Religion at the Millennium (long version)

Titus Burckhardt shows that early Christian churches were also once designed on the cosmic model. He makes this quite clear in his beautiful book on Chartres Cathedral. The body of Christ, as Burckhardt puts it, is “inscribed in the ground plan of the church”. The cross itself was seen as being “formed by the axes of the heavens”; Christ’s head “lies towards the east, His feet towards the west, His arms and hands extend from north to south”.

So according to the church fathers Hieronymus and Basilius, “the axial cross of the heavens is the pre-ordained prototype of the wood on which the saviour was nailed”. Indeed for the people of antiquity the cross represented the axes of the heavens and was “a direct expression of cosmic law”. It was assumed that if a transgressor of this law was executed on a cross “this was in order to re-establish, both symbolically and practically, the disturbed cosmic equilibrium”. [19]

The cosmic symbolism of early Christian churches could not be clearer than in the case of the Cathedral of Edessa (now called Urfa) in North West Mesopotamia, which was once one of the greatest centres of Christendom. It was built in the 6th century, like Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, and was dedicated to Holy Wisdom. The description of it provided by St Dionysus the Areopagite, could not be more illustrative:

“Wonderful it is that this building in its smallness resembles the wide world, not through its size, but in its character: water surrounds it, just as the ocean surrounds the world; its roof is wide like heaven, without pillars, vaulted and everywhere closed, and decorated with golden mosaics as is the firmament with shining stars. Its noble cupola resembles the heaven of heavens. The upper part of the building rests on the lower part like a helmet. Its wide and splendid arches represent the four sides of the world. Through their multiplicity, its colours recall magnificent rainbows.” [20]

Doing as was done in the beginning

Coomaraswamy notes how “in any traditional society, every operation is in the strictest sense of the world a rite”, and it is the very nature of a rite that it is a mimesis of “what was done in the beginning”. He tells us that “the erection of a house is an imitation of the creation of the world”; and it is in this connection that the transfixation of the head of the cosmic serpent (on which rest the house’s foundations) acquires an intelligible meaning.

Even today it appears “the astrologer shows what spot in the foundations is exactly above the head of the snake that supports the world”. The mason fashions a little wooden peg from the wood of the kadira tree and with a coconut drives a peg into the ground of this particular spot, in such a way as to peg the head of the snake securely down, otherwise the snake might “shake the world to pieces”. The foundation stone (padma-sila) with an 8-petalled lotus carved upon it, is set in mortar above the peg. A Brahman priest assists at all these rites, reciting appropriate incantations (mantras).

Significantly the Earth was seen as originally insecure “quaking like a lotus leaf” and the gods said, “come let us make steady this support”. This means that the architect who drove down his peg into the head of the serpent is doing what was done by the gods in the beginning. The architect is thus re-enacting the original act of creation (cosmogenesis), as Mircea Eliade would have put it.

Weaving the cosmos

It is unlikely that in a traditional society man ever produced an artefact that is only designed to satisfy but utilitarian purposes. All were replete with symbolic meaning. All were based on knowledge that had a superhuman origin. This was as true of his basketwork as of his pottery, and in particular, so it seems, his weaving. Thus the weaving of the cosmic veil that in the original Temple of Jerusalem separated the hekal, which represented the earth from the debir or holy of holies that represented the heavens, had to be made in accordance with very strict and ancient procedures. [21]

The veil itself, as Josephus tells us,

“represented the created world. It was a Babylonian tapestry, with embroidery and fine linen, of scarlet also and purple, wrought with marvellous skill. Nor was this mixture of materials without its mystic meaning. It typified the universe. For the scarlet seemed emblematic of fire, and fine linen of the earth. The blue of the air, the purple of the seas. The comparison in two cases being suggested by their colour, and in that of the fine line and the purpose by their origin, as the one is produced by the earth and the other by the sea. On this tapestry was portrayed a panorama of the heavens”. [22]

The ceremonial tunic of the high priest of the Temple of Jerusalem was also replete with cosmic symbolism, as is pointed out both by Josephus and Philo of Alexandria. Josephus tells us that it

“signifies the Earth, being of linen, and its blue the arch of heaven, while it recalls the lightnings by the pomegranates, the thunder by the sound of the bells. His upper garment too denotes universal nature, which it pleased God to make of four elements; being further interwoven with gold in token, I imagine, of the all-pervading sunlight”. [23]

It is not just the weaving of the clothes worn by High Priests or of the veils or curtains of the temples in which they officiate that were of cosmic design, but, probably at one time in all traditional societies, weaving in general,. An obvious example is the art of weaving among the Kogi Indians, already referred to, that like the finished products are full of symbolic meanings.

The Colombian anthropologist, Geraldo Reichel-Dolmatoff, who spent some 40 years studying the Kogi and other Colombian Indian tribes, tells us that when a Kogi starts to weave a piece of cloth he sings the following tune:

I shall weave the fabric of my life;

I shall weave it white as a cloud;

I shall weave some black into it;

I shall weave dark maize stalks into it;

I shall weave maize stalks into the white cloth;

Thus I shall obey divine Law. [24]

These are not empty words, as Reichel-Dolmatoff notes “the dress a Kogi wears is a fabric of life”, and by weaving a piece of cloth a man is “weaving his life. He is symbolically organizing his personal feelings and his social existence by the act of weaving” For a Kogi “a man’s thoughts are like threads: cotton thread is white, ‘good’ thought, and the act of spinning represents the act of thinking”. The Kogi explain:

“To spin is to think. When one sits and twists the thread on one’s thigh, one thinks a lot: one thins about one’s work, one’s family, one’s neighbours, everything. The yarn we spin is our thoughts.” It is more than that though for during the act of weaving these thoughts are interlaced into “the web that is society, the weaver’s social relationships, his social network.” [25]

The critical role played by weaving is the social world of the Kogi is quite consistent with their cosmogony, for the spindle is to be the centre of the Earth – the axis mundi that holds up the heavens. When the Mother Goddess created the earth, she pushed a spindle

“upright into the newly created and still soft earth, right in the centre of the snow peaks of the Sierra Nevada, saying ‘This is the central post’, and then picking from the top of the spindle a length of yarn, she drew with it a circle around the spindle-whorl and said: ‘This shall be the land of my children!’ ” [26]

The spindle is also a male/female symbol, the male hardwood shaft piercing the female softwood disk. A Kogi spindle, then, is a model of the cosmos; the flat disk of the spindle-whorl is our Earth and on top of it rests the high, cone-shaped body of cotton yarn wound tightly around the world axis.

“On occasion this whorl is decorated with four little dots engraved on opposite sides of the circular object. They represent the World-Quarters, or else two incised intersecting lines in the form of a cross. This white yarn is ‘the thought of the sun’; it represents life light – a male seminal concept of fertility and growth.”

The white cone is seen as divided horizontally into four ascending levels that represent the Upper World – at the summit is the sun. Underneath the world disk is another, inverted, cone of yarn, and the Kogi talk of an invisible cone of black thread, also divided into four levels that represent the Lower World.

“The sun, by spiralling around the world, spins the Thread of Life and twists it around the cosmic axis; during the day a left-spun white thread and during the night a right-spun black one.” [27]

Weaving also plays an important role in the social and spiritual life of many Central American peoples. This is so among the Maya in the highlands of Chiapas. The tradition involved is a very old one. Most ancient Maya art forms did not survive the collapse of Classic Maya society in the 10th century, let alone the Spanish Conquest in the 16th.

Weaving their beautiful and elaborate textiles was exceptional in this respect. As F. Morris notes the huipil, a rectangular blouse that is the ceremonial costume of the ancient and modern Maya, “is woven with designs that symbolize their vision of the cosmos and the beings that bring rain and life to the world”. It is also seen as enveloping the weaver “in a diagram of the world about to flower”. Morris provides a beautiful description of the weaver in her ceremonial finery with all its cosmic imagery. [28]

“Radiating from her head are diamonds that depict the sun’s movement through the sky and underworld. Along the edges of the brocade the musicians of rain, the toads, dance with the Earthlord who creates the clouds and reigns over the flowering plants that appear in growing rows of designs that cover the sleeves. A weaver may include depictions of the ancestors, the patrol saints, the people of the first world who became monkeys, the monsters defeated by the Earthlord, and the animal spirits with their jaguar lord. She interweaves these designs and the power they symbolize into a harmonious vision of the world renewed in flower.” [29]

Very much the same is true of weaving in the islands of the Sumba group that are at present part of Indonesia. The anthropologist Danielle Geirnaert-Martin has made an exhaustive study of the cosmic symbolism in the textiles produced on one of the islands called Laboya. For the Laboyans the weaving of cloth is seen as essential for maintaining the stability and order of a woman’s life, that of her family, and that of the natural world and the all-encompassing cosmos.

“There is an analogy between spinning and birth: the ball of thread symbolises a foetus or a new born baby. It can be made into warp and weft and then woven: for the process of weaving cloth and rearing children is one of equivalence. The positions women take while weaving is said to be good for coitus and bearing children. It is most important to ensure that the warp threads are evenly spaced before beginning. If they are not even, the woman may have miscarriages, the waters of the land may flow out, and the earth may dry up. If the threads cross, it is likened to incest. In a newborn, the elements of the soul need to be welded together using a loom swift, in the same way that it is used to wind yarn from a skein into a ball, otherwise the mawo (breath, life force) may become restless and leave the body. The swift also represents the link between Heaven and Earth, between the living and the dead.” [30]

As with the Kogi, the rationale for such beliefs is found in their creation myths. In one myth the Laboya ancestor, Ubu Raba took the form of a python and wove the land into existence. He wove the fountains “beating the weft into the warp with the sword until all springs were well enclosed by the woven land”. This is how the earth grew moist and young again. Human beings are said to have originated by being plaited or spun, and the moon is responsible for welding together their physical and spiritual properties.

The Laboyans divide the sea and the land into seven layers each. Weaving restores the seasons and the fertility of land, animals and humans. Ubu Raba established order within society by passing the shuttle in the correct direction, and he set out conditions for obeying the rules as he wove the cloth of the world.

On the Laboya loom, the warp is continuous: the warp beam is attached to the horizontal tie-beam above the floor, and the bottom beam is tied to the weaver’s back at the waist. If one weaves in the ‘proper’ order, one ensures a correct relationship with above and below, with the Earth and the Sky.

It is only then that the cycle of the celestial bodies and the alternations of the seasons is resumed. Uba Raba created life using a continuous warp and this is a metaphor for the human life cycle. Cotton is likened to woman’s breath or life force. As the original ancestor, ubu Raba wove cosmic order, the natural environment and the possibility for regeneration. [31]

Laboyans weaving their traditional textiles are thereby also weaving the cosmos – thereby maintaining its critical order. If they fail to perform the sacred rites involved they would be violating the sacred laws that govern their society, the natural world, and indeed the all-encompassing cosmos. To weave in any other way would, in many traditional societies, be referred to as taboo, and in the words of Roger Caillois “an act is taboo because it disrupts the universal order, which is at once that of nature and society”. By so doing, “The Earth might no longer yield a harvest, the cattle might be struck with infertility, the stars might no longer follow their appointed course, death and disease could stalk the land”. To violate a taboo is to be guilty of cosmic sin. [32]

And, in fact, this can be seen to be true. The recent storms and floods in Orissa and Vietnam, and the increased incidence of devastating droughts throughout the world, are the result of cutting down forests and of transforming the chemical composition of the atmosphere and hence disrupt the order of the ecosphere.

Whether we like it or not, the religio-culture of tribal peoples tells them the truth about their relationship with the cosmos. It does so, of course, in their special way – the way that would be best understood and believed in – not just intellectually, but with their heart and soul. It tells them the truth in the way that is most likely to be acted upon.

Religion and Ecology

The great anthropologist Roy Rappaport points out that the important question concerning the beliefs, or ‘cognitive models’, of primal people, “is not the extent to which they are identical with what the analyst states to be reality, but the extent to which they direct behaviour in ways that are appropriate to the biological well-being of the actors and the ecosystems in which they participate.” [33]

He might have added “and the welfare of the ecosphere as a whole”. “The criterion of adequacy for a model is not its accuracy but its adaptive effectiveness” [34] – in the real holistic sense of the term. If primal beliefs or ‘cognitive models’ satisfy this criterion, then they are clearly ‘true’ in the most important sense of the word.

This is so, regardless of the fact that they may be formulated in the language of gods and spirits whose physical existence could be denied by our scientists. But to do so would miss the point. Whether they be historical figures or not is unimportant. They are, above all, archetypes.

The same can be said of the truths of traditional mainstream religions. It is irrelevant to ask whether Noah’s flood as described in the Old Testament actually occurred. It may well have done, but that is not the point. The flood symbolises the forces of chaos that were let loose when people failed to observe the cosmic covenant. Noah’s flood was an archetype, not necessarily an historical event, and its role as an archetype is incomparably more important in the determination of adaptive human behaviour than any possible role it may fulfil as a scientific or historical truth.

It is important to note that these ideas figured prominently in the theology of our early mainstream religions, but that we have lost sight of them. If this is so, then they must be resuscitated, for it is only in this way that religion and the arts can inspire people to unite against the forces of chaos that today are threatening our very survival.

References

1.	Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1978.
2.	Sir Peter Medawar, The Hope of Progress, Wildwood House, London, 1974, p.244.
3.	T. H. Huxley & Julian Huxley, Evolution and Ethics. The Pilot Press, London, 1947.
4.	Lester Ward, quoted by Donald Worster in Nature’s Economy. Sierra Club, San Francisco, 1977.
5.	Op.cit. 3.
6.	Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion. Beacon Press, 1958, p.250.
7.	Ibid.
8.	Jacques Monod, Chance and Necessity. Collins, London, 1972.
9.	Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Modern Theories of Development: An Introduction to Theoretical Biology. Translated by J. H. Woodger. Harper Torchbook, New York, p.123.
10.	Ibid.
11.	Eugene Odum, Fundamentals of Ecology. W.B. Saunders, Philadelphia, 1953, p.5.
12.	Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1989.
13.	Robert Parsons, Religion in an African Society. Ed. E. J. Brill, Leiden, 1964, p.176.
14.	Ibid.
15.	Henrick Kraemer, The Christian Message in a Non-Christian World. Harper, New York, 1938.
16.	Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff, “The Loom of Life: A Kogi Principle of Integration”. In Journal of Latin American Lore. 4:1 (1978) 5-27, see pp.23-24.
17.	Ananda Coomaraswamy, Symbolism of Indian Architecture. Historical Research Documentation Programme, Jaipur 1983.
18.	Rafael Patai, Man and Temple, Thomas Nelson, London 1947.
19.	Titus Burckhardt, Chartres and the Birth of the Cathedral“. Golgonooza Press, 1995, p.17.
20.	Ibid.
21.	Mishnah Shetalim 8.5 quoted by Margaret Barker in The Gates of Heaven, p.106.
22.	Josephus. Special Laws, 1.84-7. Quoted by Margaret Barker in The Gates of Heaven, p.112.
23.	Ibid.
24.	Gerardo Reichel Dolmatoff, op.cit.
25.	Ibid.
26.	Ibid.
27.	Ibid.
28..	F. Morris Jr, ibid.
29.	Ibid.
30.	Natalie Tobert, Review of Danielle Geirnaert-Martin The Woven land of Laboya, London 19 March 1999 (to be published in The Ecologist in a forthcoming issue).
31.	Ibid.
32.	Roger Caillois, L’Homme et le Sacré. Gallimard, Paris, 1988.
33.	Roy Rappoport, Ecology, Meaning and Religion. North Atlanta Books, Richmond, California 1979.
34.	Ibid.