Alight, here it is, like an arrow through the heart. ♡
The Ten Commandments by Robert Graves (The White Goddess)
Robert Graves elaborates very well about the ten commandments (p.470-472): "The Ten Commandments, which are among the latest additions to the Pentateuch, are designed as glosses on the same mystery. The oddness of their choice seems to have struck Jesus when he quoted the 'Love thy God' and 'Love thy neighbour' commandments, from elsewhere in the Pentateuch, as transcending them in spiritual value. But it is a more carefully considered choice than appears at first sight.
The Commandments, which are really eight, not ten, to match the numbers of letters in the Name, fall into two groups: one of three "Thou shalts' concerned with the True Creation, and the other of five 'Thou shalt nots' concerned with the False Creation: each group is prefaced by a warning.
The order is purposely 'pied', as one would expect. The first group corresponds with the letters of the Tetragrammaton, and the warning preface is therefore III: 'Thou shalt not take God's name in vain.'
V: 'Honour thy father and thy mother.' i.e. J H: Life and the Brightness.
IV: 'Observe the Sabbath Day. i.e. W: Peace. I: 'Thou shalt worship me alone.' i.e. H: Light.
The second group corresponds with the powers of the five planets excluded from the Name and the warning preface is therefore II: 'Thou shalt not make nor adore the simulacrum of any star, creature, or marine monster.'
X: 'Thou shalt not bewitch.' (The Moon, as the Goddess of Enchantment)
VI:'Thou shalt not kill.' (Mars as the God of War.)
VIII: 'Thou shalt not steal.' (Mercury, as the God of Thieves, who had stolen man from God.)
IX: 'Thou shalt not bear false witness.' (Juppiter as the false god before whom oaths were sworn.)
VII: 'Thou shalt not commit adultery.' (Venus as the Goddess of profane love.)
The eight Commandments are enlarged to a decalogue apparently because the series which it superseded, and which is to be found in Exodus, XXXIV, 14-26, was a decalogue too. In Talmudic tradition this new Decalogue was carved on two tables of sappur (lapis lazuli); and in Isaiah, LIV, 12, the gates of the ideal Jerusalem were of 'fire-stones' (pyropes or fire-garnets).
So the poetic formula is: Light was my first Day of Creation, Peace after labour is my seventh day, Life and the Glory are my day of days. I carved my Law on tables of sapphirus, Jerusalem shines with my pyrope gates, Four Cherubs fetch me amber from the north. Acacia yields her timber for my ark, Pomegranate sanctifies my priestly hem, My hyssop sprinkles blood at every door. Holy, Holy, Holy is my name.
This mystical god differed not only from the Babylonian Bel or Marduk but from Ormazd, the Supreme God of the Persian Zoroastrians, with whom some Jewish syncretists identified him, in having separated himself from the erroneous material universe to live securely cloistered in his abstract city of light.
Ormazd was a sort of three-bodied Geryon, the usual Aryan male trinity that first married the Triple Goddess, then dispossessed her and went about clothed in her three colours—white, red and dark blue, like the heifer calf in Suidas's riddle, performing her ancient functions. Thus Ormazd appeared in priestly white to create (or recreate) the world; in warrior red to combat evil; in husbandman's dark blue to 'bring forth fecundity'."* *
I love Robert Graves however i must disagree with Robert on the interpretation of the White, Red, and Blue colours. Those are the colours of Egypt: white is the Upper Egypt, the white Nile, where the desert and Nubian gold is, red is the Lower Egypt with its rich red soil in the Nile delta, and blue is the war crown of Egypt and the blue Nile.
Robert Graves "The White Goddess"
Catholics Rewrite the 10 Commandments in Austin Texas
Catholics Rewrite the 10 Commandments in Philippians
Originally published
Aug 2013, 14:44