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The mystery of the bas-reliefs in the caverns of
Dénèze-sous-Doué needs to be investigated, but how? The sculptures are enigmatic and
there is no general agreement as to what produced them. These caverns are typical of such
sites that today present only the relict remains of a once vital, religious, ceremonial
site. As we examine the reasons for these mysterious sculptures, it becomes clear that the
answer to the mystery depend on understanding the history of the turbulent 12th to
15th centuries in Europe. The so-called heretical sects of those times are part
of this as is an investigation of the evolution of those sects. Some are traceable to the
great Mystery religions of ancient civilisations such as Sumer, Greece and Egypt. Back in antiquity, the myths and legends of great societies formed the woof and
weft from which the Mystery religions were woven. As some of these myths and symbols are
considered, they could provide clues to the enigmas of Deneze. Perhaps from the little
hamlet of Mousseaux and its surrounding districts, we might see how the spirit of, what is
now called gnosticism, resurfaced in the twentieth century. Today it has become a force
for spiritual growth that may be quite appropriate to people in the third millenium. Where
do we begin to unravel the mystery? What is a myth, what is the symbolic importance of the
underground places where religious mystery rites are enacted? What are the
‘Mysteries’ and why do they need an underground room, cellar or cave for use as
part of their rituals? What is the importance of the rock cave in the religious symbolism
they portray?
We will seek for the answers to these questions, relying on the guidance
of archaeology, anthropology, ethnology, history and even clinical psychology and religion
As a beginning, we consider what are the myths and symbols associated with the cave and
the underworld, from both exoteric and esoteric viewpoints.
Myth
In the last century, myths were generally considered as equivalent to
fairy stories. Yet in 1888, the esotericist, Helena P. Blavatsky, expressed what was then
a very enlightened attitude to mythology as a source of history when she wrote:
‘mythology was a primitive mode of thinking the early thought. It was founded on
natural fact…There is nothing…irrational about it…when its mode of
expression by sign language is thoroughly understood’. She goes on to observe that:
‘the ancient Egyptians…had observed the simple fact that the cat saw in the
dark, and that her eyes became full-orbed and grew more luminous by night…[They] were
not ignorant enough to suppose that the moon was a cat’, they simply adopted
it as a ‘living pictograph of the lunar orb’ (Blavatsky, 1950).
Blavatsky, together with Carl G. Jung (1972) and others, for example,
Warner (1975), give a rational basis for exploring myths while Norbert Casteret (1951)
holds that myths have their origins in actual events. Warner (1975), adopting the middle
ground, writes:
Today, it is generally admitted that myth and legend can, and often do,
have a basis in historical fact…Human beings…while unlike each other in many
ways have always still more in common, and their imagination, when confronted with similar
events, will react to them in much the same way…even when they…can have had no
geographical or racial connections with one another.
Although the myths of Homer and Hesiod reveal that the gods were
immortal, early Greek philosophies rejected them as fictional, while Xenophanes (6-5th
C. BCE) completely rejected the anthropomorphisation of the gods. All these efforts
represented attempts to free ancient ideas of divinity from association with the human
form. Yet the Hellenistic world still maintained interest in the stories and, although a
rather more literal and sophisticated interpretation was adopted, hidden meanings were
still sought.
Two typical interpretations were adopted by the ancients, that of the
Stoics (c. 310 BCE) and of Euhemerus (early 3rd C. BCE). The Stoics looked for
allegories in the meanings of myths. For instance, when Hera was bound by Zeus, they
interpreted this as meaning that Aether limited the extent of Air. On the other hand,
Euhemerus attempted to establish that the gods were ancient kings later deified. Much
later, Christian apologists adopted the Hellenistic interpretations and then stated that
the myths were fictional.
In the latter half of the 19th C., the writings of Max Muller
and Sir James Frazer provided diverse views that stimulated a renewed interest in
mythology. Muller (1964) considered that myths were a ‘disease of language’ and
Frazer (1976) wrote that they were ‘mistaken explanations of the manifestations of
nature and humanity’.
In the twentieth century, Sigmund Freud (1962) and Carl Jung (1990)
stimulated further interest by drawing attention to the links between mythology and
psychology. They drew conclusions by gathering information from their research into
clinical psychology. In studying archaic stories, ethnologists have found that primitive
societies in which mythology is, or was until recently ‘alive’, believe that
their myths are ‘true stories’-sacred and precious possessions.
Generally, ethnology finds that where living traditions are involved, a
myth tells how creative events about the earth, human beings and all the natural world
came into being. The myth recounts how these actually happened with characters that are
always supernatural beings. It is not ‘historical in itself’, but it uses
‘historical events to make its point’ (Sproul, 1979).
Myths become models for human behaviour and the repetition of associated
rites reinforces their power, recalling the original events that generated the myths. In
this way, daily survival tasks are learnt and reinforced in the young by associating the
tasks with the methods of the ancestors. In Australia, this was part of the training of
young male aboriginals with hunting and the ‘women’s business’ of
food-gathering.
The myth is relived and vivified and the accuracy of the task reinforced
with repetition. Casteret (1951) explains:
The legends of mythology conceal very deep mysteries and make allegories
of what are real and important events, having their origins in things that actually
happened, and it was in no vain intent that the ancients instituted ceremonies of
initiation in which, without any doubt the veil was lifted.
In traditional Australian Aboriginal culture, this secret initiation
takes place in the Bora Ring which is said to represent the body of the Supreme Being or
the universe ‘of which every living thing, yowie or soul is a part’ (Havecker,
1994).
As we consider the various myths that relate to the Mystery teachings,
and notice how the symbols of the underworld and cave repeatedly appear, often the context
of the myth is strange, even incomprehensible in contemporary terms. It can be helpful to
have a key to unlock the mysterious concepts contained. Such a device may be developed by
searching in the esoteric literature of both eastern and western philosophical and
religious writings to develop an amalgum to assist interpretation. Appendix A shows how
the traditional concepts of various ‘planes’ of consciousness are related to one
another in eastern and western religious writings. Briefly, the ‘Spirit’ of
Western religion is equivalent to the Adi, Anupadaka, Atma, Buddhi and
Higher Manas of the East. It is expressed by the enlightened arhat and adept
as abstract thought, universal love, wisdom, oneness with all of nature, intuition and
universal consciousness.
The Soul of western gnostic Christian literature, however, is the
reincarnating ego. This comprises Higher Manas, Lower Manas and Kama
of the East, which the west knows as abstract and rational thought, emotion and desire.
The Natural Body or physical body is the Sthula of the East and
includes the linga-sharira (etheric double). It incorporates the physical states of
matter as we know them in the physical world. This also includes the energy state just
beyond the threshold of ordinary sight, referred to as the ‘etheric’ in some of
the literature.
Mystery Teachings: In many of the Mystery teachings associated
with various cultures and civilisations, there are two levels of instruction. One level is
for the general population. These are the Lesser Mysteries that are told as allegories or
stories. The other level, the Higher Mysteries, is taught in private to an
‘elite’ group. The reason for this is that training in control of thought and
feeling as well as bodily discipline must precede teaching of arcane matters. This is
expressed by Iamblichos in his Life of Pythagoras (quoted by Wilder, 1911) as:
‘He who pours clean water into a muddy well does but disturb the mud’ and in
Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount he charges his disciples not to ‘cast pearls before
swine’.
The Cave
The physical expression of the concept of underworld may
be seen in the cave or cavern as the symbol of darkness or the physical world. It is also
the symbol of the secret place in the heart to whence the person retires in meditation and
an orifice of the female earth divinity. According to the gnostic, it is the realm through
which the ensouled person must wander during an incarnation in a human body and the arena
in which the lessons of a lifetime are taught. Usually, if the life is a reasonable
expression of the Higher nature of that person, the Spirit maintains interest in the
current life. Under such circumstances, the Soul and its body are ‘inspired’ in
the attempt to lead a good life. In the gnostic Christian document: Book According to
John, this is expressed by the ‘Savior’ [sic], in answer to one of
John’s questions thus: ‘by visitation of the incorruptible [the Spirit] it will
attain salvation’ (Layton, 1995). Conversely, if the life is being subjugated by the
overpowering use of say, a drug such as alcohol, the Spirit may lose interest in that
incarnation. At its intensely real state of consciousness, the Spirit has its own exalted
life and it does not invest its energy in a life form that can not respond to its
inspiring influence. No matter, there will be many more lives in which the Soul can learn
the lesson of ‘right action’. However, even in a blighted life, the Soul may
make a major effort of reform, and the Spirit may become interested in the incarnation and
review its withdrawal. Either way, the Soul has unlimited time (and many lifetimes) to
reach that perfection exemplified by the ideals and lives of the great teachers of
humanity, Christ, Buddha, Mohammet, Krishna, Quetzacoatl, and so on.
The cave or underground cavern is one of the most important of ancient
symbols. To the individual it represents the ‘lower nature of the Soul’
(Gaskell, 1923), the body, feelings and mind searching for spirit. The cave of the heart
in which spiritual insight is reborn (as in Mithraic and Christian
‘conversion’), is symbolised by the religious leader being born out of a cleft
in the rock, in a rock stable, or within a rock cave.
In Rites and Symbols of Initiation, Mircea Eliade (1995), writes
that: ‘caves played a role in prehistoric initiations [one of] primordial
sacredness…the Chinese term, tong: cave, finally came to have the meaning
"mysterious, profound, transcendent"; that is, it became equivalent to the
arcana revealed in initiations’.
Writing that the cave is ‘the place of rebirth…The most
beautiful development of this symbolism is to be found on Mithraic altarpieces’, Jung
(1990) explains:
anyone who gets into that cave, that is to say into the cave which
everyone has in himself, or into the darkness that lies behind consciousness, will find
himself involved in an--at first--unconscious process of transformation...The
transformation is often interpreted as a prolongation of the natural span of life, or as
an earnest of immortality.
The symbol of the cave, Jung states, not only refers to the prolongation
of life sought by some alchemists, but also to the concept of immortality that occurs in
the Mystery religions, as for example, those practised in ancient Greece at Eleusis, some
twenty-two kilometres west of Athens. In this case, the architectural feature of the
temple that represented the ‘cave’ was called the megaro. In other
examples, the space was a natural or even an excavated cave. Another representation
of the Earth-mother’s body, the navel, was called the omphalos. As Mircea
Eliade (1962) points out: ‘it is from a ‘centre’ (navel) that the creation
of the world starts’. The omphalos was also a fissure in the rock, or at least
a sunken area at the end of a temple. An example of this is found at Delphi (some one
hundred and thirty kilometres north-north-west of Athens, where the seeress sat on a
tripod beside the omphalos, symbolically in an underworld setting (Jones &
Pennick, 1995).
In terms of contemporary psychology, the cave symbol has been
appropriated by such writers as Madonna Kolbenschlag (1995) when she explains that to:
‘exorcise the pseudo-self-along with the self-negation, self-hatred, and alien values
it signifies-one must pass through a profound experience of emptiness, nothingness’.
As with the underworld symbol itself, this universal symbol has other levels of
interpretation which are fascinating. To place the symbols of the cave and the underworld
in context, we now consider how they were used in the earliest theogonies, or geneologies
of the ancient gods.
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