Whore of Babylon

Whore of Babylon on the Seven-Headed Beast, Illustration for Rev. 17:3–8. From the Las Huelgas Apocalypse, ca. 1220

I love this. The Whore of Babylon (aka Sirius, aka Ishtar) riding (in the middle of, in Jul/Aug, in Leo) seven headed beast (seven months of Mesopotamian summer Apr/May - Oct/Nov), just before she starts rising with the sun before dawn (so still invisible in the day, red sky)...

I talked about her in my post "Apocalypse" in which I give full symbolic analysis of the Woman of the Apocalypse, described in Chapter 12 of the Book of Revelation...

The same girl...

The Woman Clothed with the Sun (aka Sirius rising with sun in Leo, aka Ishtar), an illustration from the Rothschild Canticles, c. 1300

The same girl again...

3rd mill BC Mesopotamian dragon has lion body (Jul/Aug, Leo is the hottest time of the year) and seven snake heads (one for each hot month of Mesopotamian summer, Apr/May-Oct/Nov)...Analysis of this seal dated to 2200 BC can be found in my post "Seven headed dragon"...

The "dragon" (summer) is depicted while his 4th head (4th month, Jul/Aug) is being killed (is in progress). To the left we see "The Lady" standing under a star (Ishtar -  Sirius)...

Why is Ishtar depicted standing next to the seven headed dragon? 

For the same reason she is depicted here standing on a lion. Cause she is deified Sirius, which rises with the sun (morning star) in Leo, Jul/Aug, the hottest time of the year. Which is why she is depicted standing on a lion with the sun above lion's head and is known as "The Lioness of heaven"...

For the same reason she is the one who sits on a lion throne...

I gave complete explanation of why Ishtar is Sirius and not Venus in this article containing full symbolic analysis of the Sumerian poem "Inanna and Šukaletuda"...

I talked about Inanna/Ishtar and why it was Sirius that was her original "morning star" in many of my posts...

You can start here: You know how everyone thinks that Inanna/Ishtar (Morning Star) is Venus and how I think that it was originally Sirius, and only later became Venus?

Well, it seems that Ancient Egyptians preserved the proof of this switch in their myths about Sopdet...

I talked about this in my post "Sirius mother of Venus"...

She of course has many faces and names...

Silver seal from Gonur Tepe, Turkmenistan, late 3rd-early 2nd mill BC. Depicting a winged goddess riding on a lioness...

Who could this be?

Well, of course, a Central Asian version of the "Lioness of heaven", Inanna/Ishtar/Asherah/Artemis.../Sirius in Leo...

I talk about this in my post "Silver seal from Gonur Tepe"

Back to the original Whore of Bablylon painting and why I like it so much. The same "two skies" trick was used here: Does anyone else think that this picture, allegedly showing King John on a stag hunt, looks strange, and may be hiding something in plain sight? No? 

Well I do 🙂 I explain why in my post "King John"...

In short, King John here is symbolic depiction of St John's day, Midsummer day, Summer solstice. 

White horse is a universal solar symbol. On this Celtic coin from Hungary, this is symbolically depicted through "solar rider", an anthropomorphised sun riding a horse. 

I wrote many posts about horse/equid as a solar symbol from Around the world. 

Horse is a solar symbol because horse fertility is governed by sunlight and peaks on Summer solstice. St John (day), Summer solstice is in the middle of the solar horse, going from red sky (increasing sunlight, before summer solstice) to blue sky (decreasing sunlight, after summer solstice)...

John is riding after (towards) a stag, (the symbol of) winter...

Jingle bells, Jingle bells, Jingle all the way...Bronze stag pendant with bell feet, early 1st mill BC, Transcaucasia or Iran. Currently in the Met Museum...

Stag is a symbol of winter because it is through the winter that stags have their full grown antlers. 

I talked about the stag as the symbol of winter in my posts "Winter deer"  and "Deer kills snake" 

What is very interesting is that deer antlers are fully grown in Sep/Oct, right in time for the start of deer mating season and the end of the horse mating season. The old antlers fall off, and the new ones start growing, in Mar/Apr/May right in time for the start of the horse mating season. 

This means that deer and horse are natural animal calendar markers for the opposite halves of the year...Which is why King John on his white horse will (symbolically) never catch the deer... 

So, (never ending) stag hunt..Talked about it in my post "White stag"...

If you are interested in reading more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, which are at the root of all our mythologies, start here…Then check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am way way behind...

PS: Just came across this amazing painting: The woman clothed with the sun and the seven-headed dragon, c. 1360-70 by Giusto di Giovanni de Menabuoi.

Which is, I think, much better viewed like this...

The Woman clothed with the sun - Sirius rising with the sun in Jul/Aug, the middle, the hottest part of the Mesopotamian summer which lasts seven months...

The Dragon - Nergal, The Destructive Sun (God) Shamash...The God whose seat is in Jul/Aug, the middle, the hottest part of the Mesopotamian summer which lasts seven months...Whose main head is the middle head of the seven headed dragon...

This guy...

By the blood of the Lamb

"...And [after a long battle] they overcame him [the dragon] by the blood of the Lamb..."

What does this verse from the Apocalypse Chapter 12 mean?

Let's start here: When a lamb is decorated like this in Serbia, it means that it's destined to be sacrificed to St George on St George's day...Aries must die so Taurus can begin...Lamb sacrificed to a Calf...I talked about this in my post "Aries must die"...

Recently I did the analysis of the Apocalypse story where I used animal calendar markers to show that the story is just a symbolic calendar. You can read full analysis in my post "Apocalypse"...

In this post I proposed that the 7 headed dragon was the personification of the 7 months of Sumerian summer, the season dominated by the sun which "steals water and causes drought"...

I talked about the meaning of fire breathing dragons in many of my posts...

Which is why local dragon (dragon = symbol of summer) depicted on this 3rd millennium BC seal from Tell Asmar, had seven snake heads (snake = symbols of sun's heat)...The dragon has lion body, because Jul/Aug, Leo, is the hottest and driest time of the year in Mesopotamia, the time of the fire breathing dragon (burning sun of the later summer) who steals water and causes drought...Oh, and look, we also have dragon killer(s) and the princess (Lady?) standing under a star 🙂 I talked about this in my post "Seven headed dragon"...

In my post about the Apocalypse, I proposed that "The Woman Clothed in Light" that dragon is pestering is Inanna/Ishtar as Sirius. 

Here is Inanna/Ishtar, deified Sirius, which rises with the sun (morning star) in Leo, Jul/Aug, the hottest time of the year. Which is why she is depicted standing on a lion with the sun above lion's head and is known as "The Lioness of heaven"...

I talked about Inanna/Ishtar as Sirius in many of my posts and I explained in detail why I believe this is the case based on all the written and symbolic evidence we have...

BTW, Inanna/Ishtar is the princess/lady standing under the star facing the seven headed dragon on the Tell Asmar seal...

But Inanna is also deified (fertile) Mother Earth, Mother of grain...In "The Courtship of Inanna and Dumuzi" we read:

As for me, Inanna,

Who will plow my vulva?

Who will plow my high field?

Before my lord, Dumuzi,

...

I poured out grain before him,

I poured out grain before my womb...

I talked about the "Mother of grain" in many of my posts. This is a good one to start with: "Mother of grain from Mari" in which I analyse this alabaster stele from Mari dated to the 3rd millennium BC.

So if the dragon that steals water gets defeated, then his defeat would mean that the stolen water is released back to earth...

To understand what this means in Mesopotamia, where this story originates, we need to take a look at the climate chart of the region:

Levant has pretty much the same climate:

You can see that the climatic year is divided into hot dry summer (Apr/May-Oct/Nov) and cool wet winter (Oct/Nov-Apr/May):

In the Apocalypse Chapter 12 we read that "...The woman was given...wings of a great eagle, so that she might fly...and escape the dragon..." 

The Sumerian summer Apr/May-Oct/Nov ends in Oct/Nov when the rains arrive...

Rains brought by the rain god, who was in Mesopotamia originally imagined as huge black eagle. I talked about this in my post about this mad Kassite seal, where we see two headed eagle spewing water. I talked about this in my post "Kassite seal with Apkallu"...

BTW, double headed Eagle/Vulture here, is the animal calendar marker for the beginning of the vulture mating season, Oct/Nov. When Eagles/Vultures dance over the mountains 

Dancing here is synchronised flying

Which from the ground looks like this

I talked about this first in my post "Double headed eagle" and then in my post "Eagle dance"...

But the fight continues until: "...[after a long battle] they overcame him [the dragon] by the blood of the Lamb..."

What does this mean?

Now remember my post "Goatfish"? 

Goatfish, the sacred animal of Enki, the Sumerian god of fresh water, is a complex animal calendar marker for the wet half of the year in Mesopotamia...Between the mating season of wild goats and the mating season of giant Mesopotamian carps...

There is another version of the goatfish. 

Oooook...And this means what?

Towards the end of the wet period, Oct/Nov-Apr/May, in Mar/Apr, close to the fish tail of the goatfish, we find Aries, Ram...

Animal calendar marker that marks the end of the lambing season of the wild and domestic sheep...And the beginning of the milking season...Very important time of the year...I talked about the origin of Aries in my post "Aries must die"... 

Great, but why is Ram combined with Goat-Fish, symbol of wet season? Because it is "during the sheep lambing season" Feb/Mar/Apr, that the snowmelt suddenly intensifies in mountains surrounding Mesopotamia...

And the water level in Mesopotamian rivers suddenly starts to rise...

So we have Goat (Oct/Nov) -- Ram (Mar/Apr) -- Fish,Carp (Apr/May)...

And it is this sudden surge in snowmelt discharge during Mar/Apr, Aries that makes the water level in Mesopotamian rivers suddenly rise...And peak in Apr/May, in Taurus, causing the Annual Tigris and Euphrates flood...

BTW, Taurus here is The Old Taurus, the animal calendar marker for the beginning of the calving season of wild eurasian cattle...

I talked about this in many of my posts, like "Cow and calf ivory", "Foundation peg of the goddess Nanshe", "Elamite water bull", "Human bull hybrid", "White calf", "Calydonian boar"...

So it is much more appropriate to mark Apr/May, Taurus, with a calf, just like it is more much more appropriate to mark Mar/Apr, Aries, with a lamb...I talked about this in my post "Maran"...

Anyway, in "Enki and the world order" we read that:

"Enki placed in charge of the whole of heaven and earth the hero, the youth Utu (Shamash), the bull standing triumphantly, audaciously, majestically...the great herald in the east of holy An...with a lapis-lazuli beard, rising from the horizon..."

It is the rising elevation of the sun that causes the snowmelt which feeds Tigris and Euphrates which causes the flood in Taurus. 

So golden bull's head (sun) with lapis beard (flowing water)  

BTW, in "Enki and the world order" we also read:

"...Father Enki...he stood up full of lust like a rampant bull, lifted his penis, ejaculated and filled the Tigris [and Euphrates] with flowing water. He was like a wild cow mooing for its young in the wild grass..." Some scene 🙂

So Bull Utu (sun) melts snow and Bull Enki (source of Tigris and Euphrates) fills the rivers in Taurus, when "wild cows are mooing for their young in the wild grass"...

I talked about this in my posts "Shamash young and old", "When Utu steps up to heaven", "Problems of Abzu", "But chewing"...

BTW, in Serbia, St George's day which marks the end of Aries beginning of Taurus, is the time when shepherds sacrifice lambs to St George...Remember, the lamb (Aries, Mar/Apr, End of lambing season, End of spring) has to die (end) so that calf can be born (Taurus, Apr/May, Beginning of the calving season, Beginning of summer)...I talked about this in my post "Aries must die"...

Interestingly, in the past, during spring droughts, Serbs used to go to mountain lakes to pray for rain to "a dragon living in the lake who swallowed the rain"...They also sacrificed a lamb to the dragon...The same sacrifice they made to St George, the dragon killer...I talked about this in my post "Dragon that stole rain"...

Anyway...What about the serpent? "...And the serpent cast out of his mouth, after the woman, water, as it were a river: that he might cause her to be carried away..."

First, snake is a solar animal, pretty much a universal symbol of the sun's heat. Snakes follow sun everywhere. They are in our world when sun is in our world (day, summer) and in the underworld when the sun is in the underworld (night, winter)...I talked about this in many of my posts. For instance "Snake god from Hatra"...

And as I said, it is the sun's heat that melts the snow...

Second, snake mating season, when snakes intertwine, starts in Apr/May, the time of the peak snowmelt runoff, and the peak discharge of the rivers in the Tigris/Euphrates system...

Which is why in the Deliver Me from Evil: Mesopotamian Incantations, 2500-1500 BC, By Graham Cunningham, we can read that in the Earliest Sumerian texts, Enki, the god of sweet flowing water and the source of Tigris and Euphrates, was associated with poisonous snakes...And was depicted as a god with the snake body. Like on this Elamite seal from the 3rd millennium BC, currently in the Isreal Museum, Jerusalem...

And again, Utu, Sun, Serpent, Dragon, melts the snow (releases the stolen water) and Enki, Serpent, Dragon, Abzu, source of Tigris and Euphrates, pours this water into Tigris and Euphrates...During snake mating season...

Interesting...Right?

To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, start here…Then check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am way way behind...