House of Horrors?

Matthias Grünewald, Tauberbischofsheim altarpiece(detail), 1523-1525

If you look at this picture objectively, it is pretty gruesome, as are many crucifixion images. However, most people don't view them as such because they are so used to the idea of the image and its significance. Such images are displayed in millions of homes, churches and places of prayer throughout the world. Why are images like this OK? Because this particular bloody foot happens to be the foot of Jesus. It is not something grotesque like a zombie foot. It is sacred art.

We might wonder, however, what someone visiting from a distant solar system would think if they saw some of our religious art, and different religious practices. We might wonder how they would describe what they saw here back on their home planet if they didn't bother to understand the significance, or were confused about what was going on and why. What if they judged us as being silly and unevolved already because we were not as advanced as they were? They might show a picture of the crucifixion to their children and say something like, "This is the God from Earth, Passio Christi, he is a horrible masochist who haunts people. He tells everyone they have to eat his flesh and drink his blood or they will be eternally tortured. He also tells children to hate their parents and only do what he says."

Zombie Meat Market-Foot(or, given a minor miscommunication, the foot of Passio Christi packaged and ready for consumption on Planet X.)

It is all about perspective isn't it? People aren't usually as objective as they would like to think. They imagine that how they view things just is so, and is right and correct. Other people who think or do things differently, are just stupid or silly, or at worst, are evil heretics who should be put to death.

Do you want to see something really scary? Are you sure? Here it is . . .

    Horus-Set

Are you horrified?

This is a depiction of Horus-Set. The name transliterated from the hieroglyphs to the English alphabet is Ḥrwy.fy. What's that? Horrify? No, ḥrwy.fy. It is usually translated as, "He of the two faces/or heads".

Is Horus-Set supposed to be some sort of monster? What is going on here? How could it possibly have an interpretation that is positive? The man has two heads AND they are both animal heads! Isn't that demonic?

Actually, Horus-Set was supposed to signify a balance of power. Horus was the Lord of the Black Land (fertile Nile area) and Set was the Lord of the Red Land (desert). Together they created balance. Originally Set, the more negative, or yin half of the ballance, was not demonized but honored along with Horus as a god or power. In later time periods Set came to be associated with evil.

However, this association with evil can happen to more positive gods or people as well when they aren't considered to be on "your team", or aren't part of your religion or race. It is Horus, the more possitive, or yang personification of the power of God in the ancient Egyptian religion whose name and titles can be suspiciously found in words such as "horrify"(hrwyfy), "horror" (Haw-Wer, Heru-ur,  ḥr.w wr, meaning, 'Horus the Great'), and "heressy", (Herseisis, Har-si-Ese, "Horus, Son of Isis), "nefarious"(Nefer Hor, Nephoros or Nopheros, nfr ḥr.w, meaning 'The Good Horus'), and "whore"(Horus, Haru, ḥr.w, Coptic, Hōr, Greek,Ὧρος Hōros). 

And look at this. This was the orrigional "House of Horus".

    Hathor

The goddess Hathor, ḥwt-ḥr meaning, "mansion or house (like "hut", hwt) of Horus (hr)".

Hathor was the sky-goddess of love, beauty, motherhood, foreign lands, mining and music. Does that sound like a "house of horrors" to you?

I can understand this sort of thing happening to gods such as Set, the Lord of the Red Land, becoming a "Satan" figure because of his connection with storms, desert, and chaos.

    Set or Seth (Setesh, Sutekh, Setekh, or Suty)

People make judgements about adversity. All adversity is called "evil". When actually there seems to be a subtle distinction between what we call adversity and what we call evil. Adversity is an experience that can create positive outcomes. It creates growth, saviors and heroes. But evil is just bad. 

For instance, adversity is judged to be evil in the story of "The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil" in Genesis. It is one way of interpreting the events of the story.

Out of the ground the LORD God caused every tree to grow that is pleasing to the sight and good for food; the tree of life was also in the midst of the garden, and also the tree of the knowledge (da'ath) of good and evil. Genesis 2:9 

The word evil comes from Old English, yfel (Kentish evel), meaning "bad, vicious, ill, wicked". The word in Hebrew used to describe the knowledge of the tree in the garden is, ra' translated as, "evil", in English.  However ra', although it is sometimes translated as "evil" and "bad," can have the meaning of adversity, unpleasantness, giving pain, unhappy, hurtful, and not only moral badness or wickedness. 

Also, because the knowledge from the tree was said to make one "like God," 

For God knows that on the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will become like God, knowing (yada) good and evil(ra'). Genesis 3:5

is it more like God to have knowledge, as in experiential knowledge, of what we would call adversity, or of evil?  For it seems that to truly know something(and not just know of it, or hear of it), you have to be in communion with it, or be one with it. Just as we know sweet and sour after we actually taste sweet and sour foods, we know hot and cold after feeling the extremes of high and low temperatures with our bodies, and we know pleasant and painful sensations in the same way. We would say Jesus knew adversity in this way because he suffered, but would we say he knew evil? Does God know evil? Or is evil always just a fleeting perception? God intends everything for good and brings good from evil, even that which is done with bad intent, as is shown in the story of Joseph and his brothers. 

As for you, you meant evil (ra') against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to keep many people alive. 

So therefore, do not be afraid; I will provide for you and your little ones." So he comforted them and spoke kindly to them.  Genesis 50:20-21, New American Standard Bible

God does apparently at times intend ra'a (root of ra'), which is rendered as "evil" in some translations, such as this passage from the English Revised Version of the Bible.

For thus saith the LORD of hosts: As I thought to do evil (ra'a) unto you, when your fathers provoked me to wrath, saith the LORD of hosts, and I repented not; Zachariah 8:14, ERV 

But this ra'a here is just as often translated as "disaster," "bring harm," "punish", "treat badly," "afflict", or "destroy." So, God sometime intends to afflict people, but we are not supposed to think that when he does these things he is acting with evil intent or he is being bad, therefore it must be the case that ra'a is, in and of itself not wicked, but that it can be used with intent for good or bad, or to accomplish either meaningful/good or wicked ends.  

Ra / Re also happens to be the ancient Egyptian sun god.  Here he is depicted as a man with falcon head and disk of the sun encompassed by a cobra.

    Imentet/Amunet "The Hidden One" and Ra 1298-1235 BC, Tomb of Nefertari

The rays (Ra, Re) of the sun can be really intense and cause ra (adversity or affliction) but are they evil? They can seem evil when you are being scorched, like Jonah in the desert. But the same rays cause growth and warmth and give light.  Power can be perceived as evil when it causes an experience that is unpleasant, but we shouldn't truly put the label of evil on it unless it is, for the purpose of personal gratification, intentionally trying to cause harm for the sake of inflicting pain, i.e., comes from evil intent.

We can understand the association with evil, as well, with gods like Loki, who is the Norse counterpart of Set. Loki IS actually pretty "loco". He is the trickster god always causing trouble and adversity.

    Loki, Norse Trickster God, 16th Century Icelandic Manuscript

Loki is the father of Hel, of the wolf, Fenrir (who swallows Odin during the battle of Ragnarok), and the father of the Wold Serpent / Midgard Serpent, Jörmungandr. But he is also the mother (yeah, weird story) of Odin's wonderful eight-legged horse, Sleipnir who is described as, "the best of all horses".

    Sleipnir

If it weren't for Loki, the world of the gods would surely be more boring. He appears to be a force sometimes for good, and many times for adversity. He is called a god and not called a demon or Satan. However, he seems to have possibly contributed to the characteristics we think off as being demonic today. He even has the demonic looking facial hair and/or helm with horns in certain depictions.

And Set too, with his association with red, and the forked, or other times club looking tail of the set beast, whom he is represented by, has the look of what is now called a devil or demon, but he started out as the personification of a balancing power that was not called evil, but rather, adverse, difficult, or harsh.

    Set Beast or Animal

Sometimes the label of good and evil seems to be a matter of subjective opinion. If people like something, they say it is good, and if they don't like it, they tend to call it evil.  

Is darkness evil? No, darkness is not always evil. Sometimes darkness is just mystery and hiddeness. Sometimes darkness reveals secrets, like during an eclipse the corona ("crown") of the sun is visible to us, but is not visible at any other time. An eclipse or darkness would only be evil if it stayed that way and kept us in darkness forever. Some darkness is OK. A certain amount of darkness it is called night, and it is not evil because it is contained by light. Darkness is part of what we call Day, and the Day is good.

God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night.  And there was evening and there was morning, one day .  .  .  And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. Genesis 1:5, 31

    Total Solar Eclipse

We might wonder what it would be like if there were never any night. In that case we might call day evil. Too much of a good thing can seem evil. Or what if there was only too much day, or night for long periods of time, like in the polar regions. It seems what we really seek is balance between the extremes. It is silly to vilify either light or dark, hot or cold, work or rest, or any polarity. In and of themselves they are neither good, nor bad.

What of this icon known as the Black Madonna?

      Our Lady of Jasna Gora, Czestochowa, Poland

One might wonder about this dark or sooty (Suty, happens to be another rendering for the name of the god Set) depiction of Mary. This dark image is venerated right along with the bright and light ones. What mysteries lie waiting to be revealed by this darkness? What glory is being shielded behind the veil of the woman? Is something being covered that we are being protected from, or aren't ready to see?  

Could it possibly be some aspect of the feminine or yin such as this?

      Kali Hindu goddess of time and change

Kali is "the Black One", the Hindu goddess of time and change.
  
Is she evil? She does have heads strung around her neck and she is standing in a pool of blood. But how would you feel about her if she was a mother protecting her children? How would you feel toward her if you were the child in need of protection and she was defending you? Sometimes it is good to have a mother bear looking out for you. It doesn't mean the power is not fearful however. 

Maybe some people aren't quite prepared to handle the reality of the kind of strength that lies within the dark, black, yin, feminine aspect of the divine. So it has been veiled in the western tradition. Or, when not veiled, it is vilified. Such as with Eve (Havvah "living") in the garden of Eden who was an agent of change. It is because of, Eve, the woman, that we are all sinners, that we are all stained with original sin, correct? What a whore!

    Adam and Eve, Lucas Cranach the Elder, oil on wood (c.1538), Prague

She should be ashamed for causing her husband to sin like that. She listened to the whispering voice, described as, nachash [Hebrew], i.e., a snake (nachash from its hissing sound, the hisser). This snake is equated with the devil, the deceiver (trickster?), and evil.

It is interesting to note, that later on, Elijah listens to a whispering voice as well (1 Kings 19:12). He listens to the whispering voice, i.e., "qowl ('voice') demamah ('whisper/silence') daqqah ('thin')," sometimes translated as the "still soft voice", but he is said to be talking to God, and is a great prophet. He then goes back to town and instigates a huge bloodbath of slayings, but this is OK because he was talking to the Lord, YHWH, and not a snake!

It seems that a judgement has been placed on the two events. The whispering voice that Eve listens to is called a snake and a deceiver, whereas, the whispering voice that Elijah listens to is said to be YHWH. This is because the motive for what Eve did, and the consequences of what Eve did were judged as "evil"(Eve-ill), rather than causing the experience of adversity. Even though adversity is apparently a type of knowledge that God has, a kind of shame is put onto the action, i.e., she is a wicked "sinner" for disobeying God and being the cause of our experiencing "evil". On the other hand, we are told not to think badly of what Elijah does, even though it appears to be harsh, because he was doing it under the orders of God.  

We should remember too, that although the eating of the fruit of knowledge (da'ath) of adversity brought with it the experience (yada) of adversity, and especially adversity in the form of death, it is also because of this action of Eve, which was done out of her innocence (she was created in a state of grace and innocence), that we (the adam, ha'adam) became like God.

. . . "Behold, the man (ha'adam) has become like one of us, knowing good and evil . . ." Genesis 3:22, ESV

It seems that, to be like God, should be a good thing. We could consider this fall as being a necessary part of God becoming man, and man becoming God, just like a baby upon leaving the womb first begins to experience adversity in the manner of coldness, hunger, breathing, digestion, etc., but it is a necessary step in joining the human race. Is it a fall, then, as in "wickedness and evil", or a fall, as in "the falling/swinging of a pendulum", i.e., the experience of polarity and duality? Perhaps it was a fall, as in, from no change, to a state of change and movement, from timelessness, to the spinning of the wheel of experience. Or, simply put, that which occurs when the spirit(in the image and likeness of God) is incarnated in the flesh and becomes an adult.  This is just the order of creation, 

Day, Night, Day .  .  .  One Day.

        Taijitu

Actually, fall is my favorite time of year. It begins at a time of equilibrium, as the balance is shifting from the predominance of yang energy to the predominance of yin energy. It's not evil, its just an experience.

Think of the name "Katrina", is it infamous to you at all? If it is, it certainly didn't start out that way, but became infamous by association with an event that people judge as being a horrible event.

      Hurricane Katrina infrared Immage, Aug. 29, 2005 

Is it a storm or a monster?

Horrible is from the  Latin horribilis "terrible, fearful, dreadful". To be those things is not necessarily bad or evil. God is horrible in that respect. I'm sure Pharaoh thought the God of Moses was horrible, or even, evil when he killed his firstborn son.

This sort of thing is also illustrated nicely in the musical, "Wicked".  Is a witch good or bad? Is a good witch good or bad? Is a wicked witch good or bad? Which witch is which? What?

Is it an insult to be called a witch?

            Good or Bad Witch?

Or, if someone says that you are horrible, terrible, or a witch, or any other such "insult", should you take it as such, or could you maybe take it as a compliment, just like it is a compliment on Halloween?  

It's all a mater of perspective.

    Horrible Picture of Jack Skellington on a Crucifix- by Julie O. / chthonickore

Happy Halloween!  Happy Samhain!

Have a horrible, terrible, fearful evening!