3) The Spider (continued)

    Ovid (43bc -17ad) is a standard source for the Greek myths. Indeed his Metamorphoses has been the standard work for the research of Greek myths for many hundreds of years. If looked at with new eyes can his work give us new clues to religious change? Will it help to confirm that myth contains the history of religious change and that therefore we might expect elements of myth in religious history? And where will we find this leads us? Will we discover that there is more to religion than we have previously thought?
    Metamorphoses might well be a very good place to start. The title of Ovid's work translates as Changes, though we give the verb 'to metamorphosise' a meaning more in the sense of 'to change from one thing into another', such as a caterpillar changing into a butterfly.
    ..... If only .....

b) Deeper into the Maze

    There are two stories in Metamorphoses that are of interest. By coincidence they follow each other in Book 6.
    The story of Arachne tells of a girl who would not accept that the goddess of weaving, Athene, had anything to do with Arachne's weaving skills. Arachne refused to give her any credit, but Athene demanded praise and so decided to teach Arachne a lesson. Arachne continued to deny that Athene was responsible for her weaving skills, challenging Athene to a contest to prove it. Athene visited Arachne in disguise, giving her one last opportunity to praise the goddess, but again Arachne denied Athene, who was also goddess of wisdom, saying "I have wisdom enough of my own", something guaranteed to anger Athene.
     On hearing this, Athene revealed who she was and agreed to the contest. Immediately, the contest began, both women weaving with silks and threads of shimmering gold and rainbow hues to form scenes that seemed alive in their vitality and moving in the way the light danced across and caught the colours.
    Athene, still determined to teach Arachne a lesson, wove scenes of the Gods punishing those who had dared not to accept their omnipotence. And what terrible scenes of anguish and horror they were; of punishments being made to fit the crime. And as the centrepiece Athene wove herself, triumphant after her arguement with Neptune over who should have the city of Athens and the right to its name. She crowned her work with a border of laurel, her own tree, and the victors wreath.
    Arachne, by no means intimidated by the might of her opponent, wove scenes from the lives of the gods themselves. She wove scenes of deception and rape. She wove into her work the pain and anguish of her fellow women who, deceived and hurt, were used and cast aside for lust. She wove, in Ovid's account, 18 such scenes, showing the gods as proud and callous, unworthy of high esteem. She surrounded her work with garlands of flowers, so real you would have smelled the scent had it not been for the ivy, the parasitic tree, woven around them.
    Athene stood back to judge the works and recoiled in horror at Arachne's. Its true meaning was not lost to her as she saw it not only as a depiction of the crimes of the gods, but as a mirror for her, reflecting her own pride and arrogance. What to her was worse was that in its design, its detail, its delicate craftsmanship and its shimmering vibrant colours, it was clearly superior to her own. Livid with rage, she ripped the scene in two, then, still incensed, picked up a weaving shuttle and beat Arachne about the head with it.
    Arachne's spirit was broken; she must have known some terrible fate was about to befall her. She took a rope and hung herself from a roof beam. Athene, by Ovid's account, took pity on her and saved her, others might see it as a curse. Athene uttered the words that sealed her fate: "Live on then, and yet hang, condemned one, but, lest you are careless in the future, this same condition is declared, in punishment, against your descendants, to the last generation!" Athene then left, but as she did, sprinkled Arachne with 'Hecate's herb'. The effects were immediate. Arachne's hair fell out and her body parts began to get smaller. Her arms stuck to her sides while the fingers of her hands grew into 8 long legs. She lost the features of her face but her belly remained, from which, where her legs had been, she still spins her thread and weaves her web as a spider.

    The story of Athene and Arachne makes a first rate tale and is of course a well known myth. But does it also serve as a history of religious change?
    If it does, then the story would probably read something like this: The remnants of an ancient spider worshipping religion refuse to be assimilated by a growing serpent worshipping religion. (Athene's earliest emblem, usually depicted as a border to her robe, was the serpent). The old religion shows no respect for the new one, despite the propensity of the new religion to assimilate older religions by force. The inevitable happens of course, the old religion is assimilated by the new religion with the victorious side taking on the attributes of the defeated, the spider symbol being consigned to the scrap bin of history.
    Athene was not only the goddess of war and weaving, she was also the goddess of wisdom. Did she get this title from Arachne who before the 'weaving contest' begins, tells Athene: "I have wisdom enough of my own." Does this make the spider goddess an early goddess of wisdom? If we re-read the end of Ovid's account, we find that it was not Athene on her own who overcame Arachne but Athene with the help of Hecate, a death goddess who as we shall see shortly, later took on some very strange attributes of her own. Does it also mean that Ovid understood more than he was openly prepared to say?
    Is this just speculation, something in which it was assured we were not interested, or is there yet more to discover? By sheer coincidence the very next story in Metamorphoses perfectly enlarges the theory above and leads us into our next discovery.

    Ovid's story of Niobe rejecting the worship of Latona enlarges on the theme of the penalty paid (until recently) for going against the religious establishment. Niobe's crime was to ask why people worshipped the gods and not look closer to home. She was following in the footsteps of her father Tantalus, a mortal, who, when invited by the gods to taste ambrosia, the food of the gods, offered it to mortal men.
    Tantalus' crime was the most unforgivable crime of all, for he would have distributed the power of the gods amongst the common people. This was not talk of etherial gods, but of gnosis, the direct experience of something for oneself without the necessity of the intermediary of a religion, or the control of gods. This is the crime of heresy for which many thousands of people have been executed over the centuries. It must also be said that many thousands of people have willingly given their own lives to help keep this knowledge alive.
    Tantalus' punishment was to be banished for ever to the deepest depths of the Underworld where he was condemned to suffer one of the cruelest of punishments. He was stood in a dish of water with the branch of a fruit laden tree above his head. When he reached for a fruit, the branch moved out of his reach; when he stoooped for a drink, the water receded. ( Hence 'to tantalise'). This is intended to show, of course, that the only way to spiritual nourishment is through the established church.
    Tantalus' punishment was not just for his crime of heresy. He had committed another crime which on face value is quite bizarre. He had invited the gods to a banquet of his own, and having found that there was insufficient food to feed his guests, cut up his own son Pelops, added the pieces to the stew and then served him to the assembled company. All the gods realised what was happening except Demeter, who it is said was too grief stricken by her daughter's recent kidnapping and incarceration in the Underworld to notice and ate the meat from the left shoulder blade.
    Tantalus' punishment did not end with the tantalising proximity yet tormenting elusiveness of his nourishment for he had committed a third crime, that of theft. The theft Tantalus was punished for was actually carried out by Pandareus who stole a golden dog, the guardian of Zeus' own temple, and gave it to Tantalus for safe keeping. Zeus soon found the culprits, killing Pandareus and his wife and punishing Tantalus.
    In his account of the myth in The Greek Myths Robert Graves remarks on the fact that Pandareus' orphaned daughters were then looked after by four goddesses, a strange thing to do considering their father's crime. Graves suggests that maybe the goddesses were part of the plot to steal the guardian dog, maybe even its instigators. What Graves does not make clear is that the removal of the guardian of Zeus' temple would be a very good first step in any plot to overthrow him. Bearing in mind his position as the father of the gods this could well have been a plot to install a goddess as the head of the gods, thereby in one fell swoop converting a patriachal regime into a matriachal one - or maybe there was something even more revolutionary afoot.
    For the crime of theft an enormous rock was placed precariously above Tantalus' head, forever threatening to come crashing down and destroy him; reminding him no doubt that if one were to remove the gods then one also takes on responsibility for ones own destiny.

    Before we draw the threads together we should not forget Niobe, Tantalus' daughter who refused to worship the goddess Latona. The story is that Niobe was proud and arrogant, saying that she was more worthy of worship, having 7 sons and 7 daughters compared to Latona's two children. For her hubris Niobe paid the ultimate price, but not before she watched helplessly as her children were slain.
    Ovid's recounting of this myth draws attention to the number seven. Niobe had seven sons and seven daughters, her mother was one of 7 sisters, the stars of the Pliedes. Ovid also, unnecessarily, mentions that Niobe was looking forwards to her 7 sons and 7 daughters in law, contrasting this to the two children of Latona. If this is to be looked on as anything other than just vain-glory, it must be assumed that this had religious significance.
    The number 7 also appears quite frequently in the Bible, particularly in the story of Jacob, where as we have already seen, he labours for 7 years to obtain the woman he loves, is tricked, has to marry her sister, waits 7 days before having what he really wants, then waits another 7 years before he has a chance to return to his own land. Yet seven is looked on as the luckiest number.
    Seven seems to be the number that holds the biggest reward, yet it also seems to be the number that you have to work hardest at to obtain - Tantalizing!!

    Apart from the puzzle of the sevens, which we shall solve later, mythology does give us clues to what might have been going on. If you look on them as the layers of an onion they do all stack up. Whichever way you dice them the flavour is the same.
    1) Arachne: Says to Athene "I have wisdom enough of my own"
    2) Hecate: The one who turned Arachne into a spider (ie: defeated her). Hecate's later symbols were - a torch, a key and a dog, indicating that she took over the guardianship of hidden secrets.
    3) Tantalus - the 1st crime: By trying to distribute ambrosia, the food of the gods, to mortal man, Tantalus was attempting to share their power/secret/thing that made them special.
    4) Tantalus - the 2nd crime: After the failure of his first attempt, Tantalus tried a different tack. Pelops is described as his 'son' which in mythology means a religious form that came after him. Pelops is a porpoise god and the porpoise is known as a fish of wisdom (along with, for instance, the salmon in Celtic belief). It would appear that Tantalus tried to argue with the gods but to no avail - except of course with the exception of Demeter.
    5) Tantalus - the 3rd crime: To steal the guardian from the temple of a god could be a euphormism for many things. Certainly it would leave the god open to be supplanted by another. Graves hints that indeed four goddesses have instigated the plot, one of them Athene. There may well have been a fifth. Demeter having 'eaten' Pelops and gained wisdom indicates that she may well have changed her view of the gods and joined a plot to overthrow Zeus as leader.
    6) Niobe: Seems to be a similar sort of character to Arachne: not prepared to worship the gods and traditionaly looked on as proud and arrogant. Her pride seems to be based on the sevens she has in her life. Lineage, children and children in law to come (ie: past, present and future), all based on seven. Seven here does not represent the days of the week, so what is it about sevens that gives Niobe her attitude of independance, of non-dependance on the gods?
    7) Overall: Looking at two of the myths described in Ovid's Metamorphoses (those of Arachne and Niobe) has led us to the story of Tantalus. It would appear that Tantalus was part of a plot to alter the course of the gods (ie: the course of religion) in ancient times by disseminating the secret of the gods amongst ordinary people. It would appear that there was a group of goddesses involved in this plot, one of them, Demeter, being the sister of Zeus himself. It would seem that the plotters got as far as removing the guardian dog from Zeus' temple, leaving him vunerable to attack, before the plot was discovered and Tantalus punished.

    What if the plotters had succeeded? As the plotters from within the ranks of the gods were all female this would undoubtedly have meant that control of religion would have reverted back to the preistesses, that the patriachal path which society has taken would have been halted in its tracks and that our world today would be very very different from how it has turned out to be.
    To understand this we must understand that in precisely the same way that the Bible can contain history, morality tale, religious symbolism and mythology, mythology contains religious symbolism, morality tale and history. A slightly different mix, but a very different beast. Whereas the Bible, having been written by the followers of a patriachal religion, follows, for the most part, the straight line of logic, mythology follows a sinuous course weaving together strands that tell of times past in a way that reflects its beginnings in a time of preistesses and the wild dance. Mythology will never be understood by the application of logic alone. It must be looked at in a way that allows the shifting shapes in the mists of history to take a solid form, that allows them to speak to us in a language of their own, that enables their psyche to meld with ours. We are then able to see how the excesses of matriachal religions of old spurred on the change to a patriachal system, where instead of the wild excesses of matriachal intuition run amock, there was the instigation of a male dominated power system, where the straight line of logic has reigned supreme ever since and has now taken over all major functions.
    There is a chance of course that the plotters to overthrow Zeus had learned from the past mistakes of the matriachal structure and would not have reinstated an exact copy of the old religious system. Undoubtedly they would have kept some of the elements that were common to both systems: the desire for the stability of life while on this earth and the quest for rebirth - either physical or spiritual - after death, for instance, and modified the excesses of the two systems: the exclusivity of the power system - Tantalus' complaint, and the suppression of women - Arachne's complaint, and who knows - they may even have incorporated Niobe's mysterious sevens!

    Balance is a wonderful thing - when we can attain it. In our age of instant communication it is flashed around the world when we do not. Those of us who have a democratic political system are used to hearing the opposite views of two politicians and are equally used to an argument put forwards only to be countered with a hyperthetical scenario at the opposite end of the scale. One extreme verses the other. Each combatant (for that is what they have now become) expounds his views to the listening audience of millions, intent not on solving the problem for the best interests of those listeners, but on political point scoring and ego massage. That is not to say that a lot of hard work does not go on behind closed doors, but when a politician is let loose on the public it seems that generally it is his ego that does the talking.
    This is bad enough when it is confined to domestic politics, but when it is let loose on a world stage, where the people affected have no hope of voting out the thoughtless politician, the politician who traditionally has no need to fear the electorate of another country, the results can now be devastating. Global communication has made us a global family. Increasingly it is becoming a two way conversation.

    Religions always have been strange beasts, the dictionary definition being: 1) belief in and worship of a God or gods, 2) a particular system of faith or worship. There never has been logical proof of a God or Goddess, but in days gone by to argue against their existence would have meant a sentence of death. These days we seem able to call upon their existence as justification of wars and acts of terror.
    In days gone by, wars and acts of terror was the way that religions were changed. The 'victors' soon learned though, that despite being able to break bodies with their weapon of choice, man's spirit would not be broken. It chose the religion and religious beliefs that were followed, even if it had to be in secret.
    From the early days of the Goddess, to an amalgam of Gods and Goddesses, through to the one supreme God, not offering one chosen-one everlasting life as the sacred king of the wheel of the year, but offering each of us everlasting life as part of his eternal kingdom, religions have always changed initially because the time was right for a change. It is only later, when the period of change has stabilised, that man has taken power for himself and abused it, turning what is meant as a force for the advancement of civilisation into a tool to advance his ego.
    Despite this we make progress.

    So, if man has progressed from the bull cults of Mithras in the age of Taurus, to the ram cults of Amun in the age of Aries, to the fisher of men in the age of Pisces, (who took the lamb of the preceding age as one of his symbols), to what are we likely to progress to in the age of Aquarius? Are we not already being given the answer? We seem to be turning away from the traditional, structured religions as we seek more freedom of expression. In both east and west, those at the head of the power structures are reacting as frightened men at the head of power structures do: clamping down, you're either with us or against us, striking out against perceived enemies both inside and outside the state.
    Yes, ultimately politics and religion are one and the same, as each are determined by the unbreakable spirit within. Although we may not be able to have precisely what we want at any given time, we continue to yearn for it, and that is the motor of change, the driving force of evolution.

    The age of Aquarius is understood as a time of freedom, of harmony and understanding. It just so happens that understanding and harmony (actually understanding and compassion), are two components of wisdom. They can be looked on as the logic and intuition that combine to allow wisdom to 'snake between the trees' of a problem and allow us to find the perfect answer. From wisdom comes understanding, from understanding comes compassion.

    If the argument put forward earlier in this section, that man's religious changes were mirrored in the stories (myths) of the gods is true, then does it seem logical that when we read of myths or stories where man's religious path is helped by the gods that we also think of them as true? No, it does not seem logical, yet that does not stop millions from believing in the literal truth of the stories in religious books. Because we are entering an era of increasing religious freedom many are declaring this illogicality as proof that gods, or a God, do not exist. Yet many feel intuitively that there is something beyond ourselves. A wise man might counsel that although we might have no proof of the existence, similarly we have no proof of the non existence of a God.
    Those who have read Chapter Two describing the Goose and Rider, here, will have seen proof of something, but we have no proof of precisely the mechanism by which the whole thing manifested itself and probably never will. Could it be meant to help us on our way? Has such help been given before? Although such help is reported in religious books all around the world, we have no proof of anything ever happening at all.

    There is one last myth we have to look at because it combines what has been said previously into one and has many features that are found in the spider in the landscape.

    Theseus was a brave adventurer in the best tradition of the Greek myths. He conquered strange beasts - and women - until he met Ariadne. She fell in love with him, but there was a problem. Ariadne was daughter of Minos, king of Crete and Theseus had not come to Crete voluntarily. Well, he had and he had not.
    Twenty seven years earlier Minos' son Androgeus had been killed in Athens (by a white bull that coincidently was later killed by Theseus, although he was just a child at the time - but that is another story). Every nine years Minos demanded a tribute of seven youths and seven maidens from the Atheneans. Theseus just happened to be in Athens when Minos came to collect his 'tribute' and was so moved by the anguish caused to the parents that he offered to take the place of one of the youths. He was taken to Crete where Ariadne immediately fell in love with him, by some accounts after she had witnessed Minos' general, Taurus, being beaten three times in a row by Theseus in a wrestling match.
    While Theseus was enjoying the company of Ariadne, the remaining youths and seven maidens were awaiting their fate. They were due to be sacrificed to a strange half man / half bull creature that was to be found at the centre of a twisting, turning series of passageways called a labyrinth, that many had entered but from which none had returned.
    This strange creature was known as a Minotaur and was called Asterion, which translates as 'of the stars'. He / it was Ariadne's half brother, being the result of Ariadne's mother coupling with a white bull.
    Ariadne knew that Theseus would be in great danger at the centre of the labyrinth so she gave him some help. She gave him a special axe called a labrys and a magical ball of twine given to her by Daedalus, the maker of the labyrinth.
    With her help Theseus defeated the Minotaur at the centre of the labyrinth, found his way out by retracing his way with the twine, and freed the captives. He then escaped with Ariadne to a nearby island where she gave birth to his son. Theseus unfortunately was not around to see his son born. He had already deserted her for further adventures. Poor Ariadne was so distraught she hung herself.

The Classical 7 ringed Labyrinth - similar in shape to a human brainThe Minoan Labrys

    The logical explanation of the myth of Ariadne and Theseus is that at around 1400BC the Minoan religion changed to a type practiced by the Atheneans. The loss of Minos'
son to a bull is a record of the Minoans loosing a battle to the Atheneans. The coupling of his wife with a bull being a record of the final takeover or merging of the Athenean and Minoan religions, the main religious symbol,
or totem, of the Atheneans being a white bull.
    We know by now that there are many threads to myth, so let us look for some more. For instance, the Minotaur's name, Asterion, 'of the stars', indicates that the bull was also seen in its zodiacal context as the bull of Taurus. Also, in this day and age we look on the labyrinth as a hiding place, something to overcome, or to tease the answer out of a difficult problem. By coincidence, the cover of the New Scientist in the very week in May 2008
in which I am writing these words has an illustration of a labyrinth. The heading is "The final theory" with a sub heading "new routes to ultimate understanding", refering to the search for a theory of everything, something commonly referred to as the 'Holy Grail' of science.
    Is the secret at the centre of the labyrinth the Holy Grail - the thing that mankind has been searching for since the begining of his existence - the thing that shall set us free?
    Which thread do we follow? They all seem the same and are so confusing. They lie tangled in a great knot, truly like the Gordian Knot, the puzzle that could never be solved.
    Another coincidence. Again, in the week that I was writing this section on the labyrinth. I hear a discussion on the BBC's Radio 4 programme In Our Time about the brain, in which a female panellist mentions the sickle shaped area at the centre of the brain that links the left and right halves.
    The Minotaur - the divided self - left and right, animal and higher man. The labrys, the axe with the two sickle shaped blades - the tool to use to defeat the divided self, located at the very centre of the brain, the link between the two halves. Theseus then would be ourselves, each individual with a desire to change himself. And Ariadne? Ariadne would be the clue, the silver thread that would lead us to the very centre of ......... ourselves.

    Why did Ariadne help Theseus? Theseus did not enter the labyrinth for personal gain, for treasure, or to inflate his ego. He entered a perilous place to help others, not himself. His heart was moved by the anguish he saw and instinctively he knew that he must help. His was an act born of love, of compassion, of understanding. These are the three elements of wisdom, and wisdom enabled him to move effortlessly through the tangled maze to reach the centre of the labyrinth, just as a spider is the only creature to remain untangled in her maze as she deftly negotiates her web.

   Was the spider once the creature that represented wisdom; the totem figure of some ancient goddess, overthrown and assimilated by a more powerful culture to become eventually Athene's serpent? Despite the clues given to us in the folk memories of the ancient peoples and handed down to us as myths, the truth is that we shall never know for sure.
    We do know that in Biblical times Moses tamed the serpent by turning its S form into the straight line I, showing the superiority of his religion and starting us on the pattern of thought we still follow today. Today we are coming to the end of that way of thinking.
    Surely we can now see that logic alone is not the answer, that it does need to be combined with something else to take us onward to the next stage of our journey. Surely we can also see that the ingredients must be combined in each individual for this to be effective - no longer can the old divisions continue: science, art; home, abroad; them, us.
    This means great change, but man has been changing since the day he first walked on the earth. We should not be frightened by it.
    Myth and legend speak of a time like this, when we have the opportunity to change, to put right what is wrong, to open the doors to a new future, a Shambhala, a blessed land where people flourish and the land is healed. It is also said that there will be something discovered or recovered, a long lost secret that will change everything and bring this change about. There are many names for this elusive secret - The Cornucopia of life, the lost word, the cauldron of inspiration, or more universally known: the Holy Grail. What form it will take we will not know until it is found but as we have seen earlier, if something is needed to be communicated maybe the best way of doing it is through symbolism and mathematics.
    Left brain mathematics is no problem for us today, but right brain symbolism is more of a problem - hence the preceding sections. So how do we feel now? How do we feel when we read the entirely left brain (or right brain? or left/right brain?) statement below?

    Religious myth holds many secrets. Either misunderstod or dismissed as figments of an over active imagination, their true meaning is lost to us. When Ariadne offered Theseus the thread that led him from the maze of the minotaur she was doing far more than simply saving an adventurer from certain death at the hands of some half-man half-beast. She was showing us that the way out of a problem, the way through the forest, is not to use either the straight line of male logic or the sinuous curve of feminine intuition alone, but that the secret is to combine them and master them as she had done in her web. The true symbol of wisdom is not the serpent, in truth a symbol of intuition, but the spider, because of the pattern of her web.

The spider's web, combining the straight line of logic
with the curve of intuition

    We stand now at a turning point in our history, a turning point on the road to wherever we are going. It is at this point, more than ever before, that we need wisdom. Let us each go and find it.