2) Flight & Fall

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The Masks of God, Vol. II: ORIENTAL MYTHOLOGY by Joseph Campbell

 

Chapter 2: THE CITIES OF GOD

 

III. Culture Stage and Culture Style

Following Rudolf Otto, I shall assume the root of mythology as well as

of religion to be an apprehension of the numinous.

>This mental state [he writes] is perfectly _sui generis_ and irreducible

>to any other; and therefore, like every absolutely primary and elementary

>datum, while it admits of being discussed, it cannot be strictly defined.

>There is only one way to help another to an understanding of it. He must

>be guided and led on by consideration and discussion of the matter through

>the ways of his own mind, until he reach the point at which "the numinous"

>in him perforce begins to stir, to start into life and into consciousness.

>We can cooperate in this process by bringing before his notice all that

>can be found in other regions of the mind, already known and familiar, to

>resemble, or again to afford some special contrast to, the particular

>experience we wish to elucidate. Then we must add: "This X of ours is not

>precisely _this_ experience, but akin to this one and opposite to that

>other. Cannot you now realize for yourself what it is?" In other words our

>X cannot, strictly speaking, be taught, it can only be evoked, awakened in

>the mind; as everything that comes "of the spirit" must be awakened.

 

The symbolism of the temple and atmosphere of myth are, in this sense,

catalysts of the numinous - and therein lies the secret of their force.

However, the traits of the symbols and elements of the myths tend to

acquire a power of their own through association, by which the access of

the numinous itself may become blocked. And it does, indeed, become blocked

when the images are insisted upon as final terms in themselves: as they

are, for example, in a dogmatic credo.

Such a formulation, Dr. Carl G. Jung has well observed, "protects a

person from a direct experience of God as long as he does not mischievously

expose himself. But if he leaves home and family, lives too long alone and

gazes too deeply into the dark mirror, then the awful event of the meeting

may befall him. Yet even then the traditional symbol, come to full flower

through the centuries, may operate like a healing draught and divert the

final incursion of the living godhead into the hallowed spaces of the

church."

With the radical transfer of focus effected by the turn of mankind

from the hunt to agriculture and animal damestication, the older

mythological metaphors lost force; and with the recognition, c. 3500 B.C.,

of a mathematically calculable cosmic order almost imperceptibly indicated

by the planetary lights, a fresh, direct impact of wonder was experienced,

against which there was no defense. The force of the attendant seizure can

be judged from the nature of the rites of that time. In _The Golden Bough_,

Frazer has interpreted the ritual regicide rationally, as a practical

measure, practically conceived, to effect a magical fertilization of the

soil; and there can be no question but that it was applied to such an end -

just as in all religious worship, prayer is commonly applied to the

purchase of desired boons from God. Such magic and such prayer, however, do

not represent the peculiar specificity of that experience of the numinous

which authorities closer than Frazer to the core of the matter universally

recognize in religion. We cannot assume that early man, less protected than

ourselves from the numinous, had a mind somehow immune to it and

consequently, in spite of being defenseless, was rather a sort of primitive

social scientist than a true subject of numinous seizure. "It is not easy,"

as Professor Otto has said, "to discuss questions of religious psychology

with one who can recollect the emotions of his adolescence, the discomforts

of indigestion, or, say, social feelings, but cannot recall any

intrinsically religious feelings." Assuming that my reader is no such

heavyweight, I shall make no further point of this argument, but take it as

obvious that the appearance c. 4500-2500 B.C. of an unprecedented

constellation of sacra - sacred acts and sacred things - points not to a

new theory about how to make the beans grow, but to an actual experience in

depth of that _mysterium tremendum_ that would break upon us all even now

were it not so wonderfully masked.

The system of new arts and ideas brought into being within the

precincts of the great Sumerian temple compounds passed to Egypt c. 2800

B.C., Crete and the Indus c. 2600 B.C., China c. 1600 B.C., and America

within the following thousand years. However, the religious experience

itself around which the new elements of civilization had been constellated

was not - and could not be - disseminated. Not the seizure itself, but its

liturgy and associated arts, went forth to the winds; and these were

applied, then, to alien purposes, adjusted to new geographies, and to very

different psychological structures from that of the ritually sacrificed

god-kings.

We may take as example the case of the mythologies of Egypt, which

for the period of c. 2800-1800 B.C. are the best documented in the world.

Frazer has shown that the myths of the dead and resurrected god Osiris so

closely resemble those of Tammuz, Adonis, and Dionysos as to be practically

the same, and that all were related in the period of their prehistoric

development to the rites of the killed and resurrected divine king.

Moreover, the most recent findings of archaeology demonstrate that the

earliest center from which the idea of a state governed by a divine king

was diffused was almost certainly Mesopotamia. The myth of Osiris,

therefore, and his sister-bride, the goddess Isis, must be read as Egypt's

variant of a common, late neolithic, early Bronze Age theme.

Dr. E. A. Wallis Budge, on the other hand, in his many works on

Egyptian religion, has argued for an African origin of the Osirian

mythology, and Professor John A. Wilson, more recently, while attesting to

"outside contacts which must have been mutually refreshing to both

parties," likewise argues for the force of the native Nilotic "long, slow

change of culture" in the shaping of Egyptian mythology and civilization.

The argument of native against alien growth dissolves, however, when it is

observed that two problems - or rather, two aspects of a single problem -

are in question. For, as a broad view of the field immediately shows, in

every well-established culture realm to which a new system of thought and

civilization comes, it is received creatively, not inertly. A sensitive,

complex process of selection, adaptation, and development brings the new

forms into contact with their approximate analogues or homologues in the

native inheritance, and in certain instances - notably in Egypt, Crete, the

Indus valley, and, a little later, the Far East - prodigious forces of

indigenous productivity are released, in native _style_, but on the level

of the new _stage_. In other words, although its culture stage at any given

period may be shown to have been derived, as an effect of alien influences,

the particular style of each of the great domains can no less surely be

shown to be indigenous. And so it is that a scholar concerned largely with

native forms will tend to argue for local, stylistic originality, whereas

one attentive rather to the broadly flung evidence of diffused techniques,

artifacts, and mythological motifs will be inclined to lime out a single

culture history of mankind, characterized by well-defined general stages,

though rendered by way of no less well-defined local styles. It is one

thing to analyze the genesis and subsequent diffusion of the fundamental

mythological heritage of all high civilizations whatsoever; another to mark

the genesis, maturation, and demise of the several local mythological

styles; and a third to measure the force of each local style in the context

of the unitary history of mankind. A total science of mythology must give

attention, as far as possible, to all three.

-------------------

 

Chapter 3

 

THE CITIES OF MEN

 

V. Mythic Guilt

>snip<

There is an important, rather well-known little epic lay of a certain

King Etana of the city of Kish, in which the import of this transit from

the earlier mythology of man's (or at least the king's) intrinsic divinity

to the later mythology of absolute dissociation, dependency, and guilt,

comes so vividly to view that it may well serve as our milestone to mark

the point of no return between the earlier and later spiritual fields.

In the old Sumerian king lists, of which we have already surveyed the

portions dealing with the time before the Flood, the name of Etana appears

among the kings of the first dynasty following that catastrophe, where he

is termed "a shepherd, the one who ascended to heaven, the one who

consolidated all the lands, became king, and reigned for 1560 years." This

notation makes it apparent that, although no actual Sumerian version of his

flight to heaven has come down to us, Etana's adventure was known to the

early chronicler; and it would also appear that he was supposed to have

succeeded in his flight. The legend must have served, in fact, to validate

the king's divine mandate. However, in the versions of his flight that have

survived, all of which are of late Semitic vintages - Babylonian or

Assyrian, mostly from the shattered library of the last Assyrian monarch,

Ashurbanipal (668-635 B.C.) - the entire theme has been turned into its

negative, so that the lesson rendered is not of the virtue of aspiration,

but of guilt.

The prologue of this little epic, as it now stands, tells of the guilt

even of the mighty bird, the Solar Eagle, who was to serve in fhe main

adventure as the vehicle of the world's first astronaut.

"Come," said this bird to his neighbor, the Serpent, "let us swear an

oath of peace and friendship; and may the curse of the sun-god Shamash fall

heavily upon the one who fails to honor it."

Before the sun-god they took their oath, sealing it with a curse....

>snipping a looong story in which "the old, very feeble shepherd king,

>Etana of the city of Kish," asks Shamash for the "plant of birth," so he

>can have a child. Shamash tells him, "Ascend the mountain. Seek out the

>pit. Look therein...." Etana rides the eagle and is already arriving at

>"the gate of the lowest heaven," when the bird says, "Come, my friend, let

>me carry thee farther still, to the higher heaven of Anu [sumerian An]."

>So they fly higher and higher and higher and higher... and reach the gate

>of the gods Anu, Bel, and Ea [sumerian An, Enlil, and Ea]. The solar

>eagle says, "Come, my friend, let me carry thee farther still, to the

>heaven of the goddess Ishtar [inanna]." So they fly higher and higher and

>higher and higher... until finally Etana can see below them no sea nor

>land. He cries, "O my friend, do not climb farther!" and they fall....<

 

The fragmentary document and its characters go to pieces together at

the bottom. All that remains are a few broken lines:

 

A third two hours ...

The eagle fell and he was ...

It was shattered on the earth ...

The eagle fell and he was ...

... eagle ...

 

A further scattering of words suggests that the king's widow is

mourning and his ghost is being invoked in a time of need.

 

Professor Morris Jastrow, in his discussion of this piece, already

observed half a century ago that "in the original tale of Etana, there is

every reason to suppose that he was actually placed among the gods."

"This is shown," he wrote, "by the success of the first flight, in

which the goal is attained, since the heaven of Anu - the highest part of

heaven - is reached. The second flight is clearly a duplicate of the first

and betrays in the language used its dependence upon the former. It is a

favorite theme with the Babylonian theologies to whom we owe the

preservation and final form in which the old folk tales and popular myths

were cast, that man cannot come to the gods, nor can he find out what is in

store for him after death, beyond the certainty that he will be condemned

to inactivity in a gloomy subterranean cavern. There may be exceptions but

that is the general rule."

Professor Jastrow discerned in this version of the legend,

furthermore, two entirely distinct tales combined: the first, of a king and

his city abandoned by its gods, and the second, of an eagle and serpent

allied. In the first, he believed, the well-being of the community must

have been restored through the intervention of the goddess and god of

fertility - namely Ishtar (Inanna) and Bel (Enlil) - after which Etana

appealed to Shamash (or perhaps originally to Ishtar) to be shown the plant

of birth through which his flocks might again bear young.

The animal tale, on the other hand, was a piece of folklore, to which

a moral had been added. And it would have been quite in keeping with the

later Babylonian spirit, if, in the combination of the two pieces, Etana

should have been prevented from attaining his goal.

"Instead of being brought into the presence of Ishtar, he is thrown

down to the earth. Just as he appears to be approaching his goal, the eagle

with Etana on his back falls through the great space of three double hours

that he has traversed...." And the adventure is unattained.

Jastrow concludes: "The two tales thus combined are made to teach a

lesson, or rather two lessons: (a) one that the laws of Shamash cannot be

transgressed without entailing grievous punishment, and secondly - and more

important - (b) that man cannot be immortal like the gods. It is this

lesson which the Babylonian theologians made the burden of the composite

Gilgamesh epic ... and it is this same lesson which, as it seems to me, the

Etana myth in its final form was intended to convey."

Thus it appeared to one of the leading students of this field already

in 1910 that the idea of man's absolute separation from the gods belongs

properly not to Sumer but to the later Semitic mind. However, it also

belongs to the Greeks, in their idea of _hybris_, and is the inhabiting

principle of tragedy. It underlies the Christian myth, also, of the Fall

and Redemption, Tree and Cross. Indeed, throughout the literature of the

Occident defeat is typical of such superhuman adventures; whereas it is not

so in the Orient, where, as in the legend of the Buddha, the one who sets

forth to gain immortality almost invariably wins.

In the West the sense of tragedy is of such force that the word

"catastrophe" (Greek _kata_, "down," _strophein_, "to turn"), which

primarily means simply the final event, denouement, of a drama, whether

sorrowful or not, has come to mean for us, in normal speech, only calamity;

and even our highest symbol of spirituality, the crucifix, shows God

himself at that tragic moment when his body is delivered to the power of

death.

Our concept of the hero, that is to say, is of the actual, particular

individual, who indeed is mortal and so doomed. Whereas in the Orient the

true hero of all mythology is not the vainly striving, empirical

personality, but that reincarnating one and only transmigrant, which, to

quote a celebrated passage, "is never born; nor does it ever die; nor,

having once been, does it ever cease to be. Unborn, eternal, changeless and

of great age, it is not slain when the body is slain."

The fall of Etana and his eagle has the character of an Occidental,

not Oriental, "catastrophe." So that, with this legend, we have left

innocence, tasted the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, and moved

out the Western gate to that great field of the psyche and destiny where

the task of man has been conceived, for the most part, not psychologically,

as a quest within for a principle already there, but historically, as the

progressive establishment of accord between the moral and empirical orders.