RE: [ejlist] The trees of life and the titans

["Daniel Capo" <lluerna@oninet.es>]

About Yggdrasil I´m not quite sure if we are dealing with the same tree. I´d
say Yggdrasil is more an "axis mundi" tree than a tree of knowledge or life.
Odin offered an eye in order to drink from Mimir, the fountain of knowledge
( here the idea of suffering is not in vain). The image of the cosmic tree
is quite common in mythologies, specially among hindus ( katha upanishad or
bhagavad G among others), scandinavians or north - asians in general. Some
other traditions seem to prefer talking about Holy Mountains or even cities,
such as the Heaven Jerusalem. The balance of the world depends on the tree,
on the axis mundi. I find curious to realize that a snake tryes to destroy
Yggdrasil from the roots and a hawk prevents this everyday in a battle that
seems eternal. I don´t know if the snake has been elicit from the christian
world.

>Moreover, there are numerous indications in Eumeswil (apart from the
obvious
>physical similarity) that the catacombs equate to the underworld and that
>this is the realm of the Titans

What you say Thomas makes a lot of sense. Yggdrasil is rooted in the Hell,
and in catholicism the Hell is also placed in the underworld and very
related to the idea of fire and volcanic powers. Same on greek mythology.
The underworld seems to be representing the darkness and the power of fire
instead of the light in Heaven. Grace against gravity as Simone Weil would
have said The first God names seem to be very related to the idea of light
and day : sacred is what shine. Eliade believes that Dieus was the common
God of the first arian tribes, where Zeus, Jupiter or the hindu Dyaus are
developped forms of the same divinity. The etimology would be this : from
the sanskrit div " shining","day", dyaus"heaven" and"day", theos ( in
greek), ... to the modern latin Déu and dia in catalan, Dios and día in
spanish, Dieu in french, dio in italian, and day in english,...

Bertil,about this titanic debate it would be very interesting to hear from
you. Does FGJ say anything on this in his "The titans"? You said once that
you are the happy owner of this book, and it is very wellknown how important
this book was for EJ.

Greetings from a sunny Mallorca,

Daniel
http://members.es.tripod.de/ViaEuropaea/
-----Mensaje original-----
De: Thomas Friese <tfriese@intergate.bc.ca>
Para: ernst-juenger-l@maillist.ox.ac.uk <ernst-juenger-l@maillist.ox.ac.uk>
Fecha: domingo 4 de julio de 1999 4:42
Asunto: RE: [ejlist] The trees of life and the titans


>
>> If the catacomb school is the
>>> titanic one, are not the titans obsessed with knowledge rather than
>>> immortality? Or is it rather that knowledge is accessible to their
>>> technigues but life is not and thus they focus on what is not allowed
>them?
>>> Comments?
>>I think the second one is right. Titans are obsessed with inmortality
>(gods).
>>They want to reach inmortality through "their" knowledge
>>(technology). And this is what they are trying; will they suceed?
>>But, I am not sure about equaling catatombs with titanism, if so,
>>then the forest school is gods-troops:-), isn´t it?. Would you like to
>>explain it further?
>
>
>Thomas, I didn´t understand your point either, would you mind to explain it
>further?
>I made this assumption based on 1) Junger's characterisation of Vigo and
>Bruno as turned towards the Gods and the Titans respectively; "one towards
>the forest, the other towards the underworld"' and 2) this paragraph:
>
> "As little can be expected from evolution as from any progress. The great
>change transcends not only the species, but the entire bios. It is a
crucial
>loss that mere fragments have come down to us from the most ancient
>documents. The difference between the forests and the catacombs seems to be
>that in the former one experiments at the Tree of Knowledge and in the
>latter at the Tree of Life."
>
>Moreover, there are numerous indications in Eumeswil (apart from the
obvious
>physical similarity) that the catacombs equate to the underworld and that
>this is the realm of the Titans. It is in the catacombs that scientists are
>playing with fire, with magic (technology) to create new forms of life.
>Bruno wants to move "beyond knowledge" while Vigo hates technology and
would
>"rather not know" about what is going in the underworld.
>
>Attila is interesting in this respect: he has clearly been involved in the
>Titanic underworld, yet he is also knowledgeable about the forests. In his
>forest ordeal near the end of Eumeswil, he sees how Proteus has so easily
>created what the Titans worked for so hard in their laboratories. In fact,
>it is with respect to this traverse of the forest en route to the ocean
that
>Attila says: "The road back from the Tree of Knowledge to the Tree of Life
>is a sinister one. But there was no returning to the desert that lay behind
>me. There, death was certain. " This desert that he refers to contains the
>wreckage of titanic "progress" - the remnants of a nuclear holocaust.
>Finally, he finds refuge in the interior of a tree and is reborn therein -
>the Tree of Life? The "meanwhile" between his entering the tree, almost
dead
>and his awakening "reborn" is described as "a pause ... between two forms
of
>existence. " Attila's response: prayer.
>
>
>>> By the way, in the Sumerian conception, the two trees were one - the
>fruit
>>> conferred life and knowledge - divinity. How did they get divided?
>>
>This is a fascinant issue and a very interesting one to talk about but I´m
a
>little confused. Where did you get this info?
>
>I got this from a Joseph Campbell book called "Primitive Mythology" in the
>"Masks of God" series. But I don't have it with me and to be honest I do
not
>recall the images he referred to, nor the period. I will look it up when I
>have a chance to access my library again.
>
>I can be mistaken but I´ve
>been looking for this info today and haven´t been able to find it out.
>Unfortunaly I left my selection of sumerian texts in NY so I couldn´t check
>it out. I have with me the Dictionnaire des mythologies et des religions
des
>sociétés traditionnelles et du monde antique and found nothing about this
>tree.Some other scholars, such as Eliade or Graves seem to talk about a
>special kind of grass that give us inmortality. I found this idea of a
>single tree extremly interesting, could somebody give us more info on this?
>
>Speaking of single trees, would Yggdrasil be so described? I'm quite
>ignorant as yet on Nordic mythology.
>
>    As Waltrer pointed out it's true that the tree of life wasn´t mentioned
>before the fall, which is also very interesting. Eliade seems to believe
the
>tree staid hidden until the apple was eaten, so you first needed some kind
>of knowledge in orden to see the tree. This theory makes even more
>interesting the role of the snake. Was the snake eager to eat from the tree
>of life? Did the snake need Adam and Eve in order to be able to find the
>hidden tree? Anyway the idea of hidden is pretty common among the first
>cosmogonies, think of Gilgamesh grass or Golden Apples in Hesperides, as
>also the image of two trees instead of one.
>
>A speculation which may be utter rubbish: would a dragon represent the
snake
>that found and ate of the Tree of Life? Before he reaches his Tree, Attila
>sees snakes that are mating with tree trunks and  "obviously demonstrating
>the transition to dragons".
>
>Thomas Friese
>
>
>
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