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“But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee: Or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee: and the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee. Who knoweth not in all these that the hand of the Lord hath wrought this? In whose hand is the soul of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind.”
Book of Job 12:7-10
- Introduction: What are Natural Symbols?
Man is constantly looking for patterns. A symbol is a way of capturing a pattern within a single glyph – such that lots of information can be compressed or contained within a condensed form, a letter, a number a word, a series of shapes, etc.
Although man is constantly searching for meaning in his surrounding environment, today he looks primarily in books, i.e. the written word. But ancient man looked to nowhere else than nature herself to provide him with all the symbols he needed. And indeed this was where the original religious impulse found its expression: through reading the symbols inherent in nature and deriving analogs to the spirit world, God, and man’s place in these high matters.
Modern man is trained not to look at “untamed” nature for intelligence. There is a tangled, chaotic mess of dog-eat-dog, modern dogmatic science tells us. Surely not a place where not only intelligence can be found but symbols can be pulled that have direct correlation and significance to man’s plight and journey.
But a quick cursory glance to nature proves this is not true, it is just that we are not reading Her with the right eyes, if you will. We all know, for example, that the female menstruation cycle is timed according to 28 day lunar cycles, but that is usually where the knowledge base ends in this field. We think it is peculiar perhaps, this correlation, but don’t know what to make of it.
The ancients did. Not only did they see such correlations as relevant to their religious impulse, but they had direct intuition that such correlations were purposefully place there by Deity in attempt to impart to man sacred truths. In this way was nature thus “read” and recorded by the ancients.
The night and day pattern, the seasonal changes, the shifting of the stars in the heavens, all told a deeper syncretic story that mapped onto the soul journey of man.
For example, as Alvin Boyd Kuhn made plain, the night, and winter became types for the incarnation, the dark night of soul, when its buried in the flesh of matter, separated from the hot and fiery heavenly realm, which was thus typed as day and summer.
These codified motifs survived into the old and new testaments by the way, if you know how to look.
The stars and constellations became a more complex and multi-layered which still told the hero’s journey, the hero being the sun, Helios, Horus, Jesus, as he traveled through the 12 constellations, embodying each sign as he went. There is always a death and resurrection, as the sun has to die at night when it goes below the HORizon, the son has to die on the cross, but is reborn again the next MORning (Mars), when the sun RIses (RA) and shines.
This is not just some hero’s journey, this is YOUR journey. This is what every soul must do, in order to reach everlasting conscious immortality, it must undergo cyclic incarnations, dying and being reborn, like the sun, until it masters the very forces of nature, those untamed elements, within his own being.
Thus we can define a natural symbol as any aspect of nature, from organisms to patterns in the cosmos, that tells an aspect of man’s story, through a convergence of pattern. And we must keep in mind at all times, that this pattern is never arbitrary, although we can arbitrarily deceive ourselves. The pattern is put there by Deity, just as the ancients knew but which modern man forgot, in order to remind him of who he really is on the soul level. God kicked us out of the garden but gave us the symbols required to piece our way back.
The topic of natural symbols is a huge one that would require many volumes to being to do it justice. This book will focus its attention, then, on just one aspect of this vast field, and that is the zootype. What we can learn from the lofty stars and from the planets and sun and moon is truly breath-taking, but perhaps what really hits home is when you discover that the very neighbors and friends which keep man company on Earth, the animals, are also there to tell us a story, in analog.
From the life cycle of the butterfly metamorphosing from a cocoon, to the hunting and sniffing of man’s best friend the dog, are traits and patterns that reveal hidden, occult truths as to the nature of man’s own soul journey. Every animal embodies one or several adaptations which were glyphed by the ancients as types or symbols of the hero. The bat’s ability to “see” at night was the hero not getting lost in the dark forest of his incarnation. The same for the fish who does not drown in the sea (or flood) of sense life. The bird was ever the symbol for the resurrection, for its flight symbolized the soul’s journey back to Heaven, having conquered the lower realms of flesh and sense.
Many of these animals thus became luminous Gods, as all the animal-headed or human-animal hybrid forms can attest to. Animal totemism was a kind of codified ritual system for embodying the animal powers of whatever animal the aspirant would evoke, through pelts and skins and face paint, through dance and chant, that animal spirit was evoked and its skills were, temporarily, imparted. This was and still is the basis for much magic ritual.
Each chapter in this book will be focusing on a different zootype, covering the main ones that survived the test of time and are found scattered through our myths and cultures, both modern and ancient. The zootypes haven’t left us, you’ll find, if you read on, they remain loyal as ever. It is modern man who has turned his back on them, thinking himself too lofty and important. But what is left when you forget the natural symbols and zootypes is a very gray and dull world indeed. It is time to reclaim the lost guides of the soul.
The Guides:
2. Bull
The bull has been worshipped across all ancients cultures going back to Egypt, Sumer, and Phoenicia/Canaan, and its artifacts survive and thrive to this day; it is a part of the zodiac as Taurus, and as we’ll see, the bull embeds into our very language.
To start with, the Hebrew letter Aleph (Paleo-Hebrew was an offshoot of the Phoenician alphabet, where we get the word: Phonetics), or the letter “A” is the very first letter and its pictographic meaning is the ox. The original hieroglyphic form of the letter was shaped like the ox head. And this managed to cross over into English because when you turn the letter A upside down you find yourself staring at the same shape, more or less: the horned head of the bovine.
The correspondence then, between the ox or bull, the letter A and subsequently the number 1 (A=1 in gematria), is a key pattern in esoterica, indeed it is the main trunk of our Tree of Natural Symbols, of which each branch is a Zootype.
A frequent pattern is to see these animal symbols paired. For example the two stone lions you often see flanking the steps of fancy buildings, or the two fish of Pisces. We will get into them in later chapters, but for now, since the number 1 is shaped like a pillar or tower (or branch) we can substitute “two towers” imagery with two bulls. The twin pillars, representing many forms of duality are thus the bi-bulls or the bible. The bible is a book of riddles or parables (pair of bulls), each of which can sound like a paradox (pair of ox). And it is no surprise that the very air we breathe is 02 or two bonded atoms of OXygen. And in the opening quote to this book, Job calls the Lord “the breath of all mankind.”
The number 11 (twin pillars) is associated with magicK, (the letter K is the 11th), and graphically this number is the two horns of the bull. Thus in the ancient myths there was the bull of the Earth (Taurus being the sign of fixed earth) and the bull of the sky or starry heavens (An or Anu, which became the Hebrew ‘El’). The latter being the supreme Deity or Father God. El is spelled in Hebrew, Aleph Lamed, which is the ox and the ox goad. That which drives or goads (Lamed) the cosmic breath (Aleph). This was also the Mother God depending on which cult, masculine or feminine, was presiding at the time. But in a sense it doesnt matter, the supreme Deity being, in the end, androgynous or beyond the dualism of sex. This androgyny is typified by the castrated bull, which is the ox.
Occultist Paul Foster Case wrote, “Oxen are symbols of the taming of natural forces. Thus the letter Aleph is a symbol of creative energy, and of the vital principles of living creatures. This vital principle comes to us in physical form as the radiant energy from the sun. Thus its association with Tarot Key 0, the Fool. Aleph is the special sign for air and breath. The noun “fool,” is derived from the Latin follis, meaning a “bag of wind.” Oxen were the motive-power in the early civilizations where the alphabet of occultism was invented. They were used to plow fields, to thresh grain, and to carry heavy burdens. Agriculture is the basis of civilization, hence the ox represents the power at work in every activity whereby man makes use of the forces surrounding him, and adapts them to the realization of his purposes.”
The bull shows up in our language in other ways. A bull, like other hooved animals, is an ungulate. The prefix “Ung” is near-equivalent to “Ang,” as in
Angus beef, but also of course the word “angel.” The bulls were the original angels, because they were animal totems, zootypes of a profound and mysterious grace and power.
As an angel of light they are also the angles of light, pure white light bending into the color spectrum. Each zodiac sign is a different angle of light from the sun to the ecliptic. And the 30 degree segmentation of each sign harkens back to the V shape or more specifically, the shape of the letter A.
New breakthroughs in science have brought us toroidal physics, and according to many outside-the-box thinkers, the torus field is the true model of the universe, whether from the atomic level, to that of our bodies and to the very planet or plane we live on. It is no surprise then, that the word “torus” is a homonym of “taurus.” And when you align the bovine head with the torus field, we see a perfect fit:
The angle of the letter A, is the initial bifurcation of the One Mind or Life Power, splitting into two, into subject-object, into the experiencer and that which is experienced. There is the noumenal or inner world of consciousness, and the phenomenal world of weight, color, sound and effects (angles of light or twists and turns of the torus). In the letter A, the two worlds, the two bulls are connected by the crossbar to show that there is no permanent separation, intimating that at the end of each cosmic cycle, the two become one again, resolving into the Zero Point or the No-thing. The occult formula 0 = 2 preserves this symbolism. The zero is the black inky abyss in between cycles, a dreamless sleep, when the Life Power goes into its latent phase. Kali, Osiris, Nuit, and other black gods depict this phase, this black abyss of sleep.
Similarly, the letter Aleph is shaped like two Yods (Y), one flipped upside down or mirrored, and a slash or dividing line between them:
The Yod is the flame, which is why Hebrew is called the flame alphabet, where each letter is a derivation of the one Yod (which in informal writing is sometimes just the dot, the period, the point in space). Thus the letter Aleph above represents the state of duality man is in, when fire/spirit has met water/matter (which is just spirit flipped upside down or polarized in a different modality). The soul (fire) incarnates into matter (water) and has to work its way out of matter back to Source, but everything is all topsy-turvy and backwards and flipped here, (we see through a glass, darkly, says Paul in Corinthians). In this present age of materialism it seems like no one knows where we came from or where we’re going, save perhaps that Jesus fellow…hmm but I digress.
The Gnostic instructors at the site “Glorian.org” point out that by tilting the letter Aleph slightly you have a glyph of the trachea and TWO LUNGS (another paired “ANG”):
The respiratory system of course allows the body to breathe OX-ygen. But it is more than just air, but the cosmic breath giving life to all beings.
To review then, the letter A, the downward angled triangle shows the opening of a new cycle, which is why it is always first or alpha in the alphabet. It is followed by B shaped like the two B-reasts because the world has been B-irthed, and must now be nourished with milk like a B-aby.
Each birth of a new universe is a new s-TOR-y. A new turn of the primal macrocosmic Torus Field, of which our body is a microcosmic fractal. Your body has a (tor)so, the midd(le) from which the magnetic lines extend and return to that Zero point at your nav(el). The Earth is a giant Torus, a stationary plane spreading out from a middle pillar or trunk (which is invisible to us), and which is why the ancients called it a Tree, or a Mount, (see Mt. Meru, Mt. Sinai, or the Yggdrasil tree of the Nordics).
The branching of the tree in our 2D model looks like the same branching of the female uterus (torus), which, recall, also resembles the bull head and horns, the “A” upside down.
The uterus clearly stands for reproduction or fecundity. Not just physical or biological reproduction but also the fecundity of each cosmic cycle adding to the overall evolution and self-awareness of the One Mind, which is itself changeless, transcendent. To us, that last sentence sounds like a paradox (pair of ox), we cannot understand it while stuck in a linear time frame.
The mother cow, feeding her calf with her milk is a symbol of this fecundity. Perhaps this is where we get the word “Milky Way” the stars of our supposed “galaxy” being white like milk, and of course the cow jumps over the moon, which is made of cheese, etc.
The word “calf” connects to cleave, like the cloven hoof of the UNG-ulates, but also the primordial cleaving of the Zero Point into Two: Subject-Object. The calf is birthed from the cleft or the vagina, tying us back again to the u-terus (and the slang term ‘camel toe’). The egg begins in the ovaries, holding the word “Aries” which is the sign of the lamb or ram, another horned ungulate.
The same “calf” root gives us the musical clef, and it’s no coincidence that the clef contains 7 major notes (angles of sound, like the 7 primary colors or angles of light, or the 7 classical, interior planets).
The Hebrew word for dog is “Kelev,” and we will be talking in a future chapter about the dog zootype, the word “dog” in English of course being “God” backwards.
The Hebrew word for milk is “Chalav.”
The word “color” resembles the Sanskrit word kala, which means time. And there is a long standing play on words between “kala” and Kali, because she is the destructive black goddess who devours time at the end of each great cycle, or what the Hindus call a Maha Kalpa. She is the abyss, who survived (in veiled form) into Christian symbolism as the Scarlet Woman who rides the seven-headed beast in Revelation (seven primary colors or kalas).
In quantum physics we learn that time only exists with an observer and something to be observed, thus Kali is black because she is the inky abyss in between time cycles, in between the kalas of color via light angles. Between the two bulls of space and time. Before the cleaving of zero into 1+1 or 2. Before the cleft birthed the calf, to be fed and nourished on milk (chalav). The Milky Way being Anu, the sky God, the universe was turned ON (Anu) and observed. A new verse in the cosmic music, the Clef. A new s(ong) (Ang).
The vesica piscis is the cleft, between the two spheres or balls (bulls). Where the circ(le)s (El), in(ter)sect, we see the fish, another sacred zootype we’ll cover in the next chapter.
A few odd tidbits where the bull zootype weaves its subtle code:
● There is a gold bull statue on Wall Street, where people trade stocks (as
in livestock). Money (moon-eye) ch(ang)es hands. If you don’t have change you can pay in bills (bull). Gold was sometimes called gold bullion (bull-lion).
- ● The “ang” root is interchangeable with the “ank” root, which is where we get the sacred Egyptian ‘Ankh’ symbol, which means, amongst other things, a tie or bind. Thus the ankle ties the foot to the shin, and the anchor ties the boat to the sea floor. A bank ties your bills to a safe location. It keeps them in a pen (penny). A tank is a (bul)ky vehic(le) that fires (tor)pedoes. Its damage is terrible (torus-bull)
- ● Speaking of a pen, Jesus was born in a m(ang)er, or a stable (stay, bull). Jesus being the sun traveling through the animal house, the zoo-diac. The latin “-diac” meaning “divide” thus the zodiac literally means the “animal divide,” the animals either coming in pairs or being a hybrid of human-animal (Sagitarius) or a hybrid of two different animals like the fish-goat of Capricorn.
- ● Is it a coincidence that the ANGus bull shows up in the very word l(ang)uage? And this particular language we’re using is (Eng)lish.
- ● Taurus rules the throat, which modulates air, to make speech and sONG. When you align the human body to the Qabalistic Tree of Life, the throat lines up with the hidden sephirah of Daath (notice the two “A’s” or two bulls). Hold onto this for later!
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Upon The Face Of The Waters 