Isis in Paris

In the year 1514 the archbishop of the abbey of [1]Saint-Germain-des-Prés, then situated on the outskirts of the city of Paris, ordered a statue in the abbey to be removed and destroyed. The statue must have seemed innocuous enough, for it had the appearance of a typical Madonna and Child. The statue was known to be old – dating from the time when Paris was largely a Roman city. And that seems to have been the problem – at least in the eyes of the archbishop. The statue’s age dated it to pre-Christian pagan times, and there was no place for a pagan statue in a Christian house of worship, however much it might resemble the Holy Mother. And so the offending statue was duly removed and smashed to pieces.

The Roman Isis. The sheaf of corn on her crown links her to Ceres/Demeter. The sistrum which she holds, a jingling temple rattle unique to this goddess, is missing from this statue and has here been recreated digitally from a similar statue of Isis.

And that is how the last known remaining relic that once was housed in the temple of the goddess Isis came to meet its end. Churches in Europe were often built upon the pagan places of worship which the new faith destroyed, and so it was with the abbey. Fourteen years before the abbey existed there was a previous church on the site, and thirty-three years before that – as late as the year 509 – there stood a temple dedicated to the goddess Isis. The foundations of the abbey rested upon the remains of this ancient temple, and the statue closely resembling the Madonna and Child which the archbishop ordered to be destroyed was actually a Romanized version of the goddess Isis nursing her infant son, the god [2]Horus.

Spot the difference. At left: a Romanized version of Isis with the infant Horus. The statue which the archbishop ordered to be destroyed would have been very similar to this one. Centre: the present statue of the Madonna and Child in the abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés which would have replaced the destroyed statue. At right: the original Egyptian  'Isis and Horus' version of this theme, the archetypal template ‘Mother and Child’ from which all subsequent versions could have been derived.

Unlike the forces of Christian orthodoxy, the empire-building Romans apparently were happy-enough to absorb the deities of other religions into their own pantheon. Under Roman rule, Anubis, the Egyptian jackal-headed god of the dead, sported the armour of a Roman general, and Isis, the great mother goddess, took on the appearance of a Roman [3]noblewoman. But this Romanized version of Egyptian Isis also absorbed something of the culture of Ancient Greece, having some of the attributes of the Roman goddess [4]Ceres, whom the Greeks knew as Demeter.

The ugly face of iconoclasm. The granite tomb in the Dom church in Utrecht which is - or was - the effigy of Guy van Avesnes, bishop of Utrecht in the 14th-century, defaced by Dutch anti-papal Calvinists in the 17th-century. Iconoclasts might destroy an image, but the idea behind the image lives on.

Iconoclasm – the deliberate destruction of the objects of a belief to which the destroyers are opposed – is nothing new. It was practiced here in the Netherlands during an event in 1566 known as the [5]‘beeldenstorm’, in which supporters of the new anti-papal Calvinist-Protestantism stormed Catholic churches and destroyed the ‘idolatrous’ statues of the Virgin, saints, and any other items which they considered even to vaguely fall into this ‘blasphemous’ category. And it continues to be practiced in our own contemporary world with the destruction by Islamic State of the irreplaceable cultural treasures of [6]Syria and Iraq, which it also regards as ‘blasphemous’. But what does iconoclasm actually achieve? If you destroy a statue, do you also destroy the idea which that statue represents? Hardly. The physical statue, even the building, might lie in pieces, but the idea still exists, and ideas, like the gods themselves, have proven astonishingly resilient over time. And so it has been with Isis.

The nurturing Isis of the Bastille is hailed by an enthusiastic crowd at her inauguration in 1793. At right: Isis holding her sistrum as she appears on the façade of the Louvre. 

As an underground river continues to flow unseen, so the spirit of the goddess Isis apparently has continued to flow through the city of Paris. How else to explain the wealth of symbols associated with the goddess which insistently push their way to the surface? In August of 1793 a huge statue known as the Isis of the Bastille was inaugurated. The seated female figure spouted water from her breasts to symbolize the nourishment provided by the goddess to her citizens. A bass relief statue of Isis which faces the rising sun decorates the façade of the Louvre. The Louvre itself is orientated along an axis which extends towards a point on the horizon from which rises the star Sirius, the star sacred to Isis. The city’s coat-of-arms commissioned by Napoleon featured a ship with Isis being led by that same star.

The colossal pyramid proposed by the French architect Éttiene-Louis Boullée. Boullée’s genius produced projects that were more visionary than practical, and this towering structure was never realized.

And signs of the original culture from which the goddess sprang are ubiquitous in the city. There is the actual obelisk brought from the Egyptian sacred site of Luxor. There have at various times been pyramids. The unique genius of the architect Éttiene-Louis Boullée proposed a monumental pyramid ‘in the Egyptian style’. The pyramid was never realized – although the elegant [7]glass pyramid at the Louvre by architect Ming Pei has become a familiar landmark. During the Napoleonic era the rage for all things Egyptienne was in full swing. And the city plan itself is modelled on that of Luxor, with the same axes of alignment as its sacred counterpart. Significantly, the city has a specific gender. Paris is not an ‘it’. Paris is definitely a ‘she’.

Yet another grand pyramid, this time designed to be built in the grounds of the Louvre for the centenary celebrations of the Republic in 1889. A hundred years later the glass pyramid for the Louvre by Ming Pei has become a familiar landmark.

Terrorism is the bluntest of blunt instruments. It ranges itself against forces which it has little to no hope of ever actually defeating. The machineries of state are simply too powerful, too overwhelming, with all the massive resources and information, both covert and conspicuous, that governments and their armed forces have at their command. That is why terrorism is as it is: it can only ‘achieve’ some sort of an impact through the brutally crude tactics of shock and human grief. I doubt that anyone reading this post down to this paragraph will now be unaware of the irony that an acronym for Islamic State is ISIS – the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. The title Islamic State is itself a misnomer. It is of course anything but a ‘state’, and the inclusion of that word in its title is more of a wishful dream for its dubious future than an indication of anything which it has actually achieved.

French armed forces patrol in front of the glass pyramid in the grounds of the Louvre following the November 2015 attacks by Islamic State.

So why, of all the major European cities, did Islamic State last month choose to target Paris? There clearly was an active terrorist cell there with connections to other such cells in Brussels, and that cell laid its plan and followed through with that plan, and innocent men and women, many of them with most of their lives still ahead of them, were killed. In Paris the outcome was multiple murder. In the Middle East, Islamic State also have included torture in their ‘doctrine’. But apart from their iconoclasm and [8]torture, what tends to be overlooked is how deeply misogynist Islamic State is: Islamic terrorism is also specifically a campaign of violence against women.

Rape has been a consistent weapon used against the women who have been the victims of Islamic State. Violence against women is as much of a practice by IS as any of its other crimes. Knowing the above history and connections which Paris has to the goddess, what does emerge is that there is a lingering sense that, however unconsciously, the Paris attacks were a violation, certainly against the innocent citizens there, but also against the ‘she’ that is Paris.

A single rose placed in a bullet hole in a pane of glass fronting one of the restaurants that were attacked. The bullet hole has itself been enclosed by a painted heart. The simple but expressive gestures hint at a force which the brute power of mere bullets can neither comprehend nor withstand. 

Smashing a statue to pieces might have satisfied the archbishop’s affront at such a ‘pagan’ presence in his abbey. But what subsequent history establishes is that it is as if the goddess herself has arisen as a presence in the city even more assertively than when her temple stood on the south bank of the Seine. Whether you believe in gods and goddesses or not, whether you hold a belief in a deity – any deity – or not, what circumstances reveal to us is that there would seem to be forces – archetypes, if you will – so powerful, so assertive, that they will push their way through to our consciousness and manifest themselves in whatever forms they choose to adopt. The goddess Isis was not a statue. She was not banished by a mere archbishop, but lived on, creating new forms for herself in the hearts of her citizens. And Parisians are no more likely to bend a knee to terrorism than a goddess would deign to bend a knee to a mere mortal.

A sea of candles in a Paris street lights the faces of those paying tribute to the victims. The delusion of terrorists is to imagine that they are in control of the forces which they unleash, and that their actions will lead to a specific goal. But when the blunt instrument that is terrorism lashes out, the perpetrators are no more capable of foreseeing the eventual consequences than their innocent victims.

[9]Terrorism, it seems, is fighting against some power which makes all other forces pale by comparison. It is not the entrenched power of installed governments and the armed forces which those governments deploy. It is greater even that that. It is an ineffable, invisible something, and you cannot fight what you cannot see. Whatever that something might be, it evidently has survived for thousands of years, and has outlived all attempts by mere archbishops and others to subdue it. So perhaps you had better hope that you have the goddess on your side, because her anger is as dark as her heart is loving.

Hawkwood 

But I, I am compassionate and I am cruel.

Be on your guard!

I am the one whose image is great in Egypt

and the one who has no image among the barbarians.

~ from the text [10]Thunder, Perfect Mind

Notes:

[1] Literally: Saint-Germain-in-the-Fields.

[2] The Greek name for Horus was Harpocrates, known as the god of silence. The name derives from an approximate Greek version of the Egyptian phrase Horus the Child. 

[3] Please see my post The Emperor and the Eye of Horus for more examples of these hybrid deities and the way in which they persist and continue to exist in our culture.

[4] Ceres, the goddess of harvests and the fertile earth, still survives in our own world when we use the term ‘cereal’.

[5] Freely translated as: ‘Storm against statues’.

[6] Please see my post Empires of Sand, Empires of Dust for a more comprehensive coverage of these events.

[7] The urban legend fuelled by Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code that the pyramid contains 666 panes of glass – the ‘number of the beast’ in the Book of Revelations – is a fallacy. The pyramid contains exactly 673 panes.

[8] To name just one instance: the ringleader of the Paris attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who was later shot dead by French special forces, had in Iraq dragged people to death behind his vehicle.

[9] Terrorism in the context of this post means Islamic terrorism. In fact, terrorism these days does mean Islamic terrorism: a pointer, if any were needed, to the single major achievement of terrorism in our 21st-century world: that it has succeeded in making its religion synonymous with acts of terrible inhumanity which are perpetrated in the name of that same religion. In so doing, it has given decent Muslims the unenviable task of dragging the Quran out of the moral gutter where it has been dumped by those criminals acting in its name. Clearly the most effective way of achieving this is for all other Muslims vociferously and robustly to condemn such acts and those who perpetrate them, and it is heartening that many, including the legendary Muhammad Ali, are now doing so. When inhumanity in the name of a religion reaches such extremes, to keep silent is tacitly to condone such extremes, and a tacit silence can only further undermine the foundations of that religion. Misguided demonstrations such as the one seen at left might not be keeping silent, but the damage they are doing to the image of their own faith is real enough. 

[10] As translated by George W. MacRea. This powerful text remains unique among those found at Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945, the find which has given us access to many Gnostic and proto-Christian texts which had been lost for 1,600 years. The first-person narrator is unspecified, but the context and style allows us to assume a connection both with Isis and with Sophia, the female embodiment of Wisdom. 

Sources:

Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval: Talisman: Sacred Cities, Secret Faith. The Penguin Group for Michael Joseph, 2004. Most of the examples cited in this post of Isis the goddess and Ancient Egyptian culture in the city of Paris are taken from this title, which itself cites many more, complete with detailed expositions which this post only briefly mentions. It is difficult to over-emphasise the importance of this book for me personally. My first reading of it some ten years ago was my own wake-up call that history – more specifically, Church history – was not as I had imagined it. Reading for the first time about the atrocities perpetrated by the rising forces of Catholicism, and directly instigated by the papacy, against the Gnostics, and a millennium later also against the Cathars (please see my post A Dark Crusade), which were on the scale of a Holocaust, came as a shock that was mind-numbing to experience.

This is bearing in mind that the authors are dealing, not with a mere personal interpretation of events, but with what actually is part of recorded history, and whose events are related in many other titles dealing with these subjects. That sense of shock reverberated on, and eventually would give rise to this blog, which itself attempts to be a serious investigation into why we believe what we believe, who gets to decide what is ‘correct’ for us to believe, and ultimately, what ‘faith’ actually is.

666: The Number of the Beast

“Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.” Oh, how much dread this brief phrase has invoked! The phrase, from the New Testament’s [1]Book of Revelation, has provided fertile source material for [2]artists, assorted metal bands and horror blockbuster scriptwriters, and has been the source of much speculation by serious scholastic opinion at one end of the spectrum and doomsday conspiracy theorists at the other.

The number has even generated its very own medically-recognized phobia with the Scrabble-defying name of hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia (no, I don’t know how to pronounce it either), which has resulted in such startling urban changes as U.S. Highway 666 being renamed Highway 491 for that specific reason.

When fear gains the upper hand then chaos reigns, and common sense goes straight out the window. But as often as not, fear is not a rational thing, and just how irrational our fear of the ‘beast’ and the number 666 really is can be realized with a better understanding of the true meaning behind the phrase. The first clue is right there in the phrase’s opening words: “Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding…”. With these words we are given the clear signal that this phrase is not intended as some ghastly portent, but as containing concealed ‘wisdom’, if only we can unlock the puzzle and gain access to that inner knowledge. We are specifically told that we will need understanding – insight – to solve the puzzle, or as Jesus himself says [3]elsewhere: it is the sort of knowledge intended ‘for those who have ears to hear’.

We are further told that 666 is ‘the number of a man’. But which man? Based upon [4]gematria, candidates ranging from the [5]suitably bestial Roman emperor Nero to the [6]Pontiff and even Mohammed have been put forward. So we have a two-part puzzle to solve: the identity of this ‘man’, and why his number totals that mysterious 666. But there is another factor: we need to remember that we are reading what is in reality a translation from the Greek original. Did the author of Revelation really mean a ‘beast’? The word in English is immediately scary and emotive, suggesting all manner of misshapen horrors lurking in the shadows. But the word used in the original Greek is Θηρίον (thērion), which suggests something wild, primal and untamed. And such a force need be neither ‘good’ nor ‘evil’, but merely impartial – as neutral as an unleashed thunderstorm which, for all its display of awesome power, simply ‘is’. So our lurking beast is already looking a touch more friendly and less sinister. But what about that most notorious of numbers?

In the ancient world the sun and moon were thought of as planetary ‘spheres’ together with the other then-known [7]planets, and each of these seven spheres were assigned their own seals and [8]magic squares. And it is the magic square of the sun that provides the key to unlock our puzzle. For adding all the numbers together in the sun’s magic square produces (as you probably have now guessed) the total of 666. So it is the [9]sun which must have some special connection with this number. And surely the sun fits the job description of thērion – not a beast, but an untamed (and untameable) force of splendor and power.

But the phrase is not an isolated number. About the ‘man’, it ends: ‘and his number is 666’, which in its original Greek yields the gematria value of 2368. And this number in Greek letters spells out: Ιησούς Χριστός – ‘Jesus Christ’. I am aware that to many, the realization that the ‘man’ alluded to in this notorious passage turns out to be Jesus himself will probably either provoke an outraged rejection, or require them to sit down quietly for awhile to catch their breath. But that the number values of the text in its original Greek yield this actual name is surely beyond all coincidence. And the only way we can make sense of these findings is to press on deeper into Gnostic beliefs.

The spiritual vision of the Gnostics involved the belief that all that is visible to us in our material existence – including the life-giving sun – has a higher equivalent in the spirit. So there is a ‘spiritual’ sun beyond the actual sun – the ‘666 sun’ – which we see in the heavens, just as there is a true Christ – the Christ of the Holy Spirit – beyond the man – the son – who appeared on earth. What the phrase is telling us is that we need to seek beyond the material world – beyond what we see and experience with our senses – to reach the greater mysteries of the spirit which lie behind these outward appearances.

I cannot deny that a part of me rather regrets raining on the parade of all those growling goth metal bands and horror scriptwriters, but I would sooner press on to the heart of a mystery, wherever it might lead. And where this particular mystery leads is to realize that what this notorious phrase in the Book of Revelation describes is anything but the creature of bestial evil which our own [10]misreading of the phrase has created. It is rather a message of grace and hope, and its messenger is our own life-giving sun.

Hawkwood

Notes:

[1] The Book of Revelation 13:18

[2] Ah, mea culpa! It provided one of the key sequences for my own REVELATIONS video. Please see my post Hawkwood and Divine Retribution.

[3] This phrase is usually repeated in scriptural texts as a way of signaling that a statement has both an everyday ‘story’ meaning and a hidden spiritual message intended for an inner circle of followers.

[4] Gematria: the system of attributing numerical values to written letters in those alphabets which have no numbers. This would include both Hebrew and the Greek in which scriptural texts were written. Names and phrases then yield a numerical total which can have a further esoteric significance.

[5] Known for his persecutions of those belonging to the new faith (at this early date the term ‘Christianity’ and its doctrines had not yet been defined), Nero was said to have lit the grounds of his villa with their crucified and burning bodies. A stroke of ruthless political maneuvering also had him arranging and carrying out his mother’s murder. Desolate at the death of his first wife, he had a freed slave castrated and then married him, apparently because the slave bore an uncanny resemblance to his late wife. Facing ultimate revolt, he decided on suicide, but balked when the moment came and instead ordered his private secretary to murder him. Nero was just thirty years old when he died, which for history was probably not a day too soon.

[6] Yes, I’m aware of all the conspiracy theory websites and assorted YouTube videos which claim ‘proof’ for the alleged link between the Papal office and the beast of Revelation. But none of them as far as I am aware make the connection that were this to be so, then it would establish a pro-Gnostic, if not an actual Gnostic author for Revelation. In an increasingly hostile orthodox environment, and with their own faith coming under threat from the Church of Rome, the Gnostics would have had good reason to encode the identity of the perceived threat into scripture. As this post summarizes, I personally consider the truth to lie elsewhere, and in more positive directions – although this in itself still makes a pro-Gnostic stance for the Revelation author both likely and plausible, It is tempting to speculate about other encoded information in the text, perhaps in the form of gematria. The mere fact that there are no less than twenty one separate sets of sevens mentioned (seven candlesticks, seven seals, seven plagues, etc.) must at least give pause for thought.

[7] Outwards from the earth, the planetary spheres were believed to be: Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, with beyond these seven, the sphere of the stars, and beyond the stars, the realms of the different orders of angels. 

[8] Magic squares are figures set out in a grid whose numbers create the same totals when added along all the vertical, horizontal and two principal diagonal columns. Each planet is ascribed its own magic square, and one – the magic square of Jupiter – has been adapted from the writings of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (who resurrected these figures from antiquity) by the artist Albrecht Dürer, who incorporated it into his famous masterpiece engraving known as Melencolia 1 (left). Agrippa gave his three-volume work the title Occult Philosophy – although the word ‘occult’ did not then carry our own contemporary overtones, but was used in the sense of describing ‘hidden knowledge’. The relevant page of Agrippa’s text can be viewed here: Occult Philosophy, Book 2, chapter xxii. Of the tables of the Planets, their vertues, forms, and what Divine names, Intelligencies, and Spirits are set over them.

[9] That these pre-Christian teachings of Pythagoras and Plato exist in canonical scripture is already established by the story in John’s gospel (John 21: 10-11) of the miraculous catch of 153 fishes in the net (please see my post: Vesica Piscis: The Tale of a Fish), and there are other examples which I would like to cover in future posts. I can only imagine that these examples of pre-Christian Gnosticism survived the 3rd-4th-century purges of such material to make it into the canon simply because the uncomprehending orthodox editors failed to realize their significance. But there they are in any Bible – and there is the encrypted reference to the sun in the Book of Revelation.

[10] An idea, once it has taken root, can be more resilient and more powerful than the truth. Few examples which I can think of illustrate this point so tellingly as the way in which the literal reading of the ‘number of the beast’ phrase has embedded itself in our culture. And how ironic is it that it is Gnostic insight – the very beliefs which were so ruthlessly rooted out by the early Church Fathers – which transforms this seemingly-dark phrase into a message of hope.  

Sources:

John Michell: The Dimensions of Paradise: Sacred Geometry, Ancient Science, and the Heavenly Order on Earth. The gematria calculations in this post are those of Michell’s in this title. A considerably more detailed exposition of these conclusions can be found in his book than is given here.

David Fideler: Jesus Christ, Sun of God: ancient Cosmology and Early Christian Symbolism.

Nero sesturtius coin, 54-55 CE, from: Classical Numismatic Group, Inc. http://www.cngcoins.com.
Melencolia 1, engraving by Albrecht Dürer, 1514, in the British Museum, with other original prints housed in various museums around the world. 666 'beast' and all other graphics by Hawkwood, ©David Bergen Studio. 

Hawkwood and Divine Retribution

"For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: and if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book."

Stern words indeed. These are almost the very last words spoken in the book of Revelation, and therefore in the Bible itself. They read like a sort of 1st century notice of copyright, reinforced with the threat of terrible divine retribution. And they apply to me.

For awhile now I have been working on a video which is my own interpretation of the book of Revelation, and in the course of creating that video I have indeed been 'adding unto' and 'taking away from' the words which are written there. I have shaped and changed the visions of John of Patmos to suit my own creative ends, following wherever my own vision of things led me.

This has included a necessary pushing beyond the limiting dualities of the scriptures (God=good, Devil=bad) to portray a perceived mystic connection between The Woman Clothed with the Sun, who in John's writings is presented as all that is virtuous, and the Whore of Babylon, who is portrayed as being vile beyond redemption - a connection so extreme that the description of mere heresy hardly covers it.

So am I holding my breath waiting for assorted plagues to strike me down, and for my impending banishment from the holy city to take effect? Hardly. It is an easy matter to start thinking along the lines of: 'if I do (or don't do) such-and-such, then bad things will happen to me', and the line between faith and fear-driven superstition can be crossed without our even being aware of it.

Hawkwood

My video REVELATIONS has since been uploaded to YouTube and can be viewed here:
REVELATIONS: The End of Time