A Work In Progress Copyright 1995 VirtualChaos.Org. All Rights Reserved. Void where Prohibited.
Virtual chaos contends that all of humanities spiritual systems are operating on the very same set of principles but express the basic universal truths with different symbolic languages. All see the same image but from different angles, just as a landmark in four dimensions is seen from different perspectives from different locations.
To demonstrate just how much power these archetypes convey consider the power of a single concept for a moment. There may exist a concept so powerful That its very comprehension would produce all of the changes that exist between apes and human beings. The understanding of this one single idea by an ape could have lead his troop down a path that leads directly to our modern technological way of life. We may all be the end result of a single thought.
What is this super thought? It is the realization that one can keep a large, vicious predator at a distance by throwing rocks at it. That one concept has seven distinct results that directly guide an ape towards humanity.
The best survival strategy of all has got to be: DON'T GET EATEN. The ability to keep things that would eat you at a distance would have given this ape a powerful advantage over any other species. So the first result of throwing rocks is one of not being eaten. Natural selection would tend to favor such a creature.
The second and third results are due to the physics of throwing rocks. The creatures that have the best chance of survival are the ones that are the best at throwing, and the best posture for that is standing erect. This not only allows for a full swing, but also increases the distance one can keep between oneself and ones adversary by providing a better view. This early warning system requires the improvement of ones defenses if it is to be fully taken advantage of. It is a lot easier to hit something right in front of you than it is to hit something thirty yards away. It requires you to determine how much force to apply, the correct heading, triangulation of the distance, and the calculation of the trajectory. All of this must be done quickly if it is to be of any use, and that requires neurons, lots of 'em.
So far this single idea has caused us to stand up and increased the size of our brain, not to mention the fact that we haven't been eaten. The next effects are a function of statistics. When a rock is thrown, it is a statistical certainty that one of two things is going to happen: it will either hit or miss its intended target. In the case of a hit, it is a statistical certainty that eventually someone will thonk something upside the head hard enough to kill it Bam! Thud. WOW! Imagine, this thing that came here to kill you, is now lying dead at your feet.
In the case of a miss however, it is a statistical certainty that eventually your shot will hit a harder rock and shatter. Our ancestors would undoubtedly have seen this happen many times although it would have been of little consequence until the two preceding statistics were combined with the larger brain our ancestors now carried around. Over time we would begin to realize that the sharp rocks worked much more effectively than the dull ones did and our failures in hitting animals would have taught us how to produce them on demand.
This modification of the initial rock throwing idea creates a feedback loop in which using sharp rocks increases the number of animals that are killed in self-defense. This in turn increases the usage of sharp rocks. The end result of this loop would be a change from throwing rocks as a defensive action to throwing sharp rocks as a means of deliberately killing something. Man the hunter enters stage right. Meat, you see, is a concentrated form of protein, much more so than any plant foods. Something like three times more, so an animal that eats meat only needs a third as much, or a third as often.
Now making the change from an herbivore to a carnivore usually requires millions of years of evolution in order to install the necessary hardware- Big pointy teeth and usually claws. Prehistoric man had neither of these and as such would have a hard time opening dead animals to get at all that valuable meat. However, by checking out the fatal wounds on the animals they had killed with sharp rocks, they would eventually discover that sharp rocks have more than one use. Swiss army rocks, as it were. Anyway, this need to open an animal and take it apart (a hit), combined with the knowledge of how to sharpen a rock (a miss), lead inevitably to the creation of tools for this very specific use... The hand axe.
The combination of a crude stone tool technology and hunting, yields something never before seen. No longer were we restricted to what shredded remains we could steal from other animals, we could now kill our own, and guard them from scavengers no less! So now we have taken this rock throwing thing to the point where we can successfully hunt and kill other animals. Add to that our specialty tools for opening it up and dissecting it, and what do we have? The gutted remains of a dead beast, some bones and a hide. What we really have are blankets ! No more shivering at night or huddling together for warmth.
These blankets were no doubt the direct forerunners of clothing as well as serving numerous other purposes. Does your cat sleep in the gravel? Of course not, it goes and finds your laundry. Likewise early man would have much rather sat around on a soft warm fur skin than on the cold hard rocky ground. Stretched across a couple of branches it will keep you dry in a shower. And let us not forget its wonderful ability to carry a lot of small things by making them into one big thing. Things like fruits, nuts, half eaten carcasses, fish, tubers, and of course, sharp rocks.
The case can be made for any part of the body, that prolonged usage will cause it to become more developed, but the brain is the part that relates to this story. First our brains were forced to grow because we needed more neurons for the fine motor coordination throwing rocks demands. Then after standing erect, we needed to judge distance very accurately, as well as the speed of moving things. We needed to know where to aim to hit something. As the distance we maintained between us and our target increased, we had to learn to compensate our aim, not just in space (factoring in gravity over distance), but in time (where will the target be when my sharp rock gets there.?). The change to hunting made us factor in our motion as well as that of the target but also granted us a little free time to ponder the myriad of uses for our sharp rocks and hides.
Hunting down and stoning an animal to death is a coordinated group effort. Because of this it increases the demand for an effective means of communication. Although it need not necessarily be a spoken language, vocal signals are by far the best, as they can be used even when the hunters cannot see each other. I can't quite stretch this scenario so far as to say that language is a direct result of throwing rocks, but it does provide a significant prodding in that general direction.
Finally, let me draw a mental picture for you. Bob T. Hominid, is kicking back with his family and friends. His belly is full of baby wildebeest meat as he sits on the hide of a previous kill. He has a bit of free time which he wisely puts to use working on his stone tools. He knows that certain types of rock fracture and chip in different ways so he tries various combinations of hammer stone and target. One type of rock in particular chips to a very sharp edge - flint. As he sits banging two pieces of it together, his legs, and more importantly the hide he is sitting on is being showered with sparks. Then comes the breakthrough moment: Bob discovers that his crotch is on fire.
We have always been presented with the portrait of man learning to use fire by bringing a burning branch or something back from a lightning strike. Think about this for a moment though, Bob is walking around one day minding his own business when for no apparent reason there is a blinding flash of light. This is accompanied by ear-splitting sonic boom. A nearby tree explodes into a thousand pieces, many of which mysteriously burst into flame. Now, do you think Bob is going to go pick one of them up and take it home, or, run like hell?
If Bob T. Hominid's blanket caught fire, by his own hand mind you, right there in his cave, he would have had little choice but to stand back and watch as one of his more useful possessions burned to a crisp. If he was lucky enough not to have torched the wife and kids, the rest of the troop would most likely have looked at Bob with awe and amazement. That prestige alone might be enough to entice Bob to try and repeat the event, nevermind the actual benefits of fire. These limited encounters in a semi controlled environment would have exposed man to fire in a way much better suited to his mentality. By being the result of his own action, his initial fear would quickly turn to curiosity.
Even today we still base our lives upon projectile weapons. Our sticks and stones evolved into spears and arrows, then into catapults and artillery, and finally into guns and missiles. Big guns that shoot through schools and submarine based ICBM's that can destroy dozens of cities at a moments notice from anywhere on the planet. This concept that may have made us what we are will also destroy us if we do not recognize it and replace it with a concept more harmonious to our current state of being. That is the goal of every spiritual or psychological system.
All of the Bob T. Hominid story took place before homo-sapians came upon scene. Long before the time of the first modern humans, clothing, fire and cooking, communal care for the handicapped and elderly, communal hunting of large prey, and even ceremonial artifacts and ritualized burial were already established. Our ancestors were by no means stupid.
Once fully modern people emerged into Europe, about thirty two thousand years ago, their appearance did not change again. If one of these people were found today frozen in the Alps, he would be indistinguishable from somebody frozen last winter, less the wear and tear. The point here is that humans are by and large pretty clever, and have been human for quite some time. Most of their world was supernatural and beyond their ability to explain, however, their ability to identify correlations between various phenomena should have been every bit as acute as our own. When A does this, expect B to do that. Why? Gigantor is displeased by A and does B or whatever. Our ancestors ability to identify spiritual correlations and identify these with the various archetypal motifs developed into a spiritual system which gave rise to all of the spiritual systems used through the ages right up to the present
If we looks at the age at which the male and female of our species reach their sexual peaks, we can make some assumptions about the kind of survival strategy that causes it and the social structure based upon it. The males peak is at about the age of eighteen while the females is at about thirty-six, 2:1. This would suggest competition for a dominant male to pass on the strongest possible genes to the offspring. It also suggests that the men die young.
The consequences of this would also be represented somehow in their spiritual system to attempt to rationalize the way their existence appeared to operate. The roles of the male and female were projected onto larger beings which they then emulated in an attempt to grow into them. The god personified the two roles of the male, that of the boy-child, and that of the fierce hunter and lover. The goddess, on the other hand, represented the three female roles of maiden, mother, and crone. Through her longer life span, the old woman became the storehouse of wisdom for the community.
This oldest spiritual system is called wicce and means "Craft of the Wise." It's purpose was to tune the perceptions of the people to the cycles of nature to provide a sense of order and to show ones place in the scheme of things. Its holidays are the quarters and crossquarters of the calendar. It begins and ends on Halloween with a celebration of the arrival of the god. He is man the savage predator, the powerful and deadly hunter. On his head are the horns of the mightiest of beasts, proud symbols of power over these monsters but also a link to them as well.
At the winter solstice, about three days before Christmas, the god dies, presumably providing food for the recent mother and the new born boy-child. This is done at the exact point where the days stop getting shorter and begin getting longer. A new cycle has begun and the emphasis shifts to the newborn boy-child. This death and rebirth is present in every spiritual system and is necessary to awaken us to the fact that life subsists by consuming other life. Life itself is a vicious self consuming monster.
So far the emphasis has been on the god but at the second cross quarter after Halloween the focus shifts back to the goddess with the arrival of Candlemas, groundhog day. The goddess then rules the remainder of the year - nine months. The next holiday, the spring equinox is the point where the goddess and the god consecrate their union timed so as to deliver at the Yule death and rebirth.
It is in this fashion that the different relationships of the different roles of the male and female were projected onto supernatural forms which were then seen to guide and control the unfolding of the cosmos. The goddess becomes fruitful and abundant ripening and becoming full until at harvest, the fall equinox, she reaches her peak and begins to decline as the forces of death and decay start to approach. The hard, bitter times of winter are at hand. Soon death will take who it will and the new child will be born.
This primitive spiritual system would have been pivotal in keeping the people of the community in tune with the cycles of nature. When to plant, when to harvest, when to do whatever it was that would ensure they stayed alive. And who said when that was? The witches. Even our modern science of astronomy is an offshoot of astrology which is most likely descendent from the seasonal observations and practices of the Wicce.
Every spiritual system uses these archetypes in one form or another, be they mother earth and father time, or the virgin mother and boy-child, or even the anima and the animus.
Another development of the wicce that was adopted by everyone else was the introduction of religious magick. This probably developed out of an attempt to appease either the god and avert his wrath or the goddess to bless whatever. Through trial and error a primitive symbolic language would have been developed in conjunction with the archetypal images of the wicce. Because these are two of the requirements to produce a physical effect by spiritual means, the methods employed actually worked. Further refinement distilled this system into the numerous magickal systems we have today.
The use of the word primitive does not mean these concepts were not complex, on the contrary, these concepts were every bit as complex as their modern equivalents. They, like our own, were fractal in shape. One aspect of which is their ability to be resolved to finer detail and refined as more is learned about the deeper and more fundamental nature of things. The use of the word primitive denotes the time at which it was developed.
The impact of Judaism and Christianity on our western system of thought has been profound, to say the least. This impact permeates every facet of our lives and our spiritual thinking. Although the authorities of these systems would like to claim the lessons embodied in their teachings to be their own, the truth is that these lessons were incorporated from earlier systems and adapted to the archetypes and symbologies they themselves embraced. The creation epic, the serpent in the garden, the wrath of a vengeful and jealous god, the flood, and so on. All of these motifs were present in spiritual systems that predate the writing of the book of genesis. The aim here is not to discredit Jewish or Christian traditions but rather to examine the motifs that were deemed important enough to absorb as well as the major contributions these systems have made to our spiritual understanding.
The first thing one notices about these systems is the conspicuous absence of the goddess aspect of divinity. In these systems the female is blamed for initiating a fall from grace and bringing about the state of spiritual incompleteness present in the human condition today. This backlash is directed at the woman in every conceivable way. From the creation of the woman as an after-thought of the already complete man to making her subservient and chattel, This last example is carried to extreme in the Islamic traditions.
In retaliation for this alleged misdeed the feminine qualities of humanity and divinity were overthrown in favor of the more masculine and aggressive standards we practice today. The craft practiced by the old wise women was seen as the cause of MANkind's expulsion from the garden therefor everything to do with it must have been inspired by the forces of evil for the sole purpose of [your fear here]. The fact that the wicce started both cultural and spiritual traditions that continue to this day is somehow lost or is usurped by clever marketing by the newer traditions.
One example of this was the practice of the early Christian church to build its churches upon sacred sites of their pagan forerunners. By doing this the undeveloped pagan sites were over shadowed by the imposing Christian structures erected there. It was hoped that the Christian teachings would then be accepted by the peoples without raising the question of why they were built at that particular location.
Another example, but this time one that carried with it the seeds of rebellion, is evidenced in the attack on the wicce, but this time it is the god persona that is attacked. This refers of course to the horned god. The Christian representation of evil is depicted as a demon with cloven hooves and horns. The god pan of Greek mythology, if you will. This symbol was later adopted by anti-christians in their rebellion against the church.
The depiction of Satan with horns is one of the most basic Christian images and one that we in the west are exposed to from a very early age. The reason Satan has horns is never really explained, and if one were to ask about it, no acceptable answer could be given. The horned god of the wicce was automatically Satan simply because it had horns. Again the symbolic languages of man caused the viewing of an image to be stereotyped based upon its outward physical appearance. The fact that the attributes that the wicce used to personify their horned god were the same ones that were later used to personify god the father again seems to have been lost.
This automatic association of everything feminine with evil, is one of the root problems of our modern society. The greatest tragedy is not the loss of the goddess aspects but the damage done to the women of these systems. The cultural acceptance of domestic violence, the depiction of women as sex objects, [sex and fertility were matters of survival for the wicce], even today women still earn less than men for the same work, everything else being equal.
The unfortunate circumstance is that good and evil are inverses of each other and the one cannot exist with out the other The fortunate thing is that even if evil is 99.999% everywhere, there still exists good somewhere! 0.001% or so. Rejoice! Give Thanks. For this is the best possible thing that could ever have happened! This simple truth is the key to everything; those numbers can be reversed!
This precedent is set again in physics, just as there is a particle with two units of spin, and one with two units of charge, there is also an outcome with two units of satisfaction or positive movement. The name this outcome goes by is win/win, and Win/Win Works! Both parties benefit in a way that neither could have accomplished on their own. The folk anecdote is that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and the underlying truth behind all spiritual systems is that we are all part of something larger, a something that encompasses everything, something that really is greater than the sum of its parts. Male and female, we are all part of god.
Win/Win Works!
- Chaos
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![[Bob T. Hominid Image]](bob_files/bob_t.jpg)