From Wolf to Dog

 

The domestication of animals is a long-drawn-out process involving careful nurturing and breeding of a wild species over many generations. Cattle, sheep and goats were domesticated for food purposes 8,000-10,000 years ago, but the domestication of the wolf long predates this. The wolf is also unique in that it was kept for hunting and guardianship rather than to provide meat or hides, and those traits led it to eventually become man’s best friend.

 A Saami family from Norway, c1900, with one of the dogs they depended on. Wikicommons.

 The taming of the wolf likely developed from the nurturing of a young wolf cub which would become imprinted on its human ‘pack leaders’ just as it would learn to imitate and defer to its wolf elders. The wolf’s natural pack structure gave it a natural aptitude to pick up social cues from its human masters, making it easy to train and within reason, easy to live with. As in Broken Skies, people such as the Anunnaki or Wolf People, who spent a lot of time observing animals and learning their habits and social rules, would soon learn the best ways to live with their tamed wolves.

The wolf was a killer and a serious danger to humans, and careful selection was needed to breed only the friendliest and most docile animals. This selection process caused other changes, such as the curly tails and floppy ears, and led to the creation of a new species: the domestic dog. Interestingly, these characteristics have also been demonstrated in a modern experiment on wild foxes, where the animals were bred for sociability with humans, and those same dog traits began to emerge.

Leuchtender Hund, Wikicommons.

The date for the domestication of the wolf is open to debate. Likely it happened independently in different parts of the world and different stages of history, and some of those dogs survived into modern times while others were failed experiments. The earliest known remains of a domestic dog date to 15,000 years ago, but genetic studies suggest a divergence from wolves around 40,000 years ago. Europe, Asia, Siberia, and the Middle East have all been proposed for their origin.

So people around the world looked at a deadly wild animal and thought, ‘it would be very useful to tame that’. What an illustration of human innovation.

Copper: The First Metal

Copper, like many aspects of modern civilisation, originated in the Middle East. The earliest known copper items, including needles, hooks and jewellery, date to around 8800BC and were discovered at Çayönü, a settlement around 50 miles from the temple site of Göbekli Tepe and dating in its earliest form to around 10,000BC.

The workable properties of copper, known as firestone in Broken Skies, were discovered by the Anunnaki and its magical properties are a key part of the story.

The copper was found in natural seams which could be worked directly, and was hammered into shape without heat. Later came the use of malachite (copper ore) which was heated and smelted and could be poured into moulds to create a variety of objects. The start of the Copper Age or Chalcolithic Period is dated to around 6000BC in the Middle East, when copper became widely used, and the technology rapidly spread across Europe and the East. The mixing of copper and tin to make the far superior bronze soon began to change the world beyond recognition.

Copper ore (malachite). Rob Lavinsky, Wikicommons,

The first appearance of metal objects, entirely unprecedented in the ancient world, was likely greeted with wonder and reverence for the people producing or owning them. Metal soon became a statement of wealth and power, and then came a new social order based on a few individuals, typically men, who controlled land, people and wealth. This was reinforced by the greater possibilities of metal: swords, daggers, shields, armour, and of course money. The vicious circle – wealth leads to danger and greed and fear, so the wealthy amass more wealth and armies and slaughter their rivals for fear of attack, while the poor grow poorer and become little more than pawns – is one which still governs our world today.

This will be a theme in the next book of the Ouroboros series.

Some of the Hittite-period jewellery and ornaments, found in Turkey dating to c1500BC.

Meteors: Faith and Fear

Comet Hale-Bopp (Philipp Salzgeber, Wikicommons).

Around 12,000 years ago, a huge comet smashed into Earth. The ensuing explosion, triggering infernos, tidal waves, pollution, toxic rain and darkness caused the extinctions of dozens of species and near wiped out humankind in large parts of the world. I’ve talked about this in detail in an earlier post.

Legends of this cataclysm have been handed down from our remote ancestors and are still told across the world today. And across the world, comets are still seen as a terrible omen. This may simply be because they are an anomaly in the perfectly predictable cycles of the skies. Or it may be a deeply buried race memory of the time when humankind nearly died.

The Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh describes fire and flood caused by a comet. In Mongolian lore, comets are the daughters of the devil and trigger destruction and storms. A comet was blamed for the Black Death in Medieval England and for the bloodshed between Caesar and Pompey in ancient Rome.

Meteorite fragment found in Russia. Svend Buhl / Meteorite Recon, Wikicommons.

The ancient sky-watchers would not have been able to distinguish between meteors, comets and other celestial phenomena as modern astronomers do, and all were considered moving or falling stars. Meteors often survive their impact with earth and have been revered objects for millennia. Their exceptional weight for their size, their reflective surface and their unique nature all added to their mythical status. 

Iron meteors were incorporated into Native American shrines. The Black Stone of Mecca, revered since pre-Islamic times, is probably of meteoric origin. A meteor was placed in the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. A large meteorite was incorporated into a Neolithic or Bronze Age burial mound in Wiltshire in southern England. The first iron used by ancient people was of meteoric origin and the previously unknown characteristics of metal would have added another dimension to the magical nature of meteors.

And this may have entirely originated with that ancient star fall, 12,000 years ago. This is the line I’ve taken in Broken Skies.

The Pleiades

The Pleiades is one of the smallest, enigmatic and myth-laden star groups. The tiny cluster of inconspicuous stars is nominally a part of the constellation of Taurus, the Bull, and can be found by following westwards the line of the three stars of Orion’s Belt in a link popularly emphasised in myth.

The Pleiades were seven maidens in Greek myth, turned into stars to save them from the giant Orion, who still chases them through the sky today. In other cosmologies as far afield as the Native Australians and the Native Americans of Florida, they are interestingly also seen as seven maidens.

The sky as seen in North American lore. The Pleiades are represented in the top right, along with the sun, the moon, and the stars of Ursa Major.

The Pleiades in fact contain six stars clearly visible to the naked eye. This suggests the possibility that one star has reached its natural death and vanished from the star group. Greek legend states that the maiden Electra, the seventh star, turned her face from the sky in shame after witnessing the destruction of Troy.

The stars’ importance in myth reflects into the ritual world. Many sacred buildings including the pyramids of Teotihuacan in Mexico, the pyramids of Abusir in Egypt, the stones of Callanais in the Outer Hebrides, and the temples of Angkor Wat in Cambodia have claimed alignments to the Pleiades, although this is perhaps dubious and can be explained as finding what one is looking for. The cave paintings of Lascaux, dating to 15,000BC, include likely representations of the sky-bull (Taurus) and the Pleiades, showing that the stars’ importance far predates civilisation as we define it today.

Taurus and the Pleiades in Lascaux.

The Pleiades are linked to a dark realm in many sky-lores. Their arrangement, very similar to the stars of Ursa Major or The Plough which circles or ‘guards’ the Pole Star, has led to their equation with the counterbalance or opposite of these stars. The Pleiades is likely the location of Sokar, the dark realm and nemesis of creation discussed last week, which is at the heart of the story of Broken Skies.

The Pleiades also link to the legends of a falling star which near destroyed Earth 12,000 years ago. A myth from Suriname in South America describes a fiery serpent from the Pleaides which destroyed the earth with fire and flood. In Egyptian lore, the Pleiades was the foreleg of the bull Taurus, which had been torn from its body and caused devastation on Earth before being chained in the skies in its present location to stop it running amok again. This story may have its origin in the ancient Sumerian story of Gilgamesh and the Bull of Heaven.

Some Egyptian reliefs of the chained bull and the bull’s leg.

In Broken Skies, it was a star falling from Sokar which caused the Thousand Year Winter. Modern astronomy now tells us that stars and the celestial objects which impact with Earth are entirely different entities, something the ancients didn’t understand, although the Pleiad Electra, incidentally, is said to occasionally appear in the form of a comet.

Perhaps the approaching comet or flaming meteor seemed to come from this region of the sky. Perhaps the missing seventh star imploded and vanished at this coincidently key time. Perhaps, as researcher Walter Cruttenden has suggested in Lost Star of Myth and Time, there is an as-yet undiscovered dark star, the binary pair of the sun, which periodically approaches the solar system from the direction of the Pleiades with the expected consequential upheaval.

We are due its return. Perhaps we will soon find out.

Sokar

Sokar is one of the most enigmatic entities of Egyptian myth. Sokar was a falcon-headed God of the dead in later Egyptian dynasties, and is believed one of the oldest Egyptian Gods. He was associated with the vast necropolis of Giza, whose first funerary monuments predate the pyramids by many centuries, and was invoked during funerary rites.

Sokar is linked to bja or meteoric iron, which was in pre-metal eras a magical and devastating entity which brought great gift and great destruction in equal measure. It was also linked to the Bennu bird who instigated creation.

Sokar was invoked during funerary rites when the deceased must successfully navigate various regions of the Duat or underworld in order to reach eternal life. The realm of Sokar is a place which snatched away the soul, a place of silence, a gate-keeper in darkness, as black as night. Even the Sun God Ra, on his nightly journey through the underworld, could not enter the realm of Sokar. A place to be avoided at all costs, even by the Gods.

Sokar as a God of the dead.

 Many beliefs of Middle Eastern civilisations developed from older cultures and traditions, and the origins of Egyptian lore can be traced through the older cultures of Sumer and Iraq to the people of Göbekli Tepe, who flourished 8000 years before the dawn of Egyptian civilisation. There is no evidence that the stories of Sokar originate in this period, but it is plausible. Sokar’s existence is ancient and Egyptian lore itself states that Sokar was linked to the First Time, the mythical Golden Age period when the Gods brought civilisation to earth and has been linked to Göbekli Tepe.

Sokar is the realm whose corruptive influence spreads through the entire land of Kur-Gal in Broken Skies. It was the balance to the realm of creation, in a world where everything, no matter how devastating, was a necessary part of existence. This influence is channelled by a fallen star or meteorite, whose link to Sokar was known in Egyptian lore.

As to its physical location in the sky, I have linked it to the Pleiades star group, whose inconspicuousness in no way equals its singular importance in star lore worldwide. This will be the subject of next week’s post.

The Pleiades. Juan lacruz, Wikicommons.

Absu: Heart of Creation

Modern science tells us that the universe was created from a single focal point during the Big Bang, and even after expanding for infinite time and space, that primal essence still links between everything in existence: the enigmatic concept of String Theory, which forms uncanny bridges between astrophysics and the supernatural.

Ancient mysticism from diverse cultures also states a similar point of creation. To the Sumerians, who flourished in the Middle East 5000 years ago and whose cultural ancestry dates back to the time of Göbekli Tepe and the dawn of civilisation, around 10,000BCE, this was known as Absu or Apsu, the primal sea from which the Earth rose and all springs and rivers ultimately source. From this derives our word ‘absolute’, and also ‘abyss’, meaning a vast and unknowable chasm which is feared and avoided, except by those who have the wisdom and skill to enter and understand it. It is sometimes linked to the Pole Star, the axis around which the heavens pivot.

Hittite illustration of Gilgamesh

The hero Gilgamesh descended into Absu during his quest for immortality, but his gift was stolen from him by a snake as he returned. His wisdom proved ultimately lacking, perhaps because immortality for a human would prove a curse rather than a gift.

In Broken Skies, Absu is the source of all existence and all life, where spirits return after life and descend after birth, and for those who have the gifts to access it, it offers glimpses of all places and all times, and the opportunity to rearrange the weave of the threads of existence extending from it. Just as modern String Theory states.

Like all things in existence, Absu has its opposite. The realm of Sokar, a place of destruction and anti-creation, will be the subject of next week’s post.

Wolfstone: Obsidian

Obsidian spearheads with finely worked serrated edges, found at Göbekli Tepe.

Obsidian is a volcanic glass, usually black but occasionally a range of colours, which can be knapped like flint into blades and other tools of surgical sharpness. In the later prehistoric Middle East, it was also polished into mirrors and elaborate jewellery and even today it has near mythical associations.

Obsidian is found in mountainous regions of volcanic origin, and only a few sources are useable for craftwork. In the Middle East, these are focused around Bingöl and Lake Van in eastern Turkey and in Armenia. These are precisely the same regions linked to the paradisiacal land of Eden or Dilmun, home of the advanced people known variously as the Anunnaki, the Irin and the Peri.

Mountainside obsidian deposit. James St John, Wikicommons.

Obsidian from Bingöl and nearby areas was traded across the Taurus Mountains as far as Iraq and the Levant, a remarkable distance of up to 1000km, from as early as 14,000BC. This predates the earliest known dates for Göbekli Tepe by over 4000 years, indicating that an advanced and long-distance social network existed long before any known established civilisation, and long before the Younger Dryas or Thousand Year Winter which near devastated global populations. Following this cold period, obsidian trade increased and continued into the historic period.

At sites such as Göbekli Tepe, dating to 9600BC and associated with the dawn of civilisation, obsidian formed a small percentage of the tools used, and its acquisition was strictly controlled by and for a select few. Only those deemed worthy could possess it.

The Bingöl Mountains. Izzettin Ekinci, Wikicommons

Interestingly, the obsidian trade routes precisely mirror the spread of domesticated cereal plants across the Middle East from their origin in south-eastern Turkey, and indicates that the people who controlled the obsidian trade were also the first to develop agriculture. And these routes also mirror the locations of the legends of an advanced people who long ago educated and subjugated humankind.

Folklore in Turkey and Armenia also refers to the obsidian mountains. In eastern Turkey, once part of Armenia, a region of mountains was known as Gaylaxaz-ut, meaning ‘abounding in wolf’s stone’. ‘Wolf’s stone’ can refer to both flint and obsidian, but only obsidian is sourced in this region.

In Armenian tradition the Wolf Stone Mountains, revered for thousands of years, were linked with powerful people known in modern Christian lore as the ‘servants of Satan’ who were linked with wolves and snakes. Were these the powerful people who once controlled the obsidian trade across the Middle East, who inspired the legends of the Peri and other superhuman people?

This is the basis for the Anunnaki in Broken Skies, who live among the mountains of Dilmun and are known as the Wolf People who terrorise the clanspeople living on the plains.

Mingöl: Mountains of Heaven

Izzettin Ekinci, Wikicommons

The Bingöl Mountains are a vast and largely impregnable range of mountains in eastern Turkey, in what was once part of Armenia. The area has long been revered as sacred and both folklore and archaeology have revealed its importance in the dawn of Middle Eastern civilisation.

Bingöl translates as the Turkish for ‘Land of a Thousand Lakes’, referring to the countless springs which form on the mountain slopes which feed pools and streams which eventually become some of the great rivers across Turkey and the Middle East, including the Tigris and Euphrates. In both a practical and a spiritual sense, the mountains were the source of life for the region.

The area has been ruled by many cultures over the past five thousand years, including the Hittites, Persians, Romans and Byzantines and its name has changed many times, but all reflect the same meaning. The Persian name of Mingöl translates as ‘heavenly waters’. In Classical times it was known as Abus Mons, or ‘Father Mountain’, and in Armenian tradition it is considered the Mountain of Life, akin to the World Mountain or cosmic axis in many mountainous cultures. The more recent historical name of Çapakҫur, meaning ‘River of Heaven’, is said to have been given by Alexander the Great. He made a long journey to drink the healing waters after suffering a long and incurable illness, and was miraculously cured, although he didn’t quite gain the immortality he had been hoping for.

The Bingöl region in Kurdish folklore is associated with the Peri, a race of beautiful, pale-skinned, superhuman entities whose stories are widespread across Turkey, and were probably once linked to the ancient Gods of the region, although local belief states that unlike other beings in myth, the Peri were genuine living people. The legends of the Peri formed the basis for the Irin and the Anunnaki in Broken Skies, and Mingöl is the home of the spirit-walkers, who live in the inhospitable mountains and are feared even by the most powerful people on the plains.

As I’ve said in Broken Skies, mountains have long been linked to spiritual ordeals and spiritual gain. The trainee lamas of Tibet, for example, were once taken to a snow-bound mountain and wrapped in a soaking wet sheet. They weren’t allowed to move until they had dried it using only their body heat, staving off hypothermia using will alone. The enforced physical and mental hardship of constant cold, danger, altitude sickness and lack of oxygen is said to force the body and mind into new ways of existence, the reason for the spiritual gifts the holy people of both ancient and modern times.

An old monastery near Bingöl.

The Crane

The crane has long been a sacred bird across Europe and the Middle East. In the ancient town of Çatalhöyük in central Turkey, which was occupied as early as 7400BC, cranes were among the wild creatures portrayed in murals in the houses. A crane’s wing which probably formed part of a ritual costume was also found during the excavations. Is this an indication of the antiquity of the Crane Dance, supposedly invented by the hero Theseus in Classical times? According to legend, Theseus invented the dance to honour Apollo, a Greek God with shamanic connections, to celebrate his defeat of the bull-headed Minotaur. Huge horned cattle, wild and dangerous and still a long way from domestication, were a predominant part of Çatalhöyük‘s ritual and culture.

A reconstruction of Çatalhöyük’s murals, depicting a pair of dancing cranes.

An elaborate, costumed crane dance was also documented among the Ostiak shamans of Siberia in the 18^th century. Some of the reliefs carved into the stone pillars of Göbekli Tepe in southeastern Turkey also likely represent cranes, and compellingly, their legs appear to be more human than bird-like. They may in fact represent a shaman in crane-guise. Further links between the crane and shamanism come from the myths of Celtic Britain and Scandinavia, where shamans and Gods often possessed a craneskin bag which had various magical and ritualistic attributes.

Dancing cranes. Wikicommons.

The importance of the crane may derive from their renowned propensity to dance. This is often linked to courtship but entire groups of cranes can join in an elaborate, circular dance which would have been spectacular to watch and may have emulated by the human observers.

They also migrate in huge flocks, spending the winter in southern Europe and the Middle East before moving to northern climes to breed. This migration, linked to the twin balance points of the spring and autumn equinoxes, is key to their importance in Broken Skies.

Another characteristic of the crane is their migrating flight path, up to 10,000 metres above earth. The crane is the highest-flying bird known, and people on the ground watching the flocks flying higher and higher until they vanished from view would have believed them to fly as high as the stars. This is why I believe the sacred Benu-bird, which as I’ve discussed before was linked to the dawn of creation and the axis around which creation revolves, was originally a crane, and their unique journey to the stars is the reason for their ancient reverence.

Jozefzu, Wikicommons.

The Cedar and the World Tree

The World Tree, and its counterpart the Holy Mountain in mountainous regions such as India, forms the axis of existence around which all worlds are fixed. It is the source of life and death, the source of wisdom and prophecy and the indelible record of all things that have ever been. Shamans, deities and seers commonly acquire their gifts from the World Tree after great sacrifice. The Scandinavian God Odin spent nine days hanging on Yggdrasil and sacrificed an eye in return for his prophetic gifts. The God Tir endured similar sacrifice. According to esoteric legend, the cross on which Jesus was sacrificed was made from the trunk of the Tree of Life in Eden.

The celestial counterpart of the World Tree is the Milky Way, which flows across the night sky from the stars of Scorpio to the stars of Cygnus, now portrayed as a swan but once a vulture, and the former Pole Star Deneb. It is no accident that the original T-shaped ‘Tau’ Cross of Middle Eastern mysticism mirrors the four stars of the Sky Vulture.

The Tiwaz (Tir) rune, representing the God Tir who was hanged on the World Tree.

 A Methodist stained glass window. Chris Light, Wikicommons.

Just like the Milky Way, the World Tree is commonly topped by a bird: an eagle in Norse myth; the zu-bird in ancient Sumer (modern Iraq); a macaw in Mayan myth. Around its base is coiled a serpent or dragon, occasionally a scorpion. Representations include the Norse Nidhogg, the serpent coiled around the Biblical Tree of Knowledge, and the Vedic Naga-serpent Vasuki who was coiled around Mount Mandara. Scorpio was once depicted as a serpent in many cosmologies.

A replica of a totem pole, itself a representation of the World Tree, in Ketchikan, Alaska. W. Knight, Wikicommons.

The World Tree has been linked to many different species. Yggdrasil in Scandinavian lore is commonly described as an ash, known for its longevity and its ability to reshoot even when it is felled or toppled. It has been suggested that Yggdrasil was originally a yew, an evergreen and near-immortal tree whose boughs, leaves and berries are deadly poisonous.

In Middle Eastern countries, the cedar was likely the sacred tree, as seen in the 4000-year-old Epic of Gilgamesh. The cedar grows to immense heights, is evergreen – universally seen as a symbol of eternal life – and the prolific resin found in its cones has long been used for healing, purifying and magical purposes. It also has mild psychoactive effects, as I have described in Broken Skies. Cedar forests were probably once common across the Middle East although by the recorded historical period they were largely limited only to Lebanon, whose flag depicts a cedar.

In Broken Skies, the cedar represents the earthly counterpart of the celestial axis and is used in all shamanic rites, and it is also where the dead are left for the vultures to devour and guide their spirits back to the All.

Drifting Stars: The End of the Golden Age

The Golden Age, Pietro da Cortona. Wikicommons.

Legends from cultures as diverse as the Greeks, Aztecs and Tibetans talk of a one-time Golden Age where the world was in perfect and blissful harmony. Thanks to cosmic or human agency, this came to an end and the world was condemned to strife and hardship, but with the hope that at some time in the distant future, the Golden Age could be restored. Adam and Eve’s eviction from the Garden of Eden is one of the most well-known variants.

                        The Garden of Eden

Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend, in their epic book Hamlet’s Mill, have analysed these worldwide myths and linked them to a phenomenon called Precession of the Equinoxes. This is caused by a wobble in the earth’s axis, whereby it drifts in a 26,000-year cycle. From Earth we see this as a slow drift in the location of the Pole Star and also as a shift in the Zodiacal constellation housing the sun during any particular month. A vast number of myths, sacred buildings and cultural practices worldwide have been linked to the monitoring of and the attempt to control this drift.

The Egyptian Sphinx, believed to align to the rising of the constellation Leo, the lion, in its celestial position of c10,000BC.

Many of the myths are linked to a celestial mill, linked to the Milky Way and the cosmic axis, which ground out good fortune during the Golden Age but subsequently broke or became corrupted and ground out only hardship as linked to the present world. This links to the drift of the star Deneb, the ‘true’ pole star, from its axis as discussed last week and which forms the background to the story told in Broken Skies.

Churning the Milky Ocean, from a Vedic (Hindu) epic.

This drift would cause little effect on Earth. It was not suddenly wrenched from its true balance as the stories suggest, but simply drifts in its natural cycle just as it rotates and orbits the sun. But disorder in the heavens was linked to disorder on Earth: as above, as below.

And the stories do contain a grain of truth. Soon after the shift of Deneb (Benu in Broken Skies) from true, a vast comet is known to have smashed into Earth, causing vast floods, fires and toxic fallout which plunged the Earth back into the Ice Age, caused countless extinctions and left humans worldwide fighting for their survival. Just as the stories told.

Deneb: the former Pole Star

Deneb is the brightest star in the constellation of Cygnus, the swan. It sits in at the top of the Milky Way, the celestial and otherworldly axis around which existence was believed to turn, and it was also the Pole Star around 17,000-15,000BC. Researcher Andrew Collins believes Deneb to have had a far greater significance to human sky-watchers than any subsequent pole star, by virtue of its association with the Milky Way and the cosmic axis. This explains the long and widespread significance of swans, geese and other waterfowl as soul-guides and otherworldly messengers.

The Milky Way in cultures worldwide is represented as the World Tree whose roots reach into the underworld while its branches touch the sky. This in turn is represented by the wooden totem poles of many shamanic cultures. These are very commonly topped by a bird. Is this an ancient memory of the time when Deneb crowned the sky?

A replica of a totem pole in Ketchikan, Alaska. W. Knight, Wikicommons.

A 17^th-century drawing of Yggdrasil, the World Tree of Scandinavian myth. 

In Broken Skies, Deneb is Benu, the star which reflects the heart of existence, and around it circles the four stars of the soaring Sky Vulture.

Bennu was the Egyptian bird of creation. At dawn on the first day, the Earth God Geb in the form of a goose laid the primeval egg from which emerged the Sun God Ra in the form of the bennu bird. The benben stone, a sacred Egyptian relic which may have been the capstone of the Great Pyramid, is also linked to this bird.

                         The Bennu bird.

                       White Crane. Wikicommons.

The bennu was depicted as a heron perched on the primeval mound of creation. Archaeologists and alternative researchers have linked this to the ancient site of Göbekli Tepe in Turkey. I believe the bennu bird was originally a crane, for reasons I will come back to in a later post, and the crane is one of the most revered birds in Broken Skies, as it was in many shamanic traditions across Europe.

As centuries passed, Deneb drifted from its position as the axis of creation. In Broken Skies, and in myths around the world, this was associated with disaster and devastation which mirrors true historical events. I will return to that next week.

The Skies and the Soul Trail

Soaring vultures. P.Jeganathan, Wikicommons.

Last week, I talked about the vulture and its role in guiding the deceased to the afterlife, and also perhaps guiding newborn spirits back again.

Birds worldwide are portrayed as spirit guides, by virtue of their gift of flight which gives access to the sky-realms where the spirit world is often located. Spirit-flight is a common shamanic gift. The Pole Star, around which all the skies and by reflection all of creation revolves, is often seen as the birth-point and destination of all spirits.

The Milky Way. Benh Lieu Song, Wikicommons.

The Milky Way is a thick band of stars across the night sky which we see as we look along the long and star-filled axis from the centre of our plate-shaped galaxy. It is often seen as a celestial river flowing across the sky and is known as a spirit road in many shamanic traditions, which is ascended by shamans seeking spiritual insights and by the deceased journeying to the afterlife. In Baltic and Estonian tradition, it is known as the Pathway of Birds and is linked to both spiritual and migratory journeys, and I’ve named it The Soul Trail in Broken Skies.

‘Milky Way’ derives from a Greek myth where the infant Hercules was unwittingly suckled by the Goddess Hera who splashed milk across the sky when the ruse was discovered. This probably stems from an older tradition: the Milky Way is also associated with milk in Egyptian and Hindu lore.

Cygnus. The long neck of the bird soars down the Milky Way.

At its northern peak is the constellation of Cygnus, the swan. The swan is a common spirit guide in northern cultures and the location of this asterism on the Milky Way may stem from this ancient belief. Researcher Andrew Collins has suggested that Cygnus was once a vulture, and I have taken this view in Broken Skies. The four major stars uncannily represent the body, curved wings and tail of a soaring vulture. Here is its celestial counterpart as it guides souls to the next life as it devours their bodies on earth. As above, as below.

The Vulture in the Irin’s cosmology.

The Vulture

Feeding vultures. Arindam Aditya, Wikicommons

The vulture was a highly revered bird to the people of Göbekli Tepe and other cultures across the prehistoric Middle East. Human bodies were typically excarnated – left for vultures and other carrion eaters to devour – before the bones were buried or deposited in caves, rivers or other locations. Bodies were often placed on raised platforms, indicating it was important that birds, rather than foxes or other animals, did the work, and the vulture, which can spot a carcass from six miles away, is characterised for its devouring of all carrion of any species.

Vultures devouring human bodies in a mural from Çatalhöyuk in central Turkey, c6500BC

People would have rapidly made the connection between contact with dead and decaying bodies and illness in the living, and in a time before any understanding of bacteria and contagion, the logical explanation would be the angry or vengeful spirit of the deceased still clinging to its body and seeking recompense. Probably every culture worldwide has some sort of appeasement or funeral ceremony to honour the deceased.

People would also have rapidly realised that the carcasses picked clean by vultures, leaving no decaying flesh, posed no health risk. I believe the vultures were seen as guiding the spirits of the dead into the next world as they recycled their bodies in this world. As above, so below. In many European cultures which originated in the ancient Middle East, birds such as swans and geese are still believed to carry souls to the next world.

Pillar 43 in Göbekli Tepe’s Enclosure D. 

Over 50% of the animal bones excavated at Göbekli Tepe are carrion-eating birds, the majority of these vultures. They may have been attracted to the site through the exposure of human bodies or animal remains from feasting, or were perhaps hunted for ritual purposes. Pillar 43 in Enclosure D, called The Enduring in Broken Skies, is engraved with a vulture holding what is believed to be a human head balanced on its wing. The head is commonly believed the location of the spirit, and this scene may represent a vulture guiding a spirit into the afterlife. Several stone ‘totem poles’ from the site also depict a human head clutched in the talons of a bird.

Pillar 12 in Enclosure C. The base of Pillar 18 in Enclosure D.

A hatchling vulture

Seven squatting flightless birds are depicted around the base of Pillar 18 in the centre of Enclosure D, and similar birds are seen on other pillars. They’ve been interpreted as many things from ducks to dodos, but I feel they represent hatchling vultures. If vultures guided spirits to the afterlife, it would be a reasonable supposition that their young guided the spirits of newborn children back again. Even today it is a common tradition that birds, such as storks, bring a newborn spirit into the world. As above, as below. This is the line I’ve taken in Broken Skies. And how this reflects in the greater cosmology will be covered next week.