Islands : side two ~ Taming the Ox

Chapter Seventeen

ISLANDS
- side two -

- chapter index -
pg. 1 - Ladies of the Road | pg. 2 - A Flower Lady's Daughter | pg. 3 - Taming the Ox
pg. 4 - Prelude : Song of the Gulls | pg. 5 - Returning Home | pg. 6 - Islands
pg. 7 - Earth, Stream and Tree | pg. 8 - Beneath the Wind Turned Wave | pg. 9 - Dark Harbor Quays
pg. 10 - The Ego and the Self | pg. 11 - Magnum Opus

page index
Horae

site index

Translate from

5. Training the Ox

"I have supported you with great care for many years
And you plow - not mud and water, but clouds!
From dawn until dusk, the natural grass sustains you
And you keep your master company by sleeping out of doors."

- Xu Yun's Commentary on the Oxherding Pictures

"The fifth picture is called Taming the Ox, and in this, there's been some kind of an understanding. The picture shows the young man leading the ox by a rope. It is not tight. There's no physical force involved. The human can't control the animal by force, because the animal is much stronger, and you can't control your animal nature by force. The animal's much stronger. It's really the story of the "horse-whisperer", this beautiful story, based on a true story of the man who was able to tame the horse, not by using spurs and not by using ropes and not by using strength, but by using consciousness, and taking an understanding, listening and whispering, and communicating with all this kind of, unifying his/this consciousness. That's why he doesn't have to pull on the rope. The animal nature follows the human intention. The human makes the intention. Well, we're going to go in this direction, we're going to follow this spiritual path. And the animal nature, which is like your body follows along."

- Ralph Metzner

"Greek legend also goes on to explain the odd symbology of the goat-fish creature. In his attempt to escape the wrath of Typhon, Pan leaped into the Nile. As he was mid-air his human portion changed into that of a fishes tail to accommodate his descent into the depths of the water. The symbol became one of not only the escape from certain death into the realm of a new existence, it became the symbol of advent and rise of Christianity. It represents a time when the Goat (sexual promiscuity) is dying and the Fish (sexual self-control) is coming into being.

And it is this change that brings us to the strongest Olympian ruler, who embodies all of the symbolism of Capricorn, latent sexuality, spiritual rebirth and sense of purpose, Hestia (Vesta). Some historians associate the Keepers of the Hearth, or Vestal Virgins as temple prostitutes keeping the sexual connection intact. Hestia, which means hearth, represents the inner fire, the fire that is never allowed to go out. It is equated with the "fire within"; the kundalini fire as represented in Scorpio. It is by controlling this fire that the altered states of consciousness is achieved. This fire is also represented by the Self, which is symbolically born at the Winter Solstice, and the real meaning behind Capricorn."

- The Mythology of Capricorn

return to page index
site index

"Time's grey hand won't catch me"

"Time itself is a sacred whore. The hour comes from houri Gk horae, Pers houri, who kept the hours
of the night by dances - the "ladies of the hour".

In a sense Maya or illusion is the same sacred whore of the physical world complete with its law
of entropy. However, this whore is our very own life-blood.

The Dance of Maya represents the Universe of Mind and Body as the Fall from the Cosmic Hieros Gamos. As the withdrawal from union occurs the female (objective) performs the dance of illusion making the male (subjective) belief they are many and generating from her uterus the material diversity of the physical world."
(Rawson 1973 19).

- The Hieros Gamos Part 1
Exorcising Bitter-Sweet Hystery

"Sufis are also noted for their clandestine toleration of the feminine spirituality (Armstrong 1993 454). and the term fravashi or 'spirit of the way' represents the female sacred whore who teaches sexual illumination."

- The Tao of the Sufi

"She was Astarte to the Phoenicians. The Greeks associated her with Aphrodite, the Arabs called her Alat, and in Carthage, She merged with the Berber Mother Goddess and became Tanit. Goddess of love, fertility, and war. She assumed many aspects under different names and was worshiped for many centuries by many civilizations. In the Bible, She is referred to as Ashtoreth, Anath, Asherah, or Esther. In Revelation 17:5, She was the Great Whore, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots. Another of Her titles was the Goddess Har, who called herself the compassionate prostitute. Men divinely communed with Her through the sexual rites of Her priestesses.

She was the personification of the feminine reproductive and creative forces of nature."

- Ishtar

Functions of the Ancient Prostitute

"The chief roles of the ancient (female) whore were to school men in the sexual mysteries (called by mystics, "The Whore Wisdom"), act as a transmitter of the all-powerful female energy, and keep track of the passage of the seasons, and of time itself. In their role as temple-priestesses, the Horae or Holy Whores would perform a magic ceremony, then anoint a man's penis with sacred oil (called in Greek, chrism), and mount him to orgasm. This allowed for the transfer of procreative power from female to male, since, according to Goddess tradition, men lack the ability to generate the life force. As the "caretakers of time," the whore's role was primarily to aid in the construction of astrological charts, which were called "Whore-Scopes," or rather, "horoscopes" (which literally means, "watcher of time"), named after the temple priestesses-the Horae-who guarded the "heavenly spheres of time" kept inside Goddess's Temples.

Mary the Virgin-Whore-Mother and Jesus the Sun-King

...realizing that they could not eradicate her, the early Church Fathers simply transformed the Great Virgin Whore-Mother-whom the entire ancient Indo-European world had known as "Mari" into "the Virgin Mary." Her sacrificial Divine Son, the Pagan Savior Hesus, they recast as Jesus (whose name is in part a hebracization of the name of the Pagan Greek Savior-God-King, Jason.) The name "Christ," meaning "the anointed," was derived from the Horae's sacred sexual oil, chrism, which means "to anoint." The word chrism is, in turn, a derivation of the ancient Chaldean word, chrs or-with vowels-chris, meaning the "Sun."

- The Authentic Herstory of Prostitution
by G. Loch-Lainn Seabrook

Because he has gained the wisdom to overcome the Song of the Sirens, our wanderer can now hear the Song of the Gulls .

Ulysses and the Sirens
by John William Waterhouse

Ulysses and the Sirens
by John William Waterhouse

"In one myth, the Sirens were persuaded by Hera to enter a singing contest with the Muses. The Sirens were said to have the bodies of birds and the heads of beautiful women. The Muses won the competition and then plucked out all of the Sirens' feathers and made crowns out of them."

- The Muses

"It is just the most unexpected, the most terrifyingly chaotic things which reveal a deeper meaning. And the more this meaning is recognized, the more the anima loses her impetuous and compulsive character . . . In this way a new cosmos arises."

- Longing for Self: the Voyage as Soul-Making
by Mark Greene

"Capricorn is the sign of completion and conclusion: the mountain top. It marks the point beyond which further ascent in any life cycle is not possible. As progress is impossible, there is a descent to the valley of pain, despair and death before a fresh attempt to scale the heights is mounted. Therefore, Capricorn is the sign in which a new cycle of effort is inaugurated."

- D. K. Foundation

"Travel weary capricorn
Move on
To another dawn.

Travel weary tired and torn
You will
Be reborn.

Capricorn, dawn, torn, reborn. . . "