Sunday, December 16, 2007
Hieros Gamos
(This is Titian's picture of Zeus coming to Danae in a shower of gold.)
Hieros Gamos
Bird, bull,
or sacred ray.
Always there is
a coming down,
a waterfall of light.
Even the monkey god
descends,
at play among the mortals.
The women, taken,
do not protest.
This is who they are,
their chosen fate.
Sometimes they live
to bear his child,
or else vanish
in a flash.
Their stories linger
deep within,
echo through the
vanished temples of our mind.
We listen in silence.
Who would not give
up everything
to annihilate in rapture,
mate with a god?
Dorothy Walters
December 15, 2007
(Technically, “hieros gamos” (sacred marriage) refers to the rite of the ancient Goddess cultures in which the King and Queen,(in the guise of god and goddess) mated to ensure the well being of the community for the coming year. I am using it in a more general sense here to refer to other sacred pairings. The marriage of the human and the divine is one of the recurrent themes of myth and legend. The bird is the swan (Zeus) who comes to Leda, an encounter made famous in Yeats’ celebrated poem. The bull is again Zeus, who pursues Europa in that guise. Many early depictions of Mary show her conceiving through a ray of celestial light which pierces her ear. The monkey god is Hanuman, sometimes shown in Eastern painting in union with a female mortal. It was Semele who “vanished in a flash” when Zeus coupled with her. Some feel that Kundalini, repository of divine power, brings about Sacred Union with the Beloved Within and thus shares kinship with the ancient tales.)
