CONCRETE and THE RED KING

EGYPT & THE ARYANS

Seth and Ra-Horakhty battle Apep in this 21st Dynasty papyrus

We might now do well to redistribute our "solar," "lunar," and "shinning" references amongst both the reds and the whites of our ruins — if not merge them all into one. We might also do well, however, to look beyond Tudor England, or medieval alchemy, to locate a source for this mysterious dyad, since, as already noted above, we can trace these colours even further back into ancient history via the red and white crowns of Egypt...and, then, further still into mythic history where we find that oldest yet of "red kings" — Horus — who, as we read in Lurker's Dictionary, "was depicted as a falcon, with the sun and the moon as his eyes." Here again we have these two heavenly beacons, now embodied in the figure of one divine being. But, as we later read, this king-cum-sky god later becomes involved in a "clash with Seth who deprives Horus of one of his eyes," and here we come across yet another recurrent theme to enjoin him (and, potentially, whatever else he might represent) with Odin, Midir, and Nár, the "blood-red" Phoenix, the "red king" of diamonds, and celestial Orion before. That Seth claims his lunar eye (and with it Upper Egypt), and that Horus is left with the solar one (and thus the lower "Black Lands" of Kemet), may go towards explaining their respective white and red crowns. By the loss of an eye at all, however, Horus, rather than integrating two antipodal sources of light, would now seem to symbolically express the very opposition of light and darkness itself — vision and blindness, consciousness and insensibility, so on and so forth.

Darkness, as it happens though, is also the purview of his rival (at least, in metaphorical terms). Seth, as Lurker contends, is "the shady god in the Egyptian pantheon;" lord of storms, drought, war, and general malevolence. It was he who murdered Horus' father (and Seth's own brother), Osiris, by drowning and dismembering this first king of Egypt (now king of the Egyptian dead) — and here comes to mind still more links to certain persistent subjects past. Such actions and attributes then led Seth, in some traditions, to be linked with the abysmal serpent Apep, the demonic manifestation of chaos itself (other tales, it must be said, have him aiding in the destruction of Apep, along with Horus and the sun god Ra — or Ra-Horakhty, Ra and Horus as one — though often in penance for some prior transgression). The Greeks would later equate Seth with their own monstrous underworld serpent, Typhon, who, in turn, has been variously connected to the biblical Leviathan, the serpent of Eden, and St. George's dragon (as alluded to above). From here it is no far leap to Satan himself, not only as a personification of evil, but also through some linguistic similarity, as well. Of course, any firm etymological links between Satan and Seth (otherwise known as "Set") are likely as tenuous as those theorized earlier between Satan and Saturn — but let us consider another odd similarity that could potentially link all three.

We have already seen Saturn, by way of Cronos/Nimrod, likened to the centaur through the work of Marcus Keane. Seth, in turn, as with most Egyptian deities, also assumes a half-human, half-animal form. Exactly what animal, however, has puzzled scholars for some time now. Known rather prosaically as the "Set animal," this creature, with its elongated face and pricked-up ears, has variously been compared to a jackal, an anteater, a giraffe, and an ass. Given such a speculative bestiary, the horse would certainly not seem out of place among this company (and a "white horse," no less, by association with his crown, recalling now Lucifer/Leucippus). Indeed, the horse, according to Lurker, is counted among Seth's sacred animals, along with the pig, the hippopotamus, and the crocodile. Looking then to Satan, he of horns and cloven-hoof in so much iconography, we may observe an overtly "goatish" hybrid in most symbolic cases. But here we must also note the similarly featured Faunus of Roman mythology, or his Grecian counterpart Pan, both of whom arose from the same Hellenic tradition of satyrs which were originally depicted not as goat-men, but (as we learn from Lurker again) more like bipedal centaurs, possessing the tail and hind legs of a horse. Is it too far a stretch, then, to posit some form of Set-Satyr-Saturn-Satan continuity based on a combined linguistic/equino-graphic foundation? Considering all but the latter have ostensibly unsettled etymologies, we might at least say that it can't be ruled out entirely.

Horus donning the red & white pschent (left); Seth holding an ankh,
precursor to the sign of Venus (right)

Thus arriving, once more, in the vicinity of our old "light-bearer" Lucifer, we return, in some sense, from darkness back to light. And indeed, as the story goes, after ages of fighting, Seth eventually concedes defeat to Horus and relents control of all Egypt to the light of the solar "red king." As history goes, however, it was actually a "white king" of Upper Egypt (either Narmer or Menes) who would unite the northern and southern kingdoms, and don the pschent, which, like the Tudor Rose millenia hence, combined the red and white crowns of both these lands. A new cult of Horus-Seth soon followed, in kind, whereby the powers of both deities eventually came to be reconciled in a single composite god known as Hrwyfy. This Janus-like figure, who retained the heads of both former parties, now assumed the single face of totality itself wherein all opposites are reconciled in one fell swoop. As is attested to in a New Kingdom funerary scroll known as The Book of Gates, Hrwyfy now confronts the newly dead with this very mystery as they make their way through the many passages of the afterworld. What, here, might we say of Janus himself being the Roman god of gateways, portals, and other such devices which delineate transitional or oppositional territory? What, then, that so many of our ruins take the fallen form of gateways, portals, bridges, walls, boundary markers, and other such things? To this we may add that all of our sites can, in fact, be found in liminal areas — specifically those separating water from land — and are thus aligned, in some manner, with the Egyptian Aaru, the Roman Avernus, and all other such aqueous regions which, in turn, separate life from death.

Having checked so many boxes in relation to our toponymical explorations, can we then say with any certainty that Hrwyfy (or some such assimilation of Horus/Seth-as-Lucifer) is the "red king" of our ruins — or, at least, the conceptual prototype thereof? If so, what does it mean? And what of the few recurring themes still yet unaccounted for? At this point we might stop to consider that, while many of our sites allude in some way to an Egyptian, or even broader Near Eastern/Mediterranean source, the majority refer more directly to the lands and peoples of northwestern Europe, and therefore, perhaps, to an Indo-European origin. Assuming, then, that Hrwyfy may not hold a monopoly on our checklist of themes, if we head from the Nile valley to the steppes of central Asia, we now find another character of potentially equal lineage and relevance within Lurker's description of the ancient Aryan king-of-gods, Indra:

The supreme god in the Vedic pantheon. He brings rain, and is the heavenly representative of warriors; his weapon is the thunderbolt, which may have four or a hundred edges. He is red or gold in colour, and he is mounted on horseback or sits in a chariot drawn by horses ... In Hinduism, Indra is white in colour, clad in red, and he rides on the white elephant Airavata which was generated by churning the ocean of milk.

Already we see numerous themes enwrapped in this figure whom comparative mythology has being worshipped, in various guises and at various times, from the jungles of Indonesia to the frozen shores of Iceland — essentially everywhere that Aryan (Indo-European) culture had spread. Now, with respect to the last element cited in the quote above, we would seem to reintroduce yet another common theme. This "ocean of milk," known as the Kshīrasāgara, is said to be one of seven cosmic oceans that surround the world in concentric rings (with an obvious suggestion of the Milky Way), while its churning, known as the Samudra manthan, was induced by the gods in order to procure an elixir of immortality — here with a nod, one would think, to Brân's cauldron, Mímir's well, and, of course, our cosmic mill.

Indra seated upon Airavata, from a 19th century painting

Indeed, Santillana and Von Dechend have not failed to notice the similarity, and, intriguingly, they mention this episode in Hamlet's Mill alongside a hieroglyphic image purported to be of "Horus and Seth in the act of drilling or churning" which they claim is "continuously mislabelled 'the uniting of the two countries'" (although they offer no evidence for this allegation). A few other references to these two can be found scattered throughout the book, but not with any firm connection to a mill of any sort. In returning to Indra's connection to the Samudra manthan, however, we may find some ancillary connection to Horus-Seth, via Apep, as we note that the gods make use of the great serpent Vasuki as a drilling rope (wrapped around the "drill rod" of Mount Mandara) for their churning of the milk. From here we learn that Indra's mount, Airavata, is named in the Mahabharata as "king" or "father of serpents," if not, by some translations, likened to one himself. Further still, in Lurker's synopsis, we read that "Indra is the great dragon-slayer, who frees the streams obstructed by Vritra [a demon who holds the waters prisoner — hence his name, which means 'encloser']." In this capacity he engenders a myriad of lightening-wielding, dragon-slaying gods of Indo-European stock; from the Norse Thor with the Midgard Serpent, to the Greek Zeus with the abovementioned "Typhon" — the "whirlwind," as his name translates, whom we now, perhaps, seem tempted to fix with that other "churning ocean" of Hamlet's Maelstrom.

Even beyond the Aryan sphere, we'll recall how the god of the Hebrew Bible strikes down Leviathan at the end of days, just like Satan falls "as lightening" near the beginning of time. Further, then, along these lines, we find Indra, in Vedic astrology, associated not only with the planet Jupiter (as Jupiter, the god, is linked with both Jove/Jehovah and Zeus), but also with Venus, the "morning star" of Lucifer, by way of his consort Sachi — daughter of the demon Puloman, and goddess of hatred, envy, and wrath. One might find it somewhat strange that the wife of such a heroic deity should be, herself, so diabolical. No stranger, though, than any of the contradictions found alloyed within our Hrwyfy. Indeed, so similarly entwined were Indra and Sachi that one was often thought to be the other's shadow, if not really one and the same, riding together through the firmament in a chariot drawn by red or white steeds, casting shades of subsequent twin horsemen like the Ashvins and the Dioscuri.

Turning, here, to philology, we also find that, while "Sachi" represents a feminine form of the generalized divine power shakti, in "Indra" we have a name of debatable derivation, though popular suggestions of "ignition," "fire," or "light" (via the Sanskrit idh or indha) would put him in league with such other solar/shinning charioteers as Phoenix, Phaethon, and the enticingly similar Mitra (Mithra) of Persian, then Greco-Roman pedigree. Meanwhile, other suggestions of a "rain/water" (ind-u), or "sight/vision" (idam-dra) root places Indra even further along the Mitra-Midir-Mímir continuum as previously detailed above. That Mithra, in his Western manifestation, is often depicted as wearing the traditionally red Phrygian cap, while slaying a traditionally white sacrificial bull, only stokes the comparative fires. But rather than moving ahead with any further comparisons to later gods (of which there are many), let us now look back at a few first principles so as to better establish some of these themes — if not wholly reappraise them.

Red-clad Mithra slaying the white bull, from a 2nd century fresco

As it happens, after just a cursory glance at J.P. Mallory's landmark book In Search of the Indo-Europeans, many of the threads we've been tying together, by investing these various identities and attributes in the single accumulated form of Indra, seemingly begin to unravel. In his chapter on Indo-European religion we read that, originally, Indra (following the work of the French philologist and mythographer Georges Dumézil) was merely one aspect of a tripartite socio-theological arrangement in which Mithra and the "twin horsemen" were contemporaries, rather than later evolutions:

Dumézil argues that the evidence for tripartition of Indo-European society can be seen in one of the earliest sources of Indo-European religion — the treaty between Matiwaza, King of Mitanni, and the Hittite king, dating to about 1380 BC and discovered in the archives of Bogazköy (Hattusa). The Mitanni king, as we have seen before, evoked the names of the transparently Indic gods Mitra, Varuna, Indra and the Nasatyas. The first two names are characteristically found co-joined in the Vedas, that is, Mitra-Varuna, and they represent, according to Dumézil, the two main aspects of Indic sovereignty. Mitra personifies the concept of contact and governs the legalistic aspect of sovereignty while Varuna's domain pertains more appropriately to the magical or religious. The god Indra is the warrior-god par excellence while the Nasatyas are twins, associated closely with horses, and find their clearest roles in the maintenance of health in both livestock and people. In short, the three fundamental estates of Indo-European society are presented in canonical order in the Mitanni treaty.

From here, however, we go on to read of the substantial part that colour has to play in this division of roles, bringing us back to somewhat more certain territory:

One of the more obvious symbols of social tripartition is colour, emphasized by the fact that both ancient India and Iran expressed the concept of caste with the word for colour (varna). A survey of the social significance of different colours is fairly clear cut, at least for the first two functions. Indo-Iranian, Hittite, Celtic and Latin ritual all assign white to priests and red to the warrior. The third function would appear to have been marked by a darker colour such as black or blue.

At this juncture one might pause to consider the possible relevance of Toronto's three most prominent river systems (in terms of both size, and as relates to our ruins) coinciding, if ever so ambiguously, with this ternary colour scheme: the dark and "shadowy" Humber (with the Black Creek as its main tributary), the "burning bright" Don (by way of its Mississaugan name Wonscotanach), and the blatantly "red" Rouge which defines the eastern periphery of Scarborough. In fact, we find all three colours in our main focus of the Don if we include Wonscotanach's other interpretation of "black burnt grounds" and the Irish shade donn which "inclines towards red." If we now throw in the subordinate Yellow Creek, we have all four stages of the alchemical Opus. Additionally, we have all the imperial colours of the Holy Roman Empire, perhaps the most enduring representative of modern "Aryan" nationalism — not to mention all the colours of the pan-Indigenous medicine wheel (each colour representing a direction, season, element, or race of man); all the colours of the Hippocratic humours (black bile, yellow bile, red blood, "white"-ish phlegm); and all the colours of the steeds ridden by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (red, white, black, and "pale," as translated from the original Greek χλωμός, which refers to something of a "yellowish" complexion).

A knight embodies the four colours; detail from the Splendor Solis

Moving on in Mallory's book, the analysis of earthly and heavenly tripartition is followed by three further sections regarding horse, cattle, and human sacrifice (all of previous import). While no similarly tripartite function is explicitly suggested between these three offerings, that they should each warrant their own section suggests a certain ternate preeminence (if not a potential conflation at some level) among the earliest Aryan tribes. Tripartite function is also revealed within the ritual of each sacrifice. While speaking of the latter offering, Mallory relates that:

The ancient Gauls, for example, made offerings to three gods — Esus, Taranis and Teutates — by recourse to hanging, burning and drowning, respectively. This pattern is replicated in the pagan Germanic punishments of hanging, stabbing and drowning, each technique correlated to the crime for which the victim was convicted. The underlying scheme suggests that human sacrifice to a deity occupying a priestly or juridical role (or the death penalty for one who violated these particular interests) was death by hanging. A violation of the warrior code, or an offering to the god(s) of war, most appropriately awarded death either by burning or by the sword. Fertility deities were satisfied by drowned victims. Although the best evidence is primarily confined to the westernmost Indo-Europeans, there is some additional support to indicate that threefold sacrifices may have been more widespread.

We have already seen in our explorations numerous mentions of both hanged and drowned victims (noting some of their company were self-sacrificial). Among those burned or stabbed we might include the decapitated Brân, Medusa, and Thomas of Lancaster; or even the self-stabbing King of Hearts, and Christ upon the cross. Then there is he who eternally burns, the fallen Lucifer, and all others condemned to the fires of hell. But just when our unified image of Indra seems likewise to have been condemned, irrevocably fractured into three, Mallory begins to build it up again through a "War of the Functions" in which "the three estates of Proto-Indo-European society were fused only after a war between the first two against the third." Citing the Greek Iliad, the Roman Sabine War, the Aesir/Vanir conflict of the Norse, and the Hindu Mahabharata, Mallory posits an alliance of the white/magico-juridical class with the red/warrior class against the black/herder-cultivator class (although this last function tends to vary), with the first two prevailing in a quasi-historical contest of powers. Again we will note the union of the colours red and white, as well as numerous mentions or suggestions of battle, conflict, and general opposition amongst our very own ruins (including more than a few allusions to chess, a game of likely Vedic-Aryan origin).

A drowning red king; the scene of a hanging; and a dark warrior, in red and white,
dismembering a golden figure - again, from the Splendor Solis

From here Mallory expounds on a seemingly restored dualism within Aryan ideology, pointing to a preponderance of foundational "twin" motifs, then going so far as to reconstruct what amounts to an Aryan Genesis, stating "analysis of all these tales indicates that the Proto-Indo-Europeans believed that the progenitors of mankind were *Man (Indic Manu, German Mannus) and *Twin, the latter of which was sacrificed and carved up by his brother to produce mankind." This, however, would seem to venture squarely into Semitic territory as well, recalling the legends of Cain and Abel, or the aforementioned Seth and Osiris. As to who may have influenced whom, assuming any influence at all, we will likely never know. Moreover, the notion of some fundamental duality behind all things would seem so universal as to transcend any kind of influence whatsoever. Indeed, Mallory ends his chapter on Indo-European religion with rather ambivalent views towards the entire comparative mythological process, fearing much of it to be ultimately unprovable within a strict archaeological context. And while we have placed no such stricture on our own, rather dabbling investigations, we too might raise some questions with respect to this recent trajectory into the areas of dualism, tripartition, and general opposition.