Word SOBEKFINAL-Iona Miller 1-30-2018 - Io re-edit 2/19/18
SOBEK & THE DRAGON BLOODLINE
A New Myth of Bloodline Transformation for an Ancient God
by Iona Miller, 2018
"Spell 991: To become Sobek. I am the seed which issued from the encircling wrapping. I am he who broke the teeth of him who cut away the iron. I am the Lord of strength and might who took crocodile-shape. I am the Lord of wrong who lives on woe. I am that crocodile whose tongue was cut out because of the mutilation of Osiris. I am he who puts fear whom the Ennead fear. I am that god who rises in the East and sets in the West, to whom the Niles are given. I am that god whom the eight row. I am Sobek, the rebel who is among you [the gods]; you cannot do anything against me, you spirits or you dead, for I have taken possession of the sky and have taken possession of the earth." --adapted freely from The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts, Volume III Spells 788-1185.
INTRODUCTION
This essay is a deep dive into the Dark Waters of the unconscious embodied in the dual nature of Sobek, the crocodile deity, who was both revered and feared from archaic Egypt, the Old Kingdom through the Greek and Roman period. We will cover the dual nature of Sobek as mortal and divine, as material and transpersonal.
This paper explores the archetypal dragon bloodline from a few novel perspectives, including devotion and direct experience. It is more poetical and metaphorical, rather than psychological. Genealogy is its ritual, and spiritual rebirth is its telos. We explore a world where order (ma’at) or meaning is created without a designer but rather out of an intricate dynamic system.
Mythic consciousness and its practice, ritual life, requires a telos to create the dynamics of consciousness in imaginal life. This urge propels the soul. Telos is our destiny or innate potential for becoming. Wholeness is the goal of Self-realization, including where we come from and who we really are. But we cannot know the end at the beginning because possibilities arise along the way, like the crocodile suddenly arises, surging from the deep waters.
For myself such an exploration is an experiential voyage back in time on the wings of my ancestors showing a direct family connection to the god and his patron dynasties and priests. It is one thing for history to tell us there was a Sobek cult in Memphis, and another to find that one ancestor priest there served Sobek, rather than Ptah, like his own priestly family. It puts a ‘face’ on those linking us back in remembrance.
My attempt is to contemporize both the mundane and transpersonal aspects of the Sobek cult and modern devotion. While informed by Depth Psychology it doesn’t use the tired Jungian tropes and theories, but approaches the archetype poetically. Post-Jungian archetypal psychology is radically polytheistic, even animistic.
So little is written on Sobek, this is an opportunity to expand our understanding of what that direct experience might be like, not only as its metaphors and manifestations, but as self-arising generative power that impacts our instincts, dreams, and healing. We need to know where the crocodile god hides within us.I have written more on this subject online at “Sobek: The Wild Psyche” (Miller, 2018).
While rooted in my own genealogy, the dragon bloodline applies to anyone who knows their similar royal lines, as well as those who intuitively feel a soulful connection to their roots, including Sobek. Simple mathematics shows we are all connected, just as we are to Genghis Khan or Charlemagne, for example. Mythically, this approach suggests that not only can ancient practice inform our own devotion, but our own experience may help us understand actual Egyptian devotional and initiatory practice as well as or better than interpretations from archaeology and anthropology.
We have to trust our imagination, dreams, and ancestral memories to guide us in the process. We have to trust Sobek as the soul-guide and protector the Egyptians knew. Our ancestors unconsciously affect our current lives. My work as a therapist working with Transgenerational Integration has given me the opportunity to watch many others besides myself find their roots in the mists of prehistory with various gods and goddesses. Most find it strikes at the core of their self-image and worldview, transforming their lives.
The result is often shock and awe that traditional genealogy reveals such divine wonders at its deepest roots. Such awesome numinosity is a trait of Sobek experience, itself a primary instinctual manifestation – a primordial Mystery. The convergence of the popularity of personal genealogy and personal mythology from the transpersonal schools of psychology has created a hybrid spirituality, fusing ancient knowledge and eclectic practice. It also gave rise to a controversial genre of alternative history rooted in royal lines. You may have done your DNA, but it will never divulge a single name, much less a face we can relate to.
Elsewhere, in other devotionals, I have unpacked the royal connections back to Aphrodite and Mars by using my own genealogical lines as a thread to explore the labyrinths of time. History takes on a different feel when we see it unfold in the lives of our own alleged great-grandparents. There are millions, who know or don’t know, their own lines of such bloodline descent from various cultural gods and goddesses. But something special happens to each of us who discover them. It forms a solid bond, couple by couple back to our ancestral root.
This linking back or remembering of our chain of ancestors and their veneration is a big part of what Egyptian religion was all about – keeping their names and their souls alive. We can see it as a metaphor of Sobek saving and recollecting the parts of Osiris and revivifying his generative spirit. There are so many aspects of this vital connection, based on blood descent, that we cannot follow them all out, even in a long essay.
My approach arises from my own experience as a therapist in modern Dragon bloodline societies and heritage groups. Interest in books from Holy Blood, Holy Grail, the da Vinci Code, The Dragon Legacy, and the many works of Sir Laurence Gardner on Grail cultures created a modern myth of ancient cultures. It has led to the formation of many international societies and gnostic religious groups. It also created a fad of dis- and misinformation, as well as some grandiose self-delusions.
While much of this literature focuses on alleged descent from Jesus, the origins of those royal lines as a civilizing force in early Egypt and Mesopotamia is even more interesting for those whose gods are older and even more chthonic, for those who are not afraid of the initiatory dark. What we don't know lives in our dark places, deep in the primordial unconscious waters.
The dragon bloodlines are rooted in tales of the Anunnaki gods. For me, this is a way of ‘making soul,’ of deepening relationship with the unconscious as represented by the archaic Sobek worship. This takes it far beyond the intellectual or conceptual, into the experiential realm, where genealogy and care for the ancestors are a new ritual for realizing the archaic promise of Egyptian ‘immortality.’ It goes far beyond the occasional 'A-ha' into deep initiation -- our own metaphorical death and rebirth.
The ‘underground stream’ of ancient and royal descent runs through our collective history. Such exploration is valuable for myself and others, because we all want to know who we are and where we come from. I can trace my own lines back to the legendary first pharaoh Manes, a generic title for a pre-dynastic term of mythical tribal kings, described by Manetho. While some of the above interpretations are unconventional, the traditional genealogy is completely standard, though it ranges into legendary and mythological figures. This is the archetypal realm, the Netherworld of the Egyptians.
It describes an alternative view of the historical practice of the Dragon tradition that illuminates the ancient cult and informs our own devotion. The dragon/serpent/crocodile is an overarching symbol of this royal line, especially in Egypt and Mesopotamia. One of the original Dragons is Sobek. Each Pharaoh from first to last was also known as a dragon priest-king. The dragon ‘overmind’ links them all to their transpersonal divinity, one unified super-being.
We will explore many aspects of this convergence of old and new, but can only briefly introduce many of them. We will explore such themes as The Dragon Heart, The Wild Psyche, The Dragon Legacy, Creative Potential, Riding the Dragon, Freeing the Dragon, the Sobek of Our Dreams, Archaic Spiritual Legacy, and a few prominent figures from Egyptian history who built the Sobek cult. Hopefully, some resonate with your own devotion, service, and practice. More may be revealed as we unconsciously ‘digest’ the implications for ourselves.
Dragon Heart
The Dragon-Logos, Sobek, is the root of the lines. Its dragon treasures include clarity, foresight, and transformation. The names may change, but the Dragon archetype, like the crocodile, remains the same. We can approach it, with reverence and caution -- literally, metaphorically, or symbolically.
Nevertheless, it lives within us in the deepest recesses of our unconscious, in the absolute space of our subatomic nature. While such outrageous claims are arguable, we hope to provide some credible clues from both the lineage and modern research. There is precedent.
We will explore the core commonalities of old and new practices, then discover more about the dragon descent. We learn how to connect with the dragon archetype and tame that force as the Egyptians trained their sacred crocodiles. Like the ancients, we use ancestral veneration as a basis of our devotion, practice and service.
We hope to establish some flow by re-visioning the ancient and modern practices. We want to see with Dragon Eyes. Yes, there are ‘secrets,’ but such secrets always remain concealed, reserved for initiates. They simply cannot be divulged solely because they are subjective experiences, not just concepts. This essay hopes to stimulate your own vision and wisdom about this ancient path.
In The Secret Doctrine, H.P. Blavatsky says, “’Serpent’ and ‘Dragon’ were the names given to the "Wise Ones," the initiated adepts of olden times. It was their wisdom and learning that were devoured or assimilated by their followers. She describes how the priests assumed the names of gods they served and how ‘Dragons’ were symbols of immortality, wisdom, and knowledge. She names the crocodile as the Egyptian dragon, a “dual symbol of Heaven and Earth.”
“...The crocodile was moreover, the symbol of Egypt herself. The Alchemists claim another interpretation. They say that the symbol of the sun in the ship on the Ether of Space meant that the hermetic matter is the principle, or basis, of gold, or again the philosophical sun; the water, within which the crocodile is swimming, is that water or matter made liquid; the ship herself, finally, representing the vessel of nature, in which the sun, or the sulphuric, igneous principle acts as a pilot.” (Blavatsky)
As in the case of the later Grail Kings, the King and the Land were One, and the Dragon-Crocodile symbolized it all – the sovereignty, might, and wisdom. Collins English Dictionary (7th ed. - 2005) describes numinous as "arousing spiritual or religious emotion; mysterious or awe-inspiring." Rudolph Otto suggests the numinous can be understood as the experience of a mysterious terror, awe and majesty in the presence of that which is “entirely other” and thus incapable of being expressed directly.
Sobek is a numinous religion of immediate experience, not faith. In On the Nature of the Psyche, Jung says, “Numinosity is wholly outside conscious volition, for it transports the subject into the state of rapture, which is a state of will-less surrender.” Wonder and astonishment are part of taking it to heart, interiorizing it, becoming intimate with it. Primordial wisdom is "unborn, unceasing, unlimited, undying," and that is always our fundamental nature.
The transcendent function arises when our conscious mind begins to become aware of some aspect of the unconscious mind – immanence. The conscious and unconscious aspects of the mind work together to conceptualize life experience. By opening to the unconscious, the conscious mind gives form and meaning to deep ineffable truths. They are known, but unknown: intuited, but unspoken.
In Egypt, Babylon, and Chaldea, magic and occult practices were connected with astrology. Mythologies surrounding Nimrod and Osiris and Horus worship the sun god, the stars, and planets. In some legends and genealogy trees, Nimrod married Semiramis, the Egyptian princess daughter of Menes, the Pharaoh. It all goes back to ancestor worship, at the crux of it all. Between dynasties, Egypt is more a spiritual priestly lineage than a dynastic genealogical one.
Above all, the Egyptians believed in active ancestor worship or veneration, beginning with their Pharaohs. They believed in constant North as a portal to heaven for pharaohs, and the stars' close association with eternity and the afterlife. The myth of Osiris embodied their hopes for a life after death. Sobek helped ‘re-member’ the body of Osiris to impregnate Isis. Remembering is crucial, as remembrance and integration.
This important rite of Remembrance was to keep the ka ‘alive’ in this life as well as in the next. Royals, nobles and the wealthy made contracts with their local priests to perform prayers and give offerings at their tombs. The Egyptians believed that lack of ancestor veneration was one of the worst things a soul could endure.
No one can tell you what to expect from an encounter with the primordial, the numinous. It is different every time. Sometimes it is awesome and full of wonder, yet others can be paralyzing, even terrifying in their intensity and strangeness. A mysterious, majestic presence inspires dread and fascination.
For a mystical experience to occur, perceptions narrow and brain regions that orient us in space and mark the distinction between self and world must go quiet. We give up the past and give up the future; we give up our defenses. All feelings cease as the self merges with the numinous element. The mind becomes tranquil, withdraws itself from all sides, becoming firmly established in the supreme Reality.
In order to feel that time, fear, and self-consciousness have dissolved, certain brain circuits must be interrupted. This includes damping activity in the fear-registering amygdala, which monitors the environment for threats. Parietal-lobe circuits that give us a sense of physical orientation and a distinction between self and world must quiet down.
The orientation area requires sensory input to do its calculations. Intense meditation blocks the brain from forming a distinction between self and world. Frontal and temporal-lobe circuits, which mark time and generate self-awareness, must disengage. When this happens, self-awareness briefly drops out and we feel like our boundaries dissolve.
The most immediate experience is that of always having been and being forever. The three illusions of space, time and personality are obliterated in cosmic consciousness, as the soul completes its journey to its spiritual home. Human consciousness is eliminated, having been reabsorbed into the primordial essence. All becomes All without differentiation. This is the Unborn Self.
The Wild Psyche
On this path, we might imagine that as we merge into one overarching Being incorporating our ancestors and potential progeny, we ourselves embody the transpersonal for that period of time. But the ego can take no credit. It is not our abilities that allow it, but the responding connection with the depths. Archetypes take on certain autonomous behaviors.
Identification with the numinous can also lead to dangerous ego inflation, over-identification, or 'possession' -- seizure of the psyche by a seductive archetype and over-expansion. Inflation is the misuse of transcendental energy. In extreme states the non-personal unconscious can form a vortex that pulls us under a stormy sea – the Dark Waters of Sobek.
Dragon visionaries experience a similar process in their inner explorations, navigating waves of Unborn Nothingness. They magically explore the inner, deathless universe identified with, magically connected to, and transformed by Sobek. The god comes down to earth in our own psychophysiology, dwelling within us, down to the reflexive level of tactile understanding.
Dynastic sovereigns interbred for the ability to jump instantaneously from one place to another, to take a "jump off the path," "shortcut," or :travel without moving” – a quantum leap in consciousness to the stars. Their anointed Messiah was the genetic solution to simultaneously being in many places at once. The infinites are black-hole jumpers, traveling from universe to universe.
This is the source field of the fertility of microscopic, human, animal and plant life. It illumines the universe and directs nature in producing her species. This is the magical world of creative mystery. Our geocentric understanding of ourselves expands to realize that we are an intrinsic part of Cosmos.
The Universe is also literally within us. We become the personification of the whole natural world. This light, the dynamic reality of the energy field, is within us as within everything. Embodied nature is the link between the archetypal and formative worlds, the hyper-dimensional matrix of eternal patterns with sacred proportions and unique manifestations. It is also infinite potential, the possibility of bringing creative ideas to birth, to manifestation.
Spirituality is linked to the "oceanic" feeling of limitlessness. The sensation of an indissoluble bond is a deeply meaningful connection with the external world in its integral form. This feeling is an entirely subjective fact, not an article of faith. The oceanic experience is usually brief and completely unexpected. It is being at one with the entire universe, and of feeling a deep meaning and purpose to every part of existence.
This numinous experience is often accompanied by feelings of compassion and love for all beings. -- sacred participatory consciousness. But it may just be a momentary glimpse, a felt sense of what an integrated state would feel like. The universe looks very different seen from the inside out as pure consciousness apprehending itself. The holistic shift reveals that matter, energy, biology and consciousness are all interconnected in a coherent sympathetic resonance.
Dragon Legacy
The Egyptian priest-Prince Ankhfn Khonsu (2170 BC) is a Dragon Court ancestor. My genealogy shows him as my 122nd Gr-Grandfather, naming each couple in between. Today’s dragon descendants have a legacy of spiritual practice for enhancing vision, clarity and foresight. Its antecedents can be found in the practices of Sobek cults of the sacred dragon/crocodile/serpent in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and elsewhere.
For example, in Ptolemaic times, Sobek was sought as an oracle to whom mundane and spiritual questions were put. To ancient astronomers, Sobek became the Polar Dragon of vast cosmic and temporal Precession cycles, a visual and symbolic reference uniting heaven and earth. For healers, Sobek was sought as an epiphany in dreams. In Theosophy, it is Dragon Logos of the great Root Dragon.
The dragon practices deal with self-transformation, depth awareness, and expanding interiority. It is all about building a real relationship between our conscious and unconscious minds. Practice and devotion facilitate direct experience of the deep unconscious and eruptions of ancient instincts, genetic memory, and dream life, as well as wisdom.
They include a wilder, more eruptive and primal form of Kundalini awakening than the systematic Hermetic practices of Thoth. Even shock, terror, and fear can bring a rude traumatic awakening when raw emotion floods or overwhelms us.
Sobek is about interiorization, containing and symbolizing that energy. Practices are based in magical and therapeutic identification with or invocation of Sobek, natural transformational processes, and inner journeys in the netherworld. Some are rooted in alchemy and dreamwork. Sobek also had astronomical, astrological, and magical aspects. Scientific finds in astronomy, archaeology, and genealogy are providing more evidence of cult practice and associations.
In psychological terms they relate to the archaic source of the collective unconscious, psyche, and soul. Sobek was the source of both great creation and destruction. When ego and shadow unite, the Self arises as a transpersonal force of the unconscious. Draco derives from the original drakon, or draconta, which can translate as “to watch”. And what the numinous Eye of the Dragon watches over is the netherworld.
These are death-rebirth mysteries that allude to Kundalini activation and direct experience we can call a primordial ‘Sobek consciousness’ or ‘Riding the Dragon.’ As an archetypal power, Sobek can never be fully known, since our deepest unconscious essence is unknowable because it is the Unknown.
All dragon court practices trace back in some way to traditional practice. While the Coffin and Pyramid Texts describe them as death rites, they are also metaphorical and initiatory rites of symbolic immortality and primordial awareness. They can be done by devotees, descendants, and priest/priestesses of Sobek. We have to rely on intuition as Sobek’s internal guidance, a sort of navigational compass pointing to our true spiritual North.
When they were crowned, Pharaohs were anointed with Sacred Crocodile (Messeh) fat, referred to in Egypt as the Holy Mesa, which became the Aramaic Mashih, which in its verb form is MeSHeH or ‘to anoint’. Early Kings were called ‘Dragons’, ‘Mesas’ or ‘Messiahs’, and Draco.
The first known female Pharaoh, Sobek Nefru took the throne supported by the cult of Sobek. She is sometimes named as the Egyptian Princess who rescued Moses, (allegedly, Amenemhat IV), who fled when he killed an Egyptian, as described in the Bible.
Others say Moses was raised by a daughter of a Pharaoh, or link him with the family of Akhenaten. Princess Sobek Nefru married Pharaoh Khenephres, who can be equated with Khaneferre Sobekhotep IV.
Genealogy shows descents from them to Meritatin or Scota who fled to Ireland, as well as Jewish lines that married into the royal families of ancient Europe. Their reunification led to the Grail Kings, who are still claimed as legendary progenitors of royal descent.
Naturally, many other Egyptians are suggested are named the biblical Moses. Anyway, the tacit evidence of the Hebrews using a holy anointing oil for their kings and priests shows a connection occurred at some point. Today we find that both anointing recipes may have had wild consciousness-altering properties that could account for radical experiences and transformations of the ‘anointed ones.’ Their original basis was rendered crocodile fat.
Simcha Jacobovici, the ‘Naked Archaeologist’, says Moses' rod became a crocodile, not a snake:
"Did you know that, when facing Pharaoh, it is not Moses that throws down his staff; it is his brother Aaron and, according to the original Hebrew, it did not turn into a snake but a crocodile? Since the Egyptians worshiped the crocodile god -- Sobek, when Aaron's crocodile swallowed up the Egyptian crocodiles, Pharaoh understood that the God of Israel was more powerful than his entire pantheon. All this is lost if the Hebrew word 'tanin' is mistranslated as 'snake' instead of crocodile.” (cited in Mogenson)
This latter branch included the bloodline of the Davidic House of Judah who married into the descent of the Merovingian Kings of the Franks. They claim a linear descent from the Priests of the Dragon Court of Queen Sobekh Nefru of Egypt, whose predecessor Amenhemet built the Dragon Labyrinth of Faiyum at Hawara which is dedicated to Sobek. The royal lineage, descending from archaic times has always been associated with the Dragon, whether as crocodile or serpent. (de Vere)
This dragon tale continues through the Gaels, who say they descended from a princess named Scota. Her husband was Niul, by birth, a Black Sea prince of Scythia. Her name “Scota”, which was Scythian for “ruler of the people” was acquired when she married.
A variant myth in the Lebor Gabála Érenn says another Scota was the daughter of an Egyptian pharaoh named Cingris, who is only found in Irish legend. She married Niul, son of Fenius Farsaid. This Babylonian migrated to Scythia after the collapse of the Tower of Babel. He was a scholar of languages and was invited by the Pharaoh to Egypt to take Scota's hand in marriage. (Wikipedia: Scota)
Princess Scota, was born in Egypt, at the time of Moses. These leaders, from which the Gaelic people descended, were themselves descended from historic people. The Scythians, before the migration of Niul and Scota to Ireland and Scotland, were descended from the Biblical Ham and Japhet. Ham, was Thoth. Japhet was Iapetus II to the Greeks. (Gardner)
There are conflicting tales of Scota’s descent through Akhenaten, and four or five other pharaohs. But all agree on the migratory process between 4,000 and 3,500 years ago to these western lands. As Meritaten, grand daughter of Nefertiti, she may have been a religious refugee. We may never know the genetic root of the alleged dragon lineage of the High Kings of Ireland.
But we do know Egyptian artifacts, including faience beads and bones of an African monkey, have recently been found near Tara. That suggests trade or the presence of Egyptians in Ireland at that time. Recent discoveries in DNA research have added to already verified archaeological evidence. A Swiss genetics company claims that up to 70% of British men are related to the Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun.
Irish history (Scoticronicon) records a story of Scota, as a royal daughter who arrived in the southern part of Ireland via Spain between 4,000 and 3,500 years ago. She sailed the trade route in search of the new world. She settled in the southwestern county of Kerry, Ireland and gave Milesius eight sons through whom many trace their descent today..
Creative Potential
Laurence Gardner describes his theory that ‘kingship’ is derived from ‘Kainship,’ referring to the biblical Cain as the “first King of the Messianic Dragon succession.” This Mesopotamian dragon icon was used throughout the Middle East.
In pictorial representation, the Messianic Dragon was, in essence, a large-jawed serpent with four legs, very much like a crocodile or a monitor. This was the Sacred Messeh whose name was 'Draco.' Draco was a divine emblem of the Egyptian pharaohs, a symbol of the Egyptian Therapeutae, of the Essenes of Qumran, and was the Bistia Neptunis (the sea serpent) of the descendant Merovingian Fisher King in Europe. (Gardner, p. 612)
The kings of the early succession (who reigned in Sumer and Egypt before becoming kings of Israel were anointed upon coronation with the fat of the Dragon (the sacred crocodile). ...This noble beast was referred to in Egypt as the Messeh (from which derived the Hebrew verb 'to anoint'), and the kings of this dynastic succession were always referred to as 'Dragons', or 'Messiahs' (meaning Anointed Ones). (Gardner, p. 612)
Just as we do today, the Egyptians sought their origins through connections to their ancestors and their mythic antecedents in the mists of prehistory. The ancient Egyptian royal bloodline is the House of Sobek. Their reign spanned the 12th and 13th Dynasties. The royal Messianic line passes through David and Solomon to Jesus and the Desposyni, down through Roman leaders, through Scota, to the mythic-historical lines of the Holy Grail: descent from Joseph of Arimathea, Arch Druid Bran the Blessed, and Pendragon Dynasty of King Arthur.
This Dragon Bloodline has always practiced its magic of the 'secret fire' which is known as “Kundalini”, “The Serpent Fire”, and the “Dragon,” depending on tradition. Egyptian coffin texts describe a process of identification or invocation of this dragon energy and its intensely transformative effects. The Dragon bloodline is known for its clarity of vision and second sight.
Alchemical philosophy is an intrinsic part of Hermetic thought, from the land of Khem (Egypt). Tuthmosis III of Egypt, who reigned about 1450 BC, maintained a hermetic school he inherited from the Royal Court of the Dragon. The oldest alchemical symbol is the Dragon. The Work is a waking dream, often a nightmare, in which the Prime Matter appears as a dragon.
There is evidence from ancient times that holy anointing oils of crocodile fat and intoxicants amplified the magical process. In legend, the alchemical Philosopher's Stone is kept in the custody of the reawakened Dragon, the Adept who inhabits his or her Body of Light. As dragon he devours himself and as dragon he dies, to rise again in the Lapis. Carl Jung called the dragon a symbol of the universal unconscious, a fundamental theme in mythology the world over — death and rebirth.
Riding the Dragon
Jung said, "It is as though consciousness were aware that the dragon is the lower half of man, which indeed and in truth is the case." (Letters, Vol. 1, Page 489). It is our earthly essence of which we are not conscious.
H. Niehr, writes in The Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, that 'tannin' can be translated as “dragon,” “serpent,” “crocodile,” or “sea monster.” In addition, Niehr said that the tannin lives in the sea, lakes and rivers, and the netherworld. The ESV translates the word tannin as “sea monsters” and the KJV translates the same word as “dragons.” (Mariottini)
'Riding the Dragon' has always been considered a dangerous practice for the unprepared because of its wild and destructive energy. An eruption of the unconscious, the prima materia is often symbolized as a dragon, as it is the personification of the self-generating instinctual psyche. The dragon represents the fertilization of the prima materia, the original material from which the universe is created.
Jung tells us, “It is a characteristic of the arcane substance to have ‘everything it needs;’ it is a fully autonomous being, like the dragon that begets, reproduces, slays and devours itself…a being without beginning or end."
But dreams bring healing epiphanies with the god. The dragon is also a healing power. The spiritual food of immortality signifies the ability of the ego to assimilate the previously unconscious aspects. This is the elixir of youth that creates the immortal body, equivalent to the Philosopher's Stone.
Riding the dragon, priest-kings or queens can call upon the aid and power of dragon potential to perform great magic. The Great Work allows the human body to contain the power of the Dragon. The dragon as universe symbolizes the wholeness of relationships. Psychologically, the dragon is the union of ordinary human reality with the Transpersonal Self and a passion for transformation.
As a symbol of DNA or the kundalini energy, it is a symbol of the Great Work. Even shock and fear can make the kundalini life force arise. The entire history of our human emergence into the animal world is forever recorded (repressed) deep within our genetic code. Certain aspects of our powerful ancient animal nature may lay dormant, just under the surface of our expression.
This innate wisdom is not a message transfer (from a sender through a channel to a receiver) but a communication in consciousness that allows consciousness to see itself arising. Meaning arises in the universe when sentient beings observe it, the universal quality of the animal as a symbol of transcendence. Coming from the depths, they are symbolic denizens of the collective unconscious. They bring into the field of consciousness a special chthonic message.
Morgenson speaks of dragons as, "what is totally unconscious and incapable of becoming conscious, but which, as the collective unconscious and as instinct, seems to possess a peculiar wisdom of its own and a knowledge that is often felt to be supernatural. This is the treasure which the snake (or dragon) guards, and also the reason why [it] signifies evil and darkness on the one hand and wisdom on the other. Its unrelatedness, coldness, and dangerousness express the instinctuality that with ruthless cruelty rides roughshod over all moral and any other human wishes and considerations and is therefore just as terrifying and fascinating in its effects as the sudden glance."
Today's dragon descendants and devotees of Sobek carry such traditions forward as a discipline and spiritual path of the Dragon -- a soulful journey into our deep interiority. As Nicholas de Vere suggests, "Entrance to Eternity involves the 'Wave of Bliss', the 'Divine Carriage to the Immortal Realms', also referred to as 'Riding the Dragon'." Creation occurs in increasingly dense levels of energy-matter, from the most subtle, or Fire, to the most dense, or Earth.
The dragon of the original chaotic condition prevails before the radical transmutation. But it contains all the refined ingredients of the ultimate alchemical state in uncooked form. The heat has yet to be applied to the unrefined material, raw uncooked emotion. Alchemy, Kabbalah, and Hermetics all describe a 'secret fire,' a dragon energy. In Alchemy this "secret fire" is often compared to a serpent or dragon.
The alchemists recognized four grades of Fire to work with. They were called Elementary Fire, Secret Fire, Central Fire, and Celestial Fire. Elementary Fire represents our everyday lives. Secret Fire exists within our consciousness. Central Fire is the fire of creation in all manifested objects. Celestial Fire is the brilliance of the transcendent mind of the Dragon itself -- primordial awareness. When the great cosmic dragon wakes it ravages everything in its path.
The paradox of the alchemical work is expressed in the allegory of the dragon. One version of the prima materia is poisonous and the other is “the most noble purified earth”. The prima materia— dragon of chaos—serves simultaneously as the source of things, the subject to whom things appear, and the self-arising characteristic images. This is not a mere material “source”; It is the absolute unknown itself.
Freeing the Dragon
We extend deep into matter, then into energy, and primordial ground. At the psychoid level, psyche plays a role as primal as that of matter, energy, and space-time. It is the state of reality in which we become identified with and transformed by deathless awareness. This is who we are. Depth is our internal infinity.
So, how can we metaphorically tend to, tame, and feed our sacred inner Dragon, as was done in his sanctuaries, whether as devotee, descendant, or priest/ess? What can it mean in terms of our depth experience and soul? The dragon was originally revered for living in two realms, water and land, much as we exist in two realms of conscious and unconscious. Kings were also regarded as belonging to two separate realms, the mundane and sacred, source of their ‘divine right’.
Sobek was worshiped throughout Egypt; his cult center was in the Faiyum. Sobek calls us to journey in his Dark Waters, the unconscious depths, to the restoration of life and triumph over death. We are present now, with the stars in our face and expanding universe at our back. Identified with the archetypal Dragon we are the infinite impulse of the unconscious and possess both sky and earth. We are Sobek.
The poet Rumi said, "To change, a person must face the dragon of his appetites with another dragon, the life-energy of the soul." More accurate than the old notion of the unconscious is that our conscious self is unconscious of most things most of the time and of everything in dreamless sleep. Paradoxically, the unconscious is holistically, non-locally conscious of all things all of the time. It never sleeps.
Paradoxically our conscious self is unconscious of our unconscious, and the unconscious is actually more conscious than normal awareness. Unconscious thoughts and feelings affect our conscious thoughts. During unconscious perception, an unconscious feeling can produce an unexplainable conscious feeling.
How long it takes to unblock our psychic anatomy for flowing functioning of the Secret Fire is variable. The heart is the center of the individual universe, and the most important of all psychic centers, characterized by strong intuition. This is the final resting place for the Dragon Tongue after its ascent over the skull.
As breathing flesh, we approach the “Big King” first, and allow him to direct the activities of the dragon/serpent — language not unfamiliar in Hermetics. That Big King is the Dragon, the Draco, the Pharaoh, the Messiah within the initiate. In this consciousness we are directly linked to universal history, primal instinct, and deep evolutionary force.
Much like the Dragon Draco was the apparent center of the universe, around which all revolves, so too on Earth, the Dragon lineage is the archetypal core of humanity. The Dragon legacy is immortal because when they do their rites, the heirs of this bloodline invoke the spirits of their ancestors and inhabit this Wisdom Body.
Thus, everyone in the lineage is magically kept alive in memory and imagination and plausibly in the etheric or the information-carrying realm. This seems to be exactly the intention of Egyptian religion.
The Sobek of Our Dreams
More especially the threat to one’s inmost self from dragons and serpents points to the danger of the newly acquired consciousness being swallowed up again by the instinctive psyche, the unconscious. The lower vertebrates have from earliest times been favorite symbols of the collective psychic substratum, which is localized anatomically in the subcortical centers, the cerebellum and the spinal cord. These organs constitute the snake. Snake-dreams usually occur, therefore, when the conscious mind is deviating from its instinctual basis. (Carl Jung; Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious; page 166)
After his association with Horus in the Middle Kingdom related him to the Osirian triad of Osiris, Isis, and Horus. Sobek became associated with Isis as a healer of the deceased Osiris, and a protector. His fierceness was able to ward off evil while simultaneously defending the innocent.
He was thus made a subject of personal piety and a common recipient of votive offerings. In Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt, crocodiles were preserved as mummies to present at Sobek's cultic centers. He protected the Egyptian people in the same manner that the crocodile protects its young.
The Hawara labyrinth, a vast underground temple complex, in Egypt was decorated with reliefs of the Dragon god Sobek. The womb temple is a place for rebirth. Sobek is also called the Dream Healer. The Egyptians believed that dreams could be used to get advice or prophecies from the gods, or for healing.
Healing power emerges from integration. Looking within, we arouse our tacit knowledge for participatory wisdom -- the active wisdom of the collective psyche. The same patterns are at work in the individual and collective psyche, something ungraspable in the depths. Larger patterns are at work in the collective.
A supplicant would sleep in the grounds of a temple, after praying to the god for help. They hoped that Sobek would visit them in a dream, after “sleeping in.” Supplicants incubated on the floor of the temple. When they awoke, they described their dreams to a priest for interpretation.
To dream of crocodiles may mean that there is something of great power lurking just below the surface of your unconscious mind., the instinctual 'reptilian' brain. Dreaming of crocodiles may also be messages of deep spiritual initiation. They have existed, relatively unchanged, for over 200 million years, so they are connected to a very ancient, primal, energy. Similar teachings turn up again among the Therapeutae, a healing sect.
Sobek is associated with various Egyptian creation myths – some believe that he climbed out of primordial chaos and laid cosmic eggs from which the earth sprang. The overall theme in these ancient mythologies appears to involve power; the ability to simultaneously inhabit two realms; the divine and creation.
Creative Potency, Protector, and Guide
Sobek, the sacred crocodile, has been identified with the circumpolar constellation Ursa Major, the Big Dipper - the Great Bear. The Celestial River is the Milky Way. The Big Dipper winds around the North Star like a crocodile in a slow seasonal deathroll. Egyptians used it to find true North, and to align the Pyramids. (Bario)
A Rumi poem, "Cry Out in Your Weakness" begins, "A dragon was pulling a bear into its terrible mouth…" The center of true North is often called The Dragon’s Eye. Blavatsky notes, “it was the goddess of the Great Bear and mother of Time who was in Egypt from the earliest times the "Living Word," and that "Sevekh-Kronus, whose type was the Crocodile-Dragon, the pre-planetary form of Saturn, was called her son and consort; he was her Word-Logos" (SD, p. 321, Vol. I.).
The word star in Egyptian was "saba." This is where the term "sabean" comes from, meaning "of the heavens" or "stars." Also seb, seba, sheba, sava, seba, seva, zeba, and so on. The English word "star," and Latin word "aster" both derives from the Egyptian original. The names of certain deities such as Sobek, Sebekh, and Set probably referred to the stars and to the master astrologers. The head of the Essenes at Qumran near the Dead Sea, was called the "Star."The title and appellation "Star" denoted a messiah or Christ figure, a great spiritual or political leader. (Tsarion)
The Egyptians laid out their kingdom according to a divine principle, a “Nile in the sky” where terrestrial localities had cosmic equivalents. Each district was a constellation, and the Nile River was an earthly manifestation of the Milky Way, a celestial river upon which the star gods and the souls of the deceased sailed. (Berio)
The Old Kingdom revered Sobek as a god of the Nile, floods, and fertility, yet feared him as a god of destruction. In the Middle Kingdom he was closely associated with Ra (the sun god). As Sobek-Re the sky-god, he was, 'the great god whose eyes emit the two discs of light, whose right eye shines by day and whose left eye shines at night, whose two large eyes light up the darkness.' He is 'prince of maat'. Sobek embodies the creative potency of the Nile and the pharaoh. He is the intense primordial creative power of the cosmos itself.
As Above, So Below.
Sobek's myth and cult embodied and concealed celestial mysteries. The star Thuban (Draconis) was the northern pole star around 2700 BC, during the time of the ancient Egyptians. The Egyptians emulated the heavens on earth with symbolic star pyramids along the Nile. Mythology creates narratives that contextualize experience by relating a history that took place in Primordial Time. Creation stories relate to what is sacred in a society.
Thus, Sobek became identified with the non-moving center of the night sky as a gateway to the infinite and the ancestors. Ancient Egyptians believed in constant North as a portal to heaven for pharaohs, and associated the stars with eternity and the afterlife. The Egyptians believed in generative myths of the cosmic force acting through the crocodile star. They believed that the Nile River was created from his sweat. Therefore, Sobek controlled the waters and fertility of the soil.
Sobek is called the son of Neith or Nuit, another very ancient goddess deity of Infinite Space. Sobek is born of the primordial waters as the crocodile is born of the Nile. Born out of primordial nothingness, he is generative power.
Spell 148 of the Coffin Text reads, “The Crocodile Star Messeh strikes … Isis wakes pregnant with the seed of Osiris” – namely Horus. Sobek embodies sexual potency: “I am the lord of semen who takes women from their husbands whenever he wishes". In the hymns from Sumenu Sobek is said to produce all living seed, and that when he copulates he "totally assimilates the other." This devouring aspect is echoed by Saturn or Chronos, who swallowed his own children whole.
Magically Identifying and Transforming into Sobek
CT spell 636 allows the operator to establish his/her powers of magic in the netherworld, with the operator’s ka as the source of his/her heka, ‘magic’ . They are said to be magically “in the water with Sobek.” CT spells 268 and 285 are both for “Becoming Sobek, Lord of the Winding Waterway,” a term which refers to the celestial ‘waterway’ of the ecliptic, which souls cross on their journey to the northern sky. They identify with Sobek.
In CT spell 158, Identifying with Sobek allows the operator to escape from the netherworld net and CT spell 991 also permits the invocation of, or “transformation into” Sobek, as a “rebel among the Gods” who has “taken possession of the sky and of the earth”.
It suggests that Sobek is conceived as a primordial God who can uphold or transcend the lawful order of the cosmos as established by the Gods s he wishes (Lexikon 1007). In Jungian terms, his consciousness is beyond the archetypal gods he helped generate. Buddhists call this seeing with naked awareness, psychic awareness stripped of all conceptual form, direct experiential knowing independent of space and time.
Sobek transcends the phenomena of his creation. Essential awareness is our essence -- timeless space consciousness is rooted in the depths of our being, the creative, the still point, living presence. There is a freshness in every moment -- alert to sense perceptions and reactions without thinking.
Primordial Creator
The Nile crocodile, Crocodylus niloticus, was the biggest and most dangerous predator living in ancient Egypt, so it took on mythic qualities of pharaonic power, fertility, and military prowess. The god offered protection from the dangers of the Nile as the Lord of the Nile, and the one “who greens the Two Banks.”
As for laying the cosmic egg, in alchemy, the prima materia is also often referred to as “ovum” (egg), the egg contained the four elements according to the old definition. On the same lines it is called “sperma” (sperm) and “semen mundi” (seed of the world).
While coffin texts are for the dead, Pyramid Text 317 describes the pharaoh as the crocodile god's living incarnation, implying its impregnating power. Thus, pharaoh is an impregnator:
"Unis is Sobek, green of plumage, with alert face and raised fore, the splashing one who came from the thigh and tail of the great goddess in the sunlight ... Unis has appeared as Neith 's son. Unis will eat with his mouth, Unis will urinate, and Unis will copulate with his penis. Unis lord of semen, who takes women from their husbands to the place Unis likes according to his heart's fancy."
Clearly, the Dragon God Sobek is the custodian and protector of the blood royal. The god might have been already worshiped during the period of king Narmer, or earlier in prehistory. His cults flourished and evolved over the dynasties as Sobek-Horus and Sobek-Ra, taking on a solar character.
Its zenith was as Sobek Shedety at Faiyum's centrally located capital, Crocodilopolis (Egyptian "Shedet"). Outside the Faiyum area, the Kom Ombo temple, House of Sobek, in southern Egypt, was his biggest cultic center in the Ptolemaic and Roman periods.
Dragon Archetype
Alchemical philosophy is an intrinsic part of Hermetic thought, from the land of Khem (Egypt). Tuthmosis III of Egypt, who reigned about 1450 BC, maintained a hermetic school, the legacy of the Royal Court of the Dragon.
The Egyptian priest-prince Ankhfn Khonsu (2170 BC) was a Dragon Court patron. The Royal Court Of The Dragon provided an institution for the pursuit of the work of the Dragon of Al-Khem otherwise known as Thoth or Hermes. From Al-Khem we derive Alchemy, The Great Work of the Dragon, with its classic texts, “The Emerald Tablets” and “The Pymander.”
The crocodile god is a primordial aspect of the dragon archetype, which shares similar qualities. The dragon of alchemy "devours, fertilizes, begets, slays, and brings itself to life again." In the “Book of Hermes”, Pymander appears to Hermes--Thoth in the shape of.a Fiery Dragon of “Light, Fire, and Flame." Pymander is the "Thought Divine" personified.
"The Dragon" means the dragon archetype resting within the Dragon blood and passed on through the genes. It is the conduit through which flow memories of the wisdom and experience of tarchaic Dragons. The dragon is very much our raw psychic energy within the unconscious (the cave or labyrinth where dragons live).
The fire breathing kundalini Serpent that is at first asleep is vile and dangerous to those who do not know the process of its purification. It is passed through the alchemical process, uniting cosmic masculine and feminine. The serpent/dragon/crocodile is found world-wide and relates to a number of human concerns--death, rebirth, healing, immortality, knowledge, wisdom, wealth, and finally water, which has much the same symbolism.
Dragons are associated with water in the form of weather, streams, bodies of water, and the primal cosmic ocean. The oldest and most purely mythic dragon stories deal with creation and the primal oceanic chaos which is a great dragon. Some sects believed that Sobek was the creator of the world who arose from the "Dark Water" and created the order in the universe. Sobek was a god of the Nile who brought fertility to the land.
As the "Lord of the Waters" he was thought to have risen from the primeval waters of Nun to create the world. However, as well as being a force for creation, he was seen as an unpredictable deity who sometimes allied himself with the forces of Chaos. Later dragons in other cultures guard virgins as Sobek guarded Isis, the Virgin of the World.
Thus, we can equate the dragon with primordial awareness, but also with the inner effective power of matter, immanence or the subtle body -- vacuum potential -- the internal aspects of potentiality, matter, and mankind -- the energy body or psychophysical self. The dragon as universe symbolizes the wholeness of relationships.
Dragon Bloodlines
In other areas, this archaic crocodile god, from the Dark Waters of the unconscious, was referred to as a Dragon, and associated with the primordial totem of ruling families. This lineage can be traced today in conventional and traditional genealogy through the Irish royal descents. The crocodile’s strength and speed symbolized the power of the Pharaoh. The hieroglyph of a crocodile represented the word “sovereign” or “ruler.”
According to Nicholas de Vere in The Dragon Legacy, "Briefly, the Dragon lineage starts in the Caucasus with the Annunaki, descending through migrating proto-Scythians to the Sumerians while branching off also into the early Egyptians, Phoenicians and Mittani. A marriage bridge back to Scythia infused the Elvin line of “Tuatha de Danaan” and the Fir Bolg, which branched into the Arch-Druidic, Priest-Princely family to the Royal Picts of Scotland and the ring kings of the Horse Lords of Dal Riada, through the Elven dynasty of Pendragon and Avallon del Acqs, and down to a few purebred families today."
The Dragon bloodline has been elsewhere described as the “Grail bloodline”, and the Dragon priest-kings are the same as the popularly-known “Grail kings”, including the Merovingians. Legend says the first dragon king was Kain. His successors were the first great Kings (or Kains) of Mesopotamia and Egypt. The Dragon Court can first be identified in Egypt under the patronage of the priest-prince Ankhfn Khonsu at about 2170 BC. A more formal pharaonic institution was instituted by the twelfth dynasty Queen Sobekh Nefru, "the beauty of Sobek," in 1785 BC. (Gardner)
Its ancestral power still calls to many descendants, whether or not they can trace their lineage or are even aware of it. It may come as a powerful attraction to any aspects of the cult and its history. These creatures represent a deep, abiding connection with the Mother (Nature), and perhaps that's the most profound wisdom they have to share.
Those who have discovered this connection have reacted in several ways. Such knowledge enjoys a modern renaissance among those who identify their ancestry with the ancient wisdom of Sobek, and the royal dragon families, including those of dynastic Egypt. Modern claims to dragon descent have been embodied in the revivals of the Imperial & Royal Dragon Court by its presumptive heirs, who find their own ancestral history within it as a closely-held secret of the dragon.
Sobek was one among several gods responsible for weighing the souls of the dead. In The Egyptian Book of the Dead the crocodile god opens the doors that lead dead souls into paradise. He carries Osiris in death on his back, ferrying him to the other side of the river. His name is synonymous with the portal to the underworld.
"The Book of the Dead suggests that Sobek, the crocodile G-d’s closeness to Horus can be traced back to his participation in the birth of this god. Sobek was responsible for calling Isis and Nephthys to aid in the protection of the dead. He was the G-d from the Dark Water. Sobek may have been an early fertility god or associated with death and burial." (Gardner, “The Hidden History of Jesus and the Holy Grail”)
The anointing formula, presumably rendered crocodile fat mixed with fragrant oils and intoxicants, passed down through history as the recipe for the holy temple oils used by the Jews. Sobek was called ‘Lord of myrrh’. The recipe translation remains somewhat controversial and recent suggestions include psychoactive cannabis oil. We have described its used by the Egyptians, Hebrews, and Greeks. Chris Bennett describes it and repeats citations of Gardner on the Egyptian messeh and Sumerian Mûs-hûs with a vital extra ingredient:
The ancient recipe for this anointing oil, recorded in the Old Testament book of Exodus (30: 22-23) included over nine pounds of flowering cannabis tops, Hebrew "kaneh-bosm", extracted into a hind (about 6.5 litres) of olive oil, along with a variety of other herbs and spices. The ancient chosen ones were literally drenched in this potent cannabis holy oil.
Archaic Spiritual Legacy
But our point is not how or if the royals, priests, or initiates became intoxicated, nor an ideological battle between Christ and the crocodile god. If it is so, we can presume it had a very strong effect, based on today’s cannabis research. Such a ‘journey’ may well have felt like a netherworld voyage. It wouldn’t be the only psychoactive plant the Egyptians used.
Our focus is on how dragon cult practices have come down into our own times in history, legend and myth -- not to mention our genealogies, real or fabricated. Our's is a spiritual legacy to honor and perpetuate to the best of our knowledge and practice, through personal mythology, dreams, wisdom traditions, and other means. Personal myth shapes individual behavior as cultural myths influence social behavior.
Regardless of what we think about modern vanity courts or 'what's in a name,' the spiritual legacy remains and calls to us from the depths of the Dark Waters. We can consider modern revivals of the Dragon Court a sort of personal mythology lived out loud, now gone global, based on perhaps a little truth and a lot of literalism. Descent from antiquity is considered pseudo-history for genealogists, but for others that is a way of suggesting a mythical reality, a psychic or imaginal dreaming.
At Faiyum, the Greek Crocodilopolis. Sobek was called ‘Sobek of Shedet’, or ‘Shedety’. Once this ‘civic’ Sobek was created, Sobek was able to play new roles in different environments, including Hawara, Medinet Madi, el-Lahun, Gurob and Qasr el-Sagha. 'Mighty in Power,' he is also 'the scattering energy.' Life, death, and rebirth are all parts of the cycle of being.
The double temple at Kom Ombo honors Horus as spiritual warrior and Sobek as 'the Rager.' With Sobek, Hathor conceives and bares the god of cyclical time, Khonsu, god of the moon. Those temple priests served both gods and initiated first into the mystery of one, and then its opposite in the underground tunnels beneath the temple, from the celebration of life to the rebirth from death. (Normandi Ellis)
Conclusions
We have explored how the Egyptian crocodile god Sobek was a Dragon with a traceable mythical descent from the Pharaohs into humankind through the Hawara cult at Faiyum, through Sobek Nefru and Ankhfn Khonsu..We showed Sobek as the model for anointing the chosen with messeh, crocodile fat mixed with fragrant oils and intoxicants.
We followed this practice from Egyptian priest-kings to the Kings of Jerusalem; to the Black Sea Princes of Scythia (Princess Milouziana of the Scythians) and into the Balkans to Scota, to Melusine, and into the Anjou and Plantagenet royal lines.
If Prince Ankhfn Khonsu is anyone’s Great-Grandfather, we can only deeply ponder what that might mean. My genealogy shows him as my 122nd Gr-Grandfather, naming each couple in between. Today’s dragon descendants have a legacy of spiritual practice for enhancing vision, clarity and foresight. Its antecedents can be found in the practices of Sobek cults of the sacred dragon/crocodile/serpent in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and elsewhere.
Such archaic myths arise self-generated from the imaginal psyche. We discovered that we are all descended from the dragon-like primordial evolutionary energies. The dragon remains as our deepest unconscious – vital, fertile, creative.
We can consider modern revivals of the Dragon Court, fraternities and fascinations with the Dragon bloodline a sort of ‘personal mythology.’ Some live it out, some research and study it, and some perform its transformative magic (Davidsen, p. 3-8). Some take it literally, others metaphorically, and symbolically. Views range from perhaps a little truth to a lot of literalism. Descent from antiquity is considered pseudo-history for genealogists but not transpersonal therapies, which treat it as any living mythic material.
This is a way of suggesting that a mythical reality, a psychic or imaginal dreaming can spontaneously initiate and heal souls, as the Egyptians believed. A dream appearance or epiphany can appear in a dream, and that alone is enough to impact the dreamer. Crocodile meaning is inherent in their prehistoric status. We are connected through our deep ancestral lines. The oldest and most vital part of our human brains is the reptilian brainstem and the cerebellum.
The primitive non-verbal part of the brain ensures our physical survival at the instinctual level of stimulus and response. The reptilian brain holds the most ancient evolutionary patterns from which we have evolved. It has kept us protected, alive, breathing, and growing forward. But it is the living relationship with the gods that feeds our soul and theirs.
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Bio:
Iona Miller is a nonfiction writer for the academic and popular press, clinical hypnotherapist, and multimedia artist. Her post-Jungian articles have appeared in several Neos Alexandrina devotionals, and elsewhere. She has taught personal mythology and self-exploration for decades. She serves on the Advisory Boards of Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research, DNA Decipher Journal, and Scientific God Journal, as well as the Board of Directors of Medigrace, Inc. https://ionamiller2017.weebly.com/
