Abaddon
The God Apollo was a solar
ruler in heaven throughout the day, and a Lord of Death in the underworld during
the nighttime. His latter figure developed into the Jewish Apollyon, Spirit of
the Pit.1
Apollo-Python was the serpent holy being in the Pit of the Delphic oracle, who stimulated the
seeress with supernatural fumes from his nether world. The Greek word for the
Pit was abaton, which the Jews corrupted into Abaddon - later on a common
Christian expression for hell.
Additionally described as a mundus or earth-womb, the abaton was a real
pit, customary apparatus in a pagan temple. Those who entered it to "incubate,"
or to sleep overnight in magical imitation of the incubatory sleep in the womb,
were thought to be visited by an "incubus" or spirit who brought prophetic dreams.2
Novice priests went down into the pit for longer periods of incubation, pantomiming death,
burial, and rebirth from the womb of Mother Earth. Once initiated in this way,
they were thought to gain the skill of oneiromancy: the ability to interpret
dreams.
The Old Testament Joseph earned his oneiromantic talent by incubation in
a Pit. The "brothers" who put him there seem to have been fellow priests. He
could interpret Pharoah's dreams only after he has submitted to the ritual.
Assyrian priests derived similar powers from a sojourn in the Pit.3
They then assumed the priestly coat of many colors,
signifying communion with the Goddess under her oneiromantic name of Nanshe, "Interpreter of
Dreams."4
It seems likely that Joseph's coat of many colors would have been given him originally not
before the initiation but afterward, by a "father" who was actually the high
priest.5
The same burial-and-resurrection ritual is found in the lives of many
ancient sages. It was said of Pythagorean philosopher Thales of Miletus,
accounted one of the Seven Wise Men of the ancient world, that he derived his
intellectual skills from communion with the Goddess of Wisdom in an
abaton.6
References and Notes:
- Revelations 9:11.
- Bromberg, Walter. From Shaman to Psychotherapist. Chicago: Henry Regney Co. (1975). Pg. 11.
- Lethaby, W.R. Architecture, Mysticism and Myth. New York: George Braziller (1975). Pg. 172.
- Assyrian & Babylonian Literature, Selected Translations. New York: D. Appleton & Co. (1901). Pg. 131.
- Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology. London: Hamlyn Publishing Group Ltd. (1968). Pg. 63.
- de Lys, Claudia. The Giant Book of Superstitions. Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel Press (1979). Pg. 336.