ON SIGHT AND SEEING - OEDIPUS REX: PART ONE

"Then let it break! I must know who I am!" - Oedipus Rex

Thanks to Freud, Sophocles' Oedipus Rex is probably the most misunderstood play in the West. Before Freud, Oedipus' story was seen as the classic expression of the horror of a Universe in which one was trapped by events which one could not change or effect, where one's destiny one's was in the hands of inexorable Fate, and where, instead of love or justice descending from the Gods to Man, there was only cold, heartless necessity. After Freud, it became about the Oedipus Complex, the psychological trap Freud believed every man was doomed to become trapped in, and out of which all of Western culture and morality had evolved: the realisation that one's first sexual instinct was towards one's mother and therefore one's first murderous instinct was towards one's rival, the father. Out of this primal experience coupled with the ancient societal taboo against incest and parricide came the endless guilts, paradoxes and moral evasions that human culture found itself in. For Freud, every man was doomed to experience this, just as every woman, as reflected in the Electra story, was doomed to experience the same thing in reverse - sexual feelings for the father and hatred for the mother. Sophocles was only the first to articulate it as a universal. Oedipus' howl of despair and rage at the end of the play was every man's howl of agony at recognising this terrible truth within himself. Freud's excitement on encountering the play for the first time was almost religious in its intensity. Suddenly, for him, everything fell into place, his whole system seemed corroborated. So Sophocles' play, identified by Aristotle as the quintessence of what tragic drama was all about, became locked in a Freudian nightmare forever.

Neither of these interpretations of the play are necessarily wrong. Both give our understanding of it texture. But at the same time neither is necessarily what Sophocles intended when he wrote it, or, even if we can't say what he intended for sure, neither exhausts its possibilities. There are other ways of encountering and understanding the play, one of which may unlock something vital and potent within it that liberates it from its apparently cruelly deterministic aura of doom: that the play is, on a very profound level, about Sight. And not just about physical sight, but the profoundest sight available to us - sight into the deepest part of our nature.

To understand what I am wittering about, its worth looking at the way in which eyes and sight have worked historically in cultures that predate our own. The eye - eyes themselves - has always been an image of something profoundly sacred all over the world. In the East, the sign of Buddha's 'Awakening' or 'Enlightenment' is the fact that his eyes are permanently closed, unseduced by sense perception, the entangling and tormenting constantly changing and transient phenomena of this world of Maya, Illusion, which distracts the mind from itself and causes so much pain. The Buddha is 'asleep' to this world and 'awake' to the inner world. If any part of him is 'awake' it is the famous Third Eye, the Ajna Chakra, which provides mystical and intuitive insight into Truth. Sometimes known as the 'Gyananakashu', or 'Eye of Knowledge', it is regarded as the seat of the Antar-Guru, or Inner Teacher, communicating with the deepest part of ourself. Thus although the Buddha's physical eyes are closed, his spiritual eye is open in the profoundest sense, seeing things as they truly are.

In Hinduism, Siva's eyes are similarly closed, especially when he is presented as the Nataraja, or Lord of the Dance, negotiating the Wheel of Fire, his eyes sealed, his gaze turned inwards, smiling as he dances. Tradition has it that when his eyes open, the whole Universe will end, as the Universe is no more than his own dream. His creative counterpart in the Trimurti, Brahma, is similarly in a state of deep meditation or sleep, blind, once again, to physical phenomena, emanating Reality from his dreams.


In the West, the Eye has equally powerful connotations. The All-Seeing Eye which conspiracy nuts get so uptight about is an ancient image of the all-seeing, all-pervading presence of God (and not Alien Illuminati Zionist Mind-controlling Puppet-masters, sorry). It appears in Kabbalah in exactly the same way as an image of God as Universal Consciousness aware of everything. Its oldest derived source is ancient Egypt, where it appears as the Eye of Horus or Wedjat, a symbol of Royalty and Protection against evil (and not evil itself, sorry you conspiracy guys!). The addition of the All-Seeing Eye on the summit of a pyramid which appears in Freemasonry echoes not only the Eye of Horus but the ancient Egyptian Benben stone, the primordial mound that emerged from the Waters at Creation out of which everything came. Thus the Masonic image combines the All-Seeing Eye of Kabbalah and the Judeo-Christian tradition with the Creation myth of ancient Egypt, the pyramid also being a symbol of the Soul. In ancient Greece, the Eye was often painted on the prow of ships to protect them as they travelled, a practise borrowed from the Egyptians and other cultures. When sculpting a statue, the statue was not 'finished' and did not truly take on the likeness of someone or 'come alive' until the eyes were painted on (anyone who has ever painted a figurine should try this. Notice the difference between one which has no eyes painted on and one which does). Even in somewhere as remote as Easter Island, it is believed that the great stone heads of the Ancestors that litter the shores were not 'active' unless their eyes were placed in their sockets.


Eyes, then, have massive significance all over the world as images of spiritual insight, cosmic power, protection, guidance and, simply 'doorways to the soul'. The great poets Homer and Milton were both blind and throughout literature physical blindness, as we shall see, is often seen as a sign of inner sight and understanding. Tiresias, the ancient Greek Seer who is never wrong is blind and in Shakespeare's King Lear, Gloucester only begins to grope towards a painful self-knowledge when he has his eyes torn out by Cornwall. As he himself says of his own moral blindness after he has lost his eyes:

"I have no way, and therefore want no eyes;
I stumbled when I saw."

Physical sight does not mean one has insight. Indeed, as the Tao Te Ching tells us, the physical senses can distract us from everything:

"The five colours blind the eye.
The five tones deafen the ear.
The five flavours cloy the palate.
Racing and hunting madden the mind.
Rare goods tempt men to do wrong.
Therefore, the Sage takes care of the belly, not the eye.
He prefers what is within to what is without."

"He prefers what is within to what is without" - what more powerful statement could there be about the journey Oedipus is forced to go on? In another Taoist text, the Secret of the Golden Flower, the eyes are seen to be the gates of the Chi or Life Force, with Chi draining out of them unless we learn to redirect their energies back in. This vision of the discrepancy between Inner and Outer sight reappears in the Upanishads, when the Sage is encouraged to trace the source of sight away from the external world and within themselves, to the Spirit, or Consciousness which is their actual being:

"Know that when the eye looks into space it is the Spirit of man that sees: the eye is only the organ of sight. When one says 'I feel this perfume,' it is the Spirit that feels: he uses the organ of smell. When one says 'I am speaking,' it is the Spirit that speaks: the voice is the organ of speech. When one says 'I am hearing,' it is the Spirit that hears: th eear is the organ of hearing. And when one says 'I think,' it is the Spirit that thinks: the mind is the organ of thought. It is because of the Spirit that the human mind can see, and can think, and enjoy the world."

It is a common trick of sensory perception to make us believe more powerfully in the thing we perceive externally to us than the thing within us which does the seeing. How less certain are we of who we are, what our ground of being is, what our identity is, than we are of the tree we are looking at, or the film we are watching? What is external to us always seems more real and tangible than what is internal. Such is the conjuring trick of life.



In Oedipus Rex, we have two figures for whom sight is key - Tiresias, the Blind Seer, mentioned above, who has no physical sight but has total understanding and knowledge of the future, and Oedipus himself, the conquering King, who has physical sight but understands nothing. By the end of the play, Oedipus has become like Tiresias, similarly blind, but not yet with the insight the Seer has (that begins to come later in Oedipus at Colonus). That the play is about the often agonising progress of the individual to some kind of self-knowledge should be obvious. But there is more to it than this - and the nature of self-knowledge Oedipus comes to - which lies hidden in the play which cannot be understood unless one reads it on a level which few commentators do: the level of Initiation. For Oedipus Rex is much more than just a play. It is also an enactment of a Mystery, not just in the sense that Oedipus is trying to uncover his own true nature, but in the sense of a Mystery which unlocks the workings of the Unseen, just as, say the Dionysiac or Eleusinian Mysteries may have worked. To understand this, one has to understand two things about Greek Drama: that it was not drama as we understand it ie a form of entertainment, but part of a profound communal religious festival and that the form and structure of a Greek Theatre was not just designed to put on a play, but to explore the complex, multi-layered nature of the human organism, the interplay not of Man and the Gods, but of the physical and soul-self, the temporal self and the eternal...

RIDING THE SNAKE: THE CADUCEUS

The Caduceus is one of the most famous and least understood symbols in the Western world. Traditionally associated with the ancient Greek God Hermes it is today usually seen as being to do with doctors and the medical profession. In fact, its actual meaning is much older than that.

The association with doctors is to do with a confusion between the Caduceus and the not unrelated Rod of Asclepius. Asclepius was a Greek God of healing whose medicinal abilities were such that he was able to resurrect the dead and give immortality to humans. After a while Zeus became a little concerned about this and, ever mindful of the dangers of allowing humans a little too much power lest they supplant the Gods, killed Asclepius, more likely than not with a lightning bolt. Having done this, Zeus repented a little and, in partial recompense for his harshness, transformed Asclepius into a constellation of stars. Asclepius' Rod of Healing is symbolised as a single serpent coiled around a staff. The Caduceus, on the other hand, is symbolised by two serpents coiling around a staff, the top of which is often circular and sprouting wings. Apparently it was American military doctors who brought the idea of the Caducues as the symbol of medicine to Europe during the world wars (thank you to Alan Smith for that piece of information!), supplanting the single-serpented Rod of Asclepius as the sign of doctors.

That the two images are linked is obvious. As if further confirmation were needed, in the CORPUS HERMETICUM, the ancient mystical Greco-Egyptian texts which were so influential in the Renaissance, Asclepius is presented as the son of Hermes Trismegistus. In these Hermetic dialogues Hermes, the great sage associated in the Greek mind with the Egyptian God Thoth, tells his son about the secrets of the Universe, the nature of God, the power of the Gnosis and the mysteries of Reincarnation. The link between the two deities and their similar symbols is clear.

So what does the Caducues mean? Well, in all cultures there is the idea of the "Serpent Power". This is the life force, the primal energy which flows through everything. In its most uncreated state it is pure, undifferentiated power, coursing through every living thing, human or otherwise, and giving it life. In China, this Serpent Power is embodied in the Dragon. In elemental terms, the famous Dragon Lines are seen as flowing across the landscape of the earth, representing Yin and Yang, powering the natural forces therein. In the discipline of Feng Shui, how one aligns one's house or builds on these Dragon Lines is crucial for health and prosperity. Chinese Dragons, unlike their equivalents in the West, are sacred creatures who can help humankind. Not insignificantly, they are often presented as plumed or crested and can fly.

In the West, Dragons have less positive connotations. From the battle between Apollo and the serpent Python, to the story of George and the Dragon and the Serpent in the Garden of Eden, Dragons and Serpents are dangerous creatures which need to be defeated or tamed. It is the agency of the Serpent, often portrayed coiled around the Tree of Knowledge which causes the Fall of humanity, bringing death, pain and decay into the world in GENESIS. Elsewhere, though, the defeat of the Dragon yields up treasures. George, in defeating the Dragon, saves the Maiden but also protects the sacred spring of water the Dragon was defending. Apollo's defeat of Python brings about the creation of the Temple at Delphi, where the Oracle resides. Indeed, it is the fumes from Python's layer which enable the High Priestess to channel the God and so dispense cryptic wisdom to mankind. An echo of all these processes is found in the recurring imagery of the Archangel Michael defeating the Serpent. Interestingly, and in a parallel with the Dragon Lines of China, Towers dedicated to St Michael are built upon key Pagan sacred sites, most of which, invariably, are located at ley nodes. The most famous is the one at Glastonbury Tor. Anyone who knows the Tor will remember that it is grooved like a spiral, as if an enormous snake were coiled around it. Modern students of ley lines sometimes like to call them Michael and Mary lines, translating the Yin/Yang energies of these primal energy currents into a Christian context.

So on a macrocosmic level, Serpents and Dragons represent the primal Life Energy coursing through the earth. In the East, working in harmony with these energies is a good thing to do. In the West, they have needed to be conquered and tamed in order to release positive energies trapped therein (the Maiden, the Spring, the Oracle, the Golden Fleece etc). Perhaps this says something about the relative psychological development of the two hemispheres of the planet. Whatever the case, going back to the equally universal image of the World Egg with the Snake coiled around it, the Serpent represents something very ancient in the human psyche. So how does this relate to the Caduceus?

To understand, perhaps we have to go East again, to look at the ancient notion of the Kundalini. When I was first told about the Kundalini, it scared the shit out of me, largely because of how it was described: 'This serpent thing coiled at the base of the spine". Not helpful. In fact the Kundalini is the primal life force within US. In other words, it is the human equivalent of the energy described above in Ley and Dragon Lines. It is often represented as a spiral or coiled image, rather like a snake, and is said to reside at the foot of the spine in the Root Chakra. I like to imagine the Kundalini as rather like a nuclear reactor, throbbing away in us and keeping us nourished and alive. The aim of the Mystic in the East is to 'raise the Kundalini' ie draw this energy up from where it is sleeping in the Root Chakra and allow it to enter the six other Chakras until, in union with the Crown Chakra, it creates Enlightenment, opening the Thousand Petalled Lotus that is the Higher Consciousness. It is believed that raising the Kundalini, drawing it up the Sushumna, or central Nadi of the body through the other Chakras, spreads health and vitality through the recipient while also bestowing enormous spiritual and psychic benefits such as telepathy, mystical vision, healing powers and precognition. The Mystic raises the Kundalini through a rigourous process of spiritual development, meditation and prayer. With Tantrics, arcane sexual practises are used (the origin and purpose of Tantric Sex), the most primal expression of the Kundalini being in the sex drive. In Tantra, this enormous sexual energy is harnessed and channelled upwards through the Chakras leading to Enlightenment. People tend to thing that Tantric Sex is just a way of having a great shag. In fact its much more subtle than this. But peoples' lack of understanding of the true nature of Tantric Sex has lead to a lot of accusations against Eastern Gurus of sexual exploitation. On the other hand, its not hard to imagine how Tantric Sex can be used to exploit and abuse the unwary. This is why, traditionally, it has been kept hidden as one of the most esoteric and specialist approaches to Higher Consciousness.

Another reason though, is that raising the Kundalini is a dangerous process. Do it too fast and you can drive yourself mad or even die. Doing it in an impure state, with the Chakras in a mess, can be equally destructive. The effects of the unbridled power of the Kundalini can, therefore, be devastating. Hallucinations, mental illness and death can be a result of misuse and foolhardy dabbling with the Kundalini. Anyone who has had any kind of rushed or negative experience with it will tell you of the hair-raising things that go on. So one must tread with care... Immediately one understands why in the West, with our fear of the primal, cthonic energies of the instincts, we have come up with so many stories and narratives of conquering Snakes and Serpents. Indeed, one could read the story of Genesis as a warning against the shattering consequences of a cosmic Kundalini experience, which, embarked upon to become like Gods, actually leads to the total fragmentation of Human Consciousness and the loss of the primordial state of Wholeness we are still looking to repair now...



This is where the Caduceus comes in. For in truth the imagery of the two snakes coiled around the staff point the way to a positive use of the Serpent Power, one in which the primal energy operates in harmony, winding its way up the Sushumna or Middle Pillar represented by the Staff to give birth to the Higher Consciousness symbolised by the winged Solar Disc at the top. This Solar Disc echoes imagery from cultures as far afield as Persia and Ancient Egypt. In Persia, remember, Ahura Mazda is often represented by a human torso in a winged circle, while in Egypt, the Solar Disc is often replaced by a sacred Scarab Beetle in full fight, symbolising the dichotomy of a creature which feeds on dung but can also fly (ie a union of earthly and heavenly properties).



Further, the Caducues can be superimposed upon a host of Western religious symbols, revealing their hidden nature as images of achieving the Higher Consciousness. In Judaism, if the Caduceus is placed over the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, one sees how it demonstrates the ideal of uniting the two outer Pillars (Male and Female) around the central one, leading to the Higher Consciousness that is Kether (the Crown), where the Winged Solar Disc is found. Similarly the Menorah, with single base and branches above matches the expansion of the serpents and wings of the Caduceus. The two winged Cherubs on the Ark of the Covenant, both facing inwards to the point between them where God manifests to Moses do the same. And, most mysteriously, the positioning of the Caduceus over the image of Christ on the Cross does the same, with the two Thieves or the two Marys on either side completing the tripartite nature of the symbol. Thus, rather than an image of suffering and pain, the Crucifixion becomes an image of Cosmic Transformation, of becoming the Higher Man which, if you think about it, is exactly what Christ does after the Resurrection.... Even Moses shares in the Mystery of the Caduceus in EXODUS, with God demonstrating how he may overcome the hostility of the Egyptians by transforming his and later Aaron's staves into snakes and back again...



So the Caducues shows us how we may harness the primal energy of our Earthly Selves and so achieve our Divine Selves. What is fascinating is how universal it is as an image. Its no coincidence, perhaps, that the primary God and friend to men of the Mesoamericans was Quetzocoatl, the Plumed Serpent, nor that it is reflected in the double helix of our DNA...Crucially, it is a holistic symbol, as it unites 'above and below'. As with the Dung Beetle of the Egyptians, the seeds of the Ascent start at the bottom of things, thus that basic energy, often sexual, is essential to the higher energy. This is a salutory warning to the Western tendency, found particularly in Christianity, to denigrate and suppress sexuality and the instincts. In doing so, Christianity cut off its most potent source of spiritual energy. St Michael's victory over the Serpent of Paganism was too great. The balance was lost and the Fountain of Life that the Caduceus represents was cut off at its source. At the same time, the image of uncreated Kundalini energy as two snakes threshing about wildly needs to be seen as a warning against unbridled release of that power. Hence the presence of the Staff in the centre of the Caduceus. Balance and harmony is the key, not repression or indiscriminate release... That is the message and the challenge of the Caduceus...