The Two Brothers

"The seat of the soul is there where the inner and outer worlds meet." -- Novalis



The Hindu's describe 'self' as Brahmin, from the root, 'to grow'. "In this sense," Alan Watts, a pop philosopher, says, "[...] every self is modeled on and is a expression of the one self because you all feel individually that you are the center of the world and everything else is seen in circles--circling out, sphering out, from where you are." Each individual is an aspect of the greater consciousness. Your 'I'-ness is a symptom of the universe's 'I'-ness, which was a gift from God, as Christians would describe it. "'I'-ness being, as it were, the most fundamental thing in man, [then it] is also fundamental to the universe. It too is 'I', and your 'I' is a special case of it, coming out of it, coming out from the quote central 'I', like so many tits from the belly of a sow, or so many spined from a sea urchin, so many legs from a spider. And that is of course why the images of the Hindu gods are shown with many arms or faces because it is saying that all arms are the arms of the divinity, all faces are its masks." In this way, everything completes everything else because all is an aspect of a wider consciousness--this relationship can be reduced to a yin-yang relationship, and that is the relationship I wish to describe in this blog.

However, because of this same reason, the universe is like smoke. If you try to hold onto it too tightly, it will disappear in your hands. "There is nothing in the wave form that you can lean on, that you can grasp," says Alan Watts during his talk about the "Fundamental I". Like a relationship between a man and a woman, where one person tries to tie the other in chains like a caged bird. Everything changes, everything morphs, and it would be like stopping a bird from singing, robbing it of what it made beautiful in the first place. Of course this relates to my previous blog on the government's drive to control the market using Keynesian economics, or Western mystics description of the universe as a mist, but I will allow you to explore my previous entries on your own if you are curious. Here I will describe two brothers who appear time after time in history and mythology. The three relationships I will cover most deeply are between Dionysus and Apollo, Christ and the Anti-Christ, and William Shakespeare and Francis Bacon.

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A few years ago I was talking to a friend's father. He was a tall, intimidating man, who's energy radiated off his body like a small star. I wished to impress him, but I was struggling with what to say. I looked at the trees in the backyard, the plants he meticulously maintained. Why not talk about something I was passionate about? What I didn't realize is that I was breaching dangerous waters. He stared at me with his intense eyes. His lips seemed to quiver. Apparently, I had the daring to cross one of his most deeply held philosophical lynch-pins. You see, I had made mention of man's need for irrationality. I said it was an important counterbalance to 'rational thought'. He, on the other hand, believed in the complete opposite-- a man should be completely rational at all times, no matter the circumstances. He then claimed something I shall never forget, something I didn't believe was accurate then, and still don't. I will not dealve into it here. But I do know that a world of complete rationality would be a sterile one. There would be no faith, no love, and no charity. It would rob a man of the spices which make him interesting. It would be the world of A Wrinkle in Time's 'IT'--deadly barren of what makes life worth living.

For one example, when ancient Greece had reached its Golden Age, when its laws, learning, and arts had reached their zenith, something terrible was seething under the surface. The mad-god, Dionysus, was on the rise, affecting the masses' minds--making mothers kill their sons as in the story of Pentheus, stray men like Orpheus, and poor animals which dared to flee from their procession. These ravings would involve sparagmos (ripping of flesh) and omaphagia (the eating of it). Leonard Shlain says that "the dynamic growth of [this] cult coincided with the rise of the alphabet literacy, Greek rationality, and the flowering of classical arts" (The Alphabet Versus the Goddess, 136). Dionsysus and Apollo were two gods who completed each other. Apollo was the god of reason, logos, science, and written culture, while Dionsysus was his polar opposite, the god of drunkenness, giving in, and madness--"figs, bulls, Muses, the moon, dance, music, moisture, serpents, sexuality, regeneration of the earth, the cultivation of plants, and the noverbal expressiveness of the mask, [which] were originally under the aegis of the Goddess" (139). He was said to live at Delphi for three months every year while Apollo flew north to Hyperborea.

Dionysus himself was primarily worshiped by women. He usurped traditional Goddesses like Demeter and Artemis (Apollo's twin by blood), creating the link between traditional dying-gods and the coming Jesus. "He could pick the imagination of mortals and tear open a minute hole out of which would gush creative inspiration" says Shlain, quoting Plutarch, "but this touch was a but a hair's breadth away from the inundation of insanity" (138). Apollo may have been associated with the muses, but they were firmly in Dionysus' retinue.

The importance of Dionysus, of irrationality, has seemingly been lost on our own Modern culture. Shlain makes great points on page 140, mentioning that laughter, faith, appreciating great beauty and art, sexual arousal, love, charity, and patriotism are all irrational activities. However, 'unreason' also has a dark side--hatred, lust, infidelity, anger, and suicide. These things are indeed terrible, but to not acknowledge their existence, or worse, try and extirpate them completely, would lead to a great terrible thing. Either the mood swings would get worse as the natural systems tried to correct themselves, or their would be a quashing of emotions completely. For what are emotions if not irrational? In the end, the result is a massive 'falling of a cliff' or a success and the destruction of our humanness. Neither of these corollaries are good outcomes.

Greece, with its heightened sense of masculine culture, found that "suicide was so common among classical Greek women that Plutarch reported that it had reached epidemic proportions in the city-state of Miletus" (140). Cadmus, the mythological founder of Thebes, brought a new sense of logos to the Hellenistic Greek culture. The great king eventually married the daughter of Aries, Harmony, and thus "the union of the alphabet and war resulted in generations of suffering and provides a metaphor for history that is both mythic and true. Every time there has been a great advance in science and knowledge assisted by alphabet literacy, it has been associated with war" (145). Cadmus' descendents were cursed to horrific deaths. Autonoe, their first daughter, suffered the death of her son after he was eaten by his dogs after witnessing Artemis bathing. Semele, the second, would conceive Dionysus but die in the process. Agave, the third, ate her own son, Pentheus, after being overtaken by Dionysus. Io, the last, died because she cared for Bacchus after his mother's death, making Hera jealous. Finally, Pentheus, the king who was torn apart by Agave, passed his rein to his son, Menoecueus, who's famous daughter, Jocasta, married her son Oedipus. Any child who passed through high school knows how that misbegotten relationship turned out.

Greek society was seemingly driven mad by logos. Suddenly people would be killed for having different political beliefs, for following another religion, or for their own philosophical beliefs (like what happened to Socrates). Even though the blind seer, Tiresias, tried to warn them and us, we have put all our hopes in the ego. Tiresias, the he-she, knew both dualities and could see by not being able to--we have forsaken half ourselves, the irrational self. It would be Jesus, a new son, who would strive to bring sanity back to the world.

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Before I begin, I want to remind the audience that much of what I write is just as much a history of the growth of the human consciousness as it is the history of the world. The past is a mist or fog and only gains coherence when we choose to see it. With this in mind, I will lead you through several interlinking theories of Jesus' role in man's growth. The message I wish to get across is this: by containing the dualities of masculine and feminine, of good and evil, of the other and the self, by existing in a historical context, and by preaching of loving thy neighbor, Jesus existence was the catalyst for a new sense of self.

The Gospels of Luke and Matthew give different accounts of the childhood of Christ--there are altered genealogies, dates of birth, and accounts of who was present and where it took place. In esoteric history, this discrepancy can be explained away easily: there really were two Jesus childs that merged into one being. As explained in the Gnostic Pistis Sophia, when the boy Jesus and his twin met, they embraced and became one. Mark Booth explains that the "spiritual economy of the cosmos required him to do this, so that the boy who survived would in time be ready to receive the Christ-spirit at Baptism" (The Secret History of the World, 286). By becoming one, Jesus was said to have gained the ability to perform miracles like reading minds and communicating with the spirit world. This, of course, is the tradition of the Esoteric schools of Europe. History for them is not a random series of events but a controlled growth of consciousness. That is why Jesus descended from the heavens, to move humanity to its next stage of development. The tale of the two brothers is reflected in other stories as well. There is of course Romulus and Remus, Seth and Osiris, and many examples through Shakespeare's works. Two warriors complete each other. A modern film which showcases the completion of the two is "Megamind", starring Will Farrell and Brad Pitt. When one disappears, the other is distraught. He has to metaphorically absorb the role of the other to be complete again.

To that point, Jesus was the largest proponent of right brain thinking that the Western world had seen. According to Leonard Shlain in The Alphabet Versus the Goddess, He "instructed [his students] to contemplate with their rods instead of scrutinizing with their cones. He advised them to use their left arms to ward off blows, but never to ball their right hands into fists to strike back" (217) and taught his students with the use of parables. Parables, a form of instructional myth, require the subconscious' knowing. Jesus also lowered the value of laws, the masculine code, by denigrating the Pharisees, who were the Jewish middle class and tended to be lawyers and scribes, as well as lowering the value of written words by refusing to write down what He taught. Perhaps His most right brain teaching, Shlain says however, is that He "prophesied that the end of linear time was at hand" (220). As he mentions earlier in the book, the left brain may be a very well-developed organ used to perceive time. It is where the ego resides and where the narratives of are lives are constructed. "Everyone knows his or her personal time, this life, will end someday," Slain says, "but Jesus prophesied that all of time, everyone's life, this entire temporal world, was about to end . . . and soon" (220). Christianity was partially based on agricultural religions who honored the Goddess' cycles. The Goddess is eternal in that she never dies like her male escort. Jesus predicted an era where man would return to this timeliness and throw the ego aside. However, one must remember that the ego also desires its own sense of eternity--that of complete sameness, a realm where time can no longer mame or stress.

Jesus, as opposed to many of his contemporaries, was a seeker of feminine wisdom. He did not refuse women, even when they were prostitutes or adulterers, and never preached of Eve's failing as those had before him. As written by the biblical writer, 'J', Eve was fashioned from a lesser rib, and separated from her mythological partner, the snake. It was her fault that man must toil during his life, and that, in the end, he must die. It is she that he must slave and be civilized for. Yahweh showed his negative affinity toward women when He made all the patriarch's wives' fertile after years of being barren, usurping a traditional Goddess role. He also treated Jerusalem, His symbolic wife, as a disobedient child. Jesus refused this heritage. Rumors swelled of His relationship with Mary Magdalene, with the apocryphal Gospel of Philip stating that "Jesus loved her more than all the disciples and used to kiss her often on ... ". Sadly, the last word was lost to the ages; but, according to Mark Booth in the The Secret History of the World, this may be an allusion to a passage from the 'Song of Songs''--"Let him kiss me with kisses of the mouth." If Jesus did have a sexual relationship with the lady, then His association with women is complete. In fact, it would make sense for much of what He spoke broke with traditional Jewish law.

When prompted from a Pharisee lawyer of the most important Commandment, Jesus answered, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind. This is the first and greatest Commandment. And the second is like unto it. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two Commandments hang all the law and the prophets" (Matt. 22:37-40). In other words, Jesus said that to overcome the illusion of ego, we must find selfless love. According to Joseph Campbell in The Power of Myth, you must "put yourself back in the position of Paradise before you thought in terms of good and evil" (82). Christ's sacrifice was an echo of the tree in the Garden of Eden. When Adam and Eve ate the apple from the Tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil, they suddenly became aware of their own bodies, their own selves. They realized they were naked and were ashamed. Jesus died on a Holy Rood, a tree, or in other words, "the fruit of the tree, [...] the fruit of eternal life, which was the second forbidden tree in the Garden of Eden" (133). He was trying to return man to a sense of eternity, where desire and fear could wash away. "Eternity isn't some later time," Campbell says, "Eternity isn't even a long time. Eternity has nothing to do with time. Eternity is that dimension of here and now that all thinking in temporal terms cuts off" (84). No wonder the men in control were so frightened of Jesus. He was threatening left brain dominant thinking that their power depended on.

"So when Jesus says, 'Love thy neighbor as thyself," he is saying in effect, 'Love thy neighbor because he is yourself" (139). Bill Moyers says this in response to Campbell's story of a policeman who refused to let go of a jumper's hand. There was a subconscious response inside the cop. It told him that to let the man go was to die himself--their 'two'-ness became a 'one'-ness. It is only the illusion of time which prevents us from seeing the truth. "As soon as there is time," Campbell opines, "there is suffering. You can't have a future unless you have a past, and if you are in love with the present, it becomes past, whatever it is. Loss, death, birth, loss, death--and so on. By Contemplating the cross, you are contemplating a symbol of the mystery of life" (140). One can find the four beasts of the Zodiac in the ancient palaces of the Middle East. The great lion, leo, the eagle who was scorpio, a bull who was Taurus, and the a man-beast, Aquarius. These beings represent the Four Elements (fire, water, earth, air) which, according to the mystery schools, held the material universe together. Jesus was often represented as the Fifth Element, in between them all, a "Sun god who comes to earth to spiritualize the Four Elements and dissolve matter" (Booth 301). Campbell says this theme is echoed in the children's rhyme, "Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, bless the bed I sleep upon." In other words, from the middle of the four points of the heavens, Jesus, eternity, would emerge and bless mankind. What Campbell says is this: "Those four beasts represent the veil of Space-Time, veiling eternity, and the Christ in the center is the break-through, the second birth, the coming of the Lord of the World from the womb of the universal goddess, Space-Time" (120).

But what made Jesus so special? Mark Booth states that "because gods were no longer experienced as 'out there' in the material world, it was necessary for the Sun god, the Word, to descend to earth" (282). His mission, according to Booth, was to seed man's interior life, make it as grandiose inside his mind as the universe outside of it. But what made Jesus' path different? Many mythologies had similar themes of a dying-and-rising God, of a hero who died for the sins of the group, and of His message of love. Booth, in fact, calls Him a second Horus and says:

In Mary we should sense the presence of Isis; when the sun arose in the constellation of Pisces, the sign of Jesus, the constellation on the opposite horizon was Virgo. In Joseph, the patriarch carrying a crooked staff, we sense Osiris -- his staff symbolizing the Third Eye. The cave in which Jesus Christ is often represented as being, is the bony skull in which a new miracle of consciousness is about to be ignited. The baby in the manger has the luminous vegetative body of Krishna. The ox and the ass represent the two ages that have led to the new Age of Pisces -- the Ages of Taurus and Aries. The star that guides the Magi is the spirit of Zarathustra ('the golden star'). One of the Magi is Pythagoras reincarnated, and the Magi have been initiated by the prophet Daniel. The angel who announces the birth to the shepherds is the spirit of Buddha.

Many had come before him who foretold his arrival, but the major difference between them and Jesus was the Lamb existed in a historical context. An "apotheosis of the individual", as Helen M. Luke writer of Woman: Earth and Spirit calls it. She says in the same book that "[the inner truth] was revealed as an incarnate experience lived consciously by a single person at a specific moment in time" (32). Unlike the mystery schools, which Jesus was most likely an initiate based on evidence from the Bible, He revealed His secret to the masses with the public resurrection of Lazarus--one that, like theirs, preached of a dying-and-rising god who rose above the material plane to a higher realm of consciousness. This is a very feminine myth--one of eternity. But it also enlivened the individual spirit, reminding His students that one life could change the course of the world with a single decision. Based on His death, Helen M. Luke concludes that "the individual alone is the 'carrier of life' [... and] let us continually remember the dreams, the stories, the myths, which declare unshakeable truth that the single individual--you or I--may be the 'makeweight that tips the scales'" (33-4). Jesus preached a message of love, and His love would stretch across the history. However, His message was corrupted as soon as it was institutionalized.

In the secret tradition, a black magician was harnessing his power on other side of the world. He "worked to build up his supernatural powers over several incarnations, and he now threatened to pervert the whole course of history" (Booth 301). His power was modified through the use of human sacrifice and blood. Blood, a great mystery, calls the spirits down and maddens them. "Occultists know that humans can be killed in a particular way," Booth relates, "so that the human spirit is harnessed. [...] In occult circles it is know that black magicians can use the souls and spirits of others, their sacrificial victims as chariots" as Elijah did with his animal and vegetable selves. This black magician was confronted by another warrior of the sun named Huitzilopochtli, whose name is sometimes interpreted as meaning the 'left-handed hummingbird'. Booth opines that "when Jesus Christ was crucified, a huge power to spiritualize the earth was unleashed. When, simultaneously, the great black magician in the South Americas was crucified, a vortex opened up that would draw into itself the great currents of world history, the extremes of both good and evil" (304). It is important to remember that when Jesus died, He first descended to hell. Jesus and His duel in Mexico were the great linkers of history, of good and evil. Everything would form around them as they ushered in the new age of Pisces.



As mentioned by Booth, Jesus' sign was Pisces. Helen M. Luke puts it well: "In the sign of Pisces there are two fishes swimming in opposite directions--the Christ and the anti-Christ, his dark brother. The nature of true love is not exclusive. We cannot love and feed on the bright fish and refuse to recognize the validity of its opposite" (37). The fish that Luke describes are the yin-yang energies circling each other. Jesus was not only the acceptor of his good twin, his evil twin, and women--he accepted all the dualities. He vivified the elements, the material universe, and began to change humanity for the better. It was to discover the compassionate love for another which would change us all. "It involves a stern and clear-eyed recognition of evil as it is," Luke says, "the courage to confront and to fight it to the death, if necessary, on one level; but at the same time a compassionate acceptance of its manifestations in oneself or in others" (37). This is a very feminine virtue. A month ago, I got into a heated argument with a friend which revolved around this article. He said it was morally reprehensible and seemed angry with me for apparently justifying its existence. I replied that the individuals who had chosen to make fun of her were being crude, but that I could stand by its existence. The Mother loves all her children but the Father judges on his social existence; likewise, the internet shows the evil underbelly of mankind, but at the same time, I would kill a snake if it tried to bite me.

After his resurrection, Jesus' followers found him on the coast, preparing fish. Pisces' symbol is of a fish, a symbol that women are also linked because of the sea's deep depths. There is much life in her waters, and also much mystery. Helen M. Luke links the new age, Aquarius, which will proceeding Pisces one, with its mythic image of the water carrier. If our age, she claims, is one of stranded fish dying on the shore, then "the water carrier, who stands in the heavens pouring water from a never-falling jar down into the mouth of the stranded fish below him" (38) will resuscitate him. And this change may have been foreshadowed by the contemporaries, William Shakespeare and Francis Bacon.

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Rumors persist that William Shakespeare, an historical enigma, was the same person as Francis Bacon. This linkage is interesting. Bacon was a proponent for a material reality, or as Booth puts it, "Bacon realized that if you can observe objects as objectively as possible, very different patterns emerge from the ones that give subjective experience its nature" (405). Shakespeare, alternatively, wrote of a subjective reality--one "not of character types, which is what had before, but a jostling crowd of fully realized individuals, seething with passion and fired by ideas, so Bacon revealed a world bursting with quiddity, a scintillating world of infinitely various, sharply defined objects" (404-5). Booth claims that the various personalities during this time, Marlowe, Donne, and Cervantes being others, were a reincarnated Elijah moving in tandem. His spirit was split into many like a flock of birds. Shakespeare himself is compared to Jesus in that he "revolutionized human consciousness, yet left almost invisible traces on the contemporary historical record" (400). Francis Bacon, on the other hand, is well documented. In fact, he was in charge of the alotting of land in North America. What makes their connection fascinating is that they represent opposite sides of the a mythological whole. Like Apollo/Dionysus and Christ/Anti-Christ we can see a completeness in dueling brothers.

The War on the Goddess, Part 2

1. The Dying and Rising Gods, Apollo the God of Rationality



Just when the war against the Mother was looking its bleakest and it appeared life would be snuffed out forever, the sun burst forward and released its rays on the entirety of existence. The image we are meant to see in our minds is a great lion roaring, and the darkness dissipating to the edges. He is often portrayed as a beautiful young man with golden hair, riding a chariot and carrying a lyre, and was Apollo to the Greeks, Krishna to the Indians, and when he returned midway through the great story, Jesus to the Christians. With his rational insight glowing from his forehead, "he pushe[d] back the darkness until it becom[e] like a giant dragon or serpent encircling the cosmos" (Booth 72). By roaring from his leonine lungs, the Mother became impregnated in her 'cosmic womb' from his shout. Matter starts to bead, to come together into planets, moons, asteroids, and slowly plant life. The massive spinning mists harden. He literally sings the world into being.

This story, according the secret schools, is the transformation of the mineral to the plant consciousness. As green life began spreading over the face of the earth, death was nonexistent--plants thrive by being pruned, by receding each year and coming back the next. And this "vast vegetable being at the heart of the cosmos, whose soft and luminous limbs stretched to all four corners of it, was Adam. This was paradise" (73). When we commune with nature, as Montanans are often prone to do, we are returning to the state before animal consciousness and ego. It is a more peaceful world, or at least one where the cycles of life and death appear to be an illusion. "Because there was as yet no animal element to the cosmos, Adam was without desire and so without care of dissatisfaction. Needs were satisfied before they could even be felt. Adam lived in a world of endless springtime. Nature yielded an unending supply of food in the form of a milky sap, similar to that which we find in dandelions today. Memorials to this blissful satiation have come down to us in statures of the many-breasted Mother Goddess" (74). This plant consciousness continues to exist and is often referred to as the subconscious. If you were to see a diagram of the nervous system, it would look very much like a tree.

The 'third eye' is often understood to be the pineal gland in the front center of the brain behind where the forehead is. Many animals, including some lizards, frogs, and lampreys, maintain a small eye here, capable of detecting rays of light. Chakras are often thought of as New Age mumbo-jumbo but were depicted across the ancient world. The horns on Moses', which many understand as a mistranslation, could "represent the two petals of the brow chakra" (Booth 77), and the pictures of Pharaohs with a snake on their helmets relate to the pineal gland as well. The pine-cones atop Dionysian wands and the staff of Aaron are sometimes interpreted as enlivening the forehead chakra. The third eye was man's connection with the spiritual realms (sometimes described as a sphincter) and sits between both the left and right brains. It regulates the hormone, melatonin or DMT, a drug which can cause hallucinations, or experiences beyond the normal range of perceptions. This eye is one of the most important symbols as relating to the overcoming of the monstrous being of Saturn and the holistic, sometimes fickle Mother. It is here where you can utilize both sides of the warring parents, and the realm of the dying-gods, specifically Apollo/Dionysus, the twin deity--the first half is accepted by our modern world, but the second half is repressed. The eye is also the place where our mind makes sense of the universe. The swirling mist gains geometry only when we perceive it as such. Like Schrodinger's Cat, there would be no one there to give mass shape or coherence. We create the universe by observing it.

I shall come back to this, but first I want to briefly explore the next stage of consciousness' development: Adam's temptation. This is the final part of the three-part act during ancient initiation rights.



Lucifer, the morning star, is the animal consciousness, which gave birth to the ego. He is a necessary evil and quite separate from Saturn/Satan. His image is of the snake wrapped around the tree and represents the spinal chord forming, of plants becoming animals. In Shlain's The Alphabet Versus the Goddess he describes how women became increasingly sexualized through homo sapiens' development and could produce offspring anytime as a way of getting men to protect and help raise the children. Other mammals are fertile only a few times a year with males interested in procreation during this period alone. Chimp society is formed this way but women overcame this. Sex for them became a continuous bargaining tool. Women, by becoming increasingly dependent on mans' hunting, are what caused his domestication. Thus did Adam and Eve perceive themselves as being naked. Snakes are linked to women, as readers of Genesis will know. The snake appears to eternally renew itself by shedding its skin, it crawls along the earth on its belly, and its body has similarities to the umbilical chord. Shlain mentions that a woman appears serpentine during intercourse, opposite of the man's awkward thrusting.



In the esoteric tradition, Lucifer is Venus. One only needs to look at the morning star to confirm this.

These associations are an important aspect in the next few myths I will explore--the relationship between men and women. In these tales, the woman takes the forefront. This was the result of the agricultural societies. These myths are very different than the sky gods of the Paleolithic period. Death was seen as an illusion, and gods' stories became increasingly more complex. However, these stories were rationality developed, and the images created during the time are still commonly represented across our modern cities.











2. Osiris, Horus, and Adonis



The dying gods are at the heart of many religions and esoteric ideas. The sun represents compassion, truth, and love. It shines its light upon on all our heads, brightening the Earth, saving the world from the darkness of night, breathing life into every tree, bush, and weed, every mouse, shark, and elephant, and every human. In the body, it is the heart organ, pulsing blood to the rest, saving the rest, just like Jesus shed his blood on the cross. One day, sages say, he will return, and the Goddess and the Sun will be reunited once again. In Syria, he was Baal and Tummuz. In Babylon, he was Dummuzi. In Greece, he was Adonis, Apollo, and Dionysus. In Iran, he was Mithras. In Rome, he was Attis. To the Masons, he is Hiram Abiff. And to the Christians, he is Jesus Christ, the savior of the world. In this essay, I will focus most of my attention on the Egyptian Osiris/Horus and Apollo/Dionysus. The myth of Osiris, Horus, Set, Isis, and Nephtys is not a backwards myth, with deities worshiped by a backwards people, dead and incompatible with our modern reality. In fact, it is built into the Great Seal of the United States. The Great Eye of Horus is on all our dollar bills. It shines true, above all petty human concerns, above prejudices, hate, and discrimination. The founders saw themselves as being on top, where the capstone would be, observing the world from a purely rational mind-state. Many researchers have examined the esoteric lay out of the capital. With its grand obelisks drawing energy down to earth, enlivening the Washington Monument where the cock magically ejaculates, and the spiritual semen is jettisoned across the reflecting pool and impregnates the great Capital building dome--an ancient representation of the womb. Every day, the sun rises, and every day, Horus is conceived. Even the number 13 is magical. Twelve is the number of disciples Jesus had, so Jesus was number 13--the God who resurrects. To explore these themes more deeply, we are going to have to examine the myth of Osiris.



The Egyptians believed that their kingdom was once led by Osiris during a golden age. Herodotus, the early Greek historian, claims that his grave was decorated with huge stone obelisks as well as a man-made lake. "It is on this lake" he says, "that the Egyptians act out the Mysteries, the Black Rite that celebrates the death and resurrection of a being whose name I dare not speak. I know what goes on but ... say no more." If that is not intriguing, ala H.P. Lovecraft, I don't know what is. I found a post on a website who's author believes that the god's tomb is 100 feet below the Sphinx. Of course this is quite speculative in a conspiratorial sort of way, but it does go to prove how serious people take this god in his corporeality. Osiris' name is connected with reproduction, ('ourien' means semen), and some claim he is the same as the Greek Orion and biblical Nimrod (perhaps stretching even to Gilgamesh). His tale is one of betrayal, resurrection, and Mother Goddess worship. Like Baal and Dummuzi, he dies and is resurrected--like the sun dies every night and comes back in the morning, and like the winter kills life and spring brings it back. Like Dionysus, he also has a polar opposite in his brother Seth.

Brother battles reoccur in stories across history, notably Shakespeare--they show duality in pairs. Seth's name links him to Saturn/Satan. His motives for wanting to kill his brother are hazy. Was he jealous? Did he catch Osiris cheating with Nephtys? At any rate, after a gala, Seth tricks his brother into a coffin. After discovering the perfect fit, he seals Osiris inside, covering it with molten lead and throws it in a river. Osiris' sister/lover, Isis, is so distraught by his death that she searches for him across the ancient world, eventually finding him encased inside a tamarisk tree. She, being an amazing god, resurrects him, but Seth quickly discovers this miracle and chops the revived king into 14 pieces anew. Again, Isis finds all her husband's parts in the Nile--except for his penis, which was eaten by a crocodile. However, she manages to impregnate herself with an ersatz recreation and gives birth to Horus, who swears revenge on his uncle. He flies to greet Seth on a flying saucer with the aid of Thoth and kills him. In the aftermath, Osiris continues to rule the underworld, weighing the dead's deeds and granting them access to his kingdom if they weren't found lacking, while Horus was the king of the living. "The myth of Osiris," according to Mark Booth, "has many layers of meaning, but it is above all a myth about consciousness. It informs us that we must all die--but in order to be reborn. The key point in this story is that Osiris is reborn not into ordinary life, but into a higher state of consciousness" (131). Plato's realm of sphere's and imperfect shadow realities are reflected in what Booth says here. "'I shall not decay,' [Osiris] proclaims in the Book of the Dead, 'I shall not rot, I shall not putrefy, I shall not turn into worms, I shall have my being, I shall live, I shall live'" (131).

The Greeks, I believe, saw their Osiris as a dual entity (Apollo and Dionysus), and I will relate this in more detail in the subsequent paragraphs. However, there was another archetype in the Hellenistic world which also fit this theme. Tales arrived from Syria in the story of Adonis, the place where he was conceived. Adonai, another dying god who symbolizes cycles, literally means 'lord. In some stories, after much bickering, Adonis spends one-third of the year with Persephone in Hades, and two-thirds with Aphrodite, as a metaphor for the seasons. However, the most famous account deals with Adonis' death. Aphrodite, the mother god in this case, falls very much in love with the beautiful young man until he is gored and killed by a wild boar, sent by various goddesses in different accounts. Upon his death, Aphrodite sprinkles his blood with nectar and an anemone blossoms. In Shakespeare's version, she places the flower between her breasts and weeps her loss. When Ted Hughes analyzed the bard's choice of subject, he sees the boar as a destructive force which appears time after time in his works. I would argue that the creature is a force of Saturn, again trying to wreak havoc on the Mother Goddess.







3. Apollo/Dionysus

The Greeks knew that the Egyptian Osiris had parallels with their own gods, and some translated Dionysus and Osiris as being one and the same. In one tale, Dionysus flees from Greece and disguises himself in Egypt as Osiris.



But where does Apollo fit in? Apollo is the god of laws, construction, language, and wisdom, which seems somewhat opposed to the other solar deities. Zeus' favorite son, he plays the lyre and his chosen weapon is the bow and arrow, because like logic, he analyses rationally from a distance. Jean Shinoda Bolen in her book on male archetypes, Gods in Everyman, explains that "Apollo personifies the aspect of the personality that wants clear definitions, is drawn to master a skill, values order and harmony, and prefers to look at the surface rather than at what underlies appearances." She continues, saying that the "Apollo archetype favors thinking over feeling, distance over closeness, objective assessment over the subjective intuition" (135). Apollo, again, symbolizes law, order, and most importantly, logos and language. Intriguingly, it was this God who killed Python, a serpent monster. Logos killed mythos. The male zeitgeist killed the female one.

Opposed to the archetype of Apollo, but ultimately completing him, is Dionysus (Bacchus to the Romans or Iachos as an infant). Bolen says that the Dionysian archetype "has powerful positive and negative potentialities, stirring up the most ethereal and the basest of feelings, creating conflicts within the psyche and with society" (255). He represents madness, the extremes, and drunkenness. At one moment he can be in the throes of ecstasy and in the next a terrible depression. Where Apollo stands at a distance with his arrows raised, Dionysus knows the truth is only in the present. There is no planning. There is no figuring out the next step in preparation for a scheme. A representation of these two opposing figures in modern pop culture is Batman and the Joker, as anyone could have guessed by Heath Ledger's incredible performance in "The Dark Knight."

Dionysus is also the persecuted god, the one who needs to be sacrificed, because the extremes exist within him--just like Jesus' arms stretched over the cross. He wishes to save the woman who he loves and will eventually place her in the role of a wife/maternal figure like his great love, Ariadne. Dionysus can drive women mad. He is needy, haughty, dangerous, moody, and fickle. He tempts them with base desires which may be hidden away because of man's dominance over them. Women, under the spirit of Dionysus, would rampage into the hills, suckling young animals and ripping to shreds any that dared to flee from their procession. This was an expression of society's pent-up aggression, an outlet for the rational god, and a need of the mad one. Dionysus' maenads tore Orpheus and King Pentheus apart in the myths. Anyone familiar with True Blood will know Dionysus' characteristics if they have watched Season 2. He is known as the "god who comes" in this exploitative HBO series, but Dionysus exists within us all. One myth tells of Dionysus being torn apart and eaten by the Titans. When Zeus discovers this, he kills the giants and makes man from their bodies. Thus, a little bit of this persecuted god is alive inside of you, whether you like it or not. Dionysus is also nomadic, having traveled east to India to study with the gurus there. In numerology he would be characterized by the number "5".

It is my belief that Apollo and Dionysus are the same god. Both represent the sun (like Osiris), and without the other, something is lost in their respective images. Once every year, Apollo was known to fly away to the Hyperborean land and leave Dionysus in charge of Delphi. This act can signify the winter cycle or the daily sleep, but it also can represent something more. We cannot be purely rational all the time. William Blake talks about balance. By trying to destroy Dionysus, he will only come back stronger when he emerges within us again. Economists call these wild tendencies "animal spirits," where unexplainable zeitgeists seem to overwhelm the minds of people and drive the markets crazy. I believe something was forgotten in our rational society: Dionysus, the need for madness which overtakes us one-fourth of every year, one-fourth of every day, and one-fourth of every hour. Nietzsche, in The Birth of Tragedy, emphasizes this trait in the works in the three great Greek play writes, saying that the ordering hero (of Apollo) is overwhelmed by chaotic fate (of Dionysus)

Dionysus is holistic like the mother. He is the god of masks, theater, and roles. As Apollo tries to construct something beautiful, the Dionysian (sublime) aspect will ultimately beg to tear it down. Apollo with his lyre would play something by Bach or Beethoven, Dionysus would be most happy at a rave, and as Apollo is the god of law and order, Dionysus is the god of the destruction of boundaries. According to the American scholar, Camille Paglia, "The quarrel between Apollo and Dionysus is the quarrel between the higher cortex and the older limbic and reptilian brains." Apollo, the god of supreme rational wisdom portrayed on our dollar bills on top of the pyramid, is logos. In his 'supreme wisdom,' he was aware that he needed Dionysus by fleeing to Hyperborea. In our modern culture, we have forgotten this. Dionysus is persecuted. Feminine characteristics are stomped out of boys in lieu of the cherished engineer Apollo, Zeus' favorite son, the Ivy League hopeful, student body president, and captain of the swim team. Economists talk about rational individuals but forget that individuals are also 'mad' one-fourth of the time.



Dionysus, as an archetype, is also the remarriage of Christian and Satanic images, as discussed in this essay. In his myths, he is the god who died for man's sin many times yet always resurrects. He is associated with the vine and honoring him by a "ritual meal of bread and wine" was common in his celebrations. His father was a sky god (Zeus) and his mother a lesser moon goddess (Semele)--something we will see has parallels in esoteric knowledge--and his name has the familiar 'sus' at the end. Similar themes of both Dionysus and Jesus traveling to India and learning ancient wisdom have also emerged in the esoteric tradition.

Why are there so many similarities? Because good mythologies steal from each other and they are both in the tradition of the dying-and-rising gods which appeared across the ancient globe. Wikipedia says, "E. Kessler in a symposium Pagan Monotheism in the Roman Empire, Exeter, 17–20 July 2006, states that Dionysian cult had developed into strict monotheism by the 4th century CE; together with Mithraism and other sects the cult formed an instance of 'pagan monotheism' in direct competition with Early Christianity during Late Antiquity." Pagan cults of Dionysus and Asclepius were early competitors to Christianity. Shlain would say this monotheism was a result of literacy in both societies and probably why a god of written laws made such headway, finally overtaking ancient pagan beliefs. Dionysus, as the god of women and irrationality, was of course the god who would be ultimately banished from the collective mind. This could be a result of the two religion's early competition as well as the emergence of rational law and thought. Greece cherished Dionysus' presence. But to establish hierarchy, Rome could not have the holistic, mad god on the loose. Dionysus was often cavorting with satyrs in his myths, being helped raised by Silenus in a cave. The devil is also seen as a goat-man in imagery, with is horns, hoofs, and billy-goat-tee. He has many of the features Christians associate with the devil. Both Satan and Dionysus are also associated with women and snakes because he is the god of this world, and by attempting to extirpate him, we only make his allure greater. Modern culture's hidden desire for darkness and death can be seen as our Dionysian energies exploding out in uncontrolled ways. Logos and mythos complete each other, they are not at odds. In Game Theory, we call this a relative sum game. Both can thrive as the other does.

Some have gone as far as to proclaim that Apollo will be returning in 2012, as was predicted by several different groups as a new golden age of the gods. Tom Horn describes in his book, Apollyon Rising 2012, that "the tomb of Osiris may actually have been discovered in Giza in recent years containing DNA related to the deity" (135). This may remind people of the Lovecraft mythos, especially when esoteric mystics like Manly P. Hall proclaim in their books, "The Dying God shall rise again! The secret room in the House of the Hidden Places shall be rediscovered. The Pyramid again shall stand as the ideal emblem of solidarity, inspiration, aspiration, resurrection, and regeneration." A slightly terrifying prospect when Revelation mentions a being by the name of Abbadon, 'Apollyon'. The Cumaean Sibyl describes a new divine son, who "is to be spawned of 'a new breed of men sent down from heaven' [...] when he receives 'the life of gods, and sees Heroes with gods commingling" (137). Horn translates this as Apollo being the literal anti-Christ, son of Zeus, the pagan version of God. He describes how this spirit has reincarnated throughout the ages in different guises, most notably Napoleon, who's name translates as 'the true Apollo.' He also relates how the Pythian priestess' prophecy powers and convulsions were similar to modern day demon possessions depicted in movies like "The Exorcist". I am not sure what to make of this, though I do know that America was described as the New Atlantis by distinguished philosophers like Francis Bacon, and that the eagle on the dollar bills could very well be translated as a phoenix, an important occultic symbol. At the very least, it is interesting reading for a late night to scare yourself in the darkness. In the end, I think the dual Apollonion and Dionysian archetypes are the seat of rationality, but only when they are coupled together. It is where we need to arrive at and think through to defeat a history of wars and irrational sky father philosophy--at least in the way it is being interpreted today as sort of a death cult. In the next section, I will discuss the modern Father god, and how he came to prominence upon the invention of the alphabet.