Prev      Top     Next

Animals

Animals, fish, birds, amphibians, are like everything else classified as belonging to one half of the world or the other; animals, fish, birds have their own place in the system; and as humans and creatures occupy the same world, they often companion one another, the animal serving as the god’s emblem and vice versa.

Here, however, we must distinguish between two systems of thought. Initially, all creatures are wild and belong to the underworld of Gods 1 and 3.

But in certain parts of the world, as animals gradually become domesticated, the herd animal, which lives with men in the village and has its own ‘community’ with its own herd leader, is adopted into the adult ‘summer’, civilized part of the system. Distinctions, therefore, must be carefully made, especially as in the European west and near east both systems continue to exist together.

First, then, we will discuss the later system and the animals adopted into it, then, alphabetically, the remaining fauna in their usual wild contexts.

The only animals which ever appear as the representatives of the upperworld and God 2 are herd animals with horns: bull, goat, ibex, ram and stag. If the female does not wear horns--e.g. the doe--her status does not change.

We have already discussed, in God 2, the Indo-European, near eastern and North African phenomenon of a god who wields the thunderbolt, brings rain, ‘rules’, and is associated with bull, deer or ram. Some traces of a similar association may be found elsewhere: for instance, the Navaho speak of an underworld god creating wild animals while Sun created the domesticated, and the llama is held in particular reverence among the Inca. But neither the Hopi nor Mesoamerican civilizations, having no herd animals, made such a distinction.

And these horned animals even in areas where they have been adopted into civilization retain a dual identity: i.e. the bull of the old system may be specifically called ‘the wild bull’, the ‘red’ or ‘green’ or ‘spotted’ bull. (See COLOR) or be given marked phallic characteristics. Below, a variety of bull portraits belonging to any of the god phases.

Zeus carrying off Europa, red figured krater from the National Museum at Tarquinia. The bull appears to have only one horn, a curiosity emphasized by Europa’s dainty fingers holding on to it. As it has four feet, however, this may not be a matter of failed technique but of intent. Zeus, like any other god carrying off maidens, is in his God 1 guise, like the Unicorn and the Maiden. (See Unicorn, later in this section.)

Especially as this bull is most unnaturally three-horned. Now in the Musee des Beaux-Arts, Paris, it comes from the Celtic past, and may refer to God 3 Esus, on whose Paris altar are a bull and three cranes. Esus was a ‘woodcutter’, i.e. a sacrificer or priest god (See SACRED LANDSCAPE, Tree) but also god of fire and of smiths.

Bulls on gems from Knossos and Argos, linked with God 2 cross or double axe. This pattern also occurs in Scandinavia.

A ‘tamed’ bull being attacked by an eagle. (See Birds, later) His manlike head with beard and his halters seems to indicate this bull has passed initiation.

Lao-Tze’s green ox is, like Paul Bunyan’s blue Babe, marked as an underworld animal by its color. (See COLOR).

The Ram as God 2 animal is less common, belonging to Baal-Hammon and Africa’s Shango of the axe and thunderbolt. But it appears fairly regularly, as do bull, ibex and stag, is a particular kind of art where the fighting animals represent underworld vs upperworld.

Lion vs deer, or ibex, Mycenae, from a plaque found in Grave Circle A (Athens National Museum.)

Tiger attacks deer, first half 3rd Millenium BC, Kish. (Baghdad Museum)

Wolf attacks crowned? or antlered? horse. (See Horse, later.) Ordos bronze.

Leopard attacks deer, top of a ceremonial box for offerings, Ashanti, Ghana.

Paired and facing animals, conversely, like the twins represent the year as a unity and may be either upper- or underworld.

A Maya classic bowl now in the Museum of Mankind, London.

Carved stone from Haggeby, Uppland, Sweden, 5th or early 6th Century. Note ‘priest’ in background. Stockholm Historiska Museum.

Facing ibexes, from an Ordos bronze.

An Iroquois carved antler comb of the last century.

The stag, of course, is probably the most splendidly horned animal and its horns bear a natural connection to God 2, since they grow in spring and fall off in winter. The stag often appears as ‘summer’ in the conflict patterns above and with Set and Cernunnos as God 2. The diadems of the Scythians, the Plantagenets and the Queen of Ur displayed its horned head; and stags are curiously associated with the death of kings in the myths of Dumuzi of the near east, Krishna of India and Llew Llaw Gyffes of Wales.

What makes the stag partkcularly interesting as a ritual animal, however, is the pairing of the spring boar hunt and the fall stag hunt in many European works of art. Poor, indeed, the lord who did not have tapestries of each upon his wall. The traditional royal hunt of the stag in Europe, taken with the almost as traditional spring boar hun, suggest that these were originally religious duties the king was required to fulfill. The boar hunt and in the near east, the lion hunt (See Boar, Cat, later in this section) reaffirmed his spring victory, as the Sed race did for the Pharaoh; and in the fall, he was required to kill a stag to replace him as ritual victim. (Such a substitution is historically attested in many places: in Ireland, for instance, where if the O’Donnell chief appeared at the white horse sacrifice, he would be slain instead.)

In any case, the deer hunt theme in art is very old, and as all art is sacred, it probably did have ritual significance, and not only in Ineo-European areas. It appears on a late Chou bronze vase from China and on the ceiling of Cave 246 at Ch’ieu-fo-tung (T’angera) .

Deer hunt, with man and dog killing stag; mould from Mari, 18th Century BC. (Aleppo Museum)

Deer hunt scene from about 300 BC Pella, in mosaic. There the slayers are definitely young and in a state of ritual nudity. Again, a dog accompanies them.

Stag hunt and lion hunt linked as ritual scenes, from a Manchurian (T’ung-kou) tomb wall painting. There are several such scenes in Manchurian tombs of the 5th and 6th centuries, and also on early Japanese cult bells. (Also see Mycenaean lion hunt, Cat, later in this section.)

But stag and ram, doe and fawn, ewe and lamb, retain their wild underworld identities as well, and nowhere is this clearer than with the goat, strongly associated with Pan, other forest deities, and of course that black god the Devil. Its only real associations with God 2 are pulling Thor’s cart, as ‘Set’s followers" or harvest sacrifices. (See ACTION, Fall.) In the illustration below, however, it is identified with King Arthur. Nobody understands why Arthur should be riding a goat, but Arthur here probably stands for the king of a summer festival like the Lammas Fair in Ireland (midsummer) where a goat was crowned. (Mosaic the cathedral of Otranto in Apulia, Italy)

In this seal from about 3000 BC Mesopotamia, a figure identified as ‘the king’ feeds two goats from the Tree of Life. (Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin) In a later Assyrian seal from about the 9th Century BC, however, the ‘king’ is glanked by caprids and griffins both, suggesting the goats here are underworld. (Seal from the British Museum.) The knot further suggests that we are dealing with a rite of passage, possibly from king to underworld goat. In the Mycenaean ivory lid from Ras Shamra below (Louvre) it is Goddess 3 who in the center nourishes the goats--a form of triple pattern, the Master or Mistress of Animals, which will be discussed further in SACRED LANDSCAPE, Tree; and in this pattern the goats would belong to the underworld.

This popular medieval figure of the goat nibbling the grapes has probably descended from the earlier eastern icon above. It is used, very consistently, as an emblem for fall, which is indeed the time of grape harvest. It seems likely, though, that it has a fall ritual meaning as well. This example is the "September" of the Labors of the Months at the Colegiata de San Isidro, Leon, Spain.

Underworld Animals

These animals--that is, all the wild animals of the original system--appear in a variety of roles.

First, they are protecting familiars of the third stage gods and goddesses of the underworld, or protectors of the underworld itself.

Second, as companions to God and Goddess 1, and here they often appear in tale as ‘helpful animals’ aiding the hero or heroine.

But they may also be alternates for these gods. The ‘shapeshifter’ wizard figure is known all over the world for his or her ability to turn into an animal and back again; but the youth in training is also a ‘wild animal’ who will someday become a man, and God 1 may be part of a pack of wolves of which God 3 is wolf leader.

In the youth training class context, were-animals are known everywhere, but the precise animal may differ. We have werewolves, Indian has were-tigers, Japan were-foxes. In North America badgers, foxes and snakes were were-animals.

Third, they appear without humans in the upperworld vs underworld art we have previously mentioned; or as paired facing animals, the ‘twins.’

Fourth, the fiercest among them play important roles in art as the ‘initiation’ animal the youth combats in spring.

And fifth, they themselves may be symbols of the spring season. Groundhog Day in America is, in Europe, Wolf’s Day or Bear Day, when these animals emerge, like the youths, from the wild. And--oh yes--we must not forget the Easter Bunny.

Ape, see Monkey

Bear

In a spring ceremony at Arles-sur-Tech in France, a figure in bear costume arrives at the festival, carries off a maiden called Rosetta (flower goddess), and is shot by a group of young men. In similar Pyreneean festivals, he is then brought to life again. This evocation of the Bear as the Wild Man, God 1, is extremely old ; Hincmar of Reims in the 9th century inveighed against the ‘turpia ioco cum orso’, and it can be traced back through the neolithic, mesolithic and paleolithic. The recent discovery of the jaw of a young bear who had been kept tied, presumably for some later sacrificial ritual, in the France of 6000 years ago, is only one more example of the cult of the bear as sacred and sacrificial animal which extends throughout Europe and Asia--in fact, wherever bears exist. The ‘fight with the bear’ is known in North America as well as Europe, and the bear who carries off women appears in Hindu, Navaho, Cherokee, Haida and Chinese myth as well as in ‘Snow White and Rose Red."

The Bear or ‘Bear’s Son’ God 1 figure of many myths is, however, only one of the Bear’s underworld roles: in fact he appears in all of those listed at the beginning of this section.

This tapestry of St. Vaast of Arras and his tamed bear companion is an excellent example of the translation of icons of the old religion into Christian art. St. Vaast is dressed as cleric in robe and God 3 hat ‘taming’ or initiating the Bear or God 1 of the spring play with which the tapestry designer was surely familiar. The rabbits and the blossoming tree are calendar markers for spring. The gate with no building behind it is not a primitive artistic gaffe but a hieroglyph for ‘rite of passage’, as is the stream in the background. The lopped tower may be intended as an axis mundi indicating passage from under- to upperworld. Such direct translations are particularly common in areas where Roman state religion did not interpose between the old religion and Christianity, and can be found as late as the 16th century.

David (or Samson) fights his lion in this English decorated letter, ca 1170. The illustrator has never seen a lion, but he has probably seen the pagan spring ‘fight with the bear’: so his ‘lion’ becomes a bear with stripes.

Chinese hero Ch’ih Yu appears in his bear shape on this bronze belt hook from the first century BC. He is also accompanied by dragon and tiger, also of the underworld, and appears to be standing on a snake.

The ‘fight with the bear", from an early Swedish helmet plate. The design here echoes a number of initiatory scenes elsewhere. (See SACRED LANDSCAPE as well as ACTION, Initiation.)

Birds

Birds, as inhabitants of air instead of earth, clearly do not belong to this world. The owl is, all over the world, the bird of night and darkness; the crow and raven have a sinister reputation as companions of gods of the dead. Even the gentle dove (whose name indicates doves were once dark birds like pigeons) did not escape the occasional black implication: in Japan it is attribute of war god Hachiman. "A cock to Aesculapius", God 3, was a common Greek saying; doves, peacocks, pheasants and swans accompany spring gods and goddesses; swallows, cranes, cocks, cuckoos, are signs of spring or dawn; and everywhere, birds are thought of as souls of the dead.

With two specific birds, however, we have a problem. The crowned wren was called ‘king’ by every European race, and ceremonies at which it was killed in fall survived into late historic times. One scholar, indeed, suggests its killing may have replaced the killing of the real king. (Eckstin, Comparative Studies in Nursery Rhyme, London 1906, p. 172 et seq.)

Of the eagle, the Greeks said it first belonged to Pan who gave it to Zeus--a neat summary of what appears to be its emblematic history. Because of its long association with sky god 2 as his messenger, its role shifted, as did that of its cousins the hawk and falcon. In Rome it is emblem of both Mithras as God 1 and the emperor as God 2. In Greece it belongs both to Zeus and Hades. In Egypt it belongs to the Pharaoh as the falcon to Horus. For woodland Indians of the southeast, however, the falcon meant war and the eagle peace, while the Toltec opposed the Jaguar of night to the Eagle of day. In Oriental art the eagle helps the king fight his lions, or attacks serpents.

Both traditions survive in art. In the example below, for instance, eagle and serpent appear to be on very amicable terms, as befits two animals from the underworld; and in the mind of the artist they probably belonged there together. Also see Bull Attacked by An Eagle, in Opposed Animals, supra, where the eagle plays an underworld role attacking the bull, here God 2.

This painted Kwakiutl shaman mask shows the typical bird features we have already seen in some examples under PERSONNAGES, God and Goddess 3 and in HATS ETC.

This ‘bird-man’ is to Japan what the leprechaun is to Ireland. The tengu is a shy small creature, sometimes red, with a pork pie hat or bird features, wearing a cloak of feathers or, like the Wild Man, of leaves. He lives in solitary forests, e.g. the underworld. Sometimes the tengu have a chief, and this is probably he.

This Shang era Chinese bronze vessel shows us an owl, underworld bird, which is also a dragon, underworld animal (See Snake, later.)

An underworld demon, Tukhulka, from the Etruscan Grotto dell’Orco. Similar figures are found in Mesoamerican paintings, warriors or priests in bird costume.

Ra-Harakte, the sun god, shown as Pharaoh enthroned, from a wooden stela now in the Louvre. In Egypt as elsewhere the old tribal system underwent changes under the impact of urban life and statehood, but in Egypt the changes were distinctly idiosyncratic. The dual division of the world was taken with extreme seriousness--even the state granaries were divided down the middle to correspond with the religious dichotomy between Upper and Lower Egypt. However, in reality, one side was not all "Gods 2" and the other "Gods 1 and 3". Each city had its own complete set of gods, or even a triple god under the same name, like Min. Hence, though Osiris remains spring and underworld god and is Pharaoh only in death, Horus takes both God 1 and God 2 roles--even God 3 as Horus the Elder. Set , moreover, is sometimes underworld god as well as god of the Pharaohs: he defeats Osiris as God 2, but in his turn is defeated by Horus, God 2 to Set’s underworld pig self.

The Pharaoh, however, is thought to unify both halves of Egypt in his role and his person, and thus wears the emblems of both under- and upperworld. Here, in addition to his double crown, he carries the crook and flail (the flail once his thunderbolt) ;and as here, circle and snake. Here too is the only place we will find a God 2 king figure, be he Horus or as here Re, hawk-headed. Everywhere else composite figures belong only to the underworld. Whether this bird figure is an aspect of his priestly or his royal role is, however, open to question, given the adoption of the eagle as God 2 symbol in Europe and elsewhere in north Africa.

Boar

The boar which kills Attis and which, as Frazer has observed is in fact a double of Attis, replaces the bear in an area ranging from Ireland to Egypt and the near east, though in Egypt it is referred to as a pig (always a chthonic animal). And like the bear it is associated with Gods 1 or 3 in Greece, India, Scandinavia, Egypt, Russia, Celtic lands, Esthonia and China. Even Melanesia has tales of the ritual boar hunt and associates the boar with the journey to the underworld.

In art, the boar hunt of spring was a favorite European subject from very early times. and we find it portrayed not only on the tympan of Bourges, opposed to a stag hunt, but in the palace at Tiryns and even at Kish. The silver dish below (now in the Victoria and Albert) Is from Soghdia (now s. Uzbekistan, Tashkent) of the seventh century, and makes explcit the ritual equivalency of the southern lion hunt and the northern boar hunt. Such transliterations are in fact not uncommon in border areas.

Boar hunt, from the Cleves Book of Hours . The triple tree and the cap and costume mark this as a ritual portrayal. It serves as a commentary to Plate 131, the death of a young man: St. Stephen stoned by the disbelievers. A Cave-Mound (see SACRED LANDSCAPE) appears in the background.

Herakles fights the Erymanthian boar, from a oenochoe by the Andokles painter. As usual with God 1 heroes, Hercules is wearing over his head and shoulders the feline skin.

Feline: Cat, Lion, Tiger, Panther, Jaguar, etc.

There is probably no place where cats exist where they are not seen as creatures of the underworld. If they are not witch companions or witches, they are initiation battle animals: in China, the near east, Africa and Mesoamerica just as for Hercules. And this imagery is, like the bear’s, very old: at a paleolithic site near Lake Baikal excavators found the ivory statue of a goddess clothed in the skin of a cave lion just as God 1 so often is in subsequent art.

Canaanite goddess Qodshu, ca 1300 BC. Egyptian sculpture now in the British Museum. She carries lotus and snakes to underline the underworld identity the feline declares.

In China Chu-Lung, Lieutenant-Governor of Fire, rides the grinning tiger. Note his staff, hat, and aged appearance as God 3. (In imperial China, all the old pre-Taoist gods were given honorary roles in the heavenly bureaucracy corresponding to their previous powers. Chu-Lung is thus God 3, as fire god.)

Australian creator Old Man Nagacook, painted yellow, gray and black, looks remarkably like a lion, though Australia has none. He wears a mane-crest on his head, and has a single-bladed stone axe attached to him on the left. (See PERSONNAGES, Axe.)

This clay figurine of the late Jomon period, which in Japan goes back to about 3000 BC, also appears to be a cat goddess. (Note stripes) The three protuberances on her head mark her as Goddess 3. (T. Nakazawa collection)

Another Jomon figurine, from the middle of the period, wears the same three head bumps and is even more catlike. (Y. Yamasaki collection)

One of the earliest pottery human images ever found intact, this mask comes from NW China. The rear of the mask face bears a snake. The mask is believed to be that of a shaman. Compare it with the Batetela mask in HATS ETC.

Early third millenium human figure with lion head, now in the Brooklyn Museum. The prominent claws, like those of the Japanese cat goddess, suggest that these are shaman figures disguised as felines, ready to terrify the new initiate in his mock ‘wild animal’ combat: compare, for instance, with the man-lion shown under Initiation.

An even older lion-man figure, carved from mammoth ivory and found in the Hohlenstein-Stadel cave in Germany. It dates from approximately 28-32,000 B.C.

A different kind of lion hunt: the ritual lion hunt of the king--in the first place Ashurnasipal, in the second, a royal figure buried in a shaft grave at Mycenae. This repeated ritual hunt differs from the initiation battle in being fought not hand-to-hand but from a chariot, with the wheel perhaps as God 2 symbol. In the first example the message is even clearer: a dead lion lies under the horse’s feet--the king has already before ‘killed his lion’. The second seems to combine, like those mentioned under Stag, above, both spring lion and fall ritual stag hunts required of the king. And that these were, in fact, ‘required’ is attested by the fact that the Assyrians kept captive lions just so that the king would have one to kill.

Other initiatory lion fights will be found in ACTION, Initiation. amd SACRED LANDSCAPE, Tree. For other examples of noncombatant underworld lions, see the Minoan ring in SACRED LANDSCAPE, Tree, and Nergal’s staff as king of the underworld under PERSONNAGES, God 3.

Coyote

On the American continent coyote takes the place of dog and sometimes of wolf in western imagery. He is a major figure in Amerind myth: a chaser of maidens, with a penis that can go around corners; a wise ‘grandfather’; or a trickster god who, is as capable of mischief as wisdom. As such he is the counterpart of trickster Gods 3 and 1 all over the world: Loki, Hermes, Esu of the Edo of Benin and Nigeria-- even the San bushmen, the world’s most primitive tribe, have their trickster god. The trickster role is strongly associated with the unruly Wild Herd of pre-initiates and their leader

A coyote with feathers? why not? this one, from an Aztec shield, is honored because he helped Quetzalcoatl to find corn. But since birds and feathers belong to the underworld, both Quetzalcoatl and his animal companion are entitled to wear them.

Dog

We have seen already the playful dogs who accompany gods and goddesses in PERSONNAGES, God and Goddess 1 and 3. But the dog is independently an underworld creature. The Hound of Hell is known to the Greeks, Norsemen, Persians, Hindus, Irish and Eskimos as well as accompanying death gods Yama, Odin, Ereshkigal, Hekate and Lendix-Tcux of the Chilcotin. In the Aztec and Persian world he guides the soul on its journey to the next world, and a she-dog nurses Aesculapius as the wolf does Romulus and Remus. Indeed the dog at the foot of the knight on medieval tombs may be intended to play companion in the next world as well as this. Certainly the concept of the dog as guide after death is very old: dogs are buried with their masters in late Mesolithic graves in the Baltic area as well as in east and southeast Asia, the Amerind midwest, Australia, and Jomon Japan.

One more underworld figure with dog: a curious drawing from the 1509 Chartilidium Logice. The old woman’s playing dogs combine with her age, hood, purse, basket, triple staff and sea-creature to stamp her as an unmistakable Goddess 3. Note, however, the mysterious square she carries, identical to that carries by Japanese God 3 Fu Hsi portrayed under Snake.

Elephant

The elephant is a sort of oriental boar, appearing particularly often in Indian art, where it is companion or animal form of several gods, including Siva, Sri Lakshmi, and Ganesh. Here it is ridden by Pu Hsien, a popular Boddhisattva in China. His flower, green face (see COLOR) and red scarf mark him as an underworld god.

Fish, Frog

All water creatures, since water is an underworld, belong not only to sea gods but to all underworld gods. The mermaid, for instance, is only another Goddess 1 figure, luring today, gone tomorrow, not meant for marriage; and Aphrodite is a fish goddess in Syria.

Possibly to your surprise, the Fish can by itself by a spring emblem: our April Fool is in France an April Fish. There are even were-fish (England, Ireland, Scandinavia, India, China and Tahiti.)

The tortoise-turtle has a particularly important role in Pacific. Amerind and oriental myth: it is he who alone or with other underworld creatures makes the world and may still support it. (India, China, Hurons of North America). In keeping with the fertility powers of chaos gods, it also receives phallic worship in China, Japan and Africa.

We will see even the frog as God 1-3 emblem: viz, held by the Fool in the first illustration under PERSONNAGES, Goddess 1, and by the Japanese deity below.. As for his God 1 role, consider the Frog Prince, who is known to the Hopi as well as to Europe. In Mesoamerica the Aztec snake goddess Cihuacoatl was also shown as a toad.

A netsuke of Japanese sage Gama-Sennin, note age and staff. Gama-Sennin’s gift is long life; his toad marks him as underworld, his age and function as God 3.

Ol-Okun, sea god of the Benin of Nigeria, is naturally scaly and carries amphibious lizards. But note also that like Neptune, he carries a tridentlike wand, and like many other Gods 3 elsewhere, has three points to his cap.

A water goddess from the Temple of the Sun, Lake Titicaca, Peru. She has a border of water creatures and carries staff and pitcher. Locally, however, this statue is called "El Fraile"--the brother or priest--so it may really be a God rather than a Goddess 3.

Abstract figure of a god with dolphin, from Carthage. Note wand like that of Hermes or Aesculapius.

Fox, see Wolf

Hare

In many parts of the world the hare is associated with the moon because the moon’s shadow ‘face’ was thought to resemble a rabbit. In the system, however, it is usually emblem of Goddess 1 (Artemis, Aphrodite, Eostra, Freya, Holda) in Europe; and outside of Europe, of third stage gods as well. For the Maya it was a rebirth figure, in China, guardian of all wild animals, in North America woodland areas and in Africa, a trickster. In one North American epic, indeed, the Great Hare is a God 1 herro figure as he is in Japan.

Horse

The horse is at once the most confusing and the most revealing of cult animals. Originally, like the ass, a wild and underworld animal, its herds were occasionally hunted for food but never rivalled deer or sheep, and if it appeared in tale at all it was as a ‘water-horse’--a description which anyone who has watched the waves dash upon the shore will at once understand.

Then the horse was tamed, and soon after became a powerful weapon not only of war but of conquest. What to do? how to place it? Here was a tamed herd animal, but it had no horns. Here was an animal that ought to accompany youth and youthful warriors--but there were now footsoldiers and the riders were lords and ruler by role.

The resulting confusion was horrendous. A horse’s head with bull’s horns or antlers or with swastika appeared in Scandinavia at the same time as Odin was given a horse--but an eight-legged horse to indicate this one belonged to the underworld. Poseidon kept his horse, but Sun got a horse-drawn chariot. Asses got caught up in the confusion: the ass, originally wild companion sacred to Dionysos and Python, was given as emblem to Re.

Efforts were made to distinguish by color: black horse for underworld, white for above. The white horse became royal symbol in Germany, India and Achaemenid Persia. Meanwhile the Slav god of the cornucopia, god 3 Svantovit, was riding a white horse and Bretons were calling the sea ‘the white mare’.

East of Central Asia where the horse arrived or was tamed later, the problem was simpler, since it turned up only with conquerors, Gods 2. The Chinese, however, found a very Chinese solution: they created three horse gods, one for spring, summer and autumn.

In the west, however, the system simply broke down, so do not count on me to reconstruct it. There is, however, one clue. In medieval art, where saints are portrayed in the old God 1, 2 and 3 tradition, those saints which ride horseback: George, Michael, Martin--most resemble God 2.

Insects

All insects, whether they fly like bees or live in holes like ants, are per se creatures of the underworld. As Goddess 3s bees nurse Zeus, the Mayan bee gods are old men, bees and butterflies are emblems of youthful love deities. Hercules is ‘Lord of the Flies’ and ‘locust’ is an epithet of Apollo. In Africa the trickster god is mantis or spider.

The spider in fact has a special role as emblem of third stage weaver goddesses like Neith of Egypt, Ishtar of Babylon, Athena, Minerva and the Norse Fates. On the other side of the world ‘Old Spider’ is creator god in Oceania and among some Amerind tribes ‘Spider Grandmother’ is both creatress and helpful animal. In Australia, the ‘Great Spider" protects the souls of the dead and (see below) the spider can even be an initiation battle enemy.

Kintaro fights the supernatural spider. Note club, an the extreme and unusual hairiness of this God 1 Japanese hero. Normally, Japanese men have very little body hair but of course we might expect this Wild Man to be different.

Monkey

The monkey, whenever and wherever it appears, is identical to the Wild Man and enacts God 1 roles. Monkey king Hanuman of the Rama cycle in India is ally and alter ego to the hero; in China’s Monkey saga he might even be called the hero, since the young monk he is aiding is merely a Buddhist lay figure. Monkeys were not known in northern Europe until about the 15th century, but then they were instantly assigned this same role, as we can see in the examples below.

This monkey from the borders of the Cleves Book of Hours is green (see COLOR), blows the pipes, and wear’s Fool’s collar, hood and cap, here fantastically twined into flower shape. All these mark him as a God 1 figure.

A lower border, also from the Cleves. The four corner trees here, along with the fencing, mark off sacred place. The trees are, like those in the Hopi sand painting, those of the four directions and the one in the center the upright which pierces through sky, this world and underworld. The fence (which is often medievally shown as of woven branches) is like those actually used in early Europe to close off a sanctuary site. Under the center tree is its appropriate god, God 3, with hat and keys and with a ‘pack’ or sack which the monkey has just stolen. Moreover the monkey is just about the steal the hat too.

Pedlar, beggar, traveller, is a frequent identity of God 3; he is both bestower and protector of treasure--the treasure which appears in the stolen pack. This association with treasure--usually underground treasure--is still current: McKendrick, travelling Spain, observes that Spaniards are convinced archaeology has something to do with "buried treasure, or Moors, or both", and "Moor" is shorthand for the old black god of winter. (See COLOR).

The green bird on the fence is hieroglyph for ‘spring’ and the scene says clearly, "The monkey God 1 is stealing his authority from the god of underworld and winter". Even the use of theft as action is significant. The Wild Herd, the young initiates, do customarily indulge in raiding and theft (as they do even now at Hallowe’en and used to do at May festival too) and in myth they are often thieves (Robin Hood’s band) or companions of thieves.

That this border iconography is not accidental is proved by the main illustration above it of St. Gertrude in cowl and black robe with a crozier-staff. She stands on a chessboard patterned floor and rats (or possibly mice) appear in the squares: these, as we shall shortly see, belong with God 1/3 figures like the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Beyond this, however, is the simple fact that Gertrude, like God 3-pedlar, is a patron of travellers.

Rats, Mice and Other Vermin

Rats and mice, like snakes and scarab beetles, belong to the underworld in nature as well as in emblem: they live in holes in the ground. A rat is common companion of Japanese God 3 Daikoku; there was an Apollo Smintheus, god of mice.

Small Animals

Badger, beaver, gopher, hedgehog, even squirrel--all small animals belong to the underworld and in myth assist, or sometimes hinder, the hero in his initiation quest.

They do not as a rule, though, appear in the role of initiation battle enemies.

Snake

By the same powerful natural analogy--the snake disappears into a crack in winter and does not emerge until spring--the snake is the world’s most common chthonic animal.

As snake-dragon, it is enemy of the young man in his spring initiation battle: a battle still in historic times re-enacted in England, France, Germany, Sicily, Babylon, and probably many other places as well.

But as itself or as the phallus which it much resembles, it is also emblem of the young man himself. It accompanies, as well, the priest or priestess god in Mesopotamia, India, China, Japan, Crete, Mesoamerica and Europe. The Rainbow Snake of many colors (see COLOR) is creator god in Australia as, without the rainbow, he is in Polynesia. In Voodoo he is a curing god. Sometimes he is a water snake and brings drought or the Great Flood (Amerind, China, Japan, India, Scandinavia, Polynesia). Sometimes he has one horn or one eye. (See NUMBER) In Yucatan, Scandinavia, Babylon, Egypt and India he is the ‘fall’ creature which puts an end to ‘summer’ God 2 at the start of winter, and he is so celebrated in the Chinese dragon parade and at Jaen on St. Luke’s Day. In Africa--the only continent we have not yet mentioned--the snake is generally regarded as the spirit of the dead: for the Matabele, the spirit of the dead king in particular. Representations of the sacred snake also go back a long way, to Paleolithic times.

Goddess nursing snakes from the 11th-12th century church of Montmorillon, France. Snakes appear with both goddess 1 and 3 but the ‘nursing’, midwife and wet nurse goddess is always Goddess 3. The Hopi Hahai Wuhti goddess also nurses serpents at the Palulukonti rite in February-March.

Jason being reborn after being swallowed by the snake at the Golden Fleece tree; to the right Athena stands by as Goddess 3 and the sacred tree stands between them. In this cup by Douris of the early 5th Century the standard myth, in which Jason simply takes the fleece and Medea as initiation prizes, has been slightly revised to include a death and rebirth. But as Pinsent says ("Greek Myths and Legend " p. 73) "Vases often preserve earlier versions of the myth than...the literary tradition" (Museo Gregoriano Etrusco, Vatican)

Incidentally, in a 3rd Century Christian sarcophagus in the N.Y. Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen, the ‘whale’ which swallows Jonah is actually a serpent, and Jonah’s swallowing is usually seen by the middle ages as initiatory.

Hercules fights the river god Achelous, who is here one-horned like the Water Serpent of Amerind myth. It was said that Hercules broke off the horn, which became the Cornucopia of Plenty--but of course the latter long predated the former. (Greek red-figured vase.)

The Australian Rainbow Snake creating the first two children by blowing them out of his drone pipe. His spiral shape, musical instrument, and association with children are all characteristics of God 3. ( Marinhata, Port Keats).

Another version of the Rainbow Snake as protector (and eater) of children: a parallel to the Harpy with Child seen in Goddess 3. (Nagurridjilmi of the Gunnwingu did this)

Fu Hsi and Nu Kua. Here the twined snakes represent the two ‘creators’ of the Chinese earth: Nu Kua, underworld goddess with snake tail and headdress of greenery, and Fu Hsi in snake tail and tall hat. Nu Kua not only created human beings but set up the sky on poles. Fu Hsi, whose name links him to sacrificial ritual, invented the Eight Trigrams for divination as well as nets for fishing. Here, in their iconography, they hold builders’ compass and square to indicate their ‘inventiveness’; but both come from a very early stratum of Chinese religion.

Many other serpent-battles, serpent god companions, and serpent emblems can be found in PERSONNAGES, God and Goddess 1 and 3, and ACTION, Initiation, Sacred Marriage. And here, from an Inca beaker, is what may be another Sacred Marriage with snake: male with two feathers as god 2, and the lady with the bird on her head the priestess who represents the goddess. Note also the presence of a Tree of Life (see SACRED LANDSCAPE, Tree)

Left, emblem of a priest of Tlaloc.

Unicorn

The unicorn is an animal which, if it had not existed, would have had to be invented (See NUMBER); and as it didn’t, it was. Usually it is a one-horned goat, but the single horn may appear on other animals (bull, ox or serpent as on Achelous, above); and on some youthful deities as well (Dietrich of the German Wild Herd, Cuchullain, Dionysos as Zagreos the child, the Chinese Lin.) The unicorn appears not only in European art but in Japan, China, Mongolia, Persia, Babylon, Assyria, Chaldea, Egypt, Africa, Florida and among Amerinds of the Canadian border area. It is usually associated with initiation, love, sex or marriage; indeed, in some portrayals its horn bears a strong resemblance to a phallus.

The famous Unicorn Tapestries are probably the clearest exposition in art of the unicorn’s association with initiation and mating. These tapestries were woven for the dynastic wedding of Louis XII of France and Anne of Britanny and like many folk art chests, caskets, etc. of the time, they associate marriage with the old initiation-mating imagery of spring. (Traditional marriage time is, for that matter, still June.)

Here the unicorn represents the uninitiated youth, as his one horn would suggest. The hunters are about to pursue him, but here he kneels by a stream (transition) into which he dips his horn. (Is there a parallel here to our familiar phrase, "getting one’s end wet?" Across the stream, on the other side, is the stag, or summer figure, which after initiation he will become. The hunters, who have waited patiently while he does this, now pursue him, wound him (initiation scarification ) and he falls at the feet of Louis and Anne, the married couple to whom he has just passed his realm. In a final panel, however, he appears miraculously whole and revived, collared and tamed, tied to a Tree of Life. We will find many other examples of this collared and tied imagery pertaining to passage through initiation in SACRED LANDSCAPE, Tree; but here is one more, from the Wilton Diptych, where the collar is specifically a crown.

The fountain behind the unicorn is also a significant icon. It is the source of the stream of transition which he will cross, but with its phallic pillar, it also represents two of the three elements which invariably made up a sacred site: water, and a tall upright, opening up the ways between underworld and upperworld. (See SACRED LANDSCAPE.) Another such fountain appears below in another medieval initiation painting, this one related to the troubadour cult in which a youthful lover-poet pays court to the Lady, wife of the Lord of the local court; and this, in its God 1-God 2-Goddess 1-2 triangle, its antiquity, and its spring associations, represents the survival of the old spring festival in the middle ages on the aristocratic as well as on the village level. Moreover this illustration (MS Harley 4425 f.12 v., British Museum, London) is a 15th Century Flanders appendix to the Roman de la Rose, itself an aristocratic and poetic version of the May festival complete with Lover, Rose, and Wild Man.

Here the youth is being given entry to a sacred enclosure by a Goddess 3 figure with keys; once within, he becomes the poet-lover wooing the goddess, and thus achieves full manhood. This fountain, like the one above, is also adorned with a phallic upright, but its outflowing stream goes underground through a small grating. This ‘grating’ and its water appear in many other medieval paintings, and it appears to be an icon for the underworld cave-mound, third factor in the usual sacred site. For more about cave-mounds in medieval illustrations, see SACRED LANDSCAPE, Cave-Mound.

Another variation on the same initiation-mating theme: St. George and the dragon, 137 Cleves Book of Hours. The maiden and unicorn in the lower border indicate neatly that the initiation fight will be successful and followed by a mating with the maiden in red below or the maiden in blue above, with crown: Goddess 1 and Goddess 2 at this moment are in effect twins.

But this illustration carries another interesting feature. The castle and tree in the background are shorthand, again, for sacred site (See SACRED LANDSCAPE). And here the castle rather than the grating is shorthand for the cave-mound, which is often in medieval European tales like that of the Holy Grail the home of underworld personnages, and a place where people can be healed or restored to life. This castle is often shown in the shape of a prehistoric mound, a round mass topped by a single upright, but here its underworld function is simply marked by its unlikely red color. (See COLOR)

Wolf

If we say a man is a bear, we mean he is as touchy as the real animal; if we say he is a lion we mean he is brave as we perceive a lion to be; but if we say he is a wolf, this carries a meaning which has nothing to do with the natural behavior of the animal. Our association of wolves with all the aspects of young manhood==learning, wild nature, lust, is stamped all over our language, in the slang "He’s a wolf," our ‘belief’ in werewolfery, Lycaeum "Place of Wolves" for school in Greece, France, and academic imagery.

However, the two illustrations below show the wolf in other underworld guises. The first is an Etruscan painting of the god of the underworld, who is wearing a wolf’s head instead of the more common bird or feline skin. The second is the famous Romulus and Remus nursing bronze: but only the nursing wolf is the original Etruscan work of the 5th Century BC; Pollaiuolo added the twins twenty centuries later. It is not an inappropriate addition, however: underworld animals are often nurses to the baby god or hero.

The nursing wolf is now in the museum on the Capitoline Hill. The wolf-headed Hades is from a tomb at Tarquinii.

Another wolf from another continent: a contemporary Chilkoot-Tlingit wolf mask for ritual use whose red and green color links it to the underworld and makes it a brother to Fraser’s Green Wolf of Jumieges.

Foxes and wolves may play identical roles are were-animals, and in other respects too. This fox-shaped Mohica stirrup jar from South America shows us a fox-human warrior in helmet and ear plugs as an aspect of God 1.

The Japanese rice god and his foxes: underworld god of plenty--note hat and jar--and underworld companions.

UPPERWORLD AND UNDERWORLD    UNDERWORLD   PERSONNAGES    GOD 1    TWINS    GODDESS 1    GOD 2    GODDESS 2    GOD 3    GODDESS 3    NUMBERS    HATS ETC.    ACTIONS    ANIMALS    LANDSCAPE    COLOR