The Hero with a Thousand Faces
Page 20
Up you go to the first level,
Up you go to the second level,
Up you go to the third level,
Up you go to the fourth level,
Up you go to the fifth level,
Up you go to the sixth level,
Up you go to the seventh level,
Up you go to the eighth level,
Up you go to the ninth level,
Up you go to the tenth level!
Maui turned over and over in the air and started to come down again, and he fell right beside Mahu-ika; then Maui said, “You’re having all the fun!”
“Why indeed!” Mahu-ika exclaimed. “Do you imagine you can send a whale flying up into the air?”
“I can try!” Maui answered.
So Maui took hold of Mahu-ika and tossed him up, chanting: “Tossing, tossing — up you go!”
Up flew Mahu-ika, and now Maui chanted this spell:
Up you go to the first level,
Up you go to the second level,
Up you go to the third level,
Up you go to the fourth level,
Up you go to the fifth level,
Up you go to the sixth level,
Up you go to the seventh level,
Up you go to the eighth level,
Up you go to the ninth level,
Up you go — way up in the air!
Mahu-ika turned over and over in the air and commenced to fall back; and when he had nearly reached the ground Maui called out these magic words: “That man up there — may he fall right on his head!”
Mahu-ika fell down; his neck was completely telescoped together, and so Mahu-ika died.
At once the hero Maui took hold of the giant Mahu-ika’s head and cut it off, then he possessed himself of the treasure of the flame, which he bestowed upon the world.[158]
The greatest tale of the elixir quest in the Mesopotamian, pre-biblical tradition is that of Gilgamesh, a legendary king of the Sumerian city of Erech, who set forth to attain the watercress of immortality, the plant “Never Grow Old.” After he had passed safely the lions that guard the foothills and the scorpion men who watch the heaven-supporting mountains, he came, amidst the mountains, to a paradise garden of flowers, fruits, and precious stones. Pressing on, he arrived at the sea that surrounds the world. In a cave beside the waters dwelt a manifestation of the Goddess Ishtar, Siduri-Sabitu, and this woman, closely veiled, closed the gates against him. But when he told her his tale, she admitted him to her presence and advised him not to pursue his quest, but to learn and be content with the mortal joys of life:
Gilgamesh, why dost thou run about this way?
The life that thou art seeking, thou wilt never find.
When the gods created man,
they put death upon mankind,
and held life in their own hands.
Fill thy belly, Gilgamesh;
day and night enjoy thyself;
prepare each day some pleasant occasion.
Day and night be frolicsome and gay;
let thy clothes be handsome,
thy head shampooed, thy body bathed.
Regard the little one who takes thy hand.
Let thy wife be happy against thy bosom.
This passage, missing from the standard Assyrian edition of the legend, appears in a much earlier Babylonian fragmentary text.[159] It has been frequently remarked that the advice of the sibyl is hedonistic, but it should be noted also that the passage represents an initiatory test, not the moral philosophy of the ancient Babylonians. As in India, centuries later, when a student approaches a teacher to ask the secret of immortal life, he is first put off with a description of the joys of the mortal.[160] Only if he persists is he admitted to the next initiation.
But when Gilgamesh persisted, Siduri-Sabitu gave him permission to pass and apprised him of the dangers of the way.
The woman instructed him to seek the ferryman Ursanapi, whom he found chopping wood in the forest and guarded by a group of attendants. Gilgamesh shattered these attendants (they were called “those who rejoice to live,” “those of stone”) and the ferryman consented to convey him across the waters of death. It was a voyage of one and one-half months. The passenger was warned not to touch the waters.
Now the far land that they were approaching was the residence of Utnapishtim, the hero of the primordial deluge,* here abiding with his wife in immortal peace. From afar Utnapishtim spied the approaching little craft alone on the endless waters, and he wondered in his heart:
Why are “those of stone” of the boat shattered,
And someone who is not of my service sailing in the boat?
That one who is coming: is he not a man?
Gilgamesh, on landing, had to listen to the patriarch’s long recitation of the story of the deluge. Then Utnapishtim bid his visitor sleep, and he slept for six days. Utnapishtim had his wife bake seven loaves and place them by the head of Gilgamesh as he lay asleep beside the boat. And Utnapishtim touched Gilgamesh, and he awoke, and the host ordered the ferryman Ursanapi to give the guest a bath in a certain pool and then fresh garments. Following that, Utnapishtim announced to Gilgamesh the secret of the plant.
Gilgamesh, something secret I will disclose to thee,
and give thee thine instruction:
That plant is like a brier in the field;
its thorn, like that of the rose, will pierce thy hand.
But if thy hand attain to that plant,
thou wilt return to thy native land.
Figure 42. The Branch of Immortal Life (alabaster wall panel, Assyria, c. 885–860 b.c.)
Though the hero was warned against touching these waters on the journey out, he now can enter them with impunity. This is a measure of the power gained through his visit with the old Lord and Lady of the Everlasting Island. Utnapishtim-Noah, the flood hero, is an archetypal father figure; his island, the World Navel, is a prefigurement of the later Greco-Roman “Islands of the Blessed.”
The plant was growing at the bottom of the cosmic sea.
Ursanapi ferried the hero out again into the waters. Gilgamesh tied stones to his feet and plunged. Down he rushed, beyond every bound of endurance, while the ferryman remained in the boat. And when the diver had reached the bottom of the bottomless sea, he plucked the plant, though it mutilated his hand, cut off the stones, and made again for the surface. When he broke the surface and the ferryman had hauled him back into the boat, he announced in triumph:
Ursanapi, this plant is the one...
By which Man may attain to full vigor.
I will bring it back to Erech of the sheep-pens....
Its name is: “In his age, Man becomes young again.”
I will eat of it and return to the condition of my youth.
They proceeded across the sea. When they had landed, Gilgamesh bathed in a cool water-hole and lay down to rest. But while he slept, a serpent smelled the wonderful perfume of the plant, darted forth, and carried it away. Eating it, the snake immediately gained the power of sloughing its skin, and so renewed its youth. But Gilgamesh, when he awoke, sat down and wept, “and the tears ran down the wall of his nose.”[161]
To this very day, the possibility of physical immortality charms the heart of man. The Utopian play by Bernard Shaw, Back to Methuselah, produced in 1921, converted the theme into a modern sociobiological parable. Four hundred years earlier the more literal-minded Juan Ponce de León discovered Florida in a search for the land of “Bimini,” where he had expected to find the fountain of youth. While centuries before and far away, the Chinese philosopher Ko Hung spent the latter years of a long lifetime preparing pills of immortality. “Take three pounds of genuine cinnabar,” Ko Hung wrote,
and one pound of white honey. Mix them. Dry the mixture in the sun. Then roast it over a fire until it can be shaped into pills. Take ten pills the size of a hemp seed every morning. Inside of a year, white hair will turn black, decayed teeth will grow again, and the body will become sleek and glistening. If an o
ld man takes this medicine for a long period of time, he will develop into a young man. The one who takes it constantly will enjoy eternal life, and will not die.[162]
A friend one day arrived to pay a visit to the solitary experimenter and philosopher, but all he found were Ko Hung’s empty clothes. The old man was gone; he had passed into the realm of the immortals.[163]
Figure 43. Bodhisattva (carved stone, Cambodia, twelfth century a.d.)
The research for physical immortality proceeds from a misunderstanding of the traditional teaching. On the contrary, the basic problem is: to enlarge the pupil of the eye, so that the body with its attendant personality will no longer obstruct the view. Immortality is then experienced as a present fact: “It is here! It is here!”[164]
All things are in process, rising and returning. Plants come to blossom, but only to return to the root. Returning to the root is like seeking tranquility. Seeking tranquility is like moving toward destiny. To move toward destiny is like eternity. To know eternity is enlightenment, and not to recognize eternity brings disorder and evil.
Knowing eternity makes one comprehensive; comprehension makes one broadminded; breadth of vision brings nobility; nobility is like heaven.
The heavenly is like Tao. Tao is the Eternal. The decay of the body is not to be feared.[165]
The Japanese have a proverb: “The gods only laugh when men pray to them for wealth.” The boon bestowed on the worshiper is always scaled to his stature and to the nature of his dominant desire: the boon is simply a symbol of life energy stepped down to the requirements of a certain specific case. The irony, of course, lies in the fact that, whereas the hero who has won the favor of the god may beg for the boon of perfect illumination, what he generally seeks are longer years to live, weapons with which to slay his neighbor, or the health of his child.
The Greeks tell of King Midas, who had the luck to win from Bacchus the offer of whatsoever boon he might desire. He asked that everything he touched should be turned to gold. When he went his way, he plucked, experimentally, the twig of an oak tree and it was immediately gold; he took up a stone, it had turned to gold; an apple was a golden nugget in his hand. Ecstatic, he ordered prepared a magnificent feast to celebrate the miracle. But when he sat down and set his fingers to the roast, it was transmuted; at his lips the wine became liquid gold. And when his little daughter, whom he loved beyond anything on earth, came to console him in his misery, she became, the moment he embraced her, a pretty golden statue.
The agony of breaking through personal limitations is the agony of spiritual growth. Art, literature, myth and cult, philosophy, and ascetic disciplines are instruments to help the individual past his limiting horizons into spheres of ever-expanding realization. As he crosses threshold after threshold, conquering dragon after dragon, the stature of the divinity that he summons to his highest wish increases, until it subsumes the cosmos. Finally, the mind breaks the bounding sphere of the cosmos to a realization transcending all experiences of form — all symbolizations, all divinities: a realization of the ineluctable void.
So it is that when Dante had taken the last step in his spiritual adventure, and came before the ultimate symbolic vision of the Triune God in the Celestial Rose, he had still one more illumination to experience, even beyond the forms of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. “Bernard,” he writes, “made a sign to me, and smiled, that I should look upward; but I was already, of myself, such as he wished; for my sight, becoming pure, was entering more and more, through the radiance of the lofty Light which in Itself is true. Thenceforward my vision was greater than our speech, which yields to such a sight, and the memory yields to such excess.”[166]
“There goes neither the eye, nor speech, nor the mind: we know It not; nor do we see how to teach one about It. Different It is from all that are known, and It is beyond the unknown as well.”[167]
This is the highest and ultimate crucifixion, not only of the hero, but of his god as well. Here the Son and the Father alike are annihilated — as personality-masks over the unnamed. For just as the figments of a dream derive from the life energy of one dreamer, representing only fluid splitting and complications of that single force, so do all the forms of all the worlds, whether terrestrial or divine, reflect the universal force of a single inscrutable mystery: the power that constructs the atom and controls the orbits of the stars.
That font of life is the core of the individual, and within himself he will find it — if he can tear the coverings away. The pagan Germanic divinity Othin (Wotan) gave an eye to split the veil of light into the knowledge of this infinite dark, and then underwent for it the passion of a crucifixion:
I ween that I hung on the windy tree,
Hung there for nights full nine;
With the spear I was wounded, and offered I was
To Othin, myself to myself,
On the tree that none may ever know
What root beneath it runs.[168]
The Buddha’s victory beneath the Bo Tree is the classic Oriental example of this deed. With the sword of his mind he pierced the bubble of the universe — and it shattered into nought. The whole world of natural experience, as well as the continents, heavens, and hells of traditional religious belief, exploded — together with their gods and demons. But the miracle of miracles was that though all exploded, all was nevertheless thereby renewed, revivified, and made glorious with the effulgence of true being. Indeed, the gods of the redeemed heavens raised their voices in harmonious acclaim of the man-hero who had penetrated beyond them to the void that was their life and source:
Flags and banners erected on the eastern rim of the world let their streamers fly to the western rim of the world; likewise those erected on the western rim of the world, to the eastern rim of the world; those erected on the northern rim of the world, to the southern rim of the world; and those erected on the southern rim of the world, to the northern rim of the world; while those erected on the level of the earth let theirs fly until they beat against the Brahma-world; and those of the Brahma-world let theirs hang down to the level of the earth. Throughout the ten thousand worlds the flowering trees bloomed; the fruit trees were weighted down by the burden of their fruit; trunk-lotuses bloomed on the trunks of trees; branch-lotuses on the branches of trees; vine-lotuses on the vines; hanging-lotuses in the sky; and stalk-lotuses burst through the rocks and came up by sevens. The system of ten thousand worlds was like a bouquet of flowers sent whirling through the air, or like a thick carpet of flowers; in the intermundane spaces the eight-thousand-league-long hells, which not even the light of seven suns had formerly been able to illumine, were now flooded with radiance; the eighty-four-thousand-league-deep ocean became sweet to the taste; the rivers checked their flowing; the blind from birth received their sight; the deaf from birth their hearing; the crippled from birth the use of their limbs; and the bonds and fetters of captives broke and fell off.[169]
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Footnotes
* Swedenborg’s own comment on this dream was as follows: “Dragons of this kind, which do not reveal themselves as dragons until one sees their wings, symbolize false love. I am just now writing on this subject” (Ježower, Das Buch der Träume, p. 490).
* “The problem is not new,” writes Dr. C.G. Jung, “for all ages before us have believed in gods in some form or other. Only an unparalleled impoverishment of symbolism could enable us to rediscover the gods as psychic factors, that is, as archetypes of the unconscious....Heaven has become for us the cosmic space of the physicists, and the divine empyrean a fair memory of things that once were. But ‘the heart glows,’ and a secret unrest gnaws at the roots of our being.” (Jung, “Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious,” par. 50.)
* Or, as James Joyce has phrased it: “equals of opposites, evolved by a one-same power of nature or of spirit, as the sole condition and means of its himundher manifestation and polarised for reunion by the symphysis of their antipathies” (Joyce, Finnegans Wake, p. 92).
* [This succub
us is the spirit of the Queen of Sheba: Ah! Beautiful hermitess, beautiful hermitess!...If you set your finger against my flesh, it would be as a strand of fire through thy veins. The possession of the least part of my body should fill thee with a joy more vehement than an empire’s conquest. Bring on thy lips.... — Ed.]
* Or “interego” (see note above).
* Compare the numerous thresholds crossed by Inanna.
* See above.
* Avalokita (Sanskrit) = “looking down,” but also, “seen”; iśvara = “Lord”; hence, both “The Lord Looking Down [in Pity],” and “The Lord Seen [Within]” (a and i combine into e in Sanskrit: hence Avalokiteśvara). See W. Y. Evans-Wentz, Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines (London: Oxford University Press, 1935), p. 233, note 2.
* This is the Wall of Paradise; see above, here and also here. We are now inside. Hsi Wang Mu is the feminine aspect of the Lord who walks in the Garden, who created man in his own image, male and female (Book of Genesis, 1:27).
* “And the Word was made flesh”; verse of the Angelus, celebrating the conception of Jesus in Mary’s womb.
* Babylonian prototype of the biblical Noah.
* “Naturally,” writes Dr. Stekel, “‘to be dead’ here means ‘to be alive.’ She begins to live and the officer ‘lives’ with her. They die together. This throws a glaring light on the popular fantasy of the double-suicide.”
It should be noted also that this dream includes the well-nigh universal mythological image of the sword bridge (the razor’s edge), which appears in the romance of Lancelot’s rescue of Queen Guinevere from the castle of King Death.
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Endnotes
[1] Apuleius, The Golden Ass (Modern Library edition), pp. 131–41.