"Unto
you it is given to know the mystery of the
looming on the background
The Mystery of the Sphinx
Among
the world’s most revered symbols, the Sphinx at
That this highly enigmatic and exotic monument, in fact the world’s biggest and heaviest monolithic statue, IS a symbol, seems beyond doubt to almost everyone. But a symbol of what is not, paradoxically, at all clear, and a number of people have even wanted to see in it rather a representation of this or that Pharaoh. This aspect of the problem is in turn connected with the Sphinx's age, over which there is as well strong controversy, though I personally believe it goes far back than any of the oldest Egyptian dynasties - in fact to approximately 12,500 years ago, as the glaciers of the Ice Age were already melting, very probably by the time the biblical Flood occurred.
At
least for a few moments, then, let us focus rather on its symbolic
meaning, maybe not as mysterious as the Sphinx itself or its antiquity
but all the same most intriguing, and let us leave the problem of its
age for the final part of this collaboration. Several questions arise
here: What kind of symbol or symbols are we talking about? If the Sphinx
IS a symbol, what kind of symbol does it evoke? Is that symbol contained
in it? And ultimately, what does that symbol stand for?
Before we examine these questions, however, we will assume, as a general observation based on the monumentality of the statue, that the importance of such symbol (or symbols) must have been huge - at least for its builders. And based on what first comes to mind on viewing it (apart of course from the Sphinx’s great, terrific beauty), and in order to make a first approach to its probable meaning as a symbol, we will incorporate into the equation, naturally associated to the impression of monumentality, the idea of permanence, as the Sphinx quite obviously, like the pyramids themselves, was built to remain forever.
In this
way, we know the answer to the first question: if the Sphinx is a
symbol, then it had to be not only one apt to be expressed visually -
for example, by a big monument such as the sphinx actually is - but also
one that is or was greatly important. This is not much, as most symbols
are both things. But since most of these symbols can usually be
expressed as well by other similar visual representations, we may go
from it on to the subsequent questions and see first what other similar
monuments, statues and the like exist that may be likely to evoke
similar things (and more precisely if the symbol is actually contained
in it) and, second, what those representations stand for.
The Sphinx and
the Four Elements Here immediately comes to mind that other famous sphinx, the Greek sphinx of Thebes, which appears to have inspired past travelers and visitors to the Sphinx of Giza to call it also a ‘Sphinx’, since the real original name of this latter has actually never been known; and along with it its famous question to Oedipus: “What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs in the evening?”, so famous in fact that even now is mentioned in our schools as an example of an ingenious riddle. However, neither the question, nor Oedipus’ answer: “Man, as he crawls on all fours in infancy, walks upright on two legs in adulthood, and uses a cane as a third leg in old age,” can actually satisfy our need for a really meaningful symbol, as they simply posit little more than a clever riddle within an imaginative legend - and we need far more than that.
The
Mesopotamian winged bulls, like their winged lions counterpart,
incorporated three
of the four elements in them. When bulls We can also note a correlation with the early Christian tradition, in part an inheritor of the old Hebrew tradition, which figured the four evangelists with the heads of a lion, an ox, an eagle, and a man - in turn symbolic of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
And with this we are seemingly closer to solving the puzzle, as each of this tetrad of creatures are the symbols of each of the four traditional elements - respectively Fire, Air, Earth, and Water (the order of the elements may vary according to the different traditions). Of enormous significance for all ancient societies and more specifically for such traditional sciences as astrology, alchemy and numerology, these elements are in fact only second to the so-called fifth element orquintessence, ether (or better space) from which they all derive, though this latter is not precisely material but rather spiritual and intrinsically divine. But however it may be, they have always been at the root of not only those disciplines but of the main traditional sciences such as medicine and physics. Still more, from most remote times they have been closely intermingled with the entire corpus of the ancients’ traditional lore both in the East and the West.
In the
Yet the
problem in the
The Raimondi Stela is a major piece of art of the Chavín
culture in the
central
“…In
the case of the Raimondi Stela, when viewed one way, the image depicts a
fearsome deity holding two
staffs. His eyes look upward toward his large, elaborate headdress of
snakes and volutes. This same image, when
If this occurs among scientists of similar specialties (mostly archaeologists and anthropologists) studying the same cultures in the same countries, we can just imagine how much worse can be the case with scientists arrived from different countries and specialties to study an alien culture. Only by exception will they ever arrive at valid conclusions about anything.
But first and foremost, they will never understand the fact that everything was sacred for the ancients. All their science was sacred, and the four elements, which were at the root of and permeated all reality as an essential framework, were a divine manifestation of cosmic and spiritual forces - actually the most powerful of them all - supporting and articulating all that exists, even time. In order to teach this fundamental truth, they resorted to symbols that made it easier to remember it permanently. And the more visible and permanent they were, the easier it was to achieve that end.
In addition to their material meaning, the four material elements have always been associated with the seasons of the year and, by extension, with the course of the cyclic ages. In this way, air becomes the element of spring, fire is that of summer, earth is of fall, and water is of winter. And taking the correlations on to the next level, that of the cyclic ages, air becomes the element of the first age or Golden age (Satya yuga in the Hindu denomination), fire symbolizes the second age or Silver age (Treta yuga), Earth represents the third age or Bronze age (Dvapara yuga), and water is the element of the fourth and last age, the Iron age (or Kali yuga) in which we are at present.
There is one apparent flaw, however, in all of the above, as for one thing, the Mesopotamian winged bulls and lions evidently fall short by at least one of the four elements - in effect, if the bull and the lion are considered separately, then they each lack one element: the former the element fire, and the latter the element earth. However, the difficulty is not such, as a fair proportion of these images have been found to combine the two animals in one - a lion that has for its hind quarters those of an ox, so that actually it is the four elements, and all that they represent, which are symbolized by them.
And what about the Sphinx itself? It apparently only contains two of the four symbols, namely air (man’s head) and fire (the lion’s body), and I don’t think that even Edgar Cayce’s eventual efforts or the efforts of any other Egyptologists or visionaries (see http://crystalinks.com/sphinxtheories.html), apparently completely discredited by now, could possibly make sprout from the lion’s body either wings or an ox’s feet, let alone both. In my opinion, not even regarding the headdress as wings, as some have proposed for an alternative symbol for air, would do - and even if it did, there still would be missing the symbol for earth.
So it must be recognized, we seem to be at a loss here. For unlikely as it may look to even the average person, it might simply be that the Sphinx’s builders had no special symbol in mind as they initially set to the task of carving it, but only the intention to create the image of a beautiful, most impressive and enigmatic creature in order to represent the person and the feats of one particular Pharaoh - possibly Kaphre (c. 2550 BC), as most specialists claim.
And all things considered, at this juncture we can make one of two things: we may dismiss the whole matter and admit the possibility that they did want to only figure a man (Pharaoh Kaphre) with the strength and the ferocity of a lion. Or we may try to find what other facts or clues, or both, are apt to account for the fact that the Sphinx builders decided to include only the earth and fire elements, and not all four elements, in their equation.
In effect, there are other possibilities that suggest something completely different which might, in fact, have been at the root of their conception. Can it be, for example, that the two elements symbolized in the Sphinx, fire and water, were regarded as the only ones that could endanger the Earth and the entire humanity during its now millenary guardianship of probably 12,000 years or more?
What can we make of the fact that the old Olmecs, Teotihuacans and Aztecs differentiated four “Suns” or cycles that ended in an equal number of destructions of the World, of which the third was by a shower of fire (or by the “God of Fire”), and the fourth by a great deluge (although the order is not very clear and varies according to the different traditions and sources)?
Was Peter talking about a secret revealed to him by Jesus Christ himself? Maybe a secret that for the last 12,000 years or more has been contained in the Sphinx?
Luis Miguel Goitizolo
A Message from The Author
Thank You,
Luis Miguel Goitizolo
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