The Quest To Find Raxxla
- Thread starter Macros Black
- Start date
"Within 12 hours." very suspicious.
Penelope is suggested as Alcyone in the book I am reading.... went and had a look and lovely system.... only 72 Thargoid signals detected.... see my vid further up... LOL...
Popped in to a few of them in my DBX and they weren't happy with me....but nothing unusual.... Guardian FSD booster I imagine! ;-)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/201_Penelope is the only real world reference I can find....
Ah, but this is a British game!
Royal Navy: “Assume NBCD State 1 Condition Zulu”
So close all doors and get the gas masks & rubber pyjamas out; don’t see that requiring a firmware change!
Indeed there's not much love for the Blue Crew, however I see the same pattern in other systems for adjacent system factions so I guess it's normal.
![[PS4] Filthymick420](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/201/201444.jpg?1555738739){kind=avatar}
Pretty frequently for sure. I'm guessing you got it from either a data point on a surface or a satellite at an installation, is that correct?
The recent DW bgs stuff has got me thinking about the factions around lft 509. Lft 509 is marked as federal democracy. Almost all the federal factions nearby are federal confedercies. Perhaps bring these fed democracies to power will trigger something. If nothing else pushing wars in a small bubble of systems will make getting mcv spawns easier. The games does try to draw attention to war and civil wars systems/factions with the spawning of mcvs. ( which carry sap 8 core containers.)
Previously it seems the focus was on independent factions only and fed factions were ignored.
Previously it seems the focus was on independent factions only and fed factions were ignored.
Deneb is mentioned many times in the book, most interesting/relevant ones from my initial searching for you...
"The star Deneb (alpha Cygni, shown as Cygnus Į) marks the ‘birth exit’ of the Sun to the left."
Deneb The star Deneb was the Pole Star in approximately 16,500-14,300 BCE, until as a result of Precession other stars of the Cygnus group moved into the pole position. The basic astronomical facts are that in the northern hemisphere the part of the Milky Way most visible in the rainy season of October shows the Dark Rift marked by the scattered stars of Cygnus, whose imprint resembles nothing more than the spread claws of a bird’s foot or the body of an open-winged bird. At the winter solstice in December, and no other, the Sun will align with Deneb in the rift between the rivers (‘thighs of Nut’). So, with its tail at Deneb and its beak in Albireo, the asterism of Cygnus is flying in the direction of the dark opening of the separating arms of the Way, hence (when the Way is in north-south position) he flies towards the southern horizon, which is the usual destination of most northern migrators. In Finland and other far northern countries the rising of the Milky Way after dark in autumn actually coincides with the winter departure of the birds for the south or south-west (especially in that near-Arctic climate, the white birds of seas, lakes and rivers). They will have been seen to disappear over the southern horizon, to the place where the Milky Way fell from sight, for reasons we nowadays understand as an annual migration. Without that knowledge - and who could imagine the distances the birds would fly? the departure and return after the winter season of what was conceived to be not the original, but a totally new flight of birds, was proof of the power of the south to ‘resurrect’ or ‘renew’ from a death-place. This avian departure and return must have been an important causative principle in the formulation of human life as a function of seasonal change. Even today, the useful tale of the white stork that brings the new baby (‘life’) to its happy parents receives the occasional airing. The Deneb mythology can also be traced to ancient India, where the creator-god, Brahma, took the swan-goose Hamsa as his divine vehicle, or harnessed his chariot to a flight of such birds, much as Apollo rode his swan chariot when descending to Earth from the skies. As well as its counterpart the Ganges, the river Sarasvati (now lost through geological change) served as the Earth-model of the Milky Way, and possessed its accompanying celestial swan-maiden, also Sarasvati, who is an Asian parallel of Nut. To this we can add that the whiteness of Hamsa, the swan or goose (cf. Latin anser) expresses the purity relevant to ‘universal spirit’, ‘Self’ or ‘atman’, the creative force. Most telling is the designation which speaks of Hamsa as dwelling in the bindu, which is the white heart of the spiritual mandala, hence the centre of the world, a fact confirmed by modern astronomers who believe they have found a link between Hamsa the swan-goose and the stars of Cygnus in ancient Vedic astronomy.13 There is fundamentally little difference in the symbolism of a white island, a white stone, a White Rock, or for that matter, a white bird, when all relate to a common source. It will be useful to see how they overlap.
The White Rock For the opening into Hades itself, Homer supplies a precise description of an Ocean shore marked by a rock at the “junction of two thunderous rivers” (10, 513-515) and lying by or between the streams of Ocean, the gates of the Helios and the country of dreams (24, 11f.). This rock has already been identified as an omphalos marker stone for the penetration of the plane by the axis. Could this also be the point where the Milky Way splits into two, like the ‘legs of Nut’? This area was identified in Egypt, we noted, by the star Deneb, and conceptualised as an area of ‘birth’. The star has the same meaning for Pawnee and Cherokee Indians, who say that the souls of the dead are received by a star at the northern end of the Milky Way where it divides, after which they are sent ‘southwards’ on one arm or another. It would indeed be an ideal cosmic situation for the abode of souls who have yet to be reborn to life immortal. The presence of two rivers converging at this point evokes the confluence as a Centre, echoing those of the ‘islands-with-fountains’ of Circe and Kalypso, as well as the Ithakan ‘Cave of the Nymphs’ near the home of Penelope and Odysseus. A context for places of convergence such as those described in the Iliad (voyage of Priam to the gates of the Underworld, the topography of the Troad and convergence of Simoeis and Skamandros, which is reiterated in the architecture of Olympia) have all been used to signal the relevance of Homer’s White Rock. Now we have the opportunity to relate this celestial convergence of the Milky Way’s rivers to the mouth of Hades gained by Odysseus, travelling along the river of Ocean from the island of Circe.
‘Rock of Heaven’ There are so many points of similarity between Cuzco’s prototype in the galactic formation and the description of the way to Hades of the tenth and the last books of the Odyssey, that there is no hesitation in attributing the White Rock of the latter to the very bright, very pure light of the star Deneb, an ‘island’ afloat in the cosmic sea of the night. And when one considers the regular event which brings the Sun on its ecliptic path into the region of the Cygnus asterism at the winter solstice, the “gates of the sun” will indeed lie close to the White Rock, also close to the “mouldering pathway” of the Dark Rift. Remarkably, Egypt displayed the same interest in a primeval rock as the point of origin for their civilisation in the form of the mythic primordial mound which emerged from the waters of creation. Inevitably, this important symbol received a great deal of elaboration, both conceptually and in the concrete forms of art and architecture. It was a ‘fountain of energy’ drawing upon the deeps, and imbued with the power to carry the soul of a body, buried in proximity, to its earthly counterparts from this life into the next, or into rebirth. It fulfils the same role as the cosmic mountain, as a marker of the centre of space and the source of all that comes into being. Its scaled-down counterpart is the ben-ben stone (pyramidion) mounted on the obelisk but also guarded in the holy of holies at the innermost heart of the temple where the god resides. The stone also shares its name with the purple heron (also ‘bnw’) who is the phoenix, symbol of the rising Sun. Particularly worth noting is that the same primordial mount splits in two to release the creator god, Atum-Ra, the principle of light, often shown upholding the disk of the Sun. After this event, this mound resolves into the twin peaks of the double horizon so fundamental to the solar-based philosophy of ancient Egypt, where the same two mountains of the east and west horizons reappear as the twin pylon doors of the temple and as the representatives of ‘life’ and ‘death’. Nicolas Wyatt has followed the theme through Ugarit and Israelite texts to provide his readers with a substantial body of written evidence relating to the sacred stone as the focus of ritual in many Near Eastern cultures. But the feature which should interest us here should be the possibility of a cosmic prototype, a model in the night sky. Therefore the most helpful clues provided by these texts are those which associate the stone with twin phenomena, such as the split mountains just discussed, or confluent / divergent rivers. Mount Saphon, on the Syro-Turkish border, is one such divided mountain which has a split profile, like Mount Parnassos where the Greek omphalos stone resided; the same twin-peaked or saddlebacked mountain appears in several other eastern cosmologies. The following lines translated from the Ugaritian language speak of deity, mountain, temple, hill, power and place of origin in association with an Otherworldly condition or place: “Come, and I shall reveal it in the midst of my divine mountain, Saphon, in the sanctuary, on the mountain of my inheritance, in Paradise, in the hill of victory. The god resides in or on his hill in many instances, and is identified with it, as in Psalm 18. 2, which addresses the psalmist’s Lord as rock, fortress, God, strength, deliverer, buckler, horn of salvation and high tower. Confusingly, but by subtle and fluid associations now largely lost to us, the stone / mountain merges with the throne of god or king, and with the temple or palace where stone, throne or king resides; the garden of paradise is also to be found on the sacred mountain, but it will be recreated in the temple precinct. Every temple is a centre, an omphalos, and a constructed equivalent of the primordial hill, so the earthly replica carries within its walls all the values associated with its prototype. Thus there emerges an ascending-descending scale wherein the sky feature (a star or stars) is read as a rock or mountain, a mountain of adequate verisimilitude is then identified on Earth, and the temple or palace replicates that mountain at the same time as it invokes the numinous power and presence of the celestial model (its ‘god’). But the hill is equally the site of the tree as axis mundi, which climbs up into the sky. Temples, towers, ziggurats and pyramids built over a sacred foundation stone reached up into the skies in order to be close to the places of origin which they desire to replicate, especially the stars and rivers of stars. Frequently it is a particular star group which is the focus of attention. In a short Egyptian spell, reference is made both to the “sycamore in the sky” (the up-reaching tree) and to the “Great Cackler” or primeval gander / goose, who laid the first “egg” from which all life emerges. The egg is a simple variant on the ”life-giving rock or stone, so this is almost certainly the ‘egg’ of Cygnus, the white bird, and must be one of her stars, most likely Deneb at the ‘parting of the rivers’ (figure VIII-13). The egg is commonly used to express the ‘seed of manifestation’ in the biological metaphors of Hindu, Chinese, Celtic and Greek cosmogonies, to name but a few; and whose egg should it be, other than a celestial bird’s? Laid on the surface of the primordial waters, just like the emergent hill out of the floods, the egg often divides to give either Heaven and Earth, or upper and lower hemispheres. The Egyptian egg was laid on that primeval hill of which we have already spoken, and from it emerged the god Khnum, who brought order to the universe. (We must not forget the mating of Zeus with Leda the swan, which some say generated the Dioskouroi, the heavenly twins, and their sister Helen). All these overlays imply that the celestial original of stone, hill and egg is to be found among the stars of the white bird, Cygnus, which in consideration of the generative power of all three, makes the division of the Milky Way rivers the location of both Heaven and/or Olympos, and the Underworld, Hades, the entrance to one lying close to the other but leading in opposite directions, as they do from Homer’s Cave of the Nymphs. This possibility will be explored in later chapters when we come to review the topography of the Plain of Troy and the location of ancient Olympia, which also appear to imbue their physical geography with the symbolic functions of a stellar prototype. Far closer to Greek sources than the world of Egyptian mythology, and closer to Greek philosophy also, is the delicate craft work of the Minoans of Crete and the mainland Mycenaeans who embraced and absorbed Cretan culture. One example stands out as relevant to our argument, although unfortunately its provenance is open to major doubt. It is the ‘Tree of Nestor’, engraved on the gold ring which was named for the elder statesman of Homer’s two Epics.
This one I found most interesting.... (but may still be a little too long for Jorki!
)The Stone It has been suggested here that the Cuzco navel-stone was intended as a central marker and an aligned equivalent of the Deneb star at the centre point of the meeting of the Milky Way rivers. The idea can be taken further. Stones, whether precious jewels or the raw product of the Earth, have long been venerated as homes of the deity or some numinous spirit, and none more so than those stones which fall from the sky as meteorites, ‘heaven-born’, as if from the solid vault-like arch of the sky as a cave. Far from being static and lifeless, they are capable of ‘giving birth’, yielding up gold and jewels and precious ores, for example, and in the case of Deukalion the stones that he casts upon the ground are explained as the ‘bones’ of a future generation. In theory the stone should serve as a static contrast to the living, growing tree, but it is not inevitably so: they actually complement each other as mutual representatives of eternity and the cycle of life and death respectively. But is there a navel-stone marker in the sky? The Buryat people, who set a ‘sky-stone’ in a casket at the top of their image of the World Pillar at the centre of their village, must have thought so. The sacrifices and libations made to the stone itself were performed in the hopes of the gift of fertilising rains from the skies. The magical ability of stones to give birth in some form or another, is attested by, for example, the opening a spring of water from a stone struck by Moses (Exodus 17. 6); while stones which yield such luxuries as honey, oil or bread are commonplaces of ancient belief. Even more interesting for our purpose is the stone which gives birth to man or deity. In her first real encounter with Odysseus in his beggar’s garb and as yet unrecognised, Penelope enquires into the identity, the city and the parentage of the guest in her hall. Her speech resuming the state of affairs in Ithaka and summarising her strategy of her weaving and unweaving of the shroud of Laertes reveals a woman finally at the end of her resistance, wasting away and losing her beauty (19, 104f.; 123-164). Faced with the unprepossessing appearance of Odysseus, she states robustly and perhaps with a degree of sarcasm, “You were not born from any fabulous oak, or a boulder.” (163). Opinions will certainly vary as to what this line could possibly mean, but my own reading sees a reference in the first item to an oracular oak such as the oak of Dodona, or similar, which is connected with the voice and the will of the gods, hence axial in function; the other option is a ‘heaven stone’ associated (or at least, bracketed with) this cosmic tree, to which an astronomical meaning may attach. At a guess, it would be men of great quality, even divine, who would be born from such a place, such as the god Mithras, also traditionally “rock-born”. The beggar would certainly not qualify for such an ancestry, hence the irony. Finally, there is the fabled stone swallowed by Kronos to deceive Ouranos, the Sky. As Hesiod tells the story, Kronos (‘Time’) was born of the union of Earth and Sky. A crooked and scheming fellow, Kronos was coaxed by his mother into taking a sharp sickle and cutting off the genitals of the father who was consuming his own, hated sons by his partner Earth. The sickle was formed from “grey flint”, hard stone. But the same son of Earth inflicted a cruel fate on his own offspring by Rhea, gulping them down soon after birth to prevent the usurping of his role; finally and in despair as she was about to deliver great Zeus, the goddess fled to Crete and delivered the babe in a cave, deep under the Earth, therefore ‘Earthborn’ or even ‘rock-born’. Leaving the baby in a cave under Mount Aegaeum, Rhea carried to the mighty Kronos, “a great stone” wrapped in swaddling clothes, which the cannibal parent duly “thrust down”. The most revealing sequel to this story, as told in Theogony, lines 500- 503, describes the eventual fate of the regurgitated stone: “And Zeus set it fast in the wide-pathed Earth at goodly Pytho under the glens of Parnassus, to be a sign thenceforth and a marvel to mortal men.” Hesiod does not tell his reader the source of the stone; it may be Cretan or it may be imagined as part of the fabric of Mount Olympos or even the stony vault of the sky, but it appears to end its days as the omphalos stone of the oracular site at Delphi at the foot of the double-peaked mountain, Parnassos, deep in its valleys or glens. This should have the dreadful effect of ‘closing the doorway to heaven’. There are hints here of a precessional myth of change in which the stone marker of the central sky (a Pole Star perhaps?) was swallowed by Kronos in his capacity as Time. So when the adult Zeus was able to free his uncles from the dreadful bonds imposed by Kronos, and happily went on to rule both men and gods, he instituted a New Age, the Age of Silver which followed the Golden Age ruled by Kronos. Zeus survived the Silver Age long enough to institute a new one, the Bronze Age, and to generate a strange but powerful race of men “sprung from ash-trees”.16 Perhaps the closing of the previous doorway interprets the precessional shift which establishes a new world centre, at a new doorway. Precessional or not, and the question is too vast to be answered here, the tale at its simplest relates that a stone once placed in the stomach (‘navel-place’) of a god is brought down below and positioned on the Earth but above a chasm into the world below. Initially it was to be a sign and great marvel, but ultimately (as history finally tells) it was to act as marker to the centre of the Earth. Once the knowledge that Delphi was founded below a split mountain of two ‘arms’ is factored into the equation, the unavoidable fact emerges that after the omphalos stone was taken from the sky’s centre, its ‘belly’, it found a new home in a ‘cleft’ which so resembles the Dark Rift between the arms of the Milky Way.
Short version for Jorki (The last bullet point being the most interesting)
- Kronos inflicted a cruel fate on his own offspring by Rhea, gulping them down soon after birth to prevent the usurping of his role
- When she was about to deliver great Zeus, the goddess fled to Crete and delivered the babe in a cave.
- Leaving the baby in a cave under Mount Aegaeum, Rhea carried to the mighty Kronos, “a great stone” wrapped in swaddling clothes, which he duly “thrust down”.
- The most revealing sequel to this story, as told in Theogony, lines 500- 503, describes the eventual fate of the regurgitated stone: “And Zeus set it fast in the wide-pathed Earth at goodly Pytho under the glens of Parnassus, to be a sign thenceforth and a marvel to mortal men.”
- Hesiod does not tell his reader the source of the stone; it may be Cretan or it may be imagined as part of the fabric of Mount Olympos or even the stony vault of the sky, but it appears to end its days as the omphalos stone of the oracular site at Delphi at the foot of the double-peaked mountain, Parnassos.
- The tale at its simplest relates that a stone once placed in the stomach (‘navel-place’) of a god is brought down below and positioned on the Earth but above a chasm into the world below. Initially it was to be a sign and great marvel, but ultimately (as history finally tells) it was to act as marker to the centre of the Earth. Once the knowledge that Delphi was founded below a split mountain of two ‘arms’ is factored into the equation, the unavoidable fact emerges that after the omphalos stone was taken from the sky’s centre, its ‘belly’, it found a new home in a ‘cleft’ which so resembles the Dark Rift between the arms of the Milky Way.
- Firstly, the "skies centre" - I hadn't specifically linked the omphalos to the sky (essentially the universe in Greek times!) and assumed like everyone else Delphi and the earth (although I have been bugged by various pole stars, hence visiting them as I discover past or future ones).
- Secondly, "the Dark Rift between the arms of the Milky Way"... would that then be the "Omphalos Rift" then?
Just a thought
Yes, I got it from one of the installations in Nuenets. I'm not logged in at the moment, but it wasn't 'Old Pool View', the other one. Hadn't seen it before, and usually don't get any messages in my inbox, just notification of the other points to scan/attack etc.
Thanks Macros.
Do you mean a targeted hatred for a specific opposing faction from a nearby system? I've seen that too, so not holding out much for allying up with NBC but thought since they're diametrically opposed to TDW it may lead to something else interesting.
My personal journey anyway! And about all I've got time for at the moment.
/ Ra
As just posted I retrieved this from an installation, but couldn't see how I could utilise it. Mind you I only had 5 minutes before I had to log off, so thought I'd check possible community options before logging in later to see where I might focus my efforts. But if nothing is highlighted, I'll try some random stuff against the installations to see what happens.
Deneb is mentioned many times in the book, most interesting/relevant ones from my initial searching for you...
"The star Deneb (alpha Cygni, shown as Cygnus Į) marks the ‘birth exit’ of the Sun to the left."
Deneb The star Deneb was the Pole Star in approximately 16,500-14,300 BCE, until as a result of Precession other stars of the Cygnus group moved into the pole position. The basic astronomical facts are that in the northern hemisphere the part of the Milky Way most visible in the rainy season of October shows the Dark Rift marked by the scattered stars of Cygnus, whose imprint resembles nothing more than the spread claws of a bird’s foot or the body of an open-winged bird. At the winter solstice in December, and no other, the Sun will align with Deneb in the rift between the rivers (‘thighs of Nut’). So, with its tail at Deneb and its beak in Albireo, the asterism of Cygnus is flying in the direction of the dark opening of the separating arms of the Way, hence (when the Way is in north-south position) he flies towards the southern horizon, which is the usual destination of most northern migrators. In Finland and other far northern countries the rising of the Milky Way after dark in autumn actually coincides with the winter departure of the birds for the south or south-west (especially in that near-Arctic climate, the white birds of seas, lakes and rivers). They will have been seen to disappear over the southern horizon, to the place where the Milky Way fell from sight, for reasons we nowadays understand as an annual migration. Without that knowledge - and who could imagine the distances the birds would fly? the departure and return after the winter season of what was conceived to be not the original, but a totally new flight of birds, was proof of the power of the south to ‘resurrect’ or ‘renew’ from a death-place. This avian departure and return must have been an important causative principle in the formulation of human life as a function of seasonal change. Even today, the useful tale of the white stork that brings the new baby (‘life’) to its happy parents receives the occasional airing. The Deneb mythology can also be traced to ancient India, where the creator-god, Brahma, took the swan-goose Hamsa as his divine vehicle, or harnessed his chariot to a flight of such birds, much as Apollo rode his swan chariot when descending to Earth from the skies. As well as its counterpart the Ganges, the river Sarasvati (now lost through geological change) served as the Earth-model of the Milky Way, and possessed its accompanying celestial swan-maiden, also Sarasvati, who is an Asian parallel of Nut. To this we can add that the whiteness of Hamsa, the swan or goose (cf. Latin anser) expresses the purity relevant to ‘universal spirit’, ‘Self’ or ‘atman’, the creative force. Most telling is the designation which speaks of Hamsa as dwelling in the bindu, which is the white heart of the spiritual mandala, hence the centre of the world, a fact confirmed by modern astronomers who believe they have found a link between Hamsa the swan-goose and the stars of Cygnus in ancient Vedic astronomy.13 There is fundamentally little difference in the symbolism of a white island, a white stone, a White Rock, or for that matter, a white bird, when all relate to a common source. It will be useful to see how they overlap.
The White Rock For the opening into Hades itself, Homer supplies a precise description of an Ocean shore marked by a rock at the “junction of two thunderous rivers” (10, 513-515) and lying by or between the streams of Ocean, the gates of the Helios and the country of dreams (24, 11f.). This rock has already been identified as an omphalos marker stone for the penetration of the plane by the axis. Could this also be the point where the Milky Way splits into two, like the ‘legs of Nut’? This area was identified in Egypt, we noted, by the star Deneb, and conceptualised as an area of ‘birth’. The star has the same meaning for Pawnee and Cherokee Indians, who say that the souls of the dead are received by a star at the northern end of the Milky Way where it divides, after which they are sent ‘southwards’ on one arm or another. It would indeed be an ideal cosmic situation for the abode of souls who have yet to be reborn to life immortal. The presence of two rivers converging at this point evokes the confluence as a Centre, echoing those of the ‘islands-with-fountains’ of Circe and Kalypso, as well as the Ithakan ‘Cave of the Nymphs’ near the home of Penelope and Odysseus. A context for places of convergence such as those described in the Iliad (voyage of Priam to the gates of the Underworld, the topography of the Troad and convergence of Simoeis and Skamandros, which is reiterated in the architecture of Olympia) have all been used to signal the relevance of Homer’s White Rock. Now we have the opportunity to relate this celestial convergence of the Milky Way’s rivers to the mouth of Hades gained by Odysseus, travelling along the river of Ocean from the island of Circe.
‘Rock of Heaven’ There are so many points of similarity between Cuzco’s prototype in the galactic formation and the description of the way to Hades of the tenth and the last books of the Odyssey, that there is no hesitation in attributing the White Rock of the latter to the very bright, very pure light of the star Deneb, an ‘island’ afloat in the cosmic sea of the night. And when one considers the regular event which brings the Sun on its ecliptic path into the region of the Cygnus asterism at the winter solstice, the “gates of the sun” will indeed lie close to the White Rock, also close to the “mouldering pathway” of the Dark Rift. Remarkably, Egypt displayed the same interest in a primeval rock as the point of origin for their civilisation in the form of the mythic primordial mound which emerged from the waters of creation. Inevitably, this important symbol received a great deal of elaboration, both conceptually and in the concrete forms of art and architecture. It was a ‘fountain of energy’ drawing upon the deeps, and imbued with the power to carry the soul of a body, buried in proximity, to its earthly counterparts from this life into the next, or into rebirth. It fulfils the same role as the cosmic mountain, as a marker of the centre of space and the source of all that comes into being. Its scaled-down counterpart is the ben-ben stone (pyramidion) mounted on the obelisk but also guarded in the holy of holies at the innermost heart of the temple where the god resides. The stone also shares its name with the purple heron (also ‘bnw’) who is the phoenix, symbol of the rising Sun. Particularly worth noting is that the same primordial mount splits in two to release the creator god, Atum-Ra, the principle of light, often shown upholding the disk of the Sun. After this event, this mound resolves into the twin peaks of the double horizon so fundamental to the solar-based philosophy of ancient Egypt, where the same two mountains of the east and west horizons reappear as the twin pylon doors of the temple and as the representatives of ‘life’ and ‘death’. Nicolas Wyatt has followed the theme through Ugarit and Israelite texts to provide his readers with a substantial body of written evidence relating to the sacred stone as the focus of ritual in many Near Eastern cultures. But the feature which should interest us here should be the possibility of a cosmic prototype, a model in the night sky. Therefore the most helpful clues provided by these texts are those which associate the stone with twin phenomena, such as the split mountains just discussed, or confluent / divergent rivers. Mount Saphon, on the Syro-Turkish border, is one such divided mountain which has a split profile, like Mount Parnassos where the Greek omphalos stone resided; the same twin-peaked or saddlebacked mountain appears in several other eastern cosmologies. The following lines translated from the Ugaritian language speak of deity, mountain, temple, hill, power and place of origin in association with an Otherworldly condition or place: “Come, and I shall reveal it in the midst of my divine mountain, Saphon, in the sanctuary, on the mountain of my inheritance, in Paradise, in the hill of victory. The god resides in or on his hill in many instances, and is identified with it, as in Psalm 18. 2, which addresses the psalmist’s Lord as rock, fortress, God, strength, deliverer, buckler, horn of salvation and high tower. Confusingly, but by subtle and fluid associations now largely lost to us, the stone / mountain merges with the throne of god or king, and with the temple or palace where stone, throne or king resides; the garden of paradise is also to be found on the sacred mountain, but it will be recreated in the temple precinct. Every temple is a centre, an omphalos, and a constructed equivalent of the primordial hill, so the earthly replica carries within its walls all the values associated with its prototype. Thus there emerges an ascending-descending scale wherein the sky feature (a star or stars) is read as a rock or mountain, a mountain of adequate verisimilitude is then identified on Earth, and the temple or palace replicates that mountain at the same time as it invokes the numinous power and presence of the celestial model (its ‘god’). But the hill is equally the site of the tree as axis mundi, which climbs up into the sky. Temples, towers, ziggurats and pyramids built over a sacred foundation stone reached up into the skies in order to be close to the places of origin which they desire to replicate, especially the stars and rivers of stars. Frequently it is a particular star group which is the focus of attention. In a short Egyptian spell, reference is made both to the “sycamore in the sky” (the up-reaching tree) and to the “Great Cackler” or primeval gander / goose, who laid the first “egg” from which all life emerges. The egg is a simple variant on the ”life-giving rock or stone, so this is almost certainly the ‘egg’ of Cygnus, the white bird, and must be one of her stars, most likely Deneb at the ‘parting of the rivers’ (figure VIII-13). The egg is commonly used to express the ‘seed of manifestation’ in the biological metaphors of Hindu, Chinese, Celtic and Greek cosmogonies, to name but a few; and whose egg should it be, other than a celestial bird’s? Laid on the surface of the primordial waters, just like the emergent hill out of the floods, the egg often divides to give either Heaven and Earth, or upper and lower hemispheres. The Egyptian egg was laid on that primeval hill of which we have already spoken, and from it emerged the god Khnum, who brought order to the universe. (We must not forget the mating of Zeus with Leda the swan, which some say generated the Dioskouroi, the heavenly twins, and their sister Helen). All these overlays imply that the celestial original of stone, hill and egg is to be found among the stars of the white bird, Cygnus, which in consideration of the generative power of all three, makes the division of the Milky Way rivers the location of both Heaven and/or Olympos, and the Underworld, Hades, the entrance to one lying close to the other but leading in opposite directions, as they do from Homer’s Cave of the Nymphs. This possibility will be explored in later chapters when we come to review the topography of the Plain of Troy and the location of ancient Olympia, which also appear to imbue their physical geography with the symbolic functions of a stellar prototype. Far closer to Greek sources than the world of Egyptian mythology, and closer to Greek philosophy also, is the delicate craft work of the Minoans of Crete and the mainland Mycenaeans who embraced and absorbed Cretan culture. One example stands out as relevant to our argument, although unfortunately its provenance is open to major doubt. It is the ‘Tree of Nestor’, engraved on the gold ring which was named for the elder statesman of Homer’s two Epics.
This one I found most interesting.... (but may still be a little too long for Jorki!
The Stone It has been suggested here that the Cuzco navel-stone was intended as a central marker and an aligned equivalent of the Deneb star at the centre point of the meeting of the Milky Way rivers. The idea can be taken further. Stones, whether precious jewels or the raw product of the Earth, have long been venerated as homes of the deity or some numinous spirit, and none more so than those stones which fall from the sky as meteorites, ‘heaven-born’, as if from the solid vault-like arch of the sky as a cave. Far from being static and lifeless, they are capable of ‘giving birth’, yielding up gold and jewels and precious ores, for example, and in the case of Deukalion the stones that he casts upon the ground are explained as the ‘bones’ of a future generation. In theory the stone should serve as a static contrast to the living, growing tree, but it is not inevitably so: they actually complement each other as mutual representatives of eternity and the cycle of life and death respectively. But is there a navel-stone marker in the sky? The Buryat people, who set a ‘sky-stone’ in a casket at the top of their image of the World Pillar at the centre of their village, must have thought so. The sacrifices and libations made to the stone itself were performed in the hopes of the gift of fertilising rains from the skies. The magical ability of stones to give birth in some form or another, is attested by, for example, the opening a spring of water from a stone struck by Moses (Exodus 17. 6); while stones which yield such luxuries as honey, oil or bread are commonplaces of ancient belief. Even more interesting for our purpose is the stone which gives birth to man or deity. In her first real encounter with Odysseus in his beggar’s garb and as yet unrecognised, Penelope enquires into the identity, the city and the parentage of the guest in her hall. Her speech resuming the state of affairs in Ithaka and summarising her strategy of her weaving and unweaving of the shroud of Laertes reveals a woman finally at the end of her resistance, wasting away and losing her beauty (19, 104f.; 123-164). Faced with the unprepossessing appearance of Odysseus, she states robustly and perhaps with a degree of sarcasm, “You were not born from any fabulous oak, or a boulder.” (163). Opinions will certainly vary as to what this line could possibly mean, but my own reading sees a reference in the first item to an oracular oak such as the oak of Dodona, or similar, which is connected with the voice and the will of the gods, hence axial in function; the other option is a ‘heaven stone’ associated (or at least, bracketed with) this cosmic tree, to which an astronomical meaning may attach. At a guess, it would be men of great quality, even divine, who would be born from such a place, such as the god Mithras, also traditionally “rock-born”. The beggar would certainly not qualify for such an ancestry, hence the irony. Finally, there is the fabled stone swallowed by Kronos to deceive Ouranos, the Sky. As Hesiod tells the story, Kronos (‘Time’) was born of the union of Earth and Sky. A crooked and scheming fellow, Kronos was coaxed by his mother into taking a sharp sickle and cutting off the genitals of the father who was consuming his own, hated sons by his partner Earth. The sickle was formed from “grey flint”, hard stone. But the same son of Earth inflicted a cruel fate on his own offspring by Rhea, gulping them down soon after birth to prevent the usurping of his role; finally and in despair as she was about to deliver great Zeus, the goddess fled to Crete and delivered the babe in a cave, deep under the Earth, therefore ‘Earthborn’ or even ‘rock-born’. Leaving the baby in a cave under Mount Aegaeum, Rhea carried to the mighty Kronos, “a great stone” wrapped in swaddling clothes, which the cannibal parent duly “thrust down”. The most revealing sequel to this story, as told in Theogony, lines 500- 503, describes the eventual fate of the regurgitated stone: “And Zeus set it fast in the wide-pathed Earth at goodly Pytho under the glens of Parnassus, to be a sign thenceforth and a marvel to mortal men.” Hesiod does not tell his reader the source of the stone; it may be Cretan or it may be imagined as part of the fabric of Mount Olympos or even the stony vault of the sky, but it appears to end its days as the omphalos stone of the oracular site at Delphi at the foot of the double-peaked mountain, Parnassos, deep in its valleys or glens. This should have the dreadful effect of ‘closing the doorway to heaven’. There are hints here of a precessional myth of change in which the stone marker of the central sky (a Pole Star perhaps?) was swallowed by Kronos in his capacity as Time. So when the adult Zeus was able to free his uncles from the dreadful bonds imposed by Kronos, and happily went on to rule both men and gods, he instituted a New Age, the Age of Silver which followed the Golden Age ruled by Kronos. Zeus survived the Silver Age long enough to institute a new one, the Bronze Age, and to generate a strange but powerful race of men “sprung from ash-trees”.16 Perhaps the closing of the previous doorway interprets the precessional shift which establishes a new world centre, at a new doorway. Precessional or not, and the question is too vast to be answered here, the tale at its simplest relates that a stone once placed in the stomach (‘navel-place’) of a god is brought down below and positioned on the Earth but above a chasm into the world below. Initially it was to be a sign and great marvel, but ultimately (as history finally tells) it was to act as marker to the centre of the Earth. Once the knowledge that Delphi was founded below a split mountain of two ‘arms’ is factored into the equation, the unavoidable fact emerges that after the omphalos stone was taken from the sky’s centre, its ‘belly’, it found a new home in a ‘cleft’ which so resembles the Dark Rift between the arms of the Milky Way.
Short version for Jorki (The last bullet point being the most interesting)
Two observations on the final bullet point...
- Kronos inflicted a cruel fate on his own offspring by Rhea, gulping them down soon after birth to prevent the usurping of his role
- When she was about to deliver great Zeus, the goddess fled to Crete and delivered the babe in a cave.
- Leaving the baby in a cave under Mount Aegaeum, Rhea carried to the mighty Kronos, “a great stone” wrapped in swaddling clothes, which he duly “thrust down”.
- The most revealing sequel to this story, as told in Theogony, lines 500- 503, describes the eventual fate of the regurgitated stone: “And Zeus set it fast in the wide-pathed Earth at goodly Pytho under the glens of Parnassus, to be a sign thenceforth and a marvel to mortal men.”
- Hesiod does not tell his reader the source of the stone; it may be Cretan or it may be imagined as part of the fabric of Mount Olympos or even the stony vault of the sky, but it appears to end its days as the omphalos stone of the oracular site at Delphi at the foot of the double-peaked mountain, Parnassos.
- The tale at its simplest relates that a stone once placed in the stomach (‘navel-place’) of a god is brought down below and positioned on the Earth but above a chasm into the world below. Initially it was to be a sign and great marvel, but ultimately (as history finally tells) it was to act as marker to the centre of the Earth. Once the knowledge that Delphi was founded below a split mountain of two ‘arms’ is factored into the equation, the unavoidable fact emerges that after the omphalos stone was taken from the sky’s centre, its ‘belly’, it found a new home in a ‘cleft’ which so resembles the Dark Rift between the arms of the Milky Way.
- Firstly, the "skies centre" - I hadn't specifically linked the omphalos to the sky (essentially the universe in Greek times!) and assumed like everyone else Delphi and the earth (although I have been bugged by various pole stars, hence visiting them as I discover past or future ones).
- Secondly, "the Dark Rift between the arms of the Milky Way"... would that then be the "Omphalos Rift" then?
Just a thought
Mmm, no I can’t buy into this book. I think if Greek mythology is the key then we have to go back to the original sources, not a recent interpretation of what the author thinks is symbolically relevant. So I’d got all the last bullet points but I never bought into Delphi being relevant, it’s too far from the bubble. First reference to the Raxxla myth is from Tau Ceti, around the time Achenar was settled by an expedition, so that should define the maximum range from Sol.
I suspect FDev have been hinting all along about Homer’s Odyssey- a “personal journey” & now explicitly calling the next release Elite Odyssey. So we should go back to Greek myths & Homer’s Odyssey if the toast clues are related. I’ve got a set of satisfactory answers for the Jewel, Whisperer, Siren, & Vagabonds Hearts but am not satisfied at present with the possibilities for Parent’s Grief & Lover’s Woe. Someone pointed out that Odysseus met his mother Anticlea (in-game) in the Underworld; however then the “clue” should read “Grieving Parent”. Instead “Parent’s Grief” implies the source of the grief; the only satisfactory solution for that is “death of a child”, but can’t find a corresponding solution in myth/Odyssey. Similarly “Lover’s Woe” should be abandonment/separation/broken heart/heartache but I can’t find a satisfactory solution for that either; I need a Greek speaker! My hypothesis is that these “clues” from the toast represent in-game systems and this is the personal journey we need to take.
I wouldn't let the early date of the first Raxxla quote limit anything. It just means that the myth was in circulation. It does not mean that anyone had found it.
I don't expect the toast to be a complete guide for the Journey either. It is the toast of the Dark Wheel. They haven't found Raxxla, so they probably only have a part of the answer.
Interpretations in books are relevant to the degree that we can expect FD to have used external documentation, when creating the mystery. Interpretations that are generally accepted are therefor more likely to be relevant, than claims that are specific to a singular source.
There is always the slim chance that someone stumbles across a book that is the real 'Princess Astrophel and the spiralling stars', but I'm not sure there is one at all.
Good points, as always! Though I disagree on the date. I think it’s relevant, otherwise why put it in. I think FD was saying it’s quite close to/within the bubble, and I think that applies to both Raxxla and TDW station.
(But I could be wrong
)
I’m currently wondering if the Raxxla logo is actually a diagram of the Omphalos “gateway”.
I suppose it’s possible that parent’s grief & lover’s woe are poetic references to the sufferers of the woe & grief, rather than the causes/symptoms, to make the toast flow better, but if so I don’t like it! It would be very bad English grammar!!!
(But I could be wrong
)I’m currently wondering if the Raxxla logo is actually a diagram of the Omphalos “gateway”.
I suppose it’s possible that parent’s grief & lover’s woe are poetic references to the sufferers of the woe & grief, rather than the causes/symptoms, to make the toast flow better, but if so I don’t like it! It would be very bad English grammar!!!
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I think the date is relevant because of the Mars relic, that was found in the 2280s.Good points, as always! Though I disagree on the date. I think it’s relevant, otherwise why put it in. I think FD was saying it’s quite close to/within the bubble, and I think that applies to both Raxxla and TDW station.
(But I could be wrong
I’m currently wondering if the Raxxla logo is actually a diagram of the Omphalos “gateway”.
I suspect it contains some sort of info about Raxxla and leaked info lead to the start of the myth.
