The ritual enacted the destruction of the world (the deaths of the horse and the goat) due to the mystic union of Heaven and Earth (the union of the horse and the mahishi). But it also symbolized the rebirth of Nature, renewed by the drastic event (the union of the couples just after the sacrifice).
Interestingly enough, a similar ritual was performed in ancient Celtic Ireland. This ritual is closely related to the Vedic ashvamedha. In the occasion of his enthronement (a “renewal” of the world), the king would ritually mate with a mare, which was subsequently sacrificed. From its remains a broth was made, which was served communially to all. Clearly, the ritual is also an alias of that of Christian Mass and Communion, whose symbolism can also be traced back to the Vedic archetypes, the rituals of Soma preparation and of the ashvamedha.
The Far Oriental Archetypes In his remarkable study of the Mexican and the Cambodian pyramids (Stufen Pyramiden in Mexico and Kambodscha, Paideuma, VI (1958), 473-517), W. Mueller makes important observations. To start with, the German archaeologist notes that these pyramids share several features which are also often observed everywhere these enigmatic monuments are found. These generally include:
- A surrounding wall, oriented along the Four Cardinal Directions.
- A small temple or shrine at the top.
- Roads of access along the four Cardinal Directions, forming a Cross.
- A lake or dam that is referred to as a “sea”, and which surrounds the pyramid, turning it into an island.
With small differences, the Egyptian pyramids and, in particular the first one of them, that of King Zozer, also obeyed this paradigm. Mueller notes that this scheme corresponds to an ancient conception of the Cosmos, where the earth is considered an island or mountain rising from the primeval waters. In the Egyptian cosmogony, this scheme corresponds to the Tatenen, the Primordial Hill rising out of the waters of the Nun, the Primordial Abyss.
In Hindu conceptions, this mountain is the Holy Mountain, Mt. Meru, rising from the waters of the Primeval Ocean. More exactly, as we discuss in detail elsewhere, this idealized model corresponds to the sacred geometry of Atlantis. This connection among the Mexican pyramids, the Egyptian pyramids and the Cambodian pyramids, placed in regions almost antipodal in the world, attest the universality and, hence, the extreme antiquity of the Atlantean paradigm.
But what interests us here is the connection between pyramids and the Cosmogonic Hierogamy. The reader interested in more details in this regards should read the magnificent book by my Argentianian friend, Prof. José Alvarez Lopez (El Enigma de las Piramides, Buenos Aires, 1978), who treats the matter in depth. In the pyramid of Angkor there is an inscription in Sanskrit, in the northwestern corner of its wall, which reads: “Angkor is the young bride of the King, who just took her home, blushing with desire, and dressed with the sea”.
This beautiful poetic license is closely paralleled in the Book of Revelation, where the Celestial Jerusalem is described in similar terms, as the Bride of the Lamb the King of the City that is no other than the citadel of Atlantis itself. In fact, this quaint imagery is taken directly from the Ramayana, where it is applied to Lanka, about to be ravished by Rama and Hanumant. And the “dressing with the sea”, in a white dress that is even today ritually worn by the brides, is in reality an allegory of the Flood that engulfed the capital of Ravana s worldwide empire.
All this bespeaks of the Cosmogonic Hierogamy, of Atlantis fate, and of its origin in the Far East, in the dawn of times. These images derive directly from the of the Ramayana as can be seen by comparison. But the connection can be carried even further. As Mueller and Alvarez Lopez pointed out, the shrine on the top of the Angkor pyramid was used for a strange Tantric ceremony akin to the Cosmogonic Hierogamy celebrated in the holy of holies of the Egyptian pyramids and temples, and in those of Babylonian ziggurats: the ritual mating of the King and the Whore, the priestess of Bastit.
In Angkor, the king mates with the hierodule, the sacred prostitute that impersons the Nagini, the female Naga, whose role we discuss further below in the present article. The Nagini is the fateful blonde of Hindu traditions, the very same “Goldilocks” that we also encounter in the Egyptian myths which we detail below and elsewhere. In Egyptian traditions too the Whore is connected with the pyramids, for instance in the report of Herodotus concerning the whorish daughter of pharaoh Cheops, or in that related by Diodorus Siculus and the Arab historians, which ascribes the third pyramid of Giza to Naukratis, to Rhodopis, or to other such courtesans of fair countenance.
All these are, as we just said, Tantric rituals similar to the heb sed and the akitu. They replicate the Cosmogonic Hierogamy, and thus insure the periodic renovation of the Cosmos, after the model of the archetypal one which occurred with Atlantis. Alvarez Lopez notes the essential structural, symbolic and ritual identity of the American pyramids found in Mexico, Guatemala, Salvador, Bolivia, and Peru, with the ones of Angkor and Egypt.
The great Argentinian researcher even remarks the unequivocal connection of the American pyramids with the Atlantean myth, which had already been noted by Russian archaeologists such as Jaguemeister and others. For instance, one should note that the Egyptian pyramids essentially use three colors of stones with remarkable regularity: the white limestone of Tura and Mokatan, the red granite of Aswan, and the black basalt of the Sinai and elsewhere.