“No eyes will raise to heaven. The pure will be thought
insane and the impure will be honoured as wise. The madman will be believed
brave, and the wicked esteemed as good.”
― Hermes Trismegistus, Corpus Hermeticum
"Give the office of Osiris to his son Horus! Do not go
on committing these great wrongs, which are not in place, or I will get angry
and the sky will topple to the ground. But also tell the Lord of All, the Bull
who lives in Heliopolis, to double Set's property. Give him Anat and Astarte,
your two daughters, and put Horus in the place of his father. Neith
The bear. A symbol of primitive brute force. The bear was an
incarnation of the Norse God Odin and the Viking beserker warriors wore
bareskin tunics. In Greece the cult followers of Artemis dressed as bears. The
bear is linked with many other war like divinities including the Norse God Thor
and the Celtic thunder god. To the ainoo new of north Japan and to Native
Americans the bear is an ancestral figure the closest relative to humans as
bears can walk on two legs. It is also linked with resurrection symbolism
perhaps because of its hibernation. The formless bearcub licked into shape by its
mother became an image of the heathen needing the spiritual ministrations of
the church. Similarly the bear is the alchemic symbol for the primary state of
matter.
Bear worship (also known as the bear cult or arctolatry) is
the religious practice of the worshipping of bears found in many North Eurasian
ethnic religions such as the Sami, Nivkh, Ainu,[1] Basques, Germanics, Slavs
and Finns.[2] There are also a number of deities from Celtic Gaul and Britain
associated with the bear, and the Dacians, Thracians, and Getians were noted to
worship bears and annually celebrate the bear dance festival. The bear is
featured on many totems throughout northern cultures that carve them.
