To exemplify the spiral icon, the renown mythologist Joseph Campbell draws our attention to a Sumerian libation cup of King Gudea (c. 2000 B.C.), which features a pair of copulating vipers interlaced along a staff. 27  He also discusses the tenth century Cross of Muiredach located in Monasterboice, Ireland. This elaborately carved stone cross depicts spiral serpents interlacing three human heads, while on its upper portion "the Right Hand of God" touches a halo-like disk. 28 In addition, Campbell cites the fifteenth century Aztec codex Fejérváry-Mayer, which depicts a pair of serpents (possibly rattlesnakes) intertwined upon an altar with their heads facing outward in opposite directions. 29  Finally, he mentions the Navajo medicine man Jeff King, who was born in New Mexico in the mid-nineteenth century and died at about age 110. From boyhood this traditional Navajo frequently visited a stone carving near a cave of a particular mountain near his home. This carving represented two entwined spiral snakes positioned with their heads pointing east and west. Unfortunately the sculpture was lost when a rock overhang collapsed and it was washed away. 30 These exemplars from widely disparate cultures demonstrate the universal nature of the spiral, in both its therapeutic and its shamanistic dimensions. Originating from the healing snakes of Asclepius, the ophidian emblem, of course, is widely recognized today in reference to the medical profession.


 In all the excitement about the human genome mapping project and its potential for medical science, we sometimes forget the ineffable beauty of the DNA double helix, that spiral staircase gently uncoiling itself with a mathematical precision inside every living thing. Perhaps the ancients intuited even more so than we do its spiritual significance beyond aesthetics. For instance, from the Introduction to his intriguing online book entitled Living In Truth: Archaeology and the Patriarchs, Charles N. Pope writes: "The double helix or twisted pair was actually used as the fundamental literary structure of the Torah. Torah is customarily translated as 'Teachings' or 'Law.' However, the ruling class of ancient royal society was conversant in many languages. According to the early 1st Century AD Jewish master Philo of Alexandria, Moses studied the languages of all 70 nations of the known world. The related roots 'tor,' 'tort,' 'tur,' 'ter,' etc. are found in many other tongues, including Greek and Latin. They are the basis of common English words such as tornado, torture, torment, torsion, turbine, storm, turban, tour, tower, turret and turn, all of which denote or imply 'twisting.'" In this regard we are startled by the fact that a New World native people like the Hopi would use a similar etymology. Specifically, the Hopi word tori means "twisted spirally" while the word toriritaqa means "whirlwind." The village at the base of Second Mesa is called Toreva, or Toriva, literally "twist water," probably referring to a spring.

Is it merely a coincidence that the syllable denoting spiral is the same in many different languages all across the world, including the Uto-Aztecan language of the Hopi? Is it not more likely that some degree of intercultural exchange in very ancient times should cause the root word tor to be found on a global basis? We should remember that this is not just some widely dispersed common image which could be explained by the theory of universal archetypes, but instead a mutually occurring phoneme. Both the spiral form and its specific signifier were apparently necessary for its dissemination.

According to J.E. Cirlot's A Dictionary of Symbols, "The double spiral represents the completion of the sigmoid line, and the ability of the sigmoid line to express the intercommunication between two opposing principles is clearly shown in the Chinese Yang-Yin symbol." 31 Obviously the iconography of the spiral is sacred beyond belief, superseding any belief systems to reach deeply into the processes of both history and biology.



The Healing Spiral


We have talked about the spiral in nature, but what about the nature of the spiral? In essence, the three-dimensional spiral assumes its form by merging the circle (eternal) and the line (temporal). We may think of particular cultures (Hindu and Buddhist, for instance) tending toward the former, with their weary cycles of ceaseless incarnation, suffering, and death-- all of it illusory, all of it maya. (i.e., The eye is on fire; forms are on fire. The ear is on fire; sounds are on fire. The nose is on fire; odors are on fire, etc. "And with what are these on fire?" "With the fire of passion, say I, with the fire of hatred, with the fire of infatuation; with birth, old age, death, sorrow, lamentation, misery, grief, and despair are they on fire." 32) On the other hand, Western culture (heavily influenced by Judaism, Zoroastrianism, and Christianity) is decidedly linear, with a clear beginning and an eventual yet inevitable end of time (i.e., "I am Alpha and Omega..." 33). This continuum is punctuated by either revelations or theophanies, which are appearances of the divine within the temporal, most notably the incarnation of Christ at the very center of the historical time span.

In his short but masterful book The Tragic, Sacred Ground, Erling Duus underscores the paramount importance of the spiral as a mythological paradigm for our time: "The spiral is crucial, for in it the captivity of the sheer circle is broken, penetrated by the linear movement of historical time, while time is relieved of its burden and its homelessness. Where and when the two meet 'there is a whirlpool effect' and then a transformation wherein the spiral is created, maintaining yet liberating the circle and the line." 34  In other words, the line gives to the circle's sometimes stupefying languor a sense of ultimate direction, optimism, and eschatological expectation. Conversely, the circle gives to the line's frequently rootless monomania a sacred haven in the womb-arc of the natural world. When the spatial virtues of the circle and the temporal virtues of the line are fused, the result is the regenerative space-time of the spiral. Duus places his discussion within the context of the Lakota (Sioux). This tribe's central territory was the Black Hills of South Dakota, which were invaded by white settlers seeking gold in violation of the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty. (Although his book speaks primarily about the Northern Plains, it echoes the general experiences of most Native American tribes, including those of the Hopi and the Diné of the American Southwest.) The Lakota, whose ethos is embodied in the icon of the medicine wheel, were confronted by the Whites, whose doctrine of Manifest Destiny justified the "straight and narrow" march of progress, at least in their own minds. As we know all too well from the history books, the clash of these two sets of values ostensibly played itself out with tragic consequences. This interpretation, however, is absolute only to the extent that we view the conflict purely in either/or terms: either the circle or the line.

If we instead embrace the spiral, a dialectic is created whereby we transcend the limitations of both thesis and antithesis, matriarchy and patriarchy, conservative and progressive, etc., while achieving in the process a genuine liberation beyond dualism. In no way is this an attempt to sidestep or deny the genocidal atrocities perpetrated by deracinated Europeans upon the native peoples of the Americas. The fact remains, however, that Europeans journeyed to the "New World" with their linear paradigm, perhaps with the ultimate albeit unconscious goal of experiencing the cyclic paradigm of Native Americans, and vice versa. In a sense each culture needed to perceive the other as an Other, thereby creating the icon of the spiral, which speaks both from the heart and to the heart in purely visionary terms. Reflecting vastly different world views, the symbols of circle and line were perhaps destined to be subsumed by this greater icon, viz., the healing spiral which rises above, conquering all polarities in its arc of reconciliation.

Not only does the spiral include history in its spiritual sweep, but it also encompasses biology, even allowing for the theory of evolution. Just as a cart, one with innumerable wheels perhaps, slowly moves forward in a straight line, so the process of evolution is simultaneously cyclic and linear. Again, Cirlot's dictionary states that the spiral is in fact "A schematic image of the evolution of the universe." 35  It is no coincidence, then, that the term evolution (e- "out" + volvere "to roll") means "to unroll" or "to open outward"-- the precise motion of the spiral.

The paleontologist and Jesuit priest Teilhard de Chardin remarks on the shift from the 2-D to the 3-D spiral in evolutionary terms: "We have no longer the crawling 'sine' curve, but the spiral which springs upward as it turns. From one zoological layer to another, something is carried over: it grows, jerkily, but ceaselessly and in a constant direction. And this 'something' is what is most physically essential in the planet we live on."36 Teilhard may well have said "...physically and spiritually essential," for he believes that all of Creation is an evolutionary process leading to what he terms the Omega Point. Forming the spiral axis of universal love at the heart of all centers, even God Himself is not exempt from the process and does not stand apart. He instead evolves along with the rest of Gaia and Her species toward the locus of convergence, viz., the culmination of cosmogenesis. In the increasing complexification of life, there is unification of spirit without the loss of either personal identity or humanity. Teilhard does not perceive evolution in the same light as do most scientists, however, whose paradigm conceives of the process as an ever widening spiral, devoid of purpose or goal. Teilhard conversely sees it as cosmic involution, irreversibly arcing upward and inward. It is a galactic path whereon evolutionary travelers are both pulled forward and animated by the supreme focus of the transcendent Omega. In these terms the spiral not only heals, it also redeems.



The Sky Spiral


Here we return to the celestial, though --following the true nature of our subject-- on a different level. If we conceptualize the spiral as uniting the eternal and the temporal (again, circle and line), we may also see this figure linking sky and earth. Historian of religions Mircea Eliade provides evidence of this from an initiation ceremony performed by the Wiradjuri tribe of Australia.

"... the men cut a spiral piece of bark which symbolizes the path between sky and earth. In my opinion this represents the reactivation of the connections between the human world and the divine world of the sky. According to the myths the first man, created by Baiame [highest of the Gods], ascended to the sky by a path and conversed with his Creator. The role of the bark spiral in the initiation festival is thus clear--as symbol of ascension it reinforces the connection of the sky world of Baiame." 37

"Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity." 43

from Eye of the Phoenix: Mysterious Visions and Secrets of the American Southwest
Copyright © 2001-20011 by Gary A. David. All rights reserved.
Original draft: August 2001, revised February 2011
Any use of text, photographs, or diagram maps without the author's prior consent is expressly forbidden.
Email: garydavid52@hotmail.com


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Footnotes


1. Hunbatz Men, Secrets of Mayan Science/Religion, Diana Gubiseh Ayala & James Jennings Dunlap II, translators (Santa Fe, New Mexico: Bear & Company, 1990), pp. 34-35.
2. Alex Patterson, Hopi Pottery Symbols (Boulder: Johnson Books, 1994), p. 29.
3. Hisatsinom refers to the ancestral Hopi. They are frequently misnamed the Anasazi, which is a Diné (Navajo) word meaning "Ancient One" or "Ancient Enemy."
4. Frank Waters and Oswald White Bear Fredericks, Book of the Hopi (New York: Penguin Books, 1987, reprint 1963), p. 35.
5. James R. Cunkle, Talking Pots: Deciphering the Symbols of a Prehistoric People (Phoenix, Arizona: Golden West Publishers, 1996, 1993), p. 26.
6. Ani Bealaura, "The Celtic Circles of Existence," A Book of Shadow and Light, unpublished manuscript.
7. Robert Graves, The White Goddess: A historical grammar of poetic myth (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1976, 1948), pp. 171-172.
8. Ibid., p. 103.
9. John Frayne, "Celtic Symbology and Motifs," Celtic Motifs web site, .
10. The Fajada Butte "Sun Dagger" petroglyph is an extremely sophisticated astronomical tool, indicating summer and winter solstices, vernal and autumnal equinoxes, and lunar standstills. It consists of one large counterclockwise spiral and one smaller clockwise spiral. Three upright sandstone slabs direct the sunlight so that just before noon on the summer solstice a downward pointing, vertical "dagger" bisects the center of the large spiral. On the winter solstice two vertical daggers of sunlight rest tangentially to this spiral. On both equinoxes a downward pointing triangle of light bisects the small spiral, which is located above the center and to the left of the large spiral. See Anna Sofaer's excellent web site The Solstice Project.
11. "Techqua Ikachi: Land and Life, the Traditional View," 44 Newsletters of the Hopi Nation, online publication.
12. Carlos Castaneda, Tales of Power (New York: Pocket Books/Simon & Schuster, 1976, 1974), p. 116 ff.
13. Page Bryant, Terravision: A Traveler's Guide to the Living Planet Earth (New York: Ballantine Books, 1991), pp. 38-39, p. 89 and p. 91.
14. Richard Leviton and Robert Coons, "Ley Lines and the Meaning of Adam," Anti-Gravity & The World Grid, David Hatcher Childress, editor (Kempton, Illinois: Adventures Unlimited Press, 1997, 1987), p. 146.
15. Ibid., p. 150.
16. Ibid., pp. 185-186.
17. Graham Hancock, The Sign and the Seal: The Quest for the Lost Arc of the Covenant (New York: Touchstone Books/Simon & Schuster, 1993, 1992), p. 6.
18. William Blake, David V. Erdman, editor, The Poetry and Prose of William Blake (New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1970, 1965), p. 25.
19. Waters and Fredericks, Book of the Hopi, pp. 138-141.
20. Kenneth C. Hill, Ekkehart Malotki, Emory Sekaquaptewa, editors, Hopi Dictionary: A Hopi-English Dictionary of the Third Mesa Dialect (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1998), p. 531, p. 426.
21. A.M. Stephen quoted in Patterson, Hopi Pottery Symbols, p. 34.
22. New Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology (London: The Hamlyn Publishing Group Limited, 1972, 1959), p. 60.
23. Arthur Avalon (Sir John Woodroffe), The Serpent Power: the Secrets of Tantric and Shaktic Yoga (New York: Dover Publications, Inc. 1974, 1919), pp. 1-3.
24. Dennis Tedlock, translator and commentator, Popol Vuh: The Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life (New York: Touchstone Books, Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1986, 1985), p. 341.
25. Garrick Mallery, Picture Writing of the American Indians, Vol. 2 (New York, Dover Publications, Inc. 1972, 1893), pp. 701-702.
26. Waters and Fredericks, Book of the Hopi, pp. 9-11.
27. Joseph Campbell, The Inner Reaches of Outer Space: Metaphor as Myth and as Religion (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1988, 1986), p. 82.
28. Ibid., p. 83 and p. 88.
29. Ibid., pp. 90-91.
30. Ibid. pp. 89-90.
31. J.E. Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols (New York: Philosophical Library, 1971, 1962), p. 306.
32. Siddhartha Gautama the Buddha, "The Fire Sermon," The Teachings of the Compassionate Buddha, E.A. Burtt, editor (New York: New American Library/Mentor Books, 1955), p. 97.
33. Revelation 1:8.
34. Erling Duus, The Tragic, Sacred Ground (Freeman, South Dakota: Pine Hill Press, 1989), p. 67.
35. Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols, p. 305.
36. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man (New York: Harper Colophon Books/Harper & Row, Publishers, 1975, 1959), p. 148.
37. Mircea Eliade, Rites and Symbols of Initiation: The Mysteries of Birth and Rebirth (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1975, 1958), p. 14.
38. "Techqua Ikachi," op. cit.
39. Edward S. Curtis, Frederick Webb Hodge, editor, The North American Indian: Hopi, Vol. 12 (Norwood, Mass.: The Plimpton Press, 1922), p. 103.
40. Hamilton A. Tyler, Pueblo Gods and Myths (Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1984, 1964), pp. 214-1-6.
41. Katherine Cheshire, Hopi Elder, Touch The Earth Foundation, online publication, http://www.wolflodge.org/wolflodge/spiritsakes/spirits.htm .
42. Chief Dan Evehema, "Message to Mankind," online publication, , see Messages link on the left.
43. William Butler Yeats, M.L. Rosenthal, editor, The Selected Poems of William Butler Yeats (New York: Collier Books, 1968, 1962, 1934, 1931), p. 91.

http://theorionzone.com/spiral.htm