A journey from the primordial China of the legendary rulers to the maze of the palace of Knossos to the sovereignty of Saturn, in an attempt to unravel a plot which - like a dance - turns out to be based on rules animated by a lost science of rhythm whose vestiges are manifested in diagrams cosmological information informed by the observation of the highest heaven: the circumpolar region as it must have appeared in 3000 BC, different from the current one due to the precessional cycle.
di Robert Milazzi
Article originally published in English on Caerdroia N.43/2014. Translation by Marco Maculotti.
Hermann Kern opens his catalog of labirinti historians from all over the world β entitled Through the Labyrinth. Designs and Meanings over 5,000 years β with some considerations on the history of the maze as a concept:
We do not know how the original concept of the labyrinth, probably Minoan, was born. In any case, it was more concrete than the Greek references cited indicate, because the definition of "remarkable (stone) structure" sounds derivative and vaguely metaphorical. It is conceivable that the name of a certain structure attributed to Daedalus became a generic designation β as happened, for example, with the proper name βCaesar,β which came to mean the epitome of sovereign power and rank, as reflected in the German word βKaiserβ and the Russian word βtsarβ.
[1]
Kern thinks it more likely that the primary use of the word was related to a dance, whose pattern would "crystallize" much later in permanent forms, such as graffiti, petroglyphs and - finally - built structures. However plausible it may seem, this hypothesis does not shed much light on the first meaning of this drawing and on the reasons for its established form, the one we usually refer to as Cretan o knossian. Nor does it explain why such an important "structure" as a king's palace should have the shape of a dance path.
While it is true that a Latin given name such as Caesar has come to mean "the epitome of sovereign power and rank", on the other hand we may find that the English word King and the German one King may share a common root with the word having the same meaning in the Turkic and Mongolian languages: Khan [2].
Is there any evidence that the Cretan-type labyrinth owes its shape to some earlier archetype? An appendix at the end of the first chapter of Kern's book suggests a possible relationship between the design of the labyrinth and the "magic squares" [3] made up of an odd number of squares on each side. The origin of the custom of associating magic squares of different sizes with the seven "heavens" is extremely difficult to determine, both historically and geographically. We find mention of it in the treatise De Occulta Philosophia libri tres by Cornelius Agrippa [4]. Albeit based on earlier works [5], is the first to have known a great diffusion in the western world. According to these accounts, the elements of the sequence are ordered as follows:
Regarding this order, understood from the highest to the lowest sky, it can be noted that it differs from the one traditionally used to number the seven days of the week: in this regard it is worth mentioning one of the two explanations provided by the Roman historian Cassio Dione in his monumental work Roman history:
As for the custom of referring the name of the days to the seven stars called planets, we know that it was invented by the Egyptians, but it is also practiced by all peoples. Its introduction is relatively recent: in fact the ancient Greeks, as far as I know, did not know it. Since we find it among all peoples and among the Romans themselves, who now consider it their own in a certain way, I want to speak briefly about it and say how and in what manner it was formed. I have heard that there are two explanations, not really difficult to understand, which rest on a different criterion. In fact, if one were to apply the so-called Β«tetrachordΒ» harmony, which we agree in considering the basis of music, to those stars which make up the decoration of the sky, in the order according to which each star moves, and starting from Saturn, whose circle is the farthest, and then skipping the two stars that follow, stops on the fourth, and after it, skipping two other stars, reaches the seventh, and retracing all the planets in the same way, assigned the days the names of the gods who oversee the planets, he would find that all days agree in a certain musical way with the harmony of heaven.
[6]
Tracing this double sequence reveals, surprisingly, the same logic illustrated by another cosmological diagram [7] belonging to one of the few ancient civilizations that lasted to the present day: that Chinese.
The striking feature of magic squares composed of an odd number of squares is that the arrangement of the odd numbers forms the generating pattern from which a seven-circuit Cretan-type maze can be derived. This fact becomes more evident in larger magic squares [8].
The first written evidence we have of a magic square are Chinese and concern the simplest one, the one linked to Saturn. Notably, the son of Heaven and Earth was the only god in the Latin pantheon said to have once reigned over gods and mortals alike in perpetual spring. Saturn is the god who presides over agriculture and harvest time, the king ofgolden age. This can lead us to conclude that, at least in classical antiquity, the divinity corresponding to the seventh heaven embodied the very archetype of royalty.
The study of kingship in early China reveals a close relationship with astronomy, which in turn is associated with an institution known as Ming T'ang, Hall of Illumination, of Light or, literally, Luminous Hall, where things were clarified. The character Ming (ζ) of his name is composed of the two great luminaries of the sky, the sun and the moon, placed in opposition, and is significantly applied to the room in which they were observed.
[9]
On what principles was this institution founded? Who was its founder and when was it founded?
[...] the authority of the Ming T'ang resided βin Yi of Fu Hsiβ, the first legendary ruler, whose dating is fixed by the ancient tradition around 2852 BC, and who was one of the Five Ti deified as rulers of the seasons. The Touched (literally: "The eight diagrams") attributed to him was the octagonal shape of the Yi, or astronomical "changes," for which it appears to have been invented.Β
[10]
The design of the Ming Tang was based on Touched, usually octagonal in shape, but traditional sources use to correlate it numerologically to Lo-shu, the magic square of order three. Its figurative representation recalls the shape of a turtle. The middle number is a cross made up of five connected dots. The corresponding element of the Pa-kua is the symbol yin-yang.
Marcel Granet [11] highlighted the presence of one swastika implied is in the Lo-shu than in another magic square which is its celestial counterpart. The two were engraved on wooden tablets, free to rotate around a common central axis. This tool was used for the ritual orientation of buildings.
A parallel has been considered between the meander of the swastika and the drawing of the Labyrinth (Kern, Cook):Β
Only the influence of the swastika's rectangular meanders can explain the singular fact that most of the early coin labyrinths from Knossos resemble the swastika in their rectangular shape. With this in mind, Arthur Cook may be right in regarding the swastika as a symbol of the labyrinth. Β
[12]
This is particularly noteworthy, if we keep in mind that - at least originally - the swastika it is not a symbol of the sun. Confucius says:
Governing with Numb it means to be like the North Star, which remains in place while all other stars bow towards it.
[13]
This idea is closely related to the Taoist notion of Wu Wei (literally translated as "without action"), which is not a passive attitude but - on the contrary - it is the ideal condition from which the sovereign can exercise his polar activity. The ideal ruler must be to the kingdom what the North Star is to the sky. This achievement requires the ruler to conform to the divine mandate e the loss of this conformity necessarily implies a loss of legitimacy for the ruler himself. Lo-shu it is a synthetic diagram of the Divine Commission.
American archaeologist and anthropologist Zelia Nuttal was the first academic author to support the theory of the polar origin of the svasta with empirical observations [14]. However, she associated this design with a stylization of only the two bears. This might give an idea of ββthe origin of the double meander motif in its square shape, but it might not be as satisfactory in explaining the design of the symbol yin-yang: if there was an exact match between lo swastika and yin-yang what would the colon represent? Because the latter consists of a double meander and two points instead of four points or four meanders [15]? The answer could come from an unexpected source: Bianchini's planisphere, a map of the sky from the Hellenistic era whose fragments were found in Rome during excavations on the Aventine Hill in 1705 [16].
The core of the sky map is centered in the center of a dragon, which coils around Ursa Minor on the dragon's head side and Ursa Major on the opposite side. Due to a phenomenon known as the precession of the equinoxes, the position of the North Star has changed over the millennia. The time when it was halfway between Ursa Major and Ursa Minor can be fixed at around 3000 BC, the time of Fu Hsi, the first of the three rulers to whom the Touched - according to tradition - it owes its origin. Needham was unable to find any documentary evidence to date the Lo-shu before the XNUMXst century AD [17], but β as the American sinologist John Major later noted [18] β the diagram of the five processes (Wu xing) could be derived from it. The exact correspondence between numbers and elements in their traditional association would otherwise be an extraordinary coincidence. This would allow you to backdate the Lo-shu of five centuries.
The Ming T'ang was first built according to the design of ShΓͺn Nungβ, the Divine Farmer and legendary second emperor, whose date is traditionally given between 2736 and 2705 BC, and who was the second of the Five Ti.
[19]
Shen Nung, the Divine Farmer, who taught men how to plow and basic agriculture. The Book of Lord Shang he speaks of his times as one of golden age and plenty, when he could rule without the need for a judicial system or public administration and could reign without the need for arms or armor. Sometimes he is symbolically represented with the head of an ox on a human body [20]. ShΓͺn Nung is credited with βsacrifices to predecessorsβ nei Ming Tang. The "five grains" that grew in the summer, harvested in the autumn and stored in the winter were tasted and offered to the Five Ti, the rulers of directions and seasons [21].
The Ming T'ang was the first national song center and the dances were accompanied by musical instruments. It was music that brought down spirits; and this belief, or at least this practice, has continued down to the present day, especially on the occasion of the most important sacrifices. Music has always been used to call the spirits on the occasion of the two solstice sacrifices, the equinoxes and the welcoming of the four seasons.
[22]
It is worth noting that in ancient China (since at least the XNUMXth century BC, according to Sung dynasty historians) the death of a chief was followed by a dance known as βDance of the Craneβ, and eventually the dancers could be buried alive along with the dead leader [23]. The Dance of the Crane (Greek: ΞΞ΅ΟΞ±Ξ½ΟΟ) is the same name that we find associated with the celebration of the killing of the Minotaur by Theseus, performed by young Athenian men and women, otherwise destined to be ritually sacrificed to the foreign ruler.
NOTE:
[1] Hermann Kern, Through the Labyrinth β Designs and Meanings over 5,000, Prestel publishing, 2000, I. The Fundamentals of Labyrinths: Effect, Hypotheses, Interpretations, p. 25.
[2] RenΓ© GuΓ©non, The king of the world, Gallimard, Paris 1958, chap. 6, p. 54.
[3] βA single square is divided into a pattern of smaller squares, each of which is numbered so that all lines, both horizontal and vertical, as well as diagonals, add up to the same sum.β Ibidem, P. 38.
[4] The first volume was published in Paris in 1531, while the entire series (showing the association between squares and planets) was published two years later in Cologne.
[5] For example Luca Pacioli, De Viribus quantitatis, ms code 250, University of Bologna.Β
[6] Cassius Dio, Roman history, volume I (books XXXVI-XXXVIII), Greek text and facing Italian translation: BUR, 1995. Translation by Giuseppe Norcio. Book XXXVII, chap. 18-19.
[7] The Wu xing (δΊθ‘), a tool applied to fields as diverse as geomancy, martial arts, medicine, and music. The sequence obtained by proceeding clockwise describes a "Generation" process, while the one obtained by following a star path corresponds to a "Conquest" process.Β
[8] In Kern we find only the last three squares whose sides are composed of an odd number of squares, plus the square relating to Mercury (although its side is composed of eight squares). This inclusion is due to research by Mr Lonegren, which highlighted the close similarity of the orbit of the planet Mercury seen from the Earth with the Cretan-type labyrinth path.
[9] Soothill, The Hall of Light - A Study of Early Chinese Kingship, James Clarke & Co., Cambridge, 2002, p. 8 (reprint of the 1951 Lutterworth Press edition). Β
[10] Ivi, P. 70.
[11] Granet, La pensee chinoise, Albin Michel, Paris, 1950, p. 201.
[12] Kern, op. cit., p. 33
[13] Confucius, Analecta II, i (quoted in Soothhill, p. 1).
[14] Nuttal, The Fundamental Principles of Old and New World Civilizations, Peabody Museum of American Archeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, 1900.
[15] This variant, well documented, could refer to the solstitial and equinoctial stations of a first form of the constellation Draco and the two asterisms that it envelops, as we shall see.
[16] Egyptian style astrological world map, detail of engraving from L'Origine de tous les cultes, ou religion universelle by Charles-François Dupuis, 1795, vol. I, p. 180
[17] Needham, Science and Civilization in China, vol. 3, Cambridge University Press, 1959, p. 55-62.
[18] Major, The Five Phases, Magic Squares and Schematic Cosmography, pp. 133-166 in Explorations in Early Chinese Cosmology, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Studies, Vol. 50.2, 1984.Β
[19] Soothill, p. 70.
[20] Ibid.
[21] Ivi, p. 134-135, 161.
[22] Ivi, P. 207.
[23] Granet, Danses et legendes de la Chine ancienne, Les Presses universitaires de France, 1926, part I, chap. 3.
