Krasylov, 1997. Metaecology-03. Heracl. Chapter 2. DUPLICATES.

Chapter 1. Premonitions. Saloroids. Foundation. V.A. Krasilov. Metaecology.                                      M.: Paleontological Institute of the RAS, 1997. 208 p. Part 3. Heracles. Chapter 2. DOUBLES. Creation. Soul. Conflict. Heracles Heracles tore Antaeus from his mother, Earth, and defeated him. This is the key to all his labors. Man, by painful effort, broke away from the nature that had nurtured him and overcame the natural principle within himself. This feat is recorded in myth. An excursus into mythology was needed for us in order to dispel the still‑existing notion of myth‑making as a naive attempt by the ancients to explain the surrounding world. Myths pertain far more to the inner world than to the outer, which only provided material for symbolic self‑expression. From this point of view we find nothing naive in myths. On the contrary, they astonish the modern person with a boldness and depth of insight into spiritual problems that is no longer accessible. A literal reading of Heracles’ labors as the story of a super‑man or of Abraham’s wanderings as an ancient‑Jewish chronicle (“our family history,” as is liked to be said in Israel) testifies only to the spiritual impoverishment of people of the technical age with its defective metaphysics. Zeus turned his lover Io into a cow, which, following a circular route through the Caucasus and the Bosphorus, ran to Egypt, where she became the goddess Isis. It would have been simpler to say that Isis was a cow (and her husband Osiris a bull), but the late myth that reached us cannot allow such tactlessness. After all, when Io‑Isis was a totemic cow, those people with whom one could not mate were identified with animals on which a similar taboo was imposed (by the way, even occasional copulation with animals can lead to the introduction into the human population of hitherto unknown sexually transmitted viruses). Animal images were so firmly associated with sexual restrictions that they entered genetic memory and still appear as sexual symbols in our dreams. Totemism is a metaphysical system in which the spiritual world receives an external expression in the form of symbols borrowed from the natural environment. The trace of totemism in genetic memory is still discernible in a child’s attraction to animals (a kind of repetition of human history in individual development), in the affectionate nicknames of lovers (little fish, little birds, little cats—formerly common totems), in the sexual symbolism of dreams (rarely reaching the frankness of a “folkloric” dream of Pushkin’s Tatiana, where a bear serves as an intermediary between her and her beloved), in the zoological imagery of the Parnassian poets and Esenin’s “rural” lyric, in Christmas trees and the sacred ginkgo trees of Buddhist temples. In the era of totemism a normative—moral—attitude toward nature was formed, which later, unfortunately, was significantly weakened, because new metaphysical systems, developing on the totem‑enriched soil, simultaneously cleared a place for themselves, suppressing and uprooting the cult of the trampled nature. The development of the inner world and its isolation required a change of symbols, which was not achieved without effort. The consequences of these labors are still with us. Heracles’ labors are victories over the most widespread totems—the snake, the lion, the bull (on Crete), the dog and the horse (Diomedes’ horses, centaurs), and even the seemingly unrelated cleansing of Augias’ cattle yard contains totemic allusions, because sacred bulls of Helios were kept there. The bull‑producer, without doubt, was the most powerful totem, giving rise to many supreme gods. He was a zoomorphic substitute for Osiris (Apis), Zeus, Poseidon (Tavria), Helios and even Dionysus. Not only the Jewish Yahweh, but also other gods dreamed of getting rid of this intrusive image. Hence tavromachia, which degenerated into a bloody spectacle—the corrida with its sexual overtones. Equally dramatic was the history of another practically indestructible totem—the snake. It is no coincidence that the Bible calls it the craftiest of all living beings. Even the founder of Athens, Cecrops, was half‑snake. Cadmus built Thebes at the spot indicated to him by a sacred cow, but he immediately had to fight a snake. He sowed the snake’s teeth and sowed discord among its offspring, eventually turning himself into a snake. This is a metaphor for the spiritual rebirth of conquerors who, following their cows in search of new pastures, invaded the lands of tribes that revered the snake as a supreme totem. Inter‑tribal clashes gave the newcomers power over new territories. However, being receptive to sophisticated Eastern metaphysics, they themselves eventually adopted the cult of the snake. The ancient hero Gilgamesh, the Hittite storm god Te‑shub, his Greek counterpart Zeus, and, in one of his guises, the arrow‑wielding Apollo, called Pythian because the attributes of the defeated totem passed to him, all fought the snake. His priestess at Delphi, the Pythia, was essentially a snake tamed in human form. Heracles strangled snakes already in the cradle. The replacement of zoomorphic gods by hybrid half‑human half‑animal beings, who then became monsters, reflects not only alienation from the surrounding nature but also the perversion of natural instincts (the symbol of which can be Heracles in women’s clothing). The snake, as well as the sphinx, symbolized depravity, incestuous sin. The battle of heroes with centaurs is the most popular plot of Greek mythology. Birds once ruled fate, and later influenced decision‑making through their avian intermediaries, the augurs. The Olympian gods for a long time were associated with a dedicated bird (Zeus’s eagle, Aphrodite’s dove, Athena’s owl), a beast or a tree, and transformed into animals to beget a demigod or a hero, and sometimes a centaur. Thus Zeus, in the form of a bull, abducted Europa, who later gave birth on Crete to the judges of the underworld Minos and Rhadamanthus. Subsequently, Cretan women, despite Aphrodite’s prohibition, could not resist bulls, and Minos’s wife Pasiphaë bore a Minotaur from such a union (all this accumulation of fantastic plots had only one purpose—to bury the memory of the Cretan bull cult). The Scandinavian god Loki, having turned into a mare, entered the role so completely that he fathered not a centaur but a war horse. In more civilized versions of such myths, animals no longer gave birth, but fed gods and heroes, like a goat feeding Zeus or a she‑wolf feeding Romulus and Remus. When recounting the Trojan scout Dolon, captured and killed by Odysseus and Diomedes, Homer does not forget to mention that he was clothed in a wolf’s skin, while on the Odyssey he wore a helmet shaped like a boar’s head. This clash may reflect an ancient enmity, because the boar was the oldest totemic animal of Arcadia, and the wolf (dog) the totem of the Aryans, in particular the Hittites inhabiting Anatolia. In Greek mythology sacred dogs appear both in the sky (the constellation Canis, the hound chasing Orion) and underground (the Stygian hounds accompanying the goddess Hecate, the monstrous guardians Cerberus and Orthus—both defeated by Heracles). In the temple of Zeus on Crete there was a golden dog, supposedly guarding him during the period of nursing by the goat Amalthea. However, judging by the interest shown to this dog by the ancient Malian kings Pandareus and Tantalus, it was precisely an object of a cult usurped by Zeus. Both Hecate and the Hittite gods received puppies as sacrifices. One Irish hero is said: “He is called Conchobar, he will be Conchobar” (i.e., a dog‑man). The unfortunate Hecuba, having lost her sons, turns into a dog. Esenin’s lines can also be applied to her: And when she was just about to turn back,  Licking sweat from her sides,  A month appeared above the hut  One of her puppies. The Aryans who invaded the Mediterranean lands, including the ancestors of the Greeks, found themselves surrounded by autochthonous totems and gods derived from them. Borrowings, combinations, contaminations of traits occur. Thus Apollo, perhaps the most contradictory figure in the Greek pantheon, combines archaic features of a sun god and an Indo‑European wolf god. As the latter, Apollo Lykaios clashes with pastoral deities, skins satyrs, pursues ewe‑nymphs (in Ovid a wolf image arises in connection with Apollo’s chase of Daphne). Later layers turned Apollo’s conflict with the rustic god Pan into a contrast between high professional and low amateur art, urban and rural subcultures (see below). At one sharp turn of history Apollo‑Lucifer was overthrown by the thunder god. Ancient Jews were strongly influenced by the cult of Egyptian Osiris and Babylonian Marduk, whose animal substitutes (totemic predecessors) were the bull and the calf. Despite harsh repressions, Jews occasionally inclined toward these cults. When Moses withdrew to be alone with God, his “cruel tribe” set about making a golden calf. Jesus adopted from neighboring gods the Egyptian Amun (in his ovine incarnation) and the Assyrian Oannes, symbols of the lamb and the fish, the lamb appearing in sacrifice and the fish in purifying rites. However, the totemic role of the fish was not limited to the Semitic world. Anaximander thought man originated from fish, and the founder of Christianity, with his considerable philosophical erudition, could have been familiar with the works of the Milesian school (recall also that Odysseus and his companions, sailing the “fish‑laden” sea, did not eat fish). The biblical paradise was a garden where predators and herbivores lived peacefully, and man was intended to be its guardian. His first task was to name all living beings. The participation of the apple and the snake in the fall of man stems from a totemic sexual symbolism that has retreated into the subconscious. Later, reproaching Job in an attempt to assert superiority over nature, God uttered the following notable words: Behold the hippopotamus that I have created with you …  Will you pierce its skin with spears and its head with a fisher’s sharp point?  Place your hand upon it and remember this struggle: henceforth you shall not … Even the great reconstruction of ancient metaphysical systems—their transformation into religions, i.e., primarily teachings on the moral perfection of man—could not completely erase the traces of totemism. Thus, Queen Maya, long barren, dreamed of a white elephant entering her womb. The prince Siddhartha born thereafter, at the age of seven, noticed a bird seizing an earthworm. “Alas, do all living beings kill each other?” the prince thought. From that moment his spiritual enlightenment began—the transformation into a Buddha who never forgot animals. Not only the samsara borrowed from the Upanishads promoted a moral attitude toward nature, but also the commandments of everyday morality (for example, those left by Princess Malika, see below) contained a religious condemnation of cruelty to animals. Several centuries later Joseph brought his pregnant wife to Bethlehem for the census, and because there was no room in the inn, she gave birth in a manger, where the infant remained until circumcision. After baptism the Holy Spirit descended upon him in the form of a dove and led him into the desert, where he was “with the beasts” (Mark I 13), tempted by the devil, and angels served him. And what are angels if not bird‑gods, whose realm stretched from Egypt to Guatemala? In the mystical hierarchy angels are below humans, because they are not created in the image and likeness. In former times they entered human daughters, finding them beautiful. But angels also evolve. Now, as genderless beings, they serve as models of virtue. Because the humiliation of totems spread to all that is natural, becoming synonymous with the base, indecent. The ecological crisis we experience is, to a certain extent, the legacy of that time. Heracles, crushing everything around him, cleared the way for another well‑known Athenian fighter—Aristocles, nicknamed by Plato for his mighty physique. Our ecology is the offspring of our meta‑ecology. Yet the old gods did not surrender without a fight. A tumult of sexual revolutions and counter‑revolutions ensued. Socrates swore by a dog. Cynics called themselves dogs. Francis of Assisi proclaimed himself brother of all living beings and preached to birds. Vagant Archipius of Cologne asserted that the struggle with nature is futile labor. Jean‑Jacques Rousseau was a friend of nature. And finally, the Romantic writers of the 17th century first raised the question of nature protection, thereby beginning a new meta‑ecological cycle.Chapter 2. DOUBLES Egyptologists note the binary nature of all existence as a characteristic feature of the most ancient metaphysics. Not only were all gods paired and interchangeable, such as Amun‑Ra or Horus‑Set, but each of them also had a double (Ka). The pharaoh and even humans are organized in the same way, although perhaps not everyone. From the “Pyramid Texts” we learn that doubles were separated when descending into the waters that divide the external world from the otherworld. The one who, as can be understood, was sent to the otherworld (to serve there as the double of his god) was purified of the flesh (“meat”) of his double. Egyptian “binaryness” has received a wide variety of interpretations — as a reflection of the dual authority of the pharaoh over Lower and Upper Egypt, or the dual rule of twins on the throne, or the binary nature of Egyptian numeration, or, finally, the division of functions of the right and left cerebral hemispheres. Some of these explanations (perhaps all together) are most likely valid. However, the psychopathological analogies drawn by Freud, S.N. Davidenko (“Evolutionary‑genetic problems in neuropathology”, 1947) and Erich Fromm are hardly appropriate: personality formation, not its disintegration, was occurring. Personality implies self‑knowledge, and the latter is linked to the reversibility of thought, a double existence as subject and object of cognition, and the possibility of internal dialogue. In the light of internal bifurcation, all phenomena of the external world appeared binary, or their pairing acquired a hidden meaning. Images that give external expression to internal bifurcation gained additional significance. This, as we shall see, is a widely spread phenomenon that can be called metaphysical enrichment. Thus a god or gods, creating the world, divide the unity into paired opposites — light and darkness, sky and earth, water and land, etc. The entire cosmogonic system acquires a binary structure. Its mathematical proportionality is the result of successive doublings (counting, left‑hemispheric function, here overlaid on right‑hemispheric metaphysics). Its opposing components are twins, because they arose simultaneously, in organic connection with each other (and indeed, monozygotic twins are in some cases identical, in others mirror‑like, like right‑handers and left‑handers). Twins bear an increasing philosophical load. They are now associated with the opposition of masculine and feminine principles, life and death, the world of the living and the world of the dead, good and evil. The separation of essence from phenomenon becomes the cause of subsequent doublings. Water acquires a double — a water god; from the sky separates a sky god, etc. If a thing appeared in several hypostases representing different essences, then, contrary to the binary principle, it could correspond to several gods or one god with several names (the ancients equated a name with an essence, considering the naming as a second birth). In the myths of the Inter‑River region the earth is Ki, and its fertility is Ninmah (in Greek, respectively Gaia and Demeter). All Mesopotamian gods arose in pairs, as set out in the cosmogonic epic “Enuma Elish”. Later, however, the essences of many of them were transferred to the Babylonian sun god Marduk, who accordingly received fifty additional names. In ancient Persia the spirits of good and evil, Ahura‑Mazda and Angra‑Mainyu, were, according to Zoroastrian teaching, aspects of a single deity. The appearance of doubles in the cosmogonies of different peoples shows the secondary significance of Egyptian or any other particular tradition (although the Egyptians were the most consistent in their doublings), testifying to the universal importance of the metaphysical experiences underlying this symbol. Although Judaism with its single nameless god seems at first glance an exception, it actually fits the general scheme without great strain. The namelessness of the Hebrew god appears to be explained by the fact that he was originally the personal god of Abram, who became Abraham (recall that Abram came from Mesopotamia, whose inhabitants, besides the common universal gods, each had their own personal patron deity) and was therefore called “the god of Abraham”. He retained this name as a reminder of a modest beginning and, in later times, as the god of Abraham’s descendants, the whole people. His significance, however, grew so much that he implicitly acquired the names Yahweh and Jehovah, corresponding to new essences of universal being and omnipotence. Now he could be identified with the world‑maker described in Genesis: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the abyss; and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” Without even mentioning the binary structure of the cosmos, we find here a creator god and his essential double — the divine spirit (God formed the material bodies, and his spirit infused them with life‑giving force). The divine spirit as life‑giving force is the Logos (as said in the Gospel of John, in the beginning was the Word, i.e., creation occurred through incantations). Its role was to some extent determined by grammar. In Aramaic the spirit is feminine, therefore the early Judeo‑Christians imagined the immaculate conception as the merging of two feminine principles. But in Greek the spirit is neuter and better fits the role of an intermediary between god and humans, descending from heaven to earth, similar to how mortal doubles descended into the underworld. The idea of an intermediary, likely of phallic origin, found expression in the image of a “carrier” across the waters separating the world of the living from the world of the dead. This constant active figure of mystical journeys appears among Egyptians, Sumerians, Greeks and other peoples. The divine intermediary served as the prototype of all prophets and priests, also a kind of carrier on the passage from the worldly to the divine. At the same time the appearance of the son can be viewed as a bifurcation of the Holy Spirit. In Christian mysticism there is a notion of a second hypostasis — Sophia, whose essence (or two merged essences) is wisdom and love. Sophia thus is the double of the son, embodying universal love, although she may also be identified with his mother, and the cross gains an additional meaning as a symbol of the unity of four essences. Orthodox Christianity, however, adopts a scheme of incomplete division (encountered also in nature), the result of which is the Holy Trinity. It can be supposed that, similarly, odd numbers of divine trios (Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva) and sevens arose from an unfinished division, leaving a perspective for further development. The stability of sevens (identified with the seven celestial spheres of ancient astronomy) and especially trios is explained by mythological enrichment. Thus the original association of the trio with genitalia (Plato writes that two members “cannot be well joined without a third”, because a third must be born between them as a unifying link) is enriched by the triads “past, present, future”; “energy, motion, matter”; “earth, water, air (sky)”; “body, soul, spirit”; “consciousness, reason, intellect”; “id, ego, superego”, which in turn serve as clichés for new triads. Chapter 1. Premonitions. Saloroids. Foundation. V.A. Krasilov. Meta‑ecology. M.: Paleontological Institute of the RAS, 1997. 208 p. Part 3. Heraclitus. Chapter 2. DOUBLES. Creation. Soul. Conflict. { "title": "Creation. Soul. Conflict", "summary": "Creation. Soul. Conflict", "body": "Creation. Soul. Conflict" }