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ARTICLES RELATED TO Mythic Cycle

Mythic Cycle: Wiccan Pagan Dictionary on MYTHIC CYCLE

MYTHIC CYCLE - a mythic cycle is an archetyped story seen throughout many pantheons.

(See also: MYTHIC CYCLE, Wiccan Pagan, Paganism, Pagan Dictionary)

Mythic Cycle: Wiccan Pagan Dictionary on PATHWORK

PATHWORK - very similar to visualization, pathwork is a process during which one journeys withing to learn & grow. Pathwork often utilizes mythic cycles, sieties & elements as symbolism.

(See also: PATHWORK, Wiccan Pagan, Paganism, Pagan Dictionary)

Mythic Cycle: Spiritual - Theosophy Dictionary on Naglfar

Naglfar (Icelandic) [from nagl nail + far to travel]

In Norse tradition, a mythical ship built of the nails of the dead, which casts off when a world's life cycle comes to an end.

(See also: Naglfar, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Mythic Cycle: Encyclopedia - Phoenix

Please remove this notice after the article has been expanded. Details are on this talk page or at Wikipedia:Requests for expansion. In ancient Egyptian mythology and in myths derived from it, the phoenix is a mythical sacred firebird. Said to live for 500, 1461 or for 12594 years (depending on the source), the phoenix is a male bird with beautiful gold and red plumage. At the end of its life-cycle the phoenix builds itself a nest of cinnamon twigs that it then ignites; both nest and bird burn fiercely and ...

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Phoenix - In fiction

Read more here: » Phoenix: Encyclopedia - Phoenix

Mythic Cycle: Encyclopedia - Ainulindalë

Ainulindalë (Quenya for Music of the Ainur) is the first chapter of The Silmarillion, a collection of mythical/fictional histories by J. R. R. Tolkien, edited and published posthumously by his son, Christopher Tolkien. As part of the Tolkien Middle-earth cycle, Ainulindalë plays the role of its cosmogony, or 'creation story'. Many of the themes and storylines revealed in the later histories (The Lord of the Rings, for example) find first expression in Ainulindalë. This article attempts to present a synopsis of the main event ...

Including:

Ainulindalë - Main Synopsis

Mythic Cycle: Encyclopedia II - Excalibur film - Adaptation of the legends

The film is primarily based on Malory's Morte d'Arthur. However, in order to recast the Arthurian legends as a myth of the cycle of birth, life and decay, the text was stripped of decorative or insignificant details — and also stripped of Malory's Christian piety. The resulting film is best seen through the lens of mythographic works such as Sir James Frazer's The Golden Bough and Jessie Weston's From Ritual to Romance. "The film has to do with mythical truth, not histori ...

Tlingit, Tlingit - Territory, Tlingit - Culture, Tlingit - Kinship, Tlingit - Property, Tlingit - Potlatch, Tlingit - Art, Tlingit - War, Tlingit - Food, Tlingit - Nutrition, Tlingit - Beach Food, Tlingit - Salmon, Tlingit - Herring and Hooligan, Tlingit - Other Fish, Tlingit - Marine Mammals, Tlingit - Game, Tlingit - Philosophy and Religion, Tlingit - Dualism, Tlingit - Spirituality, Tlingit - Death and the Afterlife, Tlingit - Shamanism, Tlingit - Man and Nature, Tlingit - The Kooshdakhaa, Tlingit - History, Tlingit - Creation myth and the Raven Cycle, Tlingit - The Tlingit migration, Tlingit - Clan histories, Tlingit - First contact, Tlingit - Fur trade, Tlingit - Alaskan purchase, Tlingit - The bombing of Angoon, Tlingit - Territorial education and religion, Tlingit - ANB and recognizing rights, Tlingit - WWII, Tlingit - ANCSA, Tlingit - Today

Mythic Cycle: Spiritual - Theosophy Dictionary on Antariksha, Antariksha antariksa, antariksa

Antariksha, Antariksha antariksa, antariksa (Sanskrit) (from antar within, interior + iksha from the verbal root iksh to behold, see)

The mid-region; the firmament or space between earth and heaven, the abode of apsaras (nymphs), gandharvas (celestial musicians), and yakshas (nature sprites of many types) along with the mythical wish-granting cow of plenty, Kamadhenu. In the Vedas, antariksha is the middle or second of three lokas (spheres) usually enumerated as bhur, bhuvar, and svar.

Above these rise in serial order the four higher lokas of the ordinary Brahmanical hierarchy. Hierarchically, taking the bhurloka as the physical sphere, bhuvarloka or antariksha corresponds with the astral plane. In the Vishnu-Purana (3:3), Antariksha is named as the Vyasa (arranger of the Veda) in the 13th dvapara yuga in the Vaivasvata manvantara, our present world cycle.

Mythic Cycle: Spiritual - Theosophy Dictionary on Fenris, Fenrir

Fenris, Fenrir (Scandinavian, Icelandic) The mythical Norse wolf destined to devour the sun at the end of its lifetime. Fenris is one of the three monstrous offspring of Loki, the other two being Hel, queen of the realms of death, and Iormungandr, the serpent that encircles the earth in the ocean's depths.

According to popular tale, Fenris grew so rapidly that the gods became alarmed lest he devour the sun prematurely and tried repeatedly to restrain him with heavy chains with no success. The dwarfs forged a magic thread, Gleipnir (lissom bond), with which the gods bound the wolf, but only when one of the gods, Tyr (Mars), agreed to hold his hand in its jaws. Tyr sacrificed his hand, so that Fenris would be harmless until the end of the cycle.

Mythic Cycle: Spiritual - Theosophy Dictionary on Skrymir

Skrymir (Icelandic, Scandinavian) A Norse giant, also called Utgarda-Loki (Loki of the outermost court), representing the worlds of illusion (matter) in which the gods (consciousnesses) are misled. A well known tale relates how Thor, Loki, and Thor's servant Tjalfi are subjected to a number of "eye-shines" (illusions) and ignominiously outperformed by the giants in a series of contests, all by means of deceptive appearances.

In Norse mythology giants represent ages of manifest existence and each giant exhibits traits belonging to his particular eon. The giantesses who are his daughters represent lesser cycles of time within his longer age. Thurses are the gross, inert aspects of the elements which serve as vehicles for the imbodiments of conscious energies in worlds. They are represented as evil in most myths because their nature is opposed to the dynamism of the gods. Hence the gods and thurses or giants are constantly at war.

Skrymir and other giants exemplify also the gigantic forebears of our human race who inhabited the earth when forms were not yet coarse and weighty. Every mythic history contains references to giants: "in nearly every mythology -- which after all is ancient history -- the giants play an important part. In the old Norse mythology, the giants, Skrymir and his brethren, against whom the sons of the gods fought, were potent factors in the histories of deities and men" (SD 2:754).

(See also: Skrymir, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Mythic Cycle: Spiritual - Theosophy Dictionary on Dragon

Dragon (from Greek drakon, serpent, the watchful)

Known to scholarship as a mythical monster, a huge lizard, winged, scaly, fire-breathing, doubtless originating in the memory of an actual prehistoric animal. Dragon is often synonymous with serpent.

The dragon and serpent, whether high or low, are types of various events in cosmic or world history, or of various terrestrial or human qualities, for either one can at different times signify spiritual immortality, wisdom, reimbodiment, or regeneration. In the triad of sun, moon, and serpent or cross, it denotes the manifested Logos, and hence is often said to be seven-headed. As such it is in conflict with the sun, and sometimes with the moon; but this conflict is merely the duality of contrary forces essential to cosmic stability.

The dragon itself is often dual, and it may be paired with the serpent, as with Agathodaimon and Kakodaimon, the good and evil serpents, seen in the caduceus. Again the dragon is two-poled as having a head and a tail, Rahu and Ketu in India, commonly described as being the moon's north and south nodes, the moon thus being a triple symbol in which a unity conflicts with a duality.

A universal myth is that of the sun god fighting the dragon and eventually worsting it, which represents the descent of spirit into matter and the eventual sublimation of matter by spirit in the ascending arc of evolution. There are Bel (and later Merodach) and the dragon Tiamat in Babylonia and with the Hebrews; Fafnir in Scandinavia; Chozzar with the Peratae Gnostics; among the Greeks Python conquered by Apollo and the two serpents killed by Hercules at his birth; the fight between Ahti and the evil serpent in the Kalevala; and many other such stories.

In the Christian Apocalypse the dragon plays a great part, but it has been often misinterpreted as evil just as Satan or the Devil has been imagined as the foe of divinity and humanity. Cosmologically, all dragons and serpents slain by their adversaries are the unregulated or chaotic cosmic principles bought to order by the spiritual sun gods or formative cosmic powers. The dragon is the demiurge, the establisher or former of our planet and of all that pertains to it -- neither good nor bad, but its differentiated aspects in nature make it assume one or the other character.

The dragon symbol, then, is both cosmic and human in its applications: it may stand for powers of nature, which first overcome man, but which he must eventually overcome, as well as the monad atma-buddhi, which through the manasic principle seeks imbodiment, but needs the help of the still lower principles in order to effect a union with the principles of earth.

Cosmologically analogies are drawn between the north polar constellation Draco and one or the other of the great floods, and the word dragon is sometimes used to denote such a flood; for the position of this constellation relative to that of the earth's axis of rotation is intimately connected with cataclysms.

The dragon in its higher or superior sense means among other things divine wisdom, especially where the serpent is used for terrestrial wisdom; and adepts or initiates were frequently called dragons. The dragon may be the symbol of a cycle; and the sevenfold dragon may mean the seven minor cycles in a great cycle.

Mythic Cycle: Spiritual - Theosophy Dictionary on Jesus

Jesus (Latin of Greek Iesous from Hebrew Yeshua` contraction of Yehoshua` a proper name meaning savior or helper, or that which is spacious or widespread)

Indubitably a historical character, whose life as narrated in the Gospels is pure allegory, a story of the initiation chamber. There is a story current from medieval times among the Jews, mentioned in the Sepher Toledoth Yeshua` (Book of the Generations of Jesus), to the effect that the Jesus of the Gospels was a Jehoshua ben Panthera, a Jewish adept living about 100 BC. Jesus illustrates the typical sequence in occult history: 1) the coming of a leader or teacher to a people needing to be led and taught; 2) his passing, followed by the adoration, even worship, of his followers; 3) the gradual transformation of historic facts into more or less embroidered legends or mythological tales, which in time cluster so thickly about his memory that his identity as a person, and even his name, are lost; 4) the myth, allegory, or legend; and 5) the efforts of other, later teachers to explain, interpret, and reinstate this earlier teacher, now a purely mythic figure or else materialized and misunderstood.

The Christian Gospels appear to have originated in mystery-dramas, beautiful and often sublime in their inner significances, in which were depicted the experiences of the neophyte and adept in his union with the Logos, and hence such unified individual was called a Logos incarnate as a man, the Logos itself being variously named as Christos or Dionysos, and to have been by stages adapted and given a semi-historical guise, as has happened in other instances besides the Christian mythos. Christ therefore, or the Christos, is not a particular man or an especial incarnation of divinity, but a generic term for the divine as incarnated in all human beings, although Jesus was undoubtedly the name of this great Jewish initiate-avatara as an individual. Hence this universal allegory in its Christian version has a true historical peg to hang from; for there did appear, sometime before the Christian era, a special cyclic messenger who was due to come on the change of the ecliptic point from one sign of the celestial zodiac to another, from the sign of Aries to Pisces. In theosophical literature, Jesus is considered to be an avatara, the messenger for the European Messianic or Piscean cycle. As such, Jesus represented a ray sent from the Wondrous Being or spiritual hierarch of the earth into the soul of a pure human being, while the racial buddha, Gautama Buddha, supplied the intermediate or psychological nature in this act of white magic.

"But it is probable that the theosophic effort which Jesus attempted to initiate did not endure for fifty years after his death. Almost immediately after his passing, his disciples, all half-instructed, and in some cases almost illiterate, men . . . foisted upon the world of their time the forms and beliefs of early Christianity; and had there been nothing but these, that religious system had not lived another fifty years. But what happened? During the oncoming of the dark cycle after Jesus (which began as before said about the time of Pythagoras), the last few rays from the setting sun of the ancient light shone feebly in the minds of certain of these Christian Fathers, Clement of Alexandria for one, and Origen of Alexandria for another, and in one or two more like these, who had been initiated at least in the lowest of some of the then degenerate pagan Mysteries; and these men entered into the Christian Church and introduced some poor modicum of that light, . . . which they still cherished; and these rays they derived mainly from the Neo-pythagorean and the Neoplatonic system" (Fund 486-7).

The Hebrew name Jah or Jehovah became identified in the mind of Christians with the name of Jesus, although Jesus never was in any wise identical with the Jewish Jehovah, but was identified in initiation through his own inner god or Father in Heaven, and the Jewish Jehovah mystically was the regent of the planet Saturn.

The first three letters in Greek make I.H.S. placed at the head of representations of the crucified Jesus, often said to stand for Iesus Hominum Salvator (Jesus the savior of men) or In hoc signo (in this sign), with reference to the alleged vision of a cross of the Emperor Constantine. Jesus is a form of a worldwide mystery-name, whose importance was its meaning, usually given as a three-letter monogram, analogous to the Sanskrit Aum. We find it in the Greek Gnostic Iao and variants are common in ancient Greece, such as Iasios, Iasion, Iason, Iasos; and initiates were known as Iasides or sons of Iaso.

See also AVATARA

Mythic Cycle: New Age Spirituality Dictionary on Phoenix

Phoenix

(Egyptian-House of Enoch) Egyptian mythological bird of gorgeous plumage, sacred to the sun, reborn from the ashes of the funeral pyre which it made for itself when each life span of 500 or 600 years was over.

"At the top of a palm tree a bird's nest catches fire. It has been ignited by a spark struck from the hooves of celestial steeds drawing the chariot of Ra, the Egyptian sun god. Amid the flames a beautiful Arabian bird extends its golden neck and purple wings, but instead of flying off, it dances. Eventually, it is consumed by the fire and reduced to ashes. but this is not the end. Indeed, it is only the beginning - for 500 years later a new bird is reborn from the ashes. It seals the remains of the nest in myrrh, wraps it in aromatic leaves, and molds it into the shape of an egg. This it carries as a sacred offering to the temple of the sun at Heliopolis, then flies away to paradise. Five hundred years later it returns to earth, where it begins again the cycle of selfimmolation and resurrection - a process that continues forever. "

The phoenix, originating in the mythology of ancient Egypt, has become a universal symbol of rebirth and the most famous of all fabulous birds. Clad in feathers of red and gold, the color of the rising sun, it had a melodious voice that became mournful with approuching death. Other creatures were then so overcome by its beauty and sadness that they themselves fell dead.

According to legend, only one phoenix could live at a time. The Greek poet Hesiod, writing in the 8th century BC, said that the phoenix lived nine times the lifespan of the long-living raven. Other estimates went up to 97,200 years. When the bird felt death approaching, it built itself a pyre of wild cinnamon and died in the flames. But from the ashes there then arose a new phoenix, which tenderly encased its parent's remains in an egg of myrrh and flew with them to the Egyptian city of Heliopolis, where it laid them on the Altar of the Sun. These ashes were said to have the power of bringing a dead man back to life.

The profligate Roman Emperor Elagabalus (AD 205-22) decided to eat phoenix meat in order to achieve immortality. He dined off a bird of paradise, sent in place of a phoenix, but the substitute did not work. He was then murdered shortly afterward.

Scholars now think that the germ of the legend came from the Orient and was adopted by the sun-worshipping priests of Heliopolis as an allegory of the sun's daily setting and rebirth.

Like all great myths, it stirs deep chords in man. In Christian art the resurrected phoenix became a popular symbol of Christ risen from the grave. Strangely, its name may come from a misunderstanding by Herodotus, the Greek historian of the 5th century BC. In his account of the bird he may have mistakenly given it the name "phoenix" because of the palm tree (Greek: phoinix) on which it was customarily pictured sitting in those days. In their attempts to identify the gorgeously plumed phoenix of Egyptian myth with a real bird, scientists tended to discount New Guinea's birds of paradise otherwise likely candidates because of the island's great distance from Egypt. In 1957, however, Australian zoologists discovered that New Guinea tribes had exported bird of paradise plumed skins for centuries and that among those visiting the island, as long ago as 1000 BC, had been traders from Phoenicia in the Middle East.

Another significant discovery was that the tribespeople used to preserve the skins for export by sealing them in myrrh, molding them into an egg shape, and wrapping this in burned banana skins - a procedure that tallies almost exactly with the mythical bird's reputed treatment of its destroyed nest. Perhaps most significant of all is the fact that the brilliantly colored males of Count Raggi's bird of paradise are adorned with cascades of scarlet feathers that, during their courtship dance, they repeatedly raise aloft, while quivering intensely - a spectacle reminiscent of the phoenix dancing in its burning nest. On reaching the Middle East, descriptions of this spectacle, combined with the egg-like parcels of skins, may well have been sufficient to inspire the myth of the phoenix.

Mythic Cycle: New Age Spirituality Dictionary on Phoenix

Phoenix

Scholars now think that the germ of the legend came from the Orient and was adopted by the sun-worshipping priests of Heliopolis as an allegory of the sun's daily setting and rebirth.

Mythic Cycle: Spiritual - Theosophy Dictionary on Temple of Solomon

Temple of Solomon The building of this temple, according to the Bible, was first projected by King David, but on command of the Lord was not carried out by him because he had "shed much blood." David, however, assembled materials and workmen. To aid him in building the Temple, his son Solomon appealed to Hiram or Huram, King of Tyre, to send him a skillful artisan, and King Hiram sent Hiram Abif to Solomon, also workmen and additional supplies of timber.

According to the Biblical account the Temple was completely built, while according to Masonic tradition the building was left unfinished on account of the death of Hiram Abif. The temple after its completion retained its original splendor for only 33 years when the Egyptian King Shishak made war upon Rehoboam, Solomon's son, captured Jerusalem, and took away all the treasures of the temple and of the king's house. Its history is one of repeated profanation and of alternate spoilations and repairs, until finally in 588 BC it was entirely destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar in the reign of Zedekiah. Yet Herodotus who, some 150 years later, visited Tyre and described the temple of Melkarth and Astoreth, does not even mention the Temple of Solomon, supporting the view that there never was such a structure actually built.

Granting that there may be some historical background for the Biblical account, it is nevertheless allegorical throughout. Blavatsky compares the measurements given in the Bible with those of the Great Pyramid and the Tabernacle of Moses, all of which were constructed upon the same abstract formula derived from the number of years in the precessional cycle, and also upon integral values of pi, the ratio of the circumference of a circle to the diameter. Moses symbolized these "under the form and measurements of the tabernacle, that he is supposed to have constructed in the wilderness. On these data the later Jewish High Priests constructed the allegory of Solomon's Temple -- a building which never had a real existence, any more than had King Solomon himself, who is simply, and as much a solar myth as is the still later Hiram Abif, of the Masons, as Ragon has well demonstrated. Thus, if the measurements of this allegorical temple, the symbol of the cycle of Initiation, coincide with those of the Great Pyramid, it is due to the fact that the former were derived from the latter through the Tabernacle of Moses" (SD 1:314-5). And she refers to "the undeniable, clear, and mathematical proofs that the esoteric foundations, or the system used in the building of the Great Pyramid, and the architectural measurements in the Temple of Solomon (whether the latter be mythical or real), Noah's ark, and the ark of the Covenant, are the same" (SD 2:465).

The key to the meaning of Solomon's Temple is given by W. Q. Judge: it

"means man whose frame is built up, finished and decorated without the least noise. But the materials had to be found, gathered together and fashioned in other and distant places. . . . Man could not have his bodily temple to live in until all the matter in and about his world had been found by the Master, who is the inner man, when found the plans for working it required to be detailed. They then had to be carried out in different detail until all the parts should be perfectly ready and fit for placing in the final structure. So in the vast stretch of time which began after the first almost intangible matter had been gathered and kneaded, the material and vegetable kingdoms had sole possession here with the Master -- man -- who was hidden from sight within carrying forward the plans for the foundations of the human temple. All of this requires many, many ages, since we know that nature never leaps. And when the rough work was completed, when the human temple was erected, many more ages would be required for all the servants, the priests, and the counselors to learn their parts properly so that man, the Master, might be able to use the temple for its best and highest purposes" (Ocean 20).

Thus David, who collected materials for the building but was not permitted actually to build the temple, represents the evolutionary and preparatory work of earlier rounds and of the earlier root-races preceding the middle of the third root-race of this round, when humanity appeared upon the scene -- Solomon, David's son -- takes up the task of the actual building of the human temple. David thus mystically may stand for the lunar or barhishad-pitris, and Solomon for the solar or agnishvatta-pitris.

According to the Old Testament, the building of the temple was completed, but it was used for its high purposes only briefly. Allegorically this was during the Golden Age of the childhood of the human race -- the building was complete only as regards childhood when the gods walked among mankind and were their divine instructors; but humanity was not yet truly human, for manas (mind) had not yet been awakened by the manasaputras of whom Hiram Abif was a type. It is here that Masonic tradition should be studied together with the Biblical account. Then with the awakening of manas, and the eating from the Tree of Knowledge and hence the power to choose between good and evil -- in other words, with the beginning of self-directed evolution, the temple was desecrated again and again. "The building of the Temple of Solomon is the symbolical representation of the gradual acquirement of the secret wisdom, or magic; the erection and development of the spiritual from the earthly; the manifestation of the power and splendor of the spirit in the physical world, through the wisdom and genius of the builder. The latter, when he has become an adept, is a mightier king than Solomon himself, the emblem of the sun or Light himself -- the light of the real subjective world, shining in the darkness of the objective universe. This is the 'Temple' which can be reared without the sound of the hammer, or any tool of iron being heard in the house while it is 'in building' " (IU 2:391).

Again, the building of a temple, sanctuary, Holy of Holies, etc., always signified in the occult language of ancient days the founding and dissemination throughout the world or a portion of mankind of a secret doctrine of nature. In a more restricted sense, the building of a temple referred to the actual establishment of an initiation center, where not only for such territory the ancient wisdom and its divine significances were taught, but disciples were trained and brought to the "new" or "second" birth, and thenceforth themselves became adepts or initiates. On these lines the building of Solomon's Temple was the inauguration and establishment of the teaching of nature's occult wisdom in Judea and surrounding territory.