Just back from Barcelona. Exhausted travelling, but more than worth it (thank you so much to Laura and Ark and all the team... will post further thoughts on appropriate thread).
Determined to become a more active forum member, hence the following; please excuse if it comes out like a gush but I have a head only for bed but I wanted to contribute something tonight to this most interesting and important discussion.
Jeremy I would suggest you are way off beam whilst also being onto something vital!
I have been studying bull mythology for quite a while now as I think it holds many symbolic keys relating to the dismantling of our onetime state of being/consciousness and our relationship to the natural order, a process which took place over many thousands of years and which at the same time saw the unleashing of psychopathology onto the unsuspecting world.
Much as history is the propaganda of the victor, so mythology, (in the form it comes down to us), is invariable the ghost of a deep knowledge system which has been manipulated by a later cultural victor to suit their own particular needs. Yet the cleansing is rarely that thorough (for otherwise the manipulation of knowledge would breakdown) and thus the symbolism of most inherited ancient mythology contains tell-tell signs of the brutalisation of the original source. Fundamentally a great deal of bull mythology is saturated in the stain of the dismembering of the Great Mother Goddess consciousness by the masculinised, monotheistic (sacrificial/psychopathic) left brain mindset that first erupted across the near east circa 5-4,000BC and which gathered momentum over the ensuing millennia. These myths mark the slow but relentless erasing of her benign influence and the creation of controlling religions which eventually leads to Christianity (it is worth noting that Jesus was often secretly referred to as the new cosmic bull, a way of attempting to usurp the ancient power of the bull symbol).
The point of inevitable defeat is perhaps most poignantly reached in the bull’s last great outpost of Crete, where the previously pre-eminent figure succumbs to a disturbing finale at the hands of the invading Dorians (following the bronze age comet induced collapse); the Minotaur is a symptom of the new dysfunction and Theseus is only a hero in terms of the new paradigm (note how he abandons the goddess figure, Ariadne, once he has used her to defeat her own bull brother, etc; amongst other clues, note how it is some kind of sexual shame that unleashes the monster – a shame perpetrated by the mother, Pasiphae, the great bull goddess herself). The story we have received is twisted propaganda. It has been shaped to suit the victorious Greek mindset which was the last culture to maintain an uncomfortable bridgehead between the two worlds (whilst still onrushing relentlessly towards misogynistic monotheism). Do not be fooled by Greek mythology; yes they were smart enough to seize upon the wisdom of the ancients but they created effective control over them by propagandizing their stories and dismantling their original sources/meaning systems.
Almost all world cultures succumbed to the onrush of psychopathology and its key target was the defeat of the Bull.
For at the bottom line the Bull is the key symbol of the great mother i.e. the full, intelligent, knowing, benevolent, vital, life force of creative nature. As such it is a symbol of expanding consciousness. The bull represents her presence manifest as virile life on this planet. He is the original ‘child’ or ‘son’ or ‘consort’ of the god(ess). His sexuality is irrelevant in so much as he is her power manifest on earth. She/he are one. The Greeks would later water this concept down and call it Zoe and Bios (the source of all life and manifest life itself).
As such its ferocious power is seen as benign, generous, spontaneous, eruptive, life giving. Dangerous, yes; sexually charged, yes; but essentially joyous and to be embraced.
One of the most important associated images was that of a swarm of bees erupting from the carcass of the bull symbolising, amongst other things, the capacity for self regeneration, return, renewal, the harmony of interconnectedness and the deep connection bee symbolism had to higher density knowledge, that is the complete Goddess of divine being (i.e. true knowledge). The capacity of the Great Goddess to communicate throughout the life force and to renew herself in highly evolved and complex forms.
The bull was pure (sometimes white) and yet dark (light and dark embraced, aka the moon, as being symbolic of the cyclical nature of being, of life and death and rebirth); the horns (1+3) could frame and hold manifest the emergence of the great disc of illumination – the bridging logos (2), the light of cosmic awareness of belonging, which nestles in between and connects the source and the outsourced force of consciousness i.e. us! Both Apollo and Dionysus, light and dark, were both intimately connected to the bull. They were both forms of the logos (a very ancient concept). Before the monotheists got a hold of him and tried to make him purely a sun god, Apollo was the bringer of direct knowledge from the source. ‘He’ taught the way for us to bridge the gap and achieve self illumination. It was this complex and profound awareness which ensured the darkness - especially death - was not to be feared, but understood as a balancing element essential to life (an open system). The horns of the bull symbolised the ability to grow in knowledge through union with the complete divine essence (what Laura now calls the information of the entire consciously evolving living system). Higher and lower united; bridging the divide so as to expand consciousness.
And then calamity.
A process of separation from direct knowledge/experience of the source suddenly manifests and is represented in the symbolism whereby the great mother is bit by bit dismantled, and her ‘son/consort’ the bull is now to be defeated/sacrificed. The lion now fights and increasingly kills the bull. The lion, namely us, our usurped divine will and ego, becomes the solar hero (masculine). The lion becomes in some way distorted; the blinding golden light of the Sun is to be revered and in so doing the obsession with the pure light drowns out the complexity of light and dark in balance and unity (the Sun becomes the symbol of monotheism). The blinding light (all that glisters is not Gold)! The moon is sidelined, demonised and feminised (it is worth noting that in original mythologies the sun was invariable feminine and the moon masculine!)
Zeus, like a number of male father figures, begins to take over the attributes of the bull – but without the Great Mother as his guide (he’s sidelined her!) He transforms into one so as to rape or seduce, to steal away the power of the goddess! Soon enough, the bull is increasingly seen as ‘wild’ and threatening, and in need of taming! This is the code for taming the power and awareness of the completeness of the ‘goddess’, and essentially what is now merely perceived as her voracious appetite for life and her obsession with procreation. This is a sign of mounting, fearful, misogyny, the tool by which 4th density STS will enforce separation. Later rituals concerning the bull and sacrificial children are a clear perversion of the original and are symptomatic of psychopathology.
Gilgamesh and Enkidu dismantling the Bull of Heaven is a story moment where this reality first became acceptable. Killing the bull of the great goddess and throwing the shoulder of the bull at the sky is a truly terrible moment; I believe it to be a direct result of the change in consciousness which took place following a series of catastrophic events which Laura has rightly connected to the mutations which led to psychopathology (and possibly the final shutting down of direct contact with other densities once freely available via the human mind). The shoulder of the bull is almost certainly what we know as the big dipper/the plough, namely part of the great bear. The mother bear (another form of the goddess) and her son are now held prisoner and kept apart by the dragon (Draco – the great snake); this is symbolic of our separation from 4th density awareness, which may have coincided with environmental changes on earth and/or the tilting of the planet, hence the obsession with the pole star and the ‘hidden’ original true pole the dragon guards.
It is very interesting to note that at the core of the Mithraic religion is the killing of the bull, whose blood is drunk by a serpent and a dog and whose testacles, life force, consumed by a scorpion. This secret, military, imperial Roman cult was to morph eventually into Christianity (that is, it reverse engineered itself into the various incipient groups and fused them with certain Osirian/Isian Egyptian mystery rites – themselves rooted in Bull knowledge – creating what we know as Catholic Rome). I believe that at this cult’s secret centre hid the brotherhood of the snake, a group of fanatical hybrids in league with 4th density STS, hell bent on ensuring perpetual victory over the ‘goddess’ and putting in place plans to ensure that we never get back to our union with the mother knowledge. One of their initiatory rights involved the ritual wielding of the shoulder of the bull by Mithras (with the Sun god looking on) as a mark of their undefeated cosmic power. I believe this is connected in some mysterious way with the knowledge which Christianity was designed to suppress....
The sacrifice of the bull became more and more common and accepted as normal. At some point previously the bull of Taurus was even ‘sacrificed’ - cut in half to make way for a new first symbol on the Way – Aries. The 2 horns of the ram were of a quite different kind though! Sacrifice was going to become the only Way!
Enough...
I hope some of this communicates something of interest.
Goodnight one and all.
