylactic Figure,” JR A S. 1926, 689 f.). E . Pottier speaks o f scorpions as "fetishes protecteurs" (Delegation en Perse, ΧΠ1, Ceramique peinte de Suse, p. 58). The memory of a scorpion-archer certainly survives in σκόρπιός, an engine o f war for discharging arrows (Plutarch, Marcell, 15). Σκορπίο-μάχος (Aristotle, Mirah. 139) = άκρίς = Larin gryllus parallels the όφιο-μάχης of the Septuagint and Philo (see in HJAS. VI, 1942, pp. 393-8) and we suggest that the “scorpion-fighter,” like the “snake-fighter,” was not a “locust” or “grasshopper" but an ichneumon. For grylli in the mythological sense as magical symbols see A. Roes, “New Light on Grylli,” _///& 55, 1935; W. Fraenger in Jahrbuch f. Hist. Volkskunde, II 1926, pp. 128-30 (note especially Fig. 1); J. Hackin, Recherches archeologiques a Begram, 1939, pp. 21,22 (Indian examples).

Dante (Inferno, XVII) makes Geryon “with the pointed tail" essentially “a scorpion-man”; he has the face of a just man, and the rest of him is ophidian, and “in the void glanced all his tail, twisting upwards the venomed fork, which, as in scorpions, armed die point.”

Indian texts in which scorpions are associated with snakes include Rgveda 1.191.16; Atharva Veda X.5.9,15 and XX.1.46; $ilhkbayanaAranyakaXII.27.

1 Ward, 630.'5 Frankfort, Seal Cylinders, p. 156.]4 C.L. Wooley, Ur Excavations II, pi. 105.

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Figurej j : W inged A shur supported by scorpion-m an w ith bearded Orants, Phoenician. Cf. Ward, Seal Cylinders, no. 1153, in British Museum. Frankfort X X X III c.

glance is death . . . they guard Shamash at the rising and setting of the sun.”1 Scorpion-men with uplifted arms, guarding a solar shrine, are well represented on Frankfort’s seal, p. XXXIII e [our Fig. 33], while on his seal, ib. b, a single scorpion-man with uplifted arms “supports” the solar winged disc; cf. Moortgart 598,599, 709, 752. A comparison with Moortgart’s nos. 692 and 696 (where the archer is the attacking hero, comparable to Herakles) will demonstrate the equivalence of the homed serpent and scorpion-man, these last being defenders of the Tree, from which it is clear that the scorpion-man has been driven off. In other cases the solar janitors appear in the altogether human forms of bearded deities; sometimes, however, of the Janus type (Frankfort XVIII a) [our Fig. 34]. The evidence adduced so far points to the conclusion that there is to be recognized a whole series of the types of the defender of the Tree, ranging from that of the bearded human-headed snake, or scorpion-tailed centaur, or dragon to others in which the component elements of die human and monstrous forms are completely separated and then either cooperate or act independendy. We are dealing, in other words, with the personality of a deity whose special functions are indicated not only by his actions, but also by the weapons he employs and by the draconian monster with which he may be organically combined and which serves equally as his vehicle whether he is combined with it or rides upon it; one is reminded of

Ft U v f :i?

Figure J4 : Samas [i.e. Shamash] rising with anthromorphic janitors opening his gates. Cf. Frankfort, Cylinder Seals, pi. X V III a. Boston Museum 89110; serpentine; 3.8 by 2.45 cm.

1 Langdon, Semitie Mythology, p. 209; c£ British Museum, Epic of Gilgamesh, 1920, p. 50. The scorpion-men here are man and wife; the man claims Gilgamesh as food for the gods, but the wife recognizcs that he is two-thirds divine and only one-third human, and [the] final result is that Gilgamesh is allowed to continue on his way, still beset with dangers, until he reaches the Paradise garden in which the Plant of Life is growing.

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tlie Indian theological dictum, that “the weapons and the vehicle of any deity are his fiery-energy (tejas) . . . he himself becomes his own vehicle and weapon.”1 The question is no longer “entirely unsolved,” as to why this dragon was combined with the constellation Sagittarius.

We have referred to the solar Defender, so far, as Marduk (his name in the Babylonian theology), Ashur (his name in the Assyrian) and as Shamash (his name in Semitic). As Ashur he is, of course, the well-known bearded archer of die solar disc (Fig. 35); the type, reawakened and given new spiritual content after thousands of years, can still be recognized in William Blake’s Repulse ofthe Rebel Angels.

The great variety of Marduk’s forms is sufficiendy implied by the text of the first of the Seven Tablets of Creation, where we are told that he has the double form of a god, and that his measures “are not fitted for human understanding, difficult to survey,” that he is very tall, four-eared and four-eyed, and all-seeing Sun and Child of the Sun.2 He is, in fact, a rebirth of his father, Ea, whose identity with the Assyrian Lahmu fully accounts for his ophidian characteristics. Marduk is also Ba'al, or Bel, “the Lord,” and like the Indian Indra to whom he corresponds, is the “King of the gods.” But the iconography of die Assyrian seals is ultimately Sumerian, and it is an older Sumerian deity, Ninurta or Ningiszida, that Marduk really represents.3 Who are these, or Who is this? According to Frankfort, Ningiszida, Ninurta, Ningirsu, Ab-u, Dumuzi (Tammuz) are all epithets, i.e. aspects, of “a god who personified the generative forces of nature and was

Figure35 : The sun god in the winged disc above a “sacred tree” flanked by two winged human figures with buckets, both standing on the backs o f w inged bearded sphinxes. Assyrian, pink jasper. British Museum 89415, cf. Ward 679 and Lavard, Culte de M ithra, pi. X LIX .9.

1 Brhaddevata I.74; Nirukta VII.4.2 British Museum, Babylonian Legends o f the Creation, 1931, p. 39; Langdon, Semitic Mythology, p. 294.1 Mrs. Van Buren, “The God Ningizzida," /ray, I; Frankfort, “Gods and Myths on Sargonid Seals,"

ib., and Seal Cylinders, 119 f. and passim, Langdon, Semitic Mythology, pp. 131,136 etc., and Tammuz and Ishtar, p. Xl6.

Ningiszida corresponds to the constellation Hydra, Siru or Siris, and “inscriptions prove that by the serpent dragon and the lion, the constellations Hydra and Leo were intended” (Jercmias, Altorientalische Geistesgeschichte, p. 288, Fig. 133. Cf. Langdon, Semitic Mythology, Fig. 89; F.X. Kugler, Stemkunde und Stemdienst, 19 09 ,1.125). An excellent example of the Leo-Aquarius, “solar lion with the dragons tail" (Hartner, p. 144) type occurs on the fibulae of the ~f'-61'1 century B.C. in Greece (Chr. Blickenburg, Fibu/esgrecs et orientates, 1926, pp. 280-1, Fig. 319), and this type survives in the

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therefore manifest in the fertility of the soil and oi the flocks, who lived in the nether [if. other] world and often assumed the shape of a serpent, who was exposed to dangerous encounters but succeeded in vanquishing monsters, and whose connubium with a goddess was an essential part of the annual ritual. If he was invoked by varying epithets, these do not seem to have obliterated, in the third millennium, at least, the consciousness of his one and single individuality.1 As, however, there are many names, so there are many aspects; and if Ningiszida is sometimes the Janitor and at the same time the Deity ab intra, this is no more surprising than [that of him who] says “I am the door,” and “No man cometh to the father save by me,” [that one who also said] that “I and the father are one."

We have said that Ningiszida has ophidian characteristics, such as are, indeed, almost everywhere characteristics of the high gods of life and fertility.2 He is a god of healing, a physician, Asclepios or Varuna.3 He may be represented in die form of a serpent-man, with human torso and lower part ophidian (Fig βό);4 or

Figure j6 : Snake-god (N ingiszida), worshipper, door and janitor. From O. Weber, Altorientalisehe Siegelbilder, No. 394; Bib. Nat. 78.III.

(Continuedfrom preceding page.)art oflslam (Hartner, Fig. 23). In the case of Islamic representations of the Four Evangelists (Hartner, Fig. 18 = Survey o f Persian Art, pi. 853 b) it is St. Luke’s bull, and not St. Mark’s lion, that is given the knotted tail. The addition of the knotted serpent’s tail to the winged elephant of the Mughal carper (Fig. 27 [page 39]) is quite in order, as explained above. In C.J. Hynginus, Poeticon astronomicon, Venice, 1482, Capricomus has the knotted tail; Sagittarius is horned.

1 Frankfort, “Gods and Myths on Sargonid Seals,” Iraq I, pp. 16 ,17, cf. 27. On die early monotheism cf. Seal Cylinders, p. 112; Langdon, Semitic Mythology, p. 93; W. von Soden, Gotterspaltung und Gottervereinigung, 1933; and more generally, W. Schmidt, Origin and Growth o f Religion, 1935. In India also the appearance of polytheism is undoubtedly a secondary development; in RV. for example, Gandharva and Yaksa are singular, and only later many; cf. my “Vedic Monotheism” in JH I. XV.

2 Cf. my “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; Indra and Namuci,” Speculum XIX , 1944, pp. 104-25.

3 For Asklepios see J. Harrison, Themis, pp. 381-4, and H.J. Rose, Handbook o f Greek Mythology, 139 t.; Langdon, Semitic Mythology, pp. 79 ft. Varuna — amrtasya gopa, Rgveda V ill.42.2; bhisajam pati, Vajasuneyi Samhita XXI.40; identified with Soma, Rgveda IX77.5, IX.95.5, Tait. Sam. VI.1.11 (Sayana, somo varuno bhavati), and Langdon, Semitic Mythology, p. 77 f , and Egyptian forms of Asklepios.

4 Weber 394, cf. Moortgart[.]

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Figure j8 : Ningiszida on U g-hu, inscribed: To the god Iha 'um, Beli-palu has dedicated (this) . . . sealfor his life and the life o f his son, Ur-Nin-asu. Agade Dynasty, black and white speckled diorite or gabbro. In the British Museum, 122125.

1 Ningiszida is, accordingly, die arch type of the Persian epic Zohak ( = Azhi Dahaka).2 Cf. Langdon, Sumerian Epic o f Paradise, 1915, p. 42, where the w o janitors, Tammuz and Giszida,

see and question Adapa, introduce him to Anu and intercede for him. They are, of course, to be identified with the two scorpion-men, whose sting they retain. Elsewhere the same two janitors are represented in purely anthropomorphic “Gilgamesh" types, e.g. Moortgart, Vorderasiatische Rol/spiegel, 1940, Fig. 99.

Figu rejy: Ninurta, god with bow and arrow and mace, attacking Zu , the bird o f prey;Gibil (Agni), god with rays at shoulders; Dumuzu-ab-zu, with corn growing from robe; Ningis'zida, god with battle-ax under left arm; Ea, god with streams falling from shoulders or with water streaming from a vase; attendant holding post. C f. Frankfort, pi. X X III g, p. 135; E .D . Van Buren, Iraq, I, pi. IX a, pp. 70 f. Green-flecked black serpentine, 38 by 24 mm. In the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 1931. 105. Kish k 962.

in human form with a pair of crowned serpents springing from his shoulders;1 or he may ride upon or be accompanied by the horned and crowned serpent-dragon, Ughu-Mushussu. On the large Ashmolean seal (Fig. 37) he appears with Gibil, Dumuzu, Ea and Ninurta (the archer) in a group of deities opposed to the Eagle Im-gig = Zu); on the British Museum seal of the Agade period (Fig. 38) he is seated upon Ug-hu (Mushussu) and receives an offering, on the seal of Gudea, his worshipper, he is conducting the king to the seated Ea-Anu (Fig. 39 [page 46]). Ningiszida is described as “to all eternity the companion of Dumuzi.” As Mrs. Van Buren says, “the legend of Adapa related how [the] two gods, Dumuti and Gizzida, stood as guardians at the door of Anus palace,”2 We have already

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seen that the garden and the tree are primarily Anu-Ea’s. Gis'-zi-da means “tree of truth,” Nin-gis'-zi-da therefore “Lord of the Tree of Truth,” i.e. Anu himself. Again, in Mrs. Van Buren’s words, “the two guardians who stood at the eastern gate of Heaven were Gizzida, Tree of Truth,’ and Dumuzi, Tree of Life,’ either as custodians of the two magic trees, or as themselves embodiments of the trees.” Ningiszida was the God (as we should express it in India, ista devata) of Gudea. His famous vase (Fig. 7 [page 14]), is dedicated to Ningiszida, “for the prolongation of his life”; and here the two Ughu, crowned and scorpion-tailed,1 holding the door-posts, are evidendy Giszida and Dumuzi. They corresponds also to the basmu and miifhussu with which “Gudea adorned2 the lock-blocks of the door of the temple of Ningirsu,” i.e. Ningiszida at Ur.3 What we see through the door is a pillar, about which are wound two guardian serpents, forming a caduceus. There can be no doubt that the wand between the two snakes of a caduceus is the vestige of this tree,4 i.e. of Ningiszida (Tammuz Soma, [or] Dionysius) himself.

Every detail of the iconography of Gudea’s vase is important to us. To begin with the door-posts are literally their cardinal elements; it will be observed that they are adorned with half-rings. Ring-posts of this kind, occurring in pairs or singly, and either beside a doorway or as structural parts of it, mark the entrance of shrines or other penetralia or of catdefolds5 (see Figs. 40-46 [pages 47-49]).

Figure39 : Ningiszida leads Gudea to Ea, the dragon Ug-hu follows. Inscribed: Gudea, governor o f Lagash·, the personal seal o f Gudea, from Tello (ancient Girsu). This figure is from an ancient impression on clay; the original seal had metal caps 3 mm thick. See also Frankfort, Fig. 37, p. 143; Wooley, Sumerians, Fig. 21 a; Van Buren, Iraq, I, p. 72, Fig. 1. In the Louvre, ca. 2120 B.C.

1 Or rather with the tails of snakes, ending in scorpion points.2 “Adorned" is here perfecdy mot juste, according to the original and proper meaning of the word.

See my “Ornament” in Art Bulletin, XXI, 1939.3 Langdon, Semitic Mythology, p. 127.4 Cf. J. Boulnois, Le Cailucee et la symbolique. . . du s e r p e n t , 1939. pp· 46,166.5 Endeavoring to keep the length of our article within bounds, we have not considered here the point

of view from which the other-world is also referred to as a "stable” or “fold” of “cattle,” which the Hero releases and carries off from their original keeper. We shall only point out here that the cattle-raiding motif represented in the Greek tradition by Herakles’ feat in carrying oft' the cattle of Gervon (whom we have elsewhere identified with the Indian three-headed Gandharva, see JAOS. 60.50, end of note 12) is highly characteristic of the Vedic tradition and even survives in Buddhism (see JAOS. 58, p. 680).

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Figure 40: Figure with feathers holding one o f the door-posts before a temple. Carved relief from Tello (ancient Girsu), ca. 2700 B.C. Limestone, 7 by 5 V., by I Ά in. One o f the oldest inscribed reliefs known. [Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy s drawing. — Ed.]

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42 a j—t .C *

42 b

Figures 42 a, b and c:Depictions of ancient Mesopotamian shrines with ringed gateposts. [Drawings after Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy. — Ed.]

a andb: From Weber 430 and 405.

a Andrae, Das Golteshaus . . . , abb. 46, Antiquities Journal, VI, pi. LM a.

42 c

Figure 43: “Sun-birds” and Sundoor with swastikas, in J .L . Myers, Handbook o f the Cesno/a Collection o f Antiquities from Cyprus, Metropolitan Museum, NewY0rk1914.pl.XLIV, Fig. 34 ,8,h century B.C.

Figure 4 4 : “Sundoor” with torches. Myers, ib id ., Fig. 595; Metropolitan Museum 74.51.475. Kylix, Early Iron Age, from Cyprus; cf. our F ig . 8 [page 15] for another depiction o f addorsed torches, and [also] Fig. 56 a [page 54].

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Figure 43: “Sundoor” white painted kylix from Cyprus.Myers, ibid., Fig. 596; Metropolitan Museum 74.51.449, ca. 1000-750 B.C. [Ananda Kentish Coom arasw am y’s drawing after M yers.Coomaraswamy also defined the ringposts here as “eyes.” — Ed.]

In connection with a large votive ring-post found at Tello (Fig. 47), Conteneau remarks on the “symbolic significance” that the Sumerians attached to the constituent parts of doors, and especially to their posts.1 In many cases the Janitor seems to be of the Gilgamesh type. In some cases Gilgamesh is almost certainly

represented as entering the gateway o f the western mountains, where he has gone in search of his ancestor Ur-napistim and to obtain the secret of immortality. In the [Gilgamesh] epic (IXth tablet) this way is guarded by the scorpion-men and leads to the Land of Darkness, through which he finally reaches the garden in which he finds “the Tree of the Gods.” On a mother-of-pearl fragment from Tello (Fig. 48 [page 50])2 we see the Hero entering a gateway, grasping its two

ring-posts; on one of the Nimrud ivories (Fig. 49 [page 50])3 alternatively, we find him grasping a pair of serpents who are either the guardians of the door or, what amounts to the same thing, its actual jambs, nor will it surprise [us] to find that the scorpions here are replaced by serpents. We cannot but regard as an identical theme that of another seal (Fig. 50 [page 51]) on

Figure 46: “Sundoor” with rings. [Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy’s drawing, possibly after C .FA . Schaeffer, “Archeological Discoveries in Toraleti, Caucasus R egion JR/IS. 1944, pi. VI. 1500-1400 B.C., Late Bronze Age. — Ed.]

Figure47: Votive door-post from Tello. [Drawing by Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy after Conteneau, M anual. . . , II, p. 588. — Ed.]

Manuald'Archeologie Orienlale, 1927, pp. 588,589; cf. 321 and 022-3[.]L. Hcuzey, Cat. des. Antiquities ebaldienes, Musce du Louvre 1902, No. 232, cf. 1 , 125.Weber, Altorientalische Siegelbilder, No. 275, in Assyrian style. Cf. in Iraq, II, p. 189, Fig. 2, a Nimrud ivory iconographically similar, but in the quasi-Egyptian style.

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*■ G u a r d ia n s o f thf . S u n d o o r -*■

Figure 48: Figure holding door-posts with lion protomas. Cf. Weber 275 and Van Buren, Iraq, II. [After Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy. — Ed.J

which the Hero in aquiline form is grasping a pair of serpents in his claws; they are the guardians of the Plant of Life, on the right o f which a figure o f the Gilgamesh type is contending with a buck. An equation of the animated door-posts with the snakes that protect them will hardly surprise us. For apart from the literary references, there exists a whole series of representations of the Sundoor (Figs. 51-56 [a and b]

[pages 51-54]),111 guarded by paired snakes, often winged and homed (Fig. 57 [page 54])· We must not forget that we are dealing with trees that can also be thought of as dragons. Mrs. Van Burens words “either as custodians of the two magic trees, or as themselves embodiments of the trees” acquire a new significance if we reflect that actual gate-posts must have been originally trunks of trees or bundles of reeds. The most significant explanation o f the “rings” has been given by Andrae, who equates them with the volutes of Ionic columns, and sees in these volutes

Figure 49: Gilgamesh figure holding ring-posts. L. Hcuzey, Cat. des Ant. eha/d., 1902, No. 232. [Drawing after Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy. — Ed.]

11 In this series of figures, we include an exemplar, Fig. 54, from P.H. Lehmanns work, Thelieiron, I, p. 27,a stele from the Sanctuary of the gods on the island of Samothrace in the northern Aegean Sea. Though this bas-relief is Late-Classical it reflects the survival of a much earlier Hellenic tradition, incorporating many of the themes Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy is concerned \vith in this essay. — Ed.]

*■ T h e G u a rd ia n s o f t h e S u n d o o r a n d t h e S a g itta ria n Τ υ ι έ -*·

Figure50: Aquiline hero grasping serpents. Cf. Apollodorus, Lib. II .4.8 where Herakles strangles the serpents. Weber 274. Black stone. Formerly Southesk Coll., British Museum 129473.

Figure5/: G uardian serpents and the Sundoor. [Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy’s drawing after R oes, D e Oorsprong der Geometrishe Kunst, H aarlem , 1931, abb. 80. From an amphora in Leiden. — Ed.]

Figure52.· [Rampant serpents flanking doors with labyrinthine motives. Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy s drawing from B. Schweitzer, Herakles, Tubingen, 1922, abb. 10, p. 35 £ Part o f the decoration of a cult vessel from Rhodes, with photograph also from A .K . Coomaraswamy’s fde, Berlin Museum No. 4563 (o). — EM.]

* 51 *

* · G u a r d ia n s o f t h e S u n d o o r

53“

53 b

53c

[Figure 55: I<»

t-.o

-*· T h e G u a r d ia n s o f t h e Su n d o o r a n d t h e Sa g it t a r ia n T y p e ·*■

T OTXAMI X ΟΎΤΤΑΡ M E Ν Ι Σ Κ Ο Σ Α Ρ Ι Σ Τ Ε Oφ ί Λ Ο Ξ Ε Ν Ο Σ φ ί Λ Ο Ξ Ε N O T

Μ Ύ 2Τ Α Ι Ε Τ Σ Ε B E ΙΣ Α Σ Κ Λ Η Τ ΤΙ Α ΔΗ Σ Α Τ Τ Α Α Ο Υ o e c r i O N η ρ ο γ ε ιτο ν ο ς k v be ρ ν η τ η ς . μ η ν ο ^ ι λ ο τ

Figure$4 : Serpents twined around torches flanking the double doors o f a shrine. Stele from Samothrace, Roman period. Samothrace Museum, 39.16 and 39.23. From P.H. Lehmann, The Heiron, I, p. 27.

[Figure55: Detail o f bead and labyrinth design on the main lintel o f the Great Central Door o f the Heiron o f Samothrace. Hellenistic period. From Karl Lehmann and Phyllis Lehman, Samothrace: The Heiron, III. Princeton, 1969, PI. XXXV III. Cf. our Fig.8 (page 15). — Ed.]

♦ 53 ^

G u a r d ia n s o f t h e S u n d o o r

Figures56 a and b: [Two o f A .K . Coomaraswamy’s drawings o f the Adyton o f the Heiron.]

a: The Adyton o f the Heiron, with central bema and torcheres,

b: Floorplan ot the Adyton, with bothros behind the torcheres.

56 b

Figure j j : Homed serpents flanking door.[A K. Coomaraswamy’s drawing after P. Toscanne, “Etudes sur le serpent figure et symbo/es dans /'antiquities elamite in Delegation enperse, XQ, 19η, Fig. 357; cf also Ward 491. — Ed.]

54

-*· T h e G u a r d ia n s o f t h e Su n d o o r a n d t h e Sa g it t a r ia n T y p e -*·

themselves the floral branches or pendant fruits of palms;1 but the form can also be otherwise developed, e.g. from the Cretan cutdefish (Figs. 58a-d [page 50]).2 In one of the most remarkable representations of Dionysos Dendrites or Perichioios (Fig. 59), the two rings attached to die herm on opposite sides are, so to speak, the deity’s arms; and Andrae, who sees that the two ring-posts taken together are conceivably the constituent parts of a single pillar with rings on both sides could well have used this Dionysos in confirmation of his theory. In the single pillar with rings on both sides Andrae, further, sees a symbol of the polar biunity, male and female, of the Supreme Identity; in his own words, “Die Verschmelzung zweier Ringbundeln in Eines ist also eine Notwendigkeit. Sie kann nur die Polaritat: Mann- Weib, die androgyne Einheit, meinenP We have, indeed, already seen that the Scorpion-“men” who keep the Sundoor are of opposite sex, and this is a very important indication, one that applies to the two sides, right and left, of die door or tree, and all to “pairs of opposites,” positive and negative, in whatever terms they may be stated; it is because the contraries actually meet, or clash, one beginning where the other ends, without interstice, that the Way that leads between them is the “strait” gate, and diat whoever passes by it is “in straits” and will be crushed if he is not adequately tenuous and nimble, as he can only be who is “in the spirit,” atmani carati.

The door-posts and their guardians are, then, the outwardly distinguished aspects of the one inwardly conjoint principle that can be seen beyond and between them, ultra coincidentiam contradictoriorum, as Nicolas of Cusa expresses it. We must now, then, consider the caduceus itself and above all in its trinitarian aspect, since it is a composite of two snakes wound about a single pillar. The two snakes are of opposite sex, and the “third” between them is their child in whom their natures are combined. Such, at least, are the explicit or implicit Assyrian, Greek[,] Indian, Chinese, Islamic and Christian interpretations. To begin with the Assyrian: The primordial serpents Lahmu and Lahamu (his wife) beget Ashur, the Solar God of wisdom; or to say the same in terms of Babylonian dieology, Ea (Enki, Oannes) and his wife Damkina begat Marduk.4 In the Greek version, as told by Athenogoras, Zeus and his daughter Rhea (Persephone) assumed the forms of male and female dragons (serpents), and

1 W. Andrae, Das Gotteshaus und die Urformen des Bauens, Berlin, 1930, pp. 49,50 and 55-6; Die ionische Saule, Bauform oder Symbol, Berlin, 1933.

Andrae’s interpretation need not be taken to exclude the practical use of the (metal) rings, as deduced by Alexander zu Eltz, “Nomadic Tradition in the Prehistoric Near East,” Bull. /I. Inst, for Iranian Art and Archeology, V, 193 7, pp. 63-70.

• On this theme sec my “Tantric Doctrine of Divine Biunity," Ann. Bhandarkar Or. Res. Soc., XIX, 1938, pp. 173-83; Spiritual Authority and Temporal Power. . . , 1942; H.R. Zimmer, “Sri-Yantra and Siva-Trimurti," Rev. o f Religion, Nov. 1943.

“Not that the One is two, but that these two are One” (Hermes Trismegistos, XVI.3).3 W. Andrae, “Schr ft und Bi/d," in Analecta Orientalia 12, Rome, 1935, p. 5.4 Seven Tablets of Creation, I.78 £, British Museum Babylonian Legends o f Creation, 1931, p. 38; Langdon,

Semitic Mythology, 1931, pp. 103 and 291-3. In earlier Sumerian and Accadian texts the parents of Ningiszida are Ninazu (the Sun-god about to decline) and Ereshkigal (the Earth-goddess), or Nergal (the Sun as Death) and Ereshkigal, whose form was ophidian and who, like Ningiszida himself, was identified with the constellation Hydra; the story of Nergal s quarrel and subsequent marriage with his sister Ereshkigel corresponds to the Indian myth of Yama and Yami (RV. X.io ,]U B. I.53 f.), the sister in both cases being the wooer (Langdon, ib. 163-5). AM diese stories of the marriage of Heaven and Earth are variants of the one “Liehesgeschichte Himmels"

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G u a r d ia n s o f tiif. S u n d o o r

Figure 58 a: Late Helladic No. 708.

Figure 58 b:Late Helladic ΙΠ. P. 178, No. 696.

Figure 58 e:Late Helladic III. R 179, No. 699.

Figure j8 d:Spiral and “door” from a crater, No. 53, Side i, found in Tomb XV. Late Helladic III. P. 187, No.719.

Figures 58 a-d: [The spiral form in Hellas, ca. 1600-1300 B.C. Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy's drawings after C.W. Blegen, Prosyma, 1937, Vol. II. The cutdefish in the text is our Fig. 58 c. - Ed.]

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T h e G u a r d ia n s o f t h e Su n d o o r /\n d t h e Sa g it ia r ia n T yp e ·*■

Figure59: D ionysos δενδίτης, A ttic red-figured vase. From Langlotze, Griechische Vasen im Wurzburg, 1932, No. 520.

“tied themselves together in what is called ‘the knot of Herakles,’ and so mingled (συνήσας αυτήν τώ καλουμίνδυ ηοακλεωτικω ίίμματι έμι'γυη); and the symbol of die pattern of their mingling is the ‘Wand of Hermes’.”1 The product of their union was Zagreus, i.e. Dionysos. In A.B. Cook’s account, “Zeus consorted with his own mother, Rhea, both he and she being in the forms of snakes, and had by her a horned, four-eyed, two-faced daughter Persephone or Kore, with whom he, again in snake form, consorted and had for offspring a horned babe, the chthonic Dionvsos or7 J

Zagreus”2 — in whom Euripedes saw an Asiatic deity, and whom we identify widi Ningiszida, Tammuz, Dumu-zi, the “faidifiil son,” an archtype of Christ.

In India, Soma is the “Son of Sky” (divah sisu, RV IX.38.5), and in Sayana’s words, “That is his sonship.” The child of Heaven and Earth is begotten of his parents in the form of footless (snakes): “The two immobile, foodess ones (apadl) bear the mobile footed germ of multiplicity; as it were their eternal son in his parents’ womb — May Sky and Earth protect us from un-being (raksatum no abhvai)\ Co-mingling (saiiigacchanmne), young (unaging), conterminous (samante),

1 Athenagoras, Supplication pro Christianis, 16.5. The text is citcd, together with others, by L. Stephani in Comptc-Remiu de la Commission Archeologique (for 1880), St. Petersburg, 1882 and discussed by B. Segall, Katalogder Gotdschmiede-Arbeiten, Museum Benaki, Athens 1938, pp. 86,118 ff., in connection with a bracelet on which the subject is represented; J. Boulnois, loc. cit. supra; A.L. Frothingham, “Hermes, Snake-god, Caduceus,” AJA. 19 16,1/9f; Van der Osten, “The Snake Symbol and the Hittite twist,” AJA. 30,1926, pp. 405-417; P. Toscanne, “Etudes sur le Serpenf in Mem. Delegation en PerseXII, 1911; J . Ph. Vogel, Indian Serpent-Lore, 1926; A.B. Cook, Zeus, II.1929 f, Daremberg and Saglio, s.v. nodus, Rischer, Lexicon, s.v. Zagreus; and de Waele, The Magic Staff in Graeco-Roman Antiquity, The Hague, 1927 (the last is too much given to aesthetic interpretations of the form, ignores Athenagoras, and overlooks that, as B. Segall says “in der An tike noch keine Moden obne Sinn gab"). It is significant diat in Homer the herald’s wand is not a kerukeion or rhabdos but a “sceptre” of magical efficacy, given direcdv or indirccdy by Zeus, hence probablv a keraunos (= Sanskrit vajra) and for this reason called tripeta/os.

2 A.B. Cook, Zeus, II.1029. Cook further equates Zagreus with Zeus Chthonius — of whom Hermes Trismegistos (Ascl. Ill 27 C) says that he rules Earth and Sea, and “He it is that supplies nutriment to animated mortal creatures, and to all fruit-bearing trees; and it is by his power that die fruits of the earth are produced.” Marduk = Tammuz = Gilgal. Langdon, Semitic Mythology, p. 156-7.

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G u a r d ia n s o f t h e S u n d o o r ·*■ « ■ Ά

Figure 60 b: Fu Hsi and Ν ΰ-Wa; cf. also British Museum Babylonian Legends and p. 38 from Stein, Innermost Asia, III, pi. C IX . [Drawing by J. Buhot for Etudes Traditionnel/es, August-Septem ber 1932, p. 485. — Ed.]

the brother and sister twins are kissing in his parents’ lap, the Navel o f the Universe — May Sky and Earth protect us from un-being” (RV 1.185.2 and 5).1 Unquestionably, the words “co-mingling” (i.e. sexually) and “conterminous,” the reference being to serpents, can only imply a mutual embracing in the pattern of the well-known Indian Naga-kals, which is also that of the Caduceus.2

In China, Wang Wen K’ao, writing in the first half of the 2nd century A.D., and doubdess repeating a much older tradition, says that in the beginning, when Sky and Earth were first divided, Fu Hsi (T’sang Tsing) and Nii-Wa made their

Figure 60 a: Fu H si and Ν ΰ -W a; cf.also B ritish M useum Babylonian Legends and p. 38 from Stein, Innermost Asia, III, pi. C IX .

The “germ” may be here either the Sun, Fire or Soma. In some versions of the story, Agni and Soma arc liberated together from Vrtra’s mouth (TS. U.5.2). Almost everything that can be said of Agni can be said of Soma, with this fundamental distinction, that what is dr)’ pertains to Agni, and what is moist to Soma ($B. I.6.3.23). If “Earth’s dry food” be “fire” this corresponds exacdy to the distinction drawn in Euripedes, Bacchae 277 f.Sec J. Ph. Vogel, Indian Serpent-Lore, pp. 265-75 and pis. XXIX, XXX. The Indian Naga-kals are placed at the foot of trees, and represent two snakes, whose sex is sometimes clearly differentiated by a difference in the number of hoods, in sexual embrace. The [serpents] are never, however, in this context, tied together in a knot, but are simply braided or interlaced so as to form three rings; the analogous symbol, consisting of three vertically superimposed circles, occurring commonly on the old Indian punch-marked coins, is termed by numismatists the “caduceus symbol.” The great Indian serpent-deity Guga, worshipped by Hindus and Muslims alike in the Punjab, is represented in human form as a horseman, but is accompanied by two snakes, one of which coils about his staff or wand. In general, the serpent deities are worshipped either for rain, for healing (especially of snakc-bite and leprosy, a disease traditionally connected with the scalincss of snakes), or for offspring.

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T h e G u a r d ia n s o f t h e Su n d o o r a n d t h e Sa g it t a r ia n T y p e

appearance, he with a body all covered with scales, she with a woman’s bust and serpent below. In the later art of the 7'h-8,h century [a .d .] (Fig[s]. 60 [a and b]) these two, the first (mythical) Emperor and his consort, are represented in these semi-divine, semi-ophidian forms (like Indian Nagas), tightly entwined and embraced; Ts’ang Tsing is the “essence of vegetation” and reigned as Chavannas says, “en vertu de I'element bois,” while Nii-Wa represents “metal,” the clement that in the Chinese scheme corresponds to what is elsewhere “air.” Between their heads, as Stein remarks, “is the sun disc”; other constellations surround them. If Fu Hsi is in reality die Sky, and Νϋ-Wa Earth, the Sun is presumably their “child.” In some odier representations the rulers are not entwined, but only approximated and held together by the arms of a kneeling man, again, perhaps, their Son.1 What is essentially the same appears on a Chinese sword-hilt, perhaps ot the Han period (Fig. 61), the representation is of a horned mask, which Jacobsthal righdy calls a “gorgoneion,” between a dragon and a tiger.2 Yetts quotes a mirror inscription (no. 28, p. 117): “Dragon on the left and Tiger on the right ward oft'ill-luck; Scarlet Bird and Sombre Warrior accord with Yin and Yang; may descendants in ample line occupy the centre.” More precisely, the supporters are the Green Dragon of the East and the White Tiger of the West, correspond respectively to the elements wood and metal; and the Green Dragon, when it appears in the Sky, is the power that “presides over the revitalisation of nature”; Yetts is inclined to equate it with

Figure 6 1: Chinese sword hilt, Han Dynasty. Louvre, Paris. From P. Jacobsthal, Imagery in Early Celtic A rt, 1941, PI. V a and p. 8.

1 For Fu Hsi and Νΰ-Wa see Chavannes, Mission archdologique dans la Chine septentrionale, I, pp. 32, 126 and Figs. 75, 156, cf. 123, 134; and A. Stein, Innermost Asia, Ch. XIX (pp. 664, 708, 709 and pi. CIX).

2 P. Jacobsthal, “Imagery in Early Celtic Art,” Proc. Brit. Acad. XXVII, 1941, p. 8 and pi. 5a. On the Chinese T ’ao T ’ieh as Gorgoneion cf. my remarks in the Art Bulletin ΧΧΠ, 1940, pp. 52-5, and further discussion below p. 8: “The East was the chief factor in the origin ot Cclric imagery.”

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the “scorpion.”1 It is clear, in any case, that the Dragon and the Tiger of the sword- hilt are male and female principles, and that they can be correlated with Fu Hsi and Nu-Wa.

In Islam we have only the iconography to depend upon. Referring to the representation of Gemini on the British Museum qalamdan of A.H. 608 (our Fig. 62), Hartner (p. 137) remarks that “if we recall diat Gemini is the sign in which the dragons head is exalted, the curious object between the two human figures in the Gemini medal [medallion] takes on a very strange significance. It looks like a mask or monstrous head mounted on a staff.”2 It is, apparendy, homed. Hartner identifies it with the dragons head, which is represented as an astrological sign by Ω· The meanings are further clarified if we also recall that Tammuz and Ningis'zida “the two gods who guard the portals of heaven,” are almost certainly to be identified with Castor and Pollux in Gemini. We hold, with Langdon, that “perhaps the Babylonians located the gateway of heaven in the constellation Gemini.3 The dragons head detached from its body, and mounted on a pillar, would be, of course, the Sun; and one cannot but think of the Indian Pravargya ritual, with its repeated “For Makhas head art thou,” with reference to the heated bowl that is the “head of the sacrifice,” and equated with the Sun; it is precisely as the Sun that the dragons head naturally takes on the form of a human face. The Indian Asvins, the “marvellous” twin-gods who are “children of the Sky” (RV I.182.1 etc.), have been plausibly equated with the Dioskuroi.4 They are, as pupils of Dadhyana (Vedic Dadhikra, Sun-horse or

G u a r d ia n s o f t h e S u n d o o r

Figure 62: Gemini medallion from the qalamdan o f A .H . 608 (12 11-12 A.D.). London, British Museum.

P. Yetts, The Cult Chinese Bronzes, pp. 117, 125, 135, 136 and 138-9; on page 135 he refers to “our common debt to the Chaldeans.” With this and Jacobsthals remarks, cf. W.A. Nitze, “The Fisher King in the Grail Romances," PMLA. XXIV, 1909, pp. 365-418, where he connects the Fisher King, principle of moisture and fructifying power in nature, with the Gaulic deity Cemunnos (the “Homed”) and with Zagreus, the “horned serpent.”What is the heart-shaped support on which the “staff” rests? And why the ribbon held by the Twins and probably to be understood as fastened to the staff or twisted around it? The entire composition, when we take account of these two features, becomes curiously reminiscent of the Egyptian representadons of the union of the Kingdoms (Fig. 63), where paired affronted deiries hold the ends of cords that arc knotted round the “windpipe” of the sema sign for “union” (the knot having at the top the characteristic form of the nodus hercidaneus)', the royal cartouche is at the top of the “windpipe.” Such reminiscences of Egyptian iconography in Islamic art are just as possible as the survival of the psychostasis in Christian art.Langdon, Tammuz and Ishtar, 1914, p. 37.A. Weber, Indische Studien, V, p. 234; A. Macdonell, Vedic Mythology, p. 53.

60

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T h e G u a r d ia n s o f t h e Su n d o o r a n d t h e Sa g it t a r ia n T y p e ■*·

Figure 63: H orus and Seth uniting the two lands. A fte r a drawing in D . N orm an, T ie Hero M yth, Im age, Symbol, New York, 1929, Fig. 24. From a bas-relief tablet o f Sesostris I, M iddle Kingdon, Egypt, I2'h Dynasty, ca. 1191-1786B.C. Cairo Museum.

Soma) versed in the mysteries of Soma, and referred to as “guardians or Immortality — or Soma” (amr/asyagopati), TB. ΠΙ.1.2.11, as well as preeminendy “the physicians of the gods.” If, then, as Macdonell says, “the origin of these gods is to be sought in the pre-Vedic antiquity” it would be natural to equate them with Tammuz and Gis'zida, the archtypes of Castor and Pollux, and, once more, to recognize mythical formulae common to Sumerian, Indian and Greek [traditions]. Islamic sources can also throw a light upon the related problem of Hermes, and why he bears the caduceus as a sign of his heralds function. For, on the same qalamdan (Hartner, Fig. 18, second from left) Mercury-'Utarid, “the scribe” (al-katib) is represented with a scroll and pen. This conception of Mercury corresponds exacdy to that of the Babylonian Nabu, the messenger and prophet of his father Marduk, whose symbol is a writing desk on a table and “whose oldest tides are Ur and Dubisak ‘the scribe’.”1 He can be identified with his father, and is so much like him that both may be represented together each supported by Mushussu, as on Langdon’s seal (his Fig. 64), where Nabu holds (amongst other attributes) a clay tablet, and has before him a mason’s chisel, for he is also an architect. In view of the close relationship of Marduk with Ningiszida, amounting to original identity, it is natural enough (although we cannot trace all the links) that Hermes should have been entrusted with the caduceus as the symbol of his functions; Hermes, who is at once Mercurius and Nabu, bears the wand as both die mark of his descent and the symbol of his authority. In late Hebrew and Jewish mythology, and, it may be added, in Christian angelology, Nabu becomes die “recording angel.”

Like Dionysos, child of Zeus and Semele, Christ is the Son of God — and of Mother Earth, for there can be no doubt of the identity of the Madonna with

1 See for Nabu, Langdon, Semitic Mythology, pp. 158-161.

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the Earth Goddess,1 Natura naturans. As much as this is implied by the doctrine of the eternal birth, which “does not depend on a temporal mother,” and that of the divine procession as a “vital operation from a living conjoint principle,”2 i.e. the undivided biunity of an essence and a nature, of which the latter is “that Nature by which the Father begets,”3 or “Nature as being that by which the generator generates.”4 We could hardly, indeed, expect to find in Christian contexts the concept of an Ophidian Savior, or that of his procession from a “conjoint principle” in ophidian form; for although the “brazen serpent” (saraph) of Numbers* is at the same time, so to speak, an Asclepios and a type of Christ, in actual Christian symbolism the “serpent” is considered only as a symbol of evil. Yet it is with perfect justification that in Celtic art the Savior is represented in human form supported (in the heraldic sense) by affronted serpents (Fig. 64); and that, on the reliquary at Chur (Fig. 65) die Cross is represented between a pair of dragons, knotted and embraced. In the Irish representations, and still more in some of the forms that

Figure 64: Christ between serpents. Drawing by Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy after A. Mahr, Christian A rt in Ancient Ireland, 1, 1932, PI. 36.1.

“For the Earth was Adam’s mother . . . and God hath the likeness ta’cn of the Son of the first Earth-Maiden" (Wofram von Eschenbach, Parzival, IX.549-60). “Les Vierges Noires . . . sont la transformation chretienne des divinites noires fecondes et plus specialement de la Terre (M. Durand- Lefcbure, Etude sur I'origine des Verges Noires, 1937, Conclusion, p. 194. The ruined stable ot the better known mediaeval Nativities is nothing but a rationalisation of the original Byzantine types in which the “stable” is a cave or grotto in what is obviously the World-mountain and the Madonna herself a Demeter, and as Professor B. Rowland has well said (in Bull. Fogg Art Museum, VIII, 1939, p. 63) “The original reason for the ‘choice’ of the mountain cave — or rather the ‘necessity’ for it — lies dead and buried in the minds of the creators of the Christian legend . . . [they] had the memories of the cosmological foundations of all the great religions of the Semitic world dating from Sumer behind them .. . The birth of the Christ in a cave as described in the Proto-evangelion and other Syriac and Arabic gospels [is] almost certainly derived from the same ancient Asiatic source as the iconography of the nativity of Mithras.” That the Virgin of Lourdes is the Earth Goddess ot the ancients is conspicuous.St. Thomas Aquinas, Sum. Theol. I.27.2.Ibid I.41.5.St.John Damascene, Defid. orth. I.18.[Numbers] XXI.8,9; cf. Philo[.]

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Figure Addorsed serpents, reliquary from the Cathedral of Chur. From C. Hentze, Myths et Symho/es Lumieres, 1922, Fig. 109.

the motive assumes in Merovingian and related •arts,1 the central head is strongly emphasized so that the formula is reduced to that of a mask between or above affronted or interlacing serpents or fishes. The trinity thus represented is that of the Holy Family.

In connection with our Fig. 66 [page 64], a letter “QT from the Bury St.Edmund’s Gospels, E.H . Minns2 remarks that “it shews the winged beasts affronted on each side of the sacred tree . . . going back through Sassanian and Achaemenian Persia to Sumerian Cherubim flanking the Tree of Life.” The “winged beasts” might as well have been called seraphs or “co*ckatrices”; their tails are ophidian.On an archaic Ionian revetment in Boston (Fig. 67 [page 64]) the “winged beasts have leonine bodies: On one of the Nimrud ivories (Fig 68 [page 64]) they are “sphinxes passant or couchant guarding a sacred tree,”3 that is to say, winged lions with human heads.

1 Cf. Karl Hentze, “Minussinsker Steppenkultur. . . ein Beitrag zur Fruhgeschichte Nord-Europas," IPEK.IX, 1934, pp. 51 if.

2 In Ann. British School at Athens, XXXV11, 1936-7, pp. 192-3 and pi. 25. It will be observed, further, that the Tree springs from a dragons mouth; the dragon is at once the root from which the Tree springs and the mouth by which it is uttered. In the same way in the old Indian iconography the vegetative principle of life so often springs from a makara’s jaws (cf. my Yaksas, II, 1931, pi. 12, Fig. I, Figs. 4 ,13 and [Figs.] 37-39)· In fact, the iconography of the Bury St. Edmund’s dragon-tree can be better explained by Indian sources than by any other way.

Brahma (root brh, to grow, wax) can be equated both with the Dragon (c£ HJAS. VI, pp. 39 f.), and Taittmya Aranyaka II.19 (where Brahma is invoked as sisumara) and with the Tree (Taittmya Brahmana II.8.9.6; tankhiiyana Aranyaka X1.2) of light and life that suspires (root svas) and rise up like smoke (M aitri Upanisad VII.11); the Dragon is that being (bhuta) that is called the igneous “root” of all beings (Chiindogya Upanisad VI.9.4) and from which they are breathed forth (root svas) like smoke from fire (Brhadara nyaka Upanisad H.4.10 and IV.5.11); and that is the same thing as the Dragon's (Vrtra’s) breathing out of fire and smoke when Indra “forced the Glutton (Jigarti, root gr, swallow, cf. mukhena nigirati, Sayana’s gloss on the sisumara Brahma, as cited above) to disgorge and smote the Danava that breathed (root svas) against him” (RV. V.29.4, cf. I.54.5), making him gape (Taittmya Sambita II.5.2.3,4).

’ R.D. Barnett, “The Nimrud Ivories and die Art of the Phoenicians” in Iraq, Π, [1933,] p. 190 and F'g· 3-

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Figure 66: T h e letter “ Q2 from the B ury St.Edmund’s Gospel, 12* century [a.D.] In Ann. British School at Athens, X X X V II, 1936-7, pi. 25, pp. 192-3.

Figure 67: Addoreed griffins from an Archaic Ionian terra cotta revetment. In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Figure 68: Affronted sphinxes with Phrygian caps guarding a sacred tree. Nimrud ivory, probably Phoenician, ca. 7* century B.C. In Barnett, “The Nimrud Ivories in the A rt o f the Phoenicians," Iraq, II, [1933], p. 190.

Chapter III ·*·

C o n c e r n i n g S p h i n x e s

πΕρΪ τ Α ς ΣΦΙΓΓΑΣΤήν δέ του κόσμου άρμονιαυ ή σφίγξ . . . μηνύει.

— Clement o f Alexandria1' 1

I n t r o d u c t i o n

IN THE COURSE OF SOME TWO YEARS OF INTERMITTENT WORK ON “THE E aRLY Iconography of Sagittarius,” and on “The Concept of ‘Ether’ in Greek and Indian Cosmology,” both of which I still hope to complete and publish, it has been necessary to study the guardian Cherubim of [the]

Old Testament (particularly Genesis III.24), the sphinxes by which they are represented in Western Asiatic and Palestinian art, and the single Greek Sphinx; and as this study is more or less complete in itself, it can be, with advantage, published separately. It must be understood, however, that I shall not discuss here the equation of sphinxes with other types of the guardians of the Janua Coeli, and that, but for one allusion, I shall have nothing to say about the Egyptian “Sphinx” which has only been so called on the basis of a rather superficial analogy and is of another descent than that of the Western Asiatic and Greek sphinxes. Our Sphinx, of Oriental origin, combines the body of a lion (or sometimes a dog) with the face of a man or woman (in Greece it is always the latter2) and the wings, and sometimes the talons, of a bird of prey.

Figure 69: Affronted sphinxes and palmette.Detail from an Argive-Corinthian pinax, Archaic. Chr. Blickenberg and K. Frilis Johansen, Corp. Vas. Antiij. Danemark, fasc. 2, pi. 90 A.

11 The title and introduction to this essay were not translated by Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy in manuscript. The foreword can be rendered, “ . . . by the Sphinx is meant the harmony of the world . . . ” and is from Clement’s Stromata, V.5.31. — Ed.]

* Always, that is to say, when we are speaking of single sphinxes; paired sphinxes are sometimes male in late Cretan and early Corinthian art (Figs. 69 [and] 70 [a and b] [page 66]).

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Figures 70 a and b: Two sphinxes from the same vase. In the upper figure (Fig. 70 a), he wears a Corinthian helmet. Geometric-orientalising style from Crete, 7* century B.C. After Doris Levi, “Early Hellenic Pottery of Crete,” Hesperia XIV, 1945.

70 b

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[ S p h i n x e s ]

Th e W e s t e r n A s ia t ic sph in xes a r e u s u a l ly re p re s e n te d in “ Wa pp en st il" as affronted pairs, guarding the Tree of Life, or Truth, or Light, or an equivalent column with Ionic volutes; and it would be superfluous to argue here that tree and pillar are interchangeable symbols of one

and the same referent.1 Above the tree or pillar there is often shown the winged disc of the Sun. In Sumerian, Assyrian, Phoenician and some Cretan and Cypriote representations the types may be either male and bearded or female, and may wear either the feathered κίδαπις or a Phrygian cap, or fillet or plume as a sign of their royalty. In their capacity [as] defenders [of] or attendants upon the third principle that stands between them, and with which they form a trinity, the paired sphinxes may be replaced by griffins (with heads of eagles and bodies of lions), winged serpents, winged scorpion-men, or other genii', a discussion of these relationships pertains to the history of Sagittarius. In some cases the “Promethean” hero who forces his way in is shown between them, holding them apart at arms’ length;2 and in any case their primary function is that of the guardianship of the Sundoor. They are, in fact, its living and dangerous jambs; they represent all those contraries of which the Symplegades are a symbol, and between them runs the narrow path that leads to all that lies between them.

It has long been recognized that in Palestinian art the Cherubim of Genesis III.24 (“to keep the way of the tree of life”) and Ezekial XLI.18 (“so that a palm tree was between a cherub and a cherub”)3 are actually represented by

Figure 71: Winged (“Borhead”) separating female sphinxes. Mid-Corinthian. After H. Payne, Necrocorinthia, p. 307 and pi. 28.10.

1 With the concept of the Pillar as at the same time “performing a structural function" and being an “aspect of the Sun God” (A.J. Evans, “Mycenean Tree and Pillar Cult,” JH S. [1901], pp. iii.173), cf. Jaimimya Up. Brahmana 1.10.9 “they call the Sun a sky-supporting pillar”; and Taittmya Samhita IV.2.9.6 “in it there sitteth an Eagle.” More generally[:] [A.J.] Wenslick, [Tree and Bird as Cosmological Symbols in Western Asia, Amsterdam, 1921]; U. Homberg, Der Baum des Lebens, Helsinki, 1903 and Finno-Ugarian and Siberian Mythology, Boston, Chs. 111. V[.]

2 Cf. Fig. 71; and in Greek Orientalising art from Crete, Doro Levi, “ Early Hellenic Potter)' of Crete," Hesperia XIV, 1945, pi. X .l (“winged deity dominating two sphinxes”).

3 The Cherubim of Ezekial XV I.18 are described as having two faces, those of a man and of a lion; a logical conception, since the Sphinx combines the bodies of these two. No Palestinian or Greek examples o f two-headed sphinxes can be cited, but there is a Hittite example of ca. 1 0 0 0 B.C. in which a sphinx has the two heads of a man and a lion, and, it may be mentioned also, a serpent s tail (Fig. 72 [page 68]).

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Figi/rt-yz· Sphinx or chcrub with a man’s and a lion’s head, and asnake-taiL Carchemish,ca. io o o B.C [In] Moortgart, Bildewerke und Volkstum Vorderasiens zur Hethiterzeit, Fig. 35 [and] O. Weber, Die Kurnt der Hethiter, [no date,] pi-14-

Figure 73: Cf. E . Cohn-Weiner, D ie Jiidische Kunst, 1929, Abb. 20. “Stylized tree between Cherubim . . . and . . . Sphinxes . . . Λ i f den Zargen steben jedesma! zwei einander zugeviandte Sphingen zu seiten eines Baumstammes saulenartiger Form . . . eine

{ ute Vorstellung von phonizisehen und dam it auch salomenischen StiL" [He] says that] cherubim understood as angels is a “late idea. In the Bible they appear as

Damonen-Gestalten . . . neben Lowen und Rindem .” Solomon’s style is essentially Phoenician rather than Egyptian. [The illustration is a] detail o f a side [panel] o f a bronze basin-stand from Larnaka, Cyprus. Berlin Antiquarium.

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·*· C o n c e r n in g Sp h in x e s

pairs of affronted Sphinxes having a tree or pillar standing between them,1 and that those of Exodus XXI.18 (“two cherubim in the two ends of the mercy-seat”) and Isaiah IV.4 (“the Lord of hosts . . . between the two cherubim”) are represented by similar sphinxes forming the sides of the thrones of earthly monarchs;2 examples of such representations are given in Figs. 73, 74 [and 75 (page 70)]. It may be observed that in the Book of Enoch (LXXX.4- 7) Seraphim, Cherubim and Ophannin (Wheels) “are they who sleep not, and guard the throne of His glory,” and that in many traditions this sleeplessness is a marked characteristic of the guardians of the Janua Coeli.

Figure 74·. “A cherub o f Biblical rimes, supporting the throne o f King Hiram of Bvblus.” After W.F. Albright in Biblical Archaeologist [, 1938] 1.1, pi. r.

1 E. Cohn-Weiner, Die Jiidischer Kunst, 1929; with reference to our Fig. 73: “Baum zwischen Cherubim . . . zwei einander zugewandte Sphingen zu seiten eities Baumstammes sciulenartiger Form . .. eine gute Vorstellung von phonizischen und damit auch salomonischem Stil

2 W.F. Albright, “What were the Cherubim?,” Biblical Archaeologist 1.1, 1938 (with our Fig. 74). Inasmuch as the Deity can be represented as well (or better, Philo, Somn. 1.240-242) by a pillar, the occurrence of paired sphinxes (in Hittite art, E. Wasmuth, Hethitischer Kunst, pi. 45, ca. 800 B.C.) forming die pedestal of a column should be noted; the column is, in effect, enthroned upon them.

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Figure75; [Sphinx throne, ivory from Megiddo, 13th to mid I2,h century B.C. From G . Loud, Megiddo Ivories, Chicago, 1939, p. 13, pi. 4. — Ed.]

My main intention in the present article [, or chapter,] is to discuss the meaning of the Sphinx in Greek art. We have to consider for this purpose the original meaning of the archtypes and of related forms, in which the function of guardianship predominates, the significance of the Cherubim in [the] Old Testament, chiefly as expounded by Philo, and what can be gathered both from the Greek types themselves and from references in the Greek literature, and more particularly from the senses in which the verb σφίγγω, from which Σφίγξ derives, is employed in the literature from Empedocles to Philo. Finally, Clement of Alexandria’s interpretations will be cited.

Philos position may be summarised as follows: The Cherubim are discussed in pairs, in connection with Genesis III.24 as keepers of the way of the Tree of Life, and in connection with Exodus XXV.21 as the guardsmen of the royal throne. In both cases they are regarded as the representations of the primary and elder Powers (δυνάμεις) of the Logos, the Charioteer of the Universe, who stands between them, at once dividing and uniting. Invariably, the two Powers taken together with the Logos from which they proceed form a trinity; in Genesis the Logos, superior, median and “third,” is represented by the “flaming sword” that turns every way, while in Exodus there is no visual conception. Elsewhere the Logos is represented by the living image of the High Priest, and by the intellectual and ruling principle within you, the Man of Truth, and Priest, in every man.

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·*■ Chapter IV ·*■

Quinque sunt corpora mundi sirnp/icia, scilicet quatuor elementa et quinta essentia.

— St. Bonaventura, De. red. art. ad theol. 3.

Say as akasa indra e-va sab.JU B . I.31.1

“ E t h e r ” i n P l a t o

W ITHOUT ATTEMPTING AN EXHAUSTIVE COMPARATIVE TREATMENT OF the five elements in the Greek and Indian traditions, though I have collected a very great deal of material for this purpose, it seems at least desirable to correct the statement made by E.R. Lamb in

the Loeb Library Epinomis, p. 450, that Plato “does not allow ether (Timaeus 40A, 81 B) as one of the elements.” As to this, one cannot suppose him to have been ignorant of the earlier uses of the term in Greek literature; but in any case, in Craty/us 410 B he [Plato] speaks of ether as “so called because it always runs and flows about the air”; and however atrocious this hermeneia may be if treated as a serious etymology, all that matters for present purposes is that he distinguishes the ether from the air.2 Again, in Phaedo 109 B-lll B, where Plato is describing “the true Heaven and the true light and true Earth” as a veritable Paradise he says that this is only to be seen by those who wing their way to the top of the air and lift their heads above it, for this is not just the aerial “sky,” but the “pure heaven” in which the stars move. Of this heavenly world he says that it is “that which those who discourse about such matters call the ether’,3 of which water, mist, and air are onlv the 'dregs’”; and, further, of the dwellers there, that “what air is to us, ether is to them,” all of whose conditions are “as much superior to ours as air is purer than water or the ether purer than the air.” We ought certainly to bear this passage in mind when in Timaeus 28 B he speaks of “the heaven, or however it likes to be called.” Plato’s use of language, however apt, is never deliberately

T h e C o n c e p t o f “E t h e r ” in G r e e k a n d I n d ia n C o s m o lo g y 111

11 The tide, not found in die manuscript, is taken from the opening of “Concerning Sphinxes.” — Ed.]1 Here it may be the proper place to remark and complain that again and again throughout the Loeb

Library in versions of Greek texts a direct translation of the word αίθχρ by “ether” seems to havebeen carefully avoided, and any circumlocution preferred; which places quite an unnecessary burden on anyone who wishes to study the Greek doctrine of the elements. [One] must read through many long texts in the original, as I have had to do so, [in order to] find out where the word actually occurs. The same holds good in other connections also, e.g. Euripedes, Alcestis 1003 where Euripedes has “Now is she a blessed Daimon,” but A.S. Way (a “literary fcUer”) [puts it]: “With the Blest now abides she on high”; which is really a travesty, and certainly worse than useless from the point of view of a student of religion.

3 For Euripedes, Helen 34 and 584, “wrought of ουρανός” and “wrought of αιθήρ” are synonymous.Cf. Cicero, De. nat. deor. 2.29.40 “There remains . . . die all-engirdling, all-confining circuit of

the sky, also called the ether” and 2.45 "the highest part of the sky, called the ether.”

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pedantic, and as he says himself elsewhere, “I presume we shall not dispute about names” {Republic 534 D).’

It will be convenient to start with Plato’s account of the constitution of the world in Timaeus 49 ff., where he describes the four elements (fire, air, water, earth) and their continent ύποδεχη, etc.). It is true that he does not explicitly call this all-containing (πανδεχής) space a fifth element,2 but that is because he is starting from the concept of the two kinds, that of the primary (paternal) Form (είδος) and that of its (begotten) imitation (μίμημα)3 and proceeding to a third Form, that of the (material) vessel (τιθήνη)4 in which the variable sensible forms compounded of the elements appear, circulate5 and disappear; and though he only refers incidentally to αίθήρ as a purer kind of air; his “all containing nature” is actually that of the αιθήρ, akasa and fifth element of other accounts, both Greek and Indian.

This space (τόπος, χώρα, etc.), in which all things live and move and have their being, participates in the intelligible; it is imperceptible, indestructible, formless, void, and cannot be defined by or compared to any of its sensible contents.6 The all-receiving nature is thus like a plastic medium, soft linen or wax (έκμανείον)7 on which the copies of the ever-existent types are to be imprinted or drawn and a support or throne (έδρα) for them; and though it is naturally and properly void of all these forms, it assumes all sorts of different appearances at different times,

1 For this position in Plato, cf. Laws 864 A “We are not now concerned with a verbal dispute.” All that Plato cares about is to make himself understood; he is not writing for those who do not want to understand, or whose demand is for a “closed system” of thought.

2 This is nevertheless implied by 55 C where of the five solid figures (32 c; four elements and φιλία; cf Ritter and Prcller 80) described, four correspond to the four elements, and “the fifth, which is to receive over all of it always the likenesses of the intelligible and eternal forms, of all which it is properly and naturally void,” ib. 51 A, on which these forms are to be imprinted (50 C), their support or “throne” (έδρα, 52 B).

3 It may be observed here that μίμημα, “imitation,” has been correlated with Sanskrit mdya which, however, may rather belong to rm, “measure,” and correspond to Greek μαία, μήτις, μήτηρ, μήτρα, “moon,” and “mind,” and “measure” in the sense of “vessel.” To measure (ma-nir-ma) is to make; the image (prati-ma) is of the paradigm (pramd). Agni's conception is that “he was measured in the Mother” (ammata mStart), RV. III.29.11), i.e. as a “created form” (nirmana-taya), cf. my Nirmana- kUya" in JR/IS. 1938, 81-4. In the same way the Buddhas “created body” (nirmana-kaya) was bom of his mother Maya. Maya is, then, the maternal measure, art, artifice and guile by and of which as means or material (u/h, vana, materia prima) all things nameable and sensible (namarupe) are “materially-made" (maya-maya)\ which “things” (originally “unmeasured,” eg. Timaeus 50 B) (whereof the measurer is the solar Self ot all, RV. VIU.25.18 etc.) are the quantitative “matter” (miitra, i.e. materia secundd) of this all-embracing world” (BV. IV.3.9). Maya corresponds with Natura naturans, matrah to Natura naturata.

4 Spec. 1.266; with Plato’s τιοήνη, cf. ΛΑ. Π.3.1 where “the ether is a vessel (dvapanam akasab), for therein all this is collectively sown” (samopyate).

5 Plato’s description of the elements as “revolving" and as a “cycle of birth" (Timaeus 49; cf. Philo, Heres 283), like St. James’ “wheel of birth” (III.6) and Mcister Echhart's “storm of the world's flow” in which the soul “goes round in an endless chain,” corresponds with the Indian concept of the “wheel of becoming” (bbava-caira) and “vortex” or “confluence” (samsara).

" “The measure ot all measures cannot be one of them” (Tripura Rahasya, Jm na Khanda IX.87 . . . “The properties of the ether are too fundamental to be stated in terms of something else” (O.J. Lodge in Encyclopedia Britannica, I4't' cd., s.v. Ether).

7 Cf. Heres 181 wax, έκριανειον προς αϊσοησιν; Aet. I, wax for scnsibles to be imprinted.

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because of their coming and going.1 Plato calls this empty and recipient Nature (φύσος) — which is diat of the metaphysical “void” (Sanskrit sunyata) — the “Nurse and Mother of all Becoming”; the totality of all things intelligible and sensible being that of diese diree, the father, the Mother and their offspring.2

Now, in the first place, as to the “wax” or other “support” on which the sensible copies of the eternal realities are imprinted, and without which they would not become at all: This corresponds to the “tablet,”3 “wall,”4 and “mirror”5 of the Spatial-Self (akasatman), on which the World-picture (jagac-citram) is painted or in which it is reflected. Plato’s recipient Nature is thus, in other words, the speculum aeternum, “in which the minds of those who gaze perceive all things, and better than elewhere.”6 “There, indeed, everything shows as if reflected in a mirror, without circ*mscription by time and place (kala, κρονος, desa). For how could there be a circ*mscription by time and place, since both of these are comprised in the reflection in the mirror itself?' This is the mirror of our “own true form,” in which, when thought has been smoothed out, the world is shown8 . . . It is only when that is ignored that the suchlike-world is produced . . . Just as when space (pkasa) is ignored, one sees only what is taking place in it,”9 i.e. what is taking place around us, rather than in what we are. The mirror-vision is simultaneous, just as in actual mirrors however small, one sees innumerable things at a single glance.10 Nothing is more significant than that

1 C f Plutarch, Mor. 382 C. Robe of Isis [was] variegated, of Osiris of shadowless light.2 Timaeus 50 D. “The Father, the Mother, and the Son, the perfect Power” (Apocalypse o f John, cited in

Baynes, Coptic Gnostic Treatise, p. 14); “All that is declared to be One. For the Mother and the Father •and the Child are this AH" (SA. VII. 15). Plutarch, Mor. 372 E, very naturally identifies Plato’s “nurse" with Isis, who is indeed Nutria Omnium.

1 Svatmanirupana 95.4 Tripura Rahasya XI.25-7 svatuiani bhittan jagacertvam... kalpitani svena kevalan.. . etc.; Vinuklatura,

Ista siddhi as [discussed] by Das Gupta, History of Indian Philosophy II.203. Wall and future reveal one another, but are entirely distinct substances.

5 Trip. Ras. IX.90. Tatra sarvam bhasate vai darpana-prabhard avat[.]* St. Bonaventura, I Sent, d.35, a unic. q.l, fund. 3 quoting St. Augustine; cf. Dante, Paradiso XXVI.106.

Kaus. Up. IV.2, n dditye mahat. . . adarsepratirupah; KU. VI.5 yathadarse tathatmani.7 The reflection is, then, “where every where and every when are focused," Dante Paradiso·, S. Th. I.14-9,

“Since eternity . . . " Desa will be distinguished as a dimensioned space as from the akasa in which the directions (disah) acquire a meaning, cf S. Th. Sup. 83.2.

8 “The mind of the sage, being brought to rest, becomes the mirror of the universe,” ChwangTzu.God does not reflect the likeness of things, but they his likeness, and it is indeed in this sense that

“He created man in his image and likeness." All things dius arc to be seen in God as an intelligible mirror (S. Th. I.78.9), and the same judges according to this primary truth, reflected in the soul as in a mirror (ib. I.16.6 and t.), c f Katha Up. Vl.5 . . . in itself its essence as if in a mirror (yatha' dark tathatmani,) and BU. Hl.9.16 God is that Person who is the abode of forms, the Person in the mirror, life (nipany eva yasyayatanam .. . purusam . . . adarse purusah . . . asuh). There are then two mirrors, just as there are two images. In either case it is by mirror-knowledge that the knowing subject knows essentially, precisely because the mirror and die intellect arc the same. The individual knowing subject, by the reflection of the eternal image in the mirror of his own intellect, the universal knowing subject, the divine Sun who “sees all things” (visvam abhicaste, 1.164.44 [ . . . ] ) sees them in the mirror of his own intellect, or as it is expressed: “Painted by the Self, and simply as itself” (Svatmaninipana).

9 Tripurii Rahasya, Jfiana Khanda, IX. 89-95, 85 b. The whole concept corresponds to that of Plato’s “intelligible” and “sensible" worlds; the former in the mirror, the [latter] objectively with reference to things that we see around us. He sees indeed who sees all things in himself, cf. BG.

10 Cf. S. Th. I.14.9. Plato’s “continental space” is the universal.

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time and place themselves are a part of the reflection, and not a part of the mirror. This means that the speculum aetemum must not be thought of as a plane in two dimensions, but as an omnipresent and infinite support; i.e. as a “wall,” as if we conceived that wall as an all-pervading surface.1

We can now examine a little more closely the proposition that Plato does not, in the Timaeus, know of ether as quintessentia. It will be remembered that he describes the five geometrical forms from which the whole living world, body and soul, is constructed; and that these are elemental forms. In Timaeus 53,32 C and 48 B we are told that the visible and concrete universe has already been made out of the four elements, fire, earth, water and air, each having its own geometrical form; and then in 55 E that “there remained still one form, the fifth,” viz. the dodecahedron, and that God [Zeus] made use of this “to trace the forms of living beings throughout the world.” It is hard to see how anyone familiar with the Greek tradition, in which sensible bodies as such are always thought of as made of the four elements only (Timaeus 82 A), just as in Buddhism bodies as such are always caturmahabhutika, “four-elemental,” can fail to recognize that Zeus is here described as using the quintessential, etherial principle, wherewith to animate what would have been otherwise a soulless and inanimate world, “not yet having within itself all living things, and in this respect still unlike its perfect paradigm”2 (Timaeus 39 E) in which there preexisted the Forms or Ideas of the Celestial Deities, of the winged kind that traverses the air, the watery kind, and that which moves on dry land (Timaeus 39 E, 40 A), all that, as St. John says, “was life in Him.” The “depiction” of life in 55 B is, of course, the same thing as the impression of the moulding figures made upon the recipient material that is thereby to all appearances diversified or patterned as if by a seal stamped on wax (50 B)[,]3 and to which Plato refers as an adorning delineation of forms (διασχηατίσατο ειδΣσι, 54 B). The net result is that, besides Zeus himself, and “all the gods,” these are brought into being three kinds of mortal living creatures, those that fly in the air, or live in the water, or move on land (40 A, 41 B, C). An almost identical account of the creation of living beings is given in Epinomis 981 E ff., where, however, the elements are explicitly five: Fire, water, air, earth and ether, the “fifth”; the Soul, immutable and invisible, senior to the unintelligent body, and its ruler, is the efficient power that moulds all living things from the elements (of which one predominates in each

1 Cf. the Self as all-pervading.2 That Zeus worked from a paradigm of himself, as the Timaeus says, is necessarily implied whenever

God is thought of as Maker, since no one can make anything unless he has in him some idea of what it is that he wants to make. So that it is perfecdy natural that whenever God is regarded as a “Maker by art,” we meet with the concept of an intelligible “world picture" after which the actual world is modelled.

3 This well known conception of the divine signature to which all things owe their existence has a notable corollary, beautifully stated by St. Bonaventura who points out that nothing would continue to exist (esse, i.e. esse hoc et vivere) were it not for the continued presence of the Giver of their life, and illustrates this by the figure of “the impression of a seal in water, which does not last for a moment, unless the seal remains in the water” (I Sent. d. 37, p. I, a. I, q. I, conclusion). There is an Indian parallel, expressed in terms of vestigium pedis. the Solar Gander, i.e. the Sun, “the Self of all that is in motion or at rest” (RV. 1.115.1), when he rises, i.e. proceeds as in RV. X.90.2, “does not remove his one foot from the sea; and verily, were he to remove it, there would be neither night nor day, nor ever any dawn” (AV. Xl.4.21).

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kind), and so fills the whole world with beings “participant in life”; so that, apart from Zeus and Hera whose real nature can hardly be described, there are five kinds of more or less visible living things: First the fiery stellar gods, second and third the etherial and aerial Daimons (mediators between Heaven and Earth), fourth the beings (nymphs) in die waters, and fiftii men and other land animals.1

Now, that the Soul is prior to the body — composite of the four elements, and the prime mover and cause of life in all things — is Plato’s well established doctrine (Laws 891 C ff.),121 and this distinction of the Soul from all that is made of “fire, water, earth and air” amounts to speaking of it as a “fifth” essence; and actually, if we return to Timaeus (34 E and 36 B) we find the Soul as described as “woven throughout the heavens (universe) from the midst to the extremity, enveloping it in a circle from widiout” and so “making a divine origin of incessant and intelligent life lasting dirough all time” — expressions that taken by diemselves one might suppose to have been predicated of the edier that “binds all things together in its circle” (Empedocles fr. 386) equated with Zeus himself. So it seems to me that while Plato rarely makes use of the word “ether” itself, he often refers by other names to what, he says, die specialists call “ether.” And, finally that this is what most Greek Platonists would have assumed is apparent not only from the Axiochus (366) where the soul is spoken of as “ever longing for its heavenly native ether,” but also from Plutarch (Mor. 390 C and 423 A), who took it for granted that Plato, in the Timaeus, was discussing all five of the elements, of which the fifth is ether, and each of which can be thought of as a realm or world, although the world is really one. That the Greek tradition as a whole took account of all five elements, four the component of “bodies,” and one immaterial, needs no detailed demonstration.

“ E t h e r ” in P h i l o

Ph il o ’s r e f e r e n c e s t o t h e e l e m e n t s , o r pa r ts o f n a t u r e , a r e a l o n e almost sufficient for a correlation of the Greek and Indian formulae. Philo, indeed, speaks sometimes of only three or four elements,3 but in such cases it is clear that these are only three or four of the full

complement of five: Earth, water, air, fire and sky.4 When only four are mentioned the fourth is either fire or sky;5 but the sky is a mysterious factor of which it can

1 The detailed correspondences of the Timaeus with the Epinomis, despite slight differences of wording, seem to me to argue for the authenticity of the Epinomis, or to prove at least that the latter accurately interprets Plato’s own point of view. However, our present purpose is only to show that he rarely employs the word αιθήρ itself, Plato is perfectly aware of ether as quintessentia.

12 This is paralleled in a most interesting way in connection with the making of the living image (εϊαδωλον) of Helen that was carried off to Troy while she herself was kept safe in Egypt (Euripedes, Helen 33 ff and 582 ff). When Menelaus protests, “Who can fashion living bodies?” Helen answers “Ether." It was, in fact, Hera who, as Helen tells [us], of heaven framed a living image like unto me” (όμοιοσασ έμοι εϊεωλον εμπνουν ούρανοΰ ξυνθεϊσααπο); and here again we find the equation ουρανός = αιθήρ — a synonymy of which, as we may already have seen, Plato himself was quite aware.]

3 E.g. Moses Π.121; Spec. I.208.4 Moses II.133.5 Spec. I.45; Dec. 31; Moses II.37; $°mn· Ll6, 23, Π.Ι16. Nevertheless, in lists of the four, sky often takes

the place of “fire,” e.g. LA. III.101, cf. BU. IV.4, 5 akasa as fourth, tejas as fifth, as one might say, by invocation. [Cf. Conf. 135.]

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be asked whether it be “crystalline, or purest fire, or a fifth, revolving body, not participating in the nature of the four elements.”1 These are not, in fact, mutually exclusive theories.2 An apparent confusion only arises because, in fact, there is more than one kind of fire, in particular the “saving” and the “useful”;3 the former is Heracleitus’ “everlasting fire, in measures4 being kindled and in measures going out.”3 Light (φως) is a form of fire6 and so can take the place of fire as a fifth element. Mind (ό νοΰς) which is that form of soul that is not elemental but corresponds to this “better and purer” factor “out of which the natures of things divine were made,” and is die only indestructible, freely-ranging (αφετος)7 part of us, gifted with a share (μοιρι) in God’s own free-will (αφετος),8 can either be

1 Somn. 1.21.1 Sec the notes in Pbilo, Loeb Library Vol. V., p. 594; and c(.Actios Π.20 attributing to Empedocles the

notion of a “crystalline Sun." [ . . . ] Sup. Life, p. 270.’ Heres 136; the “saving” (αωτήριος) fire that is “the substance of the sky” is the "non corruptibi/is

ignis. . . sed salutaris, per quem omnia artificiosefacta sunf of Deo 6 and the “sacred and unquenchable celestial fire” of Conf. 156-7. Philo’s saving and creative fire is the Stoic “constructive (τέχνιοκον = artificiosus) and preservative (τηρητικόν = salutaris, cf. Synteresis) fire” that is in living things and makes them grow, and that can be identified with nature and soul (H. von Amim, Stoic. Vet. Fraq. I.34, II.24 ff.; and Cicero, De nat. deor. II.40, 57-58 and 115-116, and so virtually Zeus Soter and Tritos, the fiery Logos, and Vedic Agni /re/rand vaisvanara, and RV. IV.58.Ii hrdy antarayusi. The other and “useful” fire is the one diat serves our everyday purposes, but only does so by destroying. Equally in Greek and Vedic sources there is a clear distinction of Fire as an immanent and transcendent principle from the transient and destructive fires at which we warm our hands.

Ritter’s and Preller’s words, “Ζεύς, Δίκη, σόφον, λόγος; res non diverse. Idem signiftcat illtid. . . πΰρ αίείς ωον, unde manat omnis motus, omnis vita, ornnis intellects" (Hist. Philosoph. Gr. 40, note a) not only summarise the doctrine of Heracleitus, but would apply as well to Philo (for whom the Logos is a “burning” principle and Wisdom “etherial," Fug. 134-7, Cher. 27), and to Vedic theology.

4 In Heres 227, Philo speaking of the sky as a “measure” from which the elements are “measured out,” must have had Heracleitus in mind. Cf. RV. V.81.3 where Varuna (Dyaus, Sky) “making the Sun his measure, measures out the earth.” In a slighdy different (moral) sense, the Logos is also the criterion (κριτήριον) ofTrudi (Heracleitus, Sextus Empiricus, Adv. Dogm. I.131); and the measure (μετρον) of all things, teaching us to choose the good and avoid its opposite, so that “to make God our measure" (μετρεΐν κατά θεόν) in this sense is to use the fiery sword of Reason to cut away from ourselves all our mortal parts and free the immortal to fly upward to God “in naked understanding" (Cher. 31) a near parallel to Hebrews IV.12 on the “suffering of soul from spirit," and suggestive also of TS. VII.4.9, “They cut o ff.. . considering, ‘More lightly may we attain the world of heavenly-light’.” This cutting off what is mortal is the same thing as the crushing of the stern of the vessel as she passes between the Symplegades, as, e.g. in the Argonautica.

5 Heracleitus, fr. XX. Cf. AB. III.4, on Agni’s distribution. For other Indian parallels see my “Measures of Fire” in Olnstituto, Vol. 100 (Coimbra, 1942).

6 Cf. Plato, Timaeus 58 E; TS. 11.2.4.8, etc. Also Averrohoes.7 Αφετος amounts to Kamacarin, kamaga, and implies the liberty of one emeritus and no longer involved

in worldly affairs, as in the fourth asrama, of which Plato, Rep. 498 C 'όταν δε λήγη μέν ή 'ρώμη . . . άφέτοως, is virtually a description (cf. 591 A). “For it becomes the Mind to be led forth and let go free (άφιεσθαι), to stand from everything, the necessities of the body, the organs of perception, sophistries, wishful thinking, and ultimately from itself (LA. III.41). Cf. Dante, Purgatorio XXVII.131 Lo tuo piacere . . . duce, and St. Augustine’s “Love God, and do what you will" (Confessions 108) and Deum diligis? Quid dicam, Deus eris (In. cp.Joh. ad Parthos II.2.14), cf. Rumi, Mathnawi II, Argum., “What is Love? Thou shalt know when thou becomst me.”

See [also] Confessions 108 and LA. III.41. Zeus Άφεσίος releases.8 Εκοθσια, [the] root εκ [is] present in Sanskrit vas and Latin volo and victoria. The closely parallel passages

in I Peter 5.5 and Philemon 14 should be noted. Free will in Vedic contexts is expressed by yatha vasam, vasam anu, or simply vas'am, predicated of divinities and notably one of the Spirit (e.g. RV X.168.4,

(Continued on following page.)

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compared to light1 or thought of as “hot and fiery”2 like the Logos whence the “aetherial wisdom” streams,3 [becoming the] “ethereal and divine food of the soul” (LA. ΙΠ.161). The four elements, of which the Mind is independent, are “soulless (or lifeless) and material,”4 whereas the intellectual soul is a slip, spark, strain (άπόσπασμα), part or patrimony (μοίρα) of God’s etherial nature,3 and that is why alike in Philo and Plato only the four elements are mentioned when the reference is expressly to the material constitution of the body or the world,6 and, as Burnet says, “they account for all the qualities presented by the world to the senses.”' So, for example, when Dante lists the four elements,8 he is not ignoring the quintessentia, but speaking only of the “four-fold texture” (quademo)m of the material world beyond which contingency does not stand, though it is “mirrored”

(Continued from preceding page.)AV. VI.72.1, [also] anukiimam RV. LX.113.9). In TS. II.1.7.6 vasam.. . carati, “ranges freely," is said of a bull offered to Brhaspati, and so to say αφετος, cf. Xenophon, Cyn. V.14 άφιάσι τ6η θεω; add SB.XIII.6.2.13, Keith, R PV 347. Even today such “free-ranging" bulls arc to be seen in any Indian city and are regarded as sannyasins·, they are exempt from all restrictions and indeed “find pasture" (John X.9), “eating at will” (kamanni, Taitt. Up. III.10.5). That the offering of living beings to a deity does not necessarily imply their death appears also in the connection with the Purusamedha, where the human victims that hare been bound to the stake are “released," as stated in SB. XIII.6.2.13-14, where the “voice” that interdicts their slaughter parallels that of the angel of the Lord in Genesis XXII.n-12, commanding the release of Isaac, and in SB. ΠΙ.7.2.8 where the male animal victim dedicated toTvastr is released after the fire has been carried around it. [Cf.] Mark X.28.

1 Immut. 45-7, cf. Opif. 30.2 Fug. 134, not in the bad sense [of] fiery as in LA. ΙΠ.224!

1 %'■ 137·■* Cont. 4,άψθχος ϋλη, c£ Heres 160; as in Sextus Empiricus, Adv. dogm. 115, ύλικαι. Nevertheless, the

four roots can be referred to by the names of the divinities to whose qualities they correspond, as in Philo, Cont. 3 (cf. Dec. 53 and Plutarch, Moralia, 377); and Empedocles, Ritter and Preller section 164. Philos four are Hephaistos (fire), Hera (air), Poseidon (water), and Demeter (earth), and 1 assume (against Bumet, p. 229) that Empedocles’ Titan Zeus, “life-giving" (cf. Philo, Opif. 30), Hera, Aidoneus and Nestis are likewise the correlatives of fire, air, water and earth in the same sequence. Titan Zeus corresponds to Titan Aether in another fragment of Empedocles (Ritter and Preller 170 a, or in the Loeb Library' Timaeus, p. 142, note 2) and there can be no doubt that Ζεύς έστιν αιθήρ (Aeschylus, fr. 65 a). I see nothing to justify Burnet's equation of Hera with Earth in this context (Bumet p. 228, end of note 3), against Philo (Cont. 3) and the Stoics (Cicero, De nat. deor. 11.66 , air = Juno, ether = Jove); and I cannot too strongly deprecate Burnet’s most inconvenient rendering of αιθήρ by “air.”

5 Heres 282-3; *-*· ΠΙ.161.6 Soul; cf. Timaeus 56 C, 36 E, 34 B; as repeated in the Timaeus, e.g. 46 D where the soul is invisible,

and 42 C, D, where the “greatness of soul is to adhere to the dominant Soul. . . ”7 J. Bumet, Early Greek Philosophy, p. 231. According to Philostratus, Apollonius was surprised to hear

from the Indian sages [that] the world is made of not only four but of five elements, die fifth being the αιθήρ from which the Gods arc sprung (Life o f Apollonius, 111.34); but this surprise was probably feigned, since Apollonius was no materialist, and the doctrine of the luminous “ether in the soul” is elsewhere plausibly attributed to him (ib. 1.8). A positive denial of the fifth element would hare implied a philosophical materialism, and might have been expected from the Epicureans. Such a denial is certainly wrongly attributed to the Stoic Zeno of whom it is said that “in dealing with the four beginnings of things (in quattuor initiis rerum illis) he did not add this fifth nature, which his predecessors deemed to be the source of sensation and mind” (Cicero, Acad. I.39); wrongly, since he identified the source of sensation and mind with “fire” (ib. I.26) or, more precisely, “creative (artificiosus) fire” (De nat. deor. II.57) and regarded Ether as the “supreme deity, possessor of the mind by which the universe is governed” (Acad. II.126).

8 Cf. Acts X\. 5.I’ Paradiso VII.124.]

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in the eternal aspect above;1 referring specifically, that is, to the sublunary world as distinguished from the sky.2

One of Philo’s fullest statements is made in Heres 282-3, where what is bodily in man is made of the four elements, earth, water, air and fire, the corresponding qualities being those of dryness, moisture, cold and warmth, and of weight (earth, water) and lightness (air, fire) all of which return to their principles at our death,3 “but the immortal soul, whose nature is intellectual and celestial (νοερόν και ουράνιον) will depart to find a father in ether, the purest of essences. For we may suppose that, as the men of old declared, there is a fifth essence (πέμπτη αχπ'α), one that revolves [or circulates], and differs from the four by its superiority.'1 Out of this they thought the stars and all the sky had been made, and deduced as a natural consequence that the human soul was also an offshoot thereof.” The qamtessentia is our spiritual part; “spirit — the most life-giving breath of God — is the essence of the soul”5 (πνεύμα εστιν ή ψυχής ούσία);6 “the spirit in the heart” (τομέν έγκάρδιονπνεΰμα) is the father of intellections.7

Philo proceeds to a convincing analysis of the parts of the temple and its ritual furniture, on the basis of the foregoing doctrines and the “philosophy of symbols” and “laws of allegory.”8 Just as man’s body is a garment for the soul, so the Logos wears the world as raiment, “for He arrays himself in earth, water, air and fire and all that is framed from these;9 and by the same token the High Priest, except upon the occasion of his annual entrance into the Holy of Holies, wears a long robe that represents the sublunary world. The robe itself represents the air, its flowered hem the Earth, its pomegranates water, and its scarlet fire, while the ephod worn over it represents the sky.10 This representation (μιμησις) is by means of the colors

’ Paradiso XVII.37.2 For the well-known distinction of the sublunary world from the etherial sky, cf. Cicero, De nat. deor.

U.56, and Claudian, Rape o f Proserpine 299.3 Similarly Post. 5. As in $B. II.207, earth to earth, etc., but the powers of the soul (indriyani) return

to the ether (Skdsa), cf. BU. III.2.13.4 Cf. LA. 161. Philo’s revolving principle, of which the soul is an extension, corresponds to Plato’s

“soul" that is woven throughout and all around the sky (ουρανός here = κόσμος) and is the divine beginning of life (Timaeus 36 E-37 A). “Father is ether,” i.e. Ζεΰς πατήρ.

5 That is, “Soul of the soul" ψυχή χυχής, Heres 55 = “Self of the selF (atmano'tma, M aitri Up. VI.6) = CU. V III.I2 .I, amrtas aiinatuan.

6 Det. 82 with Opif. 30.7 Spec. 1.6. Cathedram babet in caelo qui intus corda docet, St. Augustine, In epist. Joannis ad Parthos.

Omne verum, a quocumque dicatur, est a Spiritu Sancto, St. Ambrose.s These expressions appear in Moses I.23, Abr. 68, cf. 99, 119, Fug. 179, Post. 7, etc., and for the

Alexandrian Jewish Allcgorists, Goodenough, By Light, Light, p. 83. These are the laws of “/<· symbolisme qui sail," and if such expressions seem strange to us whose “symbolism” is personal and psychological, it may be observed that Emile Male very properly speaks of the Christian symbolism of the Middle Ages as a “calculus,” and that the traditional symbols arc the terms of a precise and universal “language"; one in which — for example — the “gold" standard is always the same.

9 Fug. 110. As in the Isavasya Up. I (= VS. XL.l), “All this, whatsoever moves on earth, is for the Lord’s apparel” (vasyam = accbadamyam) — “Who as a mantle weareth these, and couches in every birth" {RV. VIII.41.7). Cf. M aitri Up. V1.6; Hermes Trismegistos Lib. XVI.5-7 and AscI III.34 c (mundum . . . quasi vestimentum contexta)·, also the symbolism of the parts of the initiates linen robe, ίΒ . III.1.2.18. Claudian describes a cloth embroidered with the “series of the elements"; the sea is purple, the stars are “kindled” above (accendit) in gold (Rape o f Proserpine I.247 ft. — Platnauer's ridiculous rendering of elementorum seriem by “concourse of atoms” should be forgotten!).

10 Moses 11.88, where the pomegranates form a tasselcd fringe, ib. Π.119.

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proper to the elements:1 The undyed linen (βύσσος) diat grows on Earth, and the purple (πορφύρα) obtained from the sea, represent the corresponding elements; ύακίνθινος, blue-black, is the color of air,2 and κόκκινος, scarlet, that of fire; the whole is interwoven with gold thread,3 denoting the etherial essence of the sky,4 while the gems of the breastplate are set in gold, as the elements are enclosed by the ether.5 In the same way, the veil of the temple, which separates the outer from the inner chamber, is adorned with the colors of the four elements; the outer chamber corresponding to the sublunary world and the inner to the etherial essence.6 So also, when he is to enter the Holy of Holies, the inner chamber, the High Priest puts off die variegated sacrificial robe and [dons] one of diaphanous (διάλευκος) linen of purest white (βύσσος της καθαρότατης).7 The symbolism of flax, of which Philo remarks that when carefully cleaned it has a “very brilliant and luminous aspect,” parallels that of gold; “it is a symbol of tension (εύτονία), incorruptibility, and most radiant light; it does not break (αρραγής), neither is it a product of any mortal creature.”8

In the preceding context the word εύτονία is significant. Εύτονία (root τείνω, Sanskrit tan) “tone,” “ten-sion,” “in-/e«-sity,” is the opposite of the slackening

1 Moses 11.88, Spec. I.85, 93-97, QE. II.85. Cf. Josephus, Wars o f the Jews, V.4, 16-26. [In] Apuleius, Met. XI.IO [he] describes initiates wearing linteae vestis cartdorepuro tuminosi.

2 Blue-black, as in Homer, where “hyacinth” is the color of dark hair, and since Philo himself adds that the air is “naturally black," Conq. 117 as also Opif. 29, Colson’s “dark red" is mistaken in the present context. The color meant is the deep blue or black (Sanskrit mla, indigo) of the sky that is meant. Aristotle says that air when seen nearby is colorless but seen in depth, “blue" (De cot. 794 a 9 £). Whoever finds it strange that in antiquity the sky is always thought of as dark should look at a photograph of snow and clear sky taken on panchromatic film.

3 Moses II.ni.4 This is not explicit as regards the threads, but necessarily follows from all that is said elsewhere, where

gold is always the symbol of the quintessentia, sky or ether, the seven-branched candlestick, for example, is made of gold, to represent the fifth element and to distinguish the lights from the rest of the universe composite of the four (QE. 73).

5 QE. 113; cf. Eur., Phoen. 805 χρυσόδετοις περόναμον έπι'οαμον (δέω σωξω), Ion 1008 χρυσοϊσι δεσμοΐς.6 QE. 9ι.7 Somn. I 216-217. Observe that while the βύσσος of the cosmic robe was a symbol of earth by its

origin, that of the extra-cosmic robe is a symbol of the etherial essence by its whiteness, or rather lack of color. Things are colored, God and the soul colorless (Epinomis 981 B, Hermes Trismcgistos Lib. X3II.6); avarna, “colorless," (Upanisads, passim.), contrasts with the “colors” of the four castes (vama, Mann X.4 etc.), cf. Riimi, MathnavA 1.2467-8 (creation, the imprisonment of colorlessness in color). So, “du mnsst ganz wesentlich und ungefarbet sein," Angelus SUesius, Cherub. Wandersmann I.274.

On white and white robes see E.R. Goodenough, By Light, Light, pp. 173, 178, 256, 265-6; also Philostratus, Life o f Apollonius, 1.8 [where] Apollonius wears linen raiment, not an animal product. Babylonian priests, in the presence of deity, are represented nude, and in our context the putting oft of the cosmic robe is, so to say, a gymnosophic procedure, for as he says elsewhere, the High priest “shall not enter the Holy of Holies in his robe" (Leviticus XVI.I ft.), “but laying aside the garment of opinions and phantasms of the soul, shall enter naked with no colored borders or sound of bells . . . and this is the noblest form of γύμνωσις” (LA. II.56 ff.).

As Goodenough very rightly points out, the two robes have close analogies in the Egyptian mysteries; the variegated robe of Isis is often worn by the initiate, the white robe of Osiris only once (Plutarch, Mor. 382 C, D [in] Goodenough, p. 119).

H.J. Massingham, This Plot of Earth, p. 180-I, [where] linen sarochs [are] weekday-colored and embroidered with symbols indicative of the wearer’s trade, but Sunday smock[s] are always white.

8 Somn. 217.

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(έπιχαλών) of the tew-dons (τόνοι) of the soul that Philo condemns elsewhere.1 Εύτονία presupposes the traditional ontology and psychology in which the Logos or Spirit is the bond (δεσμός) or chain (δειρά) or cable (ορμίσκος) or thread (sutram) on which all things are strung and by which they are moved.2 In this “thread-spirit” (sutratman) doctrine, God’s omnipresence “is not locomotion . . . but an act of tension (τονική)3 . . . by way of the mind’s power of intension (τονική) which it extends (τείνας) through the perceptual functions (δίαίσθήσεως = pmmh, indriyant) . . . [for so it is said that] God extends (τείναντος) His power through the median breath (διά τοΰ μέσου πνεύματος = madhye prane) even unto the material-substance-of-things-perceptible” (άχρι τοΟ υποκειμένου)4 “The Word of Him-that-Is (τού όντος λόγος) is the bond (δεσμός) of all existence, and holds together and constrains (σφίγγει) all the parts, hindering their disolution and disintegration” in die same way as which the soul which maintains the harmony and unity of the parts of the body.’ Thus “all things are constrained (σφίγγεται) by die Divine Word (λόγος θείος), which is a glue and a bond (δεσμός) that fills up all things with its being. He who fastens (είρας) and weaves together each separate thing is, verily, full of his own Self.”6

The concept is of at least Sumerian antiquity,' but here it will suffice to observe that in Philo it derives, in the first place from Plato, for whom it is “the circumambiance (περίοδος)8 of die All” that “constrains (σφίγγει) all things,” i.e. that of Fire, since “it is Fire that most of all rushes into all things,”9 or diat of the sovereign and undivided, Same and Uniform,10 within us that dominates “by

Spec, I.90; cf. Plato, Phaedo 98 D, χαλωντα opposite of συντείνοντα.Almost all the citations in the present context are additional to what will be found in my “Iconography of Durer’s ‘Knotcn’ and Leonardo’s ‘Concatenation’,” Art Quarterly, Spring 1944. The universality and catholicity of the thread-spirit doctrine can hardly be overemphasized.Sacr. 68.I A. I.30-37. “He (pmna, the “Breath") placed himself in the midst of all that is,” AA. Π.2.1. Cf. Asd. Hermetica, p. 419 [and] Plato, Timaeus 34 B ψυχήδέ εις to μέσον αύτοϋ θείς διά παυτός τε έτεινε κχΐ έτε εξ ωθεντοσαυς.Fug 112. Note τοΰ όντος λόγος = Timaeus 34 C, όντος άεϊ λογοσμός θεοΰ.Hcras 188. Cf. AA. II.1.6 “So by His (Prana’s, the ‘Breath’s) Word, (vac = vox, verbum, λόγος), as rope tanti), and by names as knots (da mani = δεσμοί) this All is tied” (sitam). Sitam here is also to be correlated with the concept of the “Bridge of Immortality” or “Sacrificer’s Bridge” that links and separates this and yonder world — alma sa setuh, CU. VIII.4.1.“The word markasu, ‘band’, ‘rope’, is employed in Babylonian mythology for the cosmic principle which unites all things, and is also used in die sense of ‘support’, the divine power and law which holds the universe together" (S. Langdon, Semitic Mythology, 1931, p. 109). It is in the same way, also, that the Chinese Tao is called the “link (hsi) of all creation” (Chwang Tzu, Ch. VI; in Hughes’ version, Everyman’s Library No. 973, p. 193). The Babylonians had also a doctrine of the creative Word (mummu) of God (Langdon, ib. pp. 104, 290; ER E XII.749 ff. “Word”).For περίοδος (= περφφορά, Timaeus 46 D) the literal sense of “circumambulation” is more appropriate, in the present contexts, than that of “revolution,” and the more so in that the extension of the pneumatic thread is essentially the divine and royal procession. The making of the circuit in divinis is reflected in the processions of kings and circuits of judges, and in the custom of the “beating of the bounds.” Cf. P. Mus, “Has Brahma Four Faces," JISOA. V, 1937, especially [the] last paragraph of p. 70, and the story of Jotipala’s cakka-viddham in Jdtaka V. 125 f., see in Ars Islamica X, 1943, p. ni.Timaeus 58 A, B. Λιελήλυθε, “charges,” like a horse; but other senses of English “charge,” e.g. to charge with electric power, or to impose a charge upon anyone, are implicit in the concept of the “bond” although not suggested in this context.Timaeus 36 D.

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Reason” (λόγφ κρατήσας) whatever is unreasonable;1 and secondly from Empedocles for whom it is the Titan Edier (τιτάν ήδ αιθήρ) that encircles and “constrains all things” (σφιγγών περί κύκλον απαυτα).2

A further consequence of the concept of the etherial and quintessential Logos as die “bond” (δεσμός) of all things illuminates the problem of destiny and necessity, and their distinction. Philo asks, “Whose is the cord (ορμίσκος), whose the ordering (κόσμος),3 whose the destiny (ειμαρμένη), the sequence and analogy of all tilings, with their ever-unbroken chain (ειρμός)? Whose is the rod (ράβδος) . . . whose the kingship? Are they not God s alone?’M More specifically, it is the Royal Power of the Logos that enjoins what things are to be done, and what not to be done;5 and accordingly, “the Law (νόμος) is nothing but the Divine Logos, prescribing what we are bound (δει) to do, and forbidding what we may not do” and the man-of-culture6 who “does” the Law is assuredly “doing” the Word of

1 Timaeus 42 C, cf. Sextus Empiricus on Parmenides, Ι.3.Π2.2 Empedocles fr. 185. “Titan Ether," i.e. Ζεύσ αίθριος (Hcraclcitus fr. 30), Za'xj πατήρ, Philo's “etherial

father" to which the soul returns (Heres 282-3), Titan, if from τεψνω (Hesiod, Theog. 207) would be the “Stretcher,” a sense that would be most appropriate to the supreme and most ex-/i«-sive power, cf. AA.I.4.3 pmnenenam lokam samtonotv, Π.4.3 sa etam purusam brabma [ta-] tatamam apasyat—root tan “Grundbegriff spannen, stricken, recken, wie etwa einen Faden (Sei/, Seine), dann aber auA. . . ein Gewebe auspannen," i.e. lay a warp (Grassman, Worterbuch zum Rig-Veda). Cf. [Philo,] Conf. 136.

3 Κόσμος here as in Protagoras 322 C, πόλεων κόσμοι τε καί δεσμοί φιλίας συναγωγοί.4 Mut. 135· The “cord” or “necklace" is a symbol of nature’s (i.e. God’s) operation, [but should]

not [ . . . ] be confused with the “wheel of necessity" [, cf.] Somn. Π.44 and Joseph 150, and so of keeping one's word [Fug. 150, cf. RV. IV.33.6, IX.H3.4); the cord, together with the signer and rod, symbols of fidelity and training (πανδείκ), are gifts of God to the soul, and are for her adornment. Cf. JUB. I.35, where the necklace (niska), of which the ends meet, is a symbol of the Year and Endless Chant-, and KU. II.3 where the snika vittamnyi that Naciketas repudiates corresponds to the “golden collar” that Joseph accepts in Somn. II.44. “Analogy” to be understood as in Heres 152 and Timaeus 32 C. On Destiny see V. CiotTari, Fortune and Fate, 1935 (Ch. 3, p. 35. Destiny, the cause of incarnation, but temporal instruments condition the body, p. 40, Destiny “the instrument by which Providence utilizes Free-will to ensure the well-being of the Universe, the triumph of Good, and the defeat of Evil"; cf. also Ch. 5).

The catenary' nature of destiny is clearly stated in Asclepius III.39 (Scott, Hermetica I.363, 423, 434, 437, II.413, 423, 433): “Quam ειμαρμένην nuncupamus, OAsc/epie, ea est necessitas omnium, quaegerunter, semper sibi catenatis nexibus vincta,” and its divinity also by the Stoics (Seneca, De benej'. IV.7.2, Hunc eundem [Jovem]et Fatum si dexteris, non menteris.)

The Hermetic dictum (Stobaeus I.5.20) that “there is none that can escape from Destiny” suggests that of Riimi, cited on [page 85,] Note 2. Destiny is an aspect of the First Cause, which is that of our being; Necessity is that of the operation of the mediate Causes, which determine the conditions of our becoming. The distinction is that of the necessitas infallibilitatis of an autonomous agent and the necessitas coactionis by which a hetcronomous subject is governed. To the extent that we cooperate with Destiny we are becoming what we are, and arc liberated from Ncccssity; our Destiny is nothing but a predication of our Destination, which must be reached if we follow its direction. The “own-law” (sva-dharma) that determines a vocation (sva-karma, το εαυτοΰ πραττείν) is self-imposed; and since this own-work is “laid down by our own nature" (sva-bhii va-niyatam, κατά ipixnv) it is to our last end of perfection that it must lead (BG. XVIII.45-49). Nothing is more blessed [and] more literally eudaimonic, than the destined (niyatem) and co-bom (sahaja) task, the metier, that is the very raison d'etre of a nativity.

5 Fug. 104. Just as the Buddha is both kiriya-vadi and an akiriya-vadt, a teacher of what-should-be- done, and of what-should-not-be-done, Vin. I.233 *·> A.I.62. Accordingly, “He who sees the Law (dbamma, δικαισύυη) sees Me,” SB. 111.120.

6 Αστείος is the exact semantic equivalent of Sanskrit nagara, both denoting a truly civilized elegance and polish and all that is opposite of boorish ness. The man who merely “knows what he likes” is not in this sense “clever."

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God.1 The invisible powers which the Creator has extended (άπέτεινε = vitanoti, vitate, samtanoti, etc.) are “bonds unbreakable” (δεσμά . . . άρρηκτοι),2 and “with [these] unbreakable bonds of self-mastery (τοΐς άρρήκτοις έγκρατειας δεσμοΐς)

we should be in earnest to bandage up (κατασεΐν) the apertures of the senses” (τά των αισθήσεων στόμια), for only misery can result if the parts of the soul are left open and loose (λελυσθαί) to admit

from without anything and everything without discrimination of quality or quantity,3 while if their

oudets are controlled and “constrained” (συνεσφιγχθαι) this will result in rectitude of life and speech.·1

We recognize, accordingly, a real as well as an etymological connection between the bonds (δεσμοί) that have been laid upon us and what

we are in duty bound (δει) to do; and also that this doing not “as we like” but of the Law, in accordance with the share of the divine free-will in which we have been made participants, is the fulfillment of our destiny (destinare, “bind” = δέω) — a very different thing from the necessity (άναγκη) by which our accidents are

determined. And therefore, as Rum! says, “to flee from that destiny and decree is like fleeing from our own essence, which is absurd.”5

m

Winged tetramorph — the Four Evangelists borne on winged and fiery wheels. A fter Byzantine mosaic, 13th century [a .D.]

1 Migr. 130.2 Migr. 181.3 An echo of Republic 397-398.* Det. 100-103. The metaphor of “closing the doors of the senses" is very familiar, e.g. Migr. 188;

Heracleitus is cited by Sextus Empiricus, Adv. dogm. 349, and BG. VHI.I2 sarva-dvarani samycimyir, D. II.70.

Note the use of σγίγγω, again implying a constraint for good. For “constrained” we might have said “guarded” — as if by sphinxes, for there is really a strict analogy between the doors of the senses and the gates of Paradise, the Kingdom of Heaven being “within you.”

5 Riirm, Mathnawi I.970, cf. V.1666. It is of the highest interest diat Arabic qistnet, “portion,” is the exact semantic equivalent of ειμαρμένη, not of αναγκη; and that just as ειμαρμένη determines the existence or becoming of die soul, but not the manner of its becoming, for which our own constitution is responsible, so in Islam the Word of God, by which the creation is brought about, is only the command to “Be” {/tun). For all its supposed “fatalism," Islam expressly asserts mans free-will (qadar) and responsibility, and is bitterly opposed to “necessitarianism” (jabr).

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PHILO NEVER SPEAKS OF A OR THE SINGLE CHERUB,1 AND NEVER MENTIONS sphinxes, though he can hardly have been unaware of the traditional representation of cherubim by winged sphinxes. But the idea of a single “Holy Cherub” seated on the Merkabah (the throne-chariot of Ezekial,

Ch. x) appears much later in the writings of Eleazar ofWorms, one of the leading lights of mediaeval Hasidism, and it has been recognized by G.G. Scholem2 that this is “an echo of Philonic thought.” This Cherub is an emanation of God’s Shekhinah or invisible Glory (kavod), or Her “great fire” that surrounds the dirone and from which the human soul also originates. The Cherub can assume every form of angel, man or beast,3 his human form being the pattern after which God created Man — in other words, the form of Philo’s Logos* “the image and idea, His Word” that God impressed upon the whole Universe.5 In any case, however, it will be evident that the nature of the superior principle, of which the Cherubim are aspects charged with delegated functions (those of creation and government, or of mercy and justice) can to some extent be inferred from that of its divisions.6 This is inherent in the nature of an organic Trinity, to be also in some sense a unity,7 participation implying kinship.8 For example, the Cherubim denote έπίγνωσις και επιστήμη πολλή,9 while the επιστήμη θεοΰ is die particular property and domain of the Logos·,10 and they and the Logos are aspects of one and the same creative Fire." And if we venture to translate these considerations into die terms of the symbols as visually conceived, it will be to say that the nature of the Logos, standing between the Cherubim, and however superior to them, will be

1 In [the] Old Testament, the singular occurs only in Ezekial X.4 “Then the glory (kavod) of the Lord went up from the Cherub.” Philos’s exegesis does not reflect Ezekial.

2 Gerschom G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, Jerusalem, 1941, p. 113.3 Trenaeus (Ill.xx.11) says that the cherubim have four appearances: Those of a lion, calf, man

and eagle, representing kingship, priesthood, human nature and /ogoi-and-protector. These are, of course, the types o f the Four Evangelists; and that their winged symbols are really those of cherubim will be evident from a collation of Ezekial 1.6 and 10 with X.14; in I.IO the faces are those of a man, a lion, an ox and an eagle, in X.14 those of a “cherub,” a man, a lion and an eagle, whence it follows that “cherub” = “ox”; which equation, together [with] the attribution ot bonne feet in 1.6 supports the analog)· o f cherubim to the Assyrian sedu, whose forms are those o f man-bulls.

4 Opif. 139. “Man was made a likeness and imitation o f the Logos.” This is not an assertion of man’s superiority to women as such, but of the superiority o f what is masculine or virile in either with respect to what is feminine or effeminate in either. That “Man” is the Immortal Soul, Soul of the soul, or Pure Mind in every man or woman, as distinguished from their mortal part. (Spec. III.207, LA. I.31, Somn. 1.215, Det. 83, Heres 55 f.)

5 Somn. II.45, Mut. 135.6 The distinction of the Powers (attributes or attendants) from their source is only apparent, not

real. Cf. E .R . Goodenough, By Light, Light, p. 25 and QE. 11.66-68.7 Heres 213, cf. Plato, Timaeus 31 C.8 LA. III.161, cf. Plato, Protagoras 322.9 Moses II.97.10 Fug. 76, cf. Spec. I.345.” Deo. 6, 7; Goodenough, I.e. p[p], 31, 41.

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that of a Power in some sense cherubimic, for example, winged. Or, if we translate into the terms of the actual iconography, in which the Cherubim are represented by sphinxes, it might have been expected that the third member of the Trinity would also have been represented by a sphinx.

Actually, however, the oldest and most universal form of the symbol that separates the affronted guardian genii is the sacred tree (or plant) or pillar. In the oldest examples the tree or pillar is often one of light, either supporting a solar wheel (Fig. 76) or more often having the winged disc of the Sun hovering above it, or even replacing it (Figs. 77 and 78). This winged disc appears in both Syrian and Assyrian art of the second millennium B.C., and notably in the kingdom of the Aryan Mitanni where, as Frankfort remarks, “the winged sun-disk supported by some elaborate pole is the most distinctive trait of the Mitannian glyptic”' as a symbol of the royal power of the Sun and Sky.

Figure 76: Marduk, Zu and [a] Tree o f Light. Museum o f Fine Arts, Boston 41.479 (Brett Coll. 129).

It has been thought that the winged disc in Assyrian art is of Egyptian origin and Semitic mediation, and this is possible since the motive occurs already in the art of the Old Kingdom. But as Frankfort himself remarks, “we should be on our guard against considering the Asiatic symbols too exclusively from the Egyptian standpoint,” and actually, in the Eighteenth Dynasty, when the Sun-disc assumes its greatest significance, there is more reason to suspect an Asiatic influence on Egypt than the reverse. This occurs most conspicuously in connection with the concept of the life-giving “touch” of die Sun, represented in art by the hands of the Sun, radiating from the disc, and extending the Ankh symbol and Breath of Life to the nostrils of the Pharaoh and his Queen.2 This conception, corresponding to that of Genesis II.7 on the one hand and to that of the Indian

1 [H.L. Frankfort, Seal Cylinders,] p. 264, 265.2 A. Moret, Du caractere re/igieux de la royaute fharaonique, Paris, 1902, p. 46, Fig. 2. S. Bey,

“Representation of the Solar Deity with human hands and arms "Ann. des Services des Antiquities de t'Egypte, 38 [1938], p. 53 f.

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Figure 77: Genius separating sphinxes, guardians of a Tree o f L igh t, below flying A sur (wing[ed] disc with bearded head). Assyrian seal cylinder, M FA .45.215. Van der Osten, Brett Catalogue No. 127.

Sun-kiss on the other, reappears also in Greek mythology in the healing and life-giving “caress” of Zeus, from which Epaphos is begotten; and although the notion of the Sun’s rays as extensions of his power and symbolized by hands or feet is characteristically Indian, that of the life-giving kiss is so universal that one would hesitate to suggest it for any precise time or place of origin.1

It is not, however, so much with the history of the motives as it is with their significance that we are concerned. It need hardly be demonstrated here that tree, pillar and bird are representations not of different but of one and the same solar, fiery and etherial principle of life and death. It will not surprise us to find that Frankfort thinks that both the sacred tree on Assyrian seals, and the winged disc (in which the archer god himself is sometimes represented) are representations of

Figure 78: Symbol o f the God Asur on a bronze cauldron from Olympia. Orientalizing style (around 700-650 B.C.). After H.V. Hermann, Olympische Forschungen, IV, pi. 4.

' On the Sun-kiss sec my “Sun-kiss," in JAO S. 60 [1940]; for Epaphos, [see] Aeschylus, Supplement 40 f., 312-315,575 f. and Prom. 850; and for the hands of the Sun in Vedic scriptures and Egyptian iconography, [see] H. Guntert, Der arische Weltkonig und Heiland [1923], pp. 156-169, E.H. Sturtcvant, “Indie speech and religion” in Yale Classical Studies I [1928], pp. 226-7 and E.R. Goodenough, “Hellenistic Kingship,” ibid pp. 80-82.

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the “national god, Asur”;1 or that in the Mediterranean area Evans should long ago have recognized in the cult pillar “an aspect of the Sun-God.”2 It appears that [the Mitannians] “or their ancestors” [were] speakers of an Indie language and worshipped well-known Indian deities. [These peoples] “exercised a powerful influence upon Assyrian religion” and “the god Asur was borrowed from the Indie nation during their sojourn in or near northeast Mesopotamia” in or before the fourteenth century.3 It will not be out of place to point out that in India Agni Vaisvanara, the most universal form of the Fire of Life, King and Spectator of this entire Universe and often identified with the Sun,-4 is not only Lord ofTrees (vanaspat!) but also thought of architecturally as a “pillar” extending from the altar-navel of the earth to the sky5 and as “a pillar of Life standing at the parting of the seven ways, in the nest of the Highest,”6 and is described as “bird-like perched upon a tree, vociferous with light as priest with speech”;7 while in another text he is spoken of as a “golden disk (rumka) glorious with glory,” and it is said with reference to the “Golden Reed,”8 i.e. pillar of fire and Axis Mundi that “in it there sitteth the Eagle, and hath his nest,”9 and so, indeed, “they do call the Sun a sky-supporting pillar.”10 Nor is it inconsistent with the fact that the Sun and Fire are powers both of life and death11 that it should be said of the Goddess of Death, Nirrti, that “like Savitr (Sun) of true laws, and like Indra, she standeth at the meeting of the ways.”12

1 H. Frankfort, Seal Cylinders, 1939, pp. 205, 208. Cf. also W.H. Ward, “The Babylonian Representation of the Solar Disk," Λ/η./. Theol. II [1898] pp. Π5-118 and B. Pcring, “ Die gefiiigelte Scbeiben in Assyrian" A n h ivfir Orientforschung III [1932] pp. 281-286.

For representations of Asur in the winged disc see seal no. 85 in G.A. Eisen, Ancient Oriental Cylinders and Other Seals. . . Collection ofMrs. W.H. Moore, Chicago 1941, pi. X, and the faience reproduced by W. Andrae, Farbige Keramik atts Assur, pi. 8 and by Frankfort, Cylinder Seals, Fig. 64, as well as the representation on the eleventh century “broken obelisk” in the British Museum illustrated by Frankfort,I.e. Fig. 63. In all such representations Asur is armed, like Apollo, with bow and arrow, and is also a rain-god; but a comparison of Frankfort’s two figures will show that he is wrong in regarding die feathered wings as clouds; in Fig. 63 only the pointed form on the right represents a cloud.

I Arthur Evans, I.e. p. 173.3 E.H. Sturtevant, “Indie Speech and Religion in Western Asia," Yale Classical Studies I [1928] pp.

225, 226.* Rgveda I.98.1; Nirukta VII.23.5 Rgveda I.59.1, IV.5.1, IV.6.2.6 Rgveda X.5.6, cf. Chdndogya UpatiisadV.3.2. Cf. Proverbs VIII.2 “in the places of the path.”7 Rgveda ΧΠ5.5; cf. Vl.3.5 “archer-like . . . and even as a bird that perches in a tree.”8 Rgveda IV.58; Atharva Veda X.8.41 (Prajapati).9 Taittiriya Samhita IV.2.9.6. Rukmcr. “Insbesondere wird die Sonne als das Gold oder Goldschmuck des

himmels. . . bezeichnei' (Grassman, s.v. in Worterbuch zum Rig-Veda)·, notably Rgveda VI.51.1.10 Jaiminiya Upanisad Brahmana 1.6.IO.II Agni’s, Prajapati s, Hiranyagarbha's “shadow” (cAays: shelter, refuge) is both of life and death." God's

shadow (o k i 'k θεοΰ) is his Word {Logos) . . . the archtype for further imagery,” and notably the image after which Man was made” (LA. ΠΙ.96, cf. Somn. I.206), viz the “Man in this man" (Conq. 97), Plato’s “inner Man" (Republic 589 B) and the “God of Socrates” (Apuleius), is qui intus est (II. Corinthians IV.16), the invisible, ineffable (anadistah, literally ίίδεικτος as in Heres 130) “Inner Person of all beings," who is our real Self (Aitareya Aranyaka ΠΙ.2.4, Maitri Upanisad VI.7), “Soul of the soul, its governing part” (Heres 55), “Immortal in the mortal” (Conq. 97), “thy Self, the Logos" (Marcus Aurelius VHI.40).

12 Taittmya Samhita IV.2.5.5. Nirrti (“dissolver,” “separator," etc.), antithesis of prarpanah, epithet of the immortal Agni in Rgveda X.45.5. But there are (as in the Greek traditions) “two Fires,” friendly and unfriendly, sacerdotal and royal, sacrificial and domestic, opposed to one another (Taittiriya Samhita V.2.7.6, Aitareya Brahmana I I I .4, Satapatha Brahmana I I .3.2.10 etc.), and to

(Continued on following page.)

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The Sun, in Philos third sense, is the symbol of the Divine Logos,' the Man who is both Mind and Word,2 ό νους, ένθιρμον καί πεπυρωμένον πυεύμα i.e. mtellectus vel spiritiis3 and Monitor of the soul,4 and it is to this immanent principle of life and gtiosis that he refers when he speaks of “the central pillar in the house, viz. the Mind in the soul, and its most healing remedy.”5

It is said of the incarnate Bambino (Agni) that the body is his hearth, the head his roof, he himself is the central Breath (madhyamah pranab), the Breath is his pillar (sthuna).b This Breath, corresponding to Philo’s θειον πνεύμα or πνοή “the most life-giving Spirit of God,”7 and repeatedly identified with the Sun (“the Spiritual-Self (atman) of all that is mobile or immobile”),8 Agni, Indra, Brahman, Sun, Life (ayus) and Death (mrtyu),9 is at the same time the

(Continued from preceding page.)the destructive (kravyat, “flesh-eating”) one of these are applied to the terms nirrtha and nirrta (masculine) as they are also to “Yama, Death, the archer” (Atharva Veda VI.9.1, 3, XII.2.14). Conversely, Yama’s nature is also friendly, e.g. in Rgveda X.135.1, as vispali, “Lord of the settlers”; and the two are often, and rightly, identified. Thus the powers of life and death arc unified in both (cf. references in JAOS. 60.47), but necessarily divided in their operation, and when thus affronted can be regarded as contrasting in sex as well as other respects.

Nirrti is the feminine counterpart of Yama nirrta, and he being the King of Justice (dharma-raja) and the stern Judge o f the dead, she is implicitly that Justice (dharma, διακαιοσύνη) by which he rules, and so corresponds to Parmenides’ “Penal Justice” (Λίκη πολΰποινος, f.) who keeps the keys of the etherial gates to which “the road o f the Daimon” leads, and opens them only to the true knower (οαφή . . . είδός), Parmenides in Sextus Empiricus, Adv. dogm. 111. With the admission o f the “true knower,” or perhaps “truth-knower,” cf. Jaiminiya Upanisad Brahmana 1.5 where the Sun is the stern Janitor, and being himself the Truth, admits the sooth-sayer as like to like, and a Brhadaranyaka Upanisad V.15.1 where the dying man appeals to Yama, the Sun, to discover himself to be one whose essential quality is truth.

1 Somn. I.85.2 Det. 83.J Fug. 133-4 Fug. 1315 Migr. 124, cf. M aitri Upanisad IV.3. In connection with the symbolism o f the “house" in

the traditional psychology it will be o f interest to compare Fug. 212 where “the angels are mcmbers-of-the-house (σίκέται) of God, and gods themselves” with Brhadaranyaka UpanisadV. 14.4 where the Breaths (pranah, sensitive powers o f the soul, elsewhere often called gods, devah, or sometimes gales, murutah) are called the “household servants" (gayah) ot the Self, and Satapatha Brahmana II.5.3.4 where the Maruts are officiants-in-the-domestic-sacrifice, grhamedhinah — for “the Breaths are gods, mind-born, mind-yoked, in them one sacrifices metaphysically” (Taittiriya Samhita VI.1.4.5). Alternatively, the two cherubimic or many other Powers (δυάμεις = saktayah) that Philo generally calls “guardsmen" (δορυφόροι) are called in the Indian contexts “allies” (apayah) or are a regiment of the King’s “own" (svah).

Λ Brhadaranyaka Upanisad II.2.1.7 Opif. 29, 30. This πνεύμα is “the substance of the soul," not the physical άήρ that we breathe,

and to be distinguished from the “blood soul” or physical life that even irrational beings possess (Det. 81, 83; Heres 55 f., 61; Spec. IV.123); not the carnal soul (nefes) but “in the soul" (Plato, Axiochus 370 C) as that by which it is empowered (LA. I.37, Opif. 67), and the fiery Mind (Fug. 133) — “spirit” as distinguished by St. Paul from “soul” (Hebrews IV.12). For the distinction of the Spirit of Life from the physical breath of life cf. Katha Upanisad V.5, “it is not by his breathing in and out that any mortal lives, but by another (Vdyu, the Gale), on whom these two spirations lean.”

8 Rgveda I.I15 .I.’ References too many to be cited here. For Brahman, Brhadaranyaka Upanisad III.9.16; for

the Sun and Death Aitareya Aranyaka II.2.4, Satapatha Brahmana II.2.3.4, X.5.2.1-5, :3> Γ4· l6, 20, 23.

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“hall-post” (sala-vamsa) or king-post (.sthfina-raja) of the cosmic house and the central principle of the microcosmic house that each of us inhabits; and all the parts and powers of the composite individual (Philo’s σύγκριμα, [cf.] Plato’s Timaeus) both rest upon and are derived from this primary principle in which they meet like the rafters of the house in its perforated roofplate which correspond to die Sun (-door) macrocosmically and to the bregmatic fontanel microcosmically.1 The central or median position of the Breath in relation to the powers of the soul that arise from it is equally emphasized by Philo and in the Indian texts.

Philo thinks of all good, and indeed of the whole heaven and universe, as the “fruit of the Tree of God’s eternal and evergreen nature,”2 and also speaks of “the Tree of Life, that is to say, of Wisdom” (σοφία).3 Nature and Wisdom are grammatically feminine, but there can be no question that the Tree or Column in Palestinian art, by its very position between the guardian powers, represents the Logos, grammatically masculine. I do not think that Philo ever expressly identifies the Logos with the Tree, unless in Mut. 140 cited above. For him the Logos is either invisible, and therefore not represented on the Mercy seat (.Fug. 101); or anthropomorphically conceived, and represented by the living image of the High Priest,4 or described as an “armed angel, the Logos of God, standing in the way, and through whom both good and evil (events) come to their fulfillment”;’ but also the mental presentation (φάντασμα) of “the image of God, his angel, die Logos" in the form of a pillar (στήλη), which is “the symbol of stability, dedication

1 References in my “Symbolism of the Dome," Indian History Quarterly XIV [1938] pp. 1-56; Svayamatrnna·. Janua Coeli," Za/rnoxis II [1939] PP· 3-51; “Sun-kiss," JAOS. 60 [1940] pp. 46-67 (pp. 58, 59, on the Breath as Kingpost); and for the Breath more generally. “On the One and Only Transmigrant,"JAO S. Supplement 3 [1944].

2 Mut. 140; cf Migr. 125 ota φϋτον . . . σοφία. Like Saiikhayana Aranyaka X I.2 “As a great green tree with moistened roots, so Brahman stood,” cf.Rgveda 1.182.7 “What tree was that, that stood in the midst of the sea, to which Bhujyu clung?” X.31.7, and 81.4 “What was the wood, and what the tree of which they fashioned Heaven and Earth?" answered in Taittmya BrahmanaII.8.9.6 “the wood was Brahman, Brahman the tree . . . there stands Brahman, world-supporting.” CU. VLn.l.

3 LA. III.52, cf. Genesis III.6. Irenaeus, Adv. haer. 1.27 “the Tree which is itself also called Gnosis”; Eriugena (cited, Bett, p. 79) “the Tree of Life, which is Christ." M aitri Upanisad VI.4, Brahman, “called the Sole of Asvattha (‘Pccpul’) . . . man's Sole Awakener” (eka sambodhayitf), which is also the Bodhi Tree, seated under which, at the navel o f the Earth, Gautama became abhisambuddha, “the Wide Awake” (Dlgha Nikaya II.4). It should be remarked that in the M aitri context the Branches of the Tree arc the Five Elements, ether and air, fire, water, [andj earth.

4 Migr. 102, cf. Fug. 108 f. It is in imitation of the Logos that the High Priest wears in outward operation the variegated cosmic robe, and when he enters the Holy of Holies, the white (etherial) robe, corresponding to the etherial (QE. II.91) essence of the sanctuary.

In some cases the winged disc of the Babylonian seals is supported, not by a tree or pillar, but by a man, an “Atlas,” with uplifted arms, e.g. seal 87 in G.A. Eisen, Ancient Oriental Cylinders and Other Seals . . . Collection of Mrs. W.H. Moore, Chicago, 1940, pi. X; or the figure between the genii may be that o f a nude goddess (ib. seal 88).

5 Cher. 35-36. “Good and evil" here, not in the moral sense, but kalyana, papa (pulcher, turpis), but sukha, duhkha. Such eventful goods and evils, occasions o f pleasure and pain, arc to be patiently endured; whereas the Logos teaches us to choose between the moral good and evil (Cher. 31, Fug. 130 and passim). The eventful goods and evils are not of the logical Destiny (ειμαρμένη, dharma) but o f irrational Necessity (άνάνκη, karma): The Logos is their permissive cause by the very fact of the creation of a spatial-temporal world that cannot but be conditioned by the “pairs” (έυαυτία, dvandvau), Heres 207 etc.

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and inscription” [and] is a likeness of the Governor of all the Powers, the mighty Logos through whom die universe is ordered and on whom it rests securely better than the human or angelic forms.”1 Or the Logos is, obviously enough, symbolized by the turning (στρεφόμενη in LXX) fiery sword of Genesis III,2 by the central and highest light of the seven branched Golden Candlestick.3 In the last two cases the symbolism is directly and explicidy solar, and the same is implied in QE. Π.67 of which Goodenough remarks that “the solar character of the figure is at once indubitable.”4 In other words, the Logos is the Sun and Light of men; he who, being risen, draws all men unto him.5 We have already seen that the Tree and Pillar are specifically solar symbols, and will only add that the seven-branched candlestick belongs to the “candelabra” type of the Tree of Light, so familiar on Assyrian seals and in the Indian iconography.

Actually, there is a good deal of evidence to show that the Tree or Column is often the representation of a goddess rather than a god. The pillar with volutes, Ionic column, which has lost in our eyes its symbolic value and has become a mere art-form, the index of a “style,” when used as a written sign in combination widi a divine determinant, denoted the Sumerian Goddess Innin, the later Ishtar and Analiita.6 It has been shown also, rather conclusively, that in Palestinian art the sacred tree between affronted animals originally represented a Phoenician and Canaanite Mother-goddess of Love and Fertility, Asherah or Ashtoreth, evidendy to be equated with Ishtar;7 and diere can be no doubt that in Egypt [the] sycamore and palm are aspects of the Dea Ni/trix, for there are many representations of both in which the arms and bust of the Goddess issue from the trunk, holding forth

' Somn. I.240-242, cf. 157,158.3 Cher. 26-28. The revolving fiery sword is a well-known type of the “active door," i.e. Sundoor

or Sun-whcel; it is the two-edged sword of the Word of God that sunders the soul from spirit (Hebrews IV.12), all that is mortal from what survives the perilous passage.

3 Heres 215-226. The main stem of the Candlestick, which supports the Sun, corresponds, of course, to the Axis M undi, the “straight light like a pillar . . . Heavens bond” (σύνδεσμος) of Republic 616 B, C, righdy understood by Stewart, and skambha of the Atharva Veda X.7, etc., uniting and dividing Heaven and Earth, and which is also the “one foot” o f the Ibex, aja ekapad, “prop of the sky and world progenitor” (divo dharta bhuvanasya prajapatih, Rgveda IV.53.2,X.65.13), who with his pillar upholdeth the sky (VIII.41.10).

4 E.R. Goodenough, By Light, Light, p. 26 [; for] Hochma, see MacDonald.5 Rgveda I.164.4, IV-54.4;John 1.4, XU.32.6 W. Andrae, “Schrift und Bi/d," Analecta Orientalia 12 [1935], p. 2. Note that the two halves of

this pregnant form give rise to the paired doorposts (cf. Proverbs VIII.34) with rings; and that these doorposts being the living guardians of the Sundoor (as is often explicit in the iconography and the whole Symplegades concept), Andrae (p. 5) is perfectly correct in inferring [the] androgenous “Polaritat” o f the primary form, which he identifies with that of the Tree of Life.

7 D. Nielsen, “Die a/tsemitische Muttergottin" ZDM G. 92 [1938]; H.G. May, “The Sacred Tret- on Palestinian Painted Pottery," JAOS. 59 [1939], pp. 251-259; cf. Ilberg, Die Sphinx . . . p. 37. The Hebrews would naturally have repudiated these pagan goddesses, but in making use of an essentially pagan iconography [they] might very naturally have seen in the Tree a symbol of the “Wisdom” (Hochma, Sophia of Proverbs VIII “M y fruit is better than gold . . . Blessed is the man that hcareth me . . . watching at the posts of my doors . . . for whoso findeth me, findcth life,” etc.). The parallel with Vac, the Word, the Dea Nutrix, o f Rgveda X.25 is very evident, and it should not be overlooked that this Word “indwelling sky and Earth, holds fast (arabh = labh = λαμβάνω [εις χεΐρας]) all existence,” a concept expanded in Aitareya Aranyaka11.1.6 where “with God’s Word as cord (tanti) and names as knots (diima = δεσμός) all this universe is tied.”

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Figure 79.· Date palm with [the] Goddess offering food and drink, Egyptian relief, l8 'h Dynasty. Berlin. After Otto Puchstein, D ie lonische Saule, Leipzig, 1907, Abb. 15.

food and drink.1 In fine, the Tree of Life is not in any systematic or exdusive sense of determinate sex, but rather the symbol of a divinity that may be thought of as either male or female, or better is the principle from which these differentiations are derived, male and female being the accidents rather than the essence of the “Man”; for it is not to him who became our Inner Man, but to the bodily and mortal nature only that the distinction of “man” from “woman” applies.2 The “image” of God, the pattern of the Logos, after which the “Man in this man or that woman” was made is “bodiless and neither male nor female”3 but a unity ot both at once, for “to the image of God He created him; male and female created He them.”4 For all this there are many exact parallels in the Indian sources.3 From Philo’s point of view or, indeed, that of the whole traditional scheme of the divine procession — a principio vivente conjunctob — [the] born image of the supreme God (ο θεός), to which he generally refers as θεός without the article,7 presented

1 E.g., the relief in Berlin 90. Puchstein, Die ionische Saule, Leipzig, 1915, Abb. 15 (here Fig. 79), corresponding to the Bharhut and Bodhgaya illustrations (here Fig. 80) of the Story of the Treasurer (Dhammapada Atthakatha 1.204), except that in this story the tree spirit is male. The Indian tree spirits are either male or female, but the Greek Dryad is always feminine.

1 Heres 139. Similarly St. Thomas Aquinas, Sum. Theol. I.47.3 ad. 3, “Man is the form; this man [or woman] is the form in matter."

3 O pif 134; Galatians ΠΙ.28 “according to the image of Him that created him, where there is neither male nor female.”

* Genesis 1.27. The biunity o f the image is the ultimate basis of Plato’s [myth, as well as others, cf. Philo, Heres 139,] of man’s original androgyny. That the immortal part of human beings is called the “Man” also explains [the] conception o f regeneration as “man,” and the Islamic exclusion of “women” from Paradise; the real distinction from this point of view being not of physical sex, but of virility from effeminacy. Cf. also my “Tantric Doctrine of Divine Biunity” in Ann. Bhandarkar Res. Inst. XIX [1938] pp. 173-183, anil “Unatiriktau and Atyaricyata” in New Indian Antiquary VI [1943] pp. 52-56.

s Notably Brhadaranyaka Upanisad 1.1-3 where the Self (atman) as Person (purusa, i.e. Prajapati, Progenitor) is originally agre = ένάρχή) “like a man and a woman closely embraced . . . himself made to fall apart, thence arose ‘husband’ and ’wife’ ”; Aitareya Aranyaka II.3.8.5 where the immortal Breath (prana) can neither be spoken of as female, male or neuter; and Svetasvatara Upanisad V.xo where the Lord of the Breaths (pranadhipati) “without beginning or end, in the midst of multiplicity, the omniform one by whom the universe is generated and circumvestcd" is neither feminine nor masculine nor sexless.

6 St. Thomas Aquinas, Sum. Theol. I.27.2.7 Somn. I.229.

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little difficulty. “Nature,” for him and in earlier Greek philosophy,1 even also in Christian theology,2 does not always or even often mean now what the term means to us, our physical environment (natura naturata, materia secunda), but the divine power that “natures” everything, making, for example, a horse horsey and men human. It is only from this point of view that we can understand the conceptions of all sin as an infringement of the Natural Law, of all human law as “just” insofar as it is based on the Natural Law, and that all of art as “correct” insofar as it is “an imitation of Nature in her manner of Operation: For the Logos is this Law,3 and Nature and Essence are one in divinis.

Another aspect of the problem already alluded to, is that of the coincidence of contraries in their common principle, of which very simple examples can

be cited in the abstract concept of “time” which may be either past or future and that of twilight marking the conjunction of darkness with light. But it will be observed that such collective or middle terms, like the Sanskrit duals that denote a mixta persona are grammatically speaking designations not of unities but of composites; for the unity of past and future without composition we have to employ the “now” (of eternity) in which the past and future merge and

80: [“The Story of the Treasurer” in Dhammapada Atthakatha (Dh. A.I. 203 sqq.), after a bas-relief from Bharut. Drawing by Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy. — Ed.]

1 Heres 115, that “invisible Nature” that is the beginning (άρχή) of all things”; Fug. 172 “God alone, the noblest Nature”; Sac. 98, the “unborn Nature" who yet gives birth, and is not to be distinguished from the “unborn God,” ib. 101 — as in Svetasvatara Upanisad I.9, “She, too, is unborn.” Plato, Laws 773 E “the ever-generative Nature,” Timaues 52 C, “true and sleepless Nature.” Sextus Empiricus reminds us, those whom the Greeks called “Physicists, from Thales down” regarded the evidence o f the senses as unreliable, and “set up reason (λόγος, cf. Heracleitus frs. I, II) as the judge of truth as regards the real essences; and starting from this arranged their doctrines of first-principles and elements and the rest, the apprehension of which is by the power of Reason” (Adv. dogm. I.89, 9). In other words, the Greek “Physicists” were not at all in our sense of the word “Naturalists,” but much rather philosophers, contemplatives or theologians who, like Socrates (Phacdo 79 C, D), held that the senses can never lead us to a knowledge of reality because their report is always of inconstants that can never be known because they never stop to be.

2 St. Augustine, De trin. XIV.9 “That Nature, to wit, that created all others.” Natura naturans, Creatrix universalis, Deus.

5 Explicit in Opif. I, Migr. 130; cf. O pif 143, where “the recta ratio (όρθος λόγος) of Nature is the Law of God.” The Logos is thus the “Common Law” Heracleitus fr. XCI, XCII, Plato Laws 644) which to obey or “do” is to participate in God’s Freewill (Immut. 47, Confessions 94, Somn.II.74, Migr. 130\ James 1.25; St. Thomas Aquinas, Sum. Theol. 1.26 — “the soul is free insofar as it obeys reason”). So that, as Marcus Aurelius says “for a rational being the same act is both natural (κατά φύσιν) and deliberate (κατά λόγον, VII.ιι).

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by which they are divided, while for a twilight shorn of its duality there is no term in English, though [we] have the very striking Sanskrit expression brahmabhuti (theosis, deificatio) as the analogical, paramiirthlka equivalent of sandhi, twilight.1 In many ancient or heiratic languages, however, it is not unusual to find “polar” words which represent the common principle of pairs or contraries,2 and without discussing this in detail, it will be pertinent to our present theme to cite the case of θεός, used in Homer and often also much later with prefixed ό to denote a masculine and with ή to denote a feminine divinity, the implication being that both are essentially “God,” but only accidentally “God” or “Goddess.”

Philo points out (what would be obvious to any student of Indian mythology3) that grammatical gender is not always a valid indication of actual functions, and expressly identifies the Logos of God with the Wisdom (Σοφία)

1 I cannot take up here the extremely important problem of the Symplegades and that of the “Golden Mean” (Webster, “the way of wisdom and safety between extremes” — aurea mediocritas, by no means in the modern pejorative sense “mediocrity”), and the raison d'etre o f ritual acts to be performed at dawn or dusk when it is neither Day or Night. [We] shall only refer to Parmenides (in Sextus Empiricus Adv. dogm. Ill): “There are the gates etherial dividing Day and Night," to which “the road of the Daimon” leads, and to Opif. 33, 34 where Philo describes the opposition (ένανπότης) and clash (διαμάχη) of Day and Night, and how the incorporeal and intelligible barriers (bpoi) of Dawn and Dusk were set in their midst (εν μέσος, the place of the timeless Logos, He of whom it is said that “no man cometh to the Father but through Me”) to disdain them; for which there arc many striking Indian parallels, notably that of Jaimimya Brahmana I.il where between the two great seas o f Day and Night (the jaws of Time, the devourer ot lives) there runs a bar or bridge for those who sacrifice at dawn and dusk; which is an imitation of the First Sacrifice, when Indra slew Namuci (Vrtra, Death) “neither with anything dry or anything wet, and neither by day nor night” (Maitreyam Samhita IV.3.4, Satapatha Brahmana Xll.7.3.1 etc.). The “nows” of the twilights are momentous of Eternity in which all whens are one.

1 On the polarity of words see Karl Abel, Ober den Gegensinn der Urworte, 1884; R. Gordis, “Effects of Primitive Thought on Language" American Journal o f Semitic Language and Literature, 55 [1938] 270 f; B. Heimann, “Plurality, Polarity and Unity in Hindu Thought” in BSOS. IX [1937-39] pp. 1015-21 and “The Polarity of the Indefinite" in JISO A. V [1937] pp. 36-40 (especially Note 18); M . Fowler, “Polarity in the Rig-Veda” in Review o f Religion Vll [1942] pp. 115-123.

Conversely, abstract nouns can be formed by combining the pairs of which they denote the one essence: For example, in Chinese, “big-small” = “size,” and in Sanskrit “dark-light” (chaya-tapau) corresponds to Dionysius’ “divine darkness, blinding by excess of light." These are illustrations of Philo's dictum, that “two opposites together form a single whole” (Heres 213) and that of St. Thomas Aquinas, “contraria conveniunt in genere uno, et etiam conveniunt in ratione essendr (Sum. Theol. I.49.3 ad i). It will be observed that every such group forms a Trinity corresponding to Philos divisive and unifying Logos with any two of its contrasting powers. These contrasted powers are the “lions in the path,” cherubim, or “clashing rocks” between which runs the "narrow way” ot those who would be “delivered from the pairs of opposites” of which the wall of Paradise is built and after which the gate is called “strait” (Bhagavad Gita VIII.28, XV.5; Nicolas of Cusa, De vis. Dei. IX, Matthew V II.13 ,14).

' Much of the pertinent material is summarized in my Spiritual Authority and Temporal Power in the Indian Theory o f Government, New Haven, 1942, pp. 38-41, especially with reference to Varuna and Dyaus. There also [are] many references to “Prajapati as a mother-being” (Caland, Paficavimsa Brahmana, 1931, p. 659), e.g. Paficavimsa Brahmana VII.6.1, X.3.1 and even to his breasts and his milk (ib. XIII.11.18, Satapatha Brahmana II.5.1.3, etc.). Cf. my “Tantric Doctrine of Divine Biunity” in Annals ofBhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, XIX [1938] pp.173 ~183; also S.M.A., “God is Our Mother,” in Blackfriars (Supplement No. 15, Life o f the Spirit) May 1945.

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of God,1 notwithstanding that he knows that the one is the Son and the other the Daughter of God.2 O f the Daughter of God, Sophia, the Mother of All things, whom he identifies with the “Rock” from which the soul can “suck honey” (.Deuteronomy XXXII.13), he says that from her breasts she gives to all her children the nourishment they need, and thinks of her as the River of Life, as it were of honey for sweetness and of oil for light;3 though he differentiates this motherhood from hers whom Adam named Eve (Ζωή), i.e. αίσ θήσις,4 who is the “mother of all living” only in the limited physical sense, whereas Sophias motherhood is that of the “really and truly living” for whom the natural life is not an end but only the means to the end of knowledge.5 So he says again of the Daughter of God, Sophia, that while her name is feminine, her nature is virile; and that she is not only masculine, “but a father, sowing and begetting in souls aptness to learn.”6 Nonetheless is God “the only true generator and sower,” and “only truly wise (σοφός).”7 Sophia corresponds in many ways to Athene, and to the Muse, or Muses collectively, who are the daughters of Zeus or Ouranos,8 or of the Sun, as the

1 LA. I.65; Goodenough, By Light, Light, p. 23.2 Confessions 146; Fug. 51,52. Just as the Indian Varuna, feminine to Mitra = Savitr, is nevertheless

male to his own domain; and as the “great Brahman” (grammatically neuter) is feminine to Krishna (Bhagavad Gita XIV.3, 4) and all beings arc “its" children (brahmayonini, ib. VII.5, 6, cf. Mundaka Upanisad H l.l.]), that is to say arc Krishna's, who is both “the Father and the Mother of the Universe" (ib. IX.17). Underlying all such formulations is the orthodox assumption that “Nature and Essence are one in God.”

The explanation o f the secondary development o f “grammatical feminine formations” (A. Tcxcira-Barbaro in Review o f Religion IX [1945] p. 229) is neither grammatical or sociological, but ontological, and parallels the secondary development of the Kingship, originally coincident with Priesthood. The grammatical development parallels that of the Nature which the Divine Essence separates from itself “as a mother o f whom to be born” (St. Augustine, Contra V. Haer. v, like Paficavimsa Brahmana VII.6.2-3). In other words, “primitive” man, the metaphysician whose traces survive even in modern speech, thought first and named the MAN in all men, and only afterwards and for practical purposes distinguished the categories of “this man" and “that woman.” Even today, “man” often means the human being o f either sex. It should not be overlooked that our current expression “the common man” originally referred not to the average “man,” but to the hom*o communis, the immanent Logos, in everyman, and woman.

3 Det. 115-116; LA. II.49, 5° · “Milk,” as in Atharva Veda VHI.10.22-29.4 Αίοθήσις, always feminine as contrasted with νοϋς, masculine, and as Vac (feminine) is contrasted

with Manas (grammatically neuter but functionally masculine), these two forming a progenitive pair o f which our notions are the “concept.” But αίσθήοις coincides with νοΰς when she follows him “forsaking the ways o f woman” (LA. 49, 50, Abr. 99 f., Fug. 128 (Genesis X V III.11):I.e. when the Mind is purified (M aitri Upanisad VI.34.6) and we “repent” (cf. mv Spiritual Authority . . . , Note 40, and “On Being in One’s Right Mind” in Review o f Religion VII [1942] pp. 32-40).

5 Heres 53. The distinction of Sophia from Eve is that of the eternal from the temporal Theotokos; that o f the Maya (Μητις, Σοφία, Hochma, kausatya) of God, the Mayin, from the analogous Maya of whom the Buddha is born on Earth; and that of the “divine" from the “human womb,” the sacrificial and the domestic fires or hearths, from which the spiritual and the natural man are respectively “born again” (Jaimimya Brahmana X V III.1) in the sense of John III.6-8 and Galatians VI.8.

6 Somn. I.51,52.7 Heres 171,172 and Confessions 94.8 Ilia d II.49; Hesiod, Theog. passim·, Mimncrmus in Pausanias IX.29.2.

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Heliades or Helicon, daughters of Mnemosyne, without whose guidance none can follow the steep path of wisdom that leads to the etherial gates whose keys are kept by “Punitive Justice,”' and that are opened only for those whom they have led.2 It is significant enough that the Muses are called “Reminders,” and that they are, in fact, the different aspects or powers of their common mother Mnemosyne, “Memory”; since there is no salvation but for the soul that remembers.3 [It is] needless to say that Sophia also corresponds to Isis;4 and in almost every respect to the Indian Savitri, daughter of the Sun, and like Sophia, the mother of every initiate.

An interesting parallel to Philo’s conception of the two Guardsmen (δορυφόροι) of the Providential Power occurs in the Hermetic fragment, XXVI.3 (Scott, Hermetica 1.5x6): “For there are (two) guardsmen of the Universal Providence. One of them is the Keeper of Souls (ψυχοταμίας), the other the Guide of Souls (ψυχοηομπός). The Keeper is in charge of the embodied souls, [while] the Guide is he who sends off (άποστολεϋς)5 and assigns their places to (διατάκτης) [or] of those who are embodied. And both he that oversees (τηρεΐ) and he that dispatches (προίσι) act according to the mind of God.”161 It may be observed that these delegated and opposite powers are precisely those of Him who both “maketh alive and killeth” (I Samuel II.6, I Kings V.7, AV XIII.3.3. etc.), and that they correspond to those of Philo’s respectively “creative and regnant,” or merciful and retributive” cherubim; the

1 Contrast Euripedes Hipp. 540 [re] Aphrodite.2 Pindar, Paean VII and IX; Parmenides in Sextus Empiricus, Adv. Dogm. m ; H.J. Rose, Greet

Mythology, p. 174.3 Cf. my “Recollection, Indian and Platonic,” JAOS. Supplement 3,1944.* Apuleius, Met. XI.4 (Isis = Minerva, Venus, Juno, etc. cujus numen . . . lotus veneratur orbis).5 Scott’s rendering o f άποστολεύς by “he that sends down to Earth" is most unnatural, both as

regards the “Psychopomp," a term elsewhere applicable only to such conductors of souls as Hermes [(cf.] Diogenes Laert. 8[)], Charon and Apollo, and because the souls referred to arc, in fact, already embodied. Άποατέλλω is not necessarily to “send down," as in Luke X.16, but to “send away" as in Luke IV.18 άποστεϊλαι . . . έω άφέσει, “to set at liberty”; and there is nothing in the text to justify the words “to Earth.” Λιατάκτης refers to the ranking of the souls “according to their worth" as in the first paragraph of the excerpt; and προίηαι is “dispatches” or “lets go," and actually a causal form exacdy corresponding to the Sanskrit intransitive pre (pra + i) in preta, the regular designation of one “gone forth,” “departed,” “deceased."

The Keeper of Souls 1 would identify with the “Prophet” who in the Republic 617 D ft. lays before the souls about to be reborn the patterns from the lives from which they choose mostly in accordance with the habits of their former lives. Although I cannot discuss here Plato’s doctrine of rebirth, I must point out that the periods of 100 and “1000” years correspond to the respective durations of the lives of men and o f gods in the Indian devayana and pitryana (e.g. of CU. V.3.2); also that Plato’s final prayer “that we may be dear to ourselves and to the gods," virtually identical with the prayer of Phaedrus 279 B, and Sophocles O. C. 309, corresponds to the Indian doctrine of true “Self-love" (atmakama = φίλαυτος), for further references to which see HJAS. IV p. 135 and JAOS. Supplement 3, pp. 40, 41 and Note 82.

16 In anv case, the two Guardsmen of the Hermetic fragment correspond to the two guides (ήγεμών) of Phaedo 107-8, viz. the daimon of each soul who leads it to the place of judgment, and the “other guide” who brings it back here again after great periods of time; the latter is the same as the guardian daimon o f the soul's new life in Republic 620 E. In other words, the two are both equally “guardsmen,” “guides,” and “daimons”; one o f the past, the other o f the coming life.]

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concern of the Keeper being with the births of the unembodied, and that of the Guide with the lot of the departed. These two Guardsmen, the angels of Life and Death, and invested with the powers of Day and Night and Light and Darkness, conditions one and undivided in Him whose station is between them as their Divider, are the symbols of all those contraries (εναντία, dvandvau) of which the wall of Paradise is built; a wall that none can pass but those who are able to overcome the highest spirit of Reason — Cusa’s spiritus altissimus rationis, ανώτατος λόγος — and truth in whom they coalesce and by whom they are divided.1,1

Male sphinx with flower offering, flanking the W isdom-Trec (Bodhi-dum a). Indian, Kusana, 2nd century A.D. Museum of Fine Arts 26.241.

11 Cusa De vis. Dei. I.io\JU B. I.5. For Day and Night cf. Opif. I.33, TS. VI.4.2 and 41, X.11.9.]

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[Figures 8 1 a andb: Sirens and sphinxes from the tomb in Xanthos, ca. 480 U.C. British Museum. Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy captioned his illustration (our Fig. 96, page 113) with a reference to Euripedes, Rhesus 890 f. — Ed.]

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IT IS A MATTER OF GENERAL AGREEMENT THAT SPHINXES, KERES, SIRENS and harpies are closely related and even equivalent types and conceptions; it may, however, be further observed that the verb άρπά ξω is at least as characteristic for the Sphinx as it is for the Harpy, and that the word

is not always used in a wholly bad sense, but rather characteristically of the “rape” of a mortal by a god, a rape that may be a “rapture”: It can hardly, I think, be overlooked that the derivative adjective άρπάλέος is not only used in the sense “voracious,” but also in that of “attractive,” “alluring,” or “seductive.” We have seen that the Sphinx, like the Siren, carries off her victims alive, and that they sometimes show no sign of distress. Discussing the sirens of the British Museum tomb from Xanthus [(Figs. 81 a and b)],1'1 where they are carrying off diminutive mortals, Cecil Smith has remarked that “in the sculpture there is no sense of dismay shown in the figures who are carried off, nor yet in their companions; the graceful bird-women support their burdens with the utmost care, and there is no suggestion of rape or violence. The Siren here is the gentle messenger o f death.”2 Much the same applies to the Harpies or Blasts as Homer conceives them; to be carried off by the Harpies (αρπυιαι) or Blasts (θύελλαι, αελλαι) is a translation and disappearance sharply distinguished from the normal death in which a body is left to be burnt or buried; and such a translation, as Rhodes points out, may even be desired.3 The same verb (άυερειπομαι) is used of a rape by the Harpies or Blasts (OdysseyI.241, IV.727, XIV.371), for the rape of Oreithyra by Boreas (Phaedrus 229B, C), for the Rape of Ganymede by the gods, to be the cupbearer of Zeus

11 Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy collected images of the "Sarpedon” legend as found in Iliad XVT.419-683 — see our Fig. 82 [page 98)] from the Cleveland Museum article of April 1945 — though he was never able to incorporate this important Hellenic story into his work.G. Nagy, in The Hellenization o f Indo-European Myth and Ritual, p. 141, relates the “name Sarpedon . . . not only to the hero but also to various places associated with the mythological theme of abduction by winds or birdlike harpies. This theme is expressed by way of various forms containing the verb-root harp — ‘snatch’ (as in harpuia ‘harpy’ and harpazo ‘snatch’), which may be formally connected with the element sarp — of Sarpedon." In this connection, I cite the following observation: “It is not too surprising that Homer makes Sarpedon the subject of the only big snatch in the Iliad, though he transformed the carriers from lady birds to Sleep and Death, to match more familiar configurations of epic mortality.” (Nagy quoting E. Vermeule, Aspects o f Death in Early Greek Art and Poetry, Berkeley, 1979, p. 169). Vermeule, herself, calls Xanthos: “Sarpcdon’s town where harpies are at home," I.e. p. 242. — Ed.]

2 Cecil Smith, “Harpies in Greek Art,” JH S. XIII [1892-1893]; Smith points out also that the Harpies arc called the “guardians” of the Apples of the Hcspcrides, and are certainly “guardians” as represented on a Cyrenean cup from Naukratis, now in the British Museum. In a representation of the Rape of Europa by Zeus (Smith’s Fig. 2), there is an accompanying harpy or Nike holding wreaths, as if to emphasize that this is a successful “rape.”

3 Edwin Rohde, Psyche (edition 1925), Chapter III and Note 4, discussing “Translation.” On page 56: “The belief that a god could suddenly withdraw his earthly favorite from the eyes of men and invisibly waft him away on a breeze not infrequently finds its application in the battle scenes of the Iliad,’' and such are not regarded as dead, but “the Harpies have carried him away."

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[Figure 82: Sleep and Death holding the dead Sarpedon. Bronze cista handle, Etruscan, ca.fourth century B.C. Cf. Ilia d X V I .671. Cleveland Museum o f Art; see the discussion in the Cleveland Museum o f A rt Bulletin, April 1945.]

{Iliad XX.232), and by Hesiod for that of Phaethon by Aphrodite, who carries him off (άυαρεψαμένη) and makes of him a “divine genius (δαίμονα δΐον, Theog. 990). Apollo himself plays the same part when, at the command of father Zeus, he saves (σεσωεμένη . . . έ ξέσωσα . . . ) Helen from Menelaus’ sword by snatching her away (ήρπασα), to reveal her later “wrapped in folds of ether,1 for as Zeus’ daughter, she may not die” (Euripedes, Or. 1496 f., 1557,1630 f.; cf. Lycophron, Λ/. 820).2 Apollo carries off (ηρπασε) Halcyone {Iliad IX.564); Eos carries off (ηρπασε) Kleitos and Tithonus (Odyssey XV.250; Hymn to

In this and many other contexts ([i.e.] Orestes 1631,1636) A.S. Way and others (notably J. Burnet) often render αιθήρ by “air" (or by such poetical terms as “cloudland") far too freely, for if rherc is one thing certain it is through the air that one ascends to the Ether (equated with Zeus or with the Sky) above (/ Corinthians XIV.288). On the other hand, Wav inserts “etherial" where there is nothing in the text or sense to warrant it (Euripedes, Rhesus 533)!

Cf. Philo, Mut. 179: “from earth through air to ether"; Speculum IV.235: "Justice extends from sky or ether through air to earth.” [In Philo there is] clearly distinguished [the] celestial etherial from [the] aerial. Cf. Migr. 184 [and] Apollordorus III.34.

[The Ether is the soul’s “immortal covering” (Marcilio Ficino, cited in Kristeller, p. 371) or “subtle body” (suksma sarira), or “body of glory.”]Compare Euripedes, Rhesus 886 ff. where a Muse is seen overhead “conducting” (πέμπει) the body of the newly slain Rhesus (her son), intending to “set free his soul” (ψυχήν άνεϊναι) and that he shall be a “human-^rams, seeing light.”

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Aphrodite, 218); Athene and Apollo assume the forms of vultures, perched on an oak, whence they survey a council of warriors {Iliad VII.59). In the sense that all things are what they do, all these are “Harpies” (αρπυιαι), or “Seizers” (Sanskrit grahcih),1 or Hades himself may be the raptor (Lycrophon, 65 s; Callimachus, Ep. Ill, 6 πάντων άρπακτής Αίδνς) [certainly of] Persephone [, cf.] Anth. Pal., or Charon, [cf., again] A nth. Pal.

The Harpies themselves act only by divine command, and are much rather, like Valkyries, choosers of those who are to live with the gods, than murderers; angels of death, but emissaries of Him (or Her) “who slaying, doth from death to life translate.” That they are, indeed, Keres or Moirai, Fates, appears in the saying of Achilles, “My Ker I will accept whenso Zeus willeth to fulfill it” (Iliad XXI.366) and that to “escape one’s Ker" is to save one’s life (OdysseyXV.235; Iliad VII.254, XXII.202). Aeschylus calls the Theban Sphinx “a man-ravishing Ker” (άρπα ξάνδπαω κήρα, Septerion 759). These are the explanations of the associations of sphinxes, harpies and sirens with battle scenes and with the tomb. I f all these winged winds are often, or even usually, regarded with fear and dread, and called by harsh names (as is Aphrodite herself, and sometimes even Apollo or Zeus), it is not because they are evil themselves but because the love of life is strong in everyone, and all men fear Death, who is welcome only under abnormal circ*mstances or in old age, and also because the fate of those who depart is both mourned and resented by those who remain. But, “unjustly men fear Death” (Aesch. fr. 191), and the true Philosopher is a practitioner of the ars moriendi throughout his life (Plato, passim., cf. Phaedo 117 D “I wept not for him but for my own loss.”), and at least in old age, a natural death is a “happy release” (Timaeus 81).

Miss Jane Harrison,2 with less than her customary acumen, saw in the Sphinx only “the ‘throttler’, an excellent name for a destructive bogey, but she became the symbol of oracular divinity.” Ilberg (I.e. p. 16) is much nearer the mark: “ . . . die Sphinx erscheint as Werkzeug einer hoherem Macht,” and the Theban saga is nothing but a local adaptation of a much older conception, and by no means its “Kerpunkt.” Nilsson,3 too, regards the Theban Sphinx only as the secondary development of the widely disseminated type of myth in which the Hero solves a riddle and therewith wins the hand of the riddler and her kingdom. Support for this point of view can be cited from Pausanias (IX.xxvi.2-4) who calls her “mountain” (i.e. the φικιον όρος of the saga) [and] her “domain” (άπχή), which she protects with her sophistries against her brothers whom, if they could not answer her, she slew on the ground that

1 Cf. Blxigavad GitH XV.8 where “when the Lord assumes a body and when he departs he seizeth (gibitva) these (powers of thought and sensation, collectively ‘soul’) and goeth his way, even as the Gate takes scents from their lairs and departs." Cf. Chiindogya Upanisad IV.3.1·, Brahmana Upanisad IV; [etc.]J. Harrison, “The Ker as Sphinx,” in Prolegomena to Greek Religion, [p.] 270 f. G.M.A. Richter (in Archaic Attic Gravestones, 1945, p. 20), though she calls the sphinxes on Orientalizing vases “purely ornamental,” finds it “hard to believe that a sphinx surmounting a gravestone was purely ornamental."

3 M.R Nilsson, The Mycenean Origin o f Greek Mythology, 1932, p. 105.

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they “had no vahd claim to the rule (άπχή) or to kinship”; but, he says, “it seems the answer had been revealed to Oedipus in a dream.”1

The mention of Apollo, acting for Zeus (as the Theban Sphinx for Hera), and that of Ganymede carried off by unspecified gods on Zeus’ behalf, reminds us that all these winged messengers of which we have spoken are really the powers of the gods or forms that they assume under given circ*mstances without ever ceasing to be themselves. All are raptores by whom men are “caught up,” and “hounds of heaven”; and it is only to state this in other words to say that Zeus himself carried off (ηρπασε) Ganymede or that it is a “God- bidden Blast that carried him off” (άνήρπασε θέσπις αελλα) whither his father knew not.2 Άελλα here, is surely at once a Gale and the Eagle (αετός) of

[Figure S j: Cyprian cylinder in the Perseus-Gorgon group, Ward 643. Kaiser Friederich M useum , Vorderasiatische Ahteilung, V .A . 2145 in C . Hopkins, “Assyrian Elements in the Perseus-Gorgon Story,” AJA. 1934, pp. 341-358·]

1 In other words, the Sphinx is an Alaksml who became a Laksmi for him who knows her secret, and can therefore overcome her. The motive is that of the “Loathly Bride” who, for the solar Hero who woos and wins her in all her horror, becomes a resplendent beauty, and is, in fact, the Sovereignty (see references in my “Loathly Bride,” to be published soon in Speculum [20,1945]). His connection provides a clue to the combination of beauty with horror that one finds in the concept and representations of sphinxes, gorgons and sirens. [In the Oedipus legend,] Jocasta [, the mother of Oedipus,] represents the Sphinx.

2 Euripedes, Rhesus 530. Cf. Revelation VIII.30 ένδς άετοΰ πετομένου έν μεσουρανήατι λέγουτος and Atharva Veda XIII.2.36,patantam arunam suparnam madye divah, “the Ruddy Eagle flying in the middle of the Sky,” i.e. the Sun Collation of Rhesus 530 with Iph. 159 gives the equation, Sun in chariot = Sun as Eagle.

Αελλα, like άτμός, άηρ, άνεμος (anima, Sanskrit ant/a),αετός, from αω, άήμι “blow," root Sanskrit an or va in Vayu, “Wind” and Atman, “Spirit”). The concept of the Blast as raptor is exactly paralleled in India, e.g. Chandogya Upanisad IV.3 where the Gale (vayu) is a “snatcher-to-himselF’ (samvargah, root samvrh), and the corresponding immanent Breath (prana) or Life in living beings likewise a “snatchcr-unto-himself": How and in what sense is clear from Brhadaranyaka Upanisad IV.4.3 and VI.1.13 where, like a horse its hobbles, the Breath uproots the Breaths and departs with them; cf. Bhagavad Gita XV.8, “When the Lord assumes a body and when he leaves it, he seizes these (powers of the soul) and departs, just as the Gale carries off scents from their seats.”

Flight implies lightness, and wings unimpeded “motion at will”; the “Knielauf” Greek and Indian, may be combined with wings, or may alone suffice to indicate the flight of wingless figures.

Maidens attendant on Artemis and Athena are “wind-footed" (Euripedes, Helen 1314) like the steeds of Zeus (Hymn to Aphrodite 217): in the iconography of the Gorgon, Perseus and Hermes, this is represented visually by the sandal wings. The Gorgon (and Gorgoneion) requires a separate discussion, but two important points may be noted here: (1) that Roscher was perfectly correct in pointing out that the Fratzenmaske was originally the terrible face of the Sun, for which additional evidence can be cited in the fact that the Gorgoneion frequently occupies a central position with an unmistakably solar significance, as notably on the Attic sherd (Gracf and Langlotz 923 A) referred to above; and (2) that in the remarkable composition of the late Assyrian seal cylinder reproduced by Ward (Seal Cylinders o f Western Asia, no. 643 = Weber, Altorientalische Siegelbilder 269 and our Fig. 83, could only be described from a Greek point of view as “Perseus beheading the Gorgon” — note, for example, the Hero’s winged feet and averted head.

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[Figure 84: Bronze shield with eagle o f Zeus as blazon. Crete, Idean Cave, ca. 700 B.C. FromH. Demisch, D ie Sphinx: Gescbicbte ibrer Darst. von d. A n f . . . bis zur Gegenwart, Stuttgart, 1877.]

Zeus, and perhaps Apollo himself in the form of the winged disc (μέσα δ’αίετοσ ούρανοΰ τοτάται).1 The distinction of his Power from Zeus himself is only a matter of describing his effects; just as the Biblical Cherubim are the Wings of the Wind, the Gale of the Spirit on which God rides, and as the Indian Garutman, Suparna, Syena, is either the Sun-bird or the solar Vishnu’s vehicle, on which he rides as Yaw rides upon the Cherubim, and as eagles are both the servants of Zeus, and himself an eagle (Fig. 84), as they are in the Palentine Anthology VIII.33 and 54, “the winged soul of Nonna went to heaven” and “an angel of dazzling light, O Nonna, carried thee off” (ηρπασι), as Christ has carried off Alpius (ib. 103). The problem vanishes, in fact, in the light of self-knowledge, if we have been able to recognize ourselves not in the mortal outer man, but in the immanent divinity, “Our Self, the self’s immortal Leader” (MU. VI.7), alike in life and at death; for if we had known Who we are, it is our Self diat flies away with us, and

1 Hymn to Aphrodite 203-215. Ganymede is made “deathless and unaging, even as the gods”; cf. Atharva Veda X.8.44.

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in our Self that we fly away {/LA. II.6, CU. III.14.4, SA. VIII.7 giving the answers to Prasna Upanisad VI.3).

We are ourselves the Sphinx. Plato himself implies as much by his “etc.” when he discusses the problem of man’s relation to the Chimera, Scylla, Cerberus, and other composite animals (Republic 588 f., cf. 544). Plato equates the two parts of the composite creature with the two parts of the soul, the better and the worse, immortal and mortal: The composite represents the whole man, the human head the Inner Man (όέντοςάν θραπος) (Republic 441 A). He might even have gone further, and pointed out that the serpent tails of these creatures correspond to the appetites (έπιθυμια), equating the two

animal forms, those of the lion and the snake, with the two parts of the mortal soul,

y y \ as Philo assuredly would have done. In anycase, Plato says, that man is one who can be described as just (or, in Christian terms, is justified), in whom the Inner Man prevails, and is not pulled about by the beasts, but makes an ally of the lion or dog, and so cares for the other beasts so as to make them friendly to one another and to himself. On this basis one might say that the composite animal [is carried] off at last, either to punishment in case the beasts have prevailed, or to the beatific life if the Man in the man has prevailed: The question is really just that of the Prasna Upanisad, “In ■which, when I depart, shall I be departing?”

The phraseology of the “rape” is taken over almost verbatim into [the] New Testament. In I I Corinthians X II.2, 4, St. Paul speaks of himself as the man who was “caught up” (άρπαγέντα) to the third heaven, to Paradise; In Acts VIII.39, the Spirit of the Lord (πυζΰμα κυρίου) “caught away” (ηρπασε) Philip, so that he was no more anywhere to be seen; in Revelation XII .5 the child of the Woman Clothed with the Sun was “caught up (άρπάσθη) unto God and unto His throne.”[1) And in connection with the Resurrection and Last

Figure 85: Coptic stele, Jerpanion, p. 133, Fig. 31. In the Coptic Museum of Cairo. C f.Antb. Pal. VHI.62. [Drawing by A.K. Coomaraswamy. — Ed.]

11 In Revelation XXI.ΙΟ άποφέπω (έω πνεύματι έπ όρος μένα) only paraphrases αρπάξω elsewhere.]

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Figure 86 a: Etana carried to Heaven by the Eagle, seeking the Plant o f Birth. Accadian seal, ca. 2800 B.C. [From] H. Frankfort, Seal Cylinders o f Western Asia, p. 138 and pi. X X IV h. [B ritish Museum] 129480 (Southcsk Collection); serpentine; 3.8 x 2.75 (2.65) cm.

[Figure 86 b: Garuda with a Nagini, Indian ca. 500 A.D. M FA Boston 36.262. M FA Bulletin, June 1937.]

Judgment, in I I Thessalonians IV.17 “we which are alive, and remain, shall be caught up (άρπαγησόμεθα) together with them, in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord”: There is an allusion to this in Luke X V II.37, “for wherever the body is, there will the eagles be gathered together” (cf. Job IX.26), and the whole conception goes back to Exodus XIX.4 where the Lord reminds Moses “how I bare

you on eagles’ wings, and brought you unto myself.” So might Zeus have spoken to Ganymede! The Eagle, in fact, survives on Christian tombstones (Fig. 85), no doubt as an expression that the deceased will be “taken up” to heaven.

The motive is, indeed, worldwide, but in Greece and India it may have originated in Sumeria, where in the myth of Etana, the Eagle (eru) carries Etana, who is seeking for the Plant of Life, to heaven’s gates. The myth is imperfecdy preserved, but it is quite clear that Etana clings to the Eagle; and there is a corresponding iconography in which Etana either clings to the Eagle or rides on its back (Fig. 86 a).1 Elsewhere, of course, there may be substituted for the “Eagle” any of the other birds, e.g. Gander (hamsa) or Simurgh, that represent the powers of the solar Spiritus2 (Fig. 86 b).

It hardly needs to be argued that Ganymede (who has actually a feminine counterpart, Ganymeda), whose boyish form is to be explained by the special character of Greek eroticism, is really a symbol of the Psyche. We actually find, in fact, that in art the living form that the Eagle soars away with is not always masculine, but may be altogether feminine. In a representation of the

1 For Etana and the Eagle see S. Langdon, The Legend o f Etana and the Eagle, Paris, 1932 (especially p. 45); Karl von Spiess, “Dervon VogelGettagene"loc. cit., pp. 170-172,182-184 and pi. I. Langdon (p. 45, Note 2) points out that Etana “places his arms round the eagles neck.”

1 For the Gander as the vehicle by which the Himmelfahrt is accomplished see U. Holmberg, “DerBaum des Lebens,” Ann. Acad. Sci. Fennicae, XVI, Helsinki, 1922-23; and my “Svayamatrnna: Janua Coe/Γ in Zalmoxis II, Paris, 1939,13 f.

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soul’s ascent on the back of a lovely mirror of the fourth century B .C ., in the Altes Museum, Berlin (Fig. 87), Ganymeda (if this name may be used) has flung one arm round the Eagle’s neck and thrown back her head as if to kiss and be kissed. The expression of ecstacy is repeated in a slighdy different way in the much later medallions of the gold flask of the treasure of Nagy St. Miklos, in the Kunsthistorische Museum in Vienna.1 We meet, moreover, with exact parallels much further East in numerous representations of the Rape of the Nagi,1 whom the Eagle bears aloft; a visual representation of the words of the Taittiriya Samhita (III.2.1.1), “Thou art the Eagle . . . I cling to thee, ferry me over in safety” (suparnosi. . . tvarabhe svasti ma samparaya), i.e. unto the Farther Shore, unto Brahma, whose abode is in the Ether, and in the last resort {parayanam) of every self,”3 that Brahma, silent and unmanifested, in whom contemplatives “go home,” merging in him their individual characteristics,4 even as sparks are carried away by the gale, and are no longer recognizable.5

It is just at this point that light is cast upon the concept of the Sphinx as a “devourer of raw flesh”:6 For while it is true that the Eagle likewise carries off the Niigi to devour her,7 and the Eagle’s prey is often to be seen within him (cf. Fig. 88), this is a consummation devoutly to be desired, since, as

Meister Eckhart says, “just as food in man . . . so does the soul in God turn into God”;8 and as I have remarked elsewhere, “if the act of solar violence is a rape, it is also a ‘rapture’ and ‘transport’ in both senses of both words.”9 The full sense o f the representations of the flying Eagle’s prey shown visibly within him — a motive of worldwide distribution10 — can hardly be

Figure 87: Eagle with Ganymeda or Psyche; Greek, 4th century B.C. Altes Museum, Berlin. After Karl von Spiess,Jahrhuch f . hist. Votkskunde, V, pi. 2.

1 See Karl von Spiess, “Der vom Vogel Getragene in Jahrbuchf. hist. Volkskunde, V, VI, [1937,] pp. 168-203.2 My “Rape of a Nagr, an Indian Gupta seal," MFA Bulletin, nos. 209, 210, Boston, 1937.3 Brhadaranyaka Upanisad ΙΙΙ.9.ΙΟ-17; cf. Chandogya Upanisad I.9.1, aka'sahparayanam. Death is the

magistcr (acaryo mrtyuh, Atharva Veda Xl.5.14) and naturally appears as the exponent of the great transition (parayanam, Katha Upanisad\.2t), Π.6).

4 Maitri UpanisadW.22.5 Milinda Panha 73 (attham gatan = parinibutto)·, Sutta Nipata 1074-6 (vimutto . . . attham paleti. . . na

pamiinam atthi).* “Earing raw flesh" (ώμΰσιτος), Euripedes, Phoen. 1025; Aeschylus, Septerion 541; cf. Lycophron, 669).

“A t t ’enleve quepour le manger," in Foucher’s words (I.Art greco-bouddhique du Gandhara, II, 1918, p. 37. If, indeed, the hody were not consumed, the soul would not be freed; an immortality in the bodv is impossible (Satapatha Brahmana X.4.3.9).

8 Pfeiffer, p. 331. It is asked in the Rgveda, “When shall I come again to be within Varuna?" Rgveda VII.8.62), of which the explanation is to be found in Satapatha Brahmana X.6.2.I where it is pointed out that when the eater and the eaten are united, the resultant is called by the name of the former. “Con quanti dentiAmor ti morde" (Dante, Paradiso, XXVI.21).

9 M y “Rape of a Niigi; an Indian Gupta seal,” M FA Bulletin, nos. 209, 210, Boston, 1937.10 See Karl von Spiess, loc. cit., and Karl Hentze, Objets rituels de la Chine antique, 1935.

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Figure 88: Raven with swallowed prey, attacking the ophidian guardian of a door. After Fr. Boas, Social Organization and Secret Societies o f the KwakiutlIndians, 1897, pi. 41.

better stated than in the words of the Brhadaranyaka Upanisad III.2 where the Wind (man’s “ last home”) puts into himself those who he conveys to the World s End.

We come now to one of the most cogent parts of the argument.We have seen that harpies are obviously so called because in fact they snatch away (αρπάξω, rapio) their prey. In the same way it is rightly assumed that the designation “Sphinx,” corresponds to an activity denoted by σφι'γγω, even though there cannot be cited a single text in which the Sphinx is actually the subject of this verb; and on this basis a majority of scholars have said that the Sphinx is the “Throttler” or “Strangler.” As to this, it may be pointed out that the Sphinx as represented in Greek art has no members with which it could be imagined that she [could] strangle anything: The Anthology does afford us an instance of constriction or strangling by a snake (σφιγθεΐς δράκοντι, VI.333.1), and Oppianus speaks o f a σφιγκτος μόρος, death by strangling, but such an activity on the part of a sphinx could only be conceived of in the case of the snake-tailed variety, for which there is some literary authority, although no example survives in Greek art. In any case, the use of σφίγγω to mean “strangle” is most exceptional; the ordinary word for that is άγχω, in connection, for example, with the strangling of the two snakes by the infant Herakles,1 while the Sphinx is never the subject of this verb, but typically and almost always of αρπάξω, to carry off, and φέρω, to bear away.

We must ask, therefore, what are the senses in which the verb σφίγγω is generally and regularly used. The common sense is that of δέω, and the meanings those of binding, tieing, lacing, tightening or encircling things such as hair, a fillet, a girdle, band or garment, or persons, whether for good or for evil. We have, for example, σφιγκτά referring to a breast-band,2 σφίγγε, “bind him fast,3 κοσμους έπισφίξας, “tightening the bridles” (of unruly horses, the

1 Pindar, Nem. Ο. Ι.33 f. Cf. Anth. Pal. VI.107.2 Anth. Pal. VI. 272.J Acschylus, Fr. 58. There is no question of strangling Prometheus, but only o f preventing

his escape.

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passions),1 and most significantly σφίγγειν δΰναμις, [the] magnet’s power of attraction (ολκός).2

The last context introduces us to the most significant and very frequent use of σφίγγω = δέω = destinare in connection with the Quintessential, Etherial and Golden Chain or cord that holds all things together at once collectively and individually, enclosing and pervading.3 For Empedocles (ff. 185) “Titan Ether [i.e., Zeus],4 binds his circle fast about all things” (σφιγγών περ'ι κύκλον

1 Philo, Somn. II.294, cf. Plant. 70. ολον άντεσπασε. I sec no reason to emend κοαμούς to κημούς, cf". Hesychius, ιπποκόομικ. The particular κοομούς intended may be the “curb-straps” (έΰρραθέα) described as “compressors of the jaws” (γεννύων σφίγκτορα) and mentioned after the κπμούς in a list of trappings, Anth. Pal. VI.233.

Philo takes over from Plato the whole symbolism of the chariot, which is also characteristically Indian (cf. Phaedrus 246-247; Fug. IOI; LA. I.40; Plant. 72 f.; Katha UpanisadIII.3;Jataka VI.252; and passim in both traditions.

2 Opif. 141. Cf. Abr. 59 where ολκός is used again of God’s attractive power, and John XII.32 (έλκι'κϊω). In Det. 90 the mind’s divine endowment by which it can range afar and be in contact with distant things is similarly one of “attraction" (ολκός).

3 For an outline of this “thread spirit” (sutratman) doctrine see my “Iconography of Diirer's 'Knoten and Leonardo’s ‘Concatenation’ ” in The Art Quarterly VII [1944], pp. 109-128. It is this pneumatic and luminous “thread" connecting all things to their source, this “Golden Cord" that we ought by all means to hold on to (Plato, Laws 644-645), “the ‘Rope of Allah’ which is to renounce self- will" (Rumi, Mathnawi, VI.3942-3) that gives its meaning to the word religion (if from religare or even re/egere), and imposes upon us an ob/tgation (Hgare); this is our “Bond" (δεσμός), and the “leading string” that tells us what we “ought” (δει, δέον, cf. Cratylus 404 A, 418 E) to do. Religion implies an alliance.

From amongst innumerable references additional to those that are given in the paper referred to above, I cite Cicero, De nat. deor. II.115 vinculo circumdato, etc.; Jacob Boehmc’s “the band of union . . . called the centri-power, being broken and dissolved, all must run thence into the utmost disorder, and falling away as into shivers, would be dispersed as loose dust before the wind” (Dialogue o f the Supersensual Life)·, from the Tripurarahasya, “Without Him (the prana-pracarah, Proceeding Breath, the guardian of the ‘city’) the citizens would all be scattered and lost, like pearls without the string of the necklace. For He it is that associates me with them all, and unifies the city; He, whose companion I am, is the transcendent Holder-of-the-Thrcad (sutrah-dharah, puppeteer, stage-manager) in that city" (Jnana Khandam V.122-123); H. Vaughn’s

And such a knot, what arm dare loose What life, what death can sever?

Which us in Him, and Him in us United keeps for ever;

and finally Bayard Simmons’That chain that bound and made me, link by link,Now it is snapped: I only eat and drink.The “emancipation” implied by this breaking of the links, if it could be effected absolutely,

would imply “extinction”; to the extent that the tension can be relaxed or dissolved or loosened, the living being becomes at the same time “slack," “dissolute," and “loose,” and is on his way to be dissolved or “lost.” Philo therefore (Det. 89, 90) righdy emphasizes that the divine “spark” (άπόσπασμχ) is never cut off from or completely separated from its source; it is an extension and not a fragmentation ([cf.] correlation in LA. III.157). In the Loeb Library (Philo I, p. 409) “particle detached” is therefore a mistranslation.

4 The identification of Zeus with Ether is made repeatedly. Heracleitus, fr. 30, αίθρίοσ Διός is expanded by Euripedes, fr. 386, τόνδάπειπον αιθέρα . . . τούτον νόμιξε Ζήνα, τόνδ’ ήνοϋ θεόν; and Socrates in Cratylus 412-3, though he does not use the word Ether, calls that swift and subtle all-pervading “Somewhat” that is the generative cause o f the becoming of all things, “Justice” (δίκαιον), as being that which is present to and through (δία) all things, and adds that

(Continued on following page.)

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άπαντα); Plato is only paraphrasing when he says that “the circuit [or circumambience] of the All . .. binds all things fast” (σφίγγει πάντα, Timaeus 58 A);1 and Philo continues, “the Logos is the Bond of all things (δεσμός . . . άπαντων) and holds together and binds fast all the parts” (συνέχει τά μέρη πάντα καί σφίγγει, Fug. 112). Composites (σύγκριμα, Det. 83, cf. Timaeus 37 A συγκραθεΐσα) such as “we” are naturally incoherent, but are held fast by the Word of God (λόγψ σφίγγεται θείφ), which is a glue and a bond (δεσμός) that fills up all things with its being (Heres 188), and the Powers of the All are bonds (δεσμοί) that cannot be broken {Migr. 181): Omnipresent by the extension of his Powers, the Lord “uniting all things with all, has bound them fast with invisible bonds, that they may never be loosed” (πάντα δέ σθωαναγό)ν διά πάντωγ άοράτοις έσφιγξε δεσμάς ινα μή ποτε λυθείν); that Power which made and ordered all things “holds the universe in its embrace and has

(Continuedfrom preceding page.)it is a secret doctrine that Zeus is Δία for the same reason. This “something” is also, of course, the same as the immortal Soul that is the source of life in Timaeus 36 E, 37 A, and which functions like the Ether as the unifying principle of all things. Aeschylus, fr. 34 (70) says explicitly Ζευς έατιν αιθήρ (as well as other things). Philo’s point of view is the same when he speaks of the Soul, in her pure essence, returning to her source in God (Abraham 258), “to find a Father in Ether, the purest of the substances," (Heres 282-283), which Etherial Nature she is herself a spark (άπόσπασμα) and part (μοίρα, LA. III.161). That “Etherial Nature” is the particular subject of Abrahams investigations (Gig. 62). [Cf.] Det. 90. Cicero, De nat. deor. 11.66 preserves the identification of Jove with Ether. The Quintessentia is still for St. Thomas Aquinas immaterial (Sum. Theol., III., Supplement, 8l.l).

Plato’s “Somewhat” (τι), further emphasized by Socrates’ persistent enquiry, “What (τί), after all, is this ‘justice’?” — to which the answers Sun, or the Heat in Fire, or Intellect are given (much as in Brhadaranyaka Upanisad IV.3 in answer to the question “What Light?”), as being at once creative and all-pervasive powers, δι& πάντων ιόντα — reappeared in Philo, Det. 118 where “the Divine Logos, eldest of the essences, is called by the most general name of ‘Somewhat’.” An analogous Hebrew M i, “Who?,” is similarly the name of “God, as the subject of the mundane process” (G.G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, p. 217); and it is remarkable that [the] Sanskrit Ka, “Who?,” etymological cognate and semantic equivalent, is similarly used throughout the Vedic tradition as a name of the Deity, especially in his capacity as Prajapati, the Father- Progenitor. One is reminded also of Erigena’s “God Himself does not know What He is, because He is not any what.”

1 I.e. “exerts a centripetal force” (E.G. Bury, in the Loeb Library edition, p. 142); ad medium rapit (Cicero, De nat. deor. II.115). The “circuit” (Empedocles “circle”) is that of “the Same within us, dominating by the power of the Logos the irrational mass of the four (material) elements” o f the body of the Cosmos (Timaeus 42 C). Plato himself does not call the Fifth Element, which corresponds to the dodecahedron and which cnforms (δια ξωγρα φών) the rest (ib. 55 C) by the name of “Ether,” but rather “Soul” (the Goddess, θεός, of Laws 897 B), and inasmuch as this Immortal Soul, that Zeus himself has “sown,” is woven throughout the Universe and encircles it from without" (πάντη διαπλακείσα κύκλιμ τε αύτόν έξωθει περικαλύφααα) it is by “psychic bonds” that the astral bodies are bound together (Timaeus 41 D, 36 E, 38 E); and it is just because this “divine beginning (άρχη) o f intelligent (έμρρων = cetanavat) life" (ib. 36 E) is thus ever omnipresent, and “has beheld all things both here in this world and there in Hades” that She, who is the self-moved Mover of all things everywhere, has it in her power to remember everything “throughout all time” (Meno 86 and Laws 896, 897). Cf. my “Recollection, Indian and Platonic,” JAOS. Supplement 3 ,1944, pp. 15 ,16 .

On Plato’s “Soul" as the Fifth Element, cf. Plutarch’s discussion (Mor. 423 A) of the five worlds of earth, water, air, fire and Soul, the latter “surrounding" or “embracing” (περιέχων) the four others, and represented by the dodecahedron with its pentagonal sides, with which the elemental triangles are incommensurable.

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surcharged all its parts” (έγκεκολπισται δέ τά ολα κάι διά των τοΰ παντός μερών διελήλυθε. Confessions 136-137)·1 We remark, accordingly, a consistent use o f the verb σφίγγε = δέω as a technical term in theology throughout a period o f some five hundred years, extending from Empedocles to Philo;2 and to the extent that the meaning o f a noun can be deduced from the corresponding verb, this is as much as to say that σφίγξ implies the etherial Bond and omnipresent Power that keeps the world in being. A t the same time and by the same token the Sphinx as subject o f the verb αρπάξω is a harpy, and as such the Fate that refers the immortal principles o f all things back to their source and centre when their time comes. This is to equate the Sphinx at once with Love and Death. It is, in fact, explicit that the Theban Sphinx “ravages the city and bears away (refers, translates) the Cadmean folk to the light o f the untrodden Ether” (άρπαγαΐσι πόλιω . . . φέρεν αίθέρος εις άβατον φως γένναν, Euripedes, Phoen. 48, 809).3

We are now in a position to take up the main problem o f the present article [/chapter], that o f the real meaning o f the Sphinx in Greek literature and art. For this we must resort to the actual iconography, the literary sources, and the studies o f modern scholars.4 In the Greek Geometric and Orientalising

I t c o c c c t B t c d c B C B C c c c o i o c o ^ c o c o c io o t o o o c c c c l

Figure 89: Griffin and male sphinx with “lily crown” ; each in pairs as guardians o f a tree. Bronze from Eleutherae,

century B.C. A fter H. Payne, N ecrocorin th ia , Fig. 1.

1 Ινα μή ποτε λυθείη, cf. Migr. 190, echoed in Dante’s la! virne, che giantmai non si divime, Paradiso XXIX.36; διελήλυθε, an echo of Plato, Timaeus 58 A, B where it is “Fire” (i.e. the “ever-living fire” of Heracleitus, Philo’s “fire unquenchable”) that “most of all surcharges all things.”

2 When Plutarch (Mor. 394 A) says that Apollo συνδεΐ the ούσιά of the world by his presence in it, he might just as well have said Έγκεκολπισται like περικαλύφασα in Timaeus 36 E; similarly in 423 A περιέχοντα is tantamount to σφιγγών περ ι κύκλον απαντα.

5 With φώς here cl. Aeschylus, Pr. 1092 αίθηρ κολν&ν φάος ειλίσσων; Plutarch, Mor. 390 A ώπάνον . . . ιρώς . . . αιθέρα . . . πέμπτην ουσίαν. The Ether is always thought of as “bright” (as in Indian akasa, root kits, “shine"), while the Air is “naturally black" (Philo, Opif. 29, Moses 11.86) or “blue” (Arist., De col. 794 A).

One “escapes” to the Ether (Euripedes, Orestes 1375-7, Phoen. 1216), but the living fear for one beloved μή πρύς αίθέπα άμπτάμεωος φύγη, Iph. in Τ. 844“5· 1° Euripedes’ Orestes 275, Orestes seeks to drive away the Erinyes, Keres and Eumenides to Ether έξακρίξετ αίθέραπτεροΐς), as if to their natural habitat. Cf. Aeschylus, Septerion 543.

4 Most o f the references will be found in Roscher, Pauly-Wissowa, and Daremberg et Saglio. J. Uberg, Die Sphinx in dergriechischen Kunst und Sage, Leipzig, 1896, is a valuable source book.

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Figure go: Bcllcrophon and Chimacra, [with] paired [female] sphinxes guarding tree, seventh century B.C. M FA 95.10.

art, and on the archaic vases of the eighth and seventh centuries B.C. and later, there are numerous representations of paired affronted or addorsed sphinxes, occasionally male (Fig. 89) but usually female (Fig. 90), having between them a vegetative motive, palmette or rosette, of which they are evidently the guardians, like their Oriental prototypes, and like the Hebraic Cherubim who keep the way of the Tree of Life, or, in the place of the sphinxes, the Tree of Life or Light may be guarded by equivalent griffins (Fig. 91).1 Paired sphinxes occur also with Hermes standing between them, holding his herald’s staff;2 the composition corresponds to Philo’s Trinity of the Logos with attendant Powers, and Hermes

himself to the Sumerian Nabu or Mummu, creative Logos, recording angel and messenger of the gods,3 and probably also to the Indian Pingala, one of the Sun-god’s two male attendants.4 Representations o f sphinxes forming parts of thrones, usually

Figure9 1: G riffin s and M inoan column.From C .W . Blegen, Prosym a, I937> Number 576, pp. 266-7.

1 Literary evidence for the equation of the sphinxes with griffins will be cited below. For the close resemblance in form and function cf. Figs. 89, 90 and 91.

2 Lenormant et de Witte, Elite ceramogr. p. 247 and pi. LXXVll; Ilberg, I.e. p. 29, citing also a representation of Hermes with Keres.

3 For Nabu see S. Langdon, Semitic Mythology, 1931, pp. 104, 158, 277, 290; and A. Jeremias, Old Testament in the Light o f the /Indent East, p. 9. For the Indian Breath (prahah) as recording angel see Jaimimya Brahmana I.18.1.

' Pingala and Danda arc discussed by J. Hackin, Mem. arch, de la Delegation Franfaise en Afganistan,VII, Paris, 1936, reviewed by L. Bachhofer in JAOS. 57 [1937], pp. 326-329. Pingala carries writing utensils (like Nabu), and Danda is armed with a shield and a spear, and it is quite obvious that these rwo represent the sacerdotal and royal powers, creative and punitive, that are united in the Sun himselt; the danda (rod) is one o f the most familiar symbols of Yama (Death, as Judge) and of the King, in his punitive capacity.

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Figure 92: Achilles and Memnon fighting, with affronted sphinxes. Attic black-figured, sixth century B.C. After Gerhard, Auserlesene griecbiscber Vasenbi/der, C C X X .

those of gods or goddesses (Zeus, Hera, Athene, Aphrodite) are not uncommon:1 Pausanias records of the throne of Zeus at Olympia, made by Phidias, that its front legs bore the images of sphinxes holding the Theban youths whom they have carried off (ήρπασμένοι).2 The conception obviously parallels that of the Hebraic God for whom the Cherubim are a seat, and it may not be out of place to repeat here that these Cherubim are, in Palestinian art, actually represented by sphinxes. There are also representations of paired sphinxes or equivalent sirens associated with batde scenes, of which they are the spectators (Figs. 92 and 93) and that their function there is similar to that of the Valkyries, who in the Norse mythology conduct the slain warrior to Valhalla, is suggested not only by this association with the battlefield, but also by the fact that the sphinxes associated with a hunting scene on an archaic vase in Munich3 are accompanied by inscriptions consisting [of] “deren Name (Σ+ΙΦΣ oder ΣΦΙ+Σ) zugleich mit besondrer Betonung (ΗΕΛΕ) und mit gewohnterpalastrischen Gruss (+AIPE).” This salutation, χαΐρε (or equivalent χοίρων) is a word (like [the] Sanskrit svaga)* of welcome or farewell, and in the latter sense often uttered by or to those who are about to die (e.g. Euripedes, Herakleidai 600); here, 1 think, addressed to the slain warriors whom the Sphinxes will carry off, and in the sense of the Homeric words, σύ δέ μοι χαΐρων άφίκόιο Odyssey XV.128, “Fare thee well and mayst thou arrive,” addressed to Telemachus, setting out to return to his “home and fatherland” (ές πατρίδα γαΐαν), and that would be no less appropriate if addressed to the Spirit of the deceased, departing, as Philo says, “to find a father in Ether” (Heres 283).

1 "In Griechenland.. . vor allem warden die Throne der Gotter mit so/cher Verzierung versehen. Sphinxe schmiicken die Riicklehne, wie am Throne des amyldaischen Apollon (Pausanias II I.18.4); sie sind neben oder unter dem Sessel, auch an der Fussbank angebracht und dienen oft statt der Fiisse’ (Ilberg, toe. cit. p. 46, with references).

2 Pausanias V.II.I2.3 Meleagros and Theseus hunting the Caledonian boar (Iliad IX.543 f., Apollodorus 1.8.2 f.);

E. Gerhard, Auserlesenegriechiscbe Vasenbi/der, 1858, III.156 and pis. CXXXV, CXXXVI.4 Taittmya Samhita III.5.5.3, iatapatha Brahmana I.8 .3 .II, literally “self-going,” i.e. to a desired

destination; in iatapatha Brahmana specifically widi reference to ritual death and prefigured Himmelfahrt. Svaga, only in the sense of “farewell," and to be distinguished from svagatam (sva + dgatam, “self-come,” or su + agatam, “well come”), “welcome." Cf. Parmcdides in Sextus Empiricus.

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Figure pj: Achilles and Memnon fighting, with affronted sirens or harpies. Italo-Corinthian. M FA , Boston 95.14.

Figure 94: Sphinx in Sundoor, between griffins. Geometric-Orientalising; Arkadia, Crete;eighth or seventh century B.C. After Doro Levi, “Early Hellenic Pottery o f Crete,” Hesperia XIV, 1945. Cf. Valentin Muller, “Minoisches Naeb/eben oder Orienta/ischer Einfluss in derfrubkretiscbe Kunst}'' Ath. M ith. L [1925], pp. 51-58, and Abb. 1.

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The single Sphinx appears in early Orientalising vase painting from Crete. The remarkable example illustrated in Fig. 94 [page h i] is important from several points of view. In the first place, she is seated between the two jambs of the Janua Coeli, in the position occupied by the Sun [here as a pillar of light] in Fig. 91 [page 109], of which Sundoor the paired griffins, right and left, must be regarded as guardian genii] and secondly, the details of the iconography are amongst those that point most clearly to the Hittite sources of this type, as to which see further below. Single sphinxes on vase paintings are also found in the central medallions of Attic black figured craters, a position in which a great variety of other solar motives are met. The single Sphinx appears also as a shield device;1 Aeschylus, for example, describes Parthenopaeus’ shield as having upon it the figure of a “raw-devouring” sphinx, holding her Cadmean prey beneath her (φέρει δ’ύφ’ αυτή),2 a figure in relief (έκκρουστον) and “cunningly constructed with pivots” (προσμεμηχανημένην γόμφοις, Septerion 541-544), on which it must, I think, have moved when the shield was swung.3

Figure 95: Two sphinxes, one with living prey.Attic black-figured sherd, [sixth century B.C.] After Furtwangler, M iinchner Jahrbuch I, Abb. 9. [Licbieghaus, Frankfort, LI 549, from a loutrophore. — Ed.]

1 For some references to representations in vase painting see G.H. Chase, “The Shield Devices of the Greeks,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, XIII, p. 122.

2 With φέρει is to be understood, however, αεθέπος εις άβατοω φώς, Euripedes, Phoen. 809!3 I digress to remark that Euripedes describes another apparently moveable shield device, which

consisted o f madly racing mares, “whirled from within by pivots ingeniously” (έν πως στρόριοφιγξιω ένδοθεν κυκλοϋμενα t, Phoen. 1124-27). The words στρόφιγξ and γόμμφος, rendered by “pivot,” are used elsewhere to denote the joints of living bodies (Plato, Timaeus 43 A; Aristotle, Part. an. II.5.9), YtyW0? also for the hinges of doors. Aristotle, moreover, witnesses that artists actually constructed wonderful machines in which a visible circle was made to revolve by means of a primary circle hidden from sight, “so that the marvel of the machine (του μηχανήματος . . . θαυμαστόν) is alone apparent, while its cause is invisible” (Mech. 848 a 35). It can hardly be doubted that such “machines,” prototypes of clockwork, were actually models of the universe, of which the prima rota is unseen. The actual device of the mares racing in a circle belongs to the well known solar Tierwirbeln with from three to seven equine or other protomas, o f which a very striking example is illustrated by Graef and Langlotz, Die antike Vasen von der Akropolis I, pi. 32 (no. 606) and 59 (no. 933 a). On the type more generally see A. Rocs, “TierwirbeF in IPEK XI [1936-7]; for some of the oldest forms [see] L. Legrain, Culture o f the Babylonians, 1925, pi. LV; and for its persistence [see] J. Baltrusaitis, “ Quelques survivances de symboles solaires dans /’art du Moyen Age," Gaz. des Beaux-Arts, [1937], pp. 75-82.

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[Sphinx from a tomb in Xanthos, ca. 480 B.C. (A photograph o f this motif on the monument is shown on page 96, Fig . 82 a.) British Museum. A .K . Coomaraswamy captioned his illustration with a reference to Euripedes, Rhesus 890 f. — Ed.]

There are many such representations o f the Theban Sphinx with her prey, with which she is sometimes flying away; sometimes or even usually the victim is manifestly clinging to its bearer (Fig. 95).1 Like the later Greek poets, one thinks of them as always “Theban” sphinxes, because of the prominence of the Oedipus saga in our minds.2 But it is even

more likely that some of these are simply representations of the Sphinx in her general capacity of soul-bearer, for the whole development is identical with that of the other winged messengers of death: Erinyes, Keres, harpies and sirens. The forms of the latter, carrying off the souls of the dead, exhibit all transitions from the terrible Gorgon-like forms to others manifesdy expressive of a truly maternal love and tenderness, of which the well-known Harpy Monument from Xanthos ([fifth] century [B .C .]), in the British Museum, is a striking example (Fig. 90).3

Of the sculptured single sphinxes the most important are that of Aegina and that of Naxian origin dedicated at Delphi (Fig. 97 [page 114]), where there ■are remains of many others. The Naxian Sphinx is colossal (2.5 meters) and was set up on an Ionic column 10 meters in height near the rock of the Sibyl, a significant association,4 for like the Sphynx the Pythian oracle always speaks

1 A. Furtwanglcr, “Die Sphinx von Aegina" MunchnerJahrb. I [1906], Fig. 9 (our Fig. 95), an Attic black figured (6th century B.C.) sherd: One arm o f the living burden around the Sphinx’s neck, cf. the siren of Weicker’s Fig. 5 (Der Seelenvogel, p. 7). Furtwangler cites other examples, published in Gaz. Arch. 1876, p. 77 and Wiener Vorlegebl. 1889, pis. 8 and 9. For similar representations on the throne of Zeus at Olympus see Pausanias V.2.2.

2 The Oedipus saga, as many scholars have recogni7.ed, is certainly not the origin or kernel of the Sphinx concept, but only a particular application o f it.

3 G. Weicker, Der Seene/vogel, Leipzig, 1902, pp. 6, 7 (“ aus dem Todesdamon wird der TodesengeV), pp. 125 and 127-130 (on the mixed types of Sphinx and Siren). Bearded as well as feminine sirens are known (ib. p. 32). The corresponding Indian kinnaras arc of both sexes, and like sirens [are] both musical and amorous, but never associated with death. In the case of Rhesus [in Euripedes,] the Muse who carries him off is really his mother.

4 Poulsen, Delphi, p. 99, discounts the significance of the association, and remarks that “the Sphinx was so decorative a creature of legend that the Greeks could employ it anywhere and everywhere”. But this is to refer a quite modern conception o f “decoration” to an age where ornament had not yet been divorced from meaning.

[There are other] “significant associations” in this area of the sacred precinct at Delphi over which the Naxian Sphinx hovered. It was called Halos (a threshing floor). “There, every eight

(Cont inued on following page.)

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Figure 98: Aphrodite with sphinxes, Corinthian mirror handle; ca. 510 B.C. After H. Payne, Nccrocoritithia, p. 246 and pi. 46,4.

Figure 97: Colossal Sphinx from Naxos at Delphi; early Archaic [sixth century B.C.]

(Continuedfrom preceding page.)years, a religious drama, the Septerion, was acted out [reenacting] the killing of Python by Apollo. A child whose parents must both be alive acted the part of Apollo. The priests led the child up the staircase called Doloneia to a hut in the Halos to shoot the dragon who was hiding there. Then the child made believe he was going to [the] Temple to atone for the murder as the god had done.” Basil. Chr. Pctracos, Delphi, Athens, 1871, p. 17.

Vincent Scully has described the ascent of the pilgrim to the Temple of Apollo in his The Earth, the Temple, and the Gods, p. 113, “The flank of the Athenian treasury directed the eye up the rising path where the Bouleuterion thrust its corner toward the roadway. Above the Bouleuterion the high Ionic column which supported the winged Sphinx of the Naxians would have been seen: Rising, appropriately treelike, near the cleft rocks which marked the sanctuary ot Gaia, [Goddess of] the Earth, out of which the Pythoness was supposed originally to have prophesied . . . Above the rocks was the temple, and above the whole opened the V of the cliffs smaller pair ot horns. The man-made forms were now seen and judged against the cliff, and the contrast was both intense and subtle.” In this way, the Sphinx on its columnar tree, significantly Ionic, interposed itself for a moment between the rocks of the Phraedriades, the Shining Rocks, potentially clashing like Symplegades in this earthquake-prone area.

(Continued onfollowing page.)

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in riddles and somewhat harshly.1 [Many of the] sphinx[es at] Aegina appear to have been acroterion[s\ on the temple of [Aphaia2], ca. 460 B.C. Furtwanger remarks that “dieser Wiirgerin ist klein bassliche Daemon, sie ist schon, beriickend durch Leibreix, bezaubernd durch Anmut. . . Der Todt, den sie bringt, ist hinter Schonheit versteckt,” and he describes his first sight of her face, as it was uncovered, in remarkable words: “ . . . das war ein Moment, den ich nie vergessen werde; denn ich war ganzlich gefangen, berauscht von den bestichenden Zauber dieser damonischen Schonheit; und ich empfand: Von ihr Klausen zerfieischt zu werden, miisste Wolluste sein."3 This use of sphinxes as acroteria [ . . . ] reminds us [of] the handle of an archaic mirror [ . . . ] formed as an image of Aphrodite with a pair of sphinxes seated on her shoulder4 (Fig. 98) [like the acroteria of a temple]. We have seen already that her throne, like that of Zeus, may be furnished with sphinxes, and we must not overlook that she, like other divinities, is one who chooses and carries off (άναρεφαμένη) her elect, making of Phaeton, for example, a “divine genius” (Hesiod, Theog. 990). These winged

(Continued from preceding page.)What defined this early theatrical area on the north was the great polygonal retaining wall

built to support the Temple o f Apollo in 548 B.C. This wall was the dedicatory offering of slaves in thanks for the obtaining o f freedom. In this way an association of “binding" was emphasized, and in this case a “loosening of bonds.” It was before this wall that the Athenians built an Ionic stoa in 478 B.C. inscribed with the phrase in archaic letters: “The Athenians offered the portico and the arms and the acroteria captured from the enemy.” “According to the findings of modern archaeological research, the arms referred to in the inscription were the ropes used to fasten the bridges over the Hellespont which had enabled Xerxes and his army to cross the water and invade Greece while the acroteria were figure-heads o f Persian ships.” Pctracos, I.e. p. 17. Again, we find in this dedication significant reference to the symbolism of “binding” and also here the ineluctable workings of fate and destiny, which both led to the binding together o f Asia and Europe and to the severing of that bond. Moreover, the Ionic order of the column was deliberately echoed in the stoa, so that as one turned the corner o f the polygonal wall and began the final ascent to the God, in looking briefly back one would have seen the “marching line” of the stoa's Ionic order leading the eve to the high Ionic column and over -all the brooding Sphinx o f Naxos.

[This page of the manuscript has been revised by Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy. The early version possessed a brief discussion of the iconography of the Theban Sphinx, most of which was later used. However, one line was excised and it is appropriate to include it here:] In the unriddling o f the enigma by Oedipus, the Theban Sphinx is seated on the capital of an Ionic column (Fig. 99 [page 116]), or perched on a crag.

1 Cf. Plutarch, Mor. 397, 404 E. The Sphinx is sometimes called an oracle (παρθένος χρηομψδός), Sophocles, Oedipus Tyr. 1199; χρησμολόγος and speaking δύσγυωστα, sco/ia on Euripedes, Phoen. 45 and 1760.

12 Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy quotes Furtwangler as giving this now famous and well-preserved temple to Aphrodite; however, it has since been recognized as belonging to the local Aeginetan deity called Aphaia. It is pertinent to note that this goddess was the subject of divine betrothal and “rapture.” — Ed.]

3 A. Furtwangler, “Die Sphinx von Aegina,” Miinchner Jahrb. I, 1906. Cf. Dante, Paradiso 26; Hinduism and Buddhism, p. 23.

4 Cf. Arch. Zeitung., 1876, p. 181; Payne, Necrocorinthia, 1931, p. 246 and pi. 46,4 (Our Fig. 98). It can hardly be doubted that the specific meaning o f the Sphinx as an attribute depends on that of the deity with which the form is combined; with Aphrodite the sense is erotic, with Athene that of wisdom, with Ares fear-inspiring, and in connection with thrones and with the Tree, protective.

On Aphrodite's and Christian doves, cf. G. Weicker, Der Seelenvogel, 1902, p. 26.

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Figure 99: Cup, Oedipus Painter; ca. 470 B.C. Vatican 16.541.

powers are surely her messengers, and in the last analysis not to be distinguished from her doves, or, indeed, from the doves o f Christian iconography where they represent both “soul-birds” [Fig. 100] and also the Spirit of the Lord, ol which it is said that it “caught away” (ηρπασε) Philip (Acts VIII.39), as Christ also “caught away” (ηρπασε) Nonna, to be reborn with her husband in heaven {Anth. Pal. VIII.103), playing the part of Charon (Anth. Pal. X V I.385, 603); all these are in some sense harpies, “ raffender Todesdamonen,” His messengers “who slaying doth from death to life translate.”

Like the Indian Gandharvas, the Sphinx in her different aspects can be thought of as either good or evil, according to our point of view. Undoubtedly, the specific meaning of the Sphinx as an attribute depends upon that of the specific deity with which the form is connected. This association of the sphinxes with Aphrodite is to be interpreted, I think, in connection with their erotic character, which is also the raison d'etre of their beauty, which, as Ilberg has very rightly pointed out, is much rather the expression of the sensual consequence of the flowering of Greek art;' and if Aphrodite’s “hounds” (as

1 Perhaps an echo of Ilberg who {I.e. p. 32) speaks of the “Schonheit. . . hezauberner Anm ut. . . beriickende Liebreitz" of the Sphinx. Plutarch (Stob. Floril. 64.31) remarks upon the “inviting variegation" (έπαγωγόν τ6 ποίκιλμα) o f the Sphinx’s wings and compares her allure to that of Eros. Anaxilas says “men call the Theban Sphinx a light of live”; and this amorousness reminds us both ofEros and [of] the the Vedic Usas.

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sphinxes are often called) are in effect Erotes, and “cherubs” in this sense, this in no way reduces their deadly power; for she and Eros, mother and son, are hardly distinguishable in their operation, as terrible as it is irresistible.1 The unity of Love and Death has been recognized in all traditions; it was as true for the Greeks as for Meister Eckhart that “the kingdom of heaven is for none but the thoroughly deadf"; and we find the prayer expressed, “Never may the Eros of the mightier gods cast upon me (προσδράκοι) the glance from which there is no escape.”2 It has been remarked that the special connection of Eros with Psyche is relatively late in Greece, but if this is true for the developed story of “Cupid and Psyche,” the Keres and Harpies and the stories of the high gods who carry off souls are not late, and the interesting facts are that Love had been originally a more generalized spirit and in fact a Ker “of double nature, good and bad . . . fructifying or death-bringing,”1 like the Indian Death (Mrtyu) who is also the God of Love (Kamadeva) and an archer in both capacities, and “devours his children as well as generates them,”4 and that even in such late versions as Apuleius’ the conception of Amor is by no means altogether sentimentalized.

[Figure ro o : From a mosaic in the Baptistry at AJbenga, 5'h century A.D.In G . de Jerphanion, La voie des monuments, 1930, p. 150.]

1 Euripedes, Hipp. 522 f. and passim·, cf. Medea 632-4. In Lycophron, At. 605, her “love” is compared to the snare o f the Erinyes.

! Aeschylus, Prom. 903, cf. Hipp. 525 (“Not me, not me!”) and Medea 632 (“Not at me!"), οοδράκοι recalls the whole class of other-world guardians whose glance is unendurable. In Apuleius, Met., Amor is described as a tier)’ draco, i.e. what in Biblical language would be a seraph. The Erinyes that haunt Orestes are winged, but also ophidian (δρακοντώδεις, Euripedes, Orestes 256). The full sense of these implications pertains to the history of Sagittarius.

3 J. Harrison, Prolegomena to Greek Religion, pp. 175, 631.1 Paficavimsa Brahmana XXI.2.1.

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In connection with the erotic aspect of the Sphinx and Siren, in which they are the lovers of those whom they carry off, it must not be overlooked that with only a slighdy different colouring the concept is of worldwide distribution in the form of the “folklore” motive of the “fairy bride,” in that of the theft of mortals by fairies, and in the legends of “Swan-maidens.” The derivation is valid even etymologically, inasmuch as “fairy” is a form of fata,' Latin equivalent of Greek μοίρα; (as “edict”); and it has long been recognized that “fairyland” is that other-world from which there is normally “no return,” at least for those who have partaken of its food — an other-world that, like Hades, can be regarded as either a Land of Delight and Lasting Life, or as [the] more dreadful Realm of the Dead. The connection is most apparent in the case of the Celtic daughters of the Land-Under-Wave or Overseas who literally seduce their chosen mates, of whom it will suffice to cite the examples of [the Lorelei and the Mermaid of Celtic legend.2]

Men shrink from death, as a matter of course; but the death of all component things is inevitable, and for the dead to be translated to the untrodden, shining Ether, the substance of God and homeland of the Immortals, is the antithesis of an undesirable fate: “No evil Fate (μοίρα) was that, that led thee hither, far from the pathways of men”!3 It is to reach our destination: For “all that from Ether sprouts seeds back again to the celestial orbit,’M “all things are etherized, being dissolved again into the Etherial Fire according to the great cycles”;5 and what applies to a maha-pralaya applies as well to the individual pralaya (άνάλυτις),6 so that when we give up the Ghost (πνεΰμαάφιέναι oracoisvai = prana-tyaga, -utsarga)

1 One would like to cite also “fey” in the sense of “doomed,” and also “fetch” in the sense of one's “double” seen as an omen of death; but the etymology of both these words is uncertain.

12 These last references were not found in the original manuscript. — Ed.]3 Parmenides, cited in Sextus Empiricus, Adv. Dogm. in ; the whole context is one of the most

magnificent descriptions o f a Himmelfahrt extant. “Led thee hither,” that is by “the far-famed road of the Daimon,” the Logos Prompompos, to the Etherial Gates of which the keys are held by “Much Retributive" or “Punitive Justice” (Δίκη πολόποινος), the safekeeper o f the records of things-done [Bury s version, “of things,” misses the point, which is that Punitive Justice is the “bookkeeper”]. Parmenides’ “chariot” corresponds to the devaratha of Aitareya Aranyaka II.3.8, the “road” to the devayana, and and the Prompompos to Agni adhvapati and puraetr.

Euripedes, Hipp. 541 makes Aphrodite the Chatelaine; and these two keepers of the Janua Coeli correspond, I think, to the “beneficent” and “punitive” powers of Philo’s Cherubim (Heres 166, Abraham 145, etc.), and in general to the “Mercy and Majesty" of the Islamic and other traditions, e.g. in Christianity the “Love and Wrath” o f God, in the Priesthood and Kingship (Judgment) o f Christ, in India represented by Mitra and Varuna.

4 Euripedes, fr. 836 (in Marcus Aurelius VII.50), i.e. to Zeus (Euripedes fr. 386 τόνδ’ άπειπον αιθέρα . . . τούτον νόμιξε Ζήνα). The most undesirable o f fates is to be unfated (αμοιρα), [i.e., having] nowhere to go.

5 Eusebius, Praep. evang. XV.18.1 (κατ& περιόδους τιοάς τας μεγίστας) i.e. in Indian terms, when a Kalpa is completed).

* As in I I Timothy IV.6 where St. Paul speaks o f his imminent όνάλυσις, which he is very surely not thinking of as an annihilation. Philo (Somn. II.67, cf. Fug. 59) says o f Nadab and his brother Abihu that they “were not carried off (άρπασθέυτες) by a savage and evil beast” [I see in this wording an allusion to the Theban Sphinx, ] but “resolved (άναλυθέυτες) into etherial rays o f light.”

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our “spirit dies away into the Ether” (πνεΰμ’ άφ ε'ις αιθέρα),1 just as in India akasam atma apyeti or, in other words, “goes home” (astam gacchati). And that is a desired consummation, for, as the Platonizing Axiochus tells us (366), the Immortal Soul, imprisoned in the earthly tabernacle that Nature has tacked onto us, “is ever longing for its heavenly native Ether” (τον ουράνιον ποθεί και τόμφυλον αιθέρα). In a remarkable passage, Philo says that at death, when the four elements of our physical constitution are returned to their sources, “the (immortal) Soul, whose nature is intellectual and celestial, will depart to find a father in Ether, the purest of the substances,” as is only natural, seeing that the soul herself is a participation (μοίρα) of that Fifth Substance that dominates the other four,2 a participation (μοφα) of the Etherial Nature, and herself etherial,3 a spark (απόσπασμα) of the divine and blessed Nature from which it can never be disconnected.4 In all these contexts, of course, the “Soul” is not the carnal “soul” but the “Soul of the soul”5 or Spirit (πνεύμα); as in Spec. IV.123 where the essences of man’s two souls or selves are distinguished, the substance of “that other Soul” being the “Divine Spirit” (πνεύμα θειον) or “Etherial Spirit” (αϊθερίον πνεύμα) which God inbreathed into the face of man as the breath of life (πνοή ξωής), and in Somn. 1.138 f., where earthly souls return to earthly

1 Euripedes, fr. 971 cited in Plutarch, Mor. 416 D, and recalling the “measures o f fire" that are kindled (άπτεται) from the “ever-living (άει ξωον = άσβεστος) Fire” at our birth and quenched (άποσβέννυται) therein at our death (Heracleitus, frs. XX, LXVII). Σβέννυμι and άπόσβεννυμι have all the values of Sanskrit udva and nirva (for which values cf. on nibbayati in HJAS. IV [1939] 158 0 . Σβέσις and nirvana, indeed, imply a dying, but not necessarily an annihilation, although σβέσις often seems to have this meaning for Philo and Marcus Aurelius; Philo, for example, explains that death is “not an extinction o f the soul” (μη σβέσις ψυής) but her separation from the body and return to her source, which is God (Abraham 258). The use of such terms is pertecdy correct, however, because, as has been recognized in every traditional philosophy, “all change is a dying,” and, in this sense, in the words of St. Thomas Aquinas, “no creature can attain a higher grade o f nature without ceasing to exist” (Sum. Theol. I.63.3). Eusebius, discussing the Stoic [but doubtless much older] doctrine of Ekpyrosis, i.e. the “etherization" of all things, their “analysis” into the etherial Fire, points out that the words άνάλυσις and φθορά (death) were never understood literally but meant a translation, transformation, migration or change (μεταβολή, Praep. evang. X V I11.1-3) — and might as well have been discussing the meaning of nirvana. Ανάλυσις and μεταβολή correspond to λνσις (άπ'ο τών δεσμών) and μεταστποφή έπί τά είδωλα καϊ τόφώς in Republic 522 Β. The Soul, considered apart from its earthly integuments, is άσβεστος καί αθάνατος (Heres 276), like the Ether,“that holy Fire, a flame unquenchable” (φλόξ .. .άσβεστος, Confessions 156-7) and so returns as like to like.

On Ekpyrosis see also Philo, Aet. 102, Heres 228, Spec. 208 with Colson’s note, p. 621. The doctrine of cycles and final conflagration is also Indian.

2 Heres 282-3.3 LA. ΙΠ.161.4 Det. 89, 90. άφ’ αΰ άπέσπασται) is immortal." It is said that this argument for the immortality

of the Soul appears for the first time in Pindar, Dirge 131 (96), “while the body of all men is subject to death, the image of life remaineth alive,” but it may be taken for granted that it was one of much older invention. This image (είδωλον) is thought of as asleep when we are active, but awakening when our activity is stilled. Απόσπασμα, scintilla, Sanskrit sphur, cf. Maitri Upanisad 24 and 26.

s Heres 55; ψυχή ψυχής, like atmano' tma, Maitri Upanisad VI.7, antah puru'sa, ib. III.3, ο έντος άνθρωπος.

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bodies, others “ascend on light wings to the Ether” 1 — “the pathway of ‘birds’.”2 All o f which is virtually a commentary on Ecclesiastes XII.7, “Then shall the dust return to the dust as it was: And the spirit return unto God who gave it” and Psalms CIV .29,30, “Thou takest away their breath, they die, and return to their dust. Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created.”3 The Hebrews, like all other peoples, clearly distinguished the mortal “soul” (nefes) from the immortal spirit (ruah).

The Indian doctrines are identical, both as regards the fundamental principle, duo sunt in homine* and as regards the identification of Ether with God, as the origin, life and end of all things.5 The Ether {akasa) is not merely the Fifth Element,6 but the very substance and abode of the supreme Deity,

1 On this /ev/tation and etevation cf. Phaedrus 247-8; Paficavimsa Brahmana XIV.1.12-13 (the gnostic is winged, and flics away; the agnostic are wingless and fall); Dante, Paradiso X.74, 75 (chi no s'impenna chc lassii voli, dal muto aspetti quindi le novelle), XV.54 (ch' a ll' alto volo ti vest'i lepiume); my Hinduism and Buddhism, note 269.

Plutarch, referring to Plato (Timaeus 55 C), and like Philo, thinks of the Ether as the summit of the soul’s perfection; for he says that she “comes to rest in the Fifth when she has attained the power o f reason and has perfected (τελεώαααα) her nature" (Mor. 390 F), i.e. that Fifth Essence which he calls “Sky” and says that others call it “Light” (φως) and others “Ether” and that it corresponds to the dodecahedron which “embraces” (περιέχων) the four and is the form appropriate to the cycles and motions o f the soul (ib. 390 A , 423 A); in Plutarch, o f the five senses, it is that of sight that corresponds to Ether and Light, but in India it is sound that is associated with the Ether, as being the principle of extension and, in particular, the source of every prophetic and heavenly “voice” (vag akdsat), cf. Abraham 176 άπ άέπος φωνή.

2 Aeschylus, Pr. V. 282. Cf. Sanskrit akOsa-ga, khe-cara, “bird."3 Chandogya Upanisad VI.II.3.4 Nirvahana upasaniharam, see Brahmana Upanisad IV.4.3.s St. Thomas Aquinas, Sum. Theol. ITI.26.4. These are the inner and outer man of St. Paul’s

Epistles (II Corinthians IV.16), and Plato’s two parts o f the soul, respectively mortal and immortal, o f which one corresponds to Hebrew, “soul" (nefes) and the other to the “spirit” (ruah), one to the ψυχή and the other to the πνεύμα, which the Word of God divides (Hebrews IV.12). In India, the distinction of the two souls or selves, mortal and immortal, that dwell together in us, is fundamental (e.g. Aitareya Aranyaka II.I.8, II.3.7, Jaimimya Brahmana 1.17, Chandogya Upanisad VIII.12.1, M aitri Upanisad II.3); a distinction in terms o f “blood” and “seed” is made in Aitareya Aranyaka II.3.7, Jaimimya Upanisad Brahmana III.37.6 and Jaimimya Brahmana I.17, cf.John III.6-8 and Galatians V 1.8. For Philo’s distinction of the blood-soul (ή έναιμεος χυχή) from the Spirit (πνεΰμα) see Heres 55, 61, Det. 83, Spec. IV.123, LA. II.56 — highly significant for the criticism o f the modern doctrines of “blood” and “race.” [Cf.] Διπλούς . . . (Hermes Trismegistos, Lib. I.15).

That there are “two in us” must have been evident to man from the time that he first envisaged an afterlife; since it is only too obvious that the visible one of these two is corruptible and mortal. It is astonishing that Rohde (Psyche, p. 6) should have thought o f this belief in an “other self” as a thing that “may well seem strange to us” (moderns), since that there are two in us is taken for granted in countless phrases still in daily use (e.g., “my better self,” “self-mastery,” “con-science," etc.), and no one supposes that a “selfless” man is not a self! It is equally surprising that so many scholars, meeting with some universal doctrine in a given context, so often think of it as a local peculiarity: Waley, for example, with reference to the Tao Te Ching, 10, remarks that “dicre are two souls in a man, according to Chinese thinking . . . the spirit soul (bun) and the physical soul (po)” — as if this had been a peculiarly Chinese belief, and not actually of worldwide distribution and still current apart from the limited sects of the “nothing morists.”

6 Aitareya Aranyaka II.6, and Upanisads,passim. There is an allusion to this as an Indian doctrine, curious because it seems to imply a Greek ignorance of the Fifth Element, in Philostatus, Life o f Apollonius III.34.

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whose nature is etherial (akasa/man), and who “from that very Ether awakens this conceptual world, which comes into being by his act of contemplation (anena . . . dhyayate), and then again in him goes home” (praty astam yat 'i)} So, when all the factors o f our component personality are returned to their principles at death, “the Spirit enters into (or dies away in) the Ether (akasam atma apyeti),2 becoming a god enters into the company o f gods” (devo bhutva devan apyeti) 3 “being Brahma, dies into him” (brahmaiva san brahmapyeti).* He being also the Spirit (atman), it is to him that our spirit enters when the body is cut off — if, indeed we have known “in whom” we are departing then.5 He is also the Gale (vayu, vata) of the Spirit, “the one entire deity,” homeless himself but into whom all other gods and men “go home,” and hence the funeral benediction, “Thy spirit to the Gale!” (gacchatu ■vatem atma) and the prayer of the dying man, “M y gale to the immortal Wind!” (vayur anilam amrtam),6 i.e. “Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit”7 — “To Prajapati let me entrust myself.”8

[Illustration from a medieval Christian bestiary.]

1 Cf. Satapatha Brahmana X.6.16.2 M aitri Upanisad VI.17.5 Brahmana Upanisad 111.2.13·4 Brahmana Upanisad 1V.I.2.5 Brahmana Upanisad IV.6.6.6 Rgveda X.16.5.7 Brahmana Upanisad V.15.1.8 Ct. Chandogya Upanisad II.22.5.

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[Eagle with Ganymeda or Psyche;] 5'h century B.C. [From] C . Trever, Nouveax Peats Sasanides d e/’Ermitage, Moscow-Leningrad, 1937.

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T h e I m m o rta l So u l as P sy c h o po m p

W E HAVE SPOKEN SO FAR OF THE SOUL AS CARRIED OFF BY WINGED powers other than itself. But the soul herself is a “bird,” alike from the Greek point of view and that of the Indian and other traditions; and when her wings are grown, it is on these wings of

her own that she flies away.1 But such souls as are “afraid o f the unseen and of Hades,”2 and are attached to earthly things, Unger below, “and flit about the monuments and tombs where their dim phantasms (σκιοειδη φαντάσματα) have been seen” — for such souls as have died unpurified, and still participate in the perceptible, have this sort of image (είδωλα).3 It is only after much delay and resistance that such a soul is “led away with violence, and hardly even so, by her appointed daimon”; whereas “the orderly and intelligent soul follows its guide (ήγεμών) and understands what is taking place.”4 We know who this guide is, for it has just been said5 that “after death, each one’s daimon, (ό έκαστου δαίμων), to whom he has been allotted in life, leads him to the place where the dead must be assembled and judged” after which they are taken charge o f by two other guides, o f whom one leads them to their place in Hades and the other brings them back to birth “after long periods of time.”6 Furthermore, we know who it is that is called “each one’s daimon” — or, as we should say in India, Yaksa, “Genius," and arakkha devatd, “guardian

1 Phaedrus 247, 248. Anth. Pal. VII.62.2 There is a play on the words άειδής, “formless” (cf. Philo, Gig. 54) and Άιδης, “Hades," both

implying “invisible” or “unknown”; but elsewhere Plato thinks that Hades is not so called from his invisibility (άειδές) but “from knowing (ε'ίδέναι) all things fair” and that he is the perfect sophist and philosopher, a benefactor both here and in the other world, where he only associates with those who are pure of all the evils and desires of the body; and no one ever desires, “not the Sirens themselves,” to leave that other world of his, where he holds his guests “in bonds (όήσας) by their desire of virtue” (Cratylus 403 E-4O4 A, B). This explanation is probably “hermeneutic” (nirutka, niruacand) rather than “etymological”; the root in any case is the Sanskrit vid, English wit, etc.

Hades (or Pluto), originally the son of Chronos and brother of Zeus — or identified with him (Euripedes, Nauck fr. 912; Justin, Cohort. C.15) or with the Sun (cf. G.H. Macurdy, Troy and Paeonia, 1925, chapter iii), or with Dionysos (Heracleitus, fr. CXXV1I) — and corresponding to the Indian Yama, God of Death and associated with Varuna in Paradise, is for Plato more often the place than the person; and as a place, one of happiness and greater than that of this world, and where alone true wisdom is to be found (Apology 41, Phaedo 63, etc.). Only those who have done evil have cause to fear (Plato, Laws 959 B).

s The contrast between such murky forms as these, and such radiant είδωλα as that of Helen that Zeus reveals to Menelaus, “in folds of Ether,” i.e. Light. In general, although by no means necessarily, είδωλον stand for the realities of things, and φαντάσμα for our mere apprehensions or impressions of things (cf. Republic 520 C, 532 B, with σαιοειδή, cf. Republic 532 B μεταστροθή από των οκιών).

4 Phaedo 108 A, B.5 Phaedo 107 D.4 Phaedo 107 D, cf. Π3 D and Laws 732 C. In Republic 617 E, cf. 620 E, however, each one chooses

his own daimon and vocation.

(Continued on following page.)

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angel”1 — for “God has given to each one o f us his daimon (δαίμουα θεός έκαστφ δέδωκε), that form121 (είδος) o f the soul that is housed in the top (έπ άκρφ)3 of the body, and which lifts us . . . up from the Earth towards our kinship in Heaven” and one “who ever tends this godhood (θειον) and well entertains (εδ . . . κεκοσμημένων) the inhabitant daimon, will be a man felicitous” (εύδαμονός).4

Now let us follow up the implications o f the words έπ’ άκρφτφ σώματι and άκροπόλις in the preceding contexts. The “top” of the body, which is the seat o f the daimon, the most lordly part o f the soul (ut supra), “the immortal principle o f the soul” (άρχή φυχής αθάνατον,5 Timaeus 69 C), “the immortal part of us that is to be obeyed as Law” (Laws 714) and “real self of each of us” (τόι δέ δντα έκαστον όντως Laws 959 Β )6 is, o f course, the “head” (κεφαλή), which is “a spherical body in imitation o f the spherical figure of the Universe,

(Continued from preceding page.)For the two “other guides” cf. Republic 617 D. ff; and the Hermetic fragment XXVI.3, Scott,

Hermetica I.616, “for there are two guardsmen of the Universal Providence, one the Cure of Souls (ψυχοταμίας) and the other the Conductor of Souls (ψυχοπομπός). . . both of whom act according to the mind of God."

The allotted space in “Hades” (the “other world”) is according to the soul’s deserts, those who have done wrong being sent below, while those who have done well are conducted to the surface of “the pure earth that is in Heaven, which those who speak of such matters call the Ether” (Phaedo 109 C f).

For the “long periods,” cf. Bhagavad Gita VI.41 and Eusebius, Praep. evang. XV.I. These periods are of a “thousand" years (Phaedrus 249 A, B; Republic 615 A) — the duration of a Ka/pa or “Day o f Brahma” Bhagavad Gita VIII.17) or Jahve (Psalms XC.4; II Peter III.8), and an Aeon of the Gods and of Prajapati (Satapatha Brahmana X I.1.6.6, 14), the (Great) Year; while man’s life is alike for Plato and the Brahmans one o f a hundred human years, this “not dying” (prematurely) here corresponding to an “immortality” there.

For “assembled,” cf. Sanskrit Yama as samganana.1 Sanskrit yaksa and Greek δαίμον are almost identical in range of meaning, from “god” to “spirit”

of any quality'; see my “Yaksa of the Vedas and Upanisads” in Quarterly Journal o f the Mythic Society XXVIII [1938], especially page numbers 231-240 and note 21 (add Samyutta Nikaya I.32 “Who is that Yaksa who does not hanker for food?” and Majjhima Nikctya I.386, the Buddha as the ahavaniya Yaksa to whom the obligation is due). For the Yaksa as guardian angel (as in Hesiod, Works and Days 121 f., Plato, Phaedo 620 E δαίμων . . . φύλαξ and Menander, frs. 550, 551, δαίμωω άνδμι . . . μυσταγωγός) see my Yaksas I, Washington [D.C.], 1928, pp. 13-16,31.

12 There are two “forms” of the soul: Carnal and spiritual, mortal and immortal (.Timaeus 90 D, Republic 439 E, Phaedo 79 A, B). When Plato also speaks of three kinds or castes (γένος) in the soul, there is a division of the mortal soul into a better and a worse part, θυμός and επιθυμία.]

3 “Housed at the Top,” i.e. in the head; when man is thought of as a “city" (πόλις = pura), then it is for the better part of the mortal soul to hear and obey and serve “the word from the Acropolis” (Timaeus 70 A), i.e. the voice of the conscience (συνεσις with which Apuleius rightly identified “the God of Socrates” (see Laws 969 C and Timaeus 90 C).

J “Felicitous” [is] the normal rendering of ευδαιμουος (see Cratylus 398 B, C).’ Philo's ήγεμονικόν, ψυχήψυχής, Q. rerum div., Heres 55; atmano’tma neta amrtakhyah, M aitri

Upanisad VI.7 (“Self of the self, immortal leader).6 The doctrine of “man’s two selves,” regarding which the question is often asked, “By which self

docs one attain the summum bonum?” or “In whom, when I depart hence, shall I be going forth?” (Brhadaranyaka Upanisad IV.3.7, Prasna Upanisad V I.3; in Buddhism, Sutta Nipata, 508). The two selves, born respectively of the human and divine wombs in Jaimimya Brahmana I.17 (see JAOS. XIX.115) are the same as those born of the flesh and born of the spirit in John III.6.

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and now we call it ‘head’ for that it is the most divine part and the ruler of the universe within us” (Timaeus 44 D, E).1

Observe that the expression “head” does not here mean merely the cranium, but also metaphorically the “head of the community”; and that in fact the immortal and divine and lordly principle, which is also the smaller part and to be contrasted with the multitude of the rest (Republic 431 C), is “housed” (προσφκο δομέω), Timaeus 69 C) and “dwells together with” (σύνοικον έω αϋτώ, Timaeus 90 A, C, etc.) the mortal soul in the microcosmic house of the body.121 Bearing this in mind, we cannot fail to see that in έπ’ άκρφ τφ σώματι . . . κεφαλή . . . θειότατον . . . κυριωτάτον . . . ούναικον taken together are, to say the least, suggestive of the κεφαλή γωνίας .. .όντος ακρογωνιαίου αύτοΰ χριστού ίησοΰ, έν φ πάσα οικοδομή συναρμολογουμ ένη άυξει είσναόω άγιου έν κυρυφ, έν φ και υμείς συνοικοδομεΐσθε εις κατοικητήριον τοΰ θεοΰ έν πνεύματι, Luke ΧΧ.17 and Ephesians II.20. Alike for Plato and [the] New Testament the immanent deity is the “top” or “head” of the microcosmic composite, as is the intelligible Sun the top and head and focus of all that it enlightens in the macrocosm.

[Prof. E. Panofsky,3 Rene Guenon-1 and myself, having referred to the lapis in caput anguli as a “keystone” and regarding it as such, have found it of great interest that] Pausanias (LX.38.3) refers to “the very topmost of the stones” of a round building with a rather blunt top as “the harmony (αρμονία) of the whole building.” The word αρμονία means both “fastening” or “bond” and “harmony”; the point at which they are “harmonized.” Miss Jane Harrison, quite properly, renders the word by “keystone” (Themis, p. 401). In this sense the word is the precise equivalent of the Indian kannika, or roof-plate of a domed building, by which the rafters of the dome are supported and in which thev are met together and are thus unified. We have shown that such a roof-plate was the symbol of the Sun, that it was perforated and that it could be used as an exit by such as possessed the requisite powers of flight.5 In this architectural sense the Sun is described as a harmony by Dionysius, De div. nom., Ch. IV: “The Sun is so-called (ήλιος) because he summeth up (αολλψποιεΐ) all things and unites the scattered elements of the soul and so conjoineth together all spiritual and rational beings, uniting them in one.”6 The Sun is, indeed, “the Spirit of all

1 Cf. M aitri Upanisad V I.7 “The light-world is the head o f Prajapati's cosmic body.” and Brhadaranyaka Upanisad II.I.2. “The Person who is yonder in the Sun . . . I worship him as the outstanding head and king of all beings.” In the sacrificial ritual, because this body has been decapitated by the separation of Sky and Earth in the beginning, an important part is played by the rites of “heading” (Webster 2) the Sacrifice in which the bodies of the Sacrificer and the Deity arc simultaneously reconstituted.

Just as in the Indian texts Earth and Sky, Sacerdotum and Regnum, when the daivam mithunam - ιερός γάμος has been celebrated, are said to be “cohabitant" (sarnokasa) here in the realm or in the individual body.]

3 Art Bulletin XVII, p. 450.4 “La Pierre angulaire," Etudes Traditionel/es, 45,1940 A vril et Mai.5 In “The Symbolism of the Dome,” etc.4 Based on Cratylus 409 A where ήλεος, Doric αλιος “might be derived from collecting (άλιςειν)

men when he rises.” Similarly in our Sanskrit sources, where the Sun is identified with prana, the “breath of life” and prana is derived from pram, to “lead forth,” cf. Prasna Upanisad 1.8 “Yonder Sun arises as the life (prana) o f beings” and Aitareya Brahmana V.31 “The Sun as he rises leads forward (pranyati) all creatures, therefore they call him the ‘Breath’ " (prana).

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that is in motion or at rest” (Rgveda I.115.1), and the “fastening” (asanjanum) to which all things are linked by his rays or threads of pneumatic light1 of which he is himself the “seventh and best” (Satapatha Brahmana 1.9.3.10, VI.7.1.17, VIII.7.3.10, X.2.6.8 etc.).2 The Sun as a “harmony” in these senses is manifestly the unique principle “in whom ye are all builded together.”3

Now we have seen that the roof-plate of a domed structure — whether that of an actual building or that of the cosmos — is typically perforated; the “eye” of the dome being either actually or vestigially the foramen or luffer by which the smoke from the hearth below it escapes, and at the same time the “light” by which the interior is illuminated. We find accordingly διά τής οπαίας κεραμίδος = “through the eyed tile” = διά τής καπνίας, “through the luffer”; and όπή, “hole or eye in the roof, serving as a chimney” = κάπνη, καπνό ςόχη (Sanskrit dhuma nirgamana).4 The Sun is “golden-eyed” (χρυσωπός).5

From Hermes Trismegistus, Lib. I.12-20, we can cite a splendid passage in which the cosmic αρμονία is indeed the “eye” through which the Son of God

1 In accordance with the well known “thread spirit” (siitratman) doctrine (loc. cit., and Atharva Veda X.8.38, Jaimimya Upanisad Brahmana III.4.1, Bhagavad Gitii VII.7 (“All this is threaded upon me . . . ”), Tripura Rahasya IV.119; Plato, Laws 644 D, E, Theatetus 153 C, D ;John XII.32; Shams-i-Tabriz (Nicholson, Ode 28) “He gave me the end of a golden thread . . . ,” Hafiz I.368.2; Blake, “I give you the end of a golden string . . . ”

2 The six rays are the six directions (East, South, West, North, Zenith and Nadir) of the cosmic cross (of which the two-armed cross is a plane diagram), the seventh the solar point of their intersection; this point corresponding also to the “nail of the cross” in the Acts o f Peter XXXVIII. It is upon this cosmic basis that the importance of the number seven in all the other connections depends. These formulations arc of the greatest importance to the theologian and iconologist: For example, the mediaeval representations of the “Seven Gifts of the Spirit" (Male, Religious Art in France o f the Thirteenth Century, Figs. 91, 93) are essentially six-spoked Sun-wheels. The number seven recurs in solar symbolism everywhere from the Neolithic onwards.

3 In Ephesians II .20, 21 Christ is the keystone (άκρογωγιαίος) “in whom all the structure is harmonized (αύναρμολογομένη) . . . in whom ye are all builded together”; in other words, the “harmony” of all the parts. Another sense in which Christ might have been spoken o f as a “harmony” is that o f the “Bridegroom” (αρμοστής), implied in I I Corinthians X I.12 “I have espoused (ήρμοοαμην) you to one husband . . . Christ” — the Vedic Aryaman and Gandharva from whom all human wives are, so to say, borrowed.

4 For οπαίος and όπή see Liddell and Scott. Cf. Ernest Diez in Ars Islamica V.39, 45, speaking of buildings “in which space was the primary problem and was placed in relation to, and dependent on, infinite space by means of a widely open opaion in the zenith of the cupola. The relation to open space was always emphasized by the skylight lantern in Western architecture . . . Islamic art appears as individuation of its metaphysical basis” (unend/iche Grund). Later, becomes a designation of any window; cf. Sanskrit gavaksa, “bullseye,” probably originally the round sky-light overhead, but in the extant literature any round window. The faces that, in the actual architecture, are often represented as looking out of such windows are rightly termed gandharva-mukha, that is “face of the solar Eros” (the Sun as Vena, etc.), and this designation is good evidence for the equation “bullseye” = suns eye; the same applies to the “bullseye" of a target.

In the archetypal domus, smoke rises from a central hearth to escape through the luffer, and in the same way if the domus is a temple. When Euripedes (Ion 89, 90) says that the fragrant smoke from the altar of the temple of Apollo at Delphi “flies like a bird (πεταται) = Sanskrit patati) to the roof” it is certain that there must have been an “eye” through which it escaped; and in the same way in the case of outdoor altars where the Sky is the roof. In all these cosmic constructions the altar is “the navel o f the Earth,” and the eye above it the nave of the Sun-wheel; the column o f smoke is one o f the many types of the Axis Mundi.

5 Euripedes, Electra 740.

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surveys all that is “under the sun.”1 Here the Man of Eternal Substance who is “the Son and Image of God, the (first) Mind, the Father o f all, he who is Life and Light,” while still “in the sphere of the Demiurge (God, as aforesaid),2 himself too willed to create (δημιουρνεΐν);3 and the Father gave him leave. . . (Accordingly) he willed to break through the orbits of the Governors (τώ

1 Scott in the text and notes of the Hermetica is mistaken in supposing that it is through the moon that the Man looks out. All the heavenly bodies had been thought of as wheels having a single aperture described as a breathing-holc (see citations from Hippolytus and Actios in Bumet, Early Greek Philosophy, 1930, pp. 66, 67). In just the same way the “Three Lights" (Agni, Vavu and Aditya — Fire, Air and Sun) in the Indian cosmology are represented in the construction of the fire-altar by the three ringstoncs called the “Self-perforates” (svayamatpina), the openings being explicitly both “for the passage of the breaths” and “for looking through"; furthermore, the way up and down these worlds leads through these holes, the lights themselves being spoken of accordingly as the stepping stones or rungs o f a ladder by which one ascends or descends. Similar formulae arc met with in the accounts of the Himmelfabrten of the Siberian Shamans. All this and much more material is collected in my “Svayamatrnna: Janua Coeli,” which was in type and due to appear in Zalmoxis II, in Bucharest, nearly two years ago.

It is, accordingly, true that the Son o f God looks through the Moon and secs the sublunary world, his eye is really far away, the Sun is the eve piece of his cosmic telescope, and the Moon only its most distant lens. To say, as Scott says (Hermetica I.I2I, Note 5) that it must have been the lunar sphere that the Man broke through cannot be reconciled with his evidently right pronouncement in another place (Hermetica II.63) that it was the eighth and outermost sphere, that of the fixed stars (from above all the planets, that is) that the Man looked out.

Another reference to the Aussichtspunkt will be found in Plato’s Statesman, 272 E. Here, at the end o f the cycle (i.e. Sanskrit yuga or kalpa preceding ours) God (χπονος, θεος, όμεγίστος δαίμιον) “ let go the handle of the rudders and withdrew to his place of outlook" (εις τήν αϋτοΰ περιωπήν), i.e. to the “crow’s nest” o f the cosmic vessel, the Ship o f Life, o f which the mast is the same as the Axis Mundi. It is in the same way that in the Satapatha Brahmana XI.2.3.3 Brahma “withdrew to the farther half” (parardham agacchat). The point o f greatest interest here is that the “place of outlook, or circ*mspection” is precisely an “eye" (ώψ in περι-ωπή), an eye that can only be the sun. It is not without interest that the analogous pari-caks, is to “overlook" in [the] secondary sense o f “neglect.” It is in just this sense that the Deus absconditus “over-looks" the world, but from the same place that his Son again “surveys” the world “with a view to” entering it at the beginning of another round.

[Coomaraswamy appended the note:]. . . how best to navigate the “ship of life through this voyage o f existence” Laws 803 B.]

2 “I the Creator and Father of works" (έγω δημιουργός πατήρ τε έργων); the Father’s works being “that which is beautifxdlv framed" (τόρήν καλώς άρμόαθεν) and may not be dissolved (άλυτα) save by his will (Timaeus 41 A , B), i.e. until the end o f time, at the Great Dissolution (mahSpm/aya). This is really the answer to the question, asked by Strvzgowski, “Whence arises the idea of building a cupola with rafters?” (Early Church Art in Northern Europe, p. 63).

Mark the word άρμόαθεν; it implies that the Father of works is a carpenter (άρμόστης); the frame of the universe and the analogous human body is quite literally a “harmony," a piece of joiner)'. And since the “material” of which the world is made is “wood” (νλη, primary matter) we begin to see exactly why the Son o f God is called “the carpenter's son” and “the carpenter” (Matthew XIII.55 ό τοΰ τέκτονος υιός, Mark Vl.3 6 τέκτων; cf. Iliad V.59, 60 τέκτονος υιόν Άρμονίδεω): Bv what other craftsman could the world have been fitly framed? In the same way [the] Sanskrit Tvastr is “the Carpenter” and the solar Indra, his son, Visvakarma, “the All-maker” (later, in a more restricted sense, the patron deity of the craftsmens guilds); and that of which the world is made is likewise a “wood” (vana, Rgveda X.31.7 and X.81.4).

The root αρμονία, etc., is root ar, Sanskrit r (“set in motion,” “infix”), present also in such notable words as αρετή, αριντος, αριθμός, άρμα; Latin ars (art); Sanskrit ararn (“sufficient," “adequate”), arya (“noble"), arc (“project,” “shine,” “sing”), rta (“order,” “rite”) and rtu (“season").

3 “Through him all things were made" (John I.3). The Sun is the “All-maker,” Visvakarma. When this Eye is opened, then his image-bearing light implants all forms according to die power of the recipients to receive them.

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διοικητόρων);1 and having all power over the mortal and irrational living beings in the cosmos, he leaned-and-looked-out through the Harmony (δια τής άπμονίασ),2 broke through the cupola (το κύτος),3 and showed to downward tending Nature the beautiful form of God. And Nature, seeing the beauty of the form o f God, smiled with insatiable love o f the Man, showing the reflection o f that most beautiful form in the water4 and its shadow on the Earth.” Because o f the union of the man with Nature, man is mortal as regards his body, and immortal as regards the Man, who is “born a slave of Fate,5 but

' The seven planets, governing as Fate, ib. I.io. The “Seven Seers” of Rgveda Samhita X.82.2, and microcosmically the “Seven Breaths” (powers of the soul) in Brhadaranyaka Upanisad II. 2.3.

2 For the Sun as God’s all-seeing eye innumerable texts could be cited from Indian and other sources.J With special reference to the spherical form of the head, which is “a copy of the spherical

form of the universe” (Plato, Timaeus 44 D). Cf. Timaeus 45 A to tb πής κεφαλής κύτος, and Hermes Trismcgistus Lib. X .n ‘ο κόσμος σραιρά έστι, τουτέστι κεφαλή. So also in the Brhadaranyaka Upanisad II.2.3, with reference to [the] vault of heaven and the human cranium, “There is a bowl with mouth below and base above [ . . . ] it is the head, for this is a bowl with mouth below and base above"; and in M aitri Upanisad VI.6 the Sky is the “head of Prajapati’s world-form . . . its eye(s) the Sun . . . He (Prajapati) is the Spirit of the All, the Eye of the All . . . This is his all-supporting form; this whole world is therein contained”; and Jaimimya Upanisad Brahmana, “The summit (agram), that is His head; thence he expressed the Sky; that (head) o f his the Sky accompanies." So for “broke through the cupola” we might have said “through the skull-cap o f the world”; c f Mark l.io “He saw the heavens opened and the Spirit. . . descending.”

Now what is above the sun is transcendental to the world “under the Sun,” just as what is above the crown of the head is transcendental to the man below. The Sky or skull-cap, in other words, is the boundary (ήman) between the finite and infinite, measured and immeasurable space, the mortal and the immortal. “Boundary," then, becomes the designation of the cranial suture in the middle o f the head” (Aitareya Brahmana IV.22), or cranial foramen (Brahmarandhra, Harnsa Upanisad I.3). It is by the way of this boundary that Brahma, Atman, the Spirit, enters the world and is born therein in all beings. And accordingly, just as in Hermes the Man o f Eternal Substance reveals the image of the Father, so Vena, the “yearning Sun” “hath made manifest the Brahma, first born of old from the shining boundary” (simatas, Atharva Veda Sambitii IV.1.1 and passim)·, or as stated more fully in the Aitareya Upanisad IQ.II.I2, “He (Atman) considered (iksata, ’saw’), ‘How now can this world exist without me?' So cleaving apart this very boundary (siman), by that door he entered . . . That is the ‘delighring’." This “delighting" nandana) suggests Hermes 1.14 where the Man and Nature are “in love with one another” (έρώμενοΟ, and actually implies a participation o f that divine beatitude (ananda) “without some share in which none might live or breathe” [Brhadaranyaka Upanisad IV.3.32, Taittmya Upanisad II.7).

Now Jupiter Terminus is the “boundary God,” and we see why his worship must be hypaethral. He corresponds to the Agni “standing as a pillar of life in the nest of the Supernal, at the parting of the (seven) ways” (Rgveda Samhita X.5.6) and the Sun as Axis Mundi and goal-post [Jaimimya Upanisad Brahmana I.10.9, Paficavimsa Brahmana IX.1.35, etc.). And hence “Even today, lest he (Jupiter Terminus) sec aught above him but the stars, have temple roofs their exiguum foramen" Ovid, Fast. II.667); “Quam angustaporta et arta via quae ducit ad vitam: Etpauci sunt qui inveniunt earn" (Math. Vl.14).

4 Closely paralleled in the Paficavimsa Brahmana VII.8.1 “Unto the Waters came their season. The Gale (of the Spirit) moved over the surface. Thence came into being a something beautiful. Therein Mitra-varunau saw themselves reflected: They said, A something beautiful, indeed, has here been born amongst the Gods’.” Similarly Rgveda I.164.25 “He (God) beheld the Sun reflected in the vehicle."

5 είρμαρμίνη, (sc. μοίρα) is literally “allotted destiny”: The essential meaning of the root (present also in Latin mors) is “to receive one’s portion, with collateral notion of being one's due” (Liddell and Scott); μοίρα is sometimes simply “inheritance,” and to be άμοιρος is to be deprived of one’s due share, usually o f something good; κατίι μοίραν is tantamount to κατίι φύσιν, “naturally,"

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also exalted above the Harmony.” When the first bisexual beings had been separated as man and woman, then “G od ’s Foreknowing (ή πρόγοια, Providence),1 working by means o f Fate and o f the Harmony (διά τής

(Continued from preceding page.)“duly,” “rightly.” The notion o f Fate is very often misunderstood to mean something arbitrarily imposed upon us from without; what it really implies is that which we must and ought to expect; one who is born is “fated” to die, one who puts his hand in the fire is “fated” to be burnt; all the mortal part of us is “fey." Nothing in Plato contradicts the orthodox view, implied in the word μοίρα itself, that “Fate lies in the created causcs themselves” (St. Thomas Aquinas, Sum. Theol. I.116.2); “There are no special doors for calamity and happiness; they come as men themselves summon them” (Thai-Shang, SBE. XL.235); ls destined (ε’ίμαρται) that he who does evil things shall suffer evil, and to this end he does it, in that he may suffer the penalty for having done it . . . the punishment is self-inflicted” (Hermes Trismegistus Lib. XIII. 1.5 and X.19 A); in the vernacular, “what is coming to us” is just “what we ask for.” The First Cause is directly the cause of our being (and this is also a participation), but only indirectly, through the mediate causes, the powers that we called forces and of which the ancients spoke as “gods,” the cause of our being what we are. What we are at any given moment is the resultant of all “things that have been done” (Sanskrit karma), of which wc are precisely the heirs. Had it been otherwise, as St. Thomas Aquinas expresses it, “The world would have been deprived of the perfection of causality”; actually, “Nothing happens by chance.”

So, as Plato says, all that is done by the “Draughts-player" (the “Aeon” of Heracleitus fr. Ixxix) is “to shift the character that grows better to a superior place, and the worse to a worse, according to what belongs to each of them, thus apportioning an appropriate Fate . . . It was to this end that He designed the rule . . . For according to the trend of our desires and the natures of our souls each of us usually becomes of a like character [paralleled almost word for word in Brhadaranyaka UpanisadIV.4.5 and M aitri Upanisad VI.34.3 c] . . . the divinely virtuous “being transported by a holy road [= Sanskrit devayana, brahmayana] to another and better place and vice-versa·, and, addressing those who think they have been left uncared for by the gods, he says “ This is the ‘Judgment’ o f the gods who dwell on Olympus” (Laws 903 D [to] 904 D). The judgments o f human law are just as if they arc of the same kind (Laws 728).

YVe cannot here enter into the problem of “liberation” from Fate and being “no longer tinder the law" except to say that since it is the mortal part of us that is fatally determined, “freedom” can only mean to have our consciousness of being only in the immortal part o f us, that is “knowing ourselves” and becoming what we really are, rather than what we seem to be. This could be by an extended citation of parallel passages from Plato, the Upanisads and other sources, notably Boethius, De consol. IV.6; “Everything is by so much the freer from Fate, by how much it draweth nigh to the Pivot (cardo). And if it sticketh to the stability of the Supernal Mind, free from motion, it surpasses also the necessity of Fate.” This derives from Plato’s Laws 893. Meanings of cardo are “hinge” (of a door), “fitting together of beams,” “point” (of the Pole), “that on which everything turns”; Greek άκή, άκμή, άκρον; Sanskrit agra. Boethius himself has just previously spoken of the circles that turn about the same centre, “of which the inmost approaches the simplicity o f the midst, which is as it were the pivot (cardo) of the rest.” That the etymological equivalent κράόη has for its primary meaning the “tip of a branch, especially of fig-trees” (cf. Hesiod, Works 679) presents at least a curious coincidence, since they say of the Tree of Life, at the top of which the solar eagle nests, that “At its top the fig is sweet; none gaineth it who knoweth not the Father” (Rgveda 1.164.22). In any case it is clear that Boethius’ cardo is the top o f the Axis Mundi and the point at which this Axis penetrates the Sky that it “supports,” in other words that he is referring to the Sun, as the “Cardinal” of the world, i.e. above the whole “structure” of the universe and above its solar construction.

1 Sanskrit prajm , ctymologically and semantically “prognosis,” and prajnatman, the “Foreknowing Spirit”; the “incorporeal foreknowing solar Self” that “mounts" the corporeal (mortal) self as its vehicle (Aitareya Aranyaka III.2.3 with Brhadaranyaka Upanisad IV.3.21), just as in Timaeus 44 D [to] 45 B ή τής ψυχής πρόνοια, “the most divine and ruling part of us” has the body “for its chariot and vehicle.”

This is “He who dwelling in the Sun, yet is other than the Sun . . . whose body the Sun is . . . He who dwelling in the sem*n is yet other than the sem*n . . . is your Self, the Inner

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ειμαρμένης καί αρμονίας),1 brought about the unions of male and female, and set the births agoing.”2

When this much has been said, Hermes asks to be told about “the upward road ot die Birth,3 how I may participate in Life.” Poimander answers, “At the dissolution of your hylic body . . . the bodily senses return to their own sources, becoming parts of the Cosmos, and entering into fresh combinations to do other work; the brave and desirous parts'1 return to irrational nature; and it remains, then,

(Continued from preceding page.)Controller, Immortal" [Brhadaranyaka Upanisad III.7.9, 23), who then enters into the corporeal self as its Life (prana) “grasps and upraises the body,” where these two, the Spirit and the Life, “dwell together" and from which they depart together (Kausitaki Upanisad II.3, IV.20, cf. Aitareya

Aranyaka 11.6).Hence it is said that creatures “are born providentially” (yatha prajtiam ki sambbavab, Aitareya

Aranyaka II.3.2); and that when the Spirit departs with the Life and is about to enter a new body, then “awareness, works and ancient Providence take hold of it” {tarn vidyakarmahi samanvarabhete purva-prajfia ca, Brhadaranyaka Upanisad IV.4.2). In all such contexts it must be remembered that it is not “this man” but God that is bom again: As Sankara says, “It is the Lord alone that wanders about (from one body to another)" (satyam, nesvarad anyah samsari, Brahmasutra-bbasya I.1.5 — a doctrine amply supported by the texts (e.g. Mundaka Upanisad 11.2.6 , M aitri Upanisad II.7). The Lord is the First Cause, and as such the “fifth and Divine (daivyam) cause" in Bbagavad Gitii XVIII. 14-15, where the word is righdv rendered by Barnett as “Providence." “Works” are the “mediate causes” of our being “what we are” (etavat). The Spirit makes a temporary home in successive bodies; it is the source of our being, but the manner of our being is predetermined by the mediate causes, karma, or as we should express it, by heredity.

' “Fate,” as explained in the preceding note; the resultant of the aforesaid “mediate causes" working in us, rather than upon us. The “Harmony” is the disc or body of the Sun, whose rays are the vivifying radii of the Spirit that become the Life in each of us (iatapatba Brahmana II.33.3.7); these, in Plato’s language, are the “golden cords” bv which the best in us is suspended like a puppet" from that region whence first our soul was gotten" and to which we should hold fast (Timaetis 90 D, Laws 644 D, E, 803); that Plato knew the “thread-spirit” (sutratmam) doctrine is clear from his interpretation of U'uidVIII.18 f. in Tbeatetus 153 C. Cf. Hermes XVI.The whole doctrine of the Sun's progenitive power is best known from Aristotle’s “Man and Sun generate man" Pbys. ii.2), but is quite universal, cf. references and citations in my “Primitive Mentality” in Quarterly Journal o f the Mythic Society XXXI, October 1940 and “Sunkiss" in JAOS. 60,1940. In the last mentioned article, page 57, on “taking by the hand,” I should have added a reference to Aitareya Brahmana V.31 where man at sunrise stretches out his hand with an offering and the Sun is said to “take him by the hand and draw him upwards into the realm of heavenly light" and the Sun is called “Life” (prana) “because he leads forth (pranayatt) all beings"; the “handfasting” and the “leading" also implying that the Sun is the Bridegroom and the man the Bride (as in Brhadaranyaka Upanisad IV.3.21 where he is “embraced by the fore-knowing Spirit” and Chandogya Upanisad VII.25.2 where “he whose Bridegroom is the Spirit (atma-mithunah) . . . becomes a Mover-at-will and autonomous." In an Egyptian representation of Amenhotep IV and his family all of the Sun’s rays end in hands — and of those rays, those which arc extended to the eyes of the Pharoah and of his wife hold the symbol of life (see Kurt Lange, Agyptische Kunst, 1939, PI. 79).

We need hardly add that the doctrine that God is our real Father survives in Christianity: For example, “The power of the soul, which is in the sem*n, through the spirit contained therein, fashions the body” (St. Thomas Aquinas, Sum. Tbeol. ΠΙ.32.Ι as in Kausitaki Upanisad cited above), and “The Spirit is the Fountain of Life, which flows forth from God, to Feed, and Maintain the Breath of Life in the Body. When the time of Death comes, this Spirit draws back to their Head again those streams of Life, by which it went forth into the Body" (Peter Sterry, Puritan and Platonist, by V. de S. Pinto, page 156, like Brhadaranyaka Upanisad IV.4.2,3 and other texts cited above).

3 Άνοδος της γινόμενης = Republic 517 B εις τΰν νοητόν τοπον της ψυχής άνοδος, the way up [and] out of the Cave (body, cosmos, tomb) into the Light.

* Ό &->μός κίιι ή έπιθιιμια; the two parts of the “mortal soul" (Republic 440, etc.), distinguished from the “immortal soul that is our real self” (Laws 959 A, B). In the Upanisads, the “corporal selP (sarira atman) consisting of the sense powers (pranab) and unclean mind (asuddba manas) as distinguished from the “incorporeal Self” (a'sartra atman), the pure mind (suddha manas).

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for the Man to ascend by way of the Harmony.1 Passing through the spheres of the seven planets, he “is stripped of all that has been wrought upon him by the Harmony,”2 and thus “attains to the eighth nature, possest of his own Power. . . and he sings with those who are there . . . And being made like those with whom he is, he hears the Powers that are above the substance of the eighth nature. And from time to time, in due order, these mount upward to the Father; they deliver up themselves (εαυτούς παραδιδόασι) to the Powers,3 and becoming Powers themselves, are born in God (έν θεώγΐνονται). That is the Good, that the Perfection (τέλος) of those who have gotten Gnosis” (γλωσις = Sanskrit jiiand).

In Book XI Hermes again describes the soul’s excursion from the Cosmos, from which it wills to break forth (εί δεβουληθειης . . . διαρρ — ή ξασθαι) just as the Man had willed at first to break in (ηροολήθη αναρρήξαι, Lib. I.13 b). “Bid your soul to travel to any land you choose” he says, “and sooner than you bid it go, it will be there4 . . . Bid it fly up to the Sky, and it will have no need of

’ The ascent reverses the descent (Heracleitus fr. lxix, and as always in the Indian texts). The “eighth nature" is the “sphere of the Demiurge from which the Man of eternal Substance first looked out through the Harmony." Hermes’ “Harmony" seems to be, as Scott understands, the whole “structure of the heavens” rather than the keystone only as in Pausanias; this is nevertheless a logical rather than a real distinction; it is in the same way that the Sun in Indian texts is both the Axis Mundi as a shaft of light and the source of light at its summit. Each of the circles is all contained and constructed (coedificatus) at its nave through which the Axis passes; [atj each of these points [, through] which the Axis penetrates [as a felly does a] “wheel" (Sanskrit cakra, world) [,] is a straight gate or needle’s eye that must be passed on the way up or down; though facile decensus\

The real problem is presented by the fact that the sun, “the greatest and the king and overlord of all the gods in [the] Sky" is not the last and highest o f them, but “submits to have smaller stars circling above him” {IJb. V.3). The Sun is not the seventh, but the fourth of the seven planets (as also in Dante’s cosmology). It will be seen that the fourth is the middle place in the series; it is from this point of view that the problem can be solved. See Appendix II, [“The Rotation o f the Earth,” page 146].

2 For this “stripping off” of evils as the soul ascends many parallels could be adduced from Sanskrit sources. A notable example is that of Apala (Psyche) reunited to the solar Indra (Eros) only when she [has] been drawn through the naves of the three world wheels, each of these strait passages removing a reptilian skin, until at last she is “sun-skinned" and can return to him as like to like (Rgveda VIII.91 and other texts for which see my “Darker Side of Dawn," Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collection).

1 In almost the same words Agni ("Noster Deus ignis consumens") is said to “know that he (the Sacrificer, who would be deified) has come to make an offering of himself to me” (atmanam paridam me) and “were he not to signify this, Agni would deprive him of himself" (Satapatba Brabmana II.4.1.11 and IX.5.1.53, cf. Chandogya Upanisad II.22.5). So “He that would save his life, let him lose it”! The Sacrificer is born again of the Fire and takes his name. The sacrifice of selfhood (individuality, what can be defined and seen) is essential to any deification; for no one who still is anyone can enter into Him Who has never become anyone and is not any what. Cf. my “Akimcanncr,; Sclf-naughting" in New Indian Antiquary III, 1941. The “stripping” is the same as what is so often described in the Sanskrit texts as “shaking off one’s bodies” or “striking off evil"; it represents that ablatio omnis alteritatis et diversitatis that, as the later Platonist, Nicolas o f Cusa, repeats, are the sine qua non of a “filiationem Dei quam Deifuationem, quae et θέωσις graece dicitur" (D e.fil. Dei., Ed. Bale, 1565, pages 119,123).

I cannot see the inconsistency discussed by Scott, Hermetica, Vol. II, page 60. I f need be, the order of the sentences beginning και ό θυμός . . . (which Scott omits from his translation) and και ούτως . . . could be reversed; but even without this it is easy to see that we have first a general statement about the purification, followed by a more detailed account of the stages by which it is effected.

4 “Nothing shall be impossible unto you” (Matthew XVII.20).

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wings; nothing can bar its way,1 neither the Sun’s fire nor the vortex (δίνη) of the planets; cleaving its way through all, it will fly up until it reaches the outermost o f all corporeal things.2 And should you wish to break forth from the Cosmos itself, even that is permitted to you” {Lib. XI.ii.20 a).

Although — as we have so far seen — the solar “Harmony” is primarily architectural, it can be shown that an interpretation of the word in its secondary and more familiar sense o f musical “Attunement,” or perhaps “Keynote” would not be incorrect; and that the solar Harmony is in fact the “Music o f the Spheres.” In the Hymn of Praise to the Sun {Lib. X III.17 f.), we find: “Let every bar of the universe be opened unto me.3 I am about to sing His praise who is both the All and the One. Be ye opened, O ye Skies, and ye Winds, be still, let the Immortal Orb"1 receive my word (λόγος) . . . From you comes the praise-song and to you it proceeds . . . It is thy Word (λόγος) that through me sings thy praise; for by thee, O Mind, is my speech shepherded.5 Through me accept from all the verbal sacrifice (λογικήν ουσίαυ);6 for the All is from thee, and to thee the All returns. O Light, illumine thou the mind171 that is in us . . . I have seen . . . I am born again.”

For the opening o f doors to successive worlds at the Sacrificer’s call, “Thrust back the bar,” see Chandogya Upanisad II.24.Not as Scott implies in his footnote, “the outermost sphere of heaven” but “the top of the lower heaven,” the “top of the wheel or vault beneath the Sky" as Plato expresses it in Phaedrus 247 B. Chandogya Upanisad II.24.15 atihataparigham.Ό κύκλος όάθάνατος, i.e. η λιοΰ κύκλος, as in Aeschylus, Pr. 91, the suns wheel or disc; των έντόμνων ούσαν μίμημά τι κύκλον, Laws 898 A. For wheels in Greek ritual sec Guthrie, Orpheus, page 208. Into the connected symbolism of ladders we cannot enter here, except to say that it plays an important part equally in Indian, Egyptian, Christian, American Indian and Siberian Shamanistic mysteries and might be expected in Greece. In a notable Vedic ritual (Taittiriya Sambita .7.8), the priest on behalf o f the sacrifice takes his seat upon a wheel set up on a post and there mimes the driving of horses, making the wheel revolve.Cf. Republic 440 D where the immanent λόγος checks the irascible power of the mortal soul “as a shepherd calls back his dog.” I cannot but regard the “Shepherd” of Hermas, appointed to live in the same house with him, as this immanent λόγος, his mentor, the Socratic δαίμων that “always holds me back from what I want to do” (Phaedrus 242 B, C), and Hermes’ “Poimander” as of the same sort. This immanent δαίμων and guardian angel becomes the Synteresis of the Schoolmen.Like the smoke of the burnt-offering, the echo of the music of the liturgy is returned to the Sun in which it originated; discarding its verbal embodiments as it rises until it returns as pure “tone” (svara) to the archetypal Cantor who “goeth forth with song unto all this universe,” “who goes on his way intoning” (Aitareya Aranyaka II.2.2 with Jaiminlya UpanisadBrabmana1.15-21); of the divine and human Cantors, the songs arc the same and the name (udgtitr) is the same. “Those who sing here on the harp sing Him” (Chandogya Upanisad I.7.5,6). The Sacrificer himself ascends with the chant “on wings of sound” (svara-paksa,Jaiminiya Upanisad BrabmanaIII.13.10) or light (jyotis-paksa, Pamaviriisa Brabmana X.4.5), the metrical wings” (chando-paksa) oiAtharva Veda V III.9.12.Throughout the tradition we meet with the distinction of the two minds, human and divine. These minds are respectively “unclean” by connection with desire, and “clean” when divorced from desiring, and beyond these is the still higher condition of “mindlessness” (M aitri Upanisad VI.34). The “Divine M ind” is the Sun’s; the superhuman “Mindless” cf. Ion 534 and Timaeus 71 D-72 B) will not be confused with its antitype, the “mindlessness” of irrational beings, the distinction between the same as that between the two orders of “madness” (Phaedrus 244 A, etc.).]

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We have seen that the soul is an “apportionment” o f the etherial nature,1 i.e. o f divinity; and the etymological connection of this μοίρα with the ειμαρμένη, o f which it is the bearer, will be obvious. The whole conception is Platonic; for him it is the fact that “man participates in a divine inheritance (μοΐρα) that makes him a kinsman (σθγγενής, cognate) of God and the only one of living beings that acknowledges the gods”2 — makes him, that is to say, a re//gious animal, one bound up and attached to the life in which he originates.3 It is in the virtue of the presence of this “Same and Uniform within him” that man can rule by Reason (λόγψ κρατήσας) the composite irrational mass o f the four elements that adheres to him.·1 In other words, the immanent Logos, Reason so governs the Necessity (ανάγκη, “ karma) by which our births are determined, as to conduct the greater parts of born beings to the best end.5 For He who generated all things, having said that “in my Will (βουγήσις) ye have a bond (δεσμός) mightier and more sovereign than those wherewith ye were bound up at birth . . . declared unto the (created) souls the Laws of Destiny (νόμους τετοΰς εϊμαρμένοας) . . . how that each was bound (δέοι), when each had been sown into his own organ of time (i.e. appropriate body), to grow into the most God-revering (θεοσεβέστατον) of living things.”6

Now, when “the immortal Soul which is our real Self, goes off (άπιέν αι = Sanskrit praiti) to other gods,7 there to render its account”8 it is thought o f as

1 LA. ΙΙΙ.ϊό.1 Protagoras 322 A, cf. Timaeus 41 E.3 This, I hold, is the meaning of the word religion, implying our dependence on a higher than our

own power; the irreligious being on the other hand [being] the negligent man who renounces his aUgiance and denies his ob/Vgations.

That chain that bound and made me, link by link,Now it is snapped: I only eat and drink.

Bayard SimmonsThe “emancipation” implied by the breaking of the links creates the specious “freedom of choice"

(thinking, doing, making “what we like") which is actually nothing but a senile subjection to the contrary pulls of our own ruling passions, and in the case of the “economically determined” man (whose measure and criterion of value is “Will it pay?") a subjection to greed; the acceptance of the obligations that our Destiny lays upon us, and consequent doing the will of God, on the other hand, is an exercise of the real “freedom of spontaneity” of which we are the legitimate heirs because of the participation in the divine free-will.

4 Timaeus 42 C.5 Timaeus 48 A.6 Timaeus 41 B, E; cf. Quran Ll.56. Note σέβομαι, cognate of Sanskrit sev, “attend upon,” etc. The

text goes on, “and since human nature is two-fold, the superior (κρεΐττον) kind is that which hereaf ter shall be called ‘the Man’.” This corresponds to Philos equation of νοΰς (= manas) with “the Man" and of αισθησις (= vac) with “the Woman.” R.G. Bury makes out that it is the superior “sex" that shall be called the Man, as if Plato had been speaking, not of “the better and the worse” in every human being of whatever sex but of men and women as such. The question involved is that of seli-mastery, of which both men and women arc capable; not one of the domination of an inferior by a superior “sex”!

7 As in Phaedo 63 B, “to other wise and good gods, and moreover to perfected men (άνθρώπους τετελευεηκότα), better than are here." “Other” is also with reference to and in distinction from the chthonic deities of Laws 959 D. The return is to the soul’s “celestial kinship” of Timaeus 90 A.

8 Laws 959 B. “To render its account” is Rev. R.G. Bury’s version of δώοοντα λόγον. The immortal soul that dwells in and with us and is our “guardian angel" is often spoken of an the “accountant”

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“ascending” ; and since it is already at the top o f the body we may assume that what is explicit in the Sanskrit texts, viz. that the departure of the real Self is by way of the scapular foramen, as if through the “eye” of the cranial dome, is implicit in our Greek sources. The departure from the bodily microcosm in which the immortal principle has been “housed” is analogous to the Indian “breaking through the roof-plate o f a domed building,” 1 and “breaking through the Sundoor, the W orld-door”2 by those of the departed who are “able.”3 Let us also not forget that Christ is the “Sun o f men’M and says, “I am the door: By me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out” {John X.9). In the symbolism of the Church this can be taken to refer both to the (usually Western) door by which one is admitted to the Church on the ground level (as in the Shepherd o f Hermas, Sim. IX.12) and more eminently to the door that is represented by the eye o f the dome above the altar. It is by the first door that we come to Him at the altar; and by the second to the Father to whom “no man cometh but by me” {John XIV.6), and as Eckhart says {Evans 1.275) this “breaking through” and second death of the soul is “far more momentous than the first.” There are two things that must be said regarding this, [first] that the Father’s abiding place is in the coelntn empyrium5 and beyond the Sun, and [second] that as like can only be known as like, those who are able to pass through the Sun must be those who have fulfilled the

(Continued from preceding page.)(λογιοτικος), and at least in the present context it is presumably the “entire soul’s” account that it presents here, as in the Shepherd o f Hermas, where the “Shepherd,” who is appointed to live with Hermas in his house and is called the “Angel of Repentance” (μετάνοια), says Ego sum pastor, et va/idissime oportet de vobis reddere rationem [Sim. IX.xxi.6).

There is, however, another important sense in which the “Accountant” is so called; he it is that can give a “true account” on such matters as the nature of the conflicting tensions by which the soul is pulled this way and that, but o f which there is only one by which we should be guided (Laws 645 B). For this last “leading string” see Appendix [I, “On the Etymology of “Cherubim,” page 145.I

1 A feat performed by the “able” (arhat), having the powers of levitation and of traveling through the air, see my “Symbolism of the Dome,” Indian Historical Quarterly XIV, 1938, page 54. For the corresponding modern practice see Madame David-Neel, Magic and Mystery in Tibet, (New York, 1937 edition), page 208.

2 Chandogya Upanisad VIII.6.5. “He ascends . . . comes to the Sun . . . the World-door, a way in for the wise, an arrest for the foolish”; cf. M aitri Upanisad V l.30, Aitareya BrabmanaIII.42, etc.

' The question is asked in Jaiminiya Upanisad Brabmana I.6.I “Who is able (arhati) to pass through the midst of the Sun?”

* A familiar expression, prefigured in Ma/achi IV.2 and implied by many passages in [the] New Testament. Literally, “Sun of Men” (siirya nrn) in Rgveda 1.146.4.

’ Jaim im ya Upanisad Brabmana 1.6 .4, parenadityam = Aitareya Upanisad 1.2, parena divan, Mahamrayana Upanisad X.5 parena nakam = Rgveda 1.164.10 pare ardhe, Katba Upanisad III.I pareme parardhe. There no Sun shines (Katba Upanisad V.15, Bhagavad Gita XV.6, Udana 9, Revelation XXI.23); “only the Spirit is his light” (Brhadaranyaka Upanisad IV.3.6), “the Lamb is the light thereof" (Revelation XXI.23).

The Sun himself is “beyond the dust,” “beyond the darkness” (parorajas, tamsah parastat)', at the top of the world, he is the door to what lies beyond them (the “what is left over," ucchista, of Atbarva Veda XI.7, “deposited in secret,” nihitam guhayam, Mahanarayana Upanisad X.5. iatapatha Brabmana X.82.2, sapta rsm para disahparanam krautam.

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*· T h e Im m o rta l S o u l as Psychopomp +

commandment, “Be ye perfect (τέλειοι), even as your Father in heaven is perfect” (τελεί'ως, Matthew V.48).1

We are now in a better position to consider Plato’s account of the perfected soul’s excursion from the universe, described in Phaedrus 246, 247: “The entire soul . . . traverses the whole sky, being sometimes in one form and sometimes in the other. But when she is perfect (τελέα) and has its wings it ascends and controls (διοικΐ)2 the whole universe; but the soul which has lost its wings is borne along until it gets hold of something concrete, in which it makes its house, taking upon itself a body of earth,3 which seems to be self-moving because of the power of the soul within it; and the whole, compounded of soul and body, is called a living being, and furthermore a mortal. . . ”

1 In Phaedrus 63 B the men who are dwelling with the celestial deities are referred to as “perfected." For ανθρώπους τετελευτηκότας we cannot accept either H.N. Fowler’s “men who have died" or Jowett’s “men departed”; for while it is true that die men referred to are “men who have died," the reference is not to the dead as a class, but to a particular class of the dead. In the same way in Plutarch, Mora/ia 382 F, where the bodies “of those who are believed τέλος έχειν” are said to be hidden away in the earth, it would be ridiculous to render “of those who are believed to be dead” since it is obvious that those who have been buried have died; what is intended is a contrast of the buried bodies with the deceased “themselves” who are regarded as “having attained perfection,” as they must have if indeed they are “really themselves” in the sense of Laws 959 B and Odyssey X I.602, cf. Hermes Trismegistus, Lib. I.18.

It is true that the forms of τέλεω all imply a “finish,” and death in some sense, for example the initiatory death of the hom*o moriturus. For to be “finished” or “perfected” is to have reached the end of a process of becoming and simply to “be”; cf. Sanskrit parinirva, [first] to be despirated and [second] to be perfected. But simply to have died when the time comes is not necessarily to have died with what Eckhart calls the “real death”: And if in many contexts τετελευτηκώς and τελευτησάς mean simply “dead” (τε θηκός), it is rather as we say “dead and gone to heaven,” expressing a pious wish than stating a certain fact. There are other contexts, including the present, in which the forms of τέλεω are used more strictly to distinguish the perfected from the unperfected. In the present case it is the “perfected" that are associated with the gods; i.e. such of the dead as are “perfectly (παντελώς) whole and hale," not such as are “imperfect (ά ελής) and mindless" and must return to Hades (Timaeus 44 C). The “perfected men" of our text arc precisely such as “return to their star homes, and gain the blessed and associated life” (Timaeus 44 C). Τέλεω = Sanskrit arhat (“fit” or “able”) and sukrtatman (“perfected self”).

2 Rather “controls and inhabits," as it is explicit in Laws 896 E where it is agreed that “Since Soul controls and inhabits (διοικούσαν κάι όνοικοΰοαν) all things everywhere that arc moved, we must needs affirm that it controls (δίοικειν) the Sky also.” The “perfected” soul is universalized by a “transfusion o f the one into the all” (Nicolas of Cusa, D eft!. dei, sec Vansteenberghe page 13, Note 2), “is bodiless, and yet has many bodies, or rather, is embodied in all bodies” Hermes Trismegistus, Lib. V .io A); it becomes “the Spirit of all beings” (Brhadaranyaka Upanisad 1.15.18), or “is fitted for embodiment in the emanated worlds" (Katba Upanisad VT.4), “its pasture is unlimited,” like the Buddha, anantagocara (Dhammapada 179); and, in other words is a “mover-at-will” “going up and down these worlds, eating what it will and assuming what likeness it will (Taittmya Upanisad III.10.5 etc.). Cf. Pistis Sophia, 2nd document, i8gb-i9i1’.

3 “O f those who ascend to the top (agra) of the great Tree, how do they fare thereafter? Those who have wings fly away, those without wings fall down. Those having wings are the wise, those without wings the foolish” (Pancavimia Brabmana XIV.1.12, 13). These “wise” and “foolish” are the same as those admitted or shut out by the Sundoor in Chandogya Upanisad VHl.6.5; t le same ;dso as the “wise” and “foolish” virgins who are admitted to the banquet or excluded from it in Matthew XXV. So Beatrice reproaches Dante that he has not long since been “full-fledged” (Purgatorio XXI.51).

Plato (Phaedrus 246 D, E) explains that the natural power o f the wing is to raise what is heavy to where the gods live; and that the wings of the soul arc “nourished” (τρέφεται) and

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Now the great leader o f the sky, Zeus, driving in a winged chariot, goes first, ordering all things and caring for all things. He is followed by a host of gods and daimons, arrayed in eleven divisions . . . There are many blessed sights and many ways about and about within the Sky (έντός όυρανοΰ), along which the beatific gods go to and fro, each one doing what it is his to do;1 and whoever always has both the will and the power,2 follows; for jealousy is excluded from the divine choir. But when they go to a feast or banquet, they climb the heights, until they reach the top of the vault below the Sky

(Continued from preceding page.)grow by “beauty, wisdom, goodness and the like.” These are, manifestly, the “congenial food" (οικεία τροφή) with which we ought to tend the divine part of us, viz. the immanent δαίμων, so as to participate in immortality (Timaeus 90 C, D).

“Where is the soul’s abode? Upon the pinions of the wind. The pinions are the powers of the divine nature” (Eckhart, Pfeiffer, page 513). The symbolism of “birds” has to do not only with their flight, but also their “language,” and plays a large part in all mythological iconography. Here the special point is that nothing without wings can pass through the Sun; even the chariot o f Zeus is “winged."

1 In other words, the gods are “just”; for “to do what belongs to one to do” (το εαιιτοΰ πράττειν), i.e. to fulfil the vocation for which one is fitted by nature is Plato’s type and definition of “justice” or “righteousness” (δικαιοσύνη, Republic 433) and sanity (σωφροσύνη, Charmides 161); cf. Bhagavad Gita III.35 and XVIII.42-48.

A very close parallel to Plato's account of the divine excursion will be found in the M aitri Upanisad VII.176; here the gods are described as “rising in the East,” South, West, North, Zenith and Nadir, “they shine, they rain, they praise (i.e. do what is theirs to do); they enter in again (punar visanty antar) and look out through the opening” (vivaren-eksanti). It is most likely that the five different openings here correspond to the “five visible quarters” from which the Sun rises (in successive stages o f our enlightenment) until it finally neither rises nor sets but “stands alone in the centre" (Chandogya UpanisadIII.6-I1); the Sundoor (saura-dvara), an open door (dvHra-vivara) o f M aitri Upanisad VI.30, corresponds to this last orientation.

2 ‘Οάει έθέλων τε κα\ δυνάμενος. Η.Ν. Fowler and Jowett both ignore the ’αεί, “always,” though in fact it marks the distinction drawn again below (248 C) where “if any soul be a follower of God and catch sight of any o f the truths (i.e. any glimpse of the ‘plain of truth’ at the back of the Sky) it cannot suffer until the next cycle, and if it can do this always, then it is always safe; but when, through want of power to follow, its vision fails, and it happens to be overcome by forgetfulness and evil, and grows heavy and so loses its wings and falls to Earth, then it is the law that. . . (of such souls) the soul that has seen the most shall enter into the birth of a man who is to be a philosopher,” etc.

The “always” of these passages recurs in Plotinus, Enneads IV.4.6 where, discussing “memory” in the gods, he concludes: “In other words, they have seen God and they do not remember? Ah, no: It is that they see God still and always, and that as long as they see, they cannot tell themselves that they have had the vision; such reminiscence is for souls that have lost it.” It is a blessed thing, but not enough, to have had an intimation of the “eternal now,” “some of the truths” that it encloses: But those alone are safe eternally who have seen not merely “some of the truths” but “the truth of truth,” and see this whole always.

The words “cannot suffer until the next cycle” and the statement that “those who have seen the most” will be reborn, when the time comes, as “philosophers” are in the closest possible agreement with Indian formulae, e.g. Bhagavad Gita VI.41-43, where the question has been asked, What becomes of one possest o f faith, “who has failed to attain perfection in yoga” (defined as dispassion and mastery of oneself), and the answer given that “Having attained to the worlds of those whose works are pure (i.e. the lower heaven), and having dwelt therein for enduring years (i.e. until the end o f the cycle), one who has fallen from yoga is bom in an illustrious and fortunate household . . . or perhaps into a family of contemplative Yogis, though such a birth as this is very hard to win in this world; there he recovers that state of being harnessed to the pure intellect that had been that of the prior body, and thence once more strives for perfection.”

-*· T h e I m m o r t a l So u l a s P s y c h o p o m p ·*■

(ακραν υπ'ο τήν ύπουπάνιον άψΐδα),1 where the chariots of the gods, whose well-matched horses obey the rein, advance easily, but the others with difficulty; for the horse o f the evil nature weighs heavily, weighing down to Earth the charioteer whose horse is not well-trained;2 there the utmost toil and trouble awaits the soul. But those whom we call immortal, when they are come to the top (προς άκρφ νένωνται)3 pass outside and take their places

1 Άψείς is primarily a wheel; it is said to be primarily a “felly,” but it must be remembered that early wheels were solid (except for the perforation of the nave), and that the expression άψιν τόμνειν . . . άμαξιι (Hesiod, Works 426) can hardly mean anything but “hew a wagon wheel”; an axe is the tool to use, and it is certainly a farmer’s οχ-cart that is being made, for which nothing but solid wheels arc at all likely at this period. So also τήν ήμερίαν άψΐδα (Euripedes, Ion 87, 88), like b ημερήσιος κύκλος (Philo, Leg. allegorica III) is nothing but the Sun’s disc. Secondarily, άψίς is any circle, vault or arch, and finally “apse” in the current architectural sense of the word. That the symbolism of the domes and wheels is essentially the same need hardly be argued here; both are circles with radii (ribs) of the dome or umbrella, spokes of the wheel, both are penetrated by a central eye, and both exemplify the first principles. The nave o f the wheel corresponds to the keystone o f the dome, the felly to its periphery, the spokes to the radiating beams; cf. Brhadaranyaka Upanisad II.5.15, “Verily, this Self (a/man = Brahma, solar Person, Spirit) is the Overlord and King of all things. Even as all the spokes are fastened-in-together (samarpitah, as in άπμονία, συναρμόζω) between the hub and the felly of the wheel, so all things, all gods, all worlds, all breathing things, all these selves (atmanah, plural) are fastened-in-together in this Self” (atman).

2 Alike in the Greek and Indian sources the immortal, incorporeal soul or spirit has for its vehicle the moveable “house” or “chariot” o f the body (Timaeus 41 E, 44 E, 69 C, D, Laws 898 C f.; Katba Upanisad \\\.yc),Jataka VI. 252 and throughout the literature). The Indian words rat ha and vimana mean both house, palace, temple and vehicle; so that, for example, at Konarak we find a temple of the Sun provided with wheels and steeds. The physical vehicle in which we move is analogous to the chariot o f light or fire in which the God or perfected soul is thought of as travelling at will. The steeds are the senses which like to feed upon their objects and must be curbed and guided if the goal is to be reached. The whole symbol can be reduced to that of a single steed or wheel.

For Plato more specifically one of the two horses is of noble blood, the other very different in breed and character (Phaedrus 246 B “The entire soul [ . . . ] ” and Brhadaranyaka UpanisadIV, cf. Laws 903 E); and these two are evidently the two parts o f the mortal soul, the Courageous (θυμοειδής) and the Desirous (τό έπιθυματικόν), of which the former listens to and naturally sides with the Reason and is rarely led astray by its mate, while the latter is most unruly (Republic 440 f. etc.). All this is taken for granted in our text. For the relation of the soul or person of the Sun to the chariot o f the Sun in greater detail see Laws 898 f. In this context the “Soul of the Sun” (“He who dwelling in the Sun, yet is other than the Sun, whom the Sun does not know, whose body the Sun is, who controls the Sun from within, and is your own Self, Inner Controller, Immortal,” Brhadaranyaka Upanisad III.7.9) seems to be thought of as in India as both one and many. Laws 903 ΰ -9 0 4 D should be compared with Brhadaranyaka UpanisadIV.4.4, 5; 903 D “Soul, being coordinated now with one body, now with another” corresponds to Satikaracarva’s “There is none but the Lord that ‘reincarnates’” (Brabmasutra-bhasya I.1.5). It scarcely needs to be said that the whole subject of “reincarnation" in Greek and Indian texts demands a fresh investigation with a view to seeing what, if anything, remains of the supposed rebirth of individuals here on Earth, when all that pertains to daily, progenitive, initiatory and final rebirth and the Vedantic doctrine that it is the immanent deity that passes from body to body and the corresponding Buddhist doctrine that no concrete essence passes over from one body to another have been allowed for.

’ The “top of the Sky” is, o f course, the same as the “top of the sky” that is the “stopping place” of the sun at midday (παύεται άκρου έκ όνρανοΰ Homeric Hymns XXXI.15), the turning point and limit o f his daily course. It is by no means without pertinence that we find Sanskrit kastha both as “goal-post” (Rgveda VIl.93.3 and IX.21.7); Katha Upanisad III.ll) and as the axle or pillar by which the Wo worlds, Sky and Earth, are propped apart, the sun in his daily course

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on the back o f the Sky . . . and they behold the things that are beyond the Sky. But the region above the Sky (tbv δέ ύπερουράνιαν τολον) was never worthily sung by any earthly poet, nor ever will be . . . For the colorless, formless and intangible really-existent essence, with which all true science (έπιστήμη) is concerned, holds this region and is visible only to the Mind (νους), the pilot o f the soul.111

Now the intellection o f a god, nurtured as it is on Mind and pure knowledge . . . not such knowledge as has a beginning and varies as it is associated with one or another o f the things we2 call realities, but that which is real and absolute; and in that same way it sees and feeds upon the other absolute realities, after which passing back again within the Sky, it goes home and there the Charioteer puts up the horses at the manger and “feeds them with ambrosia and gives them nectar to drink.” Thus the perfected souls are forever “saved” and “go in and out, and find pasture” (John X.9).

The word αρμονία is used by Heracleitus always, I think, with direct or indirect reference to the Cosmos. In Fr. XLVII we are told that “The invisible

(Continuedfrom preceding page.)from East to West reaches (the top of) this pillar at noon; this position is what is called in Sanskrit bradhya vistapa, “the Ruddy-one’s height," i.e. the uppermost of the “golden axle-points” ('vistanta hiranya-mayi = ani) o f the Sun’s chariot (Rgveda X.93.13), i.e. the poles of the skambha or vistambba, the Axis Mundi, the sense of “stepping place” is also present in vistapa. This point is the sacrificers “goal” because it is “the end of the road,” not because there is no way on (through the Sun), but because this “way” is trackless, and cannot be called a “road.”

Thus the top of the Sky, which is the top of the peaked roof of the world, is also the top of the Axis Mundi, which is itself the centre and principle of the whole house (δώμα), Sanskrit darna, house and dome, from δέμω, “build,” preserved in tim-bcr): The caput anguli is the same as the capital o f the king-post.

These relationships are very well displayed in a passage by Nonnos (Dionysiaca VI.66 f.), which is itself hardly more than a paraphrase of Plato, Timaeus 40 C, D, both contexts speaking of revolving models (έικών, μίμημα) of the universe. In Nonnos, Asterion’s “spherical image of the Cosmos” revolves on a “pole”: The demonstration is made by “turning the top of the axis,” (αξονος ακρον ελισσών) and so “spinning the pole” (πόλον αμφελέλιςε) and “carrying the stars round the axle set in the middle” (αξονι μεσσατίφ). This is a model of the Cosmos, not of the Earth only: It is evident that the Earth must revolve with the All o f which it is a part, but not explicit that the Earth revolves on her own axis or, what comes to the same thing, that her axis is also the Axis of the Cosmos (though we think this is implied). In any case ελισσών means “causing to revolve”; just as in Sextus Empiricus, Matthew X.93 είλουμεναι αφαΐραι are certainly “revolving spheres." Both of these contexts have a bearing on the meaning of the words γην . . . είλλαμένην δέ περί τόν διά παντός πολον τεταμένον. [I]n Timaeus 40 Β, we assert, they mean “Earth, rotating about the pole that strikes through the All,” although not the sort of pole on which the modern “globe” (a model of the Earth) rotates. For what the rotation of the Earth implies, see Appendix II, “The Rotation o f the Earth,” page 146.

It is far from insignificant that the Axis is spoken of as striking or cutting through, or piercing (τέμνω) the All (cf. Jaimimya Upanisad Brabmana I.10.3, where “these worlds are compenetrated — samtrnnah — by the Om, as though by a needle"): For from the same root comes τάμιας, with the secondary senses of “dispenser" ([as in an epithet for] Zeus, //1WIV.84), “controller” and “director," and also “store,” for the Axis Mundi (the skambhha described in Atharva Veda X.y) is precisely all these things; and it is in the same sense that the “Thunderbolt” (κεραυνός, Sanskrit vajfa) is said to “govern all things" (Heracleitus, fr. XXV111). It is the sceptre o f Zeus, Indra’s bolt, that works all things.

11 Cf. Timaeus 33 C and Qalb (Heart) doctrine.]2 We, for whom “such knowledge as is not empirical is meaningless . . . and should not be described

as knowledge" (Keith, Aitareya Aranyaka, 1909, page 42).

T h e I m m o r t a l S o u l a s P s y c h o p o m p ■+

Harmony dominates (κρείσσων) the visible.” It is obvious that if a harmony of sounds had been intended here we should have the “inaudible” and “audible” making equally good sense; but actually, by the invisible harmony”1 we can only understand the intelligible form of the universe, the “one from which all things proceed” (Fr. LIX) and in which they are all built together, and by the “visible harmony” the world itself. One is the “world-picture painted by the Spirit on the canvas of the Spirit” (Sankaracarya), “the picture not the colors” (Lankavatara Sutra), the other its manifold image projected on the “wall.”

Frs. XLIII, XLV, XLVI and LVI speak of the “harmony” of the pairs of opposites, which naturally tend to move in opposite directions, rather than to cooperate. The “pairs” instanced are “high and low” (tones), male and female, and opposite tensions of the bow and harp.” Plato (Symposium 187 f.) and Plutarch (Moralia 396) understand that the reference is to the pairs of opposites of which the universe is built, and which if they are not composed must remain ineffectual and unprogenitive. It is by the Cosmic Eros, a “master craftsman” (άγα θός δημιουργός) that they are made to accept “harmony and mingling” (κράσις = Sanskrit sandhi) and so to be productive. It is precisely with these “loves” (έρωτικά; Sanskrit mithunan'i) that “all sacrifices (θνσία) and all that has to do with divination (μαντιαή, Sanskrit mantrana), that is to say all means of communion between gods and men” are occupied (Symposium 188 B, cf. 210 A), a statement in every way as applicable to Indian as to Greek rites.

In connection with Heracleitus’ “opposite tensions” let us consider for a moment those of the bow. It has a string that approximates the two ends of the bow. We have no early authority for saying that these ends can be thought of as implying Sky and Earth, but will venture to say as much; on the other hand, a string or thread is one of the most universal symbols of the Spirit, with particular reference to the “pull” by which it draws and holds all things together, and to which “pull” in the present case is opposed the “push” of the bow itself (cf. Republic 439 B). That the like could be said about the lyre would be more obvious if we could suppose that this instrument was, as least in origin, a Bogenharfe, like the Sumerian and like the old Indian vina. In such an instrument the opposing tensions are those of the strings and the body of the instrument; this body, however, really consists of two parts, one the belly representing the lower parts of the body, and secondly the neck and head representing the upper part; as in the case of the bow, presumably the archetype of all stringed instruments, it is the “Spirit” that connects the extremes. The same will apply, only less obviously, to the lyre in its classical form, and in fact almost any stringed instrument in which the tension of a wooden body opposes that of a string or wire. It is, in any case, only when these tensions have been duly regulated by the “good artist,” who must be “Love’s disciple,” that a result is obtained; which result is either the flight of

1 The “divine harmony” o f Timaeus 80 B.

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the arrow (the regular symbol o f the “winged word” directed to its mark), or the production of musical sounds. It is no wonder, indeed, that archery and music have been so often made the vehicles of the highest initiatory teaching.1

We have now considered “harmony” from several points o f view. And since it is not least as a contribution to the history o f architecture that the present article has been prepared, let us recall to mind that “harmony” is for Pausanias the name o f the keystone of the actual building. For the history o f art, as regards the origins of its forms, can never be understood by an analysis o f its later, elaborated and relatively meaningless developments. As Andrae has so well said, “The sensible forms, in which there was at first a polar balance of physical and metaphysical, have been more and more voided o f content on their way down to us.”2 I f we want to understand the history of doors and pillars and roofs it will not be enough to consider only their physical functions, we must also consider the macrocosm to which they are analogous3 and the microcosm for whose use they were built, not as we think of use but in accordance with the thinking o f primitive man, all o f whose utilities were designed to “satisfy the needs o f the body and soul together.” To understand his economy, we must first understand that “plan o f creation” which the early Christian Fathers constantly spoke o f as an “economy,”4 knowing that the vaulted universe is the first house that was ever built, and the archetype of every other.

Cf. Joachim Heim, " Bogenhandwerk und Bogensport bei den Osmarten" in Der Islam, XIV and XV, 1925-26, and Nasu and Aker (Acker), Toyo kyudo Kikan (in English), privately printed, Tokyo 1937.Die ionische Saiile, Bauform oder Symbol, 1933 (Schlusswort).Cf. W.R. Lethabv, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, London 1892. Lethaby quotes on his title page Cesar Dalvs’s question “Are there symbols which may be called constant; proper to all races, all societies, and all countries?,” and evidently thinks of his own work as an affirmative answer. “Kotr οικονομίαν, selon le plan divine, estpour ainsi dire un terme technique de la langue chretienne" (A. Siouville, “Pbi/osop-huema (de Hippolyte)," Les Textes du Cbristianisme VI, Paris (no date), t. II, page 82, note 3.

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[C o n c l u sio n ]

THERE REMAINS TO BE M ADE A FINAL SYNTHESIS. W e HAVE SEEN that in the mythological formulations, verbal and visual, winged pneumatic powers, whether we call them sirens, sphinxes, eagles or angels, convey the soul to the heavenly realms of etherial light; the

soul itself not being winged, only clings to its bearer. On the other hand, Plato in the Phaedrus, speaks of the soul itself as growing her wings; Philo, similarly, speaks of souls that are purified from mundane attachments that “escaping as though from a prison or a grave, they are equipped for the Ether by light wings, and range the heights for ever” (Somn. 1.139); and though we have concluded that it is primarily as psychopomp that the Sphinx, Siren or Eagle appears on tombs, we find in the Palantine Anthology VII. 62 the question asked of the Eagle on a tomb, “Why standest thou there, and wherefore gazest thou upon the starry home of the gods?” and the answer given, “I am the image (εΐδωλον) of the Soul of Plato, that hath flown away to Olympus.” In the same way Dante speaks of those who are, or are not “so winged that they may fly up there” (Paradiso X.74). In India, likewise, both formulations occur; on the one hand, it is the Eagle that conveys the Sacrificer, who holds on to him (Taittiriya Samhita III.2.1), by means of the Gayatri, whose wings are of light, that one reaches the world of the Suns (Pancavimsa Brahmana X.4.5 withXVI.14.4), on the other it is asked, what is their lot who reach to the top of the Tree (of Life), and answered that “the winged, those who are wise, fly away, but the wingless, the ignorant, fall down” (Pancavimsa Brahmana XIV.1.12,13); uplifted on wings of sound, the Sacrificer “both perches fearless in the world of heavenly light, and also moves "Jaimimya Upanisad BrahmanaIII.13.9,10), i.e. at will, “for wherever a winged one would go, all that it reaches” (Pancavimsa Brahmana XXV.3.4). The two positions are combined in Pancavimsa Brahmana XIX.11.8 whether the metre as discussed is described as winged, and the Comprehensor therefore one who “being winged and luminous, frequents the pure worlds.”

Since writing all of the above, I have been delighted to find that I have been anticipated, as regards the Sphinx, by Clement of Alexandria. “The Sphinx,” he says, “is a symbol of defense (άλκή) and of association (συνέσις)”1 Stromata V.7.42. In another place, he speaks of the Egyptian “Sphinxes” (improperly called, here, perhaps for the first time) and explains them from his own, Greek, point of view, saying that the “Egyptians set up sphinxes before their temples, to show that the doctrine about the God-who-Is is enigmatic and obscure, and perhaps also to show that we ought both to love and fear the divinity . . . for the Sphinx displays at once the image of a wild beast and of a human being” (ib. V.5.31). In a longer passage he says that “whereas according to the poet Araton the Sphinx is not the common bond of the

1 See [next paragraph].

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Whole and the circumference of the Universe (ή των όλων σύν δεσις1 και ή τον κόσμου . . . περιφορά), nevertheless it may well be that it is the pneumatic chord (πνευματικός τόνος) that pervades and holds the Universe together (συνεχών), and that it is well to regard it as the Ether that holds all things together and constrains (πάντασυνέχοντα κας σφίγγουτα), even as says Empedocles:

But come now, first I will speak of the Sun, the beginning,From whom sprang all things we now admire,Earth and the many billowed Sea, and moist Air,And Titan Ether that constrains all things in its circle [. . . ]

(τιτάν Λ'ιθήρ σφιγγών περι κύκλον άπαντα, ib. V.8.48, quoting Empedocles Fr. [185]); and finally he quotes “μάρπτε σφίγξ, κλώψ ξβυχ θηδόν” which he says was a writing copy for children, explaining that μάρψαι is to “grasp” (καταλαβειv), and that “by the Sphinx is meant the Harmony of the World” (ήτοΰ κόσμον αρμονία, ib. V.8.49). That is precisely the conclusion which I had reached independendy, mainly by a collation of the uses of the verb σφίγγν121 from which the noun “Sphinx” comes. We have been led to think of the Sphinx as a manifestation of the principle that joins all things together in a common nexus, and that of the luminous, pneumatic, etherial thread of the Spirit by which God “draws” all things unto Himself by an irresistible attraction.

My rendering of άλκή is determined in part by Clement’s φοβεΐσθαι in V.5.31, cf. Plato, Protagoras 321 D ai Διος φυλακάι φοβεραί, in part by correlation with άλκά qualifying the “fire-breathing Chimaera” in Euripedes, Ion 202-4, and partly by the etymological equivalence of άλκέω, arceo and Sanskrit raks in soma-raksas, Gandharva “Soma-guardian.” The literal rendering of συνέσις by “association” is determined mainly by Clement’s φιλεΐν and αρμονία in V.5.31 and V.8.49, but is by no means intended to exclude the sense of “conscience” in its primary meaning of “con-sciousness,” Sanskrit sam-vitti, or to exclude the “fullness of knowledge” (έπίγνωσις πολλή) that Clement says is the meaning of the word “Cherubim” (whom he also understands to be “glorifying spirits,” cf. Philo, for whom the Cherubim represent έπίγνωσις κάι έπιστήμη πολλή, as well as the beneficent and punitive, or creative and royal Powers of God that are emanations of the Logos (Moses II.97, Fug. 100, He res 166, Cherubim 26-9). Συνέσις has near Sanskrit equivalents in sa m-sthiti, sam-bhava, sam-astita, sam-adhi, sam-vitti [and] sam-jnana.

It seems to me that Clement’s exegesis is both iconographically and philologically sound, and particularly so when he makes the Sphinx a symbol at once of love and terror, the human face expressing love and the leonine body terrifying power. For — bearing in mind that the Cherubim are actually represented in Western Asiatic art by pairs of sphinxes and that Philo does not distinguish seraphim from cherubim — Mercy and Majesty (the later

1 Manuscript synesis as emended by Sylbius.12 The remainder o f this paragraph is an interpolated portion of the lecture “The Riddle o f the

Greek Sphinx.” — Ed.]

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Islamic jama/ and jalal) are precisely die two aspects of the Logos which in his analysis are represented by the guardian Cherubim of the Old Testament. Again, when Clement substitutes “deference” and “association” for “terror” and “love,” these are qualities equally well expressed by the m o parts o f the composite form. And it is finally the unifying Logos as the Spirit, Light or Word of God-who-Is, [who is] median in two ways, both inasmuch as he stands (like the apex of a triangle in relation to its other angles) above and between the creative-beneficent and royal-legislative Powers, representing by the Cherubim, dividing them and all other opposites from one another, and inasmuch as He stands on the border (μεθότηος) “between the extremes of the created and the uncreated,” acting as mediator — suppliant on man’s behalf and ambassador on that o f the Father, and like the Sun, whose place is that of the fourth in the middle of the seven planets. This centrality o f the Solar Logos corresponds to that o f the Indian Breath (pranah) or Universal Fire (Agni Vaisvanara) or1' 1 Supernal Sun — not the sun that all men see, but the Sun of the sun, the light o f lights, as the Vedas and Plato express it. Furthermore, by a consideration of the verb σφίγυω from which the noun “Sphinx” comes, we have been led to think o f the Sphinx as a manifestation of the principle that joins all things together in a common nexus, and of that luminous, pneumatic, etherial thread of the Spirit by which God “draws” all things unto Himself by an irresistible attraction.

Lastly [Clement] says, that “by the Sphinx is meant the Harmony of the Universe,” “Harmony” here almost as i f it were the name o f the Goddess, and with reference to the root meaning of the word, “to join together,” like the carpenter whom we — more literally — term a “joiner.” I need not tell you that Christ was also a “carpenter” (αρμοστής) in just that sense, or that every form of the Artificer “through whom all things were made” must be a carpenter wherever we think o f the stuff o f which the world was made as a “wood” (ΰλη, or in Sanskrit vana). So the Sphinx, despite her femininity which corresponds to that o f the divine “Nature,” can be regarded as a type o f Christ, or more precisely, like the Dove, as a figure o f the Spirit in motion, for it is by it that he draws them to himself. The Sphinx, in other words, is Love; and though rather in the image of Aphrodite than in that of Eros, mother and son were originally hardly distinguishable in character or function. I f you ask, “Is not the Sphinx also the symbol o f Death?” need I but remind you [that] in all traditions Love and Death are one and the same Person, or that God has said of Himself in many scriptures that “I slay and make alive”?121

11 We again interpolate a portion of the “Sphinx" lecture to complete this paragraph. — Ed.]12 Our last paragraph preserves in toto the last paragraph from the “Sphinx” lecture. — Ed.]

G u a r d ia n s o f t h e S u n d o o r

In all that change is a dying. “No creature can attain a higher grade of Nature without ceasing to exist” (St. Thomas Aquinas). The Ether is the soul’s immortal covering — its subde or glorious body.

When this Perfection has been realized, it will not be found to have been affected by our toil . . . our toiling was not essential to the being of its Perfection, our own Perfection, but only dispositive to our realization of it. As Eckhart expresses it, “When I enter there no one will ask me whence I came or whither I went.” The weary pilgrim is now become what he always was had he only known it.

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I

O n t h e E t y m o l o g y o f “ C h e r u b im ”

THE DERIVATION AND SIGNIFICANCE OF THE HEBREW ChERUBLYI HAVE been discussed by Mm. Dhorme and Vincent.1 The Akkadian origin o f the word kenib and the Babylonian origin of the plastic form in Hebrew literature and plastic art are indisputable. The Akkadian verb

karabu (cf. Arabic mubarak) implies the act o f blessing (in the case of a deity) or prayer (in the case o f the worshipper), the latter sense tending to predominate. The karibu (present participle of karabu) as subordinate deities “mediate between man and God.”2 In anthropomorphic forms, they present the devotee to the deity. Their typical form, however, is that of the sedu and lamasu — man-bulls and dragons — that are represented in pairs as the guardians of gateways or sacred emblems. They may be of either sex and many different composite forms: In general, intercessors and tutelary divinities, embodying the powers and functions o f the deities they serve.

Mm. Dhorme and Vincent emphasize the intercessory character o f the karabu and regard their anthropomorphic forms as prior to the theriomorphic (which seems to me unlikely). However, the characteristic gesture of the intercessors is that o f an orant, with one or both hands raised, and this motive appears already in the prehistoric art, in which we find bird-headed men with raised hands as assistants beside a sacred symbol.

There is nothing whatever contradictory, o f course, in the double function of guardianship and intercession, or rather exclusion and introduction; it is the proper business o f any janitor or watchdog to keep out the unqualified and admit the qualified. So in the myth of Adapa, Tammuz and Giszida are the guardians o f the gates o f Paradise, and after questioning Adapa introduce him to Anu;3 and the terrible Scorpion-men, “who dwell at the ends o f the Earth, as guardians o f the Sun’s rising and setting or supporters o f his wings,”4 examine Gilgamesh with hostile intent, but on being satisfied treat him kindly

1 P. Dhorme et L .H . Vincent, “Les eherubims" Rev. Biblique 35 [1926], pages 328-333 and481-495. Cf. P. Dhorme. “Le dieu et la deese intercesseurs" in La religion assyro-babylonienne, pages 261 ff. It may be observed that the functions of guardianship and of presentation or introduction arc both properly those o f porters or janitors; and that in the Gilgamesh epic the guardian Scorpion-men (man and wife), whose representation as protectors of the Tree and supporters of the winged Sun survives all through Babylonian and Assyrian art, play both parts.

3 There can be no doubt that these “Schutzgottheiten" correspond on the one hand to the Greek Daimons, intermediate between man and the deity whose “powers” they embody, and on the other to the Indian Gandharva-ra&7«; and just as one of those, so it can be said of the karibu — whether lions, bulls, dragons, dogs, rams, sphinxes, griffins, scorpions or “storms,” in wholly theriopomorphic or partly anthropomorphic shapes, masculine or feminine — that “went die Cottergtuidig gesinnt sein, den scbutzen gute Geister; wem die Gdtter zurnen, der ist in den Handen baser DSmonen (B. Meissner, Babylonien und Assyrian II, 1925, [page] 50).

3 S. Langdon, Sumerian Epic o f Paradise, 1915, pages 42, 43.' H. Frankfort, Seal Cylinders o f Western Asia, page 201, cf. 156, 201 [and] 215, and Plates XXXIII,

b, e. Representations of the Scorpion-men as the Sun’s assistants, supporters of his wings or defending his pillar, are common on seals of all periods, cf. Moortgart, Vorderasiatitische Roltsiegel, numbers 598,599 [and] 709, and our Figures 17-21 [, pages 32-34].

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and give him advice.1 The type of the Scorpion-man, armed with bow and arrow, found on the Sumerian kudurrus, is one of the archetypes of Sagittarius, whose well known representations as a snake-tailed archer-centaur, or one with both equine and scorpion tails; these tails are the unmistakable vestige of these archetypal forms of the Defenders, whose basilisk glance, like that of the Gorgons and that of so many of the Indian forms of the Defenders of the Janna Coeli, is death.

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T h e R o t a t io n o f t h e E a r t h

F o r είλλομενην in T imaf.us 40 B J o w e t t h as “c lin g in g ro u n d ,” w ith a footnote, “or circling’”; Bury has “which is globed around”; and Cornford “as she winds round.” All these versions reflect a doubt. We shall only deal with Professor Cornford s full discussion of the problem

in Plato's Cosmology, pages 120 ff. We shall say in the first place that Hilda Richardson, cited on page 129, Note 1, is almost wholly right. In the second place, Plato could no more have thought of the Earth as a planet than of the Sky as a planet; the Earth is the floor, and the Sky the roof of the cosmic house. The orbits of the planets lie in the space between these limits. Thirdly, Earth “is the first and eldest of the gods that have come into being within the Sky,” that is to say “under the Sky,” έντός here in the sense of Liddell and Scott 2, Latin ’citra, “on this side of”; “first and eldest” because in all traditions Sky and Earth were originally one, and must be separated in order to provide a space for the existence of other beings, whether gods or men. Fourth, Sky and Earth correspond to one another, like the roof and floor of a house; the one is an inverted bowl, the other a bowl of so large a radius as to be virtually flat; the horizon is their common periphery. Sky and Earth are at once held apart and connected by an (invisible) pillar, whether of fire or smoke or resonant or luminous or pneumatic, the trunk of the Tree of Life, and only pathway up and down these worlds; this pillar extending from Nadir to Zenith penetrates the naves of all the world-wheels (three or seven or three times seven) and is the Axis about which all these worlds revolve. At the foot of this axial pillar, with which the pillar of the sacrifice is also identified, at the “navel of the Earth,” burns the “central Fire,” and at its summit the solar Eagle nests, and from this eyrie he surveys all things in the worlds below him. The Sun is not merely, however, the capital of the pillar, but the sky-supporting pillar itself, and so the “single nave” on which all turn. These worlds are collectively his vehicle; and when we are thinking only of Sky and Earth, these are the “twin wheels” of his chariot, turning on a common axle-tree. The Earth on which the whole is supported floats like a flower on the primordial Waters, and is thought of as their consolidated foam. It is from these Waters that

1 British Museum, Babylonian Story o f the Deluge and the Epic ofGilgamesh, 1920, pages 50,51.For the study of whose history the present article is, in part, preparatory. Here I shall only call

attention to the notable representation of the scorpion-tailed Sagittarius centaur defending a sacred symbol against the griffin-hero Zu, on an Assyrian seal of ca. 800 B.C.

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the Sun rises in the East, and to them that he returns from the West; it is because he passes behind the Earth from West to East at night that the Earth can be called the maker o f day and night.

Like the Sun, the Earth is central because it is from the central Axis that the quarters radiate; just as the capital of a kingdom is traditionally its centre, surrounded by four provinces. The planets other than the Sun are only “excentric” in that they are bodies “wandering” on the peripheries o f their orbits; and by analogy, whoever on Earth lives far away from its centre (and whether this be Benares, Jerusalem or Rome is a matter o f ritual, not of geographical determination), whoever in any land does not sacrifice, whoever in his own person lives “superficially” and not at the centre of his being, is likewise “excentric.”

A detailed documentation o f the traditional cosmology outlined above would require a pamphlet by itself; we do not feel that such a documentation is necessary, because every serious student will already be familiar with these formulae. Taking for granted, then, the traditional cosmology, it will be seen that it not only “contains serious teachings concerning the relations o f God to the universe and to man,” as Professor Fowler111 remarks on the Atreus myth in Plato’s Statesman, but at the same time explains all conditions that Professor Cornford finds it so hard to reconcile: Those o f a central Earth, a central fire, a central axis, a revolution about this axis, and the “making of day and night.” The modern scholar’s difficulties arise largely from the fact that he cannot forget his science and does not think in the technical terms o f metaphysics, which terms are not those o f an imperfect “science” but simply those of the appearances that are presented alike to primitive man and to our own eyes, to which the Sun still seems to rise in the East and set in the West. We as geologists who know that the Earth is spherical can only think o f the “pole” that is represented in our own “globes.” But I who have had a scientific training can also think in terms of a “flat” Earth; the Hindu trained and expert in modem astronomy can also take a sincere part in rites apotropaic o f Rahu, the mythical cause of the eclipse.2 Professor Cornford asks, “Why do we never see the Central Fire?” The answer is easy: Only because we do not want to, do not know what it means to “grasp with an incantation” (£atapatha Brahmana III.1.1.4), or how to enchant some part o f the Earth and make that part a central hearth. Our extroverted eyes are glued to the wall o f the Cave and only see the flickering shadows, not the Fire that casts them. This may suit us well enough, but it will not help us to understand Plato; unless we can think in his terms, and not only scientifically, we cannot think his thoughts, and therefore cannot translate them.

Almost the same difficulties are met by W. Scott in his endeavor to explain (mainly by emendations and omissions) Hermes Trismegistus, Lil>. XVI.5 f. Here the Sun is an expert charioteer, and has made fast and bound to himself the chariot o f the Cosmos, lest it should away in disorder.” [. . .] He “leads

11 Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy did not reference this essay of Murray Fowler. — Ed.]2 The “conflict between religion and science” is something that I have only heard of, never experienced.

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together (συνάγει, probably with marital implication) Sky and Earth, leading down (κατάγωω) being and leading up (άνάγων) matter . . . drawing to himself all things (εις αύτόν τά πάντα)1 and giving forth all things from himself.” [. . . ] “With that part o f his light that tends upwards, he maintains the immortal part o f the Cosmos, and with what is shed downwards gives life to all that is below him, and sets birth (or ‘becoming’) in motion.”2 [. . . ] “He is stationed in the midst and wears the Cosmos as a crown about him.” [. . . ] “And if there be an intelligible substance (i.e. i f we can speak of voCx; as a ‘substance’), the light of the Sun must be the receptacle of that substance.”3 [. . . ] “He is the preserver and maintainer o f every kind of living being; and as the intelligible Cosmos, encompassing the sensible Cosmos,4 he fills its space (όγκον)5 with omniform images (παυτομόρ φοις ίδέαις).”6

Scott’s chief difficulties are as follows:7(i.) How can the Sun be “in the middle,” since it is very unlikely that

Hermes could have thought o f the Earth as traveling round the Sun — “Besides, the Sun is here compared to a charioteer, and that comparison would be unintelligible i f he were thought o f as stationary”;

(2.) I f the Moon and planet-stars are included amongst the immortal parts o f the Cosmos, as “can hardly be doubted” (!), the Sun must be below the Moon, which is contrary to the usual Greek view;

1 “And I, if 1 be lifted up from the earth, will draw (ελκύσω) all unto me "John Xll.32). Cf. Iliad VIII.18 f., as rightly understood by Plato to refer to a cord by which the Sun connccts all things to himself (Theatetus 153 C, D). “The Sun is the fastening to whom these worlds are linked . . . He strings these worlds to himself by means of a thread; the thread is the gale of the Spirit” (iatafatha Brabmana VI.7.1.17, VIII.7.3.10).

"All things are generated from the One, and are resolved into it” (ascribed to Orpheus’ disciple Musaios, in Diogenes L., Proem. 3). Cf. Brhadaranyaka Upanisad V.l (Atharva Veda X.8.29) and Bhagavad Gita VII.6 “I am both the producer of the whole world and its dissolution.”

1 In other words, the Sun is stationed at the boundary between the mortal and immortal, sensible and intelligible. [Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy references a note on stman here which appears to be missing from the manuscript. — Ed.] “All creatures below him are mortal, but those beyond him are the immortal gods . . . Everything under the Sun is in the power of Death" (iatapatha Brabmana II.3.3.7 and X.5.1.4), “These things are said to be under the Sun” (St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 1.103.5 iicl 1 ancl HI. Supplement 91.1 ad 1).

3 “He who dwelling in the light, yet is other than the light, whom the light does not know, whose body the light is, who controls the light from within — He is your Spirit (atman, Self), the Inner Controller, immortal” (Brhadaranyaka Upanisad HI.7.14).

“With the Sun’s rays dost Thou unite” (Rgveda Samhita V.81.4).1 “Verilv, this Spirit (atman) is the Overlord of all things, the King of all things. Just as all the

spokes are fastened-in-together (samar-pitah = συνερμοσμένοι) between the hub and felly of a wheel, so in this Spiritual-self {atman) all things, all gods, all worlds, all breathing things, all these spiritual-selves (atmanah) are fastened-in-together” (Brhadaranyaka Upanisad II.5.15).

5 “The Sun, the Spirit (atman) o f all that is in motion or at rest, hath filled Sky, Earth and Air" (JRgveda Samhita I.U5.1). “Do I not fill heaven and earth?” (Jeremiah X XIII.24).

'■ The Sun is “omniform” (viivarupa = παντόμορφος) and distributes these forms by means of his operation o f mediate causes to receive, cf. my “ Vedic Exemplarism" in HJAS. I. Every point on the circumference of a circle is “more eminently” represented at its centre.

7 See Corpus Hermeticum 11.444 f*

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(3.) The simile of the chariot-driver is inconsistent with the picturing of the Cosmos as a wreath or crown;

(4.) “The Earth is motionless”;(5.) ‘“ The reins’, i.e. the things by means of which the Sun controls

the heavenly bodies . . . ought . . . to be the rays of light which the Sun emits”;

(6.) “I can make nothing of έλικος τρόπον”;(y.) “The νοητός κοσμος is said to ‘encompass’ αισθητός κόσμος, because

it is imagined to be situated in extra-cosmic space. But the Sun, being stationed ‘in the middle’, cannot be said to ‘encompass all things in the Kosmos’”;

(8.) The Sun operates on all things by means of his light. But we are also told that he operates on all things through the agency of the troops of daemons commanded by the planets — “two distinct and inconsistent theories”; and

(9.) Λιά του ήλιου is to be eliminated because the ray of divine νους is identified with God Himself, and cannot therefore be thought of as transmitted by the Sun.

1 can only say that no one of these difficulties presents itself to one who approaches the subject from the standpoint of a traditional cosmology such as the Indian.

We cannot undertake to explain away all these difficulties here. But to consider them in order, in the first place it must be realized that being in the middle and being at the top are by no means irreconcilable conceptions. In the well known doctrine of the “seven rays” of the Sun, six of these rays correspond to the directions of space which form a three-dimensional cross, of which the arms extend to the limits of the spherical universe. The Sun’s place is at the intersection of these arms. The seventh and best ray is that “ray of light from God by which the intellectual part of the soul is illumined” (Hermes XVI.16), and that “golden cord to which we should hold on and by no means let go o f” (Plato, Laws 644); it is [by] one of his rays which “ascending and piercing through the solar orb, on to the Brahma-world extends; thereby men reach their highest goal” (Maitri Upanisad VI.30). It is this ray, of which the extension beyond the Sun cannot be represented in any model, because in passing through the Sun it passes out of the dimensioned Cosmos, which will enable us to understand in what sense the middle is also the top; we must not be misled by the fact that the physical nadir is above the physical zenith in our model, but must realize that the Brahma-world is above the Sun, who stands, as we have already seen, at the boundary between the finite Cosmos and the space that cannot be traversed outside it. The centre of our diagram is the nail that fastens the crossbar to the upright, the crossbar itself representing the Sky.

The Sun is not in every sense of the word motionless. The two wheels of his chariot are the Sky and [the] Earth, and the axle tree that connects them is the Axis Mundi\ he inhabits this cosmic vehicle as we inhabit our bodily vehicles. Both the wheels of this chariot revolve upon the points of the axle;

GlMRDL-lNS OF THE SUNDOOR “►

but one of these poles is fixed (for we are thinking now of the Comprehensor for whom the Sun neither rises or sets, but is ever in the middle and for whom it is evermore day1); the other, in addition to its rotation has a forward and sunwise motion upon the ground of the Cosmos, represented by the the periphery o f the cosmic sphere, on which periphery we stand. The complete revolution takes a “Year” (a period of time that can be understood in various senses). It will be seen that it is in view o f this revolution correcdy said that the pole o f the solar chariot “faces all directions.”2 The Earth is far from motionless, but rather has two motions, about its own (solar) axis and about the Sun. As to the reins, they are indeed “rays,” as is explicit in the Sanskrit sources, where the one word rasmi means both “ray” and “rein. We cannot discuss the spiral motion at length, but will point out only that the resultant o f a centripetal motion by which we approach the Sun by “following” the golden chain and seventh ray, and the peripheral motion (one of these motions being independent o f time and the other temporal) will be spiral; and that all tradition agrees in regarding both the descent and the ascent therefore as spiral motions.3 The intelligible Cosmos “encompasses” the sensible Cosmos in the same sense that the Infinite encompasses the finite, the centre of the circle is the circle in principle, and in the same sense that the One is both the One and the Many.4

As for the eighth objection, I fail to see the “contradiction.” The distinction between the Sun’s direct operation and that o f the daimons who are subject to the Sun is that o f the first from mediate causes.5 There is nothing in Hermes’ text contrary to the orthodox (universal) doctrine that the Sun (spirit) is directly the author of our being, but only indirecdy (providentially) the cause of the manner of our being.6 This already disposes o f the “inconsistency.” But it will be useful to observe the working o f Heres’ daimons more closely. They are energies or forces or tendencies rather than persons (δαίμονς νάρ ούσία έωέρνεια); they are seated in our “nerves” (νεΰρα) and “veins”;7 some are

1 Chandogya Upanisad III.11.1-3.2 Rgveda X.135.3.3 See also Rene Guenon, Le Symbolismc de la Croix, Paris, 1931.4 As, for example, in Satapatha Brahmana X, where “He is one as he is in himself, but many in his

children.” “The Sun’s rays are his children” (Jaiminiya Upanisad Brahmana).5 On the distinction of first from mediate causes, cf. Plato, Laws 904, Republic 617 E, Theatetus 155

E, Timaeus 42 D.6 “The (primary) forces (ένέρνειαι) are, as it were, God’s rayings; the natural forces are the rayings

of the Cosmos; the arts and sciences are man's rayings” (Lib. X.22 b). Hermes' Daimons (the natural forces by which our “destiny” is shaped) are to be contrasted with the one “Good Daimon,” Intellect (νους, Lib. X.23 and XIII b). It must be remembered in this connection that neither Hermes nor Plato speak of Intellect or Reason (νούς, λόγος) in the narrow sense of the words, but rather as the Scholastics speak o f intellectus vel spiritu.

' These “nerves” are “attached to the heart” (Lib. V.6); they arc the same as the reins that extend from the heart to the objects of the senses (M aitri Upanisad 11.6, etc.), while the “veins” correspond to die Indian “channels” (nadi, bite) of sense perception. These “nerves” or “rays” must not be thought of as parts of the physical body, but are extensions of the soul, connecting it with the objects to which it is at -traded·, these objects themselves exert their attraction by which the soul may be entangled. The “nerves” are intangible lines o f force, directions of aesthetic reaction and instinctive response; not the “nerves” of physiology, but the “tendencies” of psychology.

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good and others bad in their tendency; they “pull” our souls towards them in opposite ways (άνθέλκουσι τάς ψυχάς ήμώς εις εαυτούς);1 they take charge of us at birth.2 They are the passions or affections (πάθη) that Hermes elsewhere (Lib. Xll.i.io f.) speaks of as “chains” or “wires” (όρμαί), telling us that “since in irrational animals [the] mind works together with these wires, which wires are the affections, it seems that [the] mind is always passible (παθητός), being colored (συγχρωματι'ξων) by them.” Thus Hermes is simply repeating the Platonic doctrine of the passions or affections (πάθη) in us “which like nerves (νεΰρα) or cords (μήινθοί) pull upon us, and being opposed to one another pull in opposite directions (άλλήλαις άνθέλκουσιν εναντίαι όυσαι) towards contrary actions, and therein lies the dividing line between virtue and vice. But, as our story tells, there is one of these tractors (ελξις) that every man should always follow and nowise leave go o f . . . and whereas the other cords are hard and steely and of every shape and likeness, this one is flexible and single, being of gold. With that most excellent leading string of Law we ought always to cooperate . . . so that the golden kind within us may vanquish the other kinds” (Laws 644-645). Hermes differs from Plato only in this respect, that instead of speaking of the golden “cord” by holding onto which the other pulls are overcome, he says that “the man who is illuminated by a ‘ray’ of light from God, passing through the Sun, for him the workings of the daimons are brought to naught; for no Daimon of God (star) has power against a single ray from God.” Hermes and Plato are at one in the essential, in distinguishing the single guidance of the “thread spirit” — “cord” or “ray” — by which the Sun “operates” directly, from the many and contrary of the demons of sensation. As in the Chandogya Upanisad VIII.6.6 and M aitri Upanisad VI.30, “Endless are his (the Sun’s) rays, who like a lamp dwells in the heart; one of these, ascending, passes through the head and penetrating the Sun’s disk leads on to immortality in the world of Brahma; but by its (the heart’s) downward tending rays one wanders there helplessly.” These rays or reins extend from the heart to the objects of the senses, and the mortal soul, losing control of them, is overcome by the pairs of opposites” (M aitri Upanisad III.02) — “opposites” that correspond to the contrary strains referred to by Plato’s άνθέ λκοθσινιεπ’ έντίασπραξεις. And just as Hermes calls these powers of the soul (Sanskrit indriyanl, pranah, etc.) “Daimons,” so in the Indian texts they are very commonly spoken of as Devas, “Gods”; they are, in fact, “Demons” (Asuras) insofar as they are used as means to the sensation, but gods (Devas) insofar as they are used as means to the understanding of realities (Sankara on Brhadaranyaka Upanisad I.3.1). But whether as Asuras or Devas, they are equally the children of the Progenitor (Brhadaranyaka Upanisad V.2 etc.). And this brings us back again to the distinction of mediate from first causes, that of the many from the one, that of the sons of God from God Himself (see Plato, Laws 904, Timaeus 42 D, Republic 617 E, Theatetus 155 E).

1 Scott renders άνθίλκοικιι only by “pull away," missing the notion of pull in opposite directions, επέναντιας in the Platonic context from which Hermes’ [is derived].

2 Karmic character [is] destiny, [i.e.] inborn tendencies.

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O n “ S t e p h a n o s ”

ON CERTAIN WELL KNOWN O RPH IC TABLETS, DISCUSSED AMONGST others by Guthrie (Orpheus, page 171 f., and 208, 209, citing the references), are found the words, “I have flown out o f the sorrowful, weary circle, I have passed with swift feet to the diadem (crown, or

garland) desired. Happy and blessed one, thou shalt be god instead of mortal. A kid, I have fallen into milk.” It need not concern us whether this forms part o f an initiatory ritual or is a recitation o f what is understood to have befallen the deceased; for such rituals always prefigure what is to take place after death, and in effect ensure that the initiate shall have “died before he dies.” The first line cited is, from an Indian point o f view, sufficiently clear: The perfected soul has escaped on wings from “the storm of the world’s flow,” the causally determined world of becoming, bhava-cakra or samsara\ it has willed and been able to pass through the Sundoor. The “milk” may very well refer to the initiates or deceased’s acceptance as a legitimate son o f God; to receive the milk that springs, sometimes like a river, from the breasts o f the Queen of Heaven is a token of divine filiation well attested from Egyptian, Etruscan and Christian sources.1

Our main purpose, however, is to discuss the word στέφανος, rendered above by “diadem” (crown or garland). It has often been thought that a crown or garland o f victory is intended, such a “crown of glory ” or “of life” (RevelationII.10) as is won by Christian saints and is often represented in the iconography only by a solar “halo” or “nimbus.”

We are told in Republic, 363 C, D, that the “justified” (ρσιοι) are “crowned” (εστεφανωμένοι) and that they feast with the gods, “who deem that the fairest mead of virtue is to be forever drunk with mead.”2 In supposing that the Orphic στέφανος was really a “crown of glory,” and in fact a nimbus, there is nothing new; it is the obvious interpretation, which many scholars have endorsed. It is rather with the fact that stephanos also means “a wall” that we wish to deal. It has been suggested on this basis that it was some kind of heavenly city or enclosure that the initiate ran. Guthrie (page 181) thinks that Pindar’s (VIII.42) “minded to make a stephanos for Ilion” does not mean a “wall encircling Ilion” but “a crowning glory for Ilion,” and that one would not gather from the words “Cortona lifts to heaven the diadem of her towers” that the word diadem had come to mean in English a thing that encloses. We shall first begin to realize that Pindar’s stephanos means both “a wall” and a

1 For some of the references see my “The Virgin suckling St. Bernard” and “La Vote Lactee” in Etudes Traditionnelles 42 [1937] and 43 [1938]; and Moret, Du caractere religieuse de la royaute pharaonique, Paris (Musee Guimet), 1902.

[Cf.] Philo, LA. ΙΠ.74 [and] Hermes XVI.7.2 There is no need whatever to suppose that Plato is sarcastic here. What the gods drink there

is not our “eau de vie,” but veritably “living water," ambrosia, amrta, rasa. Soma. The notion of a divine convivium is universal (cf. Rgveda X.135.1; Phaedrus 247 A; Matthew XXII.2 f. and JohnII.1-10). See also Emile Dcrmenghem, L'Eloge du Vin, Paris, 1931.

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“crowning glory,” and that a “diadem o f towers” is precisely “a thing that encloses,” if we recall that the most distinctive feature of the iconography of a Greek “city goddess” — the Fortuna (τυχή) o f the city — is precisely a “mural crown,” a turreted or battlemented circlet. When Homer says that “children are a man’s ‘crown’, the towers o f the city” (Epigrams, X III)1 one can hardly tell whether his στέφανος is not rather a defensive wall than a crown. In any case a city wall is in the most literal sense o f the words her crowning glory. The Byzantine crown is still unmistakably mural.

Perhaps it may be said that all crowns are in this sense walls; for the crown that can be worn by “this man” who is himself “a city” (Plato, πόλις, and Sanskrit, pur a, brakmapura) must be analogous to the nimbus (root as in Sanskrit nabha, sky) that encircles the heavenly city (brahmapura) o f the Sun himself; and as Sky is actually the “wall” that separates the Cosmos from the Empyrean, and the “veil” or “curtain” that divides the “green room” from the cosmic stage. The Sun’s headgear is in fact his “defense” (varutham, Rgveda Samhita X. 27.13) an< ^ in the same way that a crown can be also a helmet.

It is, moreover, a striking parallel to what has been said above on the semantics o f stephanos that the Indian turban1' 1 (usntsa), originally a sacerdotal and royal prerogative is in every respect an equivalent o f a crown; for in the architectural terminology o f the stupa the coping of the encircling prakara is precisely a “coronet” (usnlsa). Now a crown, like a turban, is originally and essentially a headband, fillet or wreath; the top of the head is not concealed, but seen above it. And the dome of a stupa is iconographically a cranium. It will be realized accordingly that the relation o f stephanos as “wall” to the political city, that of stephanos as crown to the individual “city,” and that of an usnlsa as coronet to a stupa are identical; in each case the Acropolis is encircled by and seen above a mural crown, a crown that is a wall, or wall that is a crown.

Whether we render stephanos by “crown” or “wall” will depend upon the context; the fact that stephanos can mean either “crown” or “mural crown” or “wall” — and is in any case something that encloses — offers no ground for supposing that in the Orphic context it means anything but a victor’s crown, and as such, archetype of the crowns or glories o f the Christian saints.131

1 It is pertinent to this to recall that “The Sun’s rays are his children” {Jaiminiya Upanisad Brahmana II.9.10) and also that it is by these rays that the way in through the Sun is defended (ibid. I.3.6,1.7.2; Isa Upanisad 15,16, etc.).

12 For the detailed symbolism of the turban and umbrella see my “Usnisa and Chatra, Turban and Umbrella” in the Poona Orientalist, Volume III, 1938, and Rend Guenon, “Le Dome et la Roue” in £tudes Traditionnelles, Volume 43 (1938).]

'5 Cf. Hermes Trismegistus XVI.7, where the Sun “is stationed in the midst and wears the Cosmos as a crown.”]

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“The problem vanishes, in fact, in the light of self-knowledge, if we have been able to recognize ourselves not in the mortal outer man, but in the immanent divinity, Our Self, the self’s immortal Leader, alike in life and at death; for if we have known Who we are, it is our Self that flies away with us, and in our Self that we fly away.”

— Clement o f Alexandria

“So ‘He that would save his life, let him lose it’! . . . The sacrifice of selfhood (individuality, what can be defined and seen) is essential to any deification; for no one who still is anyone can enter into Him Who has never become anyone and is not any what.”

— Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, “Self-Naughting"

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