Chthonic Quotes

What else can I do? Once you've gone this far you aren't fit for anything else. Something happens to your mind. You're overqualified, overspecialized, and everybody knows it. Nobody in any other game would be crazy enough to hire me. I wouldn't even make a good ditch-digger, I'd start tearing apart the sewer-system, trying to pick-axe and unearth all those chthonic symbols - pipes, valves, cloacal conduits... No, no. I'll have to be a slave in the paper-mines for all time.

I will scatter a few nuts on the frosting,’ said Maxwell, and he pushed the lever for that. This sifted handfuls of words like chthonic and heuristic and prozymeides through the thing so that nobody could doubt it was a work of philosophy.

The infamous Chthonic four—the Houses of Hades, Aphrodite, Artemis, and Ares.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Even Lord Acton couldn’t have imagined the depraved power of Chthonics.

For years they have pursued me. Their persistence has kept me underground … forced me to live in purgatory … laboring beneath the earth like a chthonic monster.

She activated Chthonic powers she didn’t know she had, and from what I saw... I believe her blood is her power—she can cause others pain with it.

But poor Andy—even before he was skipped ahead a grade—had always been a chronically picked-upon kid: scrawny, twitchy, lactose-intolerant, with skin so pale it was almost transparent, and a penchant for throwing out words like ‘noxious’ and ‘chthonic’ in casual conversation.

Kharon told him what I was after that first week. That’s why he glared at me accusingly in class. That’s why he made perplexing comments about my power and dishonor. That’s why he said Chthonic lives mattered—I was the Chthonic life, not my mentors.

The heroes cleansed our world of chthonic terrors -- earthborn monsters that endangered mankind and threatened to choke the rise of civilisation. So long as dragons, giants, centaurs and mutant beasts infested the air, earth and seas we could never spread out with confidence and transform the wild world into a place of safety for humanity. In time, even the benevolent minor deities would find themselves elbowed out by the burgeoning and newly confident human race. The nymphs, dryads, fauns, satyrs and sprites of the mountains, streams, meadows and oceans could not compete with our need and greed for land to quarry, farm and build upon. The rise of a spirit of rational enquiry and scientific understanding pushed the immortals further from us. The world was being reshaped as a home fit for mortal beings only. Today, of course, some of the rarer and more vulnerable mortal creatures that have shared the world with us are undergoing the same threats to their natural territories that cuased the end of the nymphs and woodland spirits. Habitat loss and species extinction have all happened before. The days of the gods themselves were numbered too. Prometheus's gift of fire, as Zeus had feared, would one day allow us to do even without the Olympians.

Artemis, along with Selene and Hekate, was one of the Greek triads representing the Old European three-bodied or triune aspect of the Goddess. We can see this represented in this figurine (Fig. 72) of Artemis as part of three-fold Hekate. First you have the pillar—the goddess mother is the axis of the universe herself. Round about are three representations of the Goddess, including Artemis, and Hekate, who represents the chthonic underworld—the magic aspect of the Goddess—and then dancing in a relaxed, fluent manner around about we see the three Graces. Artemis is the giver of abundance: Our Lady of the Wild Things, and the All-Mother of the many breasts, who bears the totality of the entities of the natural world. This is something very, very different from the image of the virgin goddess and the mere huntress that we have normally associated with her.

The glow lasted through the night, beyond the bar's closing, when there were no cabs on the street. And so Mathilde and Lotto decided to walk home, her arm in his, chatting about nothing, about everything, the unpleasant, hot breath of the subway belching up from the grates. 'Chthonic', he said, booze letting loose the pretension at his core, which she still found sweet, an allowance from the glory. It was so late, there were few other people out, and it felt, just for this moment, that they had the city to themselves. She thought of all the life just underfoot, the teem of it that they were passing over, unknowing. She said, 'Did you know that the total weight of all the ants on Earth is the same as the total weight of all the humans on Earth.' She, who drank to excess, was a little bit drunk, it was true, there was so much relief in the evening. When the curtains closed against the backdrop, an enormous bolder blocking their future had rolled away. 'They'll still be here when we're gone,' he said. He was drinking from a flask. By the time they were home, he'd be sozzeled. 'The ants and the jellyfish and the cockroaches, they will be the kings of the Earth.'... 'They deserve this place more than we do,' she said. 'We've been reckless with our gifts.' He smiled and looked up. There were no stars, there was too much smog for them. 'Did you know,' he said, 'they just found out just a while ago that there are billions of worlds that can support life in our galaxy alone.' ...She felt a sting behind here eyes, but couldn't say why this thought touched her. He saw clear through and understood. He knew her. The things he didn't know about her would sink an ocean liner. He knew her. 'We're lonely down here,' he said, 'it's true, but we're not alone.' In the hazy space after he died, when she lived in a sort of timeless underground grief, she saw on the internet a video about what would happen to our galaxy in billions of years. We are in an immensely slow tango with the Andromeda galaxy, both galaxies shaped like spirals with outstretched arms, and we are moving toward each other like spinning bodies. The galaxies will gain speed as they draw near, casting off blue sparks, new stars until they spin past each other, and then the long arms of both galaxies will reach longingly out and grasp hands at the last moment and they will come spinning back in the opposite direction, their legs entwined, never hitting, until the second swirl becomes a clutch, a dip, a kiss, and then at the very center of things, when they are at their closest, there will open a supermassive black hole.

What else can I do? Once you've gone this far you aren't fit for anything else. Something happens to your mind. You're overqualified, overspecialized, and everybody knows it. Nobody in any other game would be crazy enough to hire me. I wouldn't even make a good ditch-digger, I'd start tearing apart the sewer-system, trying to pick-axe and unearth all of those chthonic symbols - pipes, valves, cloacal conduits... No, no. I'll have to be a slave to the paper-mines for all time.

The Death Mother wields a cold, fierce, violent and corrosive power . . . When Death Mother’s gaze is directed at us, it penetrates both psyche and body, turning us into stone. It kills hope. It cuts us dead. We collapse. Our life energy drains from us and we sink into chthonic darkness. In this state, we find ourselves yearning for the oblivion of death. Eventually this yearning for death permeates our cells, causing our body to turn against itself. We may become physically ill.

The reason for the great number and variety of Old European images lies in the fact that this symbolism is lunar and chthonic, built around the understanding that life is in eternal transformation, in constant and rhythmic change between creation and destruction, birth and death. The moon's three phases-new, waxing, and old-are repeated in trinities or triple function deities that recall these moon phases; maiden, nymph, and crone; life-giving, death-giving, and transformational; rising, dying, and self-renewing. Life-givers are also death-wielders. Immortality is secured through the innate forces of regeneration within Nature itself. The concept of regeneration and renewal is perhaps the most outstanding and dramatic theme we perceive in this symbolism. It seems more appropriate to view all of these Goddess images as aspects of the one Great Goddess with her core functions-life-giving, death-wielding, regeneration, and renewal. The obvious analogy would be to Nature itself; through the multiplicity of phenomena and continuing cycles of which it is made, one recognizes the fundamental and underlying unity of Nature. The Goddess is immanent rather than transcendent and therefore physically manifest.

At the same time the act of sacrifice is a fertilization of the mother: the chthonic serpent-demon drinks the blood, i.e., the soul, of the hero. In this way life becomes immortal, for, like the sun, the hero regenerates himself by his self-sacrifice and re-entry into the mother.

In the heart of a hundred billion worlds— Across a trillion dying realities in a lethal multiverse— In the chthonic silence— There was satisfaction. The network of mind continued to push out in space, from the older stars, the burned-out worlds, to the young, out across the Galaxy. Pushed deep in time too, twisting the fate of countless trillions of lives.

Envy, lust, sensuality, lies, and all known vices are the negative, “dark” aspect of the unconscious, which can manifest itself in two ways. In the positive sense, it appears as a “spirit of nature,” creatively animating man, things, and the world. It is the “chthonic spirit” that has been mentioned so often in this chapter. In the negative sense, the unconscious (that same spirit) manifests itself as a spirit of evil, as a drive to destroy. As has already been pointed out, the alchemists personified this spirit as “the spirit Mercurius” and called it, with good reason, Mercurius duplex (the two-faced, dual Mercurius). In the religious language of Christianity, it is called the devil. But, however improbable it may seem, the devil too has a dual aspect. In the positive sense, he appears as Lucifer—literally, the light-bringer.

Turn your attention to all that is dying and decaying. Look at dead leaves, a lifeless tree, a dead animal. Regard anything that is slowly returning to its constituent elements. Smell the pungent odor of decay. Inhale the effluvium of the dissolution process. The object of this exercise is to know the Earth, not just in its telluric aspect (flower bearing soil), but also in its chthonic aspect. Let death talk to you.

Whenever I touch something very old (and I'm a person who likes to look with her hands), I imagine a kind of electric shock connecting me directly with whoever or whatever first held it, and whoever or whatever it once held.

With the dawn of the second millennium the accent shifted more and more towards the dark side. The demiurge became the devil who had created the world, and, a little later, alchemy began to develop its conception of Mercurius as the partly material, partly immaterial spirit that penetrates and sustains all things, from stones and metals to the highest living organisms. In the form of a snake he dwells inside the earth, has a body, soul, and spirit, was believed to have a human shape as the homunculus or homo altus, and was regarded as the chthonic God.26 From this we can see clearly that the serpent was either a forerunner of man or a distant copy of the Anthropos, and how justified is the equation Naas = Nous = Logos = Christ = Higher Adam. The medieval extension of this equation towards the dark side had, as I have said, already been prepared by Gnostic phallicism. This appears as early as the fifteenth century in the alchemical Codex Ashburnham 1166,27 and in the sixteenth century Mercurius was identified with Hermes Kyllenios.

Now Zeus held in his strength no longer. Straightway his lungs were filled with fury, and he began to display his full might. From heaven and from Olympus together he came, with continuous lightning flashes, and the bolts flew thick and fast from his stalwart hand amid thunder and lightning, trailing supernatural flames. All around, the life-bearing earth rumbled as it burned, and the vast woodlands crackled loudly on every side. The whole land was seething, and the streams of Oceanus, and the undraining sea. The hot blast enveloped the chthonic Titans;* the indescribable flames reached the divine sky, and the sparkling flare of the thunderbolt and the lightning dazzled the strongest eyes.

Thus, as far as the destiny of the soul after death is concerned, there are two opposite paths. The first is the "path of the gods," also known as the "solar path" or Zeus's path, which leads to the bright dwellings of the immortals. This dwelling was variously represented as a height, heaven, or an island, from the Nordic Valhalla and Asgard to the Aztec-Inca "House of the Sun" that was reserved for kings, heroes, and nobles. The other path is that trodden by those who do not survive in a real way, and who slowly yet inexorably dissolve back into their original stocks, into the "totems" that unlike single individuals, never die; this is the life of Hades, of the "infernals," of Niflheim, of the chthonic deities.

Hence that state of mind at once gloomy and euphoric which one associates with carrying out the rubbish; and the way we see the men who go by emptying the bins into their pulping truck not just as emissaries for the chthonic world, gravediggers of the inanimate, Charons of a beyond of greasy paper and rusty tin, but as angels too, as indispensable mediators between ourselves and the heaven of ideas in which we undeservedly soar (or imagine we soar) and which can exist only in so far as we are not overwhelmed by the waste which every act of living incessantly produces (even the act of thinking: these thoughts of mine that you are reading being all that been salvaged from the scores of sheets of paper now crumpled up in the bin), heralds of a possible salvation beyond the destruction inherent in all production and consumption, liberators from the weight of time’s detritus, ponderous dark angels of lightness and clarity.

Beginning on the left, first comes a standing figure whose name is Iacchos—Iacchos is the word that was shouted in greeting to the young Dionysus when he appeared in birth, and was the cry that was shouted at the moment of revelation. Personified as the deity Iacchos, he would represent that moment of the illumination that comes at the high point of the mystery drama. The tree behind him is a laurel, a tree that has the apotropaic power of warding off evil. Daphne was turned into a laurel tree, and there’s a place called Daphne on the way from Athens to Eleusis. So this is a threshold where we leave the secular world to enter a protected, sacred space, and the first figure that meets us is an aspect of Dionysus. Next on the way in we encounter the two goddesses: Demeter is holding her torch upward and purifying the upper air, while Persephone, her daughter, is holding her torch downward, purifying the lower, chthonic region.

The bird/snake Goddess represents the continuum of birth, death, and re-birth. The realms of the bird and snake cover all of the worlds. Birds soar in the heavens while some birds also occupy the waters; snakes live on the earth and in the Underworld, and likewise, water snakes occupy the waters. Both bird and snake embody graphic depictions of birth, since both are oviparous. Both creatures represent regeneration as well, since birds molt and snakes shed their skin. In Neolithic Europe, death and rebirth were tied together in the tomb which served as a ritual place for rebirth: the tomb could also represent the womb. In her death aspect, a Goddess such as Medusa turns people to stone—a form of death, since all human activity ceases for those thus ossified. Read against iconographies of the bird/snake goddesses, one can identify ways in which the Underworld Goddess, the Goddess of death, gives birth to life. Like Ereshkigal, with her leeky hair, Medusa, with her snaky hair, is also a birth-giver. But in Medusa’s case, she gives birth as she is dying, whereas in the earlier, Sumerian myth, the process of death led to regeneration; the Goddess of the Underworld did not have to die in the process of giving birth; she who presided over death presided over rebirth. The winged snake Goddess, before Perseus severs her head, is whole; in prehistory, she would have been a Goddess of all worldly realms. When Medusa’s head is severed, she becomes disembodied. Disembodied wisdom is very dangerous. Hence, she becomes monstrous. It is her chthonic self which the classical world acknowledges: Medusa becomes the snaky-haired severed head, a warning to all women to hide their powers, their totalities. This fearsome aspect goes two ways: she can destroy, but she also brings protection. In patriarchal societies, the conception of life and death is often perceived as linear rather than circular.

The occult war is a battle that is waged imperceptibly by the forces of global subversion, with means and in circumstances ignored by current historiography. The notion of occult war belongs to a three-dimensional view of history: this viewdoes not regard as essential the two superficial dimensions of time and space (which include causes, facts, and visible leaders) but rather emphasizes the dimension of depth, or the "subterranean" dimension in which forces and influences often act in a decisive manner, and which, more often not than not, cannot be reduced to what is merely human, whether at an individual or a collective level

In Classical mythology, righteous wrath was the province of old women. Three very specific old women, in fact: the Furies (or the Erinyes, in Greek). Fragments of myth featuring the Furies are found in the earliest records of ancient Greek culture. These sisters were much more ancient than any of the Olympian deities, indicating the persistence of an older, female-dominated tradition which endured here and there even when later, more patriarchal, mythologies set in. The role of the Furies was to preside over complaints brought to them by humans about behavior that was thought to be intolerable: from lesser misdemeanors such as the insolence of the young to the aged, of children to parents, of hosts to guests — to crimes that were very much worse. It was their role to punish such crimes by relentlessly hounding their perpetrators. The Greek poet Hesiod names the three sisters as Alecto — “unceasing in anger,” the punisher of moral crimes; Megaera — “jealous one,” the punisher of infidelity, oath-breaking, and theft; and Tisiphone — “avenger of murder.” They were, he said, the daughters of Gaea (the goddess who personified the Earth), who conceived them from the blood of her spouse, Uranus, after he had been castrated by his son, Cronos. They lived in the Underworld, and like other chthonic deities, like seeds that lie buried beneath the Earth, they were also identified with its fertility. The wrath of the Furies manifested itself in a number of ways: a tormenting madness would be inflicted on the perpetrator of a patricide or matricide; murderers usually suffered a dire disease, and nations which harbored such criminals could be stricken with famine and plague. The Furies could only be placated with ritual purification, and the completion of a task specifically assigned by them for atonement. It’s important to understand that although the Furies were feared, they were also respected and perceived to be necessary: they represented justice, and were seen to be defenders of moral and legal order. The Furies were portrayed as the foul-smelling, decidedly haggish possessors of bat-like wings, with black snakes adorning their hair, arms, and waists, and blood dripping from their eyes. And they carried brass-studded scourges in their hands. In my menopausal years, I certainly had days when I could have gone with that look. I’m happy to admit that the existence of seriously not-to-be-messed-with elder women like the Furies in our oldest European mythology gives me great pleasure. And it’s difficult not to see them as the perfect menopausal role models, because sudden upwellings of (mostly righteous) anger are a feature of many women’s experience of menopause

The Englishmen in the Middle East divided into two classes. Class one, subtle and insinuating, caught the characteristics of the people about him, their speech, their conventions of thought, almost their manner. He directed men secretly, guiding them as he would. In such frictionless habit of influence his own nature lay hid, unnoticed. Class two, the John Bull of the books, became the more rampantly English the longer he was away from England. He invented an Old Country for himself, a home of all remembered virtues, so splendid in the distance that, on return, he often found reality a sad falling off and withdrew his muddle-headed self into fractious advocacy of the good old times. Abroad, through his armoured certainty, he was a rounded sample of our traits. He showed the complete Englishman. There was friction in his track, and his direction was less smooth than that of the intellectual type: yet his stout example cut wider swathe. Both sorts took the same direction in example, one vociferously, the other by implication. Each assumed the Englishman a chosen being, inimitable, and the copying him blasphemous or impertinent. In this conceit they urged on people the next best thing. God had not given it them to be English; a duty remained to be good of their type. Consequently we admired native custom; studied the language; wrote books about its architecture, folklore, and dying industries. Then one day, we woke up to find this chthonic spirit turned political, and shook our heads with sorrow over its ungrateful nationalism - truly the fine flower of our innocent efforts. The French, though they started with a similar doctrine of the Frenchman as the perfection of mankind (dogma amongst them, not secret instinct), went on, contrarily, to encourage their subjects to imitate them; since, even if they could never attain the true level, yet their virtue would be greater as they approached it. We looked upon imitation as a parody; they as a compliment.

MAGIC SKILLS. Fire: 0 (25%) (Base). Air: 0 (75%) (Base). Water: 0 (75%) (Base). Earth: 0 (25%) (Base). Chthonic: 0 (0%) (Base). Empyrean: 0 (100%) (Base). Chaos: 0 (75%) (Base). Order: 0 (25%) (Base). Life: 0 (75%) (Base). Death: 0 (25%) (Base). Thought: 0 (75%) (Base). Aether: 0 (25%) (Base). Soul: 0 (50%) (Base).

Oh, no.” Damien cut through the air with his hand. “I’ve seen your Chthonic, it’s abysmal.” “Of course it’s Abyssal,” Xander snapped. “That’s where it comes from.” “Abysmal,” Damien stressed. “Terrible, illegible, bad. I’ll do the translations, and you take a turn at dictation.

Once again he could hear the planet’s joints and lifeblood. Stirrings in the stone. Ancient events. Here, time was like water. The tiniest creatures were his fathers and mothers. The fossils were his children. It made him into remembrance itself. He let his bare palms ricochet upon the walls, drawing in the heat and the cold, the sharp and the smooth. Plunging, galloping, he pawed at the flesh of God. This magnificent rock. This fortress of their being. This was the Word. Earth. Moment by moment, step by step, he felt himself becoming prehistoric. It was a blessed release from human habits. In this vast, capillaried monastery, through these openings and fretted spillways and yawning chthonic fistulae, drinking from pools of water older than mammal life altogether, memory was simply memory. It was not something to be marked on calendars or stored in books or labeled in graphs or drawn on maps. You did not memorize memory any more than you memorized existence. He remembered his way deeper by the taste of the soil and by the drag of air currents that had no cardinal direction. He left behind the cartography of the Holy Land and its entry caves through Jebel el Lawz in the elusive Midian. He forgot the name of the Indian Ocean as he passed beneath it. He felt gold, soft and serpentine, standing from the walls, but no longer recognized it as gold. Time passed, but he gave up counting it. Days? Weeks? He lost his memory even as he gained it.

In the Neolithic period, throughout Europe and the Near East, there appear figurines which represent bird/women, snake/women, and bird/snake/woman hybrids. Since Goddesses with bird and snake iconography appear in early historic religions, such as those of Egypt and Mesopotamia, it has been theorized that the figurines represent powerful divine female figures in the Neolithic cultures of Europe and the Near East. The “stiff white nude” figures of the Cyclades, Anatolia, and the Balkans may be death figures, but a pregnant Cycladic figure demonstrates that the Goddess serves regeneration as well as death. Early historic textual evidence of this may be found in the Sumerian Descent of Inanna, where the Underworld Goddess and Goddess of death, Ereshkigal, is in the process of giving birth. Just as the more ancient figures, Medusa too is winged, and she has snaky hair: that is, she embodies both the serpentine and the avian aspects of the Neolithic bird/snake Goddess, even though she does not have these characteristics in her earliest depictions. The bird/snake Goddess represents the continuum of birth, life, death, rebirth. The realms of the bird and snake cover all of the worlds; the realm of the bird is the heavens, while waterbirds also occupy the waters. That of the snake is the earth and Underworld, and likewise water snakes occupy the waters. Both bird and snake embody graphic depictions of birth, since both are oviparous. Both creatures are graphic depictions of regeneration as well, since birds molt and snakes shed their skin. In Neolithic Europe, death and rebirth were tied together in the tomb which served as a ritual place for rebirth: the tomb was also the womb. In her death aspect, a Goddess such as Medusa turns people to stone—a form of death, since all human activity ceases for those thus ossified.  Read against the iconographies of the bird/snake goddesses, one can identify ways in which the Underworld Goddess, the death Goddess, gives birth to life. Like Ereshkigal, with her leeky hair, Medusa with her snaky hair is also a birth-giver. But in Medusa’s case, she gives birth as she is dying, whereas in the earlier, Sumerian myth the process of death led to regeneration; the Goddess of the Underworld did not have to die in the process of giving birth; she who presided over death presided over rebirth. The winged snake Goddess, before her head is severed by Perseus, is whole; in prehistory she would have been a Goddess of all of the worldly realms. When Medusa’s head is severed, she becomes disembodied. Disembodied wisdom is very dangerous. Hence, she becomes monstrous. It is her chthonic self which the Classical world acknowledges: Medusa becomes the snaky-haired severed head, a warning to all women to hide their powers, their totalities. This fearsome aspect goes two ways: she can destroy, but she also brings protection.

You do not need to walk in the wilderness to make contact with the wild. If you know your stories--if you understand the mythologies of your land--then you can leap from a sunlit stroll with your dog into the ancient, chthonic wood.

May it be of no surprise to you that our most rapturous and indefatigable predator, that same Scorpion thrust heaven-wards into immortality, with its great arcing death-weapon and the vice-gripping of its pincers, was conjured from the fecund Chthonic soil, according to Romans, by goddess-Queen Juno: wrathful, beautiful, cunning, noble, Juno. Juno the spiteful, Juno the Just, Juno the avenging, Juno the glorious and regal perpetually cast in shame and humiliation by the escapades of her consort. Juno, for whom each embarrassment, each blasphemy, catalyzed another disaster for mankind. Juno who created the beast which stung the horses of Phaeton, the beast Aratos spoke of in his poem Phaenomena, heralding “the fiery sting of the huge portent [Scorpio] in the south wind’s bosom”. Juno who would command her warrior-familiar, Scorpius, to sting even the hunter-giant-paragon, Orion. They say Orion flees in perpetuity from Scorpius, now, but are we so sure it is not from Juno that he exhausts himself in the hope of evasion?

The cock or rooster that is met by the well, or the entrance to the Otherworld, represents the presence of the Psychopomp himself- the King of Spirits, who opens the ways to and fro between Seen and Unseen. Mercury, as he was worshiped by the Romans in Britain, was often depicted with a bag of riches (the riches of the underworld) and a cock or rooster at his side. The fact that Mercury was often synchronized by the Romans with Native underworld or chthonic Gods (Gods who were seen as controllers of the wealth below the earth, as well as chief of the spirits below) is well known; this association with the rooster is thereby quite telling. The cock's crow at dawn was seen, anciently, as an apotropaic sound, driving away evil. Even the image of the cock or rooster still carries and projects apotropaic power, and is often used to decorate homes or adorn weathervanes.

This is why he appears in so much folklore and in so many of the myths of earlier religions as a mysterious chthonic and land-based figure, not just a sky or air-based presence. So great is the aesthetic distinction between the realm of sky and the realm of earth, that we see in the evolution of myth (in nearly all places) two distinct Gods often forming from this: a fatherly, usually more severe and distant "Sky" God, and a more sensual, wild, tricky, or dangerous "Earth" God or spirit, who might be his son and sometimes his adversary.

Though each of the Vedas may be regarded as a separate work, their composition must have originated contemporaneously. Thus there is no clear division between the notion of the personification of stellar, atmospheric and chthonic phenomena and the henotheistic and henotic notions that finally superseded them. Some members of the brahmin and ksatra classes, and even of the südra, joined secret coteries in the seclusion of the forest and composed radical Äranyakas and Upanisads, which rejected ritual sacrifice as the sole means of liberation (moksa), and introduced a monistic doctrine. Such ideas challenged the stereotyped theological dogmas and revitalized religion in India. So great was their impact that the Äranyakas and Upanishads were finally regarded as the fulfilment of Vedic nascent aspirations, and therefore called the Vedanta, the end or conclusion ‘anta’ of the Veda.

Ueronados: From above, pertaining to Albios, celestial.15 Andernados: From below, pertaining to Dumnos, chthonic, infernal.

While Malabron is a water spirit, it should also be noted that he shows chthonic features. He meets Robastre close to Aleaume’s coffin; there he transforms into a horse, a chthonic animal and preeminent psychopomp (one that accompanies souls), and it should be recalled that his metamorphosis ended at daybreak, a time when Malabron behaved oddly; he tumbled three times across the ground.*12 Malabron is therefore a complex figure—an aquatic sprite and a shape-shifting creature—and he has a relationship with death that is difficult to pin down at this stage of our investigation.

For Penina Mezei petrify motive in folk literature stems from ancient, mythical layers of culture that has undergone multiple transformations lost the original meaning. Therefore, the origin of this motif in the narrative folklore can be interpreted depending on the assumptions that you are the primary elements of faith in Petrify preserved , lost or replaced elements that blur the idea of integrity , authenticity and functionality of the old ones . Motif Petrify in different genres varies by type of actor’s individuality, time and space, properties and actions of its outcome, the relationship of the narrator and singers from the text. The particularity of Petrify in particular genres testifies about different possibilities and intentions of using the same folk beliefs about transforming, says Penina Mezei. In moralized ballads Petrify is temporary or eternal punishment for naughty usually ungrateful children. In the oral tradition, demonic beings are permanently Petrifying humans and animals. Petrify in fairy tales is temporary, since the victims, after entering into the forbidden demonic time and space or breaches of prescribed behavior in it, frees the hero who overcomes the demonic creature, emphasizes Mezei. Faith in the power of magical evocation of death petrifaction exists in curses in which the slanderer or ungrateful traitor wants to convert into stone. In search of the magical meaning of fatal events in fairy tales, however, it should be borne in mind that they concealed before, but they reveal the origin of the ritual. The work of stone - bedrock Penina Mezei pointed to the belief that binds the soul stone dead or alive beings. Penina speaks of stone medial position between earth and sky, earth and the underworld. Temporary or permanent attachment of the soul to stone represents a state between life and death will be punished its powers cannot be changed. Rescue petrified can only bring someone else whose power has not yet subjugated the demonic forces. While the various traditions demons Petrifying humans and animals, as long as in fairy tales, mostly babe, demon- old woman. Traditions brought by Penina Mezei , which describe Petrify people or animals suggest specific place events , while in fairy tales , of course , no luck specific place names . Still Penina spotted chthonic qualities babe, and Mezei’s with plenty of examples of comparative method confirmed that they were witches. Some elements of procedures for the protection of the witch could be found in oral stories and poems. Fairy tales keep track of violations few taboos - the hero , despite the ban on the entry of demonic place , comes in the woods , on top of a hill , in a demonic time - at night , and does not respect the behaviors that would protect him from demons . Interpreting the motives Petrify as punishment for the offense in the demon time and space depends on the choice of interpretive method is applied. In the book of fairy tales Penina Mezei writes: Petrify occurs as a result of unsuccessful contact with supernatural beings Petrify is presented as a metaphor for death (Penina Mezei West Bank Fairytales: 150). Psychoanalytic interpretation sees in the form of witches character, and the petrification of erotic seizure of power. Female demon seized fertilizing power of the masculine principle. By interpreting the archetypal witch would chthonic anima, anabaptized a devastating part unindividualized man. Ritual access to the motive of converting living beings into stone figure narrated narrative transfigured magical procedures some male initiation ceremonies in which the hero enters into a community of dedicated, or tracker sacrificial rites. Compelling witches to release a previously petrified could be interpreted as the initiation mark the conquest of certain healing powers and to encourage life force, highlights the Penina.

Shakespeare’s felicity is so often taught it is easy to overlook how taut the sinews in his neck must have been when he grasped his pen, or the musk that exuded from the fat of his chin below a somewhat chthonic grin— life wrestled death on his desk when he composed.

The aim of this fight is to combine the phallic-chthonic with the spiritual-heavenly masculinity, and the creative union with the anima in the hieros gamos is symptomatic of this.

Ego-accentuation leads from the uroboric to the hermaphroditic, and so to the narcissistic stage, which is autoerotic at first and represents a primitive form of centroversion. The next stage is that of phallic-chthonic masculinity, dominated by the body sphere, and this in turn is succeeded by a masculinity in which the activity of consciousness has become the specific activity of an autonomous ego.

the creek is a reminder that we do not live in a simulation—a streamlined world of products, results, experiences, reviews—but rather on a giant rock whose other life-forms operate according to an ancient, oozing, almost chthonic logic.

maybe the occult is always necessary to midwife science into a paradigm shift. Maybe whenever the universe chooses someone through whom to reveal its secrets, the gates of the chthonic crack open too, and a lot of supernatural noise comes with it. And once that paradigm shift is accomplished, the occult can go away again.

chthonic

Carmenta was, like the Camenae, a water nymph. Ancient sources stressed the chthonic nature of water, and because of this, it had mantic powers.10 There was also a perceived linguistic link between the name Carmenta and carmen, which we translate most often as “poem.” Its primary meaning, however, is “ritual utterance” or “magic spell.

chthonic

The Priest is able to write these words in the air, or mind and clay, earth, or heart and thereby gain success by remembering the formulae and being in submission to the chthonic mind, also known as the deities.” The reader may note that in other writings it has been mentioned that the “chthonic mind” once awakened acts independently from the conscious and subconscious mind. This innermost part of our being is what the ancient Mesopotamian recognized as his personal god.

Sometimes sitting at a desk trying to force this doesn’t work. I never have writer’s block, exactly, but sometimes things do slow down. At those times I ask myself if my conscious mind might be thinking too much—and it is exactly at this point that I most want and need surprises and weirdness from the depths. Some techniques help in that regard. For instance, I’ll carry a microrecorder and go jogging on the West Side, recording phrases that match the song’s meter as they occur to me. On the rare occasion that I’m driving a car, I can do the same thing (are there laws against driving and songwriting?). Basically, anything—driving, jogging, swimming, cooking, cycling—that occupies part of the conscious mind and distracts it, works. The idea is to allow the chthonic material the freedom it needs to gurgle up. To distract the gatekeepers. Sometimes just a verse, or even a phrase or two, will resonate and be sufficient, and that’s enough to “unlock” the whole thing. From there on, it becomes more like fill-in-the-blank, conventional puzzle solving.

When the beautiful and benevolent Queen of Elphame still has to take True Thomas through a dimly-lit ordeal full of an ocean of gore before he can reach Elphame, it is clear the Faerie Faith that gave birth to Witchcraft was originally linked both to the chthonic realm and to a shining one. Christianity2 had no place for such ambiguity in its moral universe yet it still crept in through the third path that the Faerie Faith held firm to. Witches, or whatever the humans who worked with faeries were called in each country, were associated with darkness and death because they were the liminal guardians of the threshold of harrowing and initiatory Underworld descent, a required experience before a human could enter Faerie.

He hauled it closer, peering into its bubbling mass with eyes that he knew were burning blue. <> Teeth of black formed atop the purple-blue goo. It snarled at him. I Shall Die Before Revealing Anything To You. Felix clenched his jaw. <> Chthonic Tribute! <> The Creature’s scream tangled Dissonance and Harmony and wrapped them into baleful chords, but Felix weathered it, flexing the shaking walls of his Bastion to their utmost. It clawed and tore through his channels, his core, but it could not escape. The Seal within caught it, then his Hunger. The Creature was gone, once more. YUM.

Mari is seen as leader of both the sorginak and the laminak who both live with her or visit her in her great cave. Mari is considered to be at the top of the Basque pantheon, and whilst she flies through the air and is seen at times as a ‘woman of fire’ she is primarily to be discovered below ground in certain caves, which is significant because it makes the Basque pantheon the only remnant European pantheon to be headed by a female spirit who is said to have her dwelling underground rather than in the sky. She is known for possessing a golden comb with which she is want to comb her beautiful hair. Significantly the Basque pantheon is the closest thing we have that is suggestive of a pre-Indo-European belief system, so it makes sense that this chthonic aspect should be unique among European polytheisms and lends further credibility to the Basque claim. It is also hard to ignore how those distinctive characteristics tie into faerie lore. Mari is not only a Goddess but a laminak herself which makes her very much a prototypical Faerie Queen. If the head of a pantheon is a faerie this gives new meaning to the term “Faerie Faith.

The notion of depth is more complex in Nietzsche’s mature thought than in his early work. Indeed, he develops two parallel concepts; the first is the chthonic roots of becoming that is distinctly ontological, and the second is the herd existence that is the antithesis of the noble (the herd depth is juxtaposed to the noble height and exists on a lower rung of the social hierarchy to the noble). When this is considered at an ontological level, the herd position is an intermediary position of impotence in between height and chthonic depth that lacks the drive or the desire for a connection to either. In Heraclitean language, the herd gaze is cast downward because it is comfortable and easy, but this lamentable preoccupation with decay ultimately leads to the moralization that is characteristic of Anaximander because, as Heraclitus had established, 'Souls take pleasure in becoming moist' and seek explanation for their own decay. The herd’s preference for dampness and decay serves as an internal counter position. This movement can be appreciated in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, specifically 'Tree on the Mountainside'. The tree reaches its peak in its journey to height and finds lightening; it reveals not ‘enlightenment’ in the fire (dissolution), but stands at a point of the limitation of its growth that reveals the clarity and awareness of the connection between the two polarities of height and depth (the tree spans both); what Nietzsche will call Heraclitean wisdom.

Many more details confirm my work: For example, Sokar (who is located in the 5th hour domain) is a chthonic deity of canals and underground tombs. He is the god of the Mysterious Region which could be identified as the Grand Gallery. This passageway could possibly be recognized as the oval island of Sokar which were guarded by large granite blocks from Afu-Ra's path. The granite slabs were probably securing the pathway to the Grand Gallery from the King's Chamber rather than from the pyramid's entrance against tomb robbers as Mark Lehner's hypothesized.

You realize that this entire plan relies on a demon of the chthonic realm, right?” Wick said. “That’s why Gryph called it a Hail Mary. I do not know what kind of god this Mary is, but if she helps us get through this, I’ll make whatever sacrifice she desires.

Ferguson urges us to reconsider the child as a liminal, ambiguous figure, one capable of both compliance with capital and collusion with chthonic revolutionary energies.

a Graeco-Roman ‘grammar’ of religious studies remains dominant. For instance, the expectation that pre-Christian religions should have a ‘pantheon’ (implying a hierarchy of anthropomorphic polytheistic deities with defined functions) remains widespread, as does a prevailing assumption that celestial deities are more significant than chthonic deities or nature spirits.

The belief that godlings are always on the way out may be down to the low or unclear status they enjoy within religious cosmologies; even in Ovid’s Fasti, the numen Faunus is unsure whether he will have any power to influence Jupiter. The chthonic di nemorum, the gods of the groves, always occupy a position subordinate to the celestial Olympians, and then subordinate to the Olympians’ transcendent Christian successor as supreme deity. The theory advocated by Emma Wilby and Michael Ostling that godlings represent and embody a more basic substratum of animistic belief beneath later polytheisms is not without merit, although it is largely unproveable. In the specific case of Roman religion, godlings of nature do indeed seem to be older than the Greek-influenced official pantheon, but projecting this Roman situation onto Britain is perilous.

I was Chthonic.

Chthonic Houses

There are good reasons to think that belief in a chthonic otherworld whose name can be inferred from Gaulish inscriptions as *Andedubno (the Welsh Annwn) was a feature of Romano-British religion, even if such beliefs are neither epigraphically attested nor described by Roman authors. In 1983 a Gallo-Roman lead tablet was discovered at Larzac in France, featuring an apparent ancestral Gaulish cognate for Annwn, antumnos, in the phrase ponne antumnos nepon / nes liciatia neosuode / neia uodercos nepon (tentatively translated by Pierre-Yves Lambert as ‘If she is in the underworld, or enchanted by the thread, if she is [still] visible …’).128 Lambert traces Annwn to a hypothetical British word *Andedubno, ‘the world below’.

Firstly, as Katharine Briggs insisted, godlings are non-human beings.49 They are not to be confused with heroes, demigods or saints, because they are entities of a decidedly supernatural character even if they take a physical form and appear ‘human-like’. Secondly, godlings are ‘chthonic’ entities, ‘land spirits’ connected with nature, the land or the household rather than with celestial realms. They are not to be confused with angels or transcendent gods. Thirdly, godlings are often ambiguous in various ways; they may have animal or therianthropic characteristics, rendering their classification as human-like or animal-like ambiguous, and their gender may be uncertain or fluid. Furthermore, while they may be understood and venerated as individual entities, they will often also be understood and venerated as a class of beings, such as ‘the nymphs’, ‘the fauns’, ‘the Parcae’ or ‘the fairies’. As Jacqueline Simpson noted, the ‘contradictoriness’ of fairies is one of their stable attributes.50 Fourthly, godlings are often associated with abstract concepts of fate and destiny. In this respect they are adjacent to (albeit not the same as) divine personifications, and they are entities conjured at need in order to provide a focus for anxieties about unpredictable forces.

chthonic

I stand before the symbol of the Forbidden Knowledge of Liberation, Illumination and Apotheosis. I enter this sacred brother and sisterhood of my own free will, strong of mind and prepared for the path. I am aware that I must endeavor to Know Myself and accept the responsibility of the sacred gift of consciousness, called the Black Flame. I shall by solemn oath seek my own Liberation, confronting and overcoming weaknesses to then come into being bearing my own Black Light. In Illumination I shall open the gates of my inner depths of darkness, gathering the primal desires and passions which shall be balanced by my conscious mind. By the path of Liberation and Illumination, the fiery essence shall blaze with a Black Light and I will shape my Apotheosis. The symbol of the Circle is the Ouroboros center of my Living Temple of Mind, Body and Spirit. I am the center of the Crossroads, X, around me the swirling chaos and darkness which all originates from. My substance is encircled by the abyssic dragon-serpent, Ouroboros. In the name of Leviathan, I command the dark waters and darkness to take form from my desire. I am not blind in the darkness, the torch I ignite shines upon the path I create before me. Every experience brings insight, knowledge transforms into wisdom and power. The Forbidden Knowledge of the Empyrean, Chthonic and Infernal will be opened to me, may I have the wisdom to Know Myself through these ciphers and tests. May I have the courage to reject religious and monotheistic chains of spirit and the words of the slave-masters of this world! The Black Flame will blaze brighter for the thoughts, words and deeds which manifest my desires. I accept this responsibility and along with other Luciferians beside me, I stand alone and strong as the god (or goddess) of my own world. I will consciously build my temple of mind-body-spirit well in un-shakable foundations. Hail the Triad of the Morning Star, the path to be conquered in my Apotheosis.

Bezaliel is associated (like Azazel) with the Fulgura Inferna, the lightning flash which sprang from the ground. The Fulgura Inferna was possessed by Chthonic Deities in the ancient Etruscan religion. The Etruscan word for ‘lightning’ was rendered by the Latin ‘bidens’, ‘Forked Lightning’ is represented as the Two-Pronged Fork. This symbol is associated with the fork of Hades, God of the Underworld. The associations and deep meaning in Luciferian symbolism has layers of hidden knowledge which can be applied to initiatory benefit not only in philosophy but spiritual development as well. If you choose the path of Cacodaimonic Nephilim Apotheosis, Bezaliel is a key to insight and guidance upon this theoretical and forbidden possibility.

Dionysos at Samothrace where the chthonic mysteries of Hekate-Brimo and her consort Dionysos/Sabazios were celebrated and the sanctuary was thereafter taken into Macedonia’s protection

In Goddess cultures, rather than separating consciousness, creating division and reinforcing hierarchy, consciousness entwines. Imagine a serpent, conduit for chthonic and cosmic wisdom, coiling up the Mother Tree. Returning to the roots of Earth based spiritualities shifts thinking: the cutter becomes the planter; the ruler, a custodian. Patriarchy severed our connection with spirit, stealing this knowledge from the many, giving it to the privileged few. The fundamental difference I see between Eve and Asherah is the separation of consciousness, coercively imposed upon Eve by the patriarch. Asherah IS the tree. Eve walks beneath the tree. Asherah shape-shifts into serpent consciousness. Eve talks to the serpent. Asherah IS the apple and seed of wisdom. Eve picks the apple from the tree of knowledge and is called out for her “disobedience.” God tells Eve that, despite her own dreams and aspirations, Adam will “rule over her.” Adam has permission to “trod” Eve in the dirt. She loses her autonomy and identity. As her womb hosts the patriarchal seed, misogyny seeds in the population. Attacking women’s perceived promiscuity is textbook misogyny. Targeting women’s freedom is textbook misogyny. Silencing women is textbook misogyny. Victim-shaming, body-shaming and period-shaming are textbook misogyny. At a fundamental level, patriarchy objects to women having the freedom to roam the world, taste the fruit, enjoy sex, with the right to say no. At a fundamental level patriarchy wants women to submit. It wants women back in the house, where servitude awaits.

Tanit’s roles are unclear, but she may be both celestial, connected with the moon, and chthonic (her cult was practised in caves in some Punic sites in Spain). She may also have been connected to sailors and to the maritime world. Her iconographical attributes include dolphins, fish, pomegranates, an open hand, and doves. She is often represented symbolically through the “sign of Tanit”, which may be a schematic rendering of the goddess with her arms raised, and is found on stela, coins, figurines, and in many other locations, and it increases in frequency as her popularity as a goddess rises from the fifth century BCE onwards.

She’s a powerful Chthonic heiress—and she saved Helen!” Patro shouted proudly, then raised his fist into the air. “She’s a hero!

Make her do it for Sophia, daughter of Isara. For her alone. Yes, chthonic king, burn, burn, and ignite, inflame her heart, her liver, her spirit, with love and desire for me. Drive her mad for me. Torment her constantly. Force her running through the streets and houses. Enslave her to Sophia. Let her give up all she possesses. Let her give up herself. O terrible demon of the underworld, read the spell on this tablet and translate it into action.

As though we possessed some kind of chthonic instinct, something deep within us that urges us to move death down to the earth whence we came.

The patriarchal ego of both men and women, to earn its instinct-disciplining, striving, progressive, and heroic stance, has fled from the full-scale awe of the goddess. Or it has tried to slay her, or at least to dismember and thus depotentiate her. But it is towards her-and especially towards her culturally repressed aspects, those chthonic and chaotic, ineluctable depths-that the new individuating, yin-yang balanced ego must return to find its matrix and the embodied and flexible strength to be active and vulnerable, to stand its own ground and still to be empathetically related to others. This return is often seen as part of the developmental pat tern of women-what Erich Neumann calls a reconnection to the Self (the archetype of wholeness and regulating center of the personality) after the wrenching away from the mother by the patriarchal uroboros and the patriarchal marriage partner.2 But Adrienne Rich speaks for many of us when she writes, “The woman I needed to call my mother was silenced before I was born.” Unfortunately, all too many modern women have not been nurtured by the mother in the first place. Instead, they have grown up in the difficult home of abstract, collective authority-"cut off at the ankles from earth,” as one woman put it-full of superego shoulds and oughts. Or they have identified with the father and their patriarchal culture, thus alienating themselves from their own feminine ground and the personal mother, whom they have often seen as weak or irrelevant. Such women have all the more necessity to meet the goddess in her primal reality. This inner connection is an initiation essential for most modern women in the Western world: without it we are not whole. The process requires both a sacrifice of our identity as spiritual daughters of the patriarchy and a descent into the spirit of the goddess, because so much of the power and passion of the feminine has been dormant in the underworld—in exile for five thousand years.