ArchTale 63. Soul Seed

And his severed serpent power was a seed which began to grow in the underworld.

A new vine.

The true vine.

The severed phallic symbol as a seed

The-Saviours severed serpent power became a seed that began to grow in the underworld.

Maori of New Zealand

Maui disappeared completely into Te Tuna’s body, and at once all the sinews of the Monster Eel were rent apart, so that he died. Whereupon Maui stepped forth and, cutting off Te Tuna’s head, bore it away, intending to give it to his grandfather. But his mother, Hua-hega, got hold of it and refused to give it up. She said to Maui: “Take the head and bury it beside the post in the corner of our house.” And so he took it, buried it as she had directed, and never gave it another thought.Maui continued to go about his usual daily tasks and they all went on living together as before, until, one evening, when they were sitting in the corner of the house where the head of Te Tuna had been buried, Maui perceived that a new shoot had sprung up from the sand. He was amazed. Hua-hega, noticing his surprise, said to him: “Why are you surprised?” To which he answered: “The head of Te Tuna that I buried here in this corner of our house: why has it sprouted?” Hua-hega then told him: “The plant growing beside you is a kind of coconut known as ‘husk of the sea-green color from the region of the gods,’ because it has arisen from the depths of the sea, to reveal to us the color of its own land. Take care of your precious coconut tree and you will find that it will provide us all with food.” Maui danced and sang a boastful song in celebration of his own prowess and of that superiority in magic through which the Monster Eel’s head had become transformed into his food: No more than a woman’s belt strap, No more than a scurrying cockroach, Was Tuna the Ancient One! Bewitched with a sprig of mohio fern, A leaf casting its spell upon a mere simpleton in the arts of enchantment! What, indeed, did he bring against me? Nothing at all! 816

Ancient Egypt

Oh ye gods who are in the presence of Osiris, grant me your arms, For I am the god who shall come into being among you. Who then are these? They are the drops of blood which came forth from the phallus of Ra when he went forth to perform mutilation upon himself. They sprang into being as the gods Hu (Word) and Sa (Mind) 817

Ancient Greece

Gaia groaned within, being straitened, and she made the element of grey flint and shaped a great jagged sickle. Which she put in the hands of Kronos the wily and revealed to him the whole plot. He took courage and undertook to do the deed, for he reverenced not Ouranos his father of evil name. And He hid in an ambush, Ouranos came, bringing on night and longing for love, and he lay about Gaia spreading himself full upon her. Then the son from his ambush stretched forth his left hand and in his right took the great long sickle with jagged teeth, and swiftly lopped off his own father’s members and cast them away to fall behind him. And not vainly did they fall from his hand; for all the bloody drops that gushed forth Gaia received, and as the seasons moved round she bare the strong Erinyes and the great Gigantes with gleaming armour, holding long spears in their hands and the Nymphai whom they call Meliai [Of Ash- Trees] all over the boundless earth.” And as soon as he had cut off the members with flint and cast them from the land into the surging sea, they were swept away over the main a long time: and a white foam spread around them from the immortal flesh, and in it there grew a maiden [Aphrodite] . 818

Zeus [equated here with the Phrygian sky-god], it is said, let fall in his sleep seed upon the ground, which in course of time sent up a Daimon, with two sexual organs, male and female. They call the daimon Agdistis. But the gods, fearing Agdistis, cut off the male organ. There grew up from it an almond-tree with its fruit ripe.819

816 Joseph Campbell. pp. 191-195. PM

817 Book of the Dead Chapter 17 verses 59-63

818 Hesiod, Theogony 126 ff (trans. Evelyn-White).

819 Pausanias, Description of Greece 7. 17. 8 (trans. Jones).

Death and the growth of the vine

Here we see The-Saviour killed. The vine then grows from his bodily remains. In turn those he loves, he turns into a vine also.

The Titans] surprised the child-god Dionysus as he was playing with the toys. Jealous Hera had instigated them to this: . . . The Titans had whitened their faces with chalk. They came like spirits of the dead from the Underworld, to which Zeus had banished them. They attacked the playing boy, tore him into seven pieces and threw these into a cauldron standing on a tripod. When the flesh was boiled, they began roasting it over the fire on seven spits.

. . . When Zeus smote the Titans with his lightning they had already eaten the flesh of Dionysus. They must have been hurled back into the Underworld, since . . . they are invoked as the subterranean ancestors of mankind. . . .

The boiled limbs of the god were burnt—with the exception of a single part—and we may presume that the vine arose from the ashes. The body part was devoured neither by the Titans nor by the fire nor by the earth . . . . A goddess was present at the meal—in later tales, the goddess Pallas Athene—and she hid the body part in a covered basket. Zeus took charge of it. It was said to have been Dionysos’s heart.

This statement contains a pun: for it was also said that Zeus entrusted the kradiaios Dionysos to the goddess: Hipta [the mother goddess] [or great mother Rhea], so that she might carry it on her head . . . kradiaios is a word of double meaning: it can be derived both from kradia, “heart,” and from krade, “fig-tree,” in which latter derivation it means an object made of fig-wood. The basket on Hipta’s head was a liknon: a winnowing-fan, such as was carried on the head at festal processions, and contained a phallus hidden under a pile of fruit-Dionysos himself having made the Phallus of fig-wood. 816

Ampelos, a Satyr youth loved by the god Dionysos. After he was slain by a wild bull the god transformed him into a grape vine. “[The constellation] Grape-Gatherer (Vindemitor) . . . Its cause, too, takes a moment to teach. Beardless Ampelos, they say, a Nympha’s and a Satyrus’s son, was loved by Dionysos on Ismarian hills in Thrake. He trusted him with a vine hanging from the leaves of an elm; it is now named for the boy. The reckless youth fell picking gaudy grapes on a branch and was transformed by the god into the very first grapevine 817

816 C. Kerenyi, The Gods of the Greeks, pp. 254-2.56.

817 Ovid, Fasti 3. 407 ff (trans.Boyle)