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Post by Caylus Ark on Oct 12, 2016 20:56:06 GMT
Doing some mythological Research for my notes for book knowledge. here is my source archive.org/details/mythsofbabylonia032349mbpMyths Of Babylonia And Assyriaby Mackenzie,Donald A. ~Creation myths about dragons often centered around the powerful qualities gained by eating the flesh or the heart of serpents, which granted divine powers and the ability to speak to the 'animals' of fate, such as birds ~ Ea was depicted as clad in the skin of the fish. ~Egypt's " Isis" and " Osiris" were roughly equivalent to Babylon's " Thammuz" and " Ishtar" ~The father slain by the son was a common feature of myth - the old year slain by the new ~The birth of a new aeon ...
-in Egypt was Apuatu, "the opener of the ways", the earliest form of Osiris; in India he was Yama, the first man, "who searched and found out the path for many". The King as Patriarch was regarded during life as an incarnation of the culture god: after death he merged in the god. "Sargon of Akkad" posed as an incarnation of the ancient agricultural Patriarch: he professed to be a man of miraculous birth who was loved by the goddess Ishtar, and was supposed to have inaugurated a New Age of the Universe.
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Post by Caylus Ark on Oct 12, 2016 21:29:08 GMT
~The Ancient Sumerians held motherhood in exaltation and reverence. They had significant rights in society, including joint ownership of family estates with male siblings, roles as priestesses in temples, the ability to enter into legal agreements and business ventures for celibate unmarried woman, and at least one instance of a woman ascending the throne in sumerian culture.
~Ea belonged to an ancient class of gods which wore the skins of "sacred animals" , recalling of ancient tales of mermaids and other half animal, half human beings. The legend of the Noah's flood is recreated with Ea, who is warned to build a vessel to protect him from an imminent deluge. There was a connection between the idea of sacred fish and divine waters, in which gods entered to be reborn - the divine life of the water resides in the fish that inhabits them - making the fish itself sacred. The "soul of the land" is represented by a migrating fish. Ea was [as "Shar Apsi"] "king of the watery deep" - specifically of the fresh water, not the salt water. Because the canals of the river fertilized the crops of Bablyon, Ea was in essence a god of fertility.
" ~According to ancient myth, Ea instructed the Babylonians on many things, including the codified alphabet, mathematics, the production of crops, the working of metals - the fashioning of temples, pottery, and all manner of artisan works - thus he came to be known as an architect god. one is reminded of the way that the fallen angels were said to instruct mankind in very similar knowledge in enoch's story.
~Did Ea become Yahweh? Quite possibly:
~Dagan is believed to be identical with EA. Semitic "Dag" = "fish". ~There are a few that argue otherwise -
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Post by Caylus Ark on Oct 12, 2016 22:07:21 GMT
~Servant of Ea-Oannes - there are Seven of them - 'messengers of Anu'; these 'seven demons' or furies were attached to the deity as 'attendants' ~Anu / 'the high one' shares some similarities with Ea but is a sky god whose name was derived from 'heaven' or 'ana'; anu is an 'atmospheric' god with 'solar and lunar qualities' ~Enlil rules at Nippur; his name translates to "lord of might" "lord of demons" "lord of mist" - like Ea and Anu he is "lord of heaven and earth". Shares attributes with indian Indra. The name of Enlil's temple at Nippur translates to "mountain house" or "lie a mountain" [ some relevant symbols from the Oxford Dictionary of Symbols....] The symbol, "River"
Rivers/running waters symbolize 'universal potentiality' and 'fluidity of forms' - fertility, death, renewal. The stream is of life and death. The river may be regarded in the following ways - as the current against which one swims, as flowing down into the sea, or something to be crossed from one bank to another. Flowing into the sea is the gathering to waters or return to an undifferentiated state - ie achieving nirvana. Swimming against the stream is returning to the divine source or the First Cause. Crossing the river is overcoming an obstacle which separates two realms or conditions - the phenomenal world and the unconditioned state, the world of senses and the state of non-attachment.
As they flow down from the mountains, wind through valleys and are lost in lakes and seas, rivers symbolize human existence and its winding passage through desire, emotion and intent. In this respect Heraclitus' theory is significant -
"those who enter the same rivers receive the same current which has come from the other streams and washed other people, and souls exhale moist substances". Or from Plato: "you cannot step twice in the same stream".
Patri observes of the Heraclitan symbol of fire and water that the plural 'rivers' does not denote plurality of streams. Every bather has his own river. In the symbolic sense, to enter a river is for the soul to enter the body. River is soul enfolded in body. The dry soul is drawn in by fire, the moist soul is enfolded in the body. The body leads a precarious existence, it seeps away like water, and each soul possesses and individual body, it's temporary habitation, its river. The Symbol, "Mountain"
Mountains are tall, lofty, rising abruptly to meet the heavens - they form the symbolism of transcendence, the numinous places where the gods have revealed their presence, sharing in the symbolism of manifestation. Mountains are where heaven meet earth, where the gods live and human ascension has its boundary. Hence the ubiquity of "holy mountains" across cultures. Mountains also express stability, changelessness, or even purity. The sumerians believed them to be the undifferentiated masses of primal matter, the World Egg, which brought forth "ten thousand beings".
Mountains are both the center and axis of the world. Like the ascent of the mountain is dangerous, so is the ascent of the spiritual path. Self knowledge and what happens at the top of the mountain leads to knowledge of God. The "Sinai of one's being" - the man's deepest truth, his very nature. The highest mountain's peak touches the point at which the release from the cosmos may be affected.
Temple-mountains are the center of kingdoms, as Meru is the centre of the world. They are the axes of the universe, as were Maya or Babylonian temples. In such centres, the king was the surrogate Lord of the universe or universal monarch.
There are two aspects to the symbol: God reveals himself upon mountain tops, but the mountain tops upon which men stand only to worship idols and not the true God, are no more than signs of pride and omens of disaster. The links are a chain of sacred symbolism - God - mountain - city - palace - refuge - temple - centre of earth the sounds and song of the mountains are replete with mystery, not to be understood by the uninitiated, a hidden world full of secrets, holy places not to be entered without a guide. mountain peaks symbolize the bounds of human developments and the psychic function of the supraconscious which leads man to the peak of development.
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Post by Caylus Ark on Oct 25, 2016 4:56:59 GMT
Myths of Enki, the Crafty God
"Religion, magic, and medicine are so completely intertwined in Mesopotamia that separating them is frustrating and perhaps futile work...[Sumerian incantations] demonstrate an intimate connection between the religious, the magical, and the esthetic so complete that any attempt to pull one away from the other will distort the whole"
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