Hi all,
I just wanted to run a couple of ideas by you, about the constellation Libra, the equinox, and weighing the souls of the dead.
Libra, one of the zodiac constellations, is a pair of weighing scales. Why is there such a contraption in the sky? What is being weighed?
In Ancient Greece and in Arabic astronomy the constellation Libra was simply an extension of Scorpio: the claws of the scorpion. In Babylonian astronomy, Libra seems to have been both known as the claws of the scorpion, and as MUL Zibanu (the "scales" or "balance").
It seems that Libra resembles a pair of weighing scales because for a period the sun entered this part of the sky at the time of the autumn equinox, when the days and nights are equal.
Between about 2,400 and 1,100 BCE the sun did rise in Libra on the equinox, the day in autumn when daylight has decreased to such an extent since the summer that day and night are roughly equal. You can see below in 2,500 BCE the sun is just about to enter Libra, and in the following screen shot it is about to exit Libra in about 1,100 BCE. Babylon was a major power from about 1,800 to 1,600 BCE. Perhaps the constellation Libra marks this celestial event, but it is much older than the period when Babylon was a great city.
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The constellation chart from the temple at Denderah shows Libra quite clearly, though it may only be dated to around the year 50 BCE, so is quite recent in terms of Egyptian history. José Lull and Juan Antonio Belmonte have written that what we today refer to as the zodiac constellations, and which are quite easily recognisable on the Denderah zodiac, may have been inherited from Greece or Mesopotamia, not from a long Egyptian tradition.
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Was this part of the sky, Libra, marked to show not only where the sun rose at the equinox, marking an even balance between night and day, and a transition point in the year, but something else too? When did they become about weighing souls, as they are in Medieval Christian art? Long before then, was the same part of the sky associated with the scales Anubis uses to weigh souls?
Most religions understand life as the period of the soul's trial and testing. Such a trial implies that the soul continues to exist beyond an earthly life, and perhaps, goes on to dwell within another earthly life after that, and so on. Upon the death of a person, their soul is said to travel, and this journey is the subject of many fascinating beliefs.
In Book X of Plato's Republic, in the Myth or Er, the journey described by Er is a fascinating account of places and people beyond the world of the living, where the souls of humans and animals choose their future lives. Justice is given to those who have acted wrongly, and this seems to tie in with the actual mechanical workings of the celestial bodies. Justice, truth and order are intrinsic to the "Spindle of Necessity" which governs the heavenly cycles. This idea was very influential in the development of later religious beliefs, and may be very old indeed. Moral order and balance seem to be equated with physical, celestial order and balance, which in the Myth of Er is guaranteed by a whorl or weight which controls the revolutions of the axis.
Plato, as well as some early Christians like Plotinus, believed souls were made up of the same stuff as the Cosmos, and also believed in reincarnation. For Plato, all souls have wings and can climb upwards, but only the souls of the gods can actually stay up there. The others gradually fall back down to earth again, eventually hitting on a body, and becoming partly mortal. Some human souls can become immortal too, the most godlike ones, the philosophers, and can escape the cycle of rebirth.
Most religions in fact have either reincarnation or an after life as a central part of their beliefs. Either way, it is an almost universal idea that the souls of those who die travel to a spirit world, or to Heaven, or to the Cosmos, and the way that person's life was lived will have a bearing on this journey and the soul's destination. It's worth noting that this belief in a part of the soul living on after the death of the body and travelling to another realm is not dependent on the idea of a god or gods. However, there is usually a gatekeeper, or a guide, or some figure to sort and judge, perhaps weigh these souls. In traditions where the soul is not believed to continue on to a new mortal body, the soul has to dwell permanently in heaven or hell, or somewhere in between, and is not given much of a chance to redeem itself after death. For Plotinus, evil was simply a lack of goodness, like the holes in a swiss cheese, it certainly didn't define a person or their soul. The soul could gradually over the course of many lifetimes build up more and more good qualities and eventually break free from the cycle of reincarnation. Obviously, as with his ideas on reincarnation, they didn't last long in Christian tradition, which came to teach that the soul only inhabits a body once and is judged completely on its performance during that time, with a tiny window of opportunity before death to repent. Hell, or the possibility of it, becomes the currency of a controlling deity and ruling class in the earthly world. Christians for a long time were very fond of threatening people of burning in hell for all eternity, a theme that seems to have lost popularity in recent times.
Psychostasia is the concept by which a person's life is judged by the weighing of their soul. Though it was a particularly important part of medieval Christian belief, it dates back to a much earlier time. The Ancient Egyptians held a belief that people's hearts would be weighed after death in the underworld, the Duat. In medieval Christian art, most often you see two people in the scales, the good person to the viewer's left, the bad person tipping the scales to the viewer's right. In Egyptian art, the heart is weighed not against another person's soul but against a feather, representing truth, justice and order, Maat. The unlucky heavy hearts would be eaten by the goddess Ammit, a monstrous cross between a lion, a crocodile and a hippopotamus.
The lucky souls that passed the weighing test would reach heaven or, in the case of Egypt, pass through the golden or silver gate in the sky, where the Milky Way crosses the Ecliptic, at the foot of Ophiuchus and in Orion, just above the head. This is very near Perseus in fact, a constellation associated with the Roman god Mithras (a god which is also, according to Santillana and von Dechend in Hamlet's Mill, associated with the earth's or the galaxy's axis or the Tree of life itself). Ophiuchus can represent the Archangel Michael and also the tree of life, as well as many other major deities, and is situated right next to Libra. It is clear that the Archangel Michael is associated with Ophiuchus from early and Medieval Christian art, which very often places a dragon or the devil at his feet (Scorpio), and directs a spear to the dragon or devil's mouth (Antares), and who is seen to hold weighing scales in his left hand (Libra).
Orion is in Egyptian tradition Osiris, god of the dead, and is close to the other point in the sky where the ecliptic and Milky Way meet, the other gate. These two parts of the sky are connected with the souls' journeys after death.
Why is Libra so close to the part of the sky where the ecliptic meets the Milky Way, the so-called Golden Gate, as well as the centre of the Milky Way, also at Ophiuchus's foot? Some suggest that souls went up through the Golden Gate and came back down to earth through the Silver Gate, others that the Golden Gate was for the gods and the Silver Gate for the rest. (By coincidence, the Pope's emblem is a pair of keys, one golden, one silver.)
Is there any evidence anywhere of an earlier association with weighing scales with this section of the sky, roughly Libra / Ophiuchus, earlier than between about 2,400 and 1,100 BCE? There is evidence that some Michael sites are connected to megalithic sites, such as Skellig Michael, Saint Michael's Mount and the Mont Saint-Michel to Stonehenge.
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There's also a creator deity called Abathar Muzania, from a religion called mandeism, which thrived in the early centuries of the Christian era and which revered John the Baptist. Abathar Muzania would also weigh the souls of the dead with scales. Curiously, this demiurge with weighing scales wasn't associated with Libra, but with the pole star, Polaris, and in fact, was called the angel of the North Star. This might suggest a connection with the Greek Spindle of Necessity which governs all heavenly cycles, and which Plato mentions in his Myth of Er: the spindle could be linked to the Tree of Life metaphors from so many myths and images, and which seem to represent either the Earth's axis, or the Milky Way, or all heavenly cycles, and may be connected to Canopus, the "heavy star", acting as the whorl or weight.
Finally, why is the main feast of St Michael, Michaelmas, celebrated so close to, but not on the equinox, on the 29th of September?
Thanks for any comments!
Melissa
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I just wanted to run a couple of ideas by you, about the constellation Libra, the equinox, and weighing the souls of the dead.
Libra, one of the zodiac constellations, is a pair of weighing scales. Why is there such a contraption in the sky? What is being weighed?
In Ancient Greece and in Arabic astronomy the constellation Libra was simply an extension of Scorpio: the claws of the scorpion. In Babylonian astronomy, Libra seems to have been both known as the claws of the scorpion, and as MUL Zibanu (the "scales" or "balance").
It seems that Libra resembles a pair of weighing scales because for a period the sun entered this part of the sky at the time of the autumn equinox, when the days and nights are equal.
Between about 2,400 and 1,100 BCE the sun did rise in Libra on the equinox, the day in autumn when daylight has decreased to such an extent since the summer that day and night are roughly equal. You can see below in 2,500 BCE the sun is just about to enter Libra, and in the following screen shot it is about to exit Libra in about 1,100 BCE. Babylon was a major power from about 1,800 to 1,600 BCE. Perhaps the constellation Libra marks this celestial event, but it is much older than the period when Babylon was a great city.
The constellation chart from the temple at Denderah shows Libra quite clearly, though it may only be dated to around the year 50 BCE, so is quite recent in terms of Egyptian history. José Lull and Juan Antonio Belmonte have written that what we today refer to as the zodiac constellations, and which are quite easily recognisable on the Denderah zodiac, may have been inherited from Greece or Mesopotamia, not from a long Egyptian tradition.
Lull and Belmonte suggest a connection between Libra and Hor-em-akhet, “Horus in the horizon”, deity which represented the dawn and the early morning sun. He was often depicted as a sphinx with the head of a man, a lion or a ram, and could be what the Great Sphinx at Giza represents.Quote
Lull and Belmonte, The Constellations of Ancient Egypt
Libra, however, as represented by the Scales is first attested in Egypt, where the autumnal equinoctial point was located in late antiquity. The figure of a child within a disk is located upon these scales. This is represented also within the sign of the horizon akhet in the astronomical ceiling of the later hypostyle hall.
Was this part of the sky, Libra, marked to show not only where the sun rose at the equinox, marking an even balance between night and day, and a transition point in the year, but something else too? When did they become about weighing souls, as they are in Medieval Christian art? Long before then, was the same part of the sky associated with the scales Anubis uses to weigh souls?
Most religions understand life as the period of the soul's trial and testing. Such a trial implies that the soul continues to exist beyond an earthly life, and perhaps, goes on to dwell within another earthly life after that, and so on. Upon the death of a person, their soul is said to travel, and this journey is the subject of many fascinating beliefs.
Quote
Alvin Boyd Kuhn, The Lost Light: An Interpretation of Ancient Scriptures
Without such a testing she would remain forever ignorant of her own latent capacity, or would never bring it to expression. Here is where she is thrown into the scales of balance, in Libra on the horizon, and here is where she is being weighed.
In Book X of Plato's Republic, in the Myth or Er, the journey described by Er is a fascinating account of places and people beyond the world of the living, where the souls of humans and animals choose their future lives. Justice is given to those who have acted wrongly, and this seems to tie in with the actual mechanical workings of the celestial bodies. Justice, truth and order are intrinsic to the "Spindle of Necessity" which governs the heavenly cycles. This idea was very influential in the development of later religious beliefs, and may be very old indeed. Moral order and balance seem to be equated with physical, celestial order and balance, which in the Myth of Er is guaranteed by a whorl or weight which controls the revolutions of the axis.
Plato, as well as some early Christians like Plotinus, believed souls were made up of the same stuff as the Cosmos, and also believed in reincarnation. For Plato, all souls have wings and can climb upwards, but only the souls of the gods can actually stay up there. The others gradually fall back down to earth again, eventually hitting on a body, and becoming partly mortal. Some human souls can become immortal too, the most godlike ones, the philosophers, and can escape the cycle of rebirth.
Most religions in fact have either reincarnation or an after life as a central part of their beliefs. Either way, it is an almost universal idea that the souls of those who die travel to a spirit world, or to Heaven, or to the Cosmos, and the way that person's life was lived will have a bearing on this journey and the soul's destination. It's worth noting that this belief in a part of the soul living on after the death of the body and travelling to another realm is not dependent on the idea of a god or gods. However, there is usually a gatekeeper, or a guide, or some figure to sort and judge, perhaps weigh these souls. In traditions where the soul is not believed to continue on to a new mortal body, the soul has to dwell permanently in heaven or hell, or somewhere in between, and is not given much of a chance to redeem itself after death. For Plotinus, evil was simply a lack of goodness, like the holes in a swiss cheese, it certainly didn't define a person or their soul. The soul could gradually over the course of many lifetimes build up more and more good qualities and eventually break free from the cycle of reincarnation. Obviously, as with his ideas on reincarnation, they didn't last long in Christian tradition, which came to teach that the soul only inhabits a body once and is judged completely on its performance during that time, with a tiny window of opportunity before death to repent. Hell, or the possibility of it, becomes the currency of a controlling deity and ruling class in the earthly world. Christians for a long time were very fond of threatening people of burning in hell for all eternity, a theme that seems to have lost popularity in recent times.
Psychostasia is the concept by which a person's life is judged by the weighing of their soul. Though it was a particularly important part of medieval Christian belief, it dates back to a much earlier time. The Ancient Egyptians held a belief that people's hearts would be weighed after death in the underworld, the Duat. In medieval Christian art, most often you see two people in the scales, the good person to the viewer's left, the bad person tipping the scales to the viewer's right. In Egyptian art, the heart is weighed not against another person's soul but against a feather, representing truth, justice and order, Maat. The unlucky heavy hearts would be eaten by the goddess Ammit, a monstrous cross between a lion, a crocodile and a hippopotamus.
The lucky souls that passed the weighing test would reach heaven or, in the case of Egypt, pass through the golden or silver gate in the sky, where the Milky Way crosses the Ecliptic, at the foot of Ophiuchus and in Orion, just above the head. This is very near Perseus in fact, a constellation associated with the Roman god Mithras (a god which is also, according to Santillana and von Dechend in Hamlet's Mill, associated with the earth's or the galaxy's axis or the Tree of life itself). Ophiuchus can represent the Archangel Michael and also the tree of life, as well as many other major deities, and is situated right next to Libra. It is clear that the Archangel Michael is associated with Ophiuchus from early and Medieval Christian art, which very often places a dragon or the devil at his feet (Scorpio), and directs a spear to the dragon or devil's mouth (Antares), and who is seen to hold weighing scales in his left hand (Libra).
Orion is in Egyptian tradition Osiris, god of the dead, and is close to the other point in the sky where the ecliptic and Milky Way meet, the other gate. These two parts of the sky are connected with the souls' journeys after death.
Why is Libra so close to the part of the sky where the ecliptic meets the Milky Way, the so-called Golden Gate, as well as the centre of the Milky Way, also at Ophiuchus's foot? Some suggest that souls went up through the Golden Gate and came back down to earth through the Silver Gate, others that the Golden Gate was for the gods and the Silver Gate for the rest. (By coincidence, the Pope's emblem is a pair of keys, one golden, one silver.)
Is there any evidence anywhere of an earlier association with weighing scales with this section of the sky, roughly Libra / Ophiuchus, earlier than between about 2,400 and 1,100 BCE? There is evidence that some Michael sites are connected to megalithic sites, such as Skellig Michael, Saint Michael's Mount and the Mont Saint-Michel to Stonehenge.
There's also a creator deity called Abathar Muzania, from a religion called mandeism, which thrived in the early centuries of the Christian era and which revered John the Baptist. Abathar Muzania would also weigh the souls of the dead with scales. Curiously, this demiurge with weighing scales wasn't associated with Libra, but with the pole star, Polaris, and in fact, was called the angel of the North Star. This might suggest a connection with the Greek Spindle of Necessity which governs all heavenly cycles, and which Plato mentions in his Myth of Er: the spindle could be linked to the Tree of Life metaphors from so many myths and images, and which seem to represent either the Earth's axis, or the Milky Way, or all heavenly cycles, and may be connected to Canopus, the "heavy star", acting as the whorl or weight.
Finally, why is the main feast of St Michael, Michaelmas, celebrated so close to, but not on the equinox, on the 29th of September?
Thanks for any comments!
Melissa
