NAGAS

Awakened spiritual beings and masters of wisdom and the dragon energies residing in their opulent Celestial City called Nagaloka.

Also known as Dragon Demons, Dragon Kings. Dragon Spirits, Nats, Serpent Gods, Serpents, Serpents of Wisdom, Snakes, the Ever-Moving.

Description: Nagas are a class of semidivine spiritual beings described in Hinduism and said to look like serpents, or cobras, sometimes with multiple heads, or like humans from the neck up with a serpentine torso. Typically, Nagas are depicted as attractive, richly adorned, bejeweled men and women with a snake's lower body; over their heads rear three, five, seven, or ten expanded cobra hoods, while on their heads are jeweled crowns and large earrings.

They live luxuriously and in sensual delight in splendid palaces. Nagas are said to guard the treasures of the Earth (minerals, gemstones, and other riches), in fact, to reside deep inside the Earth in a nine-leveled realm called Patala; they also live in inaccessible mountain caves. Patala is an immense region with numerous palaces, houses, towers, and pleasure gardens. Another name for their realm is Nagaloka, “the Realm of the Nagas,” a division of the Underworld, whose capital is Bhogavati, residence of the three Naga kings: Vasuki, Taksaka, and Sesa-Ananta (this one lies under the Earth supporting its entire weight).

Legend says there is a pond in Nagaloka, and if one drinks of it, the water gives you the strength of a thousand elephants. Legend also says Patala is thousands of miles away from Earth, it is surrounded by jewel-encrusted forts, the steps at its entrance are decorated with gems and gold, and its outer doors are 100 yojanas long (about 800 miles; one yojana = 8 miles) and five yojanas high (40 miles) and its interior exceeds 1,000 yojanas (about 8,000 square miles).

Yet Nagas are also associated with water, living in subaquatic abodes, serving as protectors of rivers, lakes, reservoirs, and seas, and controlling rainfall and fertility. In this capacity, they are called Nagarajas, or Dragon Kings, the guardian spirits of lakes and rivers. In Kashmir, India, 527 Nagas have been named and worshipped there for centuries, according to an ancient text. Originally, the Kashmir Valley was a vast lake populated by Nagas, the region's guardians; after the lake drained, the Nagas remained to protect the land.

Analogically, as snakes slough their skins, so the Nagas are immortal, surviving the shedding of cycles of cosmic time and of creation-dissolution.

Among their epithets are: Serpents (Sarpa); the Ever-Moving; Creeping Creatures (Pannaga); Those Creeping on Their Chests (Uraga); Those Creeping on Their Shoulders (Bhujanga); and Goat-Eaters (Ajagara). Nagas are well respected for their spiritual wisdom, prodigious powers, beauty, skill, and great courage, but sometimes feared for their violence and quick tempers.

In Buddhism, they are credited with safeguarding key spiritual texts, including the valuable Prajnaparamita Sutra. The philosopher Nagarjuna (“the Great Naga,” or spiritual adept) rediscovered this text in a special visit he made to Naga Land, then Gautama Buddha asked the Nagas to keep it safe until humanity was ready to receive it. Buddhist tradition says that Nagas washed Gautama at his birth, protected him during his life, and guarded his bodily relics after his death.

The primordial cosmic dragon known in Hinduism as Sesa-Ananta, one of the very first creatures manifested by Brahma at the start of Creation, is a Naga, who serves as a rest for Vishnu (the Hindu Christ) during Pralaya (the “Night of Brahma,” after Creation is dissolved). The great cosmic snake or dragon Vasuki is also a Naga; he was used as a rope in the gods' Churning of the Ocean of Milk.

Hindu folklore says the Nagas originated from Surabhi (“Fragrant”), the celestial Cow and daughter of the ancient sage or rishi Kashyapa (“Vision”); or from Kashyapa and Kadru (“Chalice of Immortality”), a daughter of the rishi Daksa (“Ritual Skill”). The Nagas are said to be the implacable enemy of Vishnu's celestial bird-mount, Garuda, called Destroyer of Serpents.

Somewhat confusingly, the Nagas are also said to be the progeny of Airavata, a primordial elephant god that emerged from the Ocean of Milk. Nagasa are sometimes called elephants, possibly through association with the long trunk. Airavata is the Naga lord, the King of Snakes, says the Mahabharata, an ancient Indian text, which adds that the Nagas number in the tens of millions.

Explanation: In understanding Nagas, it is vital not to take their physical descriptions as literal: Nagas are not snakes or serpents. Their spiritual form is serpentine or snakelike, but only as a metaphor for their true nature. Naga worship based on veneration of actual snakes is a misplaced concreteness.

It is also crucial to appreciate that the cosmic dragon and its affiliate Nagaloka pertain to the archetype of the root chakra, the Muladhara, which means “root support.” From the standpoint of Creation, it is the first created center. In the human, the root chakra is found in the groin, but in the cosmos it is right under God's nose, so to speak, the foundation for the entire cosmic Earth. “Earth” in this sense means all space created to hold matter. God started with the root.

The equivalent of Sesa-Ananta in the human root chakra is called kundalini. Hindu yogis describe it as like a serpent coiled three and a half times around the base of the “Shiva linga,” another name for the sushumna, a central energy conduit that passes through the seven chakras from groin to brow. Interestingly, Hindu iconography for the root chakra depicts the elephant Airavata amidst the four broad petals or vibratory fields associated with this energy-consciousness center.

The variously described Naga realm—Bhogavati, Nagaloka, Patala—is an expression of this archetype of the root chakra and it is found in Earth's visionary geography in 144 places. The Naga realm is one of eight Celestial Cities arrayed about the cosmic peak Mount Meru, as described in Hindu lore (see Mount Meru). Implicitly, this realm is closely associated with the original cosmic dragon Sesa-Ananta and all its subsidiary expressions across Earth's visionary geography (the Earth has 1,067 dragons in all; see Dragon).

In some cases, the Naga realm is located on Earth at the site of a dragon; in others, not. The prime Naga realm is situated with respect to Earth's prime dragon, described in Norse myth, for example, as the Midgard Serpent, wrapped entirely around the Earth. This is geomantically true, and its head is in the South Pacific. So is the primary Naga realm. The others, which are like holograms of this original one, are located elsewhere, for example, at Croagh Patrick in Ireland, Lake Tahoe in California-Nevada, and Lake Manasarovar near Mount Kailash, Tibet.

The Hindu “mythic” descriptions of the Nagas and their realms are largely accurate and may be verified by clairvoyant viewing of both. The Nagas are living expressions of awakened kundalini: Their serpentine torsos represent the activated, undulatory, interweaving energy circuit (like a sentient caduceus); and their illumined, radiant, and effulgent golden heads, with the earrings, jewelry, crown, and the rest, represent the brilliant “fruit” of that total awakening.

Although Hindu lore says the Nagas are the enemies of Garuda, they are not; actually, they are cousins. Garuda's mother, Vinata, is the sister of Kadru, the Nagas's mother, and Garuda is the same being in different guise as Airavata (see Ganesh). Both are among the many expressions of the angelic order called the Ofanim who say they “eat awareness,” but it is not the Naga's awareness.

Snakes or Nagas also refer to human souls in a state of awakening awareness. Garuda swallows awareness (eats snakes) as humans awaken; his function is to eat awareness, and the awakening of that awareness is the Snake. But “eat” refers more to coparticipation in and support for the process. As celestial “cousins,” Garuda and the Nagas are colleagues in the same grand task, the Nagas of Nagaloka being perhaps the prototypes for this embodied awakening. Garuda works closely with the Nagas, emissaries of this first created realm.

Nagas are not water spirits; if anything, they pertain to the archetype of the earth element, just as the Muladhara chakra does. In some cases, their residences are situated in vast physical valleys that started out dry then became lakes: the Kashmir Valley in India and Lake Tahoe on the California-Nevada border are two examples of this. Their association with water is metaphoric: In the spiritual world, water is consciousness, so we could say the Nagas occupy (or are) vast lakes of awareness.

The Naga palace is experientially much as it is described classically: opulent, majestic, enormous, jewel-encrusted, a lake of brilliant light. The hall is very long and wide, the ceiling domed; at the far end sits the Naga King, Vasuki. Along the promenade through the hall to the throne are numerous beings, mostly human, presumably in spiritual form, and thousands of resplendent Nagas.

A Naga may offer you a jewel, as a condensation of a potential wisdom experience. The jewel, perhaps a lapis lazuli the size of your fist, acts as a portal for you to enter a dimension or experiential place where a revelation awaits.

See also: Dragon, Ganesh, Garuda, Mount Meru, Ocean of Milk.

NAVEL OF THE WORLD

One of 72 Energy Focusing Nodes for planetary landmass subdivisions that feed the land with celestial energies.

Also known as Earth Navel. Energy Focusing Node, minor Albion chakra, Name of God, omphalos.

Description: Many cultures claim a particular mountain, hill, town, or landscape feature to be the navel of the world, the omphalic place of primordial creation, or at least the center of a given landmass, such as a nation. Notable on this list are Ireland, Greece, Peru, Easter Island, and even the United States.

The Hill of Uisneach is claimed to be Ireland's navel and the residence of Eriu, an ancient Irish goddess after whom the island was first named (Eriu's Island, or Eire). She presided over Ireland as the goddess of the country's center at Uisneach. As such, she embodied the land's sovereignty and ceremonially married each new king in an inauguration ritual called the banais righe, which married secular authority with the spirit or goddess of the entire island.

Delphi, on the slopes of Mount Parnassus in Greece, was classically called the omphalos of that country and even originally had a conical egglike stone a few feet high to mark the exact navel. It was a famous and much-visited oracular site said to be founded over the slain carcass of Python, an immense Earth dragon killed by the Sun god Apollo. Greek myth says that Zeus, the high god of the Olympians, once dispatched two ravens (or eagles) from the ends of the Earth to find the planet's center; their flights converged at Delphi.

The ancient lncan city of Cusco in southeastern Peru is also called the navel of the world, indicated in its original name and its spelling, qosqo, “Earth's navel,” in the local Quechua language. Long ago, the legend says, a culture hero (or god) named Manco Capac plunged a golden staff into the ground there, establishing Cusco as the Earth's omphalos. The exact foundation site for Cusco was later called cuzco cara urumi, or “uncovered navel stone.”

The original name of Easter Island, a remote island all of 63 square miles and 2,200 miles west of Chile, was Te-Pito-o-Te-Henua, “The Center of Navel of the World.” Another old name was Mata-Ki-Re-Rani, “Eyes Looking at Heaven.”

The nineteenth-century Native American Lakota visionary Black Elk implied that Harney Peak in the Black Hills of South Dakota was the center of the world. His foundational vision of standing on the world's highest mountain and beholding the “hoop of the world” and numerous smaller hoops with a massive flowering tree in the center took place while he was meditating on that peak.

Mexican myth says that Lake Texcoco (now drained and the site of Mexico City), the ancient site of two important cities. Tenochtitlan and Teotihuacan, was the navel of the world. In classical Rome, there once stood a column next to the Arch of Severus, called umbilicus urbis romae. This is usually translated as “the navel of the city of Rome,” but it could also mean “the navel of the world” as in “the world of the Roman Empire.”

The Bons, Tibet's original pre-Buddhist and shamanic inhabitants, claimed that Mount Kailas, a 22,028-foot peak 800 miles northwest of Lhasa, was the world's navel. They said it was the Nine-Story Swastika Mountain rising into Heaven and the Soul Mountain for the entire geographic region.

The Balinese regard their sacred mountain Gunung Agung in Besakih, a 10,308-foot volcano and multiple temple site, as the navel of the world. Biblical tradition calls Mount Girizim in Palestine the navel of the Earth.

Explanation: How can so many sites claim to be the world's navel? The answer is that there are at least 72 sites that can accurately make this claim.

Within Earth's visionary geography are 72 Energy Focusing Nodes. Each is placed somewhere (not necessarily the geographic center) in one of the 72 original landmass subdivisions of the Earth. Originally, the Earth had nine major landmasses, to each of which was assigned a major angelic protector; within these landmasses, 72 subdivisions were recognized, to each of which was assigned a subsidiary angelic protector (called an egregor; see Chakravartin and Eriu) and a people. The landmass and the angelic protector would nurture the particularities and folk-soul characteristics of the people placed there, ensuring the purity of their distinguishing essence as Irish, Peruvian, Greek, and the rest.

Each of these 72 landmass subdivisions, such as Ireland, Peru, and Greece, has a location that focuses and concentrates incoming cosmic and upwelling geomantic energies for that region, just like a biological umbilicus. Such locations (Delphi, Cusco, the Hill of Uisneach) are truly navels of the world in the sense that they feed their predefined, integrated geomantic territory just like a body, or more precisely, a fetus inside the mother's womb.

In many cases, the national angelic protector is present at the navel point, as in Eriu at the Hill of Uisneach, which is also the exact geographic center of Ireland, or Izanagi-Izanami at the otherworldly Yashirodono shrine on the island of Onokoro, Japan, where stands the August Pillar of Heaven, the Amanomihashira.

It was not ignorance of world geography that led the ancients to term such locations “world navels,” but rather a sophisticated knowledge of the geomantic integrity of a given landmass subdivision and its centermost energy point.

The 72 Energy Focusing Nodes also perform a function in a larger geomantic territory or body. Each is a minor chakra in the global body of an anthropomorphic yet cosmogonic figure called Albion (see Albion). Also, each expresses one of the 72 Names of God (Shemhamforesh, in Judaic mysticism).

In the case of Delphi, the actual navel-stone that once stood there served an additional function. It marked the grounding point of a line of energy and consciousness from the constellation Ursa Major. The story of the two birds flying around the Earth and meeting precisely at Delphi is a geomantic code for the grounding of an Oroboros Line, one of Earth's 15 primary energy tracks.

With the Easter Island omphalos, the designation was originally in reference to a much larger landmass, part of the postulated sunken former continent called Lemuria, which included the Hawaiian islands.

The actual navel for the entire world (the planet) is at Avebury stone circle, a 28.5-acre megalithic enclosure in Wiltshire, England. Here, Earth itself plugs into the galaxy and receives its celestial-cosmic nourishment.

NYMPH

An umbrella term designating several classes of Nature spirits, including elementals, devas, and landscape angels, ensouling different features of the environment and bridging physical and celestial energies for their areas.

Also known as Awki, deva, elemental, Gazriinezen, genius loci, gramadevata, kami, Landscape Angel, manitou, Nature spirit, Nome gods, Numen, numina, village gods.

Description: The term “nymph” comes from the Greek nymphe, which means “young girl or bride.” While widely recognized, the word, and the being it describes, is actually poorly and only vaguely understood. The general understanding, taking our cue from Ovid's Metamorphoses, is that it is the soul of a former human, usually a youth, and most often a female, who, to avoid danger or to escape misery, changed appearance to enter a form in nature, such as a tree, spring, well, grotto, river, or mountain, or a human-occupied place, such as a city.

For example, Rhode is the nymph of the island of Rhodes; Peirene, nymph of the spring of the same name at Corinth; Thebe, nymph and daughter of a River god whose name was given to Thebes; Cyane, a nymph after whom a spring was named near Syracuse in Sicily; Castalia, nymph of a spring at Delphi; and Aetna, nymph of Mount Etna' on Sicily. Ovid recounts how the five Echinades islands were once five nymphs and how Lichas, once a mortal, turned himself into flinty rock on the Euboea coast, the rock shelf still (several thousand years ago) exhibiting traces of his former human shape.

Thus nymphs are said to be primarily beautiful female and amorous spirits dwelling in particular natural environments or features. They wear diaphanous, flowing garments, have golden bands in their hair, play instruments, educate infant gods, offer prophecies, and, though mortal, live for thousands of years.

Homer called the nymphs “daughters of Zeus,” and the Greeks described several types according to where they lived. Oreads were mountain nymphs; Alseids lived in groves; Naiads in water, such as lakes, springs, or streams, or, for Nereids, the ocean. Dryads were tree nymphs, originally of oaks specifically; Hamadryads spent their entire existence associated with a single tree, dying with its death; and Meliads were nymphs of the ash trees.

In Roman times, the word Numen referred to a minor deity or Nature spirit that made a location numinous or divine, that raised its vibration. The classical Romans and even the Greeks before them commonly thought certain places in the landscape were inhabited by spirits or numina. whose presence enlivened a site. These numina are the same as nymphs.

Nymphs were once honored by the Greeks and Romans in such forms as a nymphaeum, a special shrine for the nymphs, usually a fountain or grotto, but later a decorative wall or facade with columns, statues, and flowing water; a fountain house dedicated to them in the Agora of Athens; or a temple dedicated to the nymphs in the Campus Martius of Rome. In classical Rome, nymphs were honored on August 23 each year as part of the Volcanalia festival, and often in conjunction with Silvanus, the Roman version of Pan.

Nymphs were often associated with Pan, said to dance with him in the hills; they would hunt with Artemis; revel and rout with Dionysus; even help raise the children of the gods, such as Aeneas, Aphrodite's son, on Mount Ida in Crete. They were frequently either the lovers or mothers of the gods, heroes, and satyrs, and certain locales were recognized as sacred and dedicated to them.

Examples included a cave at Lera, sacred to Pan and the nymphs; the grotto on Mount Hymettus, sacred to Pan, Apollo, and the nymphs; and the Cave of the Nymphs (or Marmarospilia Cave) at Vathy on Ithaca, a cult center dedicated to the Naiads and used by both gods and mortals, especially Odysseus, says Homer. Odysseus also maintained an altar to the nymphs near a waterfall near his home.

Certain nymphs were credited with cofounding ancient citadels, usually in conjunction with the local River god. Troy's beginnings are attributed to a union between the River god Scamander and Idaea, the nymph of nearby Mount Ida (in today's western Turkey). Ovid writes how barefoot river nymphs attended Achelous the River god in his sumptuous abode under the river.

Explanation: Nymph is a multipurpose term that actually refers to several different classes of Nature spirits, including elementals, devas, and landscape angels. To call them all “nymph” is both accurate and confusing.

The Greek picture of nymphs offers us a wonderful image of the ensouling of every aspect of nature with celestial intelligence. When Ovid writes of humans metamorphosing into trees, streams, springs, and the rest, he is recounting the process long ago whereby the spirits entered all natural forms. Most of the account, however, is fanciful window dressing to explain how spirits enter plants, minerals, and water forms in the environment—how the soul gets in there.

Nymphs can be said to be beautiful, diaphanous female spirits, but only if we treat this image casually and poetically. Clairvoyants “reading” Nature spirits have reported various classes of Nature spirits along these lines, yet they emphasize that their “bodies” are dynamic, alive, responsive, and protean, primarily engaged in the cycling of higher energies into the auras and physical matter of their charges, be it plants, mountains, rivers, streams, or lakes.

In the case of nymphs of individual trees, groves, rocks, or springs, these are typically either elementals (the Nature spirits who manage the different classes of matter, including earth, air, fire, and water, and known, respectively, as gnomes, sylphs, salamanders, and undines) or devas, a branch of angels charged with ensouling and enspiriting different classes of Nature. On the larger scale of lakes, rivers, valleys, canyons, and mountains, we are dealing with landscape angels, again a class of devas, but executing more responsibility over a larger area.

In general the term genius loci is applicable here. From the Roman usage, it means the spirit of a place, the focal point that gives an area a particular ambiance. What gives a grove or grotto a special vibration is its genius loci—the nymphs.

In India, this class of being is called gramadevatas, the village gods. These are gods who preside over the life and welfare of villages as well as animal and plant fertility, but they can express their displeasure through drought or floods. In more general terms, the Hindus use the term Deva to indicate a spirit being of Light (angel) inhabiting or ensouling a landscape and its features.

In ancient Egypt, the land was divided into 42 small provinces, or names, each presided over by a. Nome god and its subsidiary hierarchy of assistants. The Nome god was the local god—a regional nymph, landscape angel, or egregor.

Native American psychic perception speaks of manirou, which are spirits that inhabit all aspects of Nature, including the wind, thunder, species, minerals, and lakes. They animate all physical objects in the natural world; manitou may appear in dreams to award special protection or power; or they may be encountered in natural settings as guardians such as Water gods or land features. Similarly, Japan's Shintoism speaks of kami, an undifferentiated class of spirits who animate all aspects of nature, such as stars, mountains, rivers, fields, and the wind. In Peru, Awki are the protectors of caves, springs, rocks, lakes, and trees. In Mongolian shamanism, the Gazriinezen are the spirits of mountains, rocks, trees, bodies of water, settlements, and even countries.

In Dryads, Hamadryads, and Meliads, nymphs of particular types of trees, and presumably allocated one per tree, we have a devic form highly open to human interaction. J. R. R. Tolkien's Ents in The Lord of the Rings is a highly useful image for how this might work. The older tree spirits, especially those ensouling the longer-lived trees (such as beech and redwood), have a deep memory of events that have happened around them over the years and centuries, which they will share with interested humans who “talk” with them.

At the level of valleys, canyons, lakes, and mountains, the landscape angel oversees the vibration for a large area and all its subsidiary Nature spirits. The nymph Aetna, for example, will oversee the activity of all the fire elementals in the volcano as well as the diversity of devas and Nature spirits for miles around.

In the case of cities or islands named after the resident nymph, such as Rhodes for the nymph Rhode and Thebes for the nymph Thebe, here the devas maintain the integrity of energy, ambiance, and consciousness for that region. You could say the nymph or landscape angel Rhode ensouls the entire island and that, energetically, the island, its physical and etheric matter, all its human, plant, animal, and mineral life, is enspirited by her and in fact dwells within her field.

Modern culture may no longer have formal nymphaea for honoring the nymphs, but we can include them in any outdoor geomantic rituals we perform. For example, if you bring down celestial and angelic light and consciousness to a sacred site, you can dedicate some of it as spiritual food for the local nymphs.