Organization: Arizona State University
Date: Tuesday, 18 Aug 1992 12:04:11 MST
From: <IDJDE@ASUACAD.BITNET>
Newsgroups: alt.mythology
Subject: Re: marduk
 <16846CA5A.HOLFELTZ@LSTC2VM.stortek.com>

     With respect to the symbol of the sky mother in mythology, I offer the
following: The sense of the sky mother, who in egypt appears also as the
vulture goddess, in contradistinction to the cthonic earth god, generally
associated--as in the case of hermes--with the serpent, is that the female
represents the universe itself. She IS Space and Time, and we are within her
womb of life experience. In the Eddas, for example, we find there, that on
the Day of Ragnarok, or complete dissolution of the world aeon, 800 warriors
will pour through 540 doors to do battle to the death. Now, when we multiply
800 x 540, we arrive at the number 432,000. In India, precisely this number
is regarded as the length of time for a complete cycle of creation, from the
birth of the world-lotus out of the depths of Vishnu's dreaming imagination,
to the dissolution by flood. When we turn to the Book of Genesis, we find
that precisely 10 patriarchs rule from adam to noah, and that the sum of their
years, when calculated from the point of their respective ages at the time
they begat their children, turns out to be 1,656 years. Now when add those
four numbers together, their sum is 18. 8 plus 1 equals 9. 4 plus 3 plus 2
also equals 9. For a complete cycle of the zodiac, 25,920 years are required.
Those numbers added up equal 18. Moreover, that number divided by 60, which
is the base of our mathematical system which we inherited from the Babylonians,
yields the number 432. Now, when we also consider, that the ideal heart-beat
rate for a man in good physical shape is precisely one beat a second, this
comes out to 86,400 beats in a day, which is twice43,200. The question then
is, what does all this have to do with the goddess? Just consider: there are
nine muses. There are nine planets in our solar system. An infant spends
ideally nine months in its mother's womb. Nine is the number of a cosmic
cycle, and it is the number of the womb of the Mother Goddess, who IS Time
and Space, within whose womb we experience life, and the rhythm of whose
cycle is that of the beat of our own hearts.
     The female is also the source of life's energy, which in India is known
as "shakti." The female, that is to say, is nature, the male society. The
female is the source of the male's power and energy, and without her, he is
nothing. The egyptians understood this, and that is precisely why the Pharaoh
sits on a throne in the shape of Isis. It she who is supply the dynamic rhythm
of his life. Traditionally, the pictures taken of the United States Presidents
always show the woman behind the man's chair, not because she is subordinate,
but because she is more primary, and the rhythm of her heartbeat, which is
time itself, makes possible his own activities. Likewise, the unconscious
precedes in the history of evolution and on a daily basis, the waking con-
scioussness. The unconscious makes waking conscious possible, not as Descartes
insisted, the other way around. One does not exist because one thinks, but
one thinks because one exists. The female is closer to the unconscious and
hence more "instinctive" and "intuitive," and therefore much less likely to
go astray psychologically. The male is more "conscious" and more "rational,"
and for that very reason more susceptible to psychological disorders. The
male, for example, almost always regards life itself from the rational stand-
point of "waking conscioussnes," and as a result, always comes up with the
answer "no" to life, as in the case of Schopenhauer's famous line, "Life is
something that sould not have been." From the irrational standpoint, however,--
i.e. the feminine--the answer always comes up with an emphatic "yes," and
this is why James Joyce's Ulysses ends with a chorus of "yesses" occurring
within the mind of a female as she is falling asleep (there are 18 chapters
in that book, by the way).
     Furthermore, with respect to the image of the female as universe, in
India, the goddess Maya is identified with the delusory forms of space and
time, which screen out from view our knowledge of our own immortality. Maya
is derived from the root ma, "to measure," or "pour forth." Maya, thus, has
three functions:
     1. To create: as the goddess, she is the gateway between eternity and
time, and she therefore brings not only life into the world, but death as well.
This is why eve is "credited" with bringing death into the world.
     2. To conceal: in creating the world, therefore, she brings forth the
manifold of space and time from out of the ground of her own unity; she is
thus the prism which transforms the single ray of light (ie. eternity) into
the manifold colors of the phenomenal world. Likewise, the world appears to
the unilluminated man as a place of sorow, wherein separate beings contend
against one another for goods and space. To such a man, life is regarded
pragmatically, rationally, and hence rejected as something that should not
have been. But the goddess maya--who, as Schopenhauer was the first to perceive
, is exactly equivalent to Kant's forms of sensibility, as well as the limiting
categories by which the understanding dissects, arranges, and cuts up life.
   3. To reveal: It is thus the purpose of art and myth to help the mind
(specifically, the rational waking conscioussness aspect of it) break past
the deluding veil of maya, to cross from the masculine "rational" zone of
discursive thought, to the feminine of simple, basic life experience. From
this angle, life does not "mean" anything at all, it simply "is." The pur-
pose of a flower for example, is simply to fulfill the morphological possibil-
ities which are inherent in the seed, and that's it.
     Thus, with the aid of the great Mother Goddess, within whose womb we
live, breathe, and experience this world, we become illuminated, the rational
part of the brain destroyed in purgation, so that the self-luminous, radiant
energies of eternity may come pouring triumphantly through, like the blissful
strains of Bach's Mass in B minor.
--john david ebert    mesa, az