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The Black Dog

To: alt.magick.tyagi,alt.satanism,alt.religion.satanism,talk.religion.misc.alt.magick.tantra,alt.mythology
From: tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com (nagasiva)
Subject: Re: The Black Dog
Date: 27 Aug 1998 18:11:34 -0700

980826 IIIom

cat "the black dog's friend" yronwode -- cat@luckymojo.com:
>> |I am researching black dog cults around the world right now. In
>> |"Speaking of Siva" -- a book of 10th and 11th century poems of praise 
>> |to "My Personal Saviour" :-) -- i have seen brief mention of "the 
>> |black dog cult of Siva" but no details. Then, in a recent usenet post 
>> |by Tzimon, he mentioned the black dog of Bhairava (an aspect of Siva 
>> |in his wrathful and protective form). Any citations of sources for 
>> |in-depth material on Siva/Bhairava and the Black Dog would be highly 
>> |appreciated. I am also checking out the Egyptian Anubis and other 
>> |Black Dog cults, if anyone has information on those as well.

nagasiva:
>> Myrddin, Satan, Anubis, Cerberus, Hunting Hounds

cat:
>What is the relationship between Myrddin and the black dog? 
>I am entirely unfamiliar with this. 

>Satan sometimes appears as a black dog (especially in German-derived
>tales). But is there a "black dog cult" of Satan? That is, has Satan
>ever been worshipped or adored in the form of a black dog? 

SHe COULD be.  Eris has designs. ;>

cf. _The Quest For Merlin...._, by Tolstoy. :>  I'm pretty sure
that I read it in this lovely exploration of Myrddin, but as I 
can't find the exact location of the text, here is an interlude
sampling pertaining to the Satanic and setting the stage for
assertions about the Black Dog:

	The demoniac aspect of Merlin's nature ...
	represents an archetype to the period of man's Creation,
	and surviving as the animal shadow lurking behind man's
	god-like image, with all its potential for
	anarchical disorder and evil.  The myth arose 
	to exorcize the constant reminder within the unconscious
	psyche that man is but a beast erect on his hind legs,
	and endowed with the powers of speech and thought.
	The exorcism is conducted through the familiar medium
	of ridicule, and Merlin with all his wisdom 
	is frequently made to appear incongruously foolish.

	He is born with hairy animal-skin, and appears later
	in the guise of a woodman, dressed in 'a short tattered
	smock, with his hair very shaggy and long, and a very
	long beard, so that he really looked like a wild man
	(*houme sauvaige*).'  The expression 'wild man'
	relates to relates to a widespread medieval conception,
	which in turn derives from extremely ancient belief.

	Wild Men were envisaged as semi-human creatures eking
	out brutish life in remote forests, and living on roots,
	berries, nuts, the raw flesh of wild animals. They dwelt
	in caves or primitive shelters, and were constantly
	obliged to defend themselves against other savage
	denizens of the woods.  They were pictured as immensely
	powerful, savagely aggressive, and only able to command
	the barest rudiments of language. They believed in no god,
	being too backward to entertain such a conception and
	lacking souls in consequence, were greatly given to
	sating an unbridled sexual appetite, and were frequently
	regarded as insane.  In appearance they were covered with
	thick pelts of hair (except on hands, face and feet), and
	frequently bore a massive untrimmed club as a weapon.

	Wild Men proliferate in medieval art and literature
	and the concept is traceable to the oldest literature
	in existence.  *Gilgamesh*, the great Addakian epic
	composed some time in the third millenium B.C.,
	contains a full account of Enkidu, the primordial Wild Man.... 

	...Enkidu represents mankind before civilization.  On
	the steppe he lives in communion with the wild animals,
	a communion which is shattered once he knows woman,
	acquires wisdom, and becomes human.

	       'Carefree became his mood and cheerful,
	 	His heart exulted
		And his face glowed.
		He rubbed the shaggy growth,
		The hair of his body,
		Anointed himself with oil,
		Became human.
		He put on clothing,
		He is like a groom!
		He took his weapon
		To chase the lions,
		That shepherds might rest at night.
		He caught wolves,
		He captured lions,
		The chief cattlemen could lie down;
		Enkidu is their watchmen....'

	Enkidu, like other Wild Men, represents man in a
	primitive, brutish condition, before his crude,
	shaggy frame knew the softening influences of
	civilized culture and morality.  The Wild Man is
	desire incarnate, possessing the strength, wit,
	and cunning to give full expression to all his
	lusts.  His life is correspondingly unstable in
	character.  He is a glutton, eating to satiety
	one day and starving the next; he is lascivious
	and promiscuous, without even consciousness of sin.

	Unlike other fabulous creatures, conceived of as
	remote in time or space, the Wild Man is
	conventionally represented as being always present,
	inhabiting the immediate confines of the community.
	He is just out of sight, over the horizon, in the
	nearby forest, desert, mountain, or hills.  The
	implication is clear enough; the Wild Man not only
	represents man in his early, savage conditions,
	but also that strain of savagery in his nature which
	is a lingering heritage of his primitive condition.
	In medieval iconography Adam is sometimes portrayed
	as a Wild Man (there is a fine example carved on a
	panel in the fifteenth-century French church at
	Ambierle), and it was Adam's sin which continued
	to tarnish man made in God's image.

	The Wild Man concept is thus to be seen as a variant
	of the Trickster motif; with the difference perhaps
	that, whereas Trickster stories portray man's
	prolonged struggle to free himself from his animal
	heritage, the image of the Wild Man is simply a
	reflection of an earlier, unregenerate state, when
	man dwelt as yet in conditions of unalloyed primitive
	barbarity.  (It is interesting, incidentally, to
	see this unconscious awareness of man's hominid and
	pre-hominid existence surviving in the face of
	virtually all [?] mythologies, which assert man's
	separate creation.)

	...

	[in contrast to Merlin...]

	...the traditional Wild Man is always represented
	as a great hunter after game, killing and devouring
	the raw flesh of his fellow-creatures of the 
	wilderness....

	...Wild Men are given over to the crudest sexual
	indulgence, fornicating like beasts in the absence
	of any moral restraint....

	...The true Wild Man is by definition utterly devoid
	of [exceptional intelligence and emotional sensitivity,
	desires to be included in the pleasures of cultured
	society]....

	[re Monmouth's Merlin]

	...Merlin is in truth far nearer to Prospero than
	Caliban -- a connexion which is oddly closer than mere
	analogy.  For Shakespeare's Prospero is thought to have
	been based on the famous alchemist Dr. John Dee, who
	in turn regarded himself and was widely regarded as
	a sixteenth-century counterpart of Merlin!  It is likely
	too that Spenser's picture of Merlin in _The Faerie
	Queene_ was drawn at least in part from Dr. Dee.

	There can be no question, therefore, but that the
	original Merlin-figure was far removed from being a
	Wild Man.  However, this is not to say that he did not
	acquire some Wild Man characteristics along the way.
	-------------------------------------------------------
	_The Quest for Merlin_, by Nikolai Tolstoy, 
	 published Little, Brown and Company; pp. 190-3.
	__________________________________________________ 

perhaps the Satan connection is Seth?  I shall contemplate 
the Set Animal.  the black dog thang might come out of wolves
(I'm pretty sure I saw the terms 'black dog' per se somewhere
and have been scouring the library for it, here's what I could
find to date):

	Among the Goldi, the shaman drank the blood of a pig;
	'only the shaman had the right to drink it, the laity
	couldn't touch it.'  At the initiatory rites, he, his
	family and guests, 'sing and dance (it is necessary
	to have at least nine dancers) and nine pigs are
	sacrificed; the shamans drink their blood, fall down
	in an ecstatic trance and shamanize for a long time.
	[cites Eliade -- tn]

	_The Black Book of Carmarthen Hoianau_ poetry appears
	to reflect this setting.  In it Myrddin is represented
	as addressing long, confused prophetic stanzas to his
	'little pig' [brings to mind Gautama and Ananda, or
	Padmasambhava and Yeshes Tsogyal -- tn :>]; clearly
	the pig is envisaged both as familiar and source of
	mantic inspiration.  And in the _Vita Merlini_, Merlin
	apostrophizes a wolf, his 'dear companion', whose
	presence is otherwise unexplained....
	-------------------------------------------------------
	Ibid., p. 150.
	______________

and

	...the invocations to the 'little pig' in the
	_Hoianau_ poetry.  'Oh, little pig!' starts each
	verse, followed apparently inconsequently with
	lamentations over Myrddin's wretched life in the
	forest, and prophecies of future wars and rumours
	of wars.

	It may be noted firstly that pigs wild and domestic
	played a very important role in the lives of the
	Celtic peoples.  The boar was clearly the cult
	animal *par excellence* of the Celts, and pork
	their favourite food.  Joints of pork were placed
	in the graves of the Marnian tribe, the Parisii
	of East Yorkshire, doubtless because 'the Celtic
	chief was to take with him on his journey the
	favourite food of the Celt.'....

	[he provides a long batch of refs for Celt claims - tn]

	Above all, pigs were believed to come from the
	Otherworld, and 'were ceterin guides to the
	Otherworld'.  Two lords of the Otherworld were
	divine swineherds and the heathen Celts sacrificed
	pigs, presumably in the belief that they returned
	to the Otherworld....  These pig sacrifices were not
	confined to the Celts.  In Greece, initiates at the
	Eleusinian Mysteries had on their second day to 
	sacrifice a pig, for the blood of the pig was
	considered a very potent agent of purification with
	the power to absorb the impure spirit inhabiting
	human beings.  In the same way Christ compelled
	devils possessing the Gadarene to enter the herd
	of swine... and a Finnish folk-tale tells of the
	ritual killing of a divine pig 'with a golden club,
	a copper hammer, a silver mallet'....

	...Myrddin in the _Hoianau_ is said to life among
	the forest wolves, and in the _Vita Merlini_ Merlin
	addressed an aged wolf as his companion.  Analogy
	suggests there may once have been a companion set
	of verses to the _Hoianau_ in which Myrddin was made
	to utter other prophecies to a wolf.  Wolves, like
	pigs, were objects of a devotional cult among the
	Celts, being seen as companions of a god.  Several
	Celtic saints are said to have tamed wolves, a feat
	probably intended to indicate that they possessed
	powers fully as strong as those of their heathen
	rivals.
	--------------------------------------------------
	Ibid., pp. 72-4.
	_________________

>Anubis:
>Anubis IS a black dog (a black jackal, to be taxonomically correct), but
>he is an ancient Egyptian judge of the dead, not a Satan-analogue. 

the God of the Underworld.  Lord of This World.  Hades.  Lucifer.
Jackal-headed or dog-headed Satan is far less common, as far as 
iconography is concerned, than, say goat-headed or mule-headed).  
Shugal is fox-headed (the desert fox, 333, the male half of 
the Beast 666; cf. Grant's _Nightside of Eden_, Weiser or some 
other distributor, and others of his works, for more).

>The ancient Eyptian deity Set has been identified with Satan 
>by a certain school of modern Satanist theologians, 

some Setians believe this, yes.  all will no doubt dispute 
what facts may be derived from the data.  ultimately what is
authoritative is what derives from a rich source of prana,
power, life, motivating energy.

>but although his animal-form has some dog-like aspects, it is so 
>mixed and mingled in terms of species characteristics that it is 
>usually referred to as the Set-animal, not a dog. 

agreed, though it could be understood by skeletal structure to 
resemble dogs or pigs rather than other types of animals (birds).

>Cerberus: 
>Cerberus, the Three-Headed Hound of the Greek underworld is a dog, 
>to be sure, but was there ever a cult in which his worship figured? 

and was hir color ever disclosed/ascertained?  black?  always?
I have no idea, I forward the question to an appropriate newsgroup
(what, alt.mythology?).

>Hunting Hounds:
>These are the Hell Hounds that figure in the famous Robert Johnson blues
>song "Hell Hound on My Trail." It is these hounds, or one of them, that
>i hve seen in dreams and have sought to understand. One might also note
>in this connection the Hans Christian Andersen story about the three
>demonic dogs with "eyes as big as saucers," eyes as big as "plates," and
>"eyes as big as platters."

lovely writer, Andersen.  I more enjoy Grimm portrayal of witches.
Laurie Anderson describes aliens with platter-hands, telescope-eyes
in her songs.

>> Cooper: sorcery, diabolocal powers, the damned, death.
>Well, yes, that is the idea. 

that's not a very reassuring list of associations. :>

>i am not sure how
>far to take these implied correspondences with diabolical and Satanic
>imagery that derives from Western European notions in which wild nature
>is continually suppreseed and reviled as "evil." Perhaps you can assit? 

it is a personal assessment, reflecting on the condition of humans
with respect to first nature.  cf. above quote on the Demoniacal aspect
of Merlin.

>...the ascetic aspect of Siva....  details would be much appreciated! 

they function to build a type of energy which can be used in detachment,
a kind of fireball-like directable charge, on par with ADnD's Magic Mis-
siles Spell, applied an extending an ability to desensitize.  it can be
misused, can become a trap.

>Death is the lot of us all, don't you agree? 
>A good death is all i ask. 

I agree strongly.  sounds nordic.

>Further, insofar as i assume the role and function of the Black Goddess,
>i find that the Black Dog of Death, Siva's Black Dog, becomes as
>biddable and willing to serve me as a Border Collie would be.

a doggess biddable, a goddess unpredictable.

>And this, in the end, may be what i hope to achieve: a state of
>equilibrium with the Black Dog of Death in which i am not the prey of
>wild Hunting Hounds but rather the loving mistress who sends forth my
>Border Collie to do my bidding, "bringing in the sheep." 

one of the sheep is black, Ms. Peep.  you will achieve whatever you
set your will to accomplishing. 

namaste,
nagasiva
-- 
tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com (emailed replies may be posted); 408/2-666-SLUG
cc me replies; http://www.abyss.com/tokus; http://www.hollyfeld.org/~tyagi

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