The Great Flood
The Epic of Gilgamesh is an old text, datable to the third millennium BC, describing the great flood.
The oldest story that has come down to us from the past is the EPIC OF GILGAMESH, datable to the third millennium BC.
We are in the land between the two rivers, precisely Mesopotamia. In the second half of the last century, continuing the excavations that had brought to light the stupendous palaces of Nineveh, the ancient capital of the Assyrian Empire, two archaeologists, Sir Austen Layard and his assistant Hormuzd Rassam, almost by chance noticed two outbuildings to the palace; there they found the library of King Ashurbanipal III (668-627 BC), and in it 20,000 texts on clay that dealt with mathematics, astronomy, medicine, philosophy, and together with them 12 massive clay tablets that narrated the deeds of a man who lived before and after the great catastrophe of a flood, GILGAMESH, fifth king of the city of Uruk, the largest city in southern Babylon. The Nineveh library had returned to mankind not only the first great epic in the history of the world, but even an older version of the Flood than the one described in the Bible!
The story is divided into several episodes:
- Gilgamesh's meeting with Enkidu, who becomes his friend
- a trip to the forest to kill a monster
- contempt for a goddess
- the death of the partner
- the pursuit of immortality
This story, as tablet IX in column 4 tells us, takes place "along the way of the sun", which may say nothing to an archaeologist or a historian, but to an astrologer it says that the scenario of the whole event it is in heaven, since "the way of the sun" is none other than the ECLIPTICAL. In fact, the deeds and the places of the story (of this as of other mythical tales) must be inserted, searched, not on a globe but high up in the sky, and precisely on the ecliptic band, because that is the place where the mythical events take place and where the reason behind these events is located, that is the obliquity of the ecliptic, that is the astral situation due to the fact that the Earth is inclined, with respect to the plane equatorial, of 23° 30'. This inclination causes the earth's axis to rotate like a spinning-top, so if we extend this axis to the north celestial pole, it describes a circle around the aforementioned pole; the time it takes for this extended axis to rotate around the northern pole of the ecliptic is about 25,920 years, during which its orientation passes from one star to another, a star we call Polar (from the Greek polos , that is axis, pivot): in the year 6,000 BC the Polar Star was the iota of the Constellation of the Dragon; in the year 3.000 BC Thuban was the alpha of the same constellation; at the time of Classical Greece it was Kochab, the beta of the Ursa Minor; today it is the alpha of the Ursa Minor (which we call Polaris), while in 4,000 AD it will be Vega, the alpha of the constellation of Lira.
This phenomenon is called Precession of the Equinoxes: the equinoctial points (and therefore also the solstitial ones) do not remain stationary where they should be, but move along the ecliptic in the opposite direction to that of the order of the Signs. The ancients attributed the rise and fall of the various ages (or ages) of the world to this phenomenon. In fact, it was said that the zodiacal constellation that rose in the east before the sun (heliacal rising) marked the place where the sun rested.
This constellation was called the pillar of the sky, and gave its name to the various Ages of the World (lasting 2,160 years). In 6,647 BC, the vernal equinox was in Gemini: therefore this was the pillar constellation; then we will speak of AGE OF THE GEMINI; then we passed slowly to BULL, then to ARIES, finally to PISCES, where it still is and where it will continue to stay for a little while longer. Our Age is marked by the advent of Christ the Fish ... The previous Age, that of Aries, had been announced by Moses who came down from Sinai 'with the two horns', that is, crowned with the horns of Aries, while his disobedient flock persisted in dancing around the 'golden calf', better understood as a 'golden bull', the Bull. Thus, it was the heavens in their revolutions that gave the key ... What moved with motion right in the sky - the planets with their weeks and their years - assumed an ever more majestic gravity. They were the People from True Becoming: the zodiac was the place of real events ...
(G. de Santillana and H. von Dechend, Il mulino di Amleto, ed. Adelphi, Milano, 1983)
Therefore, when we hear of floods, of flat or quadrangular earth, or of emerged earth or of waters below, this refers to events and places that are not of this world but that reflect rules, cosmic phenomena, events and astral upheavals: every deluge, therefore, can be seen as a destructive event of one Age to make way for the next. The floods described by the Greeks, who were aware of three successive destructions (and we think of the one in which Deucalion and Pyrrha are protagonists), appear as astral myths in which a world is seen dying, understood as an Age of the world.
Many traditions link this or that catastrophe with elements or star figures; we cite an example taken from the legendary Jewish tradition of the late epoch, quoted by Frazer:
Now, the deluge was caused by the meeting of the masculine waters of the sky with the feminine waters that flowed from the earth. The holes in the sky from which the above waters escaped had been made by God when he removed some stars from the constellations of the Pleiades; and to stop that flood of rain he then had to plug the two holes with a couple of stars borrowed from the constellation of the Bear. This is why, even today, the Bear runs after the Pleiades: he wants her little ones back, but he will never be able to have them until the Last Day
As for the deluge experienced by Deucalion and Pyrrha, its waters receded thanks to the sound of the whelk (an ancient musical instrument formed by a spiral shell) of Triton, an instrument that had been invented by Aigokeros, that is the Capricorn, the lord of the winter solstice when it was the constellation of Aries to 'carry' the sun (from which it should be deduced that this deluge served as a transition from the ERA OF TAURUS to that of ARIES, which would date it to 2.350 BC!).
In summary, the earth as a place where mythical events take place is not our globe: earth here indicates the plane that is formed by connecting the four points of the year marked by the equinoxes and solstices, or the ecliptic: the four angles, that is, the constellations that rise together with the sun at the equinoxes and solstices, are the points that determine a earth; so each age of the world has its own land, and it is precisely for this reason that we speak of the end of the world: when the points of the year are determined by a new group of zodiacal constellations brought by the Precession of the Equinoxes, a new earth arises. So the sky as the place where mythical events unfold, the Zodiac as the earth in which myths are born, in which Gods and Heroes move, and among these, precisely, GILGAMESH, for two thirds god and for a third man.
The Story of Gilgamesh
Gilgamesh is a despotic, cruel, violent king. The men of Uruk, annihilated by her arrogance and wickedness, turn to the goddess Ninsun, mother of Gilgamesh, begging her to create a double of her, that is, someone who is equal to him in physical strength and impetuosity of heart. Gilgamesh will cease to be a despotic Lord-Master the day he finds an equal of him, who is both his rival and his friend, so prophesies the goddess who therefore creates Enkidu, with a hairy body and long feminine hair. Enkidu is the opposite of Gilgamesh. Semi-wild, he lives and mates with animals, living in caves or in the forest. Endowed with superhuman strength, he destroys everything he encounters.
One day a hunter meets him in the forest, and he is so frightened that he immediately runs to his king to tell him what has happened. Hearing the words of the hunter, Gilgamesh decides that the only way to tame that half animal is to remove him from his condition as a beast, from his wildness. To do this it is necessary that he be seduced, that he knows the love of a woman. Then Gilgamesh sends a courtesan to Enkidu to seduce him. She joins him for seven days and seven nights and finally manages to make him a man.
Enkidu
said the woman
you have become beautiful as a god, why do you want to keep wandering in the company of animals? Come on, come with me, I will lead you to Uruk. It is there, precisely, that Gilgamesh rages like a bull and he keeps all men under his feet
.
Guide me to the city of Uruk
answered Enkidu
and as for Gilgamesh and his cruel rule, I will soon change the state of things. I will provoke and challenge him, and show him, once and for all, that the young peasants are not fools
The meeting between the two takes place at the door of the temple. Gilgamesh and Enkidu fight like wild bulls, but it's king who unexpectedly gets the worst of it, and thus realizes that he has met his worthy opponent. The goddess's prophecy comes true, and the final result of the struggle was the beginning of a long and tender friendship.
The meeting between the two takes place at the door of the temple. Gilgamesh and Enkidu fight like wild bulls, but it is the king who unexpectedly gets the worst of it, and thus realizes that he has met his worthy opponent. The goddess's prophecy comes true, and the end result of the struggle was the beginning of a long and tender friendship. The meeting between the two takes place at the door of the temple.
Time passes, and Enkidu in the new civil life is not feeling well, and day after day he weakens and saddens more and more. Then Gilgamesh proposes an enterprise: to go to the Cedar Forest to challenge and kill the monster Khumbaba. Thus they arrive at the very dense forest, at the edge of which there is an immense door; Enkidu opens it, but the great portal, turning on its hinges, suddenly closes again, crushing his hand. For twelve days Enkidu lies moaning in pain, thinking of giving up on the undertaking. But Gilgamesh urges him on, and the two enter the forest through the great door. Finally they meet, challenge and win the Khumbaba monster. Gilgamesh, however, wants to spare his life, moved with compassion by his complaints, but Enkidu insists on killing him.
The goddess Ishtar, Assyrian era, Britsh Museum, London
Upon their return to Uruk, victorious and celebrated by all, the goddess Ishtar comes forward, fascinated by the enterprise of Gilgamesh and more than anything else by her beauty, asks him to lie with her becoming her husband. But Gilgamesh disdainfully refuses her, whereupon the furious goddess sends the Celestial Bull to meet him, whose gallop is a harbinger of storms and earthquakes and whose coming causes seven years of drought; but Enkidu rushes to his friend's aid, grabs a thigh and the member of the Celestial Bull, tears them off with a violent blow and throws them in the face of the goddess, who, humiliated and defeated, returns to her heaven.
But Ishtar now makes her offers to Enkidu, which he disdainfully refuses, then the goddess punishes him by making him sick. Days and days the agony of Enkidu lasts, until the ninth, watched over by his friend, he dies. In despair Gilgamesh mourns him, and imposes mourning on the whole nation. Great is the pain for the loss of a friend, and great is the fear that 'maybe' he too will have to die.
So he thinks that the only solution is to become immortal, and he sets out in search of Utnapistim, who lives at the mouth of the two rivers, the only one who was saved from the flood and whom the Gods made become a god, thinking that he will know how to make it immortal.
He leaves, and after a long time arrives at the Gate of the Setting Sun on Mount Masu, which is opened to him by the guardians, the Scorpio-Men.
He travels twelve hours in the darkness of a basement, then finally the sunlight breaks through; exhausted, he stops on the seashore by the nymph Siduri, the one who makes wine and beer, who initially tries to distract him from the enterprise but then helps him by indicating that the boatman Ursanabi can lead him to Utnapistim.
Then they set sail, and cross the Waters of Death, and after 120 rowing they arrive from Utnapistim known as Il Lontano, who lives in the place of transit of the sun, east of the mountain. Here Il Lontano tells him how he was saved from the flood. But Gilgamesh wants immortality, and Utnapistim tells him that he must stay awake six days and six nights so he will have immortality. But Gilgamesh is too tired from the journey and immediately falls asleep.
Upon awakening he is desperate for not having had the strength to resist sleep, at which Utnapistim, moved with compassion, reveals to him the secret of the Gods, namely that at the bottom of the sea there is a plant that gives immortality. Immediately Gilgamesh throws himself into the depths of the ocean, draws the plant to himself, but does not eat it immediately because he wants to give it to the other men of Uruk as well. So he sets off and returns from the door he had entered through.
Along the way he sees a well; he is tired and wants to cool off; he then places the plant on a stone and takes a bath; but suddenly a snake, attracted by the scent of the plant, comes out of the water and grabs it, and immediately sheds its skin and returns to the well. Gilgamesh sits and mourns his lost immortality. Distraught, he returns empty-handed to Uruk, and the whole story engraves on a stone.
An Astrological Journey
That the GILGAMESH EPIC should be placed on the paths of heaven rather than relegating it to earthly mountains and swamps, can be deduced both from the places where the scene is inserted and from the type of characters that our hero gradually meets. Not only; we can also know the time in which this story takes place, and we understand it when the goddess Ishtar sends the Celestial Bull against Gilgamesh, from which Enkidu then tears off her thigh and member; the Celestial Taurus is none other than the constellation of Taurus, a constellation that is not represented by a whole bull but cut in half at the waist, missing precisely the back part.
So, this scene wants to tell us about the passage from the ERA OF TWINS (represented here by Gilgamesh and Enkidu) to the ERA OF BULL (shortly after in fact Enkidu dies and the Celestial Bull, so crippled, is assumed in the sky in the midst of the stars!), what happened around 4.499 BC.
This is therefore a 'celestial' story, and it can also be deduced from the series of characters that populate it; take for example the Guardian of the Cedar Forest, that Khumbaba monster killed by the two friends: well, the texts define him as a god, and it seems to correspond to the Elamitic god Hmba, who is even included in a Sumerian list of stars with the determinative mul that precedes the name of the stars: mul Hmba, therefore, which was the name by which the Sumerians called the star Procyon, the alpha of the constellation of Dog Minor, a star that this people had counted among those of the constellation of Cancer. Not only that: the star mul Hmba, then, was the representative, among the planets, of Mercury.
Another interesting element is the fact that to enter the Cedar Forest the two have to go through a door! But what is a door doing in a forest? The door is always a passage between two stages, between two worlds, between here and there.
We then saw that Khumbaba corresponds to the star Procyon, a star located near the constellation of Cancer. All this would be an arcane trick if we did not know that in Cancer we find one of the Gates of the Zodiac (the other is in Capricorn), that is the Gate from which mankind is incarnated (while from that of Capricorn the Gods are incarnated). It is therefore a backward journey that Gilgamesh and Enkidu undertake: from the Land of Men to that of Heaven, passing through the Door of the Cedar Forest, precisely Cancer "god of the fortress of intestines", which has led some scholars to think that he was the inhabitant and lord of the labyrinth, or a predecessor of the more famous Minotaur. In a bas-relief depicting Khumbaba, we see his face that seems to be made of intestines, depicted as it is by a single sinuous line, a face that has strong resemblances to that of the Mexican god Tlaloc, the "god of rain": here, instead of a single sinuous line, we have two snakes which, entwining one with the other, 'form' the face of the god, which thus resembles the Caducèo of Hermes-Mercury.
Therefore, the Caducèo, the face of Tlaloc and the idea of a "god of the intestines", can only indicate Mercury (we consider that this planet, astrologically, has its dominion, as well as in Gemini, also in Virgo, a sign that in Astrological Medicine it corresponds to the intestines!). But what does Mercury have to do with Cancer? In ancient times Mercury was considered a moon god, and had strong resemblances to the Egyptian moon god Thoth, who had taught writing to men. Not only that: in Egypt, in the tomb of the pharaoh Men-Maat-Ra-Sethi I, son of Ramesses I, we find the planet Mercury mentioned as "Star of the North of Heaven", and in any case as Lord of the Second Decan of the Fourth Sign, precisely Cancer, which in the zodiacal representation represents the North.
Other characters that give us further proof of the astral location of this myth are Utnapistim the Far, or the Mesopotamian Noah, who has his abode at the "mouth of the rivers", and Siduri, the divine hostess. It is said that Gilgamesh reached the pass of Mount Masu, at whose gates the Scorpion-men stood guard.
Consider that Masu means twins, and that among the Babylonian 'masu' stars we find lambda and ipsilon Scorpii, or the twin stars of Scorpio's sting. Mount Masu therefore represents, in Babylonian astronomy, the area between the end of the constellation of Scorpio and the beginning of that of Sagittarius, a celestial area in which we find nothing less than the Center of the Galaxy, the place from which it was said that the souls in their initial post-mortem journey, and it is from there that begins, we read in the text, "a darkness that no one has ever walked".
After all, we know that, astrologically speaking, in Scorpio, the eighth analogue sign to the eighth horoscopic sector, represents the death of the physical body; Interestingly, if life begins in Aries, the first Sign, death is not, as one would expect, in the last Sign, that is Pisces, but, as seen, in the eighth. From there, in fact, there are four other Signs that in practice represent the path and the evolutionary process that the soul must complete before its rebirth in a new body in the Sign of Aries. We are therefore in the world of darkness, and Gilgamesh, as the text says, travels for twelve hours in an underground tunnel before seeing the sunlight break through.
Finally our hero arrives in a garden of precious stones: here he meets Siduri, the divine hostess. The character Siduri has been approached by various scholars to those characters who in many epic poems have the task of assisting souls in the moment of their departure from the body, such as the nun Gertrude in whose inn the souls spent the first night after death. Siduri gives Gilgamesh some advice on how to get to the place where Utnapistim lives; first of all he will have to find Ursanabi, the ferryman, because he will accompany him in the Sea of Death. Now we must consider that we have been handed down some constellation names that sound like Hades or The Ferryman: these names we find them between Scorpio and Sagittarius, where we had previously seen the Galactic Center. One can think that Siduri and the ferryman Ursanabi find their 'home' in these places.
Ursanabi tells Gilgamesh to cut 120 poles which he will need to propel the boat forward so his hands don't touch the waters of death. In practice, each pole is used for a row, thus estimating that to get to the destination it takes 120 rowing: let's consider that from Scorpio, the starting point of this Gilgamesh journey in search of the plant of rebirth, to Pisces, where Utnapistim is presumed to live, there are four Signs, or 120° !
Finally Gilgamesh arrives before Utnapistim, who is then, as mentioned, the Mesopotamian Noah, and who tells him of the Flood, of how Enki, god of waters, of wisdom and creator of humanity, had warned him of the decision of Enlil, god of earth and wind, of destroying humanity, and of how to build the Ark. This measured one acre (iku) of flat space, and the same for each side, so that the Ark was practically a cube. Obviously the deluge was frightening, to the point that Enki scolded Enlil who then apologized to Utnapistim and his wife, allowing them to to be like Gods and to dwell "at the mouth of the rivers".
This "mouth of the rivers" was the name given to the city of Eridu, in turn associated, and in any case 'terrestrial' representative, of the star Canopus, the alpha of the constellation of Carina, a star that according to the Babylonians ruled the depths of Apsu, the freshwater ocean that was cube-shaped, and the Ark was also made in the likeness of the Apsu, as it was a cube and measured "an iku" on each side. To understand the importance of what has just been said, let's consider that this measure, an "iku", was the name that the Babylonians gave to the Square of Pegasus, a constellation which, 'coincidentally', is enclosed in that of Pisces.
From what has just been explained we see how Gilgamesh's journey was a celestial journey, "along the way of the sun", the ecliptic. Other things would have to be said about the hidden (but not so much) celestial implications in the Epic of Gilgamesh.
Suffice it for now to know that every myth, every 'fall', every 'measurement', is the description of those 'corrections' that must be implemented whenever the sky changes, that is, whenever the cosmic clock needs to be put back in place.
