The Egyptian Tarot cards
Where the destiny of the Sacred King is described, the first thirteen cards represent the thirteen months of the primitive year, the thirteenth month is the month of the Sacred King’s sacrifice, represented by Death.
The death of the Sacred King, the origin of the bad omen of the number 13, follows in the Tarot to card 12, which represents a ceremony of the Sacrifice of the Sacred King.
By relating the life of the King to the seasonal life of the Sun, through the analogy of the seasons of the year, the Sun became the masculine emblem and the Moon the feminine emblem.
The Sun became a symbol of male fertility when the necessary participation of man in the reciprocal was officially recognized.
In any case, it is evident the greater importance of the Moon than that of the Sun in the most primitive societies, so that all religious ceremonies and important dates were calculated according to the lunar phases, the solstices or equinoxes were only approximately known and, therefore, yielded in importance to the phase of the Moon.
The sacredness of the number 7
The number 7 comes from being a fraction of the lunar month of 28 days; this last number, 28, also had a sacred character because it was the lunar cycle and the menstruation cycle of the woman.
The Julian calendar, which changed the number of months from 13 to 12, continued with the month as the unit, as in the most primitive calendars. The days of the week were associated with the Titans, that is, the planetary gods:
- The Sun (Sunday)
- The Moon (Monday)
- Mars (Tuesday)
- Mercury (Wednesday)
- Jupiter (Thursday)
- Venus (Friday) and
- Saturn (Saturday)
Patterns of the different guilds or trades in ancient Sumer, which is where we have the oldest references thanks to their custom of writing on clay tablets that have preserved to us much knowledge of up to 15 centuries before our era.
Mythology and astrology
To understand somewhat the relationship between mythology and astrology it is necessary, first of all, to be clear that Greek, Babylonian and Biblical mythologies, in the light of modern historical and archaeological research, hardly reconcile with the psychological ideas and interpretations of C. Jung and his school.
It must be borne in mind that the societies where the mythical stories originately Sumer and pre-Hellenic Greece (i.e. Greece before and during the various invasions of the peoples known as Hellenes: Ionians, Achaeans and Dorians).
They were not exactly primitive societies with the infantile mentality that were giving literary form to archetypes of their unconscious or other psychic reveries. These societies were highly developed and possessed a very sophisticated political, religious and bureaucratic organization.
These societies were urban societies, with political and religious systems that enjoyed a great tradition, with economic and legal systems analogous to those of today, with public registries for commercial transactions and property titles, regular education at different levels and advanced construction and agricultural techniques.
Thus, neither Minoan Crete, Mycenaean Greece, Sumer nor Pharaonic Egypt can be identified with the beginnings of human civilization, even though they are the oldest civilized peoples known to us in the West.
They were already in evolved stages and, therefore, it does not seem possible to apply Jung’s psychological categories to their mythological constructions.
Study of Mythology and its relation to Astrology
It is, however, much more reasonable to deal with the study of Mythology and its relationship with Astrology, if we see those populations of Greece and Asia Minor as much closer to us in their concerns and ambitions, perhaps more inclined to use the poetic language of metaphor and allegory.
Rural societies in the process of urbanization, with large and small cities, with all the problems and contradictions that this entails, are subjected to important flows of migrations, some controlled and others not so much, some peaceful and others with the character of authentic invasions, with their social, class, ethnic, religious and any other type of struggles, as at any time in the history of humanity.
A great part of the myth is nothing more than political propaganda expressed in poetic form, whose keys today it is difficult to see clearly, as all propaganda distorts, exaggerates and deliberately lies when it is of interest, it is different when it is formulated from the side of the victors or the side of the defeated, but some of the best-known myths have been very well studied so that it is not necessary to resort to any kind of psychological explanation.
Archetype of death
Perseus is usually described as the archetype of death, which is not very far from reality.
Historically Perseus represents some specific warlord or in general the Hellenic warlords who invaded Greece in the last phase of the progressive invasions when they systematically destroyed every vestige of Greek civilization that they found in their path.
That is why Perseus, “the destroyer”, is easy to relate to death.
In the mythical story of Perseus, it is said that he killed the Chimera, slit the Gorgon’s throat and that he also tamed the horse Pegasus, who was the son of the Gorgon…
That is to say that the Gorgon, or the Goddess herself, had created them, by breeding and caring for them in the stables of her temples so that they were so fast that they seemed to carry wings, a symbol of their sacred character.
The Hellenes replaced the calendar of the natives (the Chimera is an emblem of the three-season calendar, it is represented by an animal composed of three different animal parts, each representing a season of the year) with their calendar, that of the invaders.
The taming of the horse Pegasus is explained by the theft of the sacred horses that the temples of the Great Goddess had and finally the decapitation of the Gorgon (ritual mask of the priestesses of the Great Goddess) is a clear allusion to the elimination of the female leadership of the temples, the replacement of priestesses by priests and the reduction of the surviving priestesses to simple maids or prostitutes in the service of the temples.
With information from Alba de Hermes
Astrology Spirituality Tarot Mythology Mythology History Culture Religion
