Stag and Unicorn

Stag and unicorn, Figure 3 from "Alchymistica", 17th/18th century document found in Benedictine Abbey Admont, Austria...

"The Sages say truly

That two animals are in this forest..."

"...One glorious, beautiful, and swift,

A great and strong deer;

The other an unicorn.

They are concealed in the forest,

But happy shall that man be called

Who shall snare and capture them..."

"...The Masters shew you here clearly

That in all places

These two animals wander about in forests

(But know that the forest is but one)..."

"...If we apply the parable to our Art,

We shall call the forest the Body.

That will be rightly and truly said.

The unicorn will be the Spirit at all times.

The deer desires no other name

But that of the Soul; which name no man shall take away from it..."

"...He that knows how to tame and master them by Art,

To couple them together,

And to lead them in and out of the forest,

May justly be called a Master..."

"...For we rightly judge

That he has attained the golden flesh,

And may triumph everywhere;

Nay, he may bear rule over great Augustus."

From "Book Of Lambspring" by Nicholas Barnaud Delphinas...

Let's test my "Art" on this...

Deer and unicorn, in "the same" forest, surrounded by "fiery ouroboros"...What does this mean?

The true meaning of a unicorn is easy to decipher if we know that they are white horses, and if we know that horse is one of the most widespread solar symbols...

I talked about Horse (Equid) as a solar symbol in many of my posts: 

Iran "Water carrier equid", "Dioscuri plate from Iran"

Mesopotamia "Shamash playing with the solar horse", "Sun god from Tell Brak"

India "Hayagriva"

China "Longma", "Three legged crow", "Mythical beast from Xian"

Levant "Alexamenos graffito", "Goddess on a horse", "Unicorn"

Europe "Archaic rider", "Beotian solar pyxis", "Pegasus and chimera", "King John", "The horseman", "Artemis Orthia"...

Horse is a solar symbol cause wild equid mating season, characterised by wild stallion fights, starts in Apr/May, at the beginning of summer, and ends in Sep/Oct...Equid  fertility is governed by the sunlight, and peaks on summer solstice...

Now unicorn has the same symbolic meaning as white horses...Unicorn is a solar animal, symbolising the hot, sunny half of the year...The virgin that "calms" the Unicorn is Virgo, Aug/Sep (horse mating season ends in Sep/Oct)...

BTW, Unicorn horn is described as "being cubit and a half (28 inches) in length". Erect horse's penis length 🙂 is max 28 inches...

I talked about Unicorns as animal calendar markers in my posts "Reem" and "Unicorn"...

What about the deer? Deer with fully grown antlers is a symbol of winter, because antlers become fully grown just before deer rut (Sep/Oct/Nov) and fall off just before beginning of summer, Apr/May...

I talked about deer as animal calendar marker for winter in my posts "Winter deer", "Dancing with deer and birds", "The return of Apollo to Delos", "Patera of Rennes", "Deer kills snake"...

So basically, unicorn=horny horse and deer are two animal calendar markers marking summer and winter. Two (opposite) halves of the same solar year (forrest)...Talked about it in my post "White stag":

"As for the White Roebuck [Stag], how many kings in how many fairy tales have not chased this beast through enchanted forests and been cheated of their quarry?"

That we are here looking at solar year calendar markers is confirmed by the fact that deer and unicorn are framed by the Ouroboros. 

The true meaning of the Ouroboros, "The serpent biting it's tail", is easy to decipher if we know that snake is a pure solar animal. It is in our world when sun is here (day, hot half of the year) and it is in the underworld when sun is there (night, cold half of the year)...

I talked about this in many of my posts...

Basically Ouroboros represents the ever spinning the solar wheel...the ever changing seasons: Spring-Summer-Autumn-Winter-Spring...the ever changing temperature of the sun and earth in continental parts of the northern hemisphere...

It is symbolic equivalent of this:

You know that Yin-Yang symbol is imagined as constantly spinning, ever changing? I talked about this in my post "Yin and Yang"...

So...

"He that knows how to tame and master [deer and unicorn], To couple them together...May justly be called a Master..."

He who knows the true meaning of Stag and Unicorn and how they are linked, and who knows how to use them...May justly be called a Master?

That's it. 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...

Unicorn

Unicorn, 13th c. floor mosaic, Basilica of San Giovanni Evangelista, Ravenna

While we are talking about unicorns, I actually believe that unicorns (horses with a single giant "horn") do exist...Except their horns are depicted in the wrong place...Probably because of the morals 🙂 

The predecessor of all medieval bestiaries, Physiologus (Φυσιολόγος), which was compiled in Alexandria sometime between 2nd-4th c. AD, popularised an elaborate allegory about a unicorn trapped by a maiden (representing the Virgin Mary) 

"As soon as the unicorn sees the virgin, it lays its head on her lap and falls asleep" it claims...

What does this mean? 

Well I believe that this is another myth which has its root in the "natural zodiac", set of symbols based on fixed annual lifecycle events...

In this case the unicorn symbol is derived from the natural reproductive cycle of horses. 

The natural breeding season of horses typically begins around mid-April and finishes around mid September...It is characterised by violent stallion fights...

The beginning of the horse mating season coincided with the beginning of the sailing season in the Eastern Mediterranean, which is probably why the Greek sea god Poseidon to whom then sailors prayed for calm seas, was also "god of horses" who was "worshiped as a stallion". You can read more about this in my post "Trojan horse"...

So obviously, the horse mating season is the time when stallions get "horny" 🙂 Unicorn horn is described as "being cubit and a half (700 mm, 28 inches) in length". 

Pic: erect horse's penis sizes 🙂 (sorry)

The virgin, which calms the unicorn 🙂 is not an euphemism for bestial sex...It just means that the natural horse mating season ends in Virgo 23 Aug–23 Sep...Which is the time when unicorns (🙂 ) disappear. 

Until next summer...

But maybe this is just me reading into things...

Oh I completely forgot to say that the Unicorn is the symbol of the sun, sunny part of the year, from spring equinox to autumn equinox. Mares fertility is tuned to day length, which means they are most fertile around summer solstice...When stallions are horniest 🙂  too...

Oh, and the origin of the Unicorn legend can be found in the mistranslation of the Hebrew legend of Re'em...Cause Re'em in the end turned out to be a wild bull, hot a horse...I talked about this in my post "Re'em"...