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City of The Shining Jewel
Chakra three, at the level of the navel, is called Maipura, "City of the Shining Jewel," for its fiery heat and light. Here the energy turns to violence and its aim is to consume, to master, to turn the world into oneself and one's own. The appropriated occidental psychology would be the Adlerian of the "will to power"; for now even sex becomes an occasion, not of erotic experience, but of achievement, conquest, self-reassurance, and frequently, also revenge. The lotus has ten petals, dark as thunderheads heavy laden, bearing the seed syllables dam, dham, nam, tam, tham, dam, dham, nam, pam, and pham. Its central triangle, in a white field, is the sign of the element fire, shining like the rising sun, with swastika marks on its sides. The ram, its symbolic animal, is the vehicle of Agni, Vedic god of the scrificial fire, bearing on its back the syllable ram, which is the seed syllable or sound form of this god and his fiery element. The presiding Hindu (as distinct from Vedic) deity is Shiva in his terrible guise as an ascetic smeared with the ashes of funeral pyres, seated on his white bull Nandi. And at this side is his goddess shakti, enthroned on a ruby lotus in her hideous character of Lakini. Lakini is blue, with three faces, three eyes to each; fierce of aspect, with protruding teeth. She is fond of meat; her breast is smeared with grease and blood that have dripped from her ravenous jaws; yet she is radiant, elegant with ornaments, and exalted from the drinking of ambrosia. She is the goddess who presides over all rites of human sacrifice and over the battlefields of mankind, terrible as death to behold, though to her devotees gracious, beautiful, and sweet as life.~ Joseph Campbell The Mythic Image
-a note here. I realize that Earth is the 3rd rock from the sun, from our sol, our source. However when I found this connection between the chakras, the planets, the gods, and the days of the week, I saw this connection between Mars and Earth flipped. The interesting thing of late is how I'm beginning also to see a heart/navel connection as they relate to the center. Is Heart center? Is Navel center? Heart is the source of love or the conduit of love. Navel is the source of life--portal to the womb, the galactic center. Our navel shows our connection to The Mother's navel--our home, the universe.
Was our home and heart once the red Mars? Did we destroy that and then claimed the previous rock our new heart?
This work I'm doing now is leading to my "Diagram of The Universe: 432" where I explore the architecture of The Goddess through her numbers. I'm finally climbing Jacob's ladder here on the blog, but notice how the first three chakras represent the underworld. The fourth is material, is Earth, is the mother, is the tree upon which life hangs. 5, 6, 7 are the heavenly centers. So then of the tree of life: 1, 2, 3 = roots; 4 = tree; 5, 6, 7 = branches.
More from Campbell about these lower charkras (I also recall with interest how our Martian charioteer, George II, made his decisions from the gut.):
These, and these alone [the first three chakras], have supplied the motivations of historical man, his effective moral systems, and his nightmare of world history. They are the centers of the basic urges, furthermore, that mankind shares with the beasts -- namely, (1) to survive alive by feeding on other lives, (2) to generate offspring, and (3) to conquer and subdue. Unrestrained by any control system, these become devastating, as the history of the present century surely tells. For as declared in the IndianArthasastra, "Textbook on the Art of Winning": "When uncontrolled by virtue (dharma) and the big stick (danda), men become wolves unto men." The Inner Reaches of Outer Space, pg. 63-64 by Joseph Campbell, St. James Press, Toronto, 1986.
Now all three of these lower chakras are of the modes of man's living in the world in his naïve state, outward turned: the modes of the lovers, the fighters, the builders, the accomplishers. Joys and sorrows on these levels are functions of achievements in the world "out there" : what people think of one, what has been gained, what lost. And throughout the history of our species, people functioning only on these levels (who, of course, have been in the majority) have had to be tamed and brought to heel through the inculcation of a controlling sense of social duty and shared social values, enforced not only by secular authority but also by all those grandiose myths of an unchallengeable divine authority to which every social order--each in its own way--has had to lay claim. Wherever motivations of these kinds are not checked effectively, men, as the old texts say, "become wolves unto men."However, it is obvious that a religion operating only on these levels, having little or nothing to do with the fostering of inward, mystical realizations, would hardly merit the name of religion at all. It would be little more than an adjunct to police authority, offering in addition to ethical rules and advice intangible consolations for life's losses and a promise of future rewards for social duties fulfilled. Hence, to interpret the imagery, powers, and values of the higher chakras in terms of the values of these lower systems is to mistranslate them miserably, and to lose contact in oneself, thereby, with the whole history and heritage of mankind's life in the spirt.~Joseph Campbell The Mythic Image
