Birth, Death, erections, totem poles, skulls, vultures, and rites of death and regeneration; are these the oldest subjects of cultic practice? Are the mysteries of birth and death and the passage of the spirit/soul through the after-life towards regeneration the oldest myth? How has this changed over time and what of this has come down to us over the ages?
The oldest know depiction of human death is at the Lascaux cave c. 17k BP. The cave art depicts a hunt scene with a supine man sporting an erection (seeming to be dead), next to him is a bird on a pole to one side, and a speared and dying Auroch on the other. Of initial interest to us in this scene is the bird on the pole; but we also will see Aurochs and later Cattle as being identified as part of a continuing story of the death of this man, as is his erection.
Totem Poles, Effigy, or Spirit Poles, tall poles topped by a bird/swan/eagle/vulture, can be found across Eurasia and of course in the pacific northwest, as well as South Asia. In Eurasia this is connected to Cygnus the Swan constellation and the North Pole Star. The pole being the Axis Mundi about which we spin, and the region of the pole star being the realm of the Immortals, those stars which never descend below the horizon.
Seven thousand years after Lascaux we see another scene depicting a dead man sporting an erection. At Gobekli Tepe (Turkey) c. 9500 - 8000 bce, on Pillar 43 of building D, you have Cygnus depicted as a Vulture holding a disc, and at the bottom of this Zodiacal scene is found a headless man with an erection. It is unclear however what this disc is depicting, a faceless skull, or the disc of the Sun; what can be noted though is the connection between the Soul residing in the scull, and both being connected to the Sun in later Egyptian mythology.
Sun Disc = Son = Soul = Skull = Circle = Egg
Nearby and shortly after Gobekli Tepe we see the headless man figure reappear at Çatalhöyük c. 7500 - 6400 bce, and again associated with Vultures. In the seen below we see an excarnaton, the process of the dead being placed in towers where vultures are allowed to de-flesh the bodies. This burial process is still taking place in Zoroastrian Iran, and in Tibet. What is not clear is the meaning behind the progression within this scene of a human crawling, vultures with a skull, vultures with the headless body, and a human walking away from the scene; is this a life cycle depicted?
What we also see introduced here is the appearance of a Skull Cult.
And contemporaneous with Çatalhöyük in Anatolia, we will see plastered human skulls at Jericho, between 8,000 and 6,000 BC in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B period, and other locations across the Levant in this time.
What we also find across Eurasia associated with burial Kurgans (Balbals c. 3000 bce) and at Gobekli Tepe (Urfa Man, Pre-Pottery Neolithic A, c. 9000 BCE) are effigies depicting a man holding a cup or an erect penis.
Below is the Shigir Idol, a 12,000 year old effigy pole found near the village of Kirovgrad, Russia; which has been noted by archeologists as having similarities to artifacts found at the contemporaneous site of Gobekli Tepe.
Also at the Tas Tepler complex, of which Gobekli and Karahan Tepe are a part, you have effigies, and totem animals arranged in a circular/ovoid cult enclosures containing "portal" stones.
And in the case of Karahan Tepe you have secondary and tertiary chambers connected by a small portal, with the first being associated by some as an ancestor room, and the later connected to a serpentine motif (with the possibility of water incorporated). Snakes be one of the more often depicted animals seen across the Fertile Crescent over many millennia, and of course connected to rejuvenation.
So we have poles topped by birds, effigies with erections, snakes, and vultures connected to death/transformation and birth/regeneration; a transition process between ancestors, Man, and future generations. A question to pose is of course what happened to the Skull Cult in the period between 6000 - 3000 BCE?
A Bird carrying the dead to the land of Souls in the Dark Rift of the Milky Way? Seems familiar.
During the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B the civilization of the Fertile Crescent descended into the Nile River Valley with the earliest site being the 7500 bce (Egyptian Neolithic Period) Nabta Playa astronomical stone circle. 4000 years later, and 3000 years after the last of the Skull Cults, during the Old Kingdom we see the first depictions of Egyptian afterlife and funerary customs. Among them being the Ba Soul depicted as a bird with a human face or even simply just a head or face with wings; this skull or orb with wings shows up a lot from here on for thousands of years.
The Milky Way and the River of Death of course being present in Egyptian mythology; Osiris, put into a river, his lost phallus, his journey on the river of fire, to meet the adversary on an island of fire which contained a 'temple' or canopy held up by four columns above the crypt of Osiris where he transforms by conquering the Demon Apep, and thus death, to then continue on the river to rise from the water eyes first as the new Sun/Son, Horus (a Bird/Hawk) on the Horizon.
Under the Causeway linking the Sphinx to the Great Pyramid on the Giza plateau, c. 2.7k bce, is a site known as Campbell's Tomb. At the bottom of a series of three shaft 30m deep, can be found the “Tomb of Osiris.” This is a chamber connected to tunnels providing a flow of water which encircles a platform with four columns, and at the center of which is a sarcophagi immersed in the waters. This is the depiction of the Tomb of Osiris found in the Pyramid Texts, and later Coffin Texts.
The Pyramid Texts of the 24th century BCE found in the Pyramid of Unis are among the first occurrences in hieroglyphic texts of Osiris, Horus, Nut, and Set and the passage of the Soul of the Pharaoh in the after life. Later during the third intermediate period we start to see depictions of the Headless One, Akephalos (the Akephalos, the Flaming One, the Bornless One; please view this YouTube video from Esoterica, with Dr. Kirsten D. Dzwiza for more information on the Headless One). And again in the Mythological Papyri of the 21st Dynasty (Mythological Papyri, Translated by Alexandre Piankoff, 1957), where the Headless One is associated with Osiris. Another point of interest pointed out by Dr. Dzwiza is a Headless figure associated with Capricorn and the Winter Solstice depicted in the Dendera Zodiac. The Winter Solstice of course associated with the death and rebirth of the Sun God.
In The Late Egyptian Underworld: Sarcophagi and Related Texts from the Nectanebid Period, by Colleen Manassa we see the depictions, in Coffin Texts and the Book of Amduat, of the Netherworld and Osiris as being headless accompanied by the Ba Bird. And again the Headless One appears in The Greek Magical Papyri of the 4th c. CE.
I would submit that the story of the Death of Osiris and his Rejuvenation as Horus - with the Sun, a River/Milky Way, the North Pole, a Bird of Death/Swan/Vulture, and a bird of Rebirth/Birth/Stork/Hawk/Eagle, and a Snake/Transformation - is among the oldest magic rites and Mythems in the world. Remaining a powerful symbol to this day and extant in the ritual death and rebirth of the practitioner, and the rejuvenation of the spirit in life and in death.
Examples of this can be found in the initiations of Freemasonry with the allegorical death of Hiram Abif, the narrative of Christianity (largely taken from the Egyptian Holy Family - Osiris/God, Isis/Mary, Horus/Jesus - the ritual death cult of Mithras, and Astrotheology where the cycle of the Sun is seen as the Birth, Ascent, Decline, Death, and Rebirth of the Solar King, and Sol Invictus), and Alaister Crowley’s Liber Samek - where he transposes the Headless One into the Bornless One, in a ritual to attain communion with the Holy Guardian Angel (much like Hiram Abif, the Master Mason of Solomons Temple being the Creator god). In the arts of the 20th century the Headless One is a frequent theme including the 1936-39 publication Acéphale, by Georges Bataille; with its cover illustrated by André Masson; Acephale, La Conjuration Sacrée.
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