I. The Enclosed Sun-Cross
The Four Rivers of Paradise
“And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads.”555 So reads the Book of Genesis. The four rivers of Adam’s paradise, according to many Hebrew and early Christian accounts, flowed in opposite directions, spreading to the four corners of the world.556
The tradition is apparently universal. The Navaho Indian narration of the “Age of Beginnings” speaks of an ancestral land from which the inhabitants were driven by a great catastrophe. Among the occupants of this remote home, some say, were “First Man” and “First Woman.” Most interesting is the means by which the land was watered: “In its centre was a spring from which four streams flowed, one to each of the cardinal points . . .”557
The Chinese paradise of Kwen-lun, adorned with pearls, jade, and precious stones, lay at the centre and zenith of the world. In this happy abode stood a central fountain from which flowed “in opposite directions558 the four great rivers of the world.”559
Four rivers appear also in the Hindu Rig Veda: “the noblest, the most wonderful work of this magnificent one [Indra], is that of having filled the bed of the four rivers with water as sweet as honey.”560 The Vishnu Purana identifies the four streams with the paradise of Brahma at the world summit. They, too, flow in four directions.561
Iranian myth recalls four streams issuing from the central fount Ardvi Sura and radiating in the four directions. Similarly, the Kalmucks of Siberia describe a primordial sea of life and fertility, with four rivers flowing “toward the four different points of the compass.”562
The tradition is repeated by many other nations. The Mandaeans of Iraq enumerate four great rivers flowing from the north.563 Just as the Babylonians recalled “the land of the four rivers,”564 the Egyptians knew “Four Niles,” flowing to the four quarters.565 The home of the Greek goddess Calypso, in the “navel of the sea,” possessed a central fountain sending forth “four streams, flowing each in opposite directions.”566
In the Scandinavian Edda, the world’s waters originate in the four streams flowing from the spring Hvergelmir in the land of the gods,567 while Slavic tradition recalls four streams issuing from under the magic stone Alatuir in the island paradise of Bonyan.568 Brinton finds the four mystic rivers among the Sioux, Aztecs, and Maya, just as Fornander discovers them in Polynesian myth.569
The lost land of the four rivers presents a particularly enigmatic theme for conventional mythology because few, if any, of the nations possessing the memory can point to any convincing geographical source of the imagery. When the Babylonians invoke Ishtar as “Lady, Queen of the land of the Four Rivers of Erech,”570 or when an Egyptian text at Dendera celebrates the Four Niles at Elephantine, one might expect the familiar landscape to explain the usage. But wherever the mythical four rivers appear, they possess the character of an “ideal” land, in contrast to actual geography.
The reason for this disparity between the mythical and terrestrial landscapes is that the four rivers flowed, not on our earth, but through the four quarters of the polar “homeland.” To what aspect of Saturn’s kingdom might the mythical rivers refer?
For every dominant mythical theme there are corresponding signs (though this truth is still to be acknowledged by most authorities). The signs of the four rivers are the sun-cross and the enclosed sun-cross , the latter sign illuminating the former by showing that the four streams belong to the primeval enclosure. Issuing from the polar centre (i.e., the central sun), the four rivers flow to the four corners of Saturn’s Earth.
The sign of the enclosed sun-cross , observes Cirlot, “expresses the original Oneness (symbolized by the centre),” and “the four radii . . . are the same as the four rivers which well up from the fons vitae . . .”571
But if one myth identifies the arms of the sun-cross as four paradisal rivers, there are other interpretations of the cross as well, for this primal image produced a wide-ranging and coherent symbolism, as I shall now attempt to show.
The Crossroads
From Saturn, the central sun, flowed four primary paths of light. In the myths these appear as four rivers, four winds, four streams of arrows, or four children, assistants, or light-spirits bearing the Saturnian seed (the life elements) through the four quarters of the celestial kingdom.
The sun-cross and enclosed sun-cross , depicting the four life-bearing streams, thus serve as universal signs of the Holy Land.
The modern world is accustomed to think of “the four quarters” in terrestrial terms. Today we conceive north, east, west, and south only in relationship to our own position or to a fixed geographical reference point. Chicago is “west” of New York and “east” of Omaha, and to the modern mind the “four corners of the world” only serves as a vague metaphor for “the entire globe.”
To the ancients, however, “the Four Corners of the World” possessed explicit meaning; originally, the phrase referred not to geography but to cosmography, the “map” of the celestial kingdom, laid out in the polar heaven. One of the few scholars to recognize this quality of the mythical “four corners” was O’Neill: “It results from any full study of the myths, symbolism, and nomenclature of the Four Quarters that these directions were viewed in the strict orthodoxy of heavens mythology, not as the NSEW of every spot whatever, but four heavens-divisions spread out around the pole.”572
The sun-cross , as the symbol of the four quarters, belongs to the central sun. In sacred cosmography the central position of the sun-god becomes the “fifth” direction. To understand such language, it is convenient to think of the mythical “directions” (or arms of the cross) as motions or flows of energy. From the great god the elements of life flow in four directions. The god himself, who embodies all the elements, is “firm,” “steadfast, or “resting”; his fifth motion is that of rotation while standing in one place.
The directions can also be conceived as regions: the central (fifth) region and the four quarters spaced around it.
This is why the Pythagoreans regarded the number five as a representative of the fixed world axis.573 The Pythagorean idea clearly corresponds with the older Hindu symbolism of the directions. In addition to the standard four directions, Hindu doctrine knows a fifth, called the “fixed direction,” the polar centre.574
In China, too, the pole is the immovable fifth direction, the “central palace” around which the cardinal points are spaced.575 And in Mexico, Nahuatl symbolism asserts that “five is the number of the centre.”576
In the “ideal” kingdom of heaven the Universal Monarch stands at the centre, and all the elements of life—fire, water, air, and seed
—flow from the god-king in four brilliant streams. Often interpreted as four sons of the creator, the streams mark out the four quarters of the cosmic isle, or “earth.”
Let us consider first the Egyptian symbolism of the directional streams. According to the Egyptian creation texts, the great god, standing alone, brought forth as his own “speech” the primeval matter—or sea of “words”—which congealed into an enclosure. The Egyptians associate this pouring out of the seed or life elements with four luminous streams flowing from the central sun. The four emanations are the four “sons” of Atum or the Four Sons of Horus, each identified with a quarter of the heavenly kingdom.577 Importantly, the Egyptians term these paths of light the “Four Khu”: they are the “words of power”—streams of creative “speech” coursing through the four divisions of organized space.
The Pyramid Texts call these “the four blustering winds which are about you.”578 The Four Sons of Horus “send the four winds.” In one source the four winds issue from the mouth of Amen.579 In the Book of the Dead they are “the four blazing flames which are made for [or as] the Khu [words of power],”580 while the Coffin Texts invoke them as the “four gods who are powerful and strong, who bring the water.”581
The Egyptians also interpreted the four paths of light as “arrows” launched by the creator toward the four quarters. (In hieroglyphs, the arrow means “shaft of light.”) It was an ancient practice of the Egyptian king, on assuming the throne, to release an arrow, in each of the four directions,582 thus reenacting the creation, or organization of the celestial kingdom. The arrow is sat, which means “to shoot,” but also “to pour out”; for the four arrows launched by the king signified the waters of life originally “poured out” by the creator, whom the king personified. Sat also means “to sow” or “to scatter seed abroad”; which is to say, the four streams carried to the four corners the creative seed of abundance. 583 By launching the four arrows the local king proclaimed himself the Universal Monarch and sanctified his kingdom as a duplication of the primeval abode.
In Egypt the cross—as the symbol of the four directional streams—possesses two important meanings. The form , un, signifies “coming to life,” for the directional streams shone forth with the daily birth of the central sun (i.e., with the
setting of the solar orb). In the form (or ), ami, the cross means “to be in” or “to be enclosed by”—in reference to the unified space enclosed within the womb of the mother goddess .
When certain Egyptologists first encountered the symbol of the goddess Nut , they saw in it “a pictorial symbol of primitive Eden divided by the four-fold river.”584 That conclusion would gain little credence among modern Egyptologists, yet it is much closer to the truth than the bland explanations currently in fashion. The four streams of life, emanating from the creator, coursed through the womb of Nut, the Holy Land. Thus the deceased implores the goddess, “Give me the water and the wind which are in thee.”585
Another symbol of the “holy abode” is the sign 586 showing a cross of arrows superimposed upon a shield. The glyph is precisely equivalent to the symbol of Nut , for Nut, the Great Protectoress, was the cosmic shield, and the four streams of life, enclosed within the womb of Nut, were the same as the shafts or arrows of light launched toward the four corners.
The land of the four rivers was that which the creator gathered together from the sea of words, his own emanation. The hieroglyphic symbol for “to collect, gather together” and for “the unified land” is , depicting the primeval enclosure (shen) divided into quarters by a cross of two flails. That the flail sign , in the Egyptian language, is read Khu, equates the flail-cross with the four streams of life (khu, “words of power”) radiating from the central sun.
There is, in other words, a level of Egyptian symbolism that the specialists have yet to penetrate. Standard treatments of the Egyptian Holy Land say little or nothing of the directional streams, though these powers are vital to the symbolism as a whole. And one can be certain that the paths of light and life have nothing to do with an ill-defined “four quarters” of our earth, where they are conventionally located. The four winds, or four rivers, or four pathways, or four shafts of light (arrows) belonged to the lost land in heaven, and only through symbolic assimilation to this cosmic dwelling did the terrestrial habitation share in the imagery.
A comparison of Egyptian cross symbolism with that of other lands reveals numerous parallels. The oldest Mesopotamian image of divinity was the sun-cross , symbol of the creator An, the planet Saturn. An, like his counterparts around the world, “brought forth and begat the fourfold wind” within the womb of Tiamat, the cosmic sea.587
The cult worshippers of Ninurta (Saturn) also represented their god by the cross. Hence, the cuneiform ideograms for the fourfold saru, “wind,” and for mehu, “storm wind”—both of which belong to Saturn—take the form of a cross (figs. 22 and 23). The Babylonian Saturn inaugurates the day, “coming forth in splendour,” and this coming forth of Saturn means the coming forth of the four winds (as in Egypt), for the Akkadian umum denotes both “day” and “wind,” just as the Sumerian signs UD and UG, both used for “day,” occur also in the sense of “wind.”588 (The ancient Hebrew expression “until the day blows” conveys the same identity.)
- Babylonian saru, “wind.”
- Ideogram for mehu, or “storm ”
Saturn’s four winds mark out the quarters or directions of the Cosmos, Saturn’s kingdom. Cosmological texts speak of the “furious wind . . . commanding the directions”:589 the Sumerian im and Akkadian saru, “wind,” also signify “region (or quarter) of heaven.”590
As in Egypt, the Mesopotamian four winds coincide with the four rivers of life. Instead of the simple sign , some images show four streams of water radiating from the central sun (fig. 24)591 The best-known Mesopotamian figure of these streams is the famous “sun wheel” of Shamash (a god also identified as Saturn). Portrayed are four rays of light and four rivers flowing from the central god to the border of the wheel (fig. 15).
- (a) Mycenaean four rivers symbol; (b) Four rivers symbol, Troy; (c) Babylonian image presenting the arms of the sun-cross as four
Hrozny tentatively suggests that Shamash’s cross was a sign for “settlement.”592 With this suggestion one is compelled to agree, for the first settlements, organized for a ritual purpose, imitated the heavenly abode. Each sacred territory became “the land of the four rivers” and each ruler “the king of the four quarters.”
Geographical limitations did not prevent the Assyro-Babylonian priests from assimilating the map of their land to the quartered circle of the primeval kingdom. Thus a text reproduced by Virolleaud locates the land of Akkad, Elam, Subartu, and Amurru within the fourfold enclosure of the sun .593 “Every land,” states Jeremias, “has its ‘paradise,’ which corresponds with the cosmic paradise.”594
The land of the sun-cross lay within the primeval circle, and this fact will explain why the Babylonian sign of the four kibrati or “world quarters” (i.e., ) also denoted “the interior” or “the enclosed space.”595 The terminology
offers a fascinating parallel to the Egyptian ami ( four rivers is to occupy the Saturnian enclosure.596
), “to be in,” “to be enclosed by.” To dwell in the land of the
The same overlapping interpretations of the four streams occur in Hindu symbolism. Here the cross and the circle, according to one observer, represent “the traditional abode of their primeval ancestors . . . And let us ask what better picture or more significant characters in the complicated alphabet of symbolism could have been selected for the purpose than a circle and a cross—the one to denote a region of absolute purity and perpetual felicity, the other those four perennial streams that divided and watered the several quarters of it.”597
The Hindu Holy Land lies within the world wheel, turned by the stationary sun at the centre. The spokes of the wheel, delimiting the four quarters, “have their foundation in the single centre which is Surya [the sun],” notes Agrawala.598
In the ritual of the Satapatha Brahmana the spokes of the wheel become “arrows” launched in the four directions and carrying the life elements to the four corners. The arrows sent in one direction “are fire,” those in another “are the waters,” those in another “are wind,” and those in another “are the herbs.”599 The Paippalada or Kashmirian Artharva Veda terms the latter flow of arrows “food.” The idea seems to be that of abundance or “plenty” radiating from the heart of the Cosmos (and thus answering to the four Egyptian arrows [sat] transmitting the seed of abundance to the outermost limits of the kingdom). The Hindus symbolized these shafts of light by setting afire the spokes of the sacred wheel.600
18. Hindu cross.
A pictorial image of the four streams occurs on ancient Hindu coins depicting the arms of the sun-cross as arrows directed toward the four corners (fig. 25).
Every ancient Indian settlement reflected the primeval map of the Cosmos, its unified domain lying within the sacred circle and its four primary streets answering to the celestial crossroads. The settlement’s organization reenacted the creation. As noted by W. Muller, the Hindu sacred city “duplicates the Cosmos in wood, brick and stone: its axes [north-south; east-west] demarcate the four quarters of the universe.”601
Muller finds the same concept of the quartered kingdom in Ceylon, Burma, Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam. Each sacred habitation appears as “the celestial city of the king” and each ruler as the wheel-king. “State and nation represent a quartered universe [Cosmos],” writes Muller. Every image of the sacred “settlement” reflects the image of the “world”—the circle and cross.602
In China, the emperor stands symbolically at the pole, while ranged around him are the powers of the cardinal points.603 The cosmic centre is ch’ien, from which, to use Jung’s phraseology, “the four emanations go forth, like the heavenly forces extending through space.”604 At the ch’ien, the centre, the four she or world quarters converge.605
The ideal celestial organization finds expression in the ancient Chinese hieroglyph . The sign, according to C. Hentze, denotes the contree suburbaine or settlement around a centre.606 Is this not once more the primeval “place” sustained by the outward flow of “life” (or “arrows”) from the central god?
L’Orange, in his studies of cosmic symbolism in the Near East, notes that the great residential cities of Ekbatana, Darabjird, and Firuzabad were patterned after the wheel of the Cosmos, with the king appearing at the intersection of the crossroads. “Wall and fosse are traced mathematically with the compass, as an image of the heavens, a projection of the upper hemisphere on earth. The two axis streets, one running north-south and the other east-west, divide the city into four quadrants which reflect the four quarters of the world. At the very point of intersection, in the very axis of the world wheel, the palace is situated, here sits the king, ‘The Axis and Pole of the World,’ ‘The King of the four Quadrants of the World’ . . .”607
To this city of the wheel also corresponds the imagery of Jerusalem and Palestine. The terrestrial city and Holy Land, in more than one medieval map, appear in the ideal form of a quartered circle , for such was the image of the Eden paradise, with its four directional streams. And this is why Solomon and Hezekiah, in constructing works for the distribution of Jerusalem’s waters, sought to imitate the four rivers of paradise—even to the point of naming one stream Gihon (a river of Eden) and declaring that from beneath the temple these streams flowed out over the whole world.608
The ancient Etruscans, followed by the Romans, looked to the same image of the fourfold Cosmos in laying out the plan of the sacred city. The surveyors, according to W. Muller, sought to map out the “terrestrial image of a celestial prototype,” and their division of the land into four regions—the Roma quadrata—“reflects a powerful cosmological model: the quartered earth of the Roman world image.”609
It is surely significant that all of the key features of the sun-cross and the enclosed sun-cross reviewed above occur also in the Americas. Often the parallels are stunning. The Omaha Indians, for example, invoke the “Aged One”:
. . . seated with assured permanency and endurance,
In the centre where converged the paths, There, exposed to the violence of the four winds, you sat,
Possessed with power to receive supplications, Aged One . . .610
To reside at the intersection of the celestial crossroads is to “sit” (rest) at the cosmic centre, the abode of “permanency” and “endurance.” This “centre” is also the place where the “four winds” meet, for the four winds and heavenly pathways are synonymous.
Burland relates that the symbol of the Mexican god Xiuhtechuhtli—the “Old, Old One,” the lord of the central fire at the pole—was “a white cross of the Four Directions in the black background of the night.”611
The Inca Yupanqui, writes Nuttall, “raised a temple in Cuzco to the Creator who, superior to the sun [solar orb], could rest and light the world from one spot.” This central sun was represented by a cross.612
Indeed, the sun-cross is a symbol of the primeval god throughout the Americas—from the Inca of Peru to the Eskimos of Alaska. Wherever the New World symbolism can be examined in sufficient detail, one finds that the cross possessed the same significance as in the Old World.
The best authorities tell us the native American sun-cross depicts the “four winds”—conceived as visible, even violent flows of life and energy from a central or stationary god. (That is, the winds are just the opposite of the incongruous abstractions to which they have been reduced by so many mythologists.) The four winds are the “breath” of the sun-god (as in ancient Egypt), bearing the seed of life from the centre to the four corners. Thus the Mayan Ik means at once “wind,” “breath,” and “life.” Like the Egyptian streams of sat it is “the causer of germination.”613
In Mexico, Quetzalcoatl, god of the Four Motions,” was represented by the sun-cross, and this symbol explains his title, “Lord of the four winds.” According to Nuttall, the cross “had a deeper meaning than has been realized, for it represents life-giving breath carrying with it the seeds of the four vital elements, emanating from the central lord of life, [and] spreading to the four quarters . . .”614
Also noted by Nuttall is the use of the cross in Copan, where it “is associated with a figure in repose, occupying the
Middle, and four puffs of breath or air, laden with life-seeds, emanating from this.”615
Just as the Egyptians personified the four emanations as four “sons” of the central god, so did the Mexicans. From the supreme god Ometeotl issued the four Tezcatlipocas, “the primordial forces which were to generate the history of the world.” The four sons corresponded to the four quarters of the world.616
19. Variations of the enclosed sun-cross in the Mississippi Valley.
- Arapaho sign of the four
The same powers—central god and four emissions—were represented by the five Tlalocs, who, like the Mayan Bacabs and Chacs, “were set at four cardinal points and at the centre of the heavens.”617 From his dwelling at the world summit Tlaloc sent forth the waters of the four quarters, often symbolized (as in Egypt and India) by four vases. The gods who transmitted the waters to the four corners were the same as the gods of the four winds.618
But there is an even more striking parallel with Old World symbolism: the four streams of light and life were interpreted as arrows coursing in the four directions. In the Nahuatl language the word tonamitl means at once a “ray or shaft of light” and “the shining arrow.” According to the chronicler Ixtlilxochitl, it was a native custom, on consecrating a new territory 619, “to shoot with utmost force four arrows in the direction of the four regions of the world .” Thus did the priests sanctify the land as a renewal of the primeval kingdom, in exact accord with the ancient Egyptian practice!
Consistent with the global iconography of the central sun, the American Indians revered the sun-cross and enclosed sun-cross as emblems of the unified domain, the Holy Land. Among the Mexicans “the cross and the circle” are a “native symbol for ‘an integral state,’“ writes Nuttall. Illustrating this symbolism is the famous Mexican Calendar Wheel, displaying four principal and four secondary rays (or “arrows”), signifying the four quarters and their four subdivisions. This wheel of Time, states Nuttall,620 portrays the ideal habitation, and the prototype lay in heaven, not on earth. The wheel is “as clearly an image of the nocturnal heaven as it is of a vast territorial state which once existed in the valley of Mexico, and had been established as a reproduction upon earth of the harmonious order and fixed laws which apparently governed the heavens.”621
From the center of the ancient Inca city of Cuzco, four roads radiated in the four directions. At the intersection of the crossroads rested a golden vase from which a fountain flowed. Thus did the four roads imitate the four paths or streams transporting the waters of life to the four quarters.
The Mayan Book of Chilam Balam offers the following map of northern Yucatan:622
Roys reports that this map—adapting actual geography to the primordial ideal—“is fairly typical in Maya documents.”623 Here again is the Roma quadrata, the celestial Jerusalem, or Egyptian Neter ta, the Holy Land.
The Delaware sacred text called the Walum Olum records the primeval dwelling of the Great Spirit by the image . This was the nation’s ancestral homeland, they say.624
A group of anthropologists, on examining the Walum Olum, reported that the four points on the circle “indicate the four quarters of the earth.” By “earth” they obviously meant the terrestrial landscape. But if the quartered circle refers to our earth, 625 then the dot inside certainly is not the sun, in spite of the steadfast opinion of solar mythologists.
21. Cosmological map of northern Yucatan.
In this case, the experts possessed the answer without recognizing it. The text itself identifies the sign with “the place where the Great Spirit stayed.” To this statement the commentators add: “Concentric circles or a circle with a dot in the centre means divine or hallowed.”626 Combining the two statements one obtains a clear-cut definition of the sign as “the divine or hallowed place where the Great Spirit stayed.” Denoted is the quartered, primeval land, of which the terrestrial Holy Land was but a symbol.
As a final example, I note that the sun-cross and the life-giving streams are recalled even in Hawaiian myth. Here the creator Teave is the “Father-Mother” from whom “life coursed to the four directions of the world.”627 From the cosmic centre and zenith, Teave organized the celestial “kingdom” with his “flaming cross of shining white light,” “the first and foremost Cross of God.”628 The “Primordial Lord of the Sun” (Teave) transmitted the life elements to the four corners through the agency of four assistant gods “ . . . The blood of life pulsated from the infinite and coursed to the north, east, south, west, via the Four Sacred Hearts of God, the deities Tane, Tanaoroa, Tu, Rono.”629
The widespread traditions of the primordial kingdom and the four life-streams reflect a consistent memory. On every continent one finds a compulsion to organize the native land after a cosmic original, defined by the
enclosed sun-cross . The focus is the primeval ground occupied by the great father—whose home is the “earth” brought forth in the creation legend. By superimposing the map of Saturn’s Earth onto the local landscape, the ancients consecrated their native territory as a likeness, or a renewal, of the celestial abode.
The Four-eyed or Four-faced God
In the ancient Egyptian Heb-Sed festival, the king ascends to the throne of Osiris, where he is deified as the great god’s successor. To certify his authority as Universal Monarch, he launches four arrows toward the four corners, then assumes his throne, turning to the four cardinal points in succession.630
By facing the four directions the king repeats the feat of the great god; for the Universal Monarch, occupying the steadfast centre (or fifth region), ceaselessly turned round about, sending his rays of life through the four divisions of unified space.
The classical historian Diodorus tells us that when the name Osiris is translated into Greek it means “many- eyed”—“and properly so; for in shedding his rays in every direction he surveys with many eyes, as it were, all land and sea.” To Osiris, Herodotus compares the Greek Dionysus—a god who, in the Bacchic Hymn, shines “like a star, with a fiery eye in every ray.”631
By facing the four directions and by sending forth the four directional streams, the Universal Monarch becomes the god of four faces or four eyes. “Homage to thee, O thou who hast four faces,” reads a line of the Pyramid Texts.632 Osiris, as the Ram of Mendes, is the god of “four faces on one neck.”633
The Hindu Atharva Veda speaks of the “four heavenly directions, having the wind as lord, upon which the sun looks out.” 634 This, of course, can only be the central sun, who is Brahma, a god of four faces. The myths also attribute four faces to Shiva.635 The central sun Prajapati takes the form of the four-eyed, four-faced, and four-armed Vivvakarman, the “all maker.” 636 Agni, too, faces “in all directions,”637 as does Krishna.638
Chinese myths recall a four-eyed sage named Ts’ang Chieh, a legendary inventor of writing (i.e., the Universal Monarch).639 The old Greek god Argos, in the Aigimios of Hesiod, looks “this way and that with four eyes.”640 Macrobius tells us the great god Janus was sometimes represented with four faces, in allusion to the four quarters of the Cosmos.641
Among the Tarahumara in North America, the cross represented the god Hikuli, “the four-faced god who sees all things.”642 The “Central Lord” of Mexican ritual, represented by the cross, is “He who looks in four directions.”643
There can no longer be any doubt that the four-eyed or four-faced god is Saturn, for the sun-planet appears in Babylonian myth as Ea (Sumerian Enki)—a god of four eyes that “behold all things.”644 The Phoenician El—Saturn— has four eyes, as does the Orphic Kronos (Saturn). The Chinese Yellow Emperor Huang-ti—identified as Saturn—is also four-eyed.645 The four-eyes, or four faces, become intelligible only in connection with the five regions—the polar centre and the four divisions ranged around it.
The Foundation Stone
Residing at the immovable centre of the Cosmos, Saturn was the stone or rock of foundation, the prototype of the cornerstone (situated where the four corners meet ). The four beams of light which radiated from the Saturnian
stone appeared to sustain the world wheel at its “four corners” , so that, in many myths, the life-bearing streams are synonymous with the “four pillars of the world.”
In the mystic traditions reviewed by Manly P. Hall (Masonic, Hermetic, Qabalistic, Rosicrucian, etc.), the planet Saturn looms as the elementary power of creation. The planet-god “was always worshipped under the symbol of the base or footing, inasmuch as he was considered to be the substructure upholding creation,” states Hall.646
The writer is, of course, thinking in metaphysical terms, and when he speaks of “creation” he doubtless means something much different from the “creation” discussed in the foregoing sections. Yet his summary, when stripped of metaphysics and solar terminology, accurately conveys an age-old idea: “The solar system [read: Cosmos] was organized by forces operating inward from the great ring of the Saturnian sphere; and since the beginning of all things was under the control of Saturn, the most reasonable inference is that the first forms of worship were dedicated to him in his peculiar symbol—the stone. Thus the intrinsic
nature of Saturn is synonymous with that spiritual rock which is the enduring foundation of the Solar temple [read: dwelling of the central sun].”647
In the earlier symbolism of the Foundation Stone, there is no hint of solar associations, and the stone is not a
“spiritual [invisible] rock,” but the shining center around which the created earth, or Cosmos, congealed.
The Egyptians knew the Foundation Stone as the Benben. Frankfort writes that the “first piece of solid matter actually created by Atum in the primeval ocean . . .648 was a stone, the Benben; and it had originated from a drop of the seed of Atum which fell into the primeval ocean.” More precisely, one should say that Atum was the seed and the seed was the Benben stone—the first thing to stabilize at the cosmic centre. “Thou [Atum] didst shine forth as Benben,” recalls a Pyramid Text, in connection with the first phases of creation.649
Atum, or Re, is the “Great Seed,” and this aspect of the god is conveyed by the term ben (from which the word Benben was produced): ben signifies “to beget.” But the same word means “to go round”: the Benben is the steadfast seed-stone, which, turning round about, moved the wheel of the Cosmos.
From Atum, the Benben, flowed the four streams of life, demarcating the four quarters or corners of the cosmic dwelling. It is thus vital that ben signifies “corner,” while the hieroglyphic sign for “corner” is .650 Since the stone of foundation lay at the center, the “corner” of the ben cannot have originally meant the corner of a square or rectangular edifice— even if later generations came to conceive it as such. Denoted is one of the four “quarters” converging on the central stone . This meaning is suggested by another sign , apt, signifying “division of the holy abode.” The sacred edifice is divided into four quarters or corners defined by the angles of the ben . Also relevant here are the sign ses , “to divide,” and the common sign of “the holy abode” , nut. The “four corners” meet at the Benben (Atum), the Foundation Stone.
“Go to the streamings of the Nile [that is, the heavenly waters] and there you will find a stone that has a spirit,” stated an old alchemical source.651 Clearly, the tradition refers to the Foundation Stone, the central source of the four streams radiating life to the inhabitants of the celestial kingdom.
This quality of the central sun persists in Hebrew and Muslim imagery of Adam, the Heaven Man. The Nassenes esteemed Adam as the “rock” and “cornerstone.”652 Writes Jung: “The stone is indeed of supreme importance, because it fulfills the function of Adam Kadmon as the ‘capital stone,’ from which all the upper and lower hosts in the work of creation are brought into being.”653
The theosophic Zohar declares, “The world did not come into being until God took a certain stone, which is called the foundation stone, and cast it into the abyss so that it held fast there, and from it the world was planted. This is the central point of the universe, and on this point stands the Holy of Holies.”654
Patai summarized the tradition: “In the middle of the Temple and constituting the floor of the Holy of Holies, was a huge native rock which was adorned by Jewish legends with all the peculiar features of an Omphalos, A Navel of the Earth. This rock, called in Hebrew Ebhen Shetiyyah, the Stone of Foundation, was the first solid [i.e., stable, stationary] thing created, and was placed by God amidst the as yet boundless fluid of the primeval waters. Legend has it that just as the body of an embryo is built up in its mother’s womb from the navel, so God built up the earth concentrically around this Stone.”655
Is this not the same account as that recorded by the Egyptians, who say that Atum, the masculine Foundation Stone, came to rest at the cosmic centre, and that the created “land” or “earth”—the womb of the mother goddess— congealed around the central god?
Hebrew and Muslim traditions locate the Foundation Stone in the paradise of Eden. The Arabic term for the stone is es-Sakra”—the Rock.” Thus the Mosque of Omar—known as Kubbat es-Sakra, “Dome of the Rock”—bears on its western facade the inscription: “The Rock of the Temple—from the Garden of Eden.”656 The legends relate that the Foundation Stone conceals beneath it all the world’s waters and winds: “All sweet water comes from under the Holy Rock,” notes Wensinck; “thereafter it spreads over the earth.” A Muslim text states that “all rivers and clouds and vapours and winds come from under the Holy Rock in Jerusalem.”657 This can only mean that the four rivers of Eden, which water “the whole earth,” have their origin in, or under, the Foundation Stone.
Though the stone belongs to the centre, it is, like the Egyptian Benben, a cornerstone, for one reads in Isaiah, “Therefore thus saith the Lord God, Behold I lay in Zion [i.e., Jerusalem] for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation.”658 The center is the intersection of the four corners .
That the Foundation Stone stood at the source of the four directional paths is the consistent theme in all of the ancient architectural plans reviewed by W. Muller—from Europe to Southeast Asia. When the Roman augur marked out the four directions of the sacred city he sat upon a stone—which denoted the center, the intersection of the north-south and east-west axes.659 (One naturally thinks also of the lapis niger or black stone of the Roman Forum, signifying the centre of the world.)
The map of ancient Ireland shows four provinces—Connaught, Ulster, Leinster, and Munster—surrounding the central province of Mide (“the Middle”), where was situated the Aill na-Mircann, the “Stone of the Divisions.”660 This basic pattern occurs also in the original plan of Nimwegen in the Netherlands: at the intersection of the “four streets of the world” stood a great blue stone.661 A similar stone stood at the symbolic centre of Leiden, from which four main streets radiated in four directions.662
At the center of the sacred Hindu dwelling, where the directional paths meet, stood the Foundation Stone, considered as the fixed point from which creation began.663 In Thailand the Foundation Stone of the royal palace, lying at the intersection of the crossroads, was the “corner-stone of the land.”664
Nor can one ignore the identity of the Foundation Stone and the planet Saturn. Arabic thought often identifies the Foundation Stone of Eden/Jerusalem with the sacred stone of the Ka’ba in Mecca.665 (Tradition says that Adam himself sat upon the Ka’ba stone, and that “forty years before Allah created the heavens and earth the Ka’ba was a dry spot floating on the water and from it the world has been spread out.” 666 It is reported that in the pre-Islamic period the statue of a god Hubal stood inside the Ka’ba above the opening of a well. The well symbolized the central source of the world’s waters, and Hubal was the planet Saturn.
In the tradition reconstructed by Hildegard Lewy, the statue of Hubal filled the same purpose as the stone. When the stone was removed “a statue of the planet Saturn [Hubal] had served in its place as the visible symbol of the planetary god to whom the Ka’ba was dedicated”.667
But the Meccan stone, as affirmed by numerous accounts, symbolized the very rock which the Hebrews called Ebhen Shetiyyah—the Foundation Stone.668 The Mohammedans, writes Lewy, “were fully aware of the functions of the sacred stone of Mecca and Jerusalem. The sacred stone of Jerusalem represented the same god [Saturn] as the Black Stone of Mecca”.669
The Foundation Stone is thus an indispensable ingredient in the symbolism of the four life-bearing streams. The stone denotes Saturn in his character as the steadfast support of the turning Cosmos and the source of the radiating life elements.
The Four Pillars of Heaven
There is an aspect of the four streams which seems to defy nature and reason: they are called “pillars.”
The Egyptian Four Sons of Horus appear as four supports holding aloft the womb of heaven (Nut). But the standard analysis of the four pillar-gods, by dispersing them to an indefinable “four corners” of our earth, deprives them of their concrete aspect as life-streams flowing from the central sun. When the great god identifies the Four Sons of Horus as the spirits who “have sprung from my body and who shall be with me in the form of everlasting judges . . . ,” it is clear that the four powers occupy a particular place.670 Thus the Pyramid Texts locate Atum-Re at “the place of the four pillars,”671 and this “place” is doubtless the womb of Nut, the Holy Abode . The four streams are conceived as four pillars radiating from the immovable Foundation Stone to sustain Saturn’s Cosmos at four cardinal points.
The Hindu Satapatha Brahmana, in setting forth the ritual of the world wheel, extols the great god Vishnu with the words: “O Vishnu, with beams of light thou didst hold fast the earth on all sides.”672 The four primary rays of the Hindu central sun constitute the pillars of the celestial dwelling . (The connection is implicit in the English word beam, which means both a ray of light and a fixed support.)
So also do the four winds serve as pillars. The Ethiopic Book of Enoch reads: “I saw the treasures of all the winds: I saw how He had furnished with them the whole creation and the firm foundations of the earth.673 And I saw the corner stone of the
earth: I saw the four winds . . . : these are the pillars of the earth.” In architectural representations of Eden’s four rivers, they too appear as pillars.674 The Mayan Bacabs, who personify the four directional streams, are the four props of heaven. Similarly, in Hawaiian myth, the life elements radiate to the four corners of heaven by means of the four spirits, Tane, Rono, Tanaoroa and Tucalled “the Four Male Pillars of Creation.”675
On our earth no one has ever seen a beam of light, a wind, or a river serving as a pillar, yet this is the extraordinary function of the four paths of light and life flowing from the creator. As spokes of the world wheel , the streams appeared to “pillar apart” and to steady the revolving enclosure.
Symmetrical Elaborations of the Sun-Cross
In the course of many centuries the sun-cross often acquired complex and symmetrical associations, as schools of myth and theology combined various interpretations of the four streams in formal systems. These evolved systems often identify each quarter of sacred space with an element, colour, season, or representative animal.
An early example of this tendency is the assignment of a different substance to each of the four paradisal rivers. While Marco Polo journeyed to the court of Kublai Khan he was told the legend of an old ruler called the Sheikh of the Mountain. The sheikh was distinguished for his possession of the world’s most beautiful garden, containing the best fruits of the earth. Through the garden passed four conduits, one flowing with wine, one with milk, one with honey, and one with water. The sheikh proclaimed his garden to be paradise.676
Hindu literature describes the four rivers of paradise as flowing respectively with milk, butter, honey, and wine.677 Similarly, Strabo relates the report of Calamus that the first race of men enjoyed a blissful land in which “corn of all sorts abounded as plentifully as dust does at present; and the fountains poured forth streams, some of water, some of milk, some of honey, some of wine, and some of oil.”678
In a corresponding manner each river receives a different color. The four rivers of the Chinese polar paradise Kwen-lun possess a remarkable feature: one is blue, another white, another red, and another black.679 Each of the Hindu four rivers has its special colour.680 The Kalmucks of Siberia describe a primordial sea from which four rivers flowed “toward the different points of the compass,” each issuing from the mouth of a different animal and identified with different colours: “The eastern river contains silver sand, the southern blue jewel sand, the western red jewel sand and the northern gold sand.”681
In developing the symbolism of the terrestrial kingdom, the ancients borrowed from the imagery of the celestial, assigning a different colour, element, or season to each geographical “cardinal point.” Of course the celestial prototype, the sun-cross , does not itself suggest which terrestrial direction should be associated with “fire” and which with “air,” or whether one special direction should be linked with “blue” and another with “red.” Thus there seems to be no single pattern of the symbolism from one land to another.
But the tendency toward such formalization was universal. Both the Mexicans and the Zuni identified the four directions with respective colours and “elements” (air, water, fire, earth), though the specific relationship differed, as indicated below:682
The Maya, on the other hand, connected the east with red, the north with white, the west with black, and the south with yellow. Throughout North America, according to Alexander, the directional gods were associated with respective colours, though there “is no uniformity in the distribution of the colours to the several regions.”683
Buddhist symbolism shows four rays radiating from the heads of Makasukha to the four corners, each ray associated with a colour,684 while the Chinese developed the following associations of the directions:
Taken alone, these varied connections tell us little, for such developments are largely a matter of local innovation. What is important for our analysis is the unanimity with which the ancients conceived their land as four quarters around a centre, identifying the quarters with the primal life elements which all traditions describe flowing from the central sun in radiant streams.
Moreover, there is one aspect of the elaborated symbolism of the four quarters which deserves closer attention
—namely, the connection of the planet Saturn with the centre around which the four “elements” or colors or seasons are ranged. In the specific associations of the Chinese directions indicated above one recognizes no correspondence with a “general tradition.” For example, the Chinese identification of the center with the element “earth” or with the color yellow fails to coincide with any world- wide pattern. Surely it is significant, however, that in China the center, the element “earth,” and the colour yellow all belong uniquely to the planet Saturn—a startling fact which agrees with the equally startling placement of Saturn at the pole, the cosmic centre in Chinese thought.685 Saturn is Huang-ti, the Yellow Emperor, his residence the Central Palace from which the four directions radiate.
This character of Saturn prevails in the Chinese symbolism of the five visible planets. Saturn is placed at the centre, while Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter are spaced at the “four corners” around Saturn. Nothing in the present orbits of the planets would suggest Saturn’s location at the centre of this system. In fact, as the outermost visible planet, Saturn would seem the least worthy of such distinction.
But originally, Saturn was the polar sun, the central source of the directional streams, and it was only to be expected that the other four planets, like the four seasons, four colours, or four elements, came to symbolize the powers of the four quarters, their symbolic location possibly being decided by the element with which each planet was identified. As to the “center,” Saturn could be the only choice. The order was:
This cosmological system receives extensive treatment by Leopold de Saussure.686 To the Chinese, he reports, Saturn corresponded to the sacred centre, around which the cardinal points ranged; symbolism of the terrestrial centre mirrored the symbolism of the celestial pole. The other four planets were equated with the four seasons, elements, and colours, the entire system having its origin in the concept of the four divisions of heaven, to which the polar centre, Saturn’s domain, was added as the “fifth.”
What is even more extraordinary, the location of Saturn at the polar centre—with the four quarters dispersed around him—was not unique to China. De Saussure finds the same system in Iran. Iranian cosmology connects the five planets with five regions of space, the centre being fixed at the celestial pole. Placed at the pole was Kevan, the planet Saturn, precisely duplicating the station of the Chinese Saturn. Here is the system:
The reader will note that the directional connections of the four peripheral planets do not correspond to the connections in the Chinese system. What is vital is Saturn’s central station as the source of the four emanations. “The planet that the Chinese consider as the symbol of the emperor [i.e., Saturn] is associated, in Iran, with the Great One in the Middle of Heaven, which is to say, with the celestial pole; it bears the name . . . of Kevan and it is precisely identified by the translators with Saturn.”687
After reviewing the stunning concordance of the Chinese and Iranian symbolism, de Saussure concluded that the Iranian system must have been borrowed from the Chinese. Later, however, following correspondence with the Iranian scholar Junker, de Saussure changed his opinion; for Junker pointed out that the same idea—the polar centre surrounded by four heavens-divisions—prevailed in the older Babylonian and Hindu systems. Therefore, concluded de Saussure, “the division of the universe into a central region and four peripheral divisions [and] the assimilation of the terrestrial sovereign to the celestial pole . . . occurs not only in Chinese cosmology—which is particularly rational, symmetrical and well preserved—but also in Babylonian, Vedic [Hindu] and Iranian cosmologies.”688
Most surprising of all, however, was the discovery by de Saussure and Junker that when the principles of the five regions are applied to the oldest enumeration of the sun, moon, and planets in Babylonia, Saturn acquires the central (polar) station.689 “In the most ancient Babylonian series [of planets] based on the number five,” states de Saussure, “the planet Saturn is placed, as in China, in the middle.”690 The polar Saturn, presiding over the central region and surrounded by the powers of the four quarters, thus occurs in the earliest formal astronomy.
To summarize: The imagery of the quartered kingdom centers on the sign of the sun-cross , depicting Saturn sending the seed of life in the four directions. Ancient mythmakers interpreted the radiating streams as four beams of light, four winds, four rivers, four paths of arrows, or four pillars of the Cosmos .
But the heaven-dividing streams eventually passed into an expanded symbolism, relating each direction to an element, season, colour, or planet. In such elaborate and symmetrical renderings of the quartered kingdom, one recognizes the arbitrary influence of innovation. But the root idea remains consistent from one land to another, and when such symbolism is subject to scrutiny, Saturn looms at the cosmic centre—the “fifth region,” the immovable pole around which the directional elements, seasons, planets, etc. are ranged.