The Boar and Göbekli Tepe: The House of Unbeing

Enclosure C of Göbekli Tepe is predominantly associated with wild boar.  

It comprises two concentric rings of pillars, each set into its own wall, but much of this has been damaged or destroyed in fairly recent times. The majority of their artwork comprises wild boar, although birds, foxes, bulls, and three-dimensional predators rising from the stones are also occasionally found.

Some of the boar are large and elaborate, for example on Pillar 12 in the outer ring, which depicts a boar with carefully carved teeth and other features, along with a fox and five fledgling birds in what appears to be a net. Other boars, found on the fronts and sides of the pillars’ heads, are smaller and less detailed. An elaborate entrance to the enclosure, comprising a U-shaped stone with a lion on either side, has an upside-down boar carved on the threshold.

Enclosure C’s Pillar 12

The boar is a dangerous and aggressive animal which was routinely hunted by the people of Göbekli Tepe. The cornered boar is liable to turn on its hunters and can easily cause serious or fatal injuries. The boar hunt has long been the epitome of skill, agility and bravery for hunters, and this was probably no less the case in the time of Göbekli Tepe.

In Broken Skies, Enclosure C is the House of Unbeing. Unbeing is the opposite of being. Being is awareness, of knowing yourself as a discrete entity and having mastery of yourself, physically, mentally and spiritually. Unbeing is the awareness of yourself as a small part of a unified whole, each part being linked to, aware of and able to influence each other part. This is akin to the higher state known in modern philosophy as transcendence or enlightenment.

This is a requisite gift of a skilled shaman, and in Broken Skies the boar is a representation of this gift. To gain mastery of the boar is to gain mastery over all aspects of existence, and this happens when you understand, like the gifted shamans, healers, magicians and miracle workers of every culture’s legends, that this is as easy as mastering yourself.

Some of the boar statues found at Göbekli Tepe, many of them in Enclosure C.