Omphalos stone.
Omphalos stone.
OMPHALOS. Literally, a navel; a belly button. We would be amiss if we didn't make the connection that the navel is a knot in the umbilical cord which signals the independence of the child from its mother. This knot, in another sense, is the Egyptian amulet symbolizing union; possibly a union of opposites, but maybe a union of opposing energies. We have retained a pitiful amount of knowledge from what we call the Megalithic period, and among its souvenirs are references to Earth energy and to stones, standing alone or in circles all around the globe. The ancient art of geomancy was devoted to the establishment and maintenance of these "markers". The accepted idea for these holy points has been that they were placed on energy centers to heal a distemper in the Earth; maybe to prevent earthquakes. This is a proper superstitious point of view if we accept fear as a motivation for Megalithic priesthoods. Some scholars have represented the idea that the stones were positioned to act as condensers or as transmitters of energies derived from the Earth. A few years ago, I was lying in meditation, musing on these theories, asking for a clarification when I saw, with the mind's eye, a mesh of spirals enveloping the globe with each crossing point glowing with energy. I had had an intriguing experience just previous to this event that now came into a fuller focus. I was scrutinizing a map of the British Isles with a friend who was planning a trip to some of the psychic centers for which the English are famous. We had read the accounts of Mr. Alfred Watkins reporting what he called "ley lines", and I decided to draw an alignment out on our map, using Stonehenge as a center. We soon saw the pattern in alignment with other ancient centers as the research claimed, and more; we saw an increment of east-west lines moving regularly to the north across the whole area of ancient Britain. The books had no definition for the lines I found running north and south, so we dubbed them anti-ley lines or counter-ley lines. After this exhilarating graphing of England and Ireland, I had returned the map to the files of accidental diversions, and it hadn't called out to me for some time. Now, in my meditation, I saw those lines extended out across Europe, around the Earth. In my excitement I spread out a map of the world and soon calculated the ratio of the ley lines to the system of latitude and longitude of our cartographers. I had the angles, the pro-portions and I saw that they were spirals. But working on the flat surface was frustrating; the picture was too distorted for me. Driving to make a model of what I "saw", I bought a pasteboard globe of the school-room variety, and set myself up to lay it all out. I am no adept with mathematics; my instincts are closer to the art of geometry; but I managed to transfer my triangle or rhombic pattern into the usual line grid of my globe. Put very simply, the system is developed as follows. On a globe of fifteen degree modules, the right triangle, 15 degrees N/S by 40 degrees E/W on a 15 degree "squared" grid set up the lines that were major elements. Laid out on my globe, each line spiraled away from the equator, summing up at the points north and south, indicating the axis. The only way I could "fix" the image to the curved surface of the globe was to pound a pin into the surface at each of my intersections as guide points. Like some fanatic cobbler, I sat there tapping away at my globe, until its skin bristled with pin heads. And then I saw the symbol of what I was doing... At each crossing I was driving a post into the Earth to hold a thread, stretched tightly, which came out of a north pole to encircle the body of the Earth in a tense spiral of energy before entering it again at its south pole. Both systems of lines derived from the same two points. The threads, as I stretched them out like a wire sculpture, took on the character of a common net-mesh shopping bag. The symbol was so clear - that the Earth crust is an area governed by two opposite, or complimentary spiral forces of energy acting as a net extended to a gravity-governed envelope of matter and holding all of it in the form of a globe. A NET. "As above, so below". A net for the globe. A net for the universe. The Egyptians had been there before me. They said the NEITH, the Goddess of weaving, had made a great Net (which we call the Milky Way) and within it, gathered the Universe into being. I now saw the Earth-Net as a dynamic energy field integrating the mobile crust of the Earth into a state of relative stasis, anchored by the crossing of the "ley" and "anti-ley" lines. As I watched the network appear through my "weaving", I saw it connect major areas of civilization and pinpoint great religious centers. And slowly, another symbol dawned on my mind; each pin I placed in its geomantic crossing point was like the pins in Chinese acupuncture. If effigy, I was healing the Earth with that myriad of pinheads. Then the full realization of what I saw came down on me like the rush of a symphony; the pinheads were stones - standing stones - stone circles - Omphalos stones - the crossing points were sacred knots - my threads were tension lines - MER lines. And old Merlin's head rose slowly out of the Lake of Forgetfulness. Merlin - Mer meant "to measure" in Egyptian; Lin was a line. MERLIN was he who measures lines. The ancient Geomancer. I was absolutely carried away with a delirium of "eurekas". But what did I have there? A globe pierced with hundreds of pins; a maddening network of black one way, transparent the other threads. What was it? A window into Megalithic thought? A physical truth? A metaphysical fantasy? I retreated into another meditation. My exercise in geomancy had shown me that there was a worldwide knowledge of energetic geometry in the Megalithic eon and that the practice of geomancy was active with the concern for the health of the Earth as a living thing. The scholars have deduced that ancient sites were chosen for their potency, and that a foundation was a symbolic subduing of a "dragon force" and a continual enactment of the act in symbol to prevent some geologic disaster. Some have even deduced that a temple placed on a crossing of energy lines can harness that energy to Humanity's benefit. How that was done is not so obvious. Who were the Megalithic Merlins? Did they really spread out all around the Earth? Did they all respond to a Megalithic Earth consciousness? What did they know about this world acupuncture? What have we lost with the decay of the temples? So many questions... I put out my "psychic feelers" for answers. Books came to my hands; charts of the Russian commentary on geologic plate forms; fantasy fiction and fascinating physics; a dizzying mass for my Egyptian-verging-on-Medieval-and-slightly-Renaissance-artist's-mind. I see it. I've drawn it. There is something very important in all of this. At this point, the Aries in me led me off down another path to the TAROT, and I found myself making definitions for its understanding. OMPHALOS. The NAVEL. If Omphalos signifies the knot in the Umbilicus and Greek for a stone is LITHOS, let your mind run over the images. I remember reading a chapter in The Ancient Science of Geomancy by Nigel Pennick. He included a picture of the Omphalos at Delphi; the OLD one on page 23 and the NEW one of page 44. The old one was inscribed with the name of the Earth Goddess GA (or is that GAEA? My head tells me it was also GLA, as in GLA-STONE-BURY and the ancient Titan citadel in Boetia). Mr. Pennick labels the Omphalos as a baitylos, a stone from Heaven, a meteorite. On page 44 of his book is a photograph of the new Omphalos. It is a beehive-shaped stone, sculpted with a spiraling network. In this chapter, Mr. Pennick alludes to a myth of ZEUS' establishing the Shrine of Delphi with the aid of two birds (swans or eagles). A glyph, or a picture in Egyptian came to my mind, in the symbols of SOKAR - above his head rises a pyramid surmounted by a KHEPR beetle approaching a large round-topped stone marker. On either side of its crest rest two birds, perhaps homing pigeons. Another reading blended into my reverie. Robert Graves mentions a myth about the founding of Dodona wherein two doves were sent out from Egypt on a founding mission. One flew to Dodona, the other to the oasis of AMMON at Siwa in Libya. Birds. Stones. Oracles. Caves. Wells or springs. Dragons. Serpents. Slaying serpents. The whole swirling puzzle of Megalithic practice seemed to be spiraling into a pattern for me. And I asked, "Where were the centers of teaching for the Mysteries? Malta. Ireland. Saqqara. Ras-Shamra. Atlantis. Where the stones are. Follow the ley lines. I felt like Dorothy adrift in some Megalithic Oz-land. I ask myself, "What do I know?" The hieroglyph for an Omphalos is d which Budge calls a draughtsman (an intriguing comparison!). Most Omphalic centers were used to contact the Earth Mother, and were natural caves, grottoes, springs or wells. The pit deep below the Great Pyramid was most likely an oracle of ISIS in the form of the Mother-Goddess. There is a connection with the Alphabet-Goddess KER, or CAR of Mycenean mythology, through the Rune-stones and the trees. And in the sound KER, kerb (curb) was originally an edging for a well. QUERN was a stone mortar. CAIRN was a heap of stones on a grave. We can find CER/KER/CAIRN/QUERN in place names all over Europe. There are more sound games we can play.
BAITYLOS and Beetle - There is KHEPR pointing to the stone of SOKAR.
BEETLE - Where does that come from? A beetle is a bug like KHEPR. It is also a kind of hammer in the English dictionary, a large mallet; from the Anglo-Saxon:
BYTLE used to beat out the shape of metal.
BEETLE - In middle English, BITIL, or BETEL, or BETYL.
BEETLE-BROWED - Lowering or overhanging.
KHEPR was also called KA-BA-AA (a mystery to ponder). The KA'BA in Mecca contained a stone.
BASE - The stone foundation for a column or the lower course of blocks in a construction.
BASIS - A foundation.
BASE - A beginning point.
BASIN - A dished-out receptacle. A hollow in a stone. A reservoir.
BEZEL - The grooved ring holding a gem in its setting (a kerbstone).
BIZOU - (Breton for BIJOU) A finger ring. A BEZEL, a signet ring. In Egypt these rings incorporated a scarab and carried the seal of the owner on its underside.
BASIL - A hide or sheepskin (the Golden Fleece?); and the hide on a pole in Egypt (Mesqat).
BASILICUM - Latin for royal or kingly. Greek for king.
BASILICUS - Latin for royal house (meaning due to the stone, or of the stone).
BASILICA - House of the king, or House of Stone, or House of the Fleece.
BASILISK - A dragon. A guardian that could kill by a glance or a breath.
MEDUSA, with her snakes/hair was a Basilisk, and she turned men to stone.
BASKET- The Neb. Symbol of NEPTHYS. The measure of a man. Sculpted in stone to resemble a woven basket.
VASES and BASINS - Stone-carved receptacles enclosed the dust remains of the Initiates at SAQQARA. (The letter "B" is often translated as "V" in Indo-European languages of more recent times.)
VASE (BASE) - The Greeks for a time buried people in huge ceramic jars; an echo of the stone vases in Egypt. Considering the words "basil" and "basilica" as connected with kings, the English preserve and ancient custom probably originating in Megalithic times. They have built a coronation chair kept at Westminster Abbey which incorporates the ancient "Stone of Scone". The chair becomes a "Siege Perilous" with its stone of destiny. Legend follows the stone from Ireland over to Scotland, or the Isle of lona, and thence to England. Power is where the stone is; or so the Anglo-Saxons would have us believe. The Ancients would say "Power is where the stone was". The stone is merely a marker for an existing phenomenon. Somewhere in Ireland is a place once called GLA, where the GLA-STONE was, resting in its Curb-Ring above the spring of the Earth Mother commemorating the Elder Titan tradition.ON THE OMPHALOS STONE In ancient times as culture spread with the ships of the post-Atlantean traders, the ideas of establishing sacred sites was carried throughout the Mediterranean and along the European seacoast. If the older tradition is evidenced from Malta to Sinai and from Carnac in Celtic France to KARNAK in southern Egypt, the tradition of the MAGUS as a reader of Earth-energy time and as a Master of Geometry and the building trades characterizes the cultures evidenced by the idea of polemic wholes and agrarian real estate with its attendant marketplace behavior. Geomancy indicates the psychic level of engineering as much as Geometry defines the techniques of form and function in design. Combined in the art of surveying a sacred site, we can see the two forms then wed to patterns of star watching and seasonal calendar design for ceremony. The usual elements that mark a site as special might be seismic activity or a lack of same, or the site of a sacred grove or spring... the crest of a mountain as well as the mystery of an oracle cave which might also be the burial site of the ancestors. All of these things may be cited by the seer who directs the first ritual commemoration or sanctification of the holy site. Someone - seer, priest or priestess, locates a spot that is psychically significant, and someone puts a wooden peg into the Earth from which a cord is stretched to inscribe a sacred circle.
With sophistication in time, the circles north or south of the Earth's equator were made into ovals, projected from four cardinal points, square, with the idea of four primary directions. Once the oval (ATUM disc) was laid out, the center of the whole complex, usually in plain sight, was garnished with a hub-stone, very like the lingam stones in Hindu India. I have included a photo of the famous Baitylos (Omphalos stone) preserved from Delphi in Greece. The mysterious "braids" wrapped around it in sculpture represent the mesh of energy lines just above and just below the skin or crust of the Earth. The Egyptians associated these lines with the flight of homing pigeons or maybe of migrating birds, and they pictured such a bird resting on the phallic stone, as the idea of communication between the nodes of holy centers, possibly throughout human consciousness. If SAQQARA had its Sokar point just east of the ritual entrance, the Southern Kingdom, dedicated more to OSIRIS-Everysoul, had its center around ABYDOS since very early in the political history. I have included a ritual-object-representation usually called "the box containing the Head of OSIRIS". This may be true... but, my guidance refers to the object as the focal point of OSIRIS' consciousness - head, heart, navel and genitalia... we are reminded of chakra energy points in the body. Now, if we regard a site or even the whole of Egypt as "the body of OSIRIS", ABYDOS claims the head. Soker is immersed in the Presence of OSIRIS. An imagined line of communication, psychic in nature, connects the two aspects of identity for the Double Land of historic Egypt. The hieroglyph for this object shows us what looks like an omphalos stone... with a crown or crest of the insignia of the hidden god AMEN (AMUN, AMMON). Two female cobras protect this object and it is venerated by a queen garbed as the goddess NUT. The whole construction is mounted on a sledge as if prepared for a progress outside the temple. The central pillar (recalling the lower part of the djed pillar) is supported by two leonine forms of the Akeru watchers. Sacred ram images attend the "float" and symbolic scenes of a Pharaoh's consecrating ceremony are depicted as if happening eternally. If this object contained the head-relic of OSIRIS, it probably represented the centering power of a personality equated with the geomantic energy-center of a given temenos. From the omphalos stone, we can imagine the surveyors laying out a pattern of subsequent centers and sighting points unified into a grid pattern of "Net of Neith" matrices. These are, to some extent, tlie patterns I have used to analyze the design of the installations at SAQQARA and at Gizeh.
We can wonder where the original stones were set. The stone of SOKAR came in a hennu-boat (an ark) to the center at Memphis. The stone of Delphi came from Egypt. The stone that was in the KA-ABA at Mecca was probably the original Ben-Ben from Heliopolis, brought to Sinai by some mythic ADAM/ATUM. Perhaps all of the stones are cousins. They are drawing our attention to the marvelous energy of the body of the Earth - to its network of lines, its capillaries of force pulsing with the fact of potency. The king is one of us who can pull the Sword of Discernment out of the stone of the material so to channel Earth energy carried along the ways of Merlin into the care of his subjects. And through the stones set up at the byways, each of us can be reminded to return the favor, and to wish Earth well, to heal it with our energy, to balance it with faith. We complete the circuit. Earth and sky. Gods and Goddesses. Energies and thoughts. The symbols of our existence, the Network of Being, all complementing each other in the being of ONE.
The Tree of Life with Excalibur sword.
Updated Feb. 20, 2005
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