Dismemberment

Mourner (could be Isis mourning Osiris) via Wikipedia

Dismemberment has been a cruel form of capital punishment in both Asian and European history. And the ugly practice came to North American shores, legitimized under the belief in manifest destiny.¹

The theme of dismemberment occurs throughout comparative mythology.

In the Hindu Artharva Veda the world is created from the sacrifice and dismemberment of the “cosmic man” (Skt. purusa). This has been interpreted as a universal self that we ultimately return to, past the fragmented splinters of false and deceptive personalities and personas.

In Egyptian mythology Osiris is dismembered by the demon Set. His sister-wife Isis, with the help of Nephthys and Anubis, restores him fully with only his nose to work on, a tale arguably prefiguring the 21C realities of cloning.

Wikipedia lists these additional examples:

• In Greek mythology, the god Dionysus is dismembered by the Titans.
• In Japanese mythology, Izanagi dismembers Kagutsuchi in revenge for the death of his lover Izanami.
• In Aztec mythology, the god Huitzilopochtli dismembers his sister Coyolxauhqui for trying to kill their mother, Coatlicue. He tossed his sister’s head into the sky, where it became the moon.²

The Dismemberment Plan (Photo credit: mehan)

The theme of dismemberment usually fits, either closely or indirectly, within the larger mythic cycle of death and resurrection because dismembered characters in myth often come back in some kind of new, transformed state.

The theme of dismemberment crops up in B-movies, video games, anime, and rock music. And in literature, Dante’s Divine Comedy has recurring cycles of dismemberment and healing as a form of punishment for falsifiers.

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¹ Theodore Roosevelt condoned the dismemberment of Native American Indian women and children in Colorado as a “righteous and beneficial a deed as ever took place on the continent.” http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=8&cad=rja&ved=0CGgQFjAH&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.apaonline.org%2FCMDownload.aspx%3FContentKey%3D5f847188-8a3d-4b90-a678-8f7cf9387122%26ContentItemKey%3D49ac4888-2f0c-4a87-b688-c0f5f1b03f61&ei=mY4zUJK-Jaf00gHK84GADw&usg=AFQjCNERU8qo_OtrQ5FXQTMMUGqC3LaUOw

² http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dismemberment#Folklore

Egyptian Book of the Dead

Horus (Photo credit: Shelby PDX)

From the 18^th Dynasty (c. 1580 BCE) to the Roman era Egyptian tombs usually contained papyrus scrolls bearing texts designed to make it easier to enter into a pleasing afterlife. Manually copied texts, traceable to the Coffin Texts and the Pyramid Texts, vary somewhat in content but certain key elements are always present.

In essence, the Egyptian Book of the Dead contains a stunning diversity of Egyptian creation and afterlife mythology, cosmology, ethics, rituals, hymns, prayers, spells and incantations. Some copies include illustrations of the funerary scene and depictions of the afterlife—for instance, Horus weighing a recently deceased person’s heart on scales to determine the good or bad quality of their afterlife.

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• The Ancient Egyptian Negative Confessions and Cuisine (dianabuja.wordpress.com)
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Mythic Inflation

Image via Wikipedia

Mythic Inflation is a term introduced by Joseph Campbell.

Campbell says Egyptian cultural beliefs about a ruler’s relation to God or gods progresses through several historical stages, each taking its own form.

In the second stage of mythic inflation, the ruler’s aggrandized ego believes and acts as if it were a deity. Mythically inflated rulers exhibit haughty arrogance and are obsessed with gaining material wealth and power over others. They ruthlessly lie, trick, exploit and murder to achieve earthly desires and prestige.

In contrast to mythic identification, the mythically inflated king would never consider sacrificing himself for the good of the community.

In ancient Egypt the often brutal, power-hungry kings envisioned themselves as “God on earth,” as did Julius Caesar in Rome.

Whether or not the examples Campbell provides to (apparently) support these stages reflect actual social-historical conditions remains open to debate.

Related Posts » Aliens, Alien Possession, Inflation, Mythic Dissociation, Mythic Eternalization, Mythic Identification, Mythic Subordination, Pyramids

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Mythic Identification

Image via Wikipedia

Mythic Identification is a term introduced by Joseph Campbell.

Campbell argues that Egyptian cultural beliefs about a ruler’s relation to God or gods progressed through several historical stages, each taking its own form.

The first stage is mythic identification, where the ego is entirely absorbed by the real and/or imagined powers of the deity.

In pre-dynastic Egypt, the priesthood articulates this belief. Utterly lost in wonder at the immensity of the creator and the created cosmos, the god-like king willfully submits to self-sacrifice for the good of the community. By losing his mortal life at the altar, the king believes he doesn’t die because he’s already one with God. In tune with the immortal, his death merely signals a passing to a greater dimension.

This differs from mythic inflation, where rulers exhibiting haughty arrogance will lie, trick, exploit and murder to achieve worldly power, desires and prestige. Such rulers would never consider self-sacrifice for the good of the community.

Related Posts » Mythic Subordination, Mythic Dissociation, Mythic Eternalization

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• 10 Egyptian landmarks that aren’t pyramids (holykaw.alltop.com)
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Petrie, Sir William Matthew Flinders

288. Khufu (in Greek known as Χέοψ, Cheops, pronounced /ˈhɛɒps/; according to Manetho, Σοῦφις, Suphis) was a Pharaoh of Ancient Egypt's Old Kingdom. He reigned from around 2589 to 2566 B.C.E Khufu was the second pharaoh of the Fourth Dynasty | zongo69 / DAVID HOLT

Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie (1853-1942) was a groundbreaking archeologist who was the first to precisely measure the Egyptian pyramids.

For some reason he did so wearing a ballerina’s tutu. Some say he wore the tutu to avoid being stoned by “local religious fanatics.”¹

In the Holy Land Petrie recognized the importance of earthen mounds which, due to his work, were to become known as “tells.” Unlike his plodding contemporaries, Petrie regarded the mounds as remnants of successive settlements because he noticed that each layer contained a distinctive style of ceramics.

Other archaeologists at that time had assumed the tells were natural phenomena.

From this Petrie developed a method of Biblical dating called “sequence dating,” in which biblical chronology is reconstructed by digging successive layers of earth.

This dating technique made him the ‘Father’ of Palestinian archeology.

But the strange story of Petrie doesn’t end with his wearing a tutu. He also arranged to have his head amputated at death and deposited at an American school in Jerusalem. The head was preserved in formaldehyde until transferred to the Victoria Museum in England.

According to one documentary,² Petrie believed he was brilliant and wanted his brain, and all that it contained, to be inherited by posterity. Wikipedia, however, puts a slightly different spin on this:

Upon his death in Jerusalem in 1942, influenced by his interest in science, races and different civilisations, Petrie donated his head to the Royal College of Surgeons of London, so that it could be studied for its high intellectual capacity.³

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¹ 1.1. Introduction to Anthropology, University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), 2007.

² I watched this particular documentary on VHS, obtained from the Ottawa Public Library, just after graduating and before launching Earthpages. Unfortunately no reference is currently available.

³ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flinders_Petrie

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ongo69 / DAVID HOLT

Akhenaton

Berlin 7969

Originally uploaded by kairoinfo4u

Akhenaton The first ruler in recorded history to advocate a type of monotheism.

Originally Amenhotep IV, this 18th dynasty Egyptian King changed his title to Akhenaton (“he who is beneficial to Aton”) and reigned from 1350-1334 BCE.

He replaced the many Egyptian deities, particularly Amun, with the sun god Aton.

While this was a form of monotheism some scholars contend that worshipping a solar deity differs from worshipping a wholly-other creator God.

Sigmund Freud compared Akhenaton to the Jewish prophet Moses.

The debate continues, however, as to what representations of Aton attempted to represent. Some adhere to the more limited solar cosmology while others suggest a more universal conception of the godhead.

Along these lines R. C. Zaehner and others make a distinction between theism and pantheism.

Interestingly, Akhenaton became self-aggrandized to the point of proclaiming himself as the only true mediator of Aton. This is surprising because a good number of artistic depictions of Akhenaton from this period learn toward realism, stressing human detail rather than godlike or saintly gloss.

Prior to Akhenaton, Egyptian rulers were depicted in stylized, refined forms. Akhenaton, however, is sometimes visibly unattractive, marking a first for Egyptian art and influencing realism in general.

Akhenaton’s most well-known wife was Nefertiti. Together they rode in grand and imposing public processions, demanding servility and worship as their carriages passed by onlookers.

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Alchemy

Alchemy (2)

Originally uploaded by tholmb

Alchemy In everyday usage the word alchemy describes a psychological interplay among people.

Its etymology points to the actual practice of alchemy–derived via Arabic from the Greek chemeia.

Historically, alchemy involved the heating and mixing of chemicals and mineral substances with a view toward artificially transforming base metals into gold.

The ancient Greeks in Alexandria around 300 BCE practiced the art, as did the Arabs and Chinese.

During the Middle Ages numerous shams posing as alchemists arose in England.

Few realize that Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) wrote on alchemy. His writings remained unpublished in his lifetime.

The theologian St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) also wrote on alchemy.

In the sixteenth-century the Swiss physician Paracelsus wrote extensively on alchemy.

Poet John Donne claimed “some can finde out Alchimy” in the Bible.

C. G. Jung says alchemists not only transformed substances but also practiced a psycho-spiritual technique. Jung claims that, because of the alchemists’ intimate relation to their work, the transmutation of substances paralleled their psychological development.

Raw sulfur (prima materia) was transformed into gold (the philosopher’s stone) through various boiling and chemical treatments. Thus baser aspects of the psyche were likewise transmuted to a higher state.

This involved stages, culminating in a ‘mystical union’ of the man’s anima and woman’s animus archetypes within the self, which Jung suggests are universal.

In medieval Europe twelve alchemical stages were associated with the twelve astrological houses of the zodiac.

Discounting the many historical frauds who knowingly faked the creation of gold in order to profit from aristocrats, for Jungians the alchemical quest is a personal search for immortality necessitating a sequence of a psychological deaths and rebirths.

For Jung these are not merely symbolic because positive and negative psychological states accompy each stage in the process.

Depth psychologists and some mythographers tend to see the mythic theme of dismemberment and restoration (exemplified by the Egyptian Osiris) as a parallel to the alchemical process.

alchemy

Originally uploaded by
TheAlieness GiselaGiardino²³

The Romanian scholar of religion Mircea Eliade maintains that the alchemists quickened the natural pace of geological change–that is, they were altering time.

Eliade is not so much referring to the subjective experience of time but rather to cheating the laws of nature. Transforming raw elements into refined forms (such as carbon to diamond) requires precise geological conditions and a definite duration. By quickening the process, Eliade says the alchemists overcame a natural process and thus mastered time, itself.

Eliade’s view here seems confusing and perhaps underdeveloped. A similar type of argument could be presented in the context of buying a fast food burger instead of farming, slaughtering cows and cooking the meat for oneself. One might say that Eliade is merely playing word games as the nature of time is not truly altered in either instance.

While the alchemical process perhaps accelerates the geological rate, the Jungian Marie-Louise Von-Franz claims that the numerous stages in alchemy follow their own temporal logic, representing general phases in a process of psychological transformation.

Although often painful, Von-Franz says the alchemical stages cannot be quickened. The mythic and yet subtly visceral ‘boilings’ and ‘dismemberments’ of the psyche undergoing these transitions must be patiently endured, with the ultimate hope that maturity and wisdom – what the alchemists call the elixir of life – will eventually rise from the fire.

Jung also extends the metaphor of alchemy by likening the dynamic of human relationship to chemical interactions. Accordingly he wrote a piece called “Marriage as a Psychological Relationship” (1925). » Bhagavad Gita, Magnetizers, Ramakrishna (Sri)

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Alexander the Great

Alexander the Great

Originally uploaded by macropoulos

Alexander The Great (356-323 BCE)
Third Macedonian king from 336-323 BCE, born in Pella as the son of Philip II and conqueror of most of the old world, including Egypt and Greece.

Tutored by Aristotle, in Egypt he founded the city of Alexandria.

After consulting an oracle of Ammon, he was convinced that his formidable abilities derived from divine power–that is, he felt chosen.

After seizing the capitals of Babylon, Susa, Persepolis and Ecbatana, in the following three years he took the eastern part of the empire and in 327 BCE set his sights on India.

He took the Punjab but his overburdened troops mutinied, leaving him no choice but to retreat. Soon after he died in Babylon.

At the height of his fame, Alexander rose in popularity to the point of nearly being hailed as a god.

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Amenhotep

Amenhotep (14th-century BCE)

Egyptian scribe and minister of Amenhotep III (1417-1379 BCE).

Amenhotep was worshipped in Thebes as a healer and celebrated for the magnificent temples that he commissioned.

In Egyptian art he’s usually depicted as a scribe with a papyrus scroll on his lap.

Amenhotep was revered to the extent of becoming deified.

Image Credit:

• “Painted limestone statue head of the pharaoh Amenhotep I. From the 18th dynasty, reign of Amenhotep I, circa 1551-1524 B.C. Now at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Museum catalog number: 07.536.” by Keith Schengili-Roberts, Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 License

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Amenhotep III

Amenhotep III
Originally uploaded by Jeff Kubina

Amenhotep III (c. 1411–1375 BCE) Egyptian King of the 18th dynasty.

Amenhotep III ruled peacefully at home, advancing culture and art, while securing Egyptian power in Babylonia and Assyria.

During his reign he rebuilt the ancient capital of Thebes, containing stunning architecture such as the Colossi of Memnon, the temple at Luxor and the Karnak pylon.

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