The Book of Symbols 7...

Scarab

Through "scarab" applies to a whole family of stout-bodied beetles, it is the scarabeus sacer, the bung beetle of the Western Desert that has so captured the mythopoetic imagination. This "sacred scarab" embodied the Egyptian god Khepri who propels the sun out of the darkness of the underworld and across the sky in its diurnal journey (Quirke, 35-6). Here, in an illustration from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, Khepri encompasses the sun rising out of the night sea. Shu, the god of air, supports the solar barque, while Nut, the goddess of the sky, receives the brilliant orb to which she gives birth each day.

The dung beetle has the remarkable instinct of rolling balls of animal dung along the ground to its underground cache where the dung will be stored for food. Unlike the images of the scarab, however, it is not its front legs but its feathery-looking hind legs with which the beetle rolls the balls of dung. The ball is sometimes so large that the beetle is forced into an almost vertical position; yet, persistent and resolute, the scarab manages to negotiate obstacles in the way. 

Changing "heads" as the day progresses, the solar

deity is Khepri in the morning, while the noonday sun

at the zenith manifests as the falcon-headed Ra and the

sun of the evening as the ram-headed Khnum. Wall

painting form the tomb of Nefertari, 19th dynasty (ca. 

1270 B.C.E.), Valley of the Queens, Egypt. 

African cultures featured the dung beetle in myths of the beginning, as the creature able to bring up a piece of primordial earth from the watery abyss. But the scarab's pushing of its dung ball resonated especially in the imagination of the ancient Egyptians. Khepri, associated in particular with the sun of the morning, was depicted in lifelike forma as the black dung beetle, sometimes with its wings spread, or as the figure of a man with a scarab beetle head. Kheper, from which Khepri gets his name means "to take shape" or "to come into being," evoking the sun and solar consciousness taking visible shape with day. But Khepri's blackness also suggests that it is an invisible force that upholds solar energies, and unconscious that propels consciousness into its awakenings and discriminated forms, creativity and perpetual motion. 

The scarab's relation to the rising of the sun made it an emblem of rebirth. This symbolism was reinforced by the fact that besides the bung ball it rolls for food, the scarab fashions from sheep dung a pear-shaped ball in which to lay its eggs and feed its larvae. Pupae resembling tiny mummies, their wings and legs encased, rise out of the earth in which the dung ball containing the beetle's eggs was embedded, giving all the appearance of spontaneous self-creation. 

Transcending the boundaries of darkness and

underworld, the scarab god Khepri emerges with the 

rising sun. Illustration from The Book of the Dead of 

Anhai, 20th dynasty (ca. 1100 B.C.E.), Egypt.

So much did the scarab evoke the qualities of immortality, sublimation and transcendence that its dwelling, a subterranean, vertical shaft leading to a horizontal passage, may have been imitated in the architecture of Egyptian tombs (Andrews, 51). Hundreds of thousands of scarab amulets were crafted in Egypt out of precious and semiprecious stone, metal and glass. Their flat undersides were inscribed with images of animals, gods, kings and other designs, and they drew power to the living in the form of seals or jewelry (Andrews, 50), or were placed with the dead in the tomb as symbols of new life (Lurker, 105). Funerary texts illuminate the notion that at death the heart, seen as the center of life, feeling, action and memory, would be weighed against a feather of Maat, the goddess of order and proportion. If the heart failed to balance, it would be devoured by a monster, prohibiting entry into the afterworld. Heart scarabs were a magical means of preventing such an outcome, even, presumably, if the life lacked virtue (Andrews, 56). Attached or sewn to the mummy bindings over the chest, their purpose was "to bind the heart to silence during the weighing" (ibid.). Many were inscribed with pleas to the heart not to betray its owner: "Do not contradict me with the judges... do not make my name stink to the gods" (Wilkinson, 77). Here, the image of the scarab may be said to signify, on the one hand, a well-concealed defense against authenticity; and on the other, the balance and essence required for a "coming into being" as a linking of finite and infinite dimensions of self.

The Book of Symbols 4...

Shell

From time immemorial, we have held conch shells to our ears to hear the surflike sound - the eternal tides of life that engrave their markings upon us. The human ear resembles a shell, gathering vibrations of air in its outer cavity called the "conch," and directing them through the winding passages of its shell-like inner ear as sound, symbolically evoking an interior listening. "He who has ears to hear let him hear," said Jesus of the hidden meaning of his parables. Images of the Buddha with elongated ears suggest that listening with the inner ear includes keeping silent, meditating on what has been said and opening ourselves to the resonance of the source. 

Shell-shaped and oversized, the ear of the Grand

Buddha suggests wise listening. Detail from a carved

cliff face, 713 C.E., Leshan, China

We have also raised the conch shell to our lips, trumpeting as gods of the sea might have, for the sound of the conch was said to lull the tumultuous waves of the sea.That the conch comes from the deep associates it with the underworld. The Mayan deity Quetzalcoatl mythically descends to Mictlan, the abode of the skeletons, as a dead conch that has fallen silent, so that worms may bore into him in order that he come to life again inside (Moctezuma, 138-9).

Figure, perhaps a deity, emerging from a shell,

showing whorls a growth. Effigy vase, painted

terra-cotta, Mayan, 600-800 C.E.

Shells are mysterious sea treasure, in beautiful shapes, sometimes symmetrical, often ridged and whorled, reflecting stages of growth. The recesses of a shell are reminiscent of the sacred spiral, labyrinth, and center. The intimation of marine life is also an allusion to the hidden life of our interior world, sometimes surfacing, leaving its evidence in consciousness, sometimes not. A shell is an exoskeleton serving to protect the vulnerable creature that dwells within. But shells are also delicate, easily broken, not the tough carapace of defensiveness. We speak of coming out of, or going into, one's "shell," suggesting a gradual, tenuous exposure to the world, or of retreat from it, in privacy, refuge or withdrawal.

As if incised by the waters of eternity- a stone conch 

shell. Aztec, ca. 1486-1502, Temple Mayor, Mexico.

The shape and depth of some shells, the lush pink of their coloring, brings to mind the female vulva, associating the shell with the allure and mystery of the feminine, and with incarnation and fertility. Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love (to the Roman Venus), materializing out of the ocean's foam, is borne ashore on a seashell. In his celebrated painting, Odilon Redon depicts the open, vulva-shaped shell, its soft opalescence infusing the sky and the goddess lying, yet standing, asleep and yet waking, as in a vision. We adorn ourselves with shells, remembering the goddess and her beauty, her seductions. The shell and its evocation of the uterine salt-sea, the moon, tidal ebb, and flow imparts a sense of birth and rebirth; early Christian art made the empty shell an image of the soul's departure to immortality. 

The Birth of Venus, by Odilon Redon, oil on canvas,

ca. 1912, France. 

~Bella

Little note: I won't be able to post on Friday so I'm going to post tomorrow instead. Sorry about that, but you'll still get a post :)