The Lovers

[isthmus nekoi]

cain & abel

Haven't read all the posts yet, so forgive me if I repeat something...

I'm so glad to read about the cain/abel thing, Richard b/c just the other day, I got the Lovers in Vertigo, and that was immediately what I thought - they're c/a, and suddenly it all made sense.

c/a is the oldest *human* story - it is the first story of human autonomy. The creation myth is the oldest *god* story in which god/satan call all the shots and we find the birth of consciousness. c/a is the story where Cain (Satan prototype) **utilizes** his own consciousness by negating the Other (Abel/Christ prototype).

You have to read the story carefully, interpret it on your own. So many ppl interpret the murder as: oh, Cain got all pissy and jealous that God liked Abel's sacrifices better, humans are all pissy and jealous and vengeful, let this be a lesson to us all. OK, fair enough, but it's more complex than that (if not the earlier interpretation being totally off the mark )
c/a represents the human opposites, which is why they are both brothers (both in the conscious mind). This is *different* from the original opposite that stems from the split b/w man and God which is represented by the expulsion from Eden.

Consider the following binary:
Cain------------------------------------Abel
Satan----------------------------------Christ
active----------------------------------passive
A type----------------------------------B type
top (in the BDSM sense)-----------bottom
evil (in the not 'bad' sense)-------good
farmer/agricultural economy------shepherd/hunter gatherer econ
rich (agricultural surplus)----------poor
civilizations/empires----------------pre-civilization
colonizer------------------------------colonized
ego-------------------------------------Other

Back to the Lovers/Brothers. What we have here is only the first level in reconcilling division b/w opposites - the foundation of the conscious mind. (I just learned that in Japanese, the character for understanding - wakaru - is the same one used for dividing - hanbun.) This however, is important b/c it's not reconciling the foundational difference b/w man and God. Only man and man.

From Jung/Answer to Job: "By engendering insoluable conflicts and consequently 'afflicto animae', it brings man nearer to a knowledge of God. All opposites are of God, therefore man must bend to this burden; and in so doing he finds God, in his 'oppositeness,' has taken posession of him, incarnated himself in him. He becomes a vessel for Divine conflict ..."

This is the first step - recognizing differences, marrying them (*not* uniting/dissolving into one). It's the precussor to dealing w/the split b/w man/Divine.

Sorry if that's incoherent. If you have any qs, just shoot. Will be back later to examine similarities b/w this card and Jung and alchemy. One text in particular, forgot the title. It's got a king and queen holding flowers, if you can remember it, pls post, I'd be greatful.

 

[Rose]

Re: isthmus nekoi post

It's not incoherent. Your post makes a lot of sense. Thank you. I like your interpretation of the Vertigo Tarot's Lovers as Cain and Abel from Sandman better than Rachel Pollack's and Dave McKean's choice of Chantelle and Tani (an angel and demon from the Comic series Hellblazer).

Rose

 

[Richard1]

isthmus neki - Wow...you rock! And you're not being incoherent at all. I always read Cain and Abel as a story of sacrifice, animal and human, but the dualism is definitely there as well. I wonder what it means that Cain was the alpha male/murderer, yet Abel was the hunter?
Another binary here that's important is Lilith - Eve. The mother of demons and the mother of the human race...
And I think you've not only hit the nail on the head with this card, but drove the nail firmly into the wood with one deft tap. The Lovers is a recognition and marriage of opposites that doesn't quite reach the level of "coagula" yet (makes me wonder, which card is "solve"? Does it begin with the Fool?).
I know next to nothing about alchemy besides the fact that Nicholas Flamel was a real person and that playing with mercury is a bad idea. I likwise know little about Jung, so I'm not sure what book you're referring to.
But...wow. Good post. I'll try to come back with something when I've woken up a little more...
(Oh, by the way...I also like your idea for the Vertigo Lovers card. However, I LOVE that picture! I know next to nothing about Garth Ennis's take on Hellblazer, but that card is so intense...)

 

[Minos]

Do what thou Wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

Crowley also points out an association with Cain and Abel (the children), as well as Eve and Lilith (in the upper corners), but I must confess that I didn't really get a lot of it. He also says that the real title of this card should be "The Brothers."

Crowley thought that the card referred to the establishment of a political order. In many myths, the establishment of the political order is tied to a slaughter of brother by brother. For instance, Cain and Abel or Romulus and Remus.

$20,000 Question: How does this tie into the "Oracle of the Mighty Gods?"

Also, I love the story of the Orphic Egg, but from what mythology does it come? I think it said in the Banzhof/Akron book that it was "Pelagasian" (or something like that...I'm too lazy to run back and check), but I have no idea what culture that would be.

If Banshaf and Akron say it's Pelasgian, that only confirms my suspicion that they don't know what they're talking about.

The Orphic Egg comes from the Orphic poems (naturally). These were a literature that existed on the margins of Greek culture, which told stories about the gods, the birth of man, and how men might return to their divine origin by means of rites and not killing one another. They were attributed to the mythical singer Orpheus. At the beginning of their stories about the gods was very often a cosmic egg hatched by some primordial being.

None of the Orphic poems survive whole. But we have some quotations of them by later ancient authors, and some pseudo-Orphic literature from very late antiquity. Modern scholars, of course, have had a field day trying to reconstruct Orphic beliefs and practices. If your public library has a decent inter-library loan program, you might try to get a hold of M.L. West's _The Orphic Poems_ for a good introduction.

Coldsuns: Why do you think the man is the Fool? I notice that the Hermit here has a cone of light behind his head that's like the Fool's, but that's the only connection here I can find...

Crowley alludes in a couple of other places to the secret marriage of the Empress and the Hierophant. Maybe they're the couple?

Love is the Law, Love under Will.

 

[Minos]

Richard, I didn't quite get the Cain and Abel thing either. I wonder if historically some deck used the story.

This refers to one of his Visions recounted in _The Vision and the Voice_, where the "true" nature of the card was revealed to him. I am fairly certain that it appears in no previous tarot deck.

 

[Richard1]

If Banshaf and Akron say it's Pelasgian, that only confirms my suspicion that they don't know what they're talking about.

It's funny you should say that...after finishing The Book of Thoth, I went back and read the Banzhof/Akron book, and...I hated it. FACTUALLY I think it's usually fine, but as far as INTERPRETATION goes, I think it's confused, sometimes sexist, and often out and out wrong (especially in their section on the Hanged Man, which seems to ignore Crowley's changes, and relies on an interpretation that fits nearly every deck BUT Crowley's).
And I wondered if the Orphic Egg story was Greek...since the words Orphic and (especially) Eurynome certainly sound Greek...thanks for clearing that up, Minos.
By the way, you don't happen to know anything about the backwards order of the Major Arcana, do you? Just curious...
(Can you that tell this idea really struck me?)

 

[isthmus nekoi]

wow, thanks!! I'm glad you guys liked the post And more Vertigo fans woo hoo!

Anyways, I went back and read over the earlier posts... great stuff! The "backwards" journey is interesting, I remember someone telling me the Tibetan Book of the Dead was similarily "backwards". One wonders if this is representative to the two simultaneous approaches needed - forwards representing movement towards the development of consciousness, backwards representing movement towards the unconscious. Ya gotta have both in order for things to work.
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Yes, there is definetely a theme of sacrifice in c/a - firstly Abel's death foreshadowing Christ's... except Christ's blood is there to redeem the burden of consciousness/offer eternal life while Abel's blood soaks the ground and Cain (ie father of humanity) will have to toil for the rest of our conscious days... another thing is the sacrifice that's needed to *exist*; sacrificing Eden for knowledge, sacrificing slaves to build/maintain empires, sacrificing the feminine prinicpal to build up a patriarchy, sacrificing mom to grow up (if you want to be Freudian ^_~), basically sacrificing the totality of the Self to build limitations/boundaries of the ego etc etc.

>Abel was the hunter
Yes, it's funny. Abel's technically a shepherd which connotates the nomadism and egalitarianism (ie. no wealth accumulation) of a hunter gatherer society. Of course, Abels have been known to top from the bottom sometimes But it's always the Cains, the brother killers, that build great empires if you want to go the political route. Cain makes a great capitalist ^_~

Right, Lilith/Eve.... Brothers could very well be Sisters, or Twins (Gemini). Or Lovers, although this can get confusing b/c Western discource will often gender the unconscious/Divine w/female and conscious/ego (rational) w/male. In this context, I don't think Lovers was created w/this female=uncon male=con gendering in mind b/c this isn't a merging of ego into Self. Lilith/Eve like c/a are similarily reinstated w/the 2 Marys expressing the virgin/whore binary. And wouldn't it be nice if we could marry those Marys! The interesting thing to note about l/e is that unlike c/a, they are both sinners and related to Satan. Note also how the Marys also don't give us a c/a binary as they are both 'good'. Mary 1 is the holy mother, Mary 2 is the repentant/redeemed whore. In both cases, the *mothering* figure is more 'good' than the single woman. Little more problematic than brothers in this context, I find.

I forgot to mention related myths: Inanna/Dumuzi (sp) of Sumeria, as well as Isis/Osiris/Seth of Egypt. Note how these myths feature a third (transcendent function if you're going Jungian) element, the sister/lover. Something funny happened to this character in Christian myth, she's sort of displaced.
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Orpheus....... very strongly tied in w/the figure of Persephone who in turn shares many qualities w/Eve. There are some mythical characters that had secret religious rituals built up around them, before Christianity took over. Orpheus is one, Persephone is another, Dionysus is also a good place to look, we've discussed him before I believe. Mithras is also a very hot one, although his story is not so popular.
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Oh man, I really gotta brush up on my Jung and alchemy now!! ^_^ I think the nice thing though about alchemy is that like tarot, it's really based on pictures (as opposed to text) which are soooo heavy in symbolism. It might take me awhile though... basically, if I can't find the particular text I had in mind, there's still much to talk about in terms of the alchemical king/queen.

 

[Minos]

Orpheus....... very strongly tied in w/the figure of Persephone who in turn shares many qualities w/Eve. There are some mythical characters that had secret religious rituals built up around them, before Christianity took over. Orpheus is one, Persephone is another, Dionysus is also a good place to look, we've discussed him before I believe.

The fragments we have of the Orphic poems seem to portray a scheme in which Dionysus and Persephone are set over the salvation of humanity.

Orpheus was supposed to have been torn to pieces by maenads (crazed female worshippers of Dionysus) when he neglected the worship of Dionysus, and instead worshipped the Sun under the name Apollo as the sole god.

Logically, Orpheus was then closely associated with Dionysus in cultic practice, and became the premiere pseudonym under which poems praising Dionysus as the chief liberator of the human race were written. Furthermore, shrines of Apollo were invariably hostile to those of Orpheus.

This kind of clear and inescapable logic is often seen in Greek religion. Hyacinthus was slain by Apollo, and of course became a sort of double of Apollo, given joint sacrifices with his murderer. Erectheus was slain by Poseidon for favoring Athena over Poseidon, and after his death was worshipped as Poseidon Erechtheus.

Heracles was tormented throughout his whole life by a jealous Hera, finally being driven mad by her, slaying his children and committing suicide. His name, naturally, means "the glory of Hera."

This sort of logic is no doubt behind Crowley's idea of Atu VI as "the Brothers."

Mithras is also a very hot one, although his story is not so popular.

Mithras's story is very tough to figure out. All we have are some very scanty literary references, some tantalizing but unclear relief-carvings in Mithraic places of worship, and some even more tentative hypotheses by modern scholars.

 

[Richard1]

Wow...a lot to chew on here, much of it not *quite* on topic...I don't know why I didn't put this together before, but Orpheus getting torn to pieces...do you think that would imply an association with Osiris?
And Isthmus Nekoi (Sorry for misspelling your name by the way...I noticed the mistake just now...), good points about Lilith and Eve/Mary and Mary. As for the Sumerian goddesses, I've only read the Mesopotamian versions; I'm guessing Dumuzi is the same as Erishkagul?
And what would you recommend as a good alchemical primer? I found The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz on-line at the Hermetic Golden Dawn's website, but I haven't gotten around to reading it yet...I'm too engrossed in trying to puzzle out the Sepher Yetzirah right now...
And it's funny that you mention the male and consciousness and the female as the unconscious...I'm working on the B.O.T.A. deck right now, and Case definitely views it that way. But yeah...I don't think that distinction is at play in the Thoth.

 

[firemaiden]

"Pelasgian" Creation Myth

If Banshaf and Akron say it's Pelasgian, that only confirms my suspicion that they don't know what they're talking about.

The Orphic Egg comes from the Orphic poems (naturally). These were a literature that existed on the margins of Greek culture, which told stories about the gods, the birth of man, and how men might return to their divine origin by means of rites and not killing one another. They were attributed to the mythical singer Orpheus. At the beginning of their stories about the gods was very often a cosmic egg hatched by some primordial being.

It seems the source of the word "Pelasgian" for Banzhof is Robert Graves. This "Pelasgian Creation Myth" is scattered all over the interenet, but the only source listed is Robert Graves 1959 Creation Myths. It seems the original source is in doubt, I understand in recent years Graves has been much discredited.

Be that as it may Banzhof was undoubtedly just repeating what he read.

Here is one site with his "reconstruction" of the myth:
http://www.ferrum.edu/philosophy/pelasgiancreation.htm

I was quite taken with this creation myth, as are many because it fits perfectly with the big bang theory of creation. You have a the Goddess of the Ocean, Eurynome, born of Chaos, dancing with the Serpent Ophion. Ophion gets her with child... She turns into a dove, lays an egg, which Ophion then coils himself around to hatch.
Out of this egg fly all things in creation.