Читать книгу The Science of Religion - Howard Barry Schatz - Страница 17

The Bull of Heaven as Primordial Earth

Aurochs were very large bulls, now extinct, that were worshipped in Egypt and depicted in Paleolithic carvings and cave paintings discovered in Lascaux, France (Figures 15a & b) and Çatal Höyük (Figure 15c). Bulls and cows have been worshipped in India and the Middle East as a reflection of the constellation, Taurus, symbolizing Earth: The dense, opaque matter comprising the body contains the soul’s divine light, the way a bucket contains water. It is “Mother Earth” that protects and nurtures the spiritual foetus. The Bull of Heaven plows the furrows that hold divine seed, while the gentle, nurturing Sacred Cow of India (Figure 15d) was the matriarchal goddess, Hathor of Egypt. “Finding the great secret [of immortality] is to find the cows, or their milk [Soma].” The Aryans longed for cows, because their utters symbolically contained the elixir of immortality. Indra slew the dragon Vrtra, (lit: the blocker), a stone serpent slain by Indra to liberate the rivers, while Vrtra’s brother, Vala is a stone cave, similarly split by Indra to “liberate the cows.” Vrtra and Vala symbolized the dense physical matter of the body blocking the flow of Soma, the Divine Elixer.

Figure 15a - Egyptian Bull god Apis Figure 15b - Hall of Bulls Lascaux France (circa 30,000 BCE)

Figure 15c - Çatal Höyük (Circa 6500 BCE) Figure 15d - Sacred Hindu Bull