The Devils and Evil Spirits of Babylonia

originally posted by: beansidhe
a reply to: Harte

Your (excellent) encyclopaedia lists it as Adad's (Iskur) lightning bolt and this article by Gavin White (colour names are a necessity in this field, it would seem) helps to explain why it links to Virgo and the Furrow. It's a good idiot's-guide to Babylonian skylore, which I enjoyed very much. Make of that what you will.

Thanks to both you and K,

B x

A symbol of Sala was a barley stalk, suggesting
that she was perhaps an agricultural
deity. One text links Sala and an ear of grain
147 with the constella tion called the Furrow
(Virgo), whose brightest star, in modern
terminology, is Spica (Latin virgo, 'maiden';
and spica, 'ear of grain').
See nude woman; zodiac.

Black and Green, p. 173

Black and Green link it to Sala, like White.

As for who's right, I suppose we'll have to wait for Drs. Plaid and Paisley to chime in.

In the meantime, I plan to follow Black and Green's advice - see nude woman.

Harte

a reply to: beansidhe

You know it might be worth looking into this along the lines of your initial consideration as to whether this could have anything to do with tuning forks, there is an article here which looked at Hittite representations of the storm Gods pronged fork and the realization that were experts had thought there was only one basic motif involved there were at least two and perhaps several, the situation was the same in Babylonia were if one looks at the kurdurru boundry stones there are at least several variants.



The reason for this i think is that the Furrow as Virgo is the oldest and appears also on Indus valley seals but also ploughing the furrow was the common Mesopotamian sexual metaphor, and the one that did this was Ninurta as a God of the plough and farming, as well as a warrior and storm God, thus in a sense he represented an active principle associate with the furrow, and his early two pronged sign of prowess very much resembles the furrow motif, but of course that is metallic.



So by Babylonian times there are several variants, an Hurrian import Goddess Shala has replaced the earlier association with Nisaba, the storm God is associate with the winged Panther Perseus and this is developing into the triple pronged trident and there is also seen association with Aries were the God Dumuzid is associate and reckoned to plough the furrow of Inanna in terms of representing the sexual metaphor.

Anyway while having a look through the Kurdurru stones i came across these interesting examples which relate directly to this thread in that the scorpion Goddess Ishara is seen in relationship to the astral sign for the Seven, and there is textual evidence that she was seen as giving birth to them.

Most would automatically think that sign relates only to the Pleiades but in this context that's unlikely, and the association with the Fox as Erra is also seen which is given as a star of Ursa Major. Ishara was a Goddess of oaths and it's thus understandable why she might have a prominent position on a territorial boundary stone, the seven could convey a sense of warning.

a reply to: Harte

Who could argue with such sage advice? Life is short, after all.


a reply to: Kantzveldt

Thanks for the link. It is difficult when you understand that symbols for the same god/action/star were different in different times and across different groups, although they retained a common theme. Knowing the background and understanding the culture (which I don't) is really imperative when trying to decipher these symbols.

But back to the Seven, they would be ideal on a boundary marker. If they could be summoned at will by the landowner, who would mess with him?
The kudurru you've shown does seem to indicate that the seven stars are from the scorpion, although the Pleiades and Scorpio both rise in the autumn too, interestingly enough.

Ishara was also worshipped within the Hurrian pantheon. She was associated with the underworld. Her astrological embodiment is the constellation Scorpio and she is called the mother of the Sebitti (the Seven Stars) (Seux, 343).

en.wikipedia.org...

Good stuff.

a reply to: beansidhe

I think there's a quite profound association of Ishara with the mystical notion of Seven, there are Hittite purification rituals involving her concerned with seven male and seven female Deities, with seven path ways performed over seven days and such like, the constellation of Scorpio could also be identified as Ishara-Tiamat, it's the point of connectivity between the former and present Creation.

The notion of Seven in the magical sense is that which binds the ordering of everything, it could also become unbound and collapse into chaos, think of Priests circling a City for seven days blowing seven trumpets at the end of which the walls collapse, that would relate to the cult of Ishara, or in the particular case of that example Asherah.

Ishara was a principle Deity across an expansive region, including Proto-Hebraic Ebla, the symbolic usage of seven in the bible a sign of her former importance until she herself became unbound from that tradition.

There is also the concern with the perfectly established, the basis for all the purification rituals, the opposite to which is degeneration into the mire and ultimately the underworld and chaos, as the principle of the binding was also related to Love then a concern also for the purest love, Ishara sets the hard road to hold.

Ishara

a reply to: Kantzveldt

Another Babylonian connection?

Revelation 7:1
After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth to prevent any wind from blowing on the land or on the sea or on any tree.

Revelation 9:14
.."saying to the sixth(of seven) angel, the one having the trumpet, "Release the four angels, those having been bound at the great river Euphrates." And the four angels who had been kept ready for this very hour and day and month and year were released to kill a third of mankind.