From the Phrygian tradition concerning Cybele, "goddess of the mountain and wild beasts", to the Indian tradition of Aditi, "inexhaustible source of abundance", up to the different Hellenic divinities such as Rhea, Demeter, Themes, Meti (without forgetting the various collective deities, always feminine, of destiny), an astrotheological reading emerges that can shed light on the aforementioned "Mother Goddesses of the Earth", provided that the latter is understood, following the studies of Santillana, Dechend and Richer (as well as the Platonic clues), in the meaning of ecliptic.
di Andrew Casella
“All things reproduce the number. "
(Pythagorean formula)
Su Cybele, la Great Mother of the gods, much has been written, and all agree that she was a deification of the earth. All this is correct, from a purely external point of view, but it is necessary to understand, as will be seen in the course of the article, on real meaning of "earth". Although she was an accepted deity in the Greco-Roman pantheon, the name Κυβέλη, as noted René Guénon (Symbols of sacred science, 48), is not of Greek origin:
"This name, in fact, is directly linked to the Hebrew" gebal "and to the Arabic" jabal "," mountain "... Cybele is properly the goddess of the mountain; and it is quite remarkable that, for this meaning, his name is the exact equivalent of that of 'P'in the Hindu tradition ”.
The "Hindu trail" indicated by Guénon is very interesting and we will be able to retrace it. The goddess had her center of worship in Pessinunte, in Phrygia. Here existed his temple, which also guarded the black stone that represented her. The idol of the goddess was in fact aniconic: the black stone was her simulacrum; only later will she be represented in the classic iconography of her, enthroned, with the turreted crown and flanked by two fairs.
During the Second Punic War, terrified by Hannibal at the door (motto which later became proverbial), the Romans, desperate, sent an embassy to Delphi to ask what to do, but all responses of the oracle turned out to be unsuccessful. He then resorted to how last resort, To Sibillini books, who indicated that the only way to avert the foreign threat was 'to lead the Mother Idea from Pessinunte to Rome' [1]. Not only the stone came from Phrygia, but also the entire retinue of the goddess's faithful and priests (the so-called Gauls). The stone arrived at the port of Ostia on April 9, 204 BC and it was decided that it should be accepted 'by the best man and the most virtuous matron'. The choice fell on Publio Cornelio Scipione Nasica and Claudia Quinta Navisalvia (so called for the miraculous approval publicly manifested by the goddess towards the young woman). The chronicles tell that in that year they were registered particularly abundant harvests and other auspicious signs. As we know, even the Carthaginians were eventually annihilated on the plain of Zama. The black stone was incorporated into a silver statue (it constituted its face) and was placed in a special one temple on the Palatine Hill. According to Arnobius, it was still there at the beginning of the XNUMXth century, but with the beginning of the Christian era its traces were lost.
Il myth of the Great Mother of the gods traces a large number of ancient cosmogonies. THE Phrygians, which according to Herodotus pass to be the most ancient inhabitants of the earth, narrate that Zeus, during his sleep, had ejaculated on a stone. From this stone a bisexual monster would be born, named Agdistis. The Olympians, terrified, made sure that the monster castrated itself (this would be at the origin of the ritual mutilation practiced by the Galli priests); from the blood sprinkled from his wound an almond tree was born. The daughter of the Sangario river, the nymph Nana, picked the fruit of the tree and placed it on her lap. From the fruit was born a young man, who gave himself the name of Attis. Agdistis, now a completely woman, fell in love with Attis, who had meanwhile been abandoned to his fate by Nana and had been raised by a goat in the mountains of Phrygia. The two were united in love, but one day Attis, fed up with Agdistis (behind whose identity, it is obvious, the archaic name of Cybele hides), decided to marry the daughter of the king of Pessinunte. Agdistis / Cybele, mad with jealousy, broke into the marriage. Attis, disheartened and displeased, fled to the mountains and, as an expiation for the wrong done to his former beloved, I will emasculate you under a pine (other versions of the myth want him to have been killed by the tusk of a boar, in the manner of Adonis). Violets were born from her blood. Agdistis, saddened, obtained from Zeus that the body of his son / lover of her not be corrupted. Even after her death, Attis's hair continued to grow, and so did her little finger (daktilos) retained a semi-motility.
La resurrection of Attis, culminating moment of the mysteries of Cybele and Attis, took place near thespring equinox, as of March 25, and James Frazer, with a sardonic smile, is pleased to dwell on the mutual accusations that, on that day, the followers of Cybele and the Christians (who celebrated the Easter) exchanged about who imitated whom. In the summary exposition of the myth, we preferred to type on the name of Agdistis, rather than on that of Cybele, to highlight an interesting intuition of a scholar. He writes Pier Luigi Nicolò (From Cybele to Mohammed. History of the Black Stone of Mecca, The old bridge 2004, part I, chap. 1):
"The figure of Agdistis / Cybele, which may appear a contradictory and poorly understood element within the Phrygian myth as we have received from the authors of Hellenistic-Roman culture, however, allows interesting connections with an important figure of the Hindu pantheon, confirming the common religious fund of the Aryan peoples - to which the Phrygians belonged - and confirms the archaic nature of the myth itself. So in Alain Danielou, well-known orientalist: Aditi, the primordial Expanse, 'the inexhaustible source of abundance', the first goddess, the mother of the gods…>; Aditi is the sky, Aditi is the sphere of space, Aditi is the mother, the father, the son. Aditi is all gods…> [2]. In addition to the connection, which I do not know has been detected so far, Agdistis-Aditi, of strong significance both on the ontological level (great similarity of the attributes referring to the two divinities) and on the onomastic one, I believe it should be given importance, remaining on the subject, also to the figures of Marut: <… They form a warlike troop of noisy young men… They have been compared to a society of soldiers who practice secret rites and use magic formulas. They embody the heroic deeds and moral virtues as well as the exuberance of youth. They are very close to each other>. The Maruts are companions of Indra, the bearer of the thunderbolt, certainly comparable to the Zeus of the western pantheon, . According to the Puranas, ancient Indian religious texts, the term Marut means 'do not cry'. This would complete a significant parallel also between the Maruts of Hinduism and the Corybantes armed, accompaniers of Cybele and partakers of her myth, who with the sound of their weapons hid the cry of Zeus as soon as he was born in the cave of Crete ”.
In our opinion, the innovative combination Agdistis / Aditi is decisive and reveals how the primordial identity of Cybele were eminently cosmic and cosmological. Yet, how is this more archaic celestial identity reconciled with the subsequent one, which, as we have seen, wants her to be "goddess of the mountain", and therefore with distinctly terrestrial characteristics? The key, as often happens in these cases, is provided by a step of Plato, too often overlooked. He says (Phaedo 109 C): "Ma the true earth hovers pure in the pure sky, where the stars are; and this sky, most of those who are accustomed to talk of these things, call it ether".
But how, most people will ask, bewildered; would the earth be in the sky? It is therefore quite evident (although philologists are used to ignore it when they come across passages of ancient texts that challenge the maxims of common experience and logic) that by "earth" Plato means something other than "earth" that we all we have in mind and that it can be defined as a "component of space". When Plato wants to talk about space, and the four elements that compose it (air, water, earth and fire) he uses a precise term (usually translated as "receptacle") which is Xώρα (chòra), and which is relegated to non-being , in mere becoming. It is true that Plato himself defines her as "mother" (μήτηρ = meter), but the definition here has a vulgar and negative meaning (we could draw a parallel with the opposition between the two Aphrodites, Pandemia and Urania), as the Xώρα is only the substratum of the forms. The "true earth" is actually found in heaven.
And what is this "true earth", if not the ecliptic, the ideal plane passing through the four cardinal points of the year, the two equinoxes and the two solstices; the "forest" populated by beasts of the zodiac? Join together the four cardinal points of the year: you will get a square (or a lozenge): here is the traditional symbol of the earth! If you have Chinese coins, with their characteristic square hole in the center, you will have a fairly clear idea of this schematism. The musical instrument of this finale harmony (name and mythical character, Armonia, on which there is no possibility now to dwell) is, of course, the sun [3].
Let us now consider the best known iconography of Cybele. She is sitting on a cubic throne, flanked by two fairs, has one arm (the cubit) extended forward, another holds a harpsichord. On his head he wears a characteristic cylindrical headdress, called polos. The whole figure of him is cosmographic. The two beasts (two lions) are the symbols of the summer solstice (Leo) and the spring equinox (Taurus, replaced by Leo for symmetry [4]. The outstretched arm and the harpsichord refer to units of measure, one spatial, the other temporal. As a note Hertha von Decend (The concept of symmetry in archaic cultures, in G. de Santillana - H. von Dechend, Sirio, Adelphi 2020, p. 98): “Rea Cybele has the ritual name of Hamma, from 'hamma' (Hebrew 'amna', Babylonian 'ammatu'), meaning 'cubit'… His children were the Δακτύλοι, i.e. the smallest Greek measure of length (about 7/10 of an inch), as well as one foot of the metric (Hercules, by the way, was one of the Δακτύλοι)” [5].
Il harpsichord instead it gives a temporal measure; time in fact presides over the harmonic intervals. The polos is a symbol not only of the axis of the ecliptic, but, by extension, of the sky itself (polos = pole, axis): "According to Martine De Wailly, the polos, whose meaning is axis (Plat., Tim. 40 c, Artist., Kos. 392 a, 2) would be nothing more than a continuation of the cylindrical shape previously adopted for the figure of the goddess oriental mother, which was originally represented aniconically in the form of a pole or column, symbolizing the central axis, around which all the forces of the universe rotate " (LAS Höricht, The figured terracottas of Cuma from the National Archaeological Museum of Naples, Ed. Bretschneider's herm, p. 59, note 12).
At this point, to go to the heart of the essence of the divine, and expose its "numerological" nature, we just have to dissect the very close but unsuspected relationship between what is "mother"And what is"measure". The closest allotrope of Cybele is obviously Sale (H. von Dechend attests the full name of Ρέα Κυβέλη), but Rea “In the guise of Earth, it must be understood correctly in the way of the gods Pythagorici, that is, as the ideal plane of the ecliptic " (A. Box, At the roots of the cosmic tree, Lulu 2018, p. 15 note 17). The red thread of genealogies and mythical epiclesis leads us, through the mouth of the Orphics, to the figure of Demeter: "When he gave the world Zeus, Rhea became Demeter" (fr. 145 Kern); “Rea, formerly also called Demeter"(Fr. 58 Kern) [6].
Demeter, which is also called Mother (Herodotus, Stories, viii, 65) [7], it actually is Groan, from Ge-Meter: Mother Earth, but we can say, anticipating things, that it is also for this very reason Ge-Metron: Measurement of the Earth (see γεω-μέτρης / μετρία = geometer / geometry). We do not venture such an assimilation on the phonetic approximation, but we rely on the data provided by linguistics and etymologies: under μέτρον (measure, but also means of measuring, pole [8] il Greek Italian Vocabulary by L. Rocci, ed. 1998, refers to the word for comparison μῆτις [9] = wisdom, caution, but also drawing, and personified in Μῆτις, Meti, the daughter of Oceano [10] who, among other things, aided Zeus in making Kronos vomit his own children. She also passed to be the first wife of Zeus and that she had been swallowed by him when she learned the oracle according to which, if Meti had given birth, the son would have ousted Zeus, just as Zeus had done with Kronos. When he swallowed her, Zeus gave birth Athena. It would, therefore, in turn be one Great Mother. The figure of Meti can certainly be assimilated to that of Themes (Themis): if Meti is Wisdom, Temi is in fact Justice. Temi, moreover, passes to be the second wife of Zeus after Meti.
Jean Richer (Sacred geography of the Greek world, Rusconi, 1989, p. 111), on his part, proposes, following Parke, the following derivation: Gea => Themes => Artemis / Athena [11]. Di Temi, homologous of dike, we have reconstructed, in our major work, the cosmological identity as the "equinoctial colure"(Dike instead would be the solstitial coluro) [12]. The equinoctial coluro and the solstitial coluro ("coluro", from κόλος - οὐρά = docked tail, as they are only half visible on the horizon) are the two maximum circles of the celestial sphere passing through the poles of the equator, as well as the fundamental points of the ecliptic, which are, respectively, the equinoctial points and the solstitial points). It seems clear that we are faced with unit of measure, or rather a space-time coordinates. More temporal than spatial, indeed, insofar as what is visible is translatable (Platonically, we would say) on the ideal plane into what is chronological, and therefore numerological, since theandare of time proceeds according to the number. It is not said, perhaps, in a famous passage of the Timaeus, that il time it's a'mobile image of eternity that proceeds according to the number?
Rea Cybele, and those that are, so to speak, the half epiclesis (the coluri, in effect, divide the ecliptic into four segments, one for each of the seasons), Dike and Temi / Meti, therefore make up the structure of the ecliptic, which George de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend define "scary time machine". Frightening in that it "goes", ceaselessly grinding worlds, taking away, conceding, limiting, like a cosmic executioner. Note that we have already reported in our major work, it seems that the primordial deities embodying the concepts of fate, necessity, time, justice (Erinni, Moire, Ananke, Dike, Temi, Ore, etc.) must all be female entities.
The coluri, assimilated to pillars, or columns, therefore return to the primordial symbology of Cybele. The symbolism of the pillar can also be found in that solar god that J. Richer defines, in no uncertain terms, "guardian of the doors and streets of the solstices", that is Apollo Agyieos (or Agyeus). According to Richer (Sacred geography cit., pp. 123 - 124): “It is in Tegea that it seems to have had greater importance: here, according to Pausanias, it was represented four times, since each tribe of Tegea had erected a statue for him. Now, Tegea is situated on the solstitial line, and Apollo Agyeus is'the guardian of the gates and streets of the solstices'. The four statues that the traveler saw refer, we believe, to a division that follows the four cardinal points ... An ancient idol of Lacedaemonian represented Apollo with four arms and four ears, which refers to the same symbolism. Pausanias (III, 29, 9) also saw in Sparta seven columns representing the seven planets ".
It is not difficult to compare this Apollo Agyeus to Janus, it as well lord of the solstitial gates (port = lat. ianua = Sanskrit. yāna = rad. “I” = “to go”). In short, the meaning of "measurement" and, consequently, of "creation" is inherent in the name of the Mother: "To put order means to measure; to measure is to create; in archaic times we do not find any other conception of 'creation' and, if we do not keep in mind that 'create' means 'to measure', we cannot understand any of the so-called 'creation myths' " (H. von Dechend, The concept of symmetry cit., p. 89). The pillar (allotrope of the mountain or of the stone) on the plane of geometric abstraction finally becomes a square, or in any case a rectangle. This geometric pattern is consistently followed even in arrangement of temples; writes J. Richer (Sacred geography cit., p. 110):
“We research what geographical links can exist between the great Greek sanctuaries of Demeter and Delphi. We first point out the existence of the parallels Licosura-Ermione and Delfi-Ptoo. It is about places where the Earth was the object of a particular cult. We know of the existence of a Sanctuary of Demeter in Ermione and of the location of that of the three goddesses in Licosura as well as that of Demeter near Mount Ptoo. In Delphi as on Mount Ptoo, one encounters the association of the cult of the Earth with that of Apollo. But on Mount Ptoo the two sanctuaries are located on both sides of the same valley, not far from each other. Numerous female-type terracottas from the XNUMXth and XNUMXth centuries have been found in the excavations of the sanctuary of Demeter. On the other hand, it is probable that the great sanctuary of Demeter of the Thermopylae of Antela was located at the point where the extended Licosura-Delphi line cuts the coast, that is to say towards Nicaea. If we trace the Licosura-Delphi and Ermione-Eleusis lines (it seems hardly necessary to recall the importance of the cult of Demeter in Eleusis [13]), we obtain a geometric figure which is a perfect parallelogram. Now, the square and the regular quadrilaterals generally have a symbolic relationship with the Earth. The fourth vertex of the figure is none other than Mount Olympus of Euboea, located on the line of the Earth ".
The Mother is mother precisely because it is metro, measure. Along the inexorable path (Ṛta / Dike / Tao) of the ecliptic the order of time is established and all things are created, that is, measured:
“Until we get the idea of this κόσμος e the Pythagorean formula 'things are numbers', we will have little chance of grasping the plot of any ancient culture, and not just those - such as Chinese - known for their 'numerology' (also called 'universism'). This lack of understanding on the part of contemporary scholars has been the direct result of an obsession with 'progress' and 'evolution'. It is not otherwise explained how modern scientists can disagree with Pythagoras, whom - according to Proclus - conceived the number as the intelligible order of the universe (νοητός διάκοσμος), which is identical to the νοῡς, while he conceived the soul as having the task of assigning names to things. The νοῡς had the numbers, i νοερά εἵδη, but the soul imitated the νοῡς assigning names. Names, said Pythagoras, are nothing but the images of those purely intellectual forms and therefore have nothing original in themselves, but only a certain resemblance; resemblance not with things, but with images, the εἵδη. If the names are nothing but similarities or images of the numbers, attributed by the soul, then it is our poor soul that obviously says 'Anu', even worse: that gives him an attribute (a title, a distinctive sign) by calling 'he' god of the sky; the mind would have called 'he' One, or Sixty, or the Celestial Equator "[14].
Note:
[1] Thus Tito Livio reports a passage from the poem taken from the Sibillini Books: "Si mater Idaea in Pessinunte Romam advecta foret".
[2] In the very name of Aditi the concept of non-duality, therefore of continuity: the ecliptic is the one who "goes", incessantly. The twelve Adityas, solar ones, cannot but be related to the zodiacal signs that lie on the ecliptic.
[3] If the Sun is a measuring instrument, another, that walking likewise on the ecliptic, but during the night, it is the Moon. At this point we can try a juxtaposition between mother, measure, metis-prudence and what constitutes the intellectual faculty of reflection, that is, the mind. We know that among the Germanic peoples the name of the moon contains the radical MN-: ingl. moon, German Moon, Swedish. the moon. In the Romance languages we do not find, as evident, an immediate homologue, but the phonetic assonance and conceptual proximity lead us towards the word month, through the Latin. In Latin, the name of the lunar month is monthly. Here is a first connection established. The monthly it can rightly be defined as a “segment of the year”. Among other things, it seems that the lunar year was the first type of year calculated: a year of about 360 days, approximated by excess in imitation of the circle (and here the three Moiras of the Platonic myth of Er come to mind, which according to Orphism are "the parts of the moon"). The great Earth mothers that we have met in our study so far are always associated, in a certain way, with the moon and the lunar world. This would be another aspect of their ability to create, that is, measurement, this time measured with the instrument of the moon. Indeed, if possible, it is above all in relation to the moon that the concept of measurement comes more directly to the surface, as the term monthly is directly related to mens (mind / reflexive faculty, to be associated with the Greek μῆτις = prudence / wisdom, which is in turn related, as seen, to μέτρον = measure / instrument of measurement, and therefore, ultimately, to measured = measure / quantity, Latin equivalent of μέτρον). We return as in a circle to the Germanic languages: ingl. Mon, German man, Swedish. Mon (man / he who is endowed with mens, but also pay attention to the feminine term manus = hand, the one that serves to count). It is surprising that the so-called early legislators bear in their name a reminder that is at the same time mental e lunar (after all, doesn't the term "norm", still in Italian, designate, at the same time, the measure and the law?): Menes in Egypt, Minos in Crete, Manu in India, Mane (who was a Heraclid and father of a certain Acts) in Phrygia. But to stay at the mother, here we run into mother (see also German mother, Swedish. mor). The moon, another aspect of mother earth, to which it is moreover closer, is therefore in turn μέτρον, measure, or again, an instrument of measurement. Moreover, the black stone of Cybele was set in a silver statue; the same black stone of the Ka'ba is still found set in a silver frame: silver is the metal traditionally associated with the moon! All this glottological examination is directly linked to the admonition of H. von Dechend (see note 14) not to be sidetracked by the attributes that the soul tends to give to objects: things are much more interconnected with each other, they are not disconnected monads , as long as we go down just below the semantic substratum of them, where the intelligible core of the ideas, wrapped in names.
We would like to make a footnote, starting from the German term for the moon (which is also masculine), Moon. It is very similar, at least phonetically, to the word world (lat. world). As we pointed out in our major work, the word world (which today has almost completely lost its meaning) originally designates "The complex of the Sun, the Moon and the stars": in Greek it is the kosmos. In the Norse tradition, the mysterious character called Mundilföri (lit. "the one who turns the handle") is accounted for, the one of whom it is only said that "he was the father of the Sun and the Moon". G. de Santillana and H. von Dechend dedicated a few pages to it, linking the root Mouth- and mundar = hand (term present for example in ancient English) but also in Latin world. They do not go further, even if they overshadow the suspicion of his identity. But isn't he Mundus-for / fer: he who, in a certain way, "leads the world"? If the sun and the moon are the instruments played to bring about cosmic harmony, who will be the one who plays them? Perhaps a character who is higher than all, the supreme planet, the seventh, Kronos-Saturn?
[4] Thus sings the Orphic hymn to the Mother of the Gods: "Mother of the immortal gods, honored by the gods, nurse of all, come here, regulating goddess, lady, to the prayers addressed to you, having yoked the bull-killing lions to the swift running chariot, you who hold the glorious, holy, many-named scepter of heaven, who have the throne in the center of the cosmos, whereby you yourself own the earth by supplying sweet food to mortals. From you the lineage of immortals and mortals was generated, the rivers are always dominated by you and the whole sea, you are called Estia; they call you giver of happiness, because you give mortals gifts of every kind, come to the rite, oh lady, you who rejoice in the eardrums, who tame everything, Phrygia, savior, wife of Kronos, daughter of Uranus, ancient, nurturer of life, lover of madness: Come joyful, rejoicing in pious deeds ”.
[5] Of the Δακτύλοι (Dactyls) they were said to have leapt from the earth when Rhea, giving birth to Zeus, pressed her fingers to the ground to alleviate the pain of labor. They were five females, from Rhea's left hand, and five males, from her right hand. They lived in Phrygia on Mount Ida; the males were blacksmiths and were reputed to have discovered iron, while the females, who settled in Samothrace, were experts in magic and were reputed to have initiated Orpheus into the mysteries of the Goddess. Their names were an initiatory secret, but a tradition of Elis has handed them down: Heracles, Peonio, Epimede, Giasio and Acesida. Some argued that the Dactyls were the Curetes who protected the infant Zeus in Crete with their deafening noises. In Life of Pythagoras, written by Porphyry, it is said that Pythagoras too was initiated by the Dactyls of Mount Ida. This is the explanation of R. Graves (The Greek myths, 53): “The Dactyls personify the fingers and the Olympic competition announced by Heracles is a childish fable illustrated by the game of drumming the fingers (thumb excluded) on the table: it is always the index that wins the competition. But the secret Orphic doctrinal patrimony was based on a sequence of magical trees, each of which corresponded to a certain articulation of the fingers in the sign language, and a certain letter in the Orphic alphabet-calendar, which apparently was of Phrygian origin. To the wild olive corresponds the upper joint of the thumb, which was supposed to be the seat of virility and was therefore called Heracles. The middle finger corresponds to Epimedes; the ring finger - doctor finger - corresponds to Jasio. In Western palmistry, Epimedes was replaced by Saturn and Jasio by Apollo, the healing god. The index corresponds to Jupiter or Zeus, who won the race. The little finger, which corresponds to Mercury or Hermes, is the magic finger. In primitive Europe, metalworking was associated with magical practices: this is why the blacksmiths attributed the fingers of the right hand to their Dactyls, leaving the left to the witches ". We therefore glimpse the five planets in the symbolism of the fingers, accompanied by references to metals, which, as is well known, are attributed to the planets. Of the middle finger, that of Saturn, the popular "negativity" is still known, so to speak. For some hints at the hand as a measuring instrument, cf. note 3.
[6] Orphism retained a tradition that Zeus and his mother Rhea united in the form of snakes. He tied her up "With the so-called knot of Heracles" and the caduceus of Hermes is the symbol of the modality of union. It is easy to see in this tangle of snake-circles the X pattern of the celestial equator (Zeus) and the ecliptic (Rea). It remains to understand what this "Heracles knot" is, but if the meaning we draw is correct, it should symbolize the point (or rather the two points) at which the equator and the ecliptic are confuse or if intertwine: the two equinoctial points. J. Richer gave ample explanation of the solar nature of Heracles (who is however also one of the Dactyls).
[7] ή Μήτηρ: the great mother of the Gods, id est Rea, Cybele; tal. Demetra, in L. Rocci, Greek Italian Vocabulary, HE Dante Alighieri, 1998.
[8] We wonder if, in this sense, μέτρον is not identifiable with i me (The measures Sumerian) and the maat Egyptian, which (see H. von Dechend, The concept of symmetry cit., p. 96) according to some Egyptologists it would originally be a reed and, according to Champollion, it would represent, instead, more directly, the Egyptian cubit. In any case, the idea of “measurement”, of “exact measurement” is the one that applies.
[9] See also μετά / μέτ-ειμι = in between, between/I'm between, in between, but also I go, I follow, I keep behind, I chase. “The 'law' under which these five fundamental processes move [five powerful forces in perpetual circular motion that embody the motions of the five planets, which, as known, move within 47 degrees of the ecliptic] it is the Tao, that is, the 'Way' ('the path'). If we investigate in depth the Greek words, and in particular on what in Greek is 'element', that is στοιχεῖον, we discover very similar meanings, since στοιχεῖον it is but the line segment measured in steps, the measured length of the gnomon's shadow; and the verb στοιχειοῦν, 'to found', means 'to fix the layout' of a building by measuring it in steps; hence the twelve constellations of the Zodiac are said στοιχεῖα, and στοιχειωματικός he is said to be the one who makes horoscopes; last but not least, στοιχεῖον is the letter. This in turn agrees perfectly with the conception of the Hebrew grammarians, according to which vowels and tones move in a circle; and this, among other things, explains why vowels are not written in Semitic languages: vowels correspond to the planets and cannot be fixed on paper like consonants, which instead represent their zodiacal stations [the theory of a Phoenician alphabet modeled on the lunar tasks and on the galactic constellations was proposed by G. Sermonti: The alphabet comes down from the stars. On the origin of writing, Mimesis 2009]. The other Greek word of great importance is Δὶκƞ, which has the same connotation as Tao. Δὶκƞ it is 'the life path of each natural being and also the regular course of the universe'. This according to Jane Harrison, while Cornford firmly declares that: 'Δὶκƞ means path ', and later writes:' The idea of Δὶκƞ it looks very similar to the Chinese one of Tao. Cornford also realized that the Indian Ṛta and the Iranian Aša express precisely the same conception: 'The processes, whose perpetual identity or regular recurrence gives rise to the representation of the Order, obey Ṛta or their manifestation is Ṛta ... l 'year is the path of Ṛta and so on'. However the etymology of the Greek Δὶκƞ it has nothing to do with Ṛta, but is linked to the Sanskrit diṥā: direction, cardinal point. But neither Ṛta nor Aša and neither Δὶκƞ and Tao can be considered our oldest 'testimonies'. Historically, the Egyptian 'maat', the Sumerian 'me', the Akkadian 'parṣu' are much older ”. Concorde J. Richer (pp. 325 - 326): “Just refer to the pages that Jane Ellen Harrison dedicated to Dike, in her book entitled 'Themis' and, in particular, to Dike's association with the celestial wheel. Dike, we read in her work, is the way, the order of the universe, the Tao. We quote some lines, essential to our purpose: 'Dike […] is the way of life of every natural being, plant, animal, man. It is also the way ... which manifests itself with the seasons, in the life and death of vegetation, and when we come to see that these depend on celestial bodies, Dike manifests itself in the modifications of the birth and setting of the constellations, in the growth and in the waning of the moon, in the daily and annual course of the sun '". Moreover, Richer continues: “Dike is associated with Capricorn, with pole, with the winter solstice, it is the wheel, the way, it shows the path that leads to the door of the gods”. We do not want illustrious metaphysicians and ontologists like the late Emanuele Severino, the value of whose speculative efforts remains intact, but the concepts they have long written about derive their origin from the strict cosmology.
[10] About Oceano (Okeanos), then degraded to a mere sea demon, we must always remember what the Papyrus of Derveni (DP COL. XXIII): τοἶς δέ ὀρθὦς γινὤσκουσιν / εὔδηλον ὄτι "Ωκεανός" ἐστιν ὁ ἀήρ = for those who have the right knowledge / it is absolutely clear that "Ocean" is the sky. We should meditate for a long time on how few have this "right knowledge".
[11] It has been said about Athena, daughter of Meti and Zeus. On Artemis, whose name contains that of Themes, and is related to the Ursa Major, J. Richer (Sacred geography cit., pp. 103 - 104) wrote illuminating things: "In Braurone, as well as in Athens, there was the very curious rite ofἄρκτευσις o ἀρκτεία. Every five years, when the time of the Brauronia returned, the girls, or rather some girls, dressed in saffron-colored garments, were brought to the goddess, and were consecrated for a luster to Artemis, with the name of bears (ἄρκτος)… An effort of reflection allows us to rediscover the origin of the very name of Artemis. This name is composed of 'Arth', which stands for ἄρκτος, And θέμις, which is the personification of a 'great force', the order established by the gods (whose name is from the Sanskrit dharma family). Artemis is therefore the Ruler of the law of the Bear, which is confused with the very order of heaven ". The Ursa Major is, together with the Ursa Minor (Cynosure = the dog's tail), precisely one of the Hands of Rhea: this is how, in fact, the Pythagoreans strangely called the two Bears (Porphyry, Life of Pythagoras, 41). G. de Santillana (Prologue to Parmenidesin Ancient fate and modern fate, Adelphi 2012, pp. 134 - 135) explained the epithet as the two bears are like the motionless handles of the ecliptic that make the sky turn.
[12] A. Box, At the roots of the cosmic tree. Essay on Archaic Cosmo-Theology, Lulu 2018, pp. 169 - 170.
[13] Just remember the passage from Herodotus already quoted (Stories, VIII, 65), which illustrates a scene of the procession of the initiates to the mysteries of Demeter and Kore coming from Eleusis and the loud cries raised in honor of Iacchus (a name, moreover, openly solar and to be compared with what, according to the oracle of Claro, was the secret name of the sun: Iao).
[14] H. von Dechend, The concept of symmetry cit., pp. 98 - 99.
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