9
What Happens in the Middle East Stays in Central America
Artifacts unearthed in and around the temple city of Teotihuacan place a culture in what is today central Mexico over twelve thousand years ago, while in the Yucatan peninsula to the east, codices such as the Popul Vuh portray the Maya as the distant remnant of an advanced civilization displaced to the highlands of Guatemala by global catastrophes. The question is, from where did these people originate? And if the flood myth they describe is the same one that took place around 9703 BC, could the Maya have preserved some of the oldest initiation rituals on Earth?
Linguistic and artistic similarities abound between Central American people and their Middle-Eastern counterparts, particularly with regard to sacred things: the Mesopotamian fish-man-god Oaana appears in the Mayan word oaana (he who resides in water); h-menes (wise men) is also the name of an Egyptian man who became pharaoh circa 3100 BC, precisely at the time the land of the Ma‘ya‘ab is born and the famous Fourth World calendar of the people that bore its name was set in motion.
Akkadian words such as ma (place), naa/nana (mother), kul (seat), and kun (vagina) are interchangeable with the Mayan. The Yucatan temple of Kabah is an echo of the Egyptian spirit-body concept ka-ba, while the related esoteric Mysteries teachings of the spirit-body of God, ka-baallah, is found in the Mayan ca-bala (two hidden). Ahau (great spirit) is common to the ancient cultures of Egypt, New Zealand, and Easter Island and carries the same meaning in each case. Linguistics aside, late Mayan temples are covered in effigies whose style bears surprising similarities to Hindu, Buddhist, and Balinese sacred art; a stone lintel at Lorillard depicts a man inserting a beaded cord through his tongue, in the style of worship of the god Kali, while the veneration of multiplatform pyramids with truncated tops is a decidedly Middle East practice. But of direct interest to our inquiry is the Mayan word way (spirit or soul) and Waybil, the Otherworld location where the soul resides.
The idea of a Mesoamerican temple culture with Eastern roots is more than a fanciful theory. There is ample evidence that people sailed westward across the Pacific in the third millennium BC. The Chilam Balam is even more specific; it claims the ancestors of the Maya arrived in Yucatan in 9600 BC from a place where the water “swallowed the fount of wisdom,” a land named Atzantiha. Two beautiful lintels, from the temples of Palenque and Akab Oib (Uxmal), depict the arrival of the Mayan creator god Itzamna on a boat, amid drowning people, collapsing temples, mountains, and volcanoes. This god was a renowned master astronomer, mathematician, and teacher of the laws that underpin a civilized society—attributes that appear to be an amalgamation of the husband-wife-brother-sister creator gods of Japanese mythology, Izanami and Izanagi.
Some anthropologists have reasonably concluded that the peace-loving Maya were influenced by an incoming culture from the highlands of Guatemala, the Itzá, whose name derives from itzam (shaman, sorcerer), in other words, a person knowledgeable of the laws of nature who can connect with the source of things. And here begins the association between the Maya and the Otherworld.
The risen god-man as Kukulkan/Quetzalcoatl.
The Chilam Balam refers to the first inhabitants of the Yucatan as Ah-Canule (People of the Serpent), followers of a rejuvenating god named Kukulkan who is depicted as a blue-green plumed serpent, also known to the Olmec by the name Quetzalcoatl (feathered serpent).
Quetzalcoatl belongs to a golden age, a prehistoric time before a violent flood engulfed the Earth. Its cult was based on nonviolence, compassion, and humility.1 It was also obsessed with the mysteries beyond life and death, for Quetzalcoatl was said to have made the journey into the Otherworld and returned to talk about it.2 Certainly the story is ancient, because the Olmec, who were present in the Gulf of Mexico by 1500 BC, knew about it. And these peoples were under no illusion that this god had not also been a real man . . . for they describe him in the most unambiguous terms as “a fair and ruddy-complexioned man with a long beard . . . a mysterious person, a white man with strong body, broad forehead, large eyes . . . who came from across the ocean in a boat that moved by itself without paddles.”3
Unlike the cult of Kukulkan practiced peacefully by the Maya, the Aztecs acquired Quetzalcoatl and turned it into one of history’s most diabolical rituals. It is a paradox that a people who worshipped a god-man representing one of the highest spiritual ideals should have engaged in a most barbaric savagery that culminated with the ritual slaughter of hundreds of thousands of victims every year—until the equally barbaric conquistadores arrived in Mexico in the sixteenth century and were so disgusted by what they witnessed that they banned the practice! But as it has been said, when the true understanding of a concept is lost, what remains is superstition, and in this the Aztecs are guilty of taking the teachings of the Otherworld ritual literally, for the concept of dismembering of the body was nothing more than the metaphoric flaying of the physical self to allow the soul to take flight and enter a paradisiacal landscape.
One of the many monuments erected in honor of Kukulkan is the nine-terraced pyramid at Chichén Itzá, depicting at the same time the great mound of creation and the number of levels of perfection required to reach the Otherworld. Every year the equinox sun interacts with the balustrade of its northeastern staircase, creating an expertly designed display of light and shadow that resembles a serpent rising up the pyramid. At this magic hour the serpent kuxan sum (the living cord), links the two worlds, just as the ‘hollow reeds’ at Persian, Japanese, and Native American sacred locations connect the earth to the Otherworld.
Recent excavations of this pyramid reveal it to be a later addition to an older temple, now reachable through a narrow doorway set into the grand staircase. A narrow passage reaches a dual central chamber where sits a jaguar—symbol of earth, of gravity, the feathered serpent’s complementary opposite—carved from solid rock and painted in red cinnabar, the color used by the Maya to represent the rebirth of the soul, since it mimics the glow of twilight that precedes the reborn sun.
The Mayan spatial model was organized horizontally by the cardinal directions, and vertically by three tiers: an Upperworld, a Middleworld, and an Otherworld consisting of nine levels, a watery place where the forces of creation reside. They regarded access to this location as a difficult endeavor requiring the crossing of two rivers, not to mention an assortment of obstacles, to which end the way—the soul—required the services of a dog capable of seeing in the dark, just as Cŵn Annwn and Anubis fill the same shoes in the Welsh and Egyptian narratives.
The Mayan Otherworld is called Xibalba (firestone with the power to transform).4 It was regarded as a land of plenty, reachable either during ceremony or when the soul inevitably departs from its fleshy vessel for good. At the center of Xibalba stands a mighty ceiba tree, an axis mundi from which all knowledge emanates. It is a cruel irony that this tree should appear in stylized form on a mural at the temple of Palenque in the exact shape of a Christian cross, albeit hundreds of years before the Maya collided with Catholicism and its perverted version of the symbol, with disastrous consequences.
The Mayan shamans sought natural hot spots where this tree of knowledge pierces all tiers of existence, and used them to allow the way to travel to the Otherworld, where it gains access to deities, ancestors, and celestial forces. The shaman—an adept by any other name—opened this communication between the two worlds via an elaborate ritual that dissolved any limitation imposed on the body in the Middleworld, after which he was able to divine the future and allow the power of the supernatural to merge into daily activities.
The Mayan world tree, Wacah Chan, is found inside the sacred cave Balam-ka-ànché, its meandering roots, trunk, limbs, and canopy created from millennia of slow-dripping limestone until it formed an impressive stalagmite that seems to hold up the cave ceiling. In this dark, subterranean world countless initiates came to experience Xibalba, perhaps choosing this cave over thousands like it throughout the Yucatan precisely because its water-sculpted channels so resemble a female vulva and its fallopian tubes. Inside this sensory-deprived world the soul came to tangle with supernatural beings and pick the fruits of a tree of knowledge. Ledges cut long ago around Wacah Chan still contain dozens of small clay vessels that once were filled with offerings, incense, or narcotics.
That this specific cave was used as a bridal chamber is immortalized in a local legend that tells of a young man who wished to marry a young maiden, against the wishes of her mother; so he hid his beloved bride inside the cave, thus the origin of its alternative name, Xtacumbi (hidden lady).
The Mayan world tree, Wacah Chan, inside the sacred cave Balam-ka-ànché.
The strategic placement of major temples above such ritual caves became an extension of this practice. The Pyramid of Osario at Chichén Itzá is a late structure with an access hole on the summit that leads forty feet down via metal rungs into the original ritual cave, now totally enveloped by the man-made structure. It is worth noting that such pyramids are by and large aligned to the extreme risings of Venus, which to the Maya represented both the morning star and periodic renewal, and was the first celestial object initiates were shown upon emerging from a restricted chamber.
Pyramid of Osario encompasses the original ritual cave.
Since there are two other temples at Chichén Itzá sharing identical alignments, let’s see if the three are related to the same ritual.
The Mayan universe was suffused with sacredness to the point where their secular and spiritual worlds were fused. Temple cities represented the conceptualization of a cosmos whose principles were both logical and harmonious, with sacred buildings designed and placed accordingly. One of their favorite devices was to link structures sharing common purposes in perfect triangles.5 To the north of the Pyramid of Osario stands the imposing Temple of the Jaguar. The eight surfaces of its lower room act as a teaching device about the Creation; its central figure wields a mirror, the totem used to gaze into the Otherworld, indicating how this individual has replicated the cosmos within himself and as such has earned the right to be a mediator between the worlds. The open-fronted room is guarded by a stone jaguar staring out across the long court of Chichén Itzá and beyond—toward the southernmost rising of Venus as well as the winter solstice sunrise.
Staring back from a high platform is a chac mool, a stone effigy reclining in a very uncomfortable position on its back, with a plate resting on his sacral chakra as though meant to hold Venus or the rising sun when they rise above the horizon.
Together, these three structures form a perfect right-angle triangle and, given the related symbolism, appear to have shared a function in the living resurrection ritual.
The cult of Kukulkan/Quetzalcoatl sought nothing less than spiritual transfiguration. This was to be achieved through a mixture of mental tests and an ascetic lifestyle aimed at removing oneself from physical attachments—a flaying of the self—so that this “precious stone and rich feather,” as the Maya referred to the soul, could access a finer level of being.6 The process required the initiate to undergo a symbolic death and rebirth—just as Kukulkan/Quetzalcoatl once did for four days inside a box made of stone,7 after which he rose, “cried, seized his garments, and put on his insignia of feathers. . . . Then when he was adorned he set fire to himself and burned . . . his ashes once raised up, and . . . all the rare birds appeared . . . for which reason in eight days there appeared the great star called Quetzalcoatl.”8
Like Osiris this individual becomes a god, a shining star. And just as Osiris and Orion share a symbiotic relationship in the Egyptian resurrection narrative, so the Maya venerate Orion as the cosmic hearth, the womb of the universe, and the point of arrival for souls journeying in and out of the Otherworld.9
To add weight to the evidence that the living resurrection ritual was a key component of teachings undertaken at Chichén Itzá, a mural in the Temple of the Jaguar appears to describe the story of a mythical figure, Queen Moo, and it bears an uneasy similarity to the myth of Osiris and his wife-sister, Isis.
Once upon a time Queen Moo presided at said temple city with her husband-brother, Prince Coh. Together they were given the epithets Ozil and Idzin, the Mayan words for ‘love/desire,’ and ‘younger sister.’10 This prince, like Osiris, was murdered by his brother. To add another layer, coh is Mayan for ‘leopard,’ a creature not far removed from the jaguar, the totem of the material world who aspires to become a feathered serpent following a spiritual transfiguration. Osiris was himself depicted as a crouching leopard, while the leopard skin was traditionally worn by risen Egyptian adepts, not to mention the attending priests of Amenti, the custodians of the secrets of the Amdwat.
As for Queen Moo, not only does she share characteristics with Isis—they marry their brothers and use birds for totems, the macaw and the vulture, respectively—but Isis, being associated with the seasonal flooding of the Nile, was consequently referred to as Mw, the Egyptian word for water.
Since no archaeological evidence has unearthed vestiges of Queen Moo and her prince, it is likely the story represents a spiritual ideal rather than real, living people. Then again, it was not uncommon for rulers of Yucatan, or elsewhere, to take on the mantle of earlier mythical heroes. A goodly number are known to have taken the title Quetzalcoatl to represent their spiritual status—deserved or otherwise—or to set an example to others or promulgate an ideal.
Kukulkan’s example of self-renewal paved the way for future seekers, and the ritual required to follow in his footsteps appears to have been reenacted elsewhere throughout the region. At the temple-city of Copan, seven 12-foot-tall stelae chronicle the life of its shaman-king Waxaklanhun Ub’ah K’awil, recording his negotiation with the Otherworld along with those of his associates. Stela C marks the ruler’s first interaction and his subsequent regeneration as shaman-king, which coincided with the first rising of Venus. The king’s visage is carved equinoctially upon the east and west faces of the monolith, while holding the staff of the dual-headed serpent. As he becomes the physical embodiment of the world tree so his loin apron acts as the foundation of its roots, while from said apron emerges the narcotic blue water lily.
This unusual apron motif was also employed in an identical ancient Egyptian ritual, which we shall examine later.
At one of the oldest inhabited Mayan temple-cities, Oxkintok, there is an unusual rectangular building by the name of Tzat Tun Tzat. Set in the west side of the complex, it was once described as an artificial cave without end, its vaulted tunnels connected by small gates and narrow stairs, giving the impression of an ancient labyrinth, the purpose of which was for a candidate to fumble his or her way in the dark so as to physically experience the journey of the discombobulated soul through the Otherworld. The concept is identical to the story of Theseus, the Cretan hero.
Like the Hypogeum in Malta, Tzat Tun Tzat consists of three ascending levels of tunnels, with the ceiling of the lower level set deliberately low to remind the candidate to proceed in humility; access to the upper, and progressively taller, tunnels is made through a pivoting stone in each ceiling. Finally he reemerges risen through a gateway aligned to the equinox sunrise.
Such a ‘death’ explains why Brother Antonio de Ciudad Real, who noted the customs of the Maya during the Conquista, came to misunderstand the purpose behind this temple as “a place where they tossed those who had committed great offenses so that there they may die.”11
Not far from Oxkintok rises the impressive temple-city of Uxmal. Inside one finds a quadrangle of elaborately decorated buildings, inappropriately named by Spanish priests as the Nunnery. In reality it once served as an academy for healers, mathematicians, and astronomers. The south or entrance building is called Itzam Nah (Shaman House), and a glance along the upper molding reveals stucco reliefs of small flowers called itz (blessed or magic substance), particularly when handled by an itzam (shaman), thus identifying the building as a place where ritual was conducted; a cross-hatching of Xs indicates the building as a place of restricted access. Above each of its eight doorways sits a stone effigy called a xanil nah (reed house), which acts as a kind of spirit or false door.
A xanil nah or false door.
The name bears an uncanny linguistic resemblance to jannah, the Persian concept of paradise, which is entered via eight hidden gates into a place of reeds; the same concept appears in Egyptian tradition. In fact there may exist another interconnection here, because the point of origin in Mesoamerican myth is called Tollan (Place of Cattail Reeds), and to reach it one had to cross a body of water.12 In this sacred location people learned the arts, writing, astronomy, and all the elements that constitute a civilized life. Mayan postclassic literature claims that rulers would go there and obtain from the gods the credentials with which to govern by hallowed appointment.
Opposite the south house stands a matching, taller building, focal point of the quadrangle. The inclusion of double-headed serpents above each of its xanil nah reinforces the association with heavenly regeneration (sky and serpent share the same Mayan word). Above the central door, the goggle-eyed mask of Itzam-Ye stares back at the viewer, superimposed with a secondary mask of large ringed eyes called ch’ok (young person), indicating that whoever enters this building returns newborn.
Double mask of Itzam-Ye.
Last but not least, the inner face of the quadrangle features 584 crosses, the number of years it takes the star of rebirth, Venus, to appear in the same place in the sky as observed from Earth.
Overall, the quadrangle defines an area set apart from the rest of Uxmal as though meant for a very select few.
Yet the concept of the initiates’ Otherworld journey was not limited to the temple-cities of the Yucatan. On the peninsula’s eastern shore, the temple of Tulum faces the open waters of the Caribbean and the equinox sunrise. One hundred and ninety-eight miles away on the opposite side, the Otherworld theme is completed on the island of Jaina, where a stepped pyramid shares the same latitude as Tulan and faces the equinox sunset. Jaina means ‘Temple in the Water,’ and its linguistic similarity to the Persian jannah and jinn is inescapable. Jaina is the quintessential island in the West, the place from where the soul commences its journey across the water, and later, where over 20,000 people came to be buried, each one interred with a hollow figurine with holes to be used as a whistle to help the soul navigate the inky darkness of the Otherworld.
It is as though on the Yucatan the Maya created two doorways between worlds, and the invisible umbilical cord connecting the two influenced their homeland and the temple-cities in-between, a complete and predesigned ritual landscape.
PLAYING BALL WITH THE OTHERWORLD
Like other ancient spiritual cultures, the Olmec and the Maya erected stone monuments that gave visual interpretation to the mechanics of the universe. One such unique feature is the so-called ball court where, according to orthodox view, warriors played a gruesome game with the severed heads of defeated enemies, yet not a shred of historical or archaeological evidence exists in support of this theory.
There are more than eight ball courts at Chichén Itzá alone, but the one in the northwest section is the most impressive. Referred to as hom, the unusual structure, with its steep walls and absence of spectator seating, illustrates the Mayan concept of how life emerges from a crack in the mound of creation.
Hom means both ‘crevice’ and ‘ball court’, a word that pays homage to om and how sound or vibration is central to the act of creation.
The playing area is laid out to a near 4:1 ratio, a double octave in music. This acoustical tuning makes echoes rebound seven times off its lofty vertical walls. Each wall features a stone ring exactly 3×7 units (three octaves) above the ground, carved with intertwined feathered serpents; eyes fill the gaps between the coils, so that the ball penetrating the ring becomes the object with which to ‘peer’ into the Otherworld. The sound reference is reinforced in the south temple and its seven doorways.
Running the length of the court are two intricately carved panels depicting players in what appears, to the untrained eye, a gruesome game. The central player in particular has no head; seven wriggling snakes rise out of his severed neck, each representing the creative elements of light and sound; the sixth serpent carries the name Wacah Chan, the tree from which all sacred knowledge emanates. At the player’s feet sits a large ball with a skull encircled by a way—a soul.
None of these esoteric symbols has any purpose in a place allegedly built for warriors to play soccer with the head of a decapitated enemy. They do, however, convey a story of the regenerative act of creation, with the ball court as a sacred instrument, a focal place for a spiritual drama to be played out by initiates who visualized its mechanics and learned to embody them.
Another name given to the ball court was Tlach-tli (the looking place) leading to speculation that under certain conditions the court was used as a place to observe the perpetual motion of heavenly bodies, and from this, their link with human destiny. Certainly the friezes depict a cylindrical Mercator projection of the planes around the zodiac, tracing a path of planets above and below the horizon, in effect depicting a figurative ball game of the gods. Even the slope angle of the outer court wall is an unusual 23°, the mean axial tilt of the Earth, a concept also embodied in the Egyptian Djed pillar, which was believed to represent the backbone of life itself.
Ball court frieze depicting decapitated man, with a way or soul inside the large ball.
As a metaphor—and Mysteries schools always spoke in metaphors—this looking place describes the ball court as a place where one peers into the Otherworld. By day, players carried mirrors on their backs as a reminder they are reflections of the perfection of the heavens. The idea of the game was to amass enough points to reach the center of the field, teocalli (home of the gods)—the reference to the Hindu goddess of knowledge and periodic renewal notwithstanding. Thus when players worked the ball court they interacted with a creative deity so as to learn the greatest game of all, the game of life—not as it appears to the ‘dead,’ but how it actually exists, knowledge that only the ‘risen’ are privy to.
The area of the ball court mirrors the numerical values of the adjacent pyramid of Kukulkan, divided as it was into 99 squares, the number of years when the solar and lunar calendars calibrate, a numerical reminder to each candidate that the perfected human is the sum of the masculine and feminine. Some folk dances of Mexico are faint echoes of this bipolar drama.
No wonder the ball court itself was seen as a figurative entrance into the Otherworld: the winner discovered the Mysteries of the cosmos, and by this connection with all levels of reality, the individual was enlightened.
With its playing area divided into squares, the Mayan ball court may be a variation of the board game of chess. Like the moves of the ball player, the unusual moves of each chess piece depict the motions of creation. The connection between the game and the ball courts of Yucatan is that in 600 BC chess reached Persia, referenced in a romance called Karnamak-i-Artakshatr-i-Papakan, whose hero is noted for his unusual abilities in, of all things, ball play.
The ball game of the Maya was a metaphor of the regenerative cycle of nature, and the person who understood its mechanics overcame the repetitive cycle of fate. For them the game was one of symbolic warfare. The arrival of conquistadores brought about the destruction of Mesoamerican culture by warfare of another kind, even though by then a change in climate plus the introduction into Yucatan of military conflict by the Toltec and Aztec meant that the metaphysical meaning of the ball game became corrupted. One man’s god becomes another’s devil. And when arrogant white Europeans, disconnected from the true nature of things, descended upon the Maya, they took the unusual friezes along the ball court literally rather than understanding their true significance—that the theater of human existence is a symbolic ball game of the gods, and the only difference between the two is flesh.
THE ASTRONAUT OF LA VENTA’S HANDBAG
One of the most controversial archaeological discoveries in the Olmec world concerns a unique carving of what ancient alien theorists adamantly believe to be an astronaut riding a space capsule. The fact that the object in question is in the shape of a rattlesnake does not seem to faze them.
The serpent has always been a culturally shared symbol of telluric energy as well as its rejuvenating power. In Central America it has also come to represent the periodic rebirth of god-men such as Kukulkan and Quetzalcoatl, and the real-life people who followed their example who are shown being consumed by, dressed as, even emerging out of the mouth of a serpent. Applying this understanding to the Olmec stela instantly transforms what we see: a very relaxed individual inside a chamber, wrapped by a protective serpent. This Olmec astronaut appears to be traveling, nay flowing toward another reality, an initiate embarking on an Otherworld journey to become as a god, a Kukulkan.
The astronaut of La Venta holding his container.
But that’s not the real mystery here, for in his hand he holds what some call a handbag, and others, a container. At this point our story loops back to the Middle East, for a close look at the rattlesnake’s head reveals a feathered crown, the same one depicted on the head of Sumerian anthropomorphic winged figures called Apkallu, a group of seven emissaries from a creator god entrusted with bringing the civilizing arts to humanity following a catastrophic flood. Their story is repeated almost verbatim in the diluvial myths of most ancient cultures on Earth, the only changing aspect being their names.
The quintessential image of an Apkallu is one of an eagle-, or perhaps a falcon-headed person standing by a flowering tree, picking its fruit with one hand and holding a banduddû—a container—in the other. This container is identical to the one held by our Olmec journeyman despite both cultures being half a world apart.
Apkallu with container at the Tree of Knowledge.
The manner in which the banduddû is held suggests that the fruit are to be placed in said receptacle. Sometimes the figure of the supreme deity Ahura Mazda is depicted inside a winged disc above the axis of the fruit tree, implying the tree is close to God, and thus, wisdom. It is the World Tree or Tree of Knowledge to which countless risen god-men have metaphorically been attached or nailed.
The iconic container appears in carved panels and clay tablets discovered throughout Mesopotamia. Placed in context and viewed together they appear to form a kind of triptych conveying a running commentary. Such a series of panels, removed from one of the rooms of the palace at Nimrud, is housed in the British Museum. One panel shows two Apkallu administering to the sacred tree; in the next, an Apkallu has turned from the tree and bestows a king with the tree fruit, all the while holding that mysterious container. Clearly, the king—identified as Ashunarsipal—is conferred some special privilege.
In a following panel Ashunarsipal is no longer surrounded by the Apkallu; he himself has been transformed into a winged figure holding a tree fruit as well as the container. In the adjacent image he stands in direct contact with the Tree of Knowledge and points directly at Ahura Mazda inside his winged disc. Obviously the king is privy to restricted material that provides him a means of approach to God, the kind of information only a priest or high initiate of the temple would know. As it turns out, Ashunarsipal was both. We know this because in a separate frieze he is depicted holding a beehive above his head, a clear indication he has been initiated into its secrets.
What links Ashunarsipal to the Olmec astronaut is the banduddû, for it identifies each holder with a privileged position, in other words the container is a symbol that marks its owner as being in possession of transcendental information. In various Sumerian friezes and clay seals, the first Apkallu—a fish-man named Uan, later transliterated to Ou-anna, Oannes, and John—is also shown holding the banduddû in one hand and a scroll bearing information from the gods in the other.
Part of the key to this unfolding story concerns that other object held by the Apkallu, namely the mullilu (tree fruit). Some speculate that the object is a pine cone, and the observation appears valid. However, a closer look at the classic depiction of the Apkallu at the Tree of Knowledge clearly shows the creatures picking the fruit from a tree that in no way resembles a pine, thus the two items are at odds. The tree is clearly of a flowering variety, and the one that best suits the description throughout the Middle East is the pomegranate tree. Could the mullilu held by the Apkallu be a pomegranate and its calyx, a fruit that when sliced in half is somewhat reminiscent of a pine cone, and if so, does it add to our understanding of the container as a symbol of the Otherworld?
“About the pomegranate I must say nothing,” whispered the geographer Pausanias in the second century, “for its story is somewhat of a holy mystery.” And he was right. In symbolism and mythology, the pomegranate’s role is that of point of contact between our world and that of the gods. In Greek myths it appears in the story of Persephone as the metaphor of rebirth as well as the cycle of nature, after Persephone marries the god Hades and is given six pomegranate seeds as her only source of nutrition during her six months in the Otherworld. The story carries obvious astronomical overtones, but more to the point, if one notices the wristband of the Apkallu picking the tree fruit, it features six seeds. And in sacred art every detail carries meaning.
Ashunarsipal holding beehive.
Apkallu offering Ashunarsipal the fruit of knowledge.
Incidentally, Persephone’s mother, Demeter, was the presiding goddess of Greek temples where the living resurrection ritual was performed following ingestion of a mild narcotic. The pomegranate, given its comparable shape and chambered interior, is a surrogate for a poppy’s narcotic capsule.
In a similar Greek myth, Orion is wedded to Side, whose name means ‘pomegranate.’ Since the myth is based on the older story of Osiris, whom the Egyptians identified with Orion, a link is established between the tree fruit and the resurrected individual. The pomegranate is similarly associated with the Olympian goddess Hera, whose crown is the shape of the calyx of this fruit.
As we have already seen, the Greek resurrection ritual was a continuation or adaptation of earlier Zoroastrian Mysteries tradition and the induced near-death experience of pairi daeza, the original model for the Christian paradise. The pomegranate plant and its fruit were respected in the Zoroastrian ritual because it was the sacred plant inhabiting this Garden of Eden. Since the plant is evergreen throughout the year, naturally it became a figurative representation of the perfection of nature, not to mention the immortality of the soul, the prime objective of initiates in all the world’s Mysteries schools—a concept encapsulated in Persian mythology with the hero Isfandiyar who eats a pomegranate and becomes invincible. It is this tradition that King Ashunarsipal would have been privy to.
It seems that wherever the container appears it is associated with Otherworldly knowledge, and by implication the container becomes the receptacle of that knowledge, while identifying its holder as the individual possessing the knowledge. By their very nature as intermediaries between worlds, the Apkallu materialized already equipped with such wisdom; for humans, on the other hand, it required the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge to journey into the Otherworld and return as a god.
The anthropomorphic bird feature of the Apkallu immediately suggests an eagle, or more likely a falcon, following the Egyptian model of the falcon gods Horus and Seker. What links this train of thought to our main inquiry is the initial phase of the ritual, which began with a baptism, and where the container makes another appearance.
In Sumerian rituals, real-life banduddû were filled with water by an Apkallu priest who is instructed by the god Ea to “take the bucket, the hoisting device with the wooden bail, bring water from the mouth of the twin rivers, over that water cast your holy spell, purify it with your holy incantation, and sprinkle that water over the man, the son of his god.”13 The net effect of sprinkling this sanctified water was ptr—a ‘release’ of disharmony from the recipient, in what is undoubtedly one of the oldest descriptions of a ritual baptism. In Babylonian times only a high-ranking adept called a nasiru—a title meaning ‘preserver of secret knowledge’—was entrusted with this task. The tradition endured for a considerable period because it came to be practiced by a later nasiru, a certain John the Baptist.
Was the banduddû a metaphorical vessel for restricted knowledge? Perhaps. A good number of physical containers made of stone or clay have been unearthed, some measuring a mere six inches, each adorned with all manner of motifs: entwined serpents, lions feasting on a bull, a woman holding two serpents, a falcon, a doorway flanked by entwined spirals, a wall of gates, and so forth. Anyone versed in the Mysteries secrets immediately recognizes the symbolic visuals as representative of teachings that led initiates toward a state of enlightenment. These false containers—for they have no practical use—may have once served as mnemonic devices used in restricted environments.
If the banduddû really is emblematic of the repository of knowledge of the Otherworld, then its echo is heard yet again across time and space in the story of another famous receptacle containing the laws of the universe—the Ark of the Covenant.