Oh! What a Tangled Web We Weave

O! what a tangled web we weave, when first we practiced to deceive! Sir Walter Scott, Marmion, A Tale of Flodden Field, canto vi,1808

     Spider's Web

A spider is a connector of threads. One Greek word for web is hyphe, hyphos. And a hyphen, not unlike a strand of a spider's web, joins together words. Hyphen is from the Greek hyphen, from the adverb form of the word meaning "together, in one," literally "under one," hypo "under" + hen "one".  Because of the internet we are now able to access the World Wide Web, a.k.a. "the web", and connect in ways we were not able to before. The web has brought us together and made us more unified in thought and communication. We, like spiders, can sit at the center of our web and feel movements from across the globe, almost as fast as they occur.  

The Latin word for "spider's web; spider" is aranea. The spider's web in the picture above even looks a bit like an arena, which is a similar sounding English word. Below are a couple pictures of the Colosseum arena in Rome.

    Colosseum Ruins Drawing

    Model of the Colosseum

It is also interesting how much a stadium or arena looks like a knitting loom.


    Knitting Looms


    Modern Four Shuttle Knitting Loom

Neith/Nit/Net/Neit (nt/nrt) was a predynastic Egyptian goddess whose name is thought to be connected to the root word for "weave" ntt. Neith was goddess of war and hunting. She was fashioner of the weapons of warriors and guarded their bodies when they died.

  Various Portrayals of Neith with Desheret, arrows & bow, papyrus sceptre, and shuttle

Neith's name was also associated with water as well(think "wave", i.e., water in motion, back and forth like a weaver), and she came to be associated with the primordial waters. Think of her name here, written as Net, as in the woven grid-like nets of fishermen.   

      Spiral Galaxy

Neith was the mother of all the gods and wove the world on her loom. Starting with the four directions. The pointer in a modern compas often looks like a type of weaving shuttle.

    Wooden Weaveing Shuttle

    Compas With Shuttle Shaped Pointer

   Compas with Arrow Shaped Pointer

Oddly enough, Neith's connections with weaving seem to be associated with her role as goddess of war and hunting. Two of her symbols were crossed arrows and bow. The arrow and bow are not only weapons used for war, but are also words used for weaving instruments.  The word shuttle in Old English scytel means "a dart, arrow." So the swift movement of the shuttle in weaving is like an arrow being shot. The word for both a beam used in weaving and the stock of a crossbow is tiller from Latin telarium, from tela "web, loom".

So, Neith or Nit used instruments, like the instruments of war, to then weave the bandages and burial shrouds used in mummification.  

    Egyptian Mummy with Face Bandages in a Woven Pattern, Louvre Museum, Paris

Athena, goddess of wisdom, just warfare, and crafts, et al., was the Greek counterpart of Neith. She famously had a weaving competition with the mortal woman, Arachne. Arachne's insolence toward the gods caused Athena to curse her, and Arachne ended up hanging herself, but was then resurrected in the form a spider(maybe her name means, ar-Akh-Neith, i.e., pertaining to the Akh["living spirit"] of a weaver). 

    A Cosmic Looking Web with a Spider at the Hub

Both the center of a web and a wheel, or shield can be called a hub. It was Arachne's hubris/hybris, "insolence toward the gods", perhaps, connecting herself to the center, that caused her demise.  For she was, in fact, an excellent weaver, but she did not act with respect towards the ones more powerful than she. Arachne did not act wisely toward, Athena, the goddess of wisdom.

To be wise is to be sagacious, and like an arrow, to be quick and sharp.  The Latin word for "arrow" is sagitta, said to be of unknown origin, however, the word sagacity is said to be ultimately from the proposed PIE root *sag, "track down, trace, seek." This does seem very arrow-like. Words can pierce like weapons, like Athena's words to Arachne, and even wage wars. Thus we have the saying, "The pen(from Latin penna, 'feather')is mightier than the sword."

Neith was associated with spiders due to her weaving abilities, but she was also associated with bees. Neith's temple in Sais was called per-bit, "house of the bee", and the title of the king in lower Egypt was bit, "he of the bee".

However, what, if anything, do bees have to do with weaving?

As we are all painfully aware, bee's have stingers which are a kind of spine or quill. Spinning wheels also use a quill.


    A quill spindle from a spinning wheel.

Neith was also patron goddess of the Red Crown of Lower Egypt, in which Sais is located, called the Desheret.   

    The Red Crown 

It is an odd shape and there are many speculations about what it is supposed to symbolize. However, it seems to me that there probably is some truth in the proposal that the Desheret is related to the honeybee. It is stated in Momonism, that in the Jeredite language deseret means, "honeybee".  If you think about it, the Red Crown does look to be a sort of spine, or thorn(Latin spina, originally "thorn), or nail(Old Norse, nal "needle". Latin nere, "to spin".  English root *(s)ne-, "to sew, to spin"), or in other words, "a spinner", or . . . stinger.

    Bee Stinger

I don't know how the Egyptians described a bee stinger, but this one definately looks red, and the ancient Egyptian word for "red" was desher, thus desheret, the Red Crown. Desheret, dsrt, also had the meaning of the "Red Land", desert area, of Lower Egypt, on either side of the fertile Nile river basin.

If the Desheret is fashioned after the honeybee, although it is quite unique in its shape, it would not appear to be the only crown having a bee motif. There are many portrayals of the Sumerian gods which show a conical shaped crown resembling a conical bee hive. 

    Shamash- Babylonian Sun God

These pictures show Shamash, the Babylonian sun god. Notice his wavy, and plaited or weaved/waffle pattern beard and hair.

  

The word waffle comes from the Proto-Germanic wabila, "web, honeycomb", related to Old English wefan, "to weave". And the word "hive" itself is not too far off of wef. The bees "weave" their comb together, but with wax instead of thread. 

   Honeycomb with Honey

Both the spider and the bee are associated with Neith, the weaver(Nit-er, "knitter").  She is associated with the spider, for it being a spinner and weaver, and the bee, for it having a spine/thorn and waffled hive.  This is because in order to weave and spin we use spindles and needles.

   Spider Woman by Susan Seddon Boulet

Nit was, further, associated with Daumutef.

Daumutef Canoptic Jar

Daumutef, one of the four sons of Horus, was the deification of the canopic jar storing the stomach(and small intestines)[not to be confused with Quebehsenuef keeper of the (large)intestines], or we might say, yarn of a person, (yarn, Old Norse garnan from root ghere- "intestine, gut, entrail", Greek khord, "intestine, gut-string," Sanskrit hira, "vein, entrails"). And it is sometimes said that a man is knit together as in this passage from the bible.

You knit/weaved me together in my mothers womb. Psalm 139:13

Crochet comes from a word meaning "hook", as in the hooked needle used to knot/knit the yarn or chord.

    Jack Skellington hat my sister knit for my son for Halloween.  Neat-o! 
    (However he refuses to wear it. One year olds!) - photo by Julie O. /chthonickore

Did the goddess, Nit, knit man together on her loom? Or did she, rather, knit the human out of the humus and loam, i.e., sticky mud or fertile clayey earth?

   Adamah/Humus- by Julie O. /chthonickore

We could say that men were formed out of the loam of the earth through a knitting or tilling process of that loam, or a "looming" process upon that "loom". Remember, telarium is from tela "web, loom" in Latin. So we might say to till or cultivate the earth is akin to "weaving" on the "loom" of the earth. 

The Old English tilian means, "to tend, work at, to attain by labor". So the word "till," which is from tilian, certainly has the connotation of difficulty or striving, like Adam after he was forced to leave the garden. Adam was told that he would have to toill upon the earth.

"Cursed is the ground because of you;  through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken;  for dust you are, and to dust you will return. Genesis 3:17-19 [NIV]

19

The word toil in 3:17 is a translation of the Hebrew, itstsabon. The Spanish name Esteban, i.e. Stephen. Stephen is said to mean "crown" from Greek, στέφανος / stephanos, "crown, garland, wreath, honor, reward". So, Adam's toil(itstsabon) = his crown(esteban)?  And this is his "reward" for eating from the tree of Knowledge? A crown is what identifies a king.  A king is actually supposed to be a servant to his subjects. So to wear a crown would be a toil or labor(hopefully of love). 

However, the ground/earth was said to be "cursed" because of Adam and that it would bring forth "thorns". So, the loam("earth") or loom("tela"), brings forth thorns.  To be in the flesh, i.e., made from the earth, is to till a crown of thorns.

And a loom actually does look a lot like a crown.

    Knitting Loom 

Adam's toil was his stephanos, "crown or garland".  It was a crown of toil, therefore, a crown with a sting, a crown of spines, or thorns.

    A Loomed Bracelet

    Crown of Thorns

The Red Crown of Lower Egypt(or of the Red Land/"Earth") was a crown with a thorn. 
The crown of Christ, or a Christ, is a crown of many thorns and full of toil, i.e., blood, sweat and tears.

It's kind of funny, I have been using the cursor pointer of my computer to knit all these thoughts together and, darn it, if that curser doesn't look like a shuttle.

    I Beam Cursor(enlarged)

     Weaving Shuttle

Oh! what a tangled web we weave!

Abel

Digging in the night, small creature,

Rain came down to cleanse the soul,

Gave to the earth what was dead,

having been banished to the grave.

The smell of the earth rose like creation.

It sang, “You should have known, you should have known!

Your tears are shed to bury the dead,

But the sagebrushed earth is the crown for your head;

The scent that could have raised the dead,

if you had only listened,

It was in the blood of the earth that you were christened."

Even in death he cries out to his God, “It was I who pleased you.”

 –by Julie O. / Ember Elektra

Dec. 9, 2009

                            Adamah- by Julie O. /chthonickore

Rest in Pieces

Rostau (Restau) was one ancient Egyptian name for the area of the Giza plateau, which was the location of the necropolis of ancient Egypt even before the great pyramids were built. So this place Rostau would be the place where the bodies were interred, which were caves/tombs or openings in the earth, which we would call a grave, i.e. a place of rest, from Proto-Germanic *rasto- (also source of Old Saxon resta, "resting place", "burial-place").

Osiris, also transliterated as Usiris, wsjr, Asar, Asari, Ausar, Ausir, Wesir, Usir, Usire, Ausar, is the ancient Egyptian god of the underworld or, the world down under, you know, the austrailis (Latin for, "southern") land, i.e., the land of the dead. Osiris was ruler of the dead, but called "king of the living," because the land of the dead 𓇽, called the Duat (Tuat), was the land of the ntrw, neteru, i.e., the gods/beings who were the "living ones".

Osiris was actually the god of regeneration and rebirth.  

    Osiris

In Egyptian mythology the body of Osiris is torn apart by his brother Set, and scattered, but Isis gathers the pieces of his body and brings them together for proper burial.  So, you could say Osiris was "resting in pieces". He went to the "opening" to enter the land of the dead when he died (or was diced, "cut up") and was buried.  Or might we call it the land of the djed, dd, ?

        Raising the Djed Pillar

The djed (tet) was a symbol meaning "stability", but was actually representative of the body of Osiris.  We see it here in the ceremony of the "raising of the djed". People often call it the "djed pillar", but I think the djed would be more properly called a stalk (from Middle English stale "one of the uprights of a ladder"), given Osiris's green colored skin, and association with vegetation and growth, and given the djed pillars's association with a ladder, scala in Latin (from which we get the word "celery", i.e., a stalk).

    Bloody Mary with Celery Stalk

Anyway, the land of Osiris, or land of the djed, known as the Duat or Tuat, is the land of the dead. 

The word dead is said to come from a past-participle adjective based on *dau-, which is said to be perhaps from (PIE) *dheu- (3) "to die"[OE]. In German the word for "dew" is tau. Dew is said to come from [perhaps] PIE root *dheu-, "to flow"[OE]. The word "die" comes from the same root, *dheu - (3) "to pass away, die, become senseless". When someone dies, drops of water dew from our eyes. 

The word for "day" in Latin is dies.  And isn't a day something that is flowing, constantly in motion, and passing away? A day is change. Change only happens to those who are in the flesh, to those who are able to die and be judged on the "day of wrath," dies irae.

    Dies Irae - by Frederico Correa

Sometimes the dies, i.e.,"day" and/or death / dying is a bloody thing. 

You can dye clothes.  

When you dye cloth you change the hue, or color. Cloth can be dyed red, like blood.  

     Holi - Hindu festival of colors

The garment of the gods is white, bright and pure. But the adam "man", was given the hue ("color, skin"), a hue-man, of the earth or ground (adamah, "red/bloody earth"). Because the adam was made in the dies, "day", the flow, or passing away of creation, he (he/her/they) became mortal, or susceptible to death.

One dye used to make a scarlet or crimson color for garments was called "grain", from the color of the granada, i.e., pomegranate ("apple with many seeds").  

Persephone ate the "grains", or "seeds"(in Latin, granum) of the pomegranate  when she was in  Hades, the land of the dead. The god Hades (Αιδης), the earliest written form being Aides, and proposed to be from the Proto-Greek *Awides (meaning "unseen"), "from privative prefix a- + idein 'to see' (from PIE root *weid- 'to see')[OE]." Was the idea (from weid, "to see", who tricked (so he was also a "weed", i.e., pest) Persephone into eating the seeds, the grains, that caused her to have to stay in the land of the dead. The whole point was know return; gnosis.

    Pomegranate - by Julie O. chthonickore

Why did she have to remain in the land of the dead just for eating some seeds?  Perhaps because the seeds stood for certain knowledge that was gained (in'grain'ed) into her mind, or a "knowing" that causes irrevocable change, such as the fruit from the tree of knowledge in the garden of Eden. Adam and Eve went and ate the bloody forbidden fruit of the tree of da'ath "knowledge" and received death, muth / mooth in Hebrew.

     Death Head Moth

And thus, it is the mooth-er (or mother, matter), i.e., the bringer of death (mooth) / da'ath (knowledge) who is vilified for being an agent of change. God is singular, i.e., he is the monad.  However, he makes creatures of "two", or *dheu, those who "flow, change, pass away". In other words they die, they are hue-man. They have a dheu-al nature, duality, two-ality, i.e., matter + spirit.

In certain traditions Death is personified as a woman, such as Śmierć ("smirk") and Pestula ("pest, pestilence", and "pestle", i.e., a grinder).

The ancient Egyptian goddess Mut / Maut / Moat, meaning "mother", was the primordial mother, or waters of creation, i.e., the abyss. Her heiroglyph was the white vulture. The priestesses of the vulture goddess, Nekhbet, were called muu (mothers). Her city was Nekhbet, the city of the dead, or the original necropolis.

However, today vultures aren't usually thought of as being a positive symbol.

    Vultures

And, generally, neither is Death. The figure of Death is often pictured as the reaper.

He is Cronos or Saturn with his scythe.

    Saturn

But if he was the reaper, then he was also the sower, for, you reap what you sow.  The sower, or seeder, is also the reaper. What he reaps is the grain, i.e., the "seed" sprouted and reborn.

"Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat  falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit." John 12:24

    Wheat

And the crimson dye, or red seed of the pomegranate is also called "grain". It is symbolic, then, of the bloody body of the god, the piece ("bit") of the god buried in the ground which sprouts and brings forth life abundantly.

        Osiris-Nepra, with wheat growing from his body, from a base relief, Philae

However, since the place of burial is called the opening, rostau, it can also be equated with the mouth.  The R heiroglyph is "mouth" in ancient Egyptian, so rostau is, "mouth" + stau (tau, T). In fact the heiroglyph for "mouth," is a mandorla ("almond") i.e., vesica pisces shape .

 

                             Ra, "mouth"  

                     

        Iesous Xristos Theou Yios Sotare 

        Christ in Mandorla

A ros-tau (place of the dead) is also the shape of a tau-ros, or an ankh (tau + ros [loop / circular), the symbol for "life" and the cross of Christ in Christianity (σταυρός / stauros).

[Notice the row of ankh's under the body of Osiris-Nepra in the picture above]

Tau + Ros, The Halloween Tarot

The body of the god, then, would go in the "opening" or "mouth", hopefully to sprout and be resurrected (from Latin resurgere to "rise again"[re "again" + surgere "to rise", or we might say, taking the ancient Egyptian, rise from the mouth (re) or the grave, like Osiris, and bear fruit. Once resurrected the god joins the living ones in the Duat and is able to . . . rest in peace.

R. I. P.

Lend Me Your Ear

Uh no, Vincent, I didn't mean it like that. . . Vincent. . . can you hear me?

    Vincent VanGogh, Self-portrait with Bandaged Ear 1889

Being in a body and having organs for sensing and sensation makes us human, as opposed to, beings who are purely spiritual. The word "human" is related to the Latin humus ("ground, earth").  We are the living beings, i.e., animals (from Latin anima, "living principle, soul") made from the clay or humus.  We are, therefore, adam ("man"), i.e., the creature made from the adamah, "ground, earth" in Hebrew (related to, adom "red" and dam "blood"), or fertile ground, who were made to be living, or  Eve, from Hawwah / Chavvah, corresponding to chai "living."  That is, we are adam-eve's, or human animals.  We are the living clay. And because we are made in the image and likeness of God, the particular form of that clay has mystical, or godlike quality. This includes the  form of our ears.

In ancient Egypt people used pictures of ears carved into stone, a.k.a.,"ear-stele", as a way to address their prayers to the gods for intercession. Certain gods and goddesses held the tile of, "The Ear Which Hears," Mesedjer Sedjem. Among these was Ptah (the primal creator).  Another epithet of Ptah is said to be, "Ptah who listens to prayers." If you pronounce the word for "ear" in the ancient Egyptian language, mesedjer, it seems to be the same as our word "messenger," only without the 'n'. However, according to the etymological dictionary, the 'n' in "messenger" is in fact a parasitic addition to the word "messager." Therefore, "messager" became "messenger" due to the fact that people just wanted to say it like that. So, quite literally, a messenger can be said to be an ear, and the ear was used as messenger for the gods.

     Egyptian Ear-stele

It's curious, the ears on the stele even look a little bit like angel wings and an angel is, of course, a messenger.  We might even say our word "angel" comes from the notion of an ear, at least from the shape of the ear as being a hooked, or bent shape. This is because the Proto-Indo-European(PIE) root *ang / ank- is etymologically connected to the Greek ankylos "bent, crooked," Latin ang(u)ere "to compress in a bend, fold," Lithuanian anka "loop," Sandscrit ankah, "hook, bent".  

This ang/ank, then, appears to be related to the ancient Egyptian heiroglyph for "life" as well. The ancient Egyptian word for "life" ankh, was, perhaps, used as a word to describe the shape of its hieroglyph. So something with a similar shape as an ankh, would be "ankh-like", which is bent / curved / looped. The ankh hieroglyph is actually a tau (T), or "cross" with a bend / loop on it.  Ankh was also the ancient Egyptian word for "mirror."  A mirror gives you an image reflected (from Latin reflexionem, "a bending back"), or bent back to you. And a mirror is a messenger (angel) of truth (damn those mirrors!). In any case, the loop of the ankh is similar in shape to an ear, as well.

     Ankh

So, we could say that an angel is a messenger who is an, ang (like an ear) of el ("god"), ang + el. And one who is sent in a loop to and from God.

Hermes (which sounds close to hear-mes) is the Greek god who is messenger (ear) of the gods.  He is sometimes depicted with wings on his Petasos, like ears. 

    Hermes

We get our word "angel" from the Greek angelos, meaning "messenger, envoy". In Greek one of the titles of Hermes is Angelus Athanaton, "Messenger of the Gods", or, we might say, "Angel of the Gods". 

An angel is one who helps or serves. Shamash is the "helper" or "servant," as in the name given to the middle candle of the menorah which is used to light the other candles during Hanukkah.  A word that means to "hear" or "obey" in Hebrew is shama.  The ones who are the ears of God and hear him, serve both the gods and men. Maybe like the shamanic priests and witches called shamen, who are "ears" or "hearers" and conduits to the spirit world .

    Siberian Shaman, by Nicolaes Witsen 1692

Shamash / Samas, Akkadian for "sun" is also the name of the Mesopotamian sun god. Shemesh / semes is the Hebrew word for "sun." Shamash (God) who is the shemesh (sun) shema (hears) his shamash (servant). Whoa!

It is interesting that in the bible, when the guards come to arrest Jesus, Peter, a.k.a.., Cephas (from Aramaic keph/kafe "a rock") cuts off the ear of Malchus, the servant of Caiaphas ("rock, depression"), the High Priest.  The name, Malchus, means "king, councilor." Jesus tells Peter to stop, and heals Malchus' ear.  The words for king and angel in Hebrew are very similar, melech/melek "king" and mal'ach/mal'ak "angel." Mal'ach is from the root l-'-k meaning "to send/dispatch," thus the meaning "messenger," and  Melech is derived from the verb form of the word (malak) with the notion of "setting up or making to reign." A king/melech is specifically chosen or called by God to reign (eg. 1 Samuel 16:1). So, the two words seem like they could be ultimately be related in that respect. 

In any case, we could say, Peter cut off the mal'ach ("angel") of Malchus the shamash ("servant"), if we equate angel with ear, or, at least, we could say that Peter cut off the mesedjer (ear) of Malchus, if you don't want to play around. Technically, Peter was just "borrowing" the ear from Malchus, and Jesus gave it right back to him.  No harm done, right?  

Lend me your ear.

    Christ is Taken- Duccio di Buoninsegna, from Maesta Altarpiece 1308-1311