The White Goddess

by Robert Graves

  The Holy Trinity doctrine was pre-Christian, founded on Ezekiel’s vision, the Trinity consisting of the three main elements of the Tetragrammaton. The First person was the true Creator, the All-Father, ‘Let there be Light’, represented by the letter H, the acacia, the tree of Sunday, the tree of Levi, the lapis lazuli symbolizing the blue sky as yet untenanted by the heavenly bodies; he was identified by the Jewish apocalyptics with the ‘Ancient of Days’ in the Vision of Daniel, a later and inferior prophecy which dates from the Seleucid epoch. The Second Person was comprised in Ezekiel’s Enthroned Man – spiritual man as God’s image, man who abstained in perfect peace from the dangerous pleasures of the false creation and was destined to reign on earth everlastingly; he was represented by F, the fire-garnet, the pomegranate, the tree of the Sabbath and of Judah. The apocalyptics identified him with the Son of Man in Daniel’s vision. But only the lower half of the Man’s body was fire-garnet: the male part. The upper half was amber: the royal part, linking him with the Third Person. For the Third Person comprised the remaining six letters of the name, six being the Number of Life in the Pythagorean philosophy. These letters were the original White-goddess vowels, A O U E I, representing the spirit that moved on the face of the waters in the Genesis narrative: but with the death vowel I replaced by the royal consonant J, amber, Benjamin’s letter, the letter of the Divine Child born on the Day of Liberation; and with the ‘birth of birth’ vowel omega supplementing the birth vowel alpha. The Third Person was thus androgynous: ‘virgin with child’, a concept which apparently accounts for the reduplication of the letter H in the J H W H Tetragrammaton. The second H is the Shekinah, the Brightness of God, the mystic female emanation of H, the male First Person; with no existence apart from him, but identified with Wisdom, the brightness of his meditation, who has ‘hewn out her Seven Pillars’ of the true Creation and from which the ‘Peace that passeth understanding’ derives when Light is linked with Life. The sense of this mystery is conveyed in the Blessing of Aaron (Numbers, VI, 22-27), which only priests were authorized to utter:

  The Lord bless you and keep you.

  The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you,

  The Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you,

  And give you peace.

  This fourfold blessing, which was certainly not composed earlier than the time of Ezekiel, is explained in the last verse of the chapter as a formula embodying the Tetragrammaton:

  And they [Aaron and his sons] shall put my Name upon the Children of Israel, and I shall bless them.

  The first two blessings are really one, together representing the Third Person, Life and the Brightness, J H; the third blessing represents the First person, Light, H; the fourth blessing represents the Second Person, Peace, W. This Trinity is one indivisible God, because if a single letter is omitted the Name loses its power, and because the three concepts are interdependent. The Second Person is ‘begotten by the Father before all the world’ in the sense that ‘the World’ is a false Creation which he preceded. This interpretation of J H W H as ‘Light and the Glory, Life and Peace’ further explains why the priests sometimes enlarged it to 42 letters. In the Pythagorean system, 7, written as H aspirate, was the numeral of Light and 6, written as Digamma F (W in Hebrew), was that of Life. But 6 also stood for the Glory, and 7 for Peace as the seventh day of the week; so six times seven, namely 42, expressed Light, the Glory and Peace multiplied by Life. Though the Jews used the Phoenician notation of numeral letters for public purposes, it is likely that they used the early Greek in their mysteries, just as they used the Greek ‘Boibalos’ calendar-alphabet.

  The Menorah symbolized the fullness of Jehovah’s Creation, yet it did not contain the first of the four letters of the Tetragrammaton; and its lights recalled his seven-letter Name, but not the eight-letter one. However, at the Feast of Illumination, or ‘The Feast of Lights’, (mentioned in John, X, 22 and Josephus’s Antiquities, XII, 7.7), the ancient Hebrew Winter Solstice Feast, an eight-branched candlestick was used, as it still is in Jewish synagogues, known as the Chanukah candlestick. The rabbinical account is that this eight-day festival which begins on the twenty-fifth day of the month Kislev, was instituted by Judas Maccabeus and that it celebrates a miracle: at the Maccabean consecration of the Temple a small cruse of sacred oil was found, hidden by a former High Priest, which lasted for eight days. By this legend the authors of the Talmud hoped to conceal the antiquity of the feast, which was originally Jehovah’s birthday as the Sun-god and had been celebrated at least as early as the time of Nehemiah (II Maccabees, I, 18). Antiochus Epiphanes had sacrificed to Olympian Zeus, three years before Judas’s re-institution of the festival, at the same place and on the same day: Zeus’s birthday fell at the winter solstice too – as did that of Mithras the Persian Sun-god whose cult had greatly impressed the Jews in the time of their protector Cyrus. According to rabbinical custom one light of the candlestick was kindled each day of the festival until all eight were alight; the earlier tradition had been to begin with eight lights and extinguish one each day until all were out.

  In the Chanukah candlestick which, among the Moroccan Jews (whose tradition is the oldest and purest) is surmounted by a small pomegranate, the eight lights are set in a row, each on a separate branch, as in the Menorah; and an arm projects from the pedestal with a separate light in its socket from which all the rest are kindled. The eighth light in the row must stand for the extra day of the year, the day of the letter J, which is intercalated at the winter solstice: for the pomegranate, the emblem not only of the seventh day of the week but of the planet Ninib, ruler of the winter solstice, shows that this candlestick is a Menorah enlarged to contain all the letters of the Tetragrammaton, that it is, in fact, the ‘Eightfold City of Light’ in which the Word dwelt. The number Eight, the Sungod’s number of increase, recalled Jehovah’s creative order to increase and multiply; and the eight lights could further be understood (it will be shown) as symbolizing the eight essential Commandments.

  The Chanukah candlestick was the only one ritually used in the synagogues of the Dispersion, because of the Sanhedrin law forbidding the reproduction of the Menorah or of any other object housed in the Holy of Holies. This law was designed to prevent the foundation of a rival Temple to that of Jerusalem, but aimed also, it seems, at the Ophites, who justified their heretical religious views by the centrality of the fourth light (that of the Wise Serpent Nabu) in the seven-branched candlestick; they would find no central light in this one. The separate light probably stood for the oneness of Jehovah as contrasted with the diversity of his works and brought the total number of lights up to nine, symbolizing the thrice-holy Trinity. The meaning of the pomegranate at the top has been forgotten by the Moroccan Jews, who regard it as a mere decoration though agreeing that it is of high antiquity; Central European Jews have substituted for it a knob surmounted by a Star of David. Among the Moroccan Jews a pomegranate is also placed on the sticks around which the sacred scroll of the Torah is wound, the sticks being called Es Chajim, ‘the tree of life’; Central European Jews have reduced this pomegranate to the crown formed by its withered calyx. The common-sense Rabbinical explanation of the sanctity of the pomegranate is that it is the only fruit which worms do not corrupt.

  The Ten Commandments, which are among the latest additions to the Pentateuch, are designed as glosses on the same mystery. The oddness of their choice seems to have struck Jesus when he quoted the ‘Love thy God’ and ‘Love thy neighbour’ commandments, from elsewhere in the Pentateuch, as transcending them in spiritual value. But it is a more carefully considered choice than appears at first sight. The Commandments, which are really eight, not ten, to match the numbers of letters in the Name, fall into two groups: one of three ‘Thou shalts’ concerned with the True Creation, and the other of five ‘Thou shalt nots’ concerned with the False Creation: each group is prefaced by a warning. The order is purposely ‘pied’, as one would expect.

  The first grou
p corresponds with the letters of the Tetragrammaton, and the warning preface is therefore III: ‘Thou shalt not take God’s name in vain.’

  V: ‘Honour thy father and thy mother.’

  i.e. J H: Life and the Brightness.

  IV: ‘Observe the Sabbath Day.’

  i.e. W: Peace.

  I: ‘Thou shalt worship me alone.’

  i.e. H: Light.

  The second group corresponds with the powers of the five planets excluded from the Name and the warning preface is therefore II: ‘Thou shalt not make nor adore the simulacrum of any star, creature, or marine monster.’

  X: ‘Thou shalt not bewitch.’

  (The Moon, as the Goddess of Enchantment.)

  VI: ‘Thou shalt not kill.’

  (Mars as the God of War.)

  VII: ‘Thou shalt not steal.’

  (Mercury, as the God of Thieves, who had stolen man from God.)

  IX: ‘Thou shalt not bear false witness.’

  Jupiter as the false god before whom oaths were sworn.)

  VII: ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery.’

  (Venus as the Goddess of profane love.)

  The eight Commandments are enlarged to a decalogue apparently because the series which it superseded, and which is to be found in Exodus, XXXIV, 24-26, was a decalogue too.

  In Talmudic tradition this new Decalogue was carved on two tables of sappur (lapis lazuli); and in Isaiah, LIV, 12, the gates of the ideal Jerusalem were of ‘fire-stones’ (pyropes or fire-garnets). So the poetic formula is:

  Light was my first day of Creation,

  Peace after labour is my seventh day,

  Life and the Glory are my day of days.

  I carved my law on tables of sapphirus,

  Jerusalem shines with my pyrope gates,

  Four Cherubs fetch me amber from the north.

  Acacia yields her timber for my ark,

  Pomegranate sanctifies my priestly hem,

  My hyssop sprinkles blood at every door.

  Holy, Holy, Holy is my name.

  This mystical god differed not only from the Babylonian Bel or Marduk but from Ormazd, the Supreme God of the Persian Zoroastrians, with whom some Jewish syncretists identified him, in having separated himself from the erroneous material universe to live securely cloistered in his abstract city of light. Ormazd was a sort of three-bodied Geryon, the usual Aryan male trinity that first married the Triple Goddess, then dispossessed her and went about clothed in her three colours – white, red and dark blue, like the heifer calf in Suidas’s riddle, performing her ancient functions. Thus Ormazd appeared in priestly white to create (or recreate) the world; in warrior red to combat evil; in husbandman’s dark blue to ‘bring forth fecundity’.

  The pre-Christian Jewish apocalyptics, probably influenced by religious theory brought from India, along with the ethrog, by Jewish merchants, expected the birth of a divine child: the Child, prophesied by the Sibyl, who would free the world from sin. This implied that Michael and the archangels to whom the new Idealistic God had delegated the immediate care of mankind had proved no match for the World, Flesh and Devil – the grosser powers which he had repudiated. The only solution was for the Prince of Peace, namely the Second Person, the Son of Man, who had hitherto had no independent existence,1 to become incarnate as perfect man – the human Messiah born of Judah, Benjamin and Levi. By exposing the vanity of the material Creation he would bring all Israel to repentance and thus initiate the deathless millennary kingdom of God on earth, to which the Gentile nations would ultimately be admitted. This was the faith of Jesus, who was of Judah, Benjamin and Levi and had been ritually rebegotten by God at his Coronation: he expected the actual historical appearance of the Son of Man on the Mount of Olives to follow his own prophesied death by the sword, and assured his disciples that many then living would never die but enter directly into the kingdom of God. The prophecy was not fulfilled because it was founded on a confusion between poetic myth and historical event, and everyone’s hopes of the millennium were dashed.

  The Grecians then claimed that those hopes had not after all been premature, that Jesus had indeed been the Second Person of the Trinity, and that the Kingdom of God was at hand, the dreadful signs which would portend its coming, the so-called Pangs of the Messiah, being apparent to everyone. But when the Gentile Church had wholly separated itself from the Judaistic Church and Jesus as King of Israel was an embarrassing concept to Christians who wished to escape all suspicion of being Jewish nationalists, it was decided that he had been born as the Second Person not at his coronation but at his physical birth; though spiritually begotten before all the world. This made Mary the Mother of Jesus into the immaculate human receptacle of the Life and Brightness of God, the Third Person of the Trinity; so that it had to be presumed that she was herself immaculately conceived by her mother St. Ann. Here was a fine breeding-ground for all sorts of heresy, and soon we return in our argument to the point where the Theme reasserted itself popularly with the Virgin as the White Goddess, Jesus as the Waxing Sun, the Devil as the Waning Sun. There was no room here for the Father God, except as a mystical adjunct of Jesus (‘I and the Father are One’).

  1 There are only a few recorded references in English Literature to a male Muse, and most of these occur in poems written by homosexuals and belong to morbid pathology. However, George Sandys in A Relation of a Journey Begun (1615), calls James I a ‘Crowned Muse’ perhaps because James behaved more like a Queen than a King towards his favourites at Court and because he published an elementary treatise on versification. And Milton writes in Lycidas:

  1 Vulcan is another example of a god who ‘went the way of all flesh’ before his final extinction. The last addition to the Vulcan legend was made by Apuleius in The Golden Ass where Vulcan cooks the wedding breakfast for Cupid and Psyche.

  1 Gordium was in Eastern Phrygia, and according to local tradition whoever untied the knot would become master of Asia. Alexander, who had not the learning, patience or ingenuity to perform the task decently, used his sword. It was a raw-hide knot on the ox-yoke which had belonged to a Phrygian peasant named Gordius, and Gordius had been divinely marked out for royalty when an eagle settled on the yoke; by marriage with the priestess of Telmissus he became a petty king and presently extended his dominion over all Phrygia. When he built the fortress of Gordium he dedicated the yoke to King Zeus, it is said, and laid it up in the citadel. Gordium commanded the main trade route across Asia Minor from the Bosphorus to Antioch, so that the manifest meaning of the prophecy was that nobody could rule Asia Minor who did not hold Gordium; and it was from Gordium that Alexander began his second Eastern campaign which culminated in the defeat of Darius at Issus. Now, Gordius was the father of Midas, who has already been mentioned as a devotee of the Orphic Dionysus, so the yoke must originally have been dedicated to King Dionysus, not to Father Zeus. And the secret of the knot must have been a religious one, for another widespread early means of recording messages, besides notching sticks and scratching letters on clay, was to tie knots in string or strips of raw-hide. The Gordian knot, in fact, should have been ‘untied’ by reading the message it contained, which was perhaps a divine name of Dionysus, the one contained in the vowels of the Beth-Luis-Nion. By cutting the knot Alexander ended an ancient religious dispensation, and since his act seemed to go unpunished – for he afterwards conquered the whole East as far as the Indus valley – it became a precedent for rating military power above religion or learning; just as the sword of Brennus the Gaul, thrown into the scales that measured out the agreed tribute of Roman gold, provided a precedent for rating military power above justice or honour.

  1 In the Babylonian Epic it was Ishtar, not any male God, who caused the Deluge. Gilgamesh (Noah) stocked an ark with beasts of every kind and gave a New Year’s feast to the builders with great outpouring of new wine; the New Year’s Feast being an autumnal one. The myth seems to be iconotropic, for the account of the great wine-drinking, which appears in the Genesis version as
a moral story of Noah’s drunkenness and the bad behaviour of his son Canaan (Ham), recalls the myth of the wine-god Dionysus. When captured by Tyrrhenian pirates, Dionysus changed the masts of their ship into serpents, himself into a lion and the sailors into dolphins, and wreathed everything with ivy. The original Asianic icon from which both myths are presumably derived must have shown the god in a moon-ship at the Vintage Feast, going through his habitual New Year changes – bull, lion, snake and so on – which gave rise to the Babylonian story of the cargo of animals. The pirates’ ship is probably described as Tyrrhenian because it had a figure-head in the shape of a Telchin, or dog with fins for feet, an attendant of the Moon-goddess.

  1 This was denounced as the Beryllian heresy at Bostia in AD 244.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  RETURN OF THE GODDESS

  What, then, is to be the future of religion in the West? Sir James Frazer attributed the defects of European civilization to ‘the selfish and immoral doctrine of Oriental religions which inculcated the communion of the soul with God, and its eternal salvation, as the only objects worth living for’. This, he argued, undermined the unselfish ideal of Greek and Roman society which subordinated the individual to the welfare of the State. Adolf Hitler said later, more succinctly: ‘The Jews are to blame for all our troubles.’ Both statements, however, were historically untrue.