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The Article for Lord Asmodeus is amazing, i was glad to read! 
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Gods' Section [January 31st: Adonis]
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Karnonnos [SG]
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Thank you, SG, for your professional articles about our beloved Gods. Everyone should read them to deprogram from Abrahamic narratives and connect more deeply with our deities.
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Karnonnos [SG]
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Janus is known as the mysterious two-headed God of the Roman people, starting with his ancient origin in the reign of the King Numa Pompilius. He was known as a God of beginnings, gates, time, breakthroughs, doorways, transitions, ages, the seasons, liminality, diplomacy and endings.
He was known as the “Two-Faced of War and Peace” whose dictates were closely followed when the Roman state pursued diplomacy or warfare with other states, but his oracle was also consulted when it came to starting any major religious, civic, architectural or legal endeavor in the Roman kingdom.
Temple of Janus, coin of Nero
It was said by Livy and Dionysius that the King Numa introduced the rites of Janus to the Roman people to tame their bellicose nature, to make them deeply respect religion in solemnity and to civilize them with proper rigor; the doors were kept shut as Numa waged no wars. He built a passage or bridge with a double gate, which came to be known as the first temple of Janus. The Gates of Janus were famously held closed during times of peace and conversely open during times of war, a tradition that Romans obediently followed into the sixth century:
The Temple was described as modest and of being a square burnished with bronze, only five cubits high. Another Temple to Janus with a clearly occult design was built by the consul Gaius Duilius, who also had a statue of Janus installed with one hand showing the number 300 and the other hand 65, with twelve altars.
The existence of Janus always closely correlated with the presence of civilization and law. In fact, Plutarch designated Janus as the one God who lifted humanity as a whole out of bestiality and confusion, despite the Hellenistic view that Janus originated with the Roman people. The Romans themselves considered the dual God to be the first ancient king of Latium, and, in a roundabout way, the ancestor of all peoples within the area.
Roman phrase
The God was typically involved in blessing procedures of city gates and walls for the most auspicious beginning possible, but he also was consulted in regards to major projects in Rome, including amenities for civilians and great architectural structures. Servius in the Aeneid claimed that it was ‘proper’ to invoke Janus on any start to any effort.
He also represented border-zones, but unlike Set, represented the sort of ambiguity of such a zone rather than its rigid wall. Many of the liminal zones between the Romans, Etruscans, Samnites and other peoples of Italy bear increased evidence of Janus’ presence with their place name markers. The most notable instance is the expanse of the Ianiculum which separated Rome from Etruria proper.
King Ancus Marcius, the fourth king of Rome, instated a complex set of practices linked to Janus when declaring war on other states, observed by the class of diplomat-priests known as the fetials. The procedure involved sending holy envoys to warn foreign powers of Roman distress, declaring a succession of oaths if the issue was not resolved.
Thirty-three days had to pass before an escalation occurred under oath to both Jupiter and Janus, and the matter was returned to Rome for the king and patricians to make a final decision. If war was declared, a spear was thrown into the territory of the enemy.
Rites to Janus were conducted by the rex sacrorum, the kingly priest office inaugurated by King Numa.
Janus also maintained a deeply mystical aspect related to the home and hearth, where he functioned as a deity that kept watch over any kind of boundary zone, which is why passages were called ‘iani’ and doors ‘ianua’. His cult was immensely popular with the Roman people for its apotropaic and protective qualities against thieves, natural disasters, diseases and other dangers. In this he shared a practical function with Vesta, who functioned as a similar deity closing off the home and tomb.
The triad of Jupiter, Juno and Janus were often invoked to keep the initiate safe and prosperous.
SYMBOLISM OF JANUS
Janus is known as a two-faced God, a concept from which the word ‘Bifrons’ comes. The two or ‘twin’ faces of Janus were nonetheless often represented distinctively with subtle differences. Occasionally the differences were dramatic, such as one head as a bearded citizen and the other as a younger man, sometimes as an old man and a relatively younger one, although both faces were always male. In the Roman context, it was also said to represent the transitional differences between Mars and Quirinus.
The duality represented war and peace, life and death, past and future, love and hate, the beginning and the end, youth and senility, day and night, civilization and nature, matter and intellect, and many other oppositional sets of meanings that were interpreted as forming a cohesive whole.
Even the etymology of Janus has a distinctive set of symbols behind it:
Therefore, Janus rules over rites such as the Dedication of the Soul. We can read about what is behind the door we are about to embark, we can make estimations, and we can certainly ask a Master that has went through or we can visualize what might be the reality after the door. Yet, unless we walk through the door, we can never know what lies beyond the threshold.
HPS Maxine has written very graphically about the Truth of Zevism. There is a door behind you that slams closed when you enter it, a new world that opens up after this, one cannot go back. If we pay attention to this statement, the closing of the door behind us, is symbolic of the ability to choose. While certain choices can be taken back, others cannot; not because we cannot cancel them, but because what one will see can never be unseen.
As the Christian apologist Augustine explained, the Romans viewed the mouth of Janus with its two ‘doors’ as being between the two heads. The mouth cavity in this context was seen as being symbolic of the sky, the universe and symbolically represented the airy powers of magical vibration. The beginning cause was always held to be a prerogative of Janus, through which Jupiter accomplished all things. Other than Jupiter, he had no direct mythological relation to any of the Roman or Hellenic Gods.
The ‘twin Janus’ (Janus Geminus) spoken of by Romans also had four heads in two sets (Janus Quadrifons), symbolic of the four corners of the earth. Janus’ body was equated with the visible and material soul of the world through which all magic manifested.
Some Romans interpreted his name as being formed from ‘ire’ (the verb ‘to go’). Roads, paths and waterways in general were considered to be his domain because every way implies a way to go forward and backwards.
The key was a major symbol of the dual God and represented his capacity to unlock new things, including the use of such powers in the initiate before a major magical working or desired mental shift. The symbolism of the key was deeply interwoven into the holy doors being opened and shut, and it was seen as a symbol of friendly foreigners such as merchants having access to Rome’s cities during times of peace. It also signified the divinely-endowed prerogative of the priest to lock any temple door.
Doors also symbolized Janus in himself, and the Romans remarked among themselves that every door in existence has two sides. The door was also linked to the shrine of the Roman household where one side would be visible to the people outside the sanctuary, and the other side would only have the divine ones in silence staring at the door.
Naturally, the dual heads and doors, much like the gates of Cerberus, the door of Hestia and other transitional symbols, also allegorically represented the rite of dedication in a holy initiate. The door to the old life full of impiety and death was shut forever, with the new life looking towards holiness. They also represent the brain and its two hemispheres; the functions of both sides must be united and nurtured for someone to advance in power.
Janus was also closely associated with the morning and shared in the symbolism of Eosforos, the morning star. Horace called him ‘the Father of the Morning’, and this aspect of Janus represented the morning as signifying the new day where resets could occur, and new obstacles could always be broken.
Just as with the start of the day, Janus through the policies of Numa inaugurated the new-style year beginning in January , a month which continues to bear his name across the world and which marked the death of the ‘old sun’ and beginning of the new, alongside the aftermath of the Saturnalia and the beginning of the traditional time to start the Magnum Opus. The old new year in March was used to drum up the military campaign season, but this date was chosen so ne torpor infectet annum ex auspicio (lest the sloth of auspiciousness infect the whole year), and is linked to the industrious sign of Capricorn:
Precatio Consulis Designati Pridie Kalendas Ianuarias Fascibus Sumptis, Ausonius
Janus thus held open the eternal Gates of Capricorn and Cancer through which souls passed. Romans gave offerings to Janus of a symbolic variety at the beginning of the year, typically things of a sweet variety such as figs and cakes, but even money itself. Ovid’s representation of Janus in the Fasti explains that this was to ensure the resolution began in the first part of the year remained as sweet as it was when pledged.
The 365 days of the year were also equated with him heavily in the sources of Antiquity. In this, Janus shared symbolism with Hermes and Abrasax.
Janus was also referred to as the ‘porter of the heavenly court’ and stands as the major gatekeeper of the doors of heaven. However, it is not just heaven that he has the right to lock and unlock, but the effects of the heavenly powers on earth as a whole, which partially explains the metaphor of his body:
The Major Arcana card of Janus is the Hierophant, known as ‘the Pope’ for much of Tarot’s development. This card in Rider Waite imagery shows a mixture of proper Zevist and enemy imagery in confusion. The Hierophant stands between two men and two pillars, holding his staff up level to the pineal gland. Between him stand two keys, one golden and one silver, conventionally used as a symbol of the church, but actually symbolic of Janus’ powers in representing the conscious and subconscious mind. The red robe is symbolic of the breaking power of Ganesh; the papal tiara itself is shaped like the brain witnessed from a sky view.
This card harkens to tradition and to do things in a tried and tested way rather than pursuing dangerous and unorthodox methods. Often it beseeches the querent to build a proper spiritual routine and to draw on the powers of wisdom in a situation that requires it. It can also signify the incoming presence of a teacher or a guide. Since the Hierophant occupies an office that is changeable, his teachings may someday aid his two disciples.
The Six of Cups is the Minor Arcana card associated with Janus. The card represents the past and shows two children, a boy and a girl, with the boy passing a cup full of lilies to her. In the background is an adult guard with a pike and many old buildings, while one of the cups stands on top of a plinth with a saltire emblem.
For the querent, the emphasis is to be inspired by the past, to allow innocence and joy to inform current choices. Sometimes, it serves as a rebuke not to be childish. In any case, the Six of Cups always represents something that ceased existing, or is yet to exist.
Aspects of Janus were stolen to create the mythology of ‘St. Peter’ and the founding of the church. The association of the Papacy itself with the dual keys shows the erection of the great synagogue above Rome, as Nietzsche infamously called it. To make this less abstract, the installation of the Pope as the intermediary of God on earth is highly symbolic, and in theory it was the command of the ‘First Priest’ that decided most important decisions in the Age of Ignorance. To defy the Pope and his most odious institution meant calamity.
Certain ‘theologians’ of the enemy wrote tracts devoted to attacking the functions of Janus. Since he is a major custodian of empires, this was not merely some theological dispute, but this was a vitriolic attempt to undermine the Roman state by appealing to the stupidity of the masses.
As the Age of Ignorance began in earnest, the Goetic ‘identity’ of Janus became the demon Bifrons, a name which simply means ‘two-faced’. It is said he assumes an extremely monstrous form before shifting to a human one on the command of the conjuror, another way of letting slip the dual identity of Janus. Unfortunately, certain ‘experts’ are unable to understand the connection here, even though it is one of the blatantly obvious cases. The same goes for the proper understanding that Janus and Ganesh do represent the same God.
Bifrons teaches astrology, geometry, and other arts and sciences, as well as the virtues of precious stones and woods. In the early 20th century, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn’s investigations into this demon claimed that Bifrons could be summoned for the purposes of astral travel and intellectual mastery of a subject, which at least shows some cursory early awareness of Janus’ proper attributes.
Certain portents of Janus were eerily interwoven into Roman history and should serve as a warning about the Gods’ eternal rulership of civilization. The first king of Rome and the last ruler of Western Rome were named Romulus. The first Christian ruler of Eastern Rome who made Christianity the state religion and the last Christian ruler in 1453, who fell in battle to the Turks, were both named Constantine. An empire is much like a year.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
History of Rome, Livy
History of Rome, Dionysus of Halicarnassus
City of God against the Pagans, Augustine
Precatio Consulis Designati Pridie Kalendas Ianuarias Fascibus Sumptis, Ausonius
Fasti, Ovid
He was known as the “Two-Faced of War and Peace” whose dictates were closely followed when the Roman state pursued diplomacy or warfare with other states, but his oracle was also consulted when it came to starting any major religious, civic, architectural or legal endeavor in the Roman kingdom.
Temple of Janus, coin of Nero
It was said by Livy and Dionysius that the King Numa introduced the rites of Janus to the Roman people to tame their bellicose nature, to make them deeply respect religion in solemnity and to civilize them with proper rigor; the doors were kept shut as Numa waged no wars. He built a passage or bridge with a double gate, which came to be known as the first temple of Janus. The Gates of Janus were famously held closed during times of peace and conversely open during times of war, a tradition that Romans obediently followed into the sixth century:
Book 1, History of Rome, Livy
The Temple was described as modest and of being a square burnished with bronze, only five cubits high. Another Temple to Janus with a clearly occult design was built by the consul Gaius Duilius, who also had a statue of Janus installed with one hand showing the number 300 and the other hand 65, with twelve altars.
The existence of Janus always closely correlated with the presence of civilization and law. In fact, Plutarch designated Janus as the one God who lifted humanity as a whole out of bestiality and confusion, despite the Hellenistic view that Janus originated with the Roman people. The Romans themselves considered the dual God to be the first ancient king of Latium, and, in a roundabout way, the ancestor of all peoples within the area.
Roman phrase
The God was typically involved in blessing procedures of city gates and walls for the most auspicious beginning possible, but he also was consulted in regards to major projects in Rome, including amenities for civilians and great architectural structures. Servius in the Aeneid claimed that it was ‘proper’ to invoke Janus on any start to any effort.
He also represented border-zones, but unlike Set, represented the sort of ambiguity of such a zone rather than its rigid wall. Many of the liminal zones between the Romans, Etruscans, Samnites and other peoples of Italy bear increased evidence of Janus’ presence with their place name markers. The most notable instance is the expanse of the Ianiculum which separated Rome from Etruria proper.
King Ancus Marcius, the fourth king of Rome, instated a complex set of practices linked to Janus when declaring war on other states, observed by the class of diplomat-priests known as the fetials. The procedure involved sending holy envoys to warn foreign powers of Roman distress, declaring a succession of oaths if the issue was not resolved.
Thirty-three days had to pass before an escalation occurred under oath to both Jupiter and Janus, and the matter was returned to Rome for the king and patricians to make a final decision. If war was declared, a spear was thrown into the territory of the enemy.
Rites to Janus were conducted by the rex sacrorum, the kingly priest office inaugurated by King Numa.
Janus also maintained a deeply mystical aspect related to the home and hearth, where he functioned as a deity that kept watch over any kind of boundary zone, which is why passages were called ‘iani’ and doors ‘ianua’. His cult was immensely popular with the Roman people for its apotropaic and protective qualities against thieves, natural disasters, diseases and other dangers. In this he shared a practical function with Vesta, who functioned as a similar deity closing off the home and tomb.
The triad of Jupiter, Juno and Janus were often invoked to keep the initiate safe and prosperous.
SYMBOLISM OF JANUS
Janus is known as a two-faced God, a concept from which the word ‘Bifrons’ comes. The two or ‘twin’ faces of Janus were nonetheless often represented distinctively with subtle differences. Occasionally the differences were dramatic, such as one head as a bearded citizen and the other as a younger man, sometimes as an old man and a relatively younger one, although both faces were always male. In the Roman context, it was also said to represent the transitional differences between Mars and Quirinus.
The duality represented war and peace, life and death, past and future, love and hate, the beginning and the end, youth and senility, day and night, civilization and nature, matter and intellect, and many other oppositional sets of meanings that were interpreted as forming a cohesive whole.
Even the etymology of Janus has a distinctive set of symbols behind it:
Free ToZ Donor Article: The Month Of January: The Message of Janus, High Priest Hooded Cobra
Therefore, Janus rules over rites such as the Dedication of the Soul. We can read about what is behind the door we are about to embark, we can make estimations, and we can certainly ask a Master that has went through or we can visualize what might be the reality after the door. Yet, unless we walk through the door, we can never know what lies beyond the threshold.
HPS Maxine has written very graphically about the Truth of Zevism. There is a door behind you that slams closed when you enter it, a new world that opens up after this, one cannot go back. If we pay attention to this statement, the closing of the door behind us, is symbolic of the ability to choose. While certain choices can be taken back, others cannot; not because we cannot cancel them, but because what one will see can never be unseen.
As the Christian apologist Augustine explained, the Romans viewed the mouth of Janus with its two ‘doors’ as being between the two heads. The mouth cavity in this context was seen as being symbolic of the sky, the universe and symbolically represented the airy powers of magical vibration. The beginning cause was always held to be a prerogative of Janus, through which Jupiter accomplished all things. Other than Jupiter, he had no direct mythological relation to any of the Roman or Hellenic Gods.
The ‘twin Janus’ (Janus Geminus) spoken of by Romans also had four heads in two sets (Janus Quadrifons), symbolic of the four corners of the earth. Janus’ body was equated with the visible and material soul of the world through which all magic manifested.
Some Romans interpreted his name as being formed from ‘ire’ (the verb ‘to go’). Roads, paths and waterways in general were considered to be his domain because every way implies a way to go forward and backwards.
The key was a major symbol of the dual God and represented his capacity to unlock new things, including the use of such powers in the initiate before a major magical working or desired mental shift. The symbolism of the key was deeply interwoven into the holy doors being opened and shut, and it was seen as a symbol of friendly foreigners such as merchants having access to Rome’s cities during times of peace. It also signified the divinely-endowed prerogative of the priest to lock any temple door.
Doors also symbolized Janus in himself, and the Romans remarked among themselves that every door in existence has two sides. The door was also linked to the shrine of the Roman household where one side would be visible to the people outside the sanctuary, and the other side would only have the divine ones in silence staring at the door.
Naturally, the dual heads and doors, much like the gates of Cerberus, the door of Hestia and other transitional symbols, also allegorically represented the rite of dedication in a holy initiate. The door to the old life full of impiety and death was shut forever, with the new life looking towards holiness. They also represent the brain and its two hemispheres; the functions of both sides must be united and nurtured for someone to advance in power.
Janus was also closely associated with the morning and shared in the symbolism of Eosforos, the morning star. Horace called him ‘the Father of the Morning’, and this aspect of Janus represented the morning as signifying the new day where resets could occur, and new obstacles could always be broken.
Just as with the start of the day, Janus through the policies of Numa inaugurated the new-style year beginning in January , a month which continues to bear his name across the world and which marked the death of the ‘old sun’ and beginning of the new, alongside the aftermath of the Saturnalia and the beginning of the traditional time to start the Magnum Opus. The old new year in March was used to drum up the military campaign season, but this date was chosen so ne torpor infectet annum ex auspicio (lest the sloth of auspiciousness infect the whole year), and is linked to the industrious sign of Capricorn:
Precatio Consulis Designati Pridie Kalendas Ianuarias Fascibus Sumptis, Ausonius
Janus thus held open the eternal Gates of Capricorn and Cancer through which souls passed. Romans gave offerings to Janus of a symbolic variety at the beginning of the year, typically things of a sweet variety such as figs and cakes, but even money itself. Ovid’s representation of Janus in the Fasti explains that this was to ensure the resolution began in the first part of the year remained as sweet as it was when pledged.
The 365 days of the year were also equated with him heavily in the sources of Antiquity. In this, Janus shared symbolism with Hermes and Abrasax.
Janus was also referred to as the ‘porter of the heavenly court’ and stands as the major gatekeeper of the doors of heaven. However, it is not just heaven that he has the right to lock and unlock, but the effects of the heavenly powers on earth as a whole, which partially explains the metaphor of his body:
Fasti, Ovid
The Major Arcana card of Janus is the Hierophant, known as ‘the Pope’ for much of Tarot’s development. This card in Rider Waite imagery shows a mixture of proper Zevist and enemy imagery in confusion. The Hierophant stands between two men and two pillars, holding his staff up level to the pineal gland. Between him stand two keys, one golden and one silver, conventionally used as a symbol of the church, but actually symbolic of Janus’ powers in representing the conscious and subconscious mind. The red robe is symbolic of the breaking power of Ganesh; the papal tiara itself is shaped like the brain witnessed from a sky view.
This card harkens to tradition and to do things in a tried and tested way rather than pursuing dangerous and unorthodox methods. Often it beseeches the querent to build a proper spiritual routine and to draw on the powers of wisdom in a situation that requires it. It can also signify the incoming presence of a teacher or a guide. Since the Hierophant occupies an office that is changeable, his teachings may someday aid his two disciples.
The Six of Cups is the Minor Arcana card associated with Janus. The card represents the past and shows two children, a boy and a girl, with the boy passing a cup full of lilies to her. In the background is an adult guard with a pike and many old buildings, while one of the cups stands on top of a plinth with a saltire emblem.
For the querent, the emphasis is to be inspired by the past, to allow innocence and joy to inform current choices. Sometimes, it serves as a rebuke not to be childish. In any case, the Six of Cups always represents something that ceased existing, or is yet to exist.
JANUS AND THE ENEMY
Matthew 16:19
Aspects of Janus were stolen to create the mythology of ‘St. Peter’ and the founding of the church. The association of the Papacy itself with the dual keys shows the erection of the great synagogue above Rome, as Nietzsche infamously called it. To make this less abstract, the installation of the Pope as the intermediary of God on earth is highly symbolic, and in theory it was the command of the ‘First Priest’ that decided most important decisions in the Age of Ignorance. To defy the Pope and his most odious institution meant calamity.
Certain ‘theologians’ of the enemy wrote tracts devoted to attacking the functions of Janus. Since he is a major custodian of empires, this was not merely some theological dispute, but this was a vitriolic attempt to undermine the Roman state by appealing to the stupidity of the masses.
As the Age of Ignorance began in earnest, the Goetic ‘identity’ of Janus became the demon Bifrons, a name which simply means ‘two-faced’. It is said he assumes an extremely monstrous form before shifting to a human one on the command of the conjuror, another way of letting slip the dual identity of Janus. Unfortunately, certain ‘experts’ are unable to understand the connection here, even though it is one of the blatantly obvious cases. The same goes for the proper understanding that Janus and Ganesh do represent the same God.
Bifrons teaches astrology, geometry, and other arts and sciences, as well as the virtues of precious stones and woods. In the early 20th century, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn’s investigations into this demon claimed that Bifrons could be summoned for the purposes of astral travel and intellectual mastery of a subject, which at least shows some cursory early awareness of Janus’ proper attributes.
Certain portents of Janus were eerily interwoven into Roman history and should serve as a warning about the Gods’ eternal rulership of civilization. The first king of Rome and the last ruler of Western Rome were named Romulus. The first Christian ruler of Eastern Rome who made Christianity the state religion and the last Christian ruler in 1453, who fell in battle to the Turks, were both named Constantine. An empire is much like a year.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
History of Rome, Livy
History of Rome, Dionysus of Halicarnassus
City of God against the Pagans, Augustine
Precatio Consulis Designati Pridie Kalendas Ianuarias Fascibus Sumptis, Ausonius
Fasti, Ovid
SrivatsaKouros
Member
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This last part really struck a chord with me; it shows the tremendous power the Gods wield over our fates. Outstanding article, as always, SG. Thank you very much.
High Priestess Lydia
High Priestess
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Excellent article, SG Karnonnos. Very enlightening as to what Lord Janus rules.
Karnonnos [SG]
Temple of Zeus Guardian
- Joined
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Eos, the Goddess of the dawn, occupies a unique and luminous position in mythology. Her daily emergence heralds the arrival of the sun, symbolizing both renewal and the relentless passage of time. The presence of the dawn Goddess in myth is not merely a poetic device to explain the coming of day, it is a figure imbued with profound occult attributes.
Her genealogy places her among the earliest and most powerful of the Greek deities. In the traditional Theogony of Hesiod, she is described as the daughter of the Titans Hyperion and Theia. Hyperion, the personification of the sun, and Theia, associated with sight and the shining light of the clear blue sky, together produce a trio of luminous children: Helios (the sun), Selene (the moon), and Eos (the dawn). This familial grouping represents the cyclical passage of time, with Eos’s role as the bringer of dawn serving as a bridge between the night and the day.
Eos, Evelyn de Morgan
Such interconnectedness of their domains underlines the Greeks’ understanding of the cosmos as an ordered, rational system. Eos herself is sometimes depicted as the eldest of the siblings, her arrival each morning preceding the chariot-driven ascent of Helios across the sky. The Titanic lineage of Eos also places her among a generation of Gods who, though eventually supplanted by the Olympians, retain a primordial status within the mythic hierarchy.
Eos is unusually animated for a Goddess, and she is represented as being rather mirthful, brazen and capricious. Nonetheless, she also had a pervasive dislike of bringing in the dawn each day.
One of the most famous myths involving Eos is her love affair with Tithonus, a mortal prince of Troy. Enamored with his beauty, the dawn Goddess asks Zeus to grant Tithonus immortality so they can be together forever. However, she neglects to ask for eternal youth, and as a result, Tithonus ages endlessly and frightens her away from their marital bed with his graying visage, eventually becoming so withered that he is transformed into a cicada. This myth poignantly illustrates the bittersweet nature of Eos’s love and the dangers of unchecked desire… and it also serves as a specific warning to make sure the affirmations you use are good ones.
Eos and Tithonus
Her romantic entanglements are numerous. She is said to have abducted several handsome mortals, including Cephalus, Orion, and Cleitus. These stories often follow a similar pattern of Eos being driven by desire. In some versions like those of Pseudo-Apollodorus, her affairs are explained as a punishment from Aphrodite, who curses the dawn Goddess with insatiable desire after Eos is caught in her own affair with Ares, the God of War. Parthenius of Nicaea claimed that Phileas spoke of the son of Eos and Cephalus being the first ruler of the world.
In the great Odyssey, she is shown driving her Chariot across the sky, with her horses ‘Firebright’ and ‘Daybright’ pulling her carriage. In the Iliad, she takes precedence as the mother of the warrior Memnon, who is impaled by the spear of Achilles. Eos begs for Nyx (Night) to come quicker in order to steal his body and conduct his funeral rites. With the help of Thanatos and Hypnos, she transported his body back to Aethiopia. The tears of Eos, which left the light of Helios to dim, drove Zeus to grant him immortality.
She occupied no known places of worship; in Ovid’s Metamorphses she exclaims, in the Latinized form of Aurora, that her shrines and temples are so few and far between as to be almost nonexistent. As far as worship is concerned, her role was highly symbolic.
Eos in her four horse-drawn chariot, terracotta red-figure lekanis vase, late 300s BCE, Canosa, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Eos’ presence in ancient art is well documented compared to the obscurity of her cult. She appears on numerous vase paintings, often depicted in the act of driving her chariot across the sky. In sculpture and relief, she is shown as a beautiful but determined figure clad in saffron, embodying the beauty and transience of dawn.
In the end, it was said that Eos married the Titan named Astraeus and in addition to Memnon, gave birth to the wind Gods (the Anemoi) named Zephyrus, Boreas, Notus and Eurus, and the starry Goddess related to the sign of Virgo, Astraea.
SYMBOLISM OF EOS
Eos is frequently described with rosy fingers and as having golden arms that personify the radiant beauty of dawn itself. Ancient poets such as Sappho describe her golden attributes, while the Homeric Hymns refer to her as ‘rosy-armed’ and ‘rosy-fingered’ (Ἠὼς Ῥοδοδάκτυλος). Since she opens the vault of heaven for the sun to ascend, vivid descriptions like this emphasize her delicate renewal of each and every day. Homer claims that her robe is of safron, being embroidered with endless flowers. She is also often adorned with a halo.
Typically she is represented on Greek vases as wearing a diadem and being as beautiful as could be. Like the Anemoi, she sometimes has large white wings. Likewise, her description in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite called her ‘golden throned’, and the Homeric Hymn to Hermes named her as the ‘early-born’, while Mesomedes of Crete called her χιονοβλέφαρος, "she who has snow-white eyelids".
The 77th Orphic Hymn is dedicated to Eos, deliberately placed symbolically behind the 8th Hymn of the Sun.
As the Hymn alludes to, much of Eos’ symbolism entails the beginnings of intent during workings, and how to properly activate magick as the hazy dawn of understanding begins to emerge in the operator. She also deals with the soul’s cursory journey towards light and how to blossom correctly during those first steps towards proper personhood, which is part of why she is represented mythologically as a Titaness who is lustful and indecisive in her wonder at the world.
As she deals with these first steps, she also represents the throwing away of ignorance that can occur each new day as a cycle. Her determined skyward rides on her Chariot represent the maintenance of the Great Work, showing that evolution requires daily consistency that must occupy the mind of the initiate from dawn to dusk. Part of Eos’ frenzied single-mindedness does represent the necessity of keeping the mind fixated on evolution at any cost, even though the tales involving her also warn not to overlook subtle details in such enthusiasm.
The Gates of Dawn, Herbert James Draper
Eos rules over the animating force that allows humanity to continually function. Her attributes in this regard are also meant to convey the benefits of pursuing certain kinds of meditation during the dawn and morning period, which we know to be times of power that keep the individual well-ordered enough to pursue other things during the day. In enemy religions such as Islam, these facets are keenly understood, while they have been wrested from the minds of modern secular people and Christians.
She is important as a symbolic Goddess of womanhood as a whole. Her nurturing dawn power is symbolic of the power to create the new life of a child, the role of women in maintaining society and the wisdom required to continue to nurture some of the most subtle aspects that keep civilizations running. She represents many of the aspects of wisdom shared among women in particular, from the oldest and wisest to the youngest girls.
In general, she represents the power of Venus in trailing or being ahead of the Sun, which is never far away from it in aspect. This itself is often visible during the morning hours. Her name, which involves a certain code, also relates to the ears (οὖς) in Greek and the mouth (os) in Latin, both involved in the perception of vibration. Her role is often incited in ritual purity, such as the pyre of Hector in the Iliad:
In addition, Eos rules over powerful protective functions. Her role as a Goddess of the First Light is said to drive away all evil and filthy entities, dispelling delusional and dangerous behaviors in the faithful that could attract the presence of fiends. She dispels all forms of chaos as the morning light illuminates the solemn darkness each day. Just as Aphrodite is the great uniter, Eos represents the first pivotal step in the process towards the soul becoming light.
Her card is the Star reversed, which represents Eos’ own mythological hesitance to usher in the dawn each day and echoes the hopelessness of some of her doomed affairs. The naked figure is drawing water upside down, a paradoxical situation. The eight stars move towards the bottom of the card, as if dawn itself is breaking.
This card signifies the necessity of getting out of a rut and to find inspiration, to move forward from everything holding the querent back. It also signifies that something may happen quite unexpectedly and unusually, just as day begins to break in an abrupt fashion.
Her Minor Arcana card is the Three of Pentacles upright, which is perhaps emblematic of her relationship with Helios and Selene, or even the cycle of dawn, noon and dusk. Three figures meet in a cathedral-like building beneath an aisle with its stone pillar; one holds a chisel, the other a scroll of plans, and the other is listening intently. The three pentacles themselves are carved into the stony embellishment of the arch pillar. One of the figures stands atop a table with an increasingly lit background, while the other two are proximate to the darkness – the hierarchy is somewhat inverted as it is the chisel holder who explains everything. Much has been done before to create the beauty of the building, and much will have to happen again in a new plan for expansion.
Since the figures allegorically stand in a house of God, the illustration shows the beginning stages of a plan that must be executed carefully and properly. It indicates the need to learn from those different to oneself and that even if things have started, they must be finished. The card also represents the power of teamwork in getting things done, and to carefully look into details to get it done.
This card is also symbolic of Freemasonry; as the Goddess of the Dawn, Eos was involved in instructing groups to overcome the terror of the Dark Ages. In the image, three classes of the craftsman wearing a golden apron, the wealthy burgher and the monk are shown. The card can also simply signify building something.
EOS AND THE ENEMY
Since the Nazarene lay claim to being the ‘morning star’, part of this symbolism was an attack on the powers of Eos, along with her father, Zeus Phosphoros.
In the grim, fallacious tomes of the enemy, Eos was reformulated as the male demon named Ose, also known as Oso or Voso. Once again, the purpose of this demon was to make the querent ‘cunning’ in the liberal arts of grammar, rhetoric, logic and other disciplines.
Clearly, the power of Eos enduring for ‘an hour’ is a reference to the dawn itself. Other writings specify he cannot be summoned at twilight, a reference to Eos’ control of the matutine hours. The appearance of Ose is said to be like that of an agile and sinister leopard, a visual shorthand in antiquity for the stars.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Metamorphoses, Ovid
Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite
Homeric Hymn to Hermes
The Iliad
The Odyssey
Orphic Hymn to Eos, trans. Thomas Taylor
Hymn to the Sun, Mesomedes
Poetic Fragments, Parthenius of Nicaea
Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, Johann Weyer
Her genealogy places her among the earliest and most powerful of the Greek deities. In the traditional Theogony of Hesiod, she is described as the daughter of the Titans Hyperion and Theia. Hyperion, the personification of the sun, and Theia, associated with sight and the shining light of the clear blue sky, together produce a trio of luminous children: Helios (the sun), Selene (the moon), and Eos (the dawn). This familial grouping represents the cyclical passage of time, with Eos’s role as the bringer of dawn serving as a bridge between the night and the day.
Eos, Evelyn de Morgan
Such interconnectedness of their domains underlines the Greeks’ understanding of the cosmos as an ordered, rational system. Eos herself is sometimes depicted as the eldest of the siblings, her arrival each morning preceding the chariot-driven ascent of Helios across the sky. The Titanic lineage of Eos also places her among a generation of Gods who, though eventually supplanted by the Olympians, retain a primordial status within the mythic hierarchy.
Eos is unusually animated for a Goddess, and she is represented as being rather mirthful, brazen and capricious. Nonetheless, she also had a pervasive dislike of bringing in the dawn each day.
One of the most famous myths involving Eos is her love affair with Tithonus, a mortal prince of Troy. Enamored with his beauty, the dawn Goddess asks Zeus to grant Tithonus immortality so they can be together forever. However, she neglects to ask for eternal youth, and as a result, Tithonus ages endlessly and frightens her away from their marital bed with his graying visage, eventually becoming so withered that he is transformed into a cicada. This myth poignantly illustrates the bittersweet nature of Eos’s love and the dangers of unchecked desire… and it also serves as a specific warning to make sure the affirmations you use are good ones.
Eos and Tithonus
Her romantic entanglements are numerous. She is said to have abducted several handsome mortals, including Cephalus, Orion, and Cleitus. These stories often follow a similar pattern of Eos being driven by desire. In some versions like those of Pseudo-Apollodorus, her affairs are explained as a punishment from Aphrodite, who curses the dawn Goddess with insatiable desire after Eos is caught in her own affair with Ares, the God of War. Parthenius of Nicaea claimed that Phileas spoke of the son of Eos and Cephalus being the first ruler of the world.
In the great Odyssey, she is shown driving her Chariot across the sky, with her horses ‘Firebright’ and ‘Daybright’ pulling her carriage. In the Iliad, she takes precedence as the mother of the warrior Memnon, who is impaled by the spear of Achilles. Eos begs for Nyx (Night) to come quicker in order to steal his body and conduct his funeral rites. With the help of Thanatos and Hypnos, she transported his body back to Aethiopia. The tears of Eos, which left the light of Helios to dim, drove Zeus to grant him immortality.
She occupied no known places of worship; in Ovid’s Metamorphses she exclaims, in the Latinized form of Aurora, that her shrines and temples are so few and far between as to be almost nonexistent. As far as worship is concerned, her role was highly symbolic.
Eos in her four horse-drawn chariot, terracotta red-figure lekanis vase, late 300s BCE, Canosa, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Eos’ presence in ancient art is well documented compared to the obscurity of her cult. She appears on numerous vase paintings, often depicted in the act of driving her chariot across the sky. In sculpture and relief, she is shown as a beautiful but determined figure clad in saffron, embodying the beauty and transience of dawn.
In the end, it was said that Eos married the Titan named Astraeus and in addition to Memnon, gave birth to the wind Gods (the Anemoi) named Zephyrus, Boreas, Notus and Eurus, and the starry Goddess related to the sign of Virgo, Astraea.
SYMBOLISM OF EOS
Eos is frequently described with rosy fingers and as having golden arms that personify the radiant beauty of dawn itself. Ancient poets such as Sappho describe her golden attributes, while the Homeric Hymns refer to her as ‘rosy-armed’ and ‘rosy-fingered’ (Ἠὼς Ῥοδοδάκτυλος). Since she opens the vault of heaven for the sun to ascend, vivid descriptions like this emphasize her delicate renewal of each and every day. Homer claims that her robe is of safron, being embroidered with endless flowers. She is also often adorned with a halo.
Typically she is represented on Greek vases as wearing a diadem and being as beautiful as could be. Like the Anemoi, she sometimes has large white wings. Likewise, her description in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite called her ‘golden throned’, and the Homeric Hymn to Hermes named her as the ‘early-born’, while Mesomedes of Crete called her χιονοβλέφαρος, "she who has snow-white eyelids".
The 77th Orphic Hymn is dedicated to Eos, deliberately placed symbolically behind the 8th Hymn of the Sun.
Orphic Hymn to Eos, translated by Thomas Taylor
As the Hymn alludes to, much of Eos’ symbolism entails the beginnings of intent during workings, and how to properly activate magick as the hazy dawn of understanding begins to emerge in the operator. She also deals with the soul’s cursory journey towards light and how to blossom correctly during those first steps towards proper personhood, which is part of why she is represented mythologically as a Titaness who is lustful and indecisive in her wonder at the world.
As she deals with these first steps, she also represents the throwing away of ignorance that can occur each new day as a cycle. Her determined skyward rides on her Chariot represent the maintenance of the Great Work, showing that evolution requires daily consistency that must occupy the mind of the initiate from dawn to dusk. Part of Eos’ frenzied single-mindedness does represent the necessity of keeping the mind fixated on evolution at any cost, even though the tales involving her also warn not to overlook subtle details in such enthusiasm.
The Gates of Dawn, Herbert James Draper
Eos rules over the animating force that allows humanity to continually function. Her attributes in this regard are also meant to convey the benefits of pursuing certain kinds of meditation during the dawn and morning period, which we know to be times of power that keep the individual well-ordered enough to pursue other things during the day. In enemy religions such as Islam, these facets are keenly understood, while they have been wrested from the minds of modern secular people and Christians.
She is important as a symbolic Goddess of womanhood as a whole. Her nurturing dawn power is symbolic of the power to create the new life of a child, the role of women in maintaining society and the wisdom required to continue to nurture some of the most subtle aspects that keep civilizations running. She represents many of the aspects of wisdom shared among women in particular, from the oldest and wisest to the youngest girls.
In general, she represents the power of Venus in trailing or being ahead of the Sun, which is never far away from it in aspect. This itself is often visible during the morning hours. Her name, which involves a certain code, also relates to the ears (οὖς) in Greek and the mouth (os) in Latin, both involved in the perception of vibration. Her role is often incited in ritual purity, such as the pyre of Hector in the Iliad:
The Iliad
In addition, Eos rules over powerful protective functions. Her role as a Goddess of the First Light is said to drive away all evil and filthy entities, dispelling delusional and dangerous behaviors in the faithful that could attract the presence of fiends. She dispels all forms of chaos as the morning light illuminates the solemn darkness each day. Just as Aphrodite is the great uniter, Eos represents the first pivotal step in the process towards the soul becoming light.
Her card is the Star reversed, which represents Eos’ own mythological hesitance to usher in the dawn each day and echoes the hopelessness of some of her doomed affairs. The naked figure is drawing water upside down, a paradoxical situation. The eight stars move towards the bottom of the card, as if dawn itself is breaking.
This card signifies the necessity of getting out of a rut and to find inspiration, to move forward from everything holding the querent back. It also signifies that something may happen quite unexpectedly and unusually, just as day begins to break in an abrupt fashion.
Her Minor Arcana card is the Three of Pentacles upright, which is perhaps emblematic of her relationship with Helios and Selene, or even the cycle of dawn, noon and dusk. Three figures meet in a cathedral-like building beneath an aisle with its stone pillar; one holds a chisel, the other a scroll of plans, and the other is listening intently. The three pentacles themselves are carved into the stony embellishment of the arch pillar. One of the figures stands atop a table with an increasingly lit background, while the other two are proximate to the darkness – the hierarchy is somewhat inverted as it is the chisel holder who explains everything. Much has been done before to create the beauty of the building, and much will have to happen again in a new plan for expansion.
Since the figures allegorically stand in a house of God, the illustration shows the beginning stages of a plan that must be executed carefully and properly. It indicates the need to learn from those different to oneself and that even if things have started, they must be finished. The card also represents the power of teamwork in getting things done, and to carefully look into details to get it done.
This card is also symbolic of Freemasonry; as the Goddess of the Dawn, Eos was involved in instructing groups to overcome the terror of the Dark Ages. In the image, three classes of the craftsman wearing a golden apron, the wealthy burgher and the monk are shown. The card can also simply signify building something.
EOS AND THE ENEMY
Since the Nazarene lay claim to being the ‘morning star’, part of this symbolism was an attack on the powers of Eos, along with her father, Zeus Phosphoros.
In the grim, fallacious tomes of the enemy, Eos was reformulated as the male demon named Ose, also known as Oso or Voso. Once again, the purpose of this demon was to make the querent ‘cunning’ in the liberal arts of grammar, rhetoric, logic and other disciplines.
Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, Johann Weyer
Clearly, the power of Eos enduring for ‘an hour’ is a reference to the dawn itself. Other writings specify he cannot be summoned at twilight, a reference to Eos’ control of the matutine hours. The appearance of Ose is said to be like that of an agile and sinister leopard, a visual shorthand in antiquity for the stars.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Metamorphoses, Ovid
Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite
Homeric Hymn to Hermes
The Iliad
The Odyssey
Orphic Hymn to Eos, trans. Thomas Taylor
Hymn to the Sun, Mesomedes
Poetic Fragments, Parthenius of Nicaea
Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, Johann Weyer
Thank you so much SG Karnonnos! 
Priest - Alexandros Iowno
Head of Activism
These exceptional spiritual articles are to be seen as religious material and items of study, real study!
monomotapa
New member
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Apologies but does that mean that these qualities are acceptable in nature and one who has these is most likely to be in greater closeness to this goddess
DiscipleofEshmun
New member
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Will repost my reply here as it was lost in the forum update...
Excellent articles SG Karnonnos. Your article on Asmodeus led me to establishing a relationship with Him. I was troubled by some money issues and shuffled my tarot cards, which got me the Eight of Pentacles and Chariot, both upright. Then I was immediately hit with an urge to look up Asmodeus on the forums.
This thread was pinned and stuck out to me, as at the time it had Asmodeus on the title. I was surprised to find these two cards are His and I also really enjoyed learning about Him and His ancient positions in various pantheons such as Shalim and Eshmun. I pray to Him regularly and I hope I always have a good and close relationship with Him.
I actually just read that Jerusalem was stolen from Shalim, including the Hebrew word "Shalom".
Thank you for your work and may the Gods bless you eternally.
Excellent articles SG Karnonnos. Your article on Asmodeus led me to establishing a relationship with Him. I was troubled by some money issues and shuffled my tarot cards, which got me the Eight of Pentacles and Chariot, both upright. Then I was immediately hit with an urge to look up Asmodeus on the forums.
This thread was pinned and stuck out to me, as at the time it had Asmodeus on the title. I was surprised to find these two cards are His and I also really enjoyed learning about Him and His ancient positions in various pantheons such as Shalim and Eshmun. I pray to Him regularly and I hope I always have a good and close relationship with Him.
I actually just read that Jerusalem was stolen from Shalim, including the Hebrew word "Shalom".
Thank you for your work and may the Gods bless you eternally.
Karnonnos [SG]
Temple of Zeus Guardian
- Joined
- Nov 10, 2019
- Messages
- 1,464
Mourned by the Greeks and the Middle East for his tragic beauty, Adonis is the great Daemon of death, growth and renewal. To him we can trace the archetypal concept of a beautiful man in modern times, a record of how far his legend spread through the ages.
The main mythology of Adonis plays out as his birth from the Myrrh tree, the remnant of his beautiful mother who was cursed by the Great Goddess. Aphrodite takes the foundling and transfers him to Hades so Persephone could look after him. As he grows older, his beauty, as radiant as his mother’s, attracts the attentions of Aphrodite and Persephone. The two Goddesses quarrel; Zeus intervenes and instates a decree saying Adonis may spend a third of the year above the earth with Aphrodite, a third below it with Persephone and a third with whomever he may please.
In his time on earth, Adonis remonstrates in a hunting ground often cited to be near Byblos, which ultimately leads to his death from a boar – in some variations of the myth the boar is also a jealous Ares angry at being spurned by his lover. The mourning Aphrodite applies nectar to the wounds of the quickly dying Adonis, which mingled with his blood enables Adonis to become the anemone flower as an eternal token of love’s lasting power.
Venus and Adonis, Titian
Ultimately, Adonis’ myth is parallel to the shepherd Dumuzid, whose characterization in Inanna’s Descent into the Underworld and Inanna Prefers the Farmer indicate his long standing association with Inanna and the underworld. Dumuzid, who was transformed into an allalu bird invariably had a similar fate to Adonis and like in Greece, the cult was associated with women and had a romantic tone throughout the Middle East. The cult of Adonis ultimately came from a being who achieved apotheosis.
However, although Adonis is often considered the local formulation of the Semitic deity named Adon, Tammuz or Dumuzid, the presence of his cult in Greece has been noted to exist rather early, making it worthy of questioning whether his cult was a native innovation after all, alongside the two ‘foreign Deities’ of Aphrodite and Dionysus. In contrast to the typical mythology, the rather ancient Hesiod made of him the son of the Homeric hero Phenix and the unknown Alphesiboea. Sappho herself attested to the ritualized mourning of his life in her circle of women decades before the start of the Classical era:
In Greece, the characteristics of the Adonia festival mourning him were markedly odd to contemporaries. It had no fixed date (although some sources like Plutarch claim it was celebrated in midsummer), was not recognized formally by the state and was an exclusive preserve of women regardless of their class, creed or social position. Typically it was a private ceremony, but often involved women pouring onto the streets, all of whom were said to parade in melancholic crowds, wailing, beating at their chests, tearing their tunics, engaging in dramatic displays, and more. The Adonia would progress in a particular fashion; it was defined mainly by the aforementioned event of mass weeping, recalled in a fragment of Pherecrates from the mouth of a participator as “we hold the Adonia and we weep for Adonis” but also accompanied by drumming and dancing. Small icons and images of Adonis would be carefully placed with funerary rites conducted for each of them:
The Middle Eastern rites of Adonis had similar but distinct elements. In Byblos at least, the festival would culminate in people joyfully pointing at the sky and claiming the God had been resurrected in a miraculous fashion. In the Phoenician city states, the Adonia festivals were said by contemporaries like Lucian of Samosata to have the status of a sacred and consecrated holiday, particularly in Byblos, the most ancient polis of the area. Other ancient writers noted they always commenced there with the heliacal rising of Sirius.
Vase showing Adonia
Historians ultimately found the most dramatic development of his mysterious cults dated to the Hellenistic era after Alexander’s conquests, where they seemed to take on more magnificent attributes through patronage of states far outside the Greek mainland which hosted his festivals. The Hellenistic queen of Egypt and priestess Arsinoe II, who was one of the few wives of the Pharaoh to gain the title of King of Upper and Lower Lands herself (alongside Hatshepsut and Tausret), inaugurated the sacred cult of Adonis in the relatively new city of Alexandria, where his yearly state-decreed worship reached a proportion that would envelop the entire city in revelry for hundreds of years.
As noted by the poet Theocritus, despite his origins in the Middle East and accompanying cult in mainland Greece, the bustling metropolis of Alexandria in many ways became the adopted home of the Daemon. Theocritus describes exactly how the entire city became involved: there was a magnificent display of Adonis’s images and cult tableaux, alongside an official contest of dirges and lamentations sung by competing women’s choruses sponsored by the royal court. The Temple of Osiris and even the later Serapeum had sectional rites assimilated to Adonis.
Adonis, John Northcote
Adonis’ stature in poetry did not end with Sappho, for Greek and Roman poets and playwrights continued to reference the tragic myth of Adonis and Aphrodite in many contexts, a rather prevalent theme for Classicists to discover over the ages. Ovid stands as the most prominent elaborator of the myth, but it was markedly and dramatically recalled by many poets, such as this poignant example by Bion:
SYMBOLISM
Statue of an athlete identifed as Adonis, 1st-2nd century BCE, Uffizi Gallery
Adonis is archetypally represented as a beautiful young man. On vases, he is given similar imagery to Apollo and Dionysus, often depicted with a lyre. In later classical statues, he is represented as athletic and the archetype of male beauty at the peak of its youthful virility, arguably as the most beautiful of the male Gods other than Zeus Himself.
Adonis with Aphrodite, vase
The youthful God was most often identified in Antiquity with crops as a symbol. Crops were be cut and scythed in order to bring new seeds, seen widely as a paradoxical situation of nature that evoked the strange nature of Adonis’ death. Lettuce and fennel plants were also some of his symbols; the Suda explains that these were considered superficial and shallow plants, evocative of the Gardens of Adonis with its transitory and evolving types of vegetation, suitable as symbols for the great dying and resurrecting Adonis. His blood-red flower, variably the anemone or wildflower, was associated with vulnerability to the winds and weather. The flower, like the Glory of God, can be witnessed only in brief passing.
The most prominent symbolism remarked upon in Antiquity were the Gardens of Adonis. Women in Greece would create broken pieces of terracotta which had lettuce and fennel seeds sown in them. They would congregate from the rooftops of the city during the Adonia to hold up these tokens as a symbol of his resurrection. The deliberate failure of these plants to grow has been ascribed to a moral lesson concerning the inability of men to influence the fate of other humans, let alone plants.
Philosophically, Neoplatonist philosophers, many of whom were also priests or initiates, often interpreted the mythology of Adonis via their philosophical worldview, particularly as Socrates mentions the growth technique of the Gardens of Adonis in the Phaedrus as a by-word for shallow knowledge. The Adonis legend, with its theme of death and revival, was naturally compared to other mystery traditions like those of Osiris or Dionysus. Plutarch, the Priest of Apollo, noted that the resident Egyptians in Byblos linked Osiris to the local Adonis cult. Adonis was often compared to the lover of Cybele, Attis.
Adonis became associated with ultimate metaphysical Beauty and the ability to renew through divine right, an archetype of ascension and resurrection through the desire to . Porphyry linked Attis and Adonis to the life-cycle of plants: “Attis…is the symbol of the blossoms which appear early in the spring, and fall off before the complete fertilization… but Adonis was the symbol of the cutting of the perfect fruits.” Proclus weaved the inscrutable Adonis into his elaborate Platonic theology. In his Hymn to the Sun, Proclus syncretizes the tragic being with the solar divinity: invoking the sun-God Helios, he says “some praise you as Euios Attis in the depths of matter, whereas others praise you as pretty Adonis.”
The two Tarot cards representing Adonis are unsurprisingly the transformative cards of Death and the upright Tower. Death represents much of his symbolism of an event that will transform the querent from one state to another. The Yorkist flower on the knight of death's banner and blood red tassle on his helm is evocative of Adonis himself. The card represents in an abstract sense the fragility of life.
Just as Adonis was cut down by the boar, so does the Tower come to show the querent being struck to their foundations, as well as the King and Queen falling from the building. This event can mean a more encompassing disaster than death, but hints at the ability to rebuild, the shedding of the philosophical vessel.
LATER INFLUENCE
The story of Adonis, believed to cohere with courtly love, served as an inspiration for many writers during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. The Romance of the Rose by Jean de Meun (1275) interprets the story as a moral command for men to heed the women beloved to them. Christine de Pizan’s moralist work Othea also contains references to Adonis.
Reproductions across Europe of the 13th century Ovide moralisé made the story quite famous. Later on, the most popular poem of Shakespeare during his and the master’s lifetime was Venus and Adonis (1593), while the tale is referenced in Edmund Spenser’s the Faerie Queene (1590). The popular poet Giambattista Marino created the most popular work of his time, L’Adone. Some of the most beautiful examples of Neoclassical and restorative sculpture are of Adonis, such as this work by François Duquesnoy:
The story of Tammuz began to attract attention in Renaissance England and France, however, darker examples continued to be tied to Tammuz who was considered a ‘demon’, such as in Book I of Paradise Lost by John Milton.
THEFT IN CHRISTIANITY
The name of Adonai was stolen for its properties in Jewish religion. Ezekiel 8:14 mentions Tammuz by name and considers the worship by women an abomination.
Much like Apollonius and Asclepius, the theft of Adonis attributes to build up the concept of ‘Jesus Christ’ was marked. Bethlehem itself was a site of the God’s worship. Even the cave in which the Nazarene dwelled as a child is said to have been the local chamber of worship for Tammuz and Inanna. According to Lucian, the water was said to run red with blood in the Adonis river during his holiday, which is now rather deliberately named the Abraham river, similar to several events in the Bible.
The theft of Adonis in the Jesus mythology was often noted in comparative mythological literature as far back as the Renaissance but was formulated most strongly in the argument put forth by Sir James George Frazer’s the Golden Bough (1890), which compared Adonis to numerous dying-and-resurrecting Gods of the area, including the so-called Nazarene.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Metamorphoses, Ovid
Hesiod
Fragment of Sappho [Hephaestius, Book on Metres]
Fragment of Pherecrates
Dionysiaca, Nonnus
Life of Alcibiades, Plutarch
On the Syrian Goddesses, Lucian of Samosata
Life of Nicias, Plutarch
Idyll XV, Theocritus
Lament for Adonis, Bion
Byzantine Suda
The Constraints of Desire: The Anthropology of Sex and Gender in Ancient Greece, John J. Winkler
Phaedrus, Plato
Hymn to Helios, Proclus
Fragment 7, On Cult Images, Porphyry
Christians and the Holy Places: The Myth of Jewish-Christian Origins, Joan E. Taylor
The Golden Bough, Sir James George Frazer
Roman de la rose [second half], Jean Meun
Othea, Christine de Pizan
The Faerie Queene, Edmund Spenser
Venus and Adonis, William Shakespeare
L'adone, Giambattista Marino
Paradise Lost, John Milton
The main mythology of Adonis plays out as his birth from the Myrrh tree, the remnant of his beautiful mother who was cursed by the Great Goddess. Aphrodite takes the foundling and transfers him to Hades so Persephone could look after him. As he grows older, his beauty, as radiant as his mother’s, attracts the attentions of Aphrodite and Persephone. The two Goddesses quarrel; Zeus intervenes and instates a decree saying Adonis may spend a third of the year above the earth with Aphrodite, a third below it with Persephone and a third with whomever he may please.
In his time on earth, Adonis remonstrates in a hunting ground often cited to be near Byblos, which ultimately leads to his death from a boar – in some variations of the myth the boar is also a jealous Ares angry at being spurned by his lover. The mourning Aphrodite applies nectar to the wounds of the quickly dying Adonis, which mingled with his blood enables Adonis to become the anemone flower as an eternal token of love’s lasting power.
Venus and Adonis, Titian
Ultimately, Adonis’ myth is parallel to the shepherd Dumuzid, whose characterization in Inanna’s Descent into the Underworld and Inanna Prefers the Farmer indicate his long standing association with Inanna and the underworld. Dumuzid, who was transformed into an allalu bird invariably had a similar fate to Adonis and like in Greece, the cult was associated with women and had a romantic tone throughout the Middle East. The cult of Adonis ultimately came from a being who achieved apotheosis.
However, although Adonis is often considered the local formulation of the Semitic deity named Adon, Tammuz or Dumuzid, the presence of his cult in Greece has been noted to exist rather early, making it worthy of questioning whether his cult was a native innovation after all, alongside the two ‘foreign Deities’ of Aphrodite and Dionysus. In contrast to the typical mythology, the rather ancient Hesiod made of him the son of the Homeric hero Phenix and the unknown Alphesiboea. Sappho herself attested to the ritualized mourning of his life in her circle of women decades before the start of the Classical era:
Fragment of Sappho [Hephaestius, Book on Metres]
In Greece, the characteristics of the Adonia festival mourning him were markedly odd to contemporaries. It had no fixed date (although some sources like Plutarch claim it was celebrated in midsummer), was not recognized formally by the state and was an exclusive preserve of women regardless of their class, creed or social position. Typically it was a private ceremony, but often involved women pouring onto the streets, all of whom were said to parade in melancholic crowds, wailing, beating at their chests, tearing their tunics, engaging in dramatic displays, and more. The Adonia would progress in a particular fashion; it was defined mainly by the aforementioned event of mass weeping, recalled in a fragment of Pherecrates from the mouth of a participator as “we hold the Adonia and we weep for Adonis” but also accompanied by drumming and dancing. Small icons and images of Adonis would be carefully placed with funerary rites conducted for each of them:
Life of Nicias, Plutarch
The Middle Eastern rites of Adonis had similar but distinct elements. In Byblos at least, the festival would culminate in people joyfully pointing at the sky and claiming the God had been resurrected in a miraculous fashion. In the Phoenician city states, the Adonia festivals were said by contemporaries like Lucian of Samosata to have the status of a sacred and consecrated holiday, particularly in Byblos, the most ancient polis of the area. Other ancient writers noted they always commenced there with the heliacal rising of Sirius.
Vase showing Adonia
Historians ultimately found the most dramatic development of his mysterious cults dated to the Hellenistic era after Alexander’s conquests, where they seemed to take on more magnificent attributes through patronage of states far outside the Greek mainland which hosted his festivals. The Hellenistic queen of Egypt and priestess Arsinoe II, who was one of the few wives of the Pharaoh to gain the title of King of Upper and Lower Lands herself (alongside Hatshepsut and Tausret), inaugurated the sacred cult of Adonis in the relatively new city of Alexandria, where his yearly state-decreed worship reached a proportion that would envelop the entire city in revelry for hundreds of years.
As noted by the poet Theocritus, despite his origins in the Middle East and accompanying cult in mainland Greece, the bustling metropolis of Alexandria in many ways became the adopted home of the Daemon. Theocritus describes exactly how the entire city became involved: there was a magnificent display of Adonis’s images and cult tableaux, alongside an official contest of dirges and lamentations sung by competing women’s choruses sponsored by the royal court. The Temple of Osiris and even the later Serapeum had sectional rites assimilated to Adonis.
Adonis, John Northcote
Adonis’ stature in poetry did not end with Sappho, for Greek and Roman poets and playwrights continued to reference the tragic myth of Adonis and Aphrodite in many contexts, a rather prevalent theme for Classicists to discover over the ages. Ovid stands as the most prominent elaborator of the myth, but it was markedly and dramatically recalled by many poets, such as this poignant example by Bion:
Lament for Adonis, Bion
SYMBOLISM
Statue of an athlete identifed as Adonis, 1st-2nd century BCE, Uffizi Gallery
Adonis is archetypally represented as a beautiful young man. On vases, he is given similar imagery to Apollo and Dionysus, often depicted with a lyre. In later classical statues, he is represented as athletic and the archetype of male beauty at the peak of its youthful virility, arguably as the most beautiful of the male Gods other than Zeus Himself.
Adonis with Aphrodite, vase
The youthful God was most often identified in Antiquity with crops as a symbol. Crops were be cut and scythed in order to bring new seeds, seen widely as a paradoxical situation of nature that evoked the strange nature of Adonis’ death. Lettuce and fennel plants were also some of his symbols; the Suda explains that these were considered superficial and shallow plants, evocative of the Gardens of Adonis with its transitory and evolving types of vegetation, suitable as symbols for the great dying and resurrecting Adonis. His blood-red flower, variably the anemone or wildflower, was associated with vulnerability to the winds and weather. The flower, like the Glory of God, can be witnessed only in brief passing.
The most prominent symbolism remarked upon in Antiquity were the Gardens of Adonis. Women in Greece would create broken pieces of terracotta which had lettuce and fennel seeds sown in them. They would congregate from the rooftops of the city during the Adonia to hold up these tokens as a symbol of his resurrection. The deliberate failure of these plants to grow has been ascribed to a moral lesson concerning the inability of men to influence the fate of other humans, let alone plants.
Philosophically, Neoplatonist philosophers, many of whom were also priests or initiates, often interpreted the mythology of Adonis via their philosophical worldview, particularly as Socrates mentions the growth technique of the Gardens of Adonis in the Phaedrus as a by-word for shallow knowledge. The Adonis legend, with its theme of death and revival, was naturally compared to other mystery traditions like those of Osiris or Dionysus. Plutarch, the Priest of Apollo, noted that the resident Egyptians in Byblos linked Osiris to the local Adonis cult. Adonis was often compared to the lover of Cybele, Attis.
Adonis became associated with ultimate metaphysical Beauty and the ability to renew through divine right, an archetype of ascension and resurrection through the desire to . Porphyry linked Attis and Adonis to the life-cycle of plants: “Attis…is the symbol of the blossoms which appear early in the spring, and fall off before the complete fertilization… but Adonis was the symbol of the cutting of the perfect fruits.” Proclus weaved the inscrutable Adonis into his elaborate Platonic theology. In his Hymn to the Sun, Proclus syncretizes the tragic being with the solar divinity: invoking the sun-God Helios, he says “some praise you as Euios Attis in the depths of matter, whereas others praise you as pretty Adonis.”
The two Tarot cards representing Adonis are unsurprisingly the transformative cards of Death and the upright Tower. Death represents much of his symbolism of an event that will transform the querent from one state to another. The Yorkist flower on the knight of death's banner and blood red tassle on his helm is evocative of Adonis himself. The card represents in an abstract sense the fragility of life.
Just as Adonis was cut down by the boar, so does the Tower come to show the querent being struck to their foundations, as well as the King and Queen falling from the building. This event can mean a more encompassing disaster than death, but hints at the ability to rebuild, the shedding of the philosophical vessel.
LATER INFLUENCE
The story of Adonis, believed to cohere with courtly love, served as an inspiration for many writers during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. The Romance of the Rose by Jean de Meun (1275) interprets the story as a moral command for men to heed the women beloved to them. Christine de Pizan’s moralist work Othea also contains references to Adonis.
Reproductions across Europe of the 13th century Ovide moralisé made the story quite famous. Later on, the most popular poem of Shakespeare during his and the master’s lifetime was Venus and Adonis (1593), while the tale is referenced in Edmund Spenser’s the Faerie Queene (1590). The popular poet Giambattista Marino created the most popular work of his time, L’Adone. Some of the most beautiful examples of Neoclassical and restorative sculpture are of Adonis, such as this work by François Duquesnoy:
The story of Tammuz began to attract attention in Renaissance England and France, however, darker examples continued to be tied to Tammuz who was considered a ‘demon’, such as in Book I of Paradise Lost by John Milton.
THEFT IN CHRISTIANITY
The name of Adonai was stolen for its properties in Jewish religion. Ezekiel 8:14 mentions Tammuz by name and considers the worship by women an abomination.
Much like Apollonius and Asclepius, the theft of Adonis attributes to build up the concept of ‘Jesus Christ’ was marked. Bethlehem itself was a site of the God’s worship. Even the cave in which the Nazarene dwelled as a child is said to have been the local chamber of worship for Tammuz and Inanna. According to Lucian, the water was said to run red with blood in the Adonis river during his holiday, which is now rather deliberately named the Abraham river, similar to several events in the Bible.
The theft of Adonis in the Jesus mythology was often noted in comparative mythological literature as far back as the Renaissance but was formulated most strongly in the argument put forth by Sir James George Frazer’s the Golden Bough (1890), which compared Adonis to numerous dying-and-resurrecting Gods of the area, including the so-called Nazarene.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Metamorphoses, Ovid
Hesiod
Fragment of Sappho [Hephaestius, Book on Metres]
Fragment of Pherecrates
Dionysiaca, Nonnus
Life of Alcibiades, Plutarch
On the Syrian Goddesses, Lucian of Samosata
Life of Nicias, Plutarch
Idyll XV, Theocritus
Lament for Adonis, Bion
Byzantine Suda
The Constraints of Desire: The Anthropology of Sex and Gender in Ancient Greece, John J. Winkler
Phaedrus, Plato
Hymn to Helios, Proclus
Fragment 7, On Cult Images, Porphyry
Christians and the Holy Places: The Myth of Jewish-Christian Origins, Joan E. Taylor
The Golden Bough, Sir James George Frazer
Roman de la rose [second half], Jean Meun
Othea, Christine de Pizan
The Faerie Queene, Edmund Spenser
Venus and Adonis, William Shakespeare
L'adone, Giambattista Marino
Paradise Lost, John Milton
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Arcadia [NG]
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Firstly, magnificent article as always, SG. There are some interesting things I would like to add, regarding the anemone flower. Even in eastern cultures like Japan, the anemone often represents transience; the twilight hour of the day, and the autumn season. It is these liminal times which are representative of a thinned veil between the physical and spiritual worlds. Another interesting bit of behaviour is the fact anemones will close their petals not only at night, but will even do so when conditions are overcast, like right before a rainstorm. As such, there are certain cultural connotations of the anemone is a flower of anticipation, linking it very clearly to the The Tower Tarot.
It's worth saying that, although a rainstorm may be destructive, it's also vitalizing and necessary for nature. Death and decay as functions themselves are also necessary parts of the life-giving cycle. Further, it's worth noting there is an aspect of The Tower which involves the shattering of illusions. Oftentimes, beauty on its own can be mistaken for lasting strength. Adonis, at his death by Aphrodite's side, was young, fit, beautiful and perfect, the last thing you would ever expect to die, though in failing to heed Aphrodite's truthful warning, he met his shocking end.
Even when it comes to the "smaller" aspects of the Gods attributes, like sacred animals and flowers, you will find the divine connections essentially bottomless.
