Eclipse Dragons, Seasonal Change, and the Salvation of Light: A Case of Overlapping Cosmologies in Manichaeism (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Dragon of the Eclipses - A Note
Culture and Cosmos; A Journal of the History of Astrology and Cultural Astronomy, 2009
The astrological concept of the 'dragon of the lunar nodes', responsible for eclipses of the sun and the moon, may have derived from a combination of ideas prevailing in Late Antiquity with respect to the ourobóros or 'tail-biting serpent' - that it constituted a ring of darkness, that it was bent around the sun and that it was positioned on the ecliptic band. Various Mithraic, astrological and alchemical images of celestial dragons appear to represent this aspect of the dragon.
2016
The idea that eclipses of the Sun and the Moon were caused by the interference of an eclipse monster was widely held throughout the Eurasian continent and can be traced back to remote antiquity. The fearful monster, who quenched the light of the supreme luminaries by seizing them in its jaws, was generally conceived as a giant serpent or dragon, an iconography thought to be of oriental origin. Its function was thus seen to be that of threatening and “devouring,” as well as “delivering” and protecting the great luminaries at certain irregular intervals. The idea that these phenomena were caused by a body whose head and tail intercept the Sun’s and the Moon’s light was probably related to the emergence of definite ideas as to the nature of the orbits of the Sun and the Moon and their opposite points of intersection between the Moon’s orbit and the ecliptic. The classical theory of the dragon myth seems to have been modified in accordance with developments in astrological doctrine at least from late Arsacid and Sasanian times onwards. Sasanian astrologers received from India the notion of Rāhu, a celestial serpent whose head (siras) and tail (ketu) cause solar and lunar eclipses. In Pahlavī Rāhu was referred to as Gōchihr, his head sar, and his tail dumb; in Arabic, the latter were respectively called ra’s and dhanab. The great treatise on horoscopic astrology of the first-century Hellenistic astrologer Dorotheus of Sidon, which was first translated into Persian in the third century and into Arabic in the eighth century, contains a chapter (V, 43) entitled “on clarifying the phases of the moon and the head of the dragon and its tail ...” It states that “the head is called the “ascending” and its tail the “descending” and the signs which those learned in the stars call “obscured” are from Leo to Capricorn …”
ECLIPSES, MYTHOLOGY, AND ISLAM
Ad-Duhaa, 2021
Comparative religion is a field of study through which views of various religions about a particular topic or sets of topics can be collated, interpreted, and systematically compared for attaining useful insights and broadening the understanding of religious beliefs, behaviors, and actions. The current research furthers the study of comparative religion by elaborating the conceptions or myths related to eclipses as found in various religions and cultures in the world. Written as a narrative literature review, it aims to collate these conceptions and opinions for comparative analysis. In this paper, we have studied the 'myths' and 'mythology' of the religions and cultures spread across Australia, Asia, the Americas, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. It is found that some common themes exist in the beliefs held by various people and religions. However, if we compare these themes with each other, they are found to be considerably different indicating that they have not come from a common source; people have been creating them at various points in history. However, very different to them is the Islamic perspective on the topic. It profoundly differs from the conceptions held in other religions. It does not say that the eclipses are caused by some giant creature eating up the sun, or because of the sun being imprisoned, or because of a fight between some 'gods', and so on. It rather explains them as a phenomenon of nature that invites reflection and pondering. This raises a very important question to ponder upon: Why did Islam not adopt any myths to explain the concept of eclipse unlike any other religion even though it could use them for its benefit? This paper answers it by explaining the nature and objective of the Prophet of Islam and the source of his knowledge which was that very Creator who created the sun and the moon and everything else. Another important point that the current research highlights are that there is an inseparable connection between the fields of history, science, religion, politics, culture, and psychology; none of them can be separated from each other if one wishes to obtain a holistic understanding of this topic as well as many other matters of the past, present, and future.
The Substance of the Light according to the Coptic Manichaean Treatise Kephalaia 1
The Polish Journal of the Arts and Culture, 2015
In this paper the author analyses two important features of the substance of the Light in Manichaean narrative as it shows the Coptic Manichaean treatise Kephalaia, namely its uniformity and its physicality (perceptivity through the senses). He adds brief information on this treatise, then he writes about the method of presentation of the Light and the Darkness by ancient editors of the Kephalaia, and finally about the contexts of the Manichaean religious universe, in which the substance of the Light occurs. The author's final conclusions refer to the overall structure of the Manichaean religious thinking.