This fierce falcon surveys the Grand Court of the Edfu Temple, located midway between Luxor and Aswan. The falcon is the symbol of the Egyptian deity Horus in his aspect as the avenger of his father Osiris and the conqueror of Set, the god of the material world. Set and Horus were eternal antagonists in ancient Egypt, representing the principle of light (Horus) and that of darkness (Set). The victory of Horus over Set symbolizes the release of spirit from its imprisonment in matter—the triumph of the divine principle over the temporal and material. The granite statue conveys unnervingly well the fierceness, might, and precision of the falcon that strikes silently and unpredictably, swooping down with incredible swiftness, then carrying its prey back up into the eye of the sun itself. There is something majestic about the aloof and stern gaze of the statue, something laser-like that makes you feel vulnerable and frail as you sit underneath it. I fully experienced the energy of Horus and his temple in the inner sanctuary where, in semi-darkness and silence, I stood before the altar. There, the energy shaped itself as warm ruthlessness, the energy of constructive destruction. Horus the Avenger, I then understood, is that aspect of the divine which does away with the old, so the new could be born.
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The Osireion is an anomaly in the archaeology of ancient Egypt. (“Anomaly” is the scientific euphemism for “mystery.”) Mainstream archaeologists usually deal with such anomalies by either ignoring them (because they don’t know how to explain them), or using inconclusive evidence to fit them into the accepted time framework.
The Osireion is a small temple at Abydos (middle of Egypt), located behind the main temple of Seti I. Conventional archaeology dates it to 1300BC, but stylistic differences and erosion patterns, as well as the fact that it was built below the present-day ground level, indicate a much earlier construction date. The Osireion is one of the only two examples in Egypt of monolithic granite architecture (the other is the Valley Temple next to the Sphinx—another “anomaly”). The red granite blocks you see in the picture weigh up to 100 tons. In its bare grandeur, the Osireion echoes other Cyclopean structures around the world, in particular lake Tiwanaku in Bolivia, but also Mycenae in Greece (see my post "The Lion Gate"), and even some megalithic temples of Malta. According to the French esotericist, alchemist, and Egyptologist Schwaller de Lubitz, Egyptian civilization appeared complete at its beginning. There is no sign of a period of development; if anything, it only deteriorated from its outset. Ancient Egyptian documents refer to the period when Egypt was ruled by Shemsu Hor (the Followers of Horus), a group of highly evolved beings that transmitted a complete package of knowledge—writing, arts, astronomy, architecture—to a primitive, Neolithic culture of the pre-Dynastic Egypt. The Osireion is one of those places on earth where you stand in awe of mystery. Rome. 1600. On this very spot, a pyre is built. A man is brought out, in chains, stripped naked, tied to a stake, then set afire. That man was Giordano Bruno, the great philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer. His discoveries about planetary movements turned the known world of the sixteenth century upside down: the Sun, and not the Earth, he declared, was in the center, and all the planets revolved around it. Now, his haunting statue rises in accusation of the Inquisition that sentenced him to the pyre. In the middle of the lively piazza Campo dei Fiori (Flower Square), Bruno emerges from the mists of time. I examine the folds of his cape, the hood that hides a willful and defiant face, his crossed arms holding a book. I feel the past is still present. Two centuries co-exist on this very spot. “In Mycenae, the gods once walked the earth,” said Henry Miller. And if not the gods then the Cyclopes, who were the mythic builders of this city in Peloponnesus 3500 years ago (according to the mainstream archaeologists) or immensely earlier (according to ancient documents and the esoteric tradition). Even in ruins, Mycenae exudes power: the power of a prehistoric animal, the power of Cyclopean architecture, the power of a race of semi-gods. The terrible power of dark passions. It was here that the goriest myths took place: Atreus serving his brother with the flesh of his own children for dinner; Clytemnestra killing her husband Agamemnon for sacrificing their daughter Iphigenia to start the Trojan war; Orestes murdering his mother Clytemnestra to avenge his father—the whole royal family bathed in incestuous blood for several generations. I cannot but think about this as I’m walking the uneven stone causeways, admiring the ragged grandeur of the Lion Gate, letting my eyes soar above the Argive plain that gleams resplendent in the mid-day heat. This land is pulsing with the ghosts of antediluvian times, the earth seeded with bodies and relics of legendary heroes. It is alive in an eerie way, as memories and dreams are alive in our subconscious. Those dream-like memories are embedded in the very DNA of European civilization. This is the iconic Gothic Image bookstore in Glastonbury. It has the reputation of being the best occult bookstore in Europe, as well as publishing wonderful books on ancient civilizations and sacred sites. Hence the book store can pass as a sacred site by association - or as close to a sacred site as our modern civilization can produce. Browsing the shelves feels like entering another world. I spent two hours lost in books, all so enticing, feeling like a child in a toy shop.
Oh, and Nicolas Cage was reported being seen there. Hilandar is a Serbian monastery on Mt. Athos, a judicially autonomous peninsula in Greece that is home to twenty Orthodox Christian monasteries. Also called the Holy Mountain, Mt. Athos is accessible only by boat and is protected from the intrusion of modern times by strict regulations: ascetic religious life without hot water and only minimal electricity.
Mt. Athos is a supremely male territory that hasn’t felt the presence of female energy for over a thousand years. Only men are allowed on this sacred soil, either as monks or visitors (and this rule extends to animals as well—males only). When I was in my late teens I was so drawn to Hilandar that I frequently devised plans for disguising myself as a man so that I could visit this holy place. Many years later my wish was fulfilled vicariously when I sent Dwight as my emissary. He spent two weeks in the Serbian monastery surrounded by virgin (no pun intended) nature. Hilandar was founded in the 12th century by the great Serbian saint Sveti Sava, who had established the first educational system in old Serbia. Dwight found the monastic life there simple but hard. Monks stand for seven hours each day in liturgical chanting and praying (no chairs or pews in Orthodox churches). The rest of the day is spent in labor or reading in the library that contains thousands of old manuscripts and some exquisite frescoes from the 13th century. It’s a life steeped in devotion, utterly simple and removed from present times. Paestum—originally Poseidonia—was one of the major early Greek colonies in southern Italy (some sixty miles southeast of Naples), founded around 600 BC by colonists from Sybaris. Even today the site offers a taste of Greece thanks to its astonishingly well-preserved temples. The oldest one, the Temple of Hera, is said to be the most beautiful Archaic Doric temple in existence, better preserved than any early Doric temple in Greece itself. (Doric is the earliest architectural style in Greece, dating back to the seventh century BC. It is characterized by stout, portly columns that were later replaced by the lighter and slimmer—some say, more elegant—Ionic style, then later still by the more ornate Corinthian style.) The temple you see in the picture was built around 500 BC in honor of Athena, the goddess of wisdom and arts. In Paestum, more so than in Acropolis in Greece, we are reminded how ancient architects considered temples living beings. If you look closely at the columns you’ll notice how they “swell” in the middle and how “squashed” are their echini (echinus is the rounded molding in the top portion of the column, called the capital). Both apparent distortions were intended to convey the belief that buildings were living entities that swell and get squashed under heavy pressure. In these early temples, you really feel that the full weight of the upper structures lies on the columns. Along the same lines of belief, the interior of the temple (naos) was a sacred place enclosed by walls. The naos was the abode of the god or goddess in whose honor the temple was constructed; the statue of the deity was kept within in darkness. Only priests were allowed inside, while the rest of the population gave offerings and prayers outside. The inner chamber was divided by two lines of columns into three parts, called naves. This three-nave partition was later adopted in the construction of the Christian churches. After a year of inactivity, my Photolog of Sacred Sites is back! I’m resuming the presentation of mysterious, intriguing, or famous places of power that have affected people since remote times. In this post I will give an example of a sacred place that has “shut down” due to either desecration of the physical site, debasement of its original purpose, or neglect through loss of human intention—or all three. It’s the famous oracle of Cumaean Sybil in southwest Italy. Cumae was the oldest Greek colony on the Apennine Peninsula, founded in the 9th century BC. It was the Greek Cumeans who introduced the alphabet into Italy and established the oracle where Sibyl divined. Now, Sibyl was actually not a personal name, but a Latinized Greek word for “prophetess”--sibylla. Dedicated to the sun god Apollo, Sibyls were virgin priestesses endowed with powers of divination and believed to be semi-divine beings. As such they were immortal, or nearly so. There were several Sibyls in antiquity, but the Cumean Sibyl was the most famous. She was so venerated that Virgil, in his grand epic the Aeneid, had his hero Aeneas seek guidance from the Cumean Sibyl before undertaking his journey into the Underworld. Her fame stretched well into Renaissance times, when Michelangelo included her in the composition on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (although her looks are far from flattering—he painted her to look like a weight-lifter crone). According to the Latin poet Ovid in his Metamorphoses, the Cumean Sibyl lived for about one thousand years. This broken menhir, located in Brittany, France, is the largest single megalith known in the world (well, at least in Europe). It weighs 350 tons and, when it was standing upright, it was 64ft tall. The south of Brittany is studded with Neolithic remains: dolmens, alignments, menhirs, cairns—the legacy of a civilization that thrived over ten thousand years ago and about which little is known. This broken menhir, along with all the other mysterious stone structures, was part of what researcher John Michell calls “the science of megalith builders.” In the very distant past, there used to be a unified system of knowledge, a true science—although very different from ours—about the ways of the Earth spirit, symbolically represented as a dragon in folklore and early Christian imagery. For ancient people, the spirit or energy was a formative cause behind the world of appearances. So the Earth spirit—in modern terminology we refer to it as electromagnetic currents or as telluric streams of energy—flows through countryside on certain routes and certain days, which are governed by celestial bodies. By placing large menhirs on particulars spots, the Neolithic people increased the flow of energy—just as acupuncturists do by placing needles on the meridians in the human body—which, in turn, increased the bounty of the Earth. But the megaliths had also an effect on human consciousness. By amplifying the magnetic charge of the Earth energy, these megaliths made it easier for ancients to establish contact with the spirit world. “Lyon has a past—an alternative spiritual background,” our French friend who was born there said significantly, as we were preparing for the visit to this second-major city in France. Lyon certainly does have a past. To begin with, it was the capital of Three Gauls that housed major shrines both to the Great Mother, the supreme deity, and to the Celtic God of Light, Lug. The hill where the shrines were located has been considered sacred since remote times. And at its foot developed le Vieux Lyon with its remarkable “past.” In the 2nd century there thrived Gnosticism, the esoteric undercurrent of Christianity. In the 4th century, the worship of the Great Mother was transformed into the cult of the Black Madonna (which continues to this day). During the Middle Ages, the Old Lyon was honeycombed with traboules, narrow passageways that connected parallel streets through houses. In that way, when the Church launched religious raids, the alchemists could quickly escape through the warren of passageways not visible from the streets. Lyon was also one of the major centers of the Knights Templar, followed by Egyptian Freemasonry. The first lodge was created in 1782 by controversial and mysterious Count Cagliostro. Finally, in the 20th century, the Theosophically-inspired Catholic Liberal Church taught the doctrine of reincarnation and the occult science. But it wasn’t all alchemy and esoterica in the Old Lyon. As economic tides moved south, the Old Lyon became impoverished. A period of acute poverty set in and lasted until fifty years ago. And that was the first thing I picked up while walking through the warren of narrow streets—an underlying energy of angst and hopelessness. |
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