Hail!
Everyone knows that our old towns are often laid out in a cross-shape, with four main streets going to four doors or gates, which ideally should mark the four cardinal points: that is, north, east, south and west. In the middle of the town, where the two main streets meet, there should be some kind of markstone or pillar, which is often called a "cross". But these are seldom met with and seem to have evolved almost everywhere into a kind of spire-like architectural feature on a stepped base. Indeed we often find that the stepped base is a little hill in its own right, more akin to a little stepped pyramid than anything else. The following town plan of Bristol shows one of these features at its heart. It was called the "alta crux" or high cross and is now to be seen in the park at Stourhead House in Wiltshire. A further evolution of such things, and which may be understood as the decadence of the original idea, will have this cross become one of those odd little civic buildings which are sometimes met with where the old cross was once sited.
"The square is the fundamental format of most yantras.. It is the substratum, the recptacle and base of the manifest world...contained by the compass points of the four cardinal directions... At the periphery of the figure are four T-shaped portals, placed at the four cardinal directions and known as cosmic doors because it is through them that the aspirant symbolically enters the cosmic force-field. ...".
δύο εἶναι ἐν οὐρανῷ ἄκρα, ὧν οὔτε νοτιώτερόν ἐστι τοῦ χειμερινοῦ τροπικοῦ οὔτε βορειότερον τοῦ θερινοῦ. ἔστι δ' ὁ μὲν θερινὸς κατὰ καρκίνον, ὁ δὲ χειμερινὸς κατ' αἰγόκερων. ….δύο οὖν ταύτας ἔθεντο πύλας καρκίνον καὶ αἰγόκερων οἱ θεολόγοι, Πλάτων δὲ δύο στόμια ἔφη· τούτων δὲ καρκίνον μὲν εἶναι δι' οὗ κατίασιν αἱ ψυχαί, αἰγόκερων δὲ δι' οὗ ἀνίασιν. ἀλλὰ καρκίνος μὲν βόρειος καὶ καταβατικός, αἰγόκερως δὲ νότιος καὶ ἀναβατικός. ἔστι δὲ τὰ μὲν βόρεια ψυχῶν εἰς γένεσιν κατιουσῶν, καὶ ὀρθῶς καὶ τοῦ ἄντρου αἱ πρὸς βορρᾶν πύλαι καταβαταὶ ἀνθρώποις· τὰ δὲ νότια οὐ θεῶν, ἀλλὰ τῶν εἰς θεοὺς ἀνιουσῶν, ...
… there are two extremities in the heavens, viz., the winter tropic, than which nothing is more southern, and the summer tropic, than which nothing is more northern. But the summer tropic is in Cancer, and the winter tropic in Capricorn. …11. Theologists therefore assert, that these two gates are Cancer and Capricorn; but Plato calls them entrances. And of these, theologists say, that Cancer is the gate through which souls descend; but Capricorn that through which they ascend. Cancer is indeed northern, and adapted to descent; but Capricorn is southern, and adapted to ascent. The northern parts, likewise, pertain to souls descending into generation. And the gates of the cavern which are turned to the north are rightly said to be pervious to the descent of men; but the southern gates are not the avenues of the Gods, but of souls ascending to the Gods.
Οὕτω δὲ πρὸς τὸν Κόσμον οἰκείως ἔχοντος τοῦ μύθου, ἡμεῖς τὸν Κόσμον μιμούμενοι - πῶς γὰρ ἄν μᾶλλον κοσμηθείημεν; - ἑορτὴν ἄγομεν διὰ ταῦτα· καὶ πρῶτον μὲν ὡς αὐτοὶ πεσόντες ἑξ οὐρανοῦ καὶ τῇ Νύμφῃ συνόντες ἐν κατηφείᾳ ἐσμὲν σίτου τε καὶ τῆς ἄλλης παχείας καὶ ῥυπαρᾶς τροφῆς ἀπεχόμεθα, ἑκάτερα γὰρ ἐναντία ψυχῇ· εἶτα δένδρου τομαὶ καὶ νηστεία ὥσπερ καὶ ἡμῶν ἀποκοπτομένων τὴν περαιτέρω τῆς γενέσεως πρόοδον· ἐπὶ τούτοις γάλακτος τροφὴ ὥσπερ ἀναγεννωμένων· ἐφ'οἷς ἱλαρία καὶ στέφανοι καὶ πρὸς τοὺς Θεοὺς οἷον ἐπάνοδος. Μαρτυρεῖ δὲ τούτοις καὶ ὁ τῶν δρομένων καιρός· περὶ γὰρ τὸ ἔαρ καὶ τὴν ἰσημερίαν δρᾶται τὰ δρώμενα, ὅτε τοῦ μὲν γίνεσθαι παύεται τὰ γινόμενα ἡμέρα δὲ μείζων γίνεται τῆς νυκτός, ὅπερ οἰκεῖον ἀναγομέναις ψυχαῖς. Περὶ γοῦν τὴν ἐναντίαν ἰσημερίαν ἡ τῆς Κόρης ἁρπαγὴ μυθολογεῖται γενέσθαι, ὅ δὴ κάθοδος ἐστι τῶν ψυχῶν.Thus, as the myth is in accord with the Cosmos, we for that reason keep a festival imitating the Cosmos, for how could we attain higher order? And at first we ourselves, having fallen from heaven and living with the Nymph, are in despondency, and abstain from corn and all rich and unclean food, for both are hostile to the soul. Then comes the cutting of the tree and the fast, as though we also were cutting off the further process of generation. After that the feeding on milk, as though we were being born again; after which come rejoicings and garlands and, as it were, a return up to the Gods.The season of the ritual is evidence to the truth of these explanations. The rites are performed about the Vernal Equinox, when the fruits of the earth are ceasing to be produced, and day is becoming longer than night, which applies well to Spirits rising higher. (At least, the other equinox is in mythology the time of the Rape of Kore, which is the descent of the souls.)
"The conception, indeed, my son, of your forefathers in the formation of sacred images, is perfectly admirable. For the Egyptians make a twofold representation of the daemon Hermes, placing a young by the side of an elderly man, intending to signify by this, that he who rightly inspects [sacred concerns] ought to be both intelligent and strong, one of these being imperfect in affording utility without the other. On this account, also, a sphinx is established by us in the vestibules of our temples, as a sacred symbol of the conjunction of these two goods; the beast in this figure signifying strength, but the man wisdom. For strength when destitute of the ruling aid of wisdom, is borne along with stupid astonishment, mingling and confounding all things; and intellect is useless for the purposes of action, when it is deprived of the subserviency of hands. "
Sed iam bifrontis simulacri interpretatio proferatur. Duas eum facies ante et retro habere dicunt, quod hiatus noster, cum os aperimus, mundo similis uideatur; unde et palatum Graeci οὐρανόν appellant, et nonnulli, inquit, poetae Latini caelum uocauerunt palatum, a quo hiatu oris et foras esse aditum ad dentes uersus et introrsus ad fauces.But now let the interpretation of the two-faced image be produced. For they say that it has two faces, one before and one behind, because our gaping mouths seem to resemble the world: whence the Greeks call the palate οὐρανός, and some Latin poets, he says, have called the heavens palatum [the palate]; and from the gaping mouth, they say, there is a way out in the direction of the teeth, and a way in in the direction of the gullet.
"...ἔνθεν καὶ τετράμορφον ἀπὸ τῶν τεσσάρων τροπῶν· καὶ τοιοῦτον αὐτοῦ ἄγαλμα ἐν τῷφόρῳ τοῦ Νερβᾶ ἔτι καὶ νῦν λέγεται σεσωσμένον.”"...he is also [said to be] quadruple in form, from the four "turns" [i.e., the solstices and equinoxes]—and a statue of him of this type is said to be preserved even now in the Forum of Nerva ..." [awend. Mischa Hooker]
2.8 “ἀλλὰ μὴν τέσσαρές τε ἡλίου τροπαί, καθ' ἃς τὰ ὄντα συντηρεῖται, ἰσημερίαι δύο, θερινὴ
καὶ χειμερινὴ τροπή.”
“But further, there are four "turnings" of the sun, in accordance with which existing things are preserved: the two equinoxes, and the summer and winter solstices.”[awend. Mischa Hooker]
At Time Zero, the two equinoctial "hinges" of the world had been Gemini and Sagittarius,spanning between them the arch of the Milky Way: both bicorporeal signs [n4 4 Theseconstellations were, originally, called "bicorporeal" for reasons very different from thosegiven by Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos 1.11.]--and so were Pisces, and Virgo with her ear ofwheat, at the two other corners--to mark the idea that the way (the Milky Way itself) wasopen between earth and heaven, the way up and the way down' here men and godscould meet in that Golden Age. As will be shown later, the exceptional virtue of theGolden Age was precisely that the crossroads of ecliptic and equator coincided with thecrossroads of ecliptic and Galaxy, namely in Gemini and Sagittarius, both constellations"standing" firmly at two of the four corners of the quadrangular earth.
Far away, the Mangaians of old (Austral Islands, Polynesia), who kept the precessional clock running instead of switching over to "signs," claim that only at the evening of the solstitial days can spirits enter heaven, the inhabitants of the northern parts of the island at one solstice, the dwellers in the south at the other [n3 W. W. Gill, Myths and Songs from the South Pacific (1876), pp. 1566ff., 185ff.].
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