The Hero with a Thousand Faces

“God’s mere pleasure,” which defends the sinner from the arrow, the flood, and the flames, is termed in the traditional vocabulary of Christianity God’s “mercy”; and “the mighty power of the spirit of God,” by which the heart is changed, that is God’s “grace.” In most mythologies, the images of mercy and grace are rendered as vividly as those of justice and wrath, so that a balance is maintained, and the heart is buoyed rather than scourged along its way. “Fear not!” says the hand gesture of the god Śiva, as he dances before his devotee the dance of the universal destruction. “Fear not, for all rests well in God. The forms that come and go — and of which your body is but one — are the flashes of my dancing limbs. Know Me in all, and of what shall you be afraid?” The magic of the sacraments (made effective through the passion of Jesus Christ, or by virtue of the meditations of the Buddha), the protective power of primitive amulets and charms, and the supernatural helpers of the myths and fairy tales of the world, are mankind’s assurances that the arrow, the flames, and the flood are not as brutal as they seem.

Figure 28. Śiva, Lord of the Cosmic Dance (cast bronze, India, c. tenth–twelfth century a.d.)

The symbolism of this eloquent image has been well expounded by Ananda K. Coomaraswamy,^[43] and by Heinrich Zimmer.^[44] Briefly: the extended right hand holds the drum, the beat of which is the beat of time, time being the first principle of creation; the extended left holds the flame, which is the flame of the destruction of the created world; the second right hand is held in the gesture of “fear not,” while the second left, pointing to the lifted left foot, is held in a position symbolizing “elephant” (the elephant is the “breaker of the way through the jungle of the world,” i.e., the divine guide); the right foot is planted on the back of a dwarf, the demon “Non-knowing,” which signifies the passage of souls from God into matter, but the left is lifted, showing the release of the soul: the left is the foot to which the “elephant-hand” is pointing and supplies the reason for the assurance, “Fear not.” The God’s head is balanced, serene and still, in the midst of the dynamism of creation and destruction which is symbolized by the rocking arms and the rhythm of the slowly stamping right heel. This means that at the center all is still. Śiva’s right earring is a man’s, his left, woman’s; for the God includes and is beyond the pairs of opposites. Śiva’s facial expression is neither sorrowful nor joyous, but is the visage of the Unmoved Mover, beyond, yet present within, the world’s bliss and pain. The wildly streaming locks represent the long-untended hair of the Indian yogi, now flying in the dance of life; for the presence known in the joys and sorrows of life, and that found through withdrawn meditation, are but two aspects of the same, universal, non-dual, Being-Consciousness-Bliss (sat-cit-ānanda). Śiva’s bracelets, arm bands, ankle rings, and brahminical thread,^[45] are living serpents. This means that he is made beautiful by the Serpent Power — the mysterious Creative Energy of God, which is the material and the formal cause of his own self-manifestation in, and as, the universe with all its beings. In Śiva’s hair may be seen a skull, symbolic of death, the forehead ornament of the Lord of Destruction, as well as a crescent moon, symbolic of birth and increase, which are his other boons to the world. Also, there is in his hair the flower of a datura — from which plant an intoxicant is prepared (compare the wine of Dionysos and the wine of the Mass). A little image of the goddess Ganges is hidden in his locks; for it is he who receives on his head the impact of the descent of the divine Ganges from heaven, letting the life- and salvation-bestowing waters then flow gently to the earth for the physical and spiritual refreshment of mankind. The dance posture of the God may be visualized as the symbolic syllable AUM (or ) which is the verbal equivalent of the four states of consciousness and their fields of experience. (A: waking consciousness; U: dream consciousness; M: dreamless sleep; the silence around the sacred syllable is the Unmanifest Transcendent.^[46]) The God is thus within the worshiper as well as without.

Such a figure illustrates the function and value of a graven image, and shows why long sermons are unnecessary among idol-worshipers. The devotee is permitted to soak in the meaning of the divine symbol in deep silence and in his own good time. Furthermore, just as the god wears arm bands and ankle rings, so does the devotee; and these mean what the god’s mean. They are made of gold instead of serpents, gold (the metal that does not corrode) symbolizing immortality; i.e., immortality is the mysterious creative energy of God, which is the beauty of the body.