Symplegades

by

Ananda K. Coomaraswamy

Source: Studies in Comparative Religion, Vol. 7, No. 1. (Winter 1973) © World Wisdom, Inc.
www.studiesincomparativereligion.com

THE distribution of the motif of "Clashing Rocks"[1] is an indication of its prehistoric antiquity, and refers the complex pattern of the Urmythos of the Quest to a period prior at least to the population of America. The signs and symbols of the Quest of Life which have so often survived in oral tradition, long after they have been rationalized or romanticized by literary artists, are our best clue to what must have been the primordial form of the one spiritual language of which, as Jeremias says (Altorientalischen Geisteskultur, Vorwort) "the dialects are recognizable in the diverse existing cultures." Here, for the sake of brevity, we are considering only a single component of the complex pattern, that of the "Active Door."[2] It has been quite generally recognized that these Wandering Rocks, "to pass between which thou must thyself find a means" (Julg), are the "Mythical forms of that wonder-door beyond which lie Oceanus, the Islands of the Blessed, the Kingdom of the Dead" and that they divide "this known world from the unknown Beyond" (Jessen in Roscher, Lexikon): that, as Cook, endorsing Jessen,. says, they "presuppose the ancient popular belief in a doorway to the Otherworld formed by clashing mountain-walls." The Planktai Petrai, in other words, are the leaves of the Golden Gates of the Janua Coeli,[3] of which in the Christian tradition, St. Peter, appointed by the Son of Man, is now the Keeper.

We begin with the problems of distribution of the motif, of which the meaning will develop as we proceed. In certain contexts, as pointed out by Cook (pp. 988-991) "dancing reeds" replace the floating or dancing islands, and although there is no indication in the classical sources of the notion of a dangerous passage between a pair of dancing reeds, this appears elsewhere, and it can hardly be doubted that it belongs to the original form of the story. Dr. Murray Fowler[4] has called attention to an Indian context (Satapatha Brâhmana III. 6.2.8,9) where Soma, the plant, bread, or water of life, is to be brought down from above by the aquiline Gâyatri (Suparni, Vâc), Agni's vocal and metrical power, and we are told that it had been "deposited [for safe-keeping] within, i.e., behind, two golden leaves,[5] that were razor-edged, and snapped together[6] at every winking of an eye." She tears out these leaves, and appropriates the life-giving power, which Indrâgni "extend for the generation of offspring" (ibid., 13). In other words, the Falcon, successful Soma-thief, passes safely between these "two Gandharva Soma-wardens" and returns with the rescued prisoner, viz., that King Soma who "was Vrtra" (ibid. III.4.3.13, etc.) and now "made to be what he actually is,[7] the Sacrifice is now himself a God restored to the Gods" (ibid. III.6.3.16, 19). From the point of view of the Titans this translation of the "imprisoned, strictly-guarded Soma-Haoma"[8] is a theft, but from that of the Gods a rescue and a disenchantment.[9]

It will be recognized immediately that the Falcon's Quest-and we use this word deliberately to imply that this is, in fact, a Grail Quest—is identical with that of the doves that fetch ambrosia[10] for Father Zeus from beyond the Planktai Petrai, always at the price of one of their number, caught on the way as they pass the Clashing Rocks (Odyssey XII.58f.): and that it corresponds at the same time to the Quest of the Golden Fleece, where it is, indeed, a winged "ship" that Athena (Goddess of Wisdom) drives between the Clashing Rocks that she holds apart, but it is like a bird that Argo flies through the air, and even so can only escape with the loss of her stern-ornament (or, as we might almost say, "tail-feather"), after which the rocks remain in close contact, barring the way to other mortal voyagers (Argonautica II.645 f.). The door is thus normally "closed"; for as we shall presently realize, it is one that can only be opened, in what would otherwise seem to be a smooth and impenetrable wall, by a more than normally human wisdom.[11]

An example of this "Open Sesame" motif (best known in connection with Aladdin's Cave) can be cited from Southern Africa: "In one of Schultze's [Hottentot] stories the fleeing heroine drops food behind her, delaying the pursuing Lion, who eagerly devours it. When the pursuer endeavours to follow, the rock closes and kills him. The opening and closing rock occurs in various combinations in South African mythology" (from a review of J. Schultze, "Aus Namaland und Kalahari," Berlin, 1907, in Journal of American Folklore XXXXI (1908), 252). In such a sequence it is easy to recognize in the heroine, Psyche, and in the pursuer, Death.

To return now to the Cutting Reeds, we can cite an American Indian myth in which, amongst the series of living obstacles that bar the way of the hero Nayanezgani there are not only "Crushing Rocks" which he stays apart, but also "Cutting Reeds" which "tried to catch him, waving and clashing together." We are also told of these Cutting Reeds that "when anyone passed through them, the reeds moved and cut the person into little pieces and ate him" (M. C. Wheelwright, Navajo Creation Myth (1942), pp. 71, 96). Another reference to the "Slicing Reeds" will be found in the Franciscan Fathers' Ethnologic Dictionary of the Navaho Language (1910), p. 358.

The Cutting Reeds are, of course only one of the many forms of the Active Door, of which the passage is so dangerous. We shall consider now some of the other forms of the Wonderdoor, and to begin with the Clashing Rocks or Mountains themselves. Different forms of the Door may be associated in one and the same story. In a more elaborate Indian text, parallel to that of the Brâhmana already cited, the "golden blades" are represented by "two sleepless, watchful, razor-edged lightnings, striking from every side," and it is asked "How did the Vulture [Garuda, Eagle, Soma-thief] transgress these Soma-wardens, 'Fear' and 'No-Fear'?" (Suparnâdhyaya 24.2,3). These names of the Soma-wardens, also to be thought of as snakes or dragons, are significant because, as we shall presently come to see more clearly, the two leaves or jambs of the Active Door are not merely affronted by the very nature of a door, but at the same time stand for the "pairs of opposites" or "contraries" of whatever sort, between which the Hero must pass in the Quest of Life, without hope or fear, haste or delay, but rather with an equanimity superior to any alternative. When Alexander sought he did not find what Khizr found unsought (Sikandar Nâma LXIX.75). Taken superficially, "Seek, and ye shall find" is a very comfortable doctrine; but it should be understood that whoever has not found has never really sought (cf. Nafahâtu'l Uns as cited by Nicholson, Diwani Shams-i-Tabriz, 1898, p. 329).

In the same context (25.5) we find an obstacle described as consisting of "two razor-edged restless mountains." The text is obscure and admittedly in need of emendation,[12] but there is a clearer reference, the importance of which has been hitherto completely overlooked, in Sankhayana Aranyaka IV.13 (=Kauyitaki Upanisad II.13), to moving mountains: here we are told of the Comprehensor of the doctrine that the powers of the soul are an epiphany of Brahma, that "verily, even though both mountains, the northern and the southern, were to roll forth against him, seeking to overcome him instantly, indeed, they would not be able to devour him." [13] The immediate reference may be to the Himalayas and Vindhyas, normally separated by the Gangetic Madhya-desa, but must be indirectly to Sky and Earth, who were originally "one", or "together," and can be reunited. The door of the world of heavenly light is to be found, indeed, "where Sky and Earth embrace" and the "Ends of the Year" are united (Jaiminīya Upanisad Brāhmana I.5.5; I.35.7-9; IV. 15.2-5).[14] The Expert, for whom the antitheses are never absolute values but only the logical extremities of a divided form (for example, past and present of the eternal now), is not overcome by, but much rather transits their "north-and-southness" or, as we should say, "polarity," while the Empiricist is crushed or devoured by the perilous alternatives (to be or not to be, etc.) that he cannot evade.[15]

An unmistakable reference to the Clashing Rocks is to be found in Rgveda, VI.49.3, where the "Rocks" are times, viz., Day and Night, described as "clashing together and parting" (mithasturā vicaranti); mithas here (V mith, to unite, alternate, dash together, understand, and also kill, cf. mithya, contrarily, and mithuna, pair-ing) in combination with tura (V tur, to hasten, rush, overpower, injure), corresponding to tustūrsamānau (SA.IV.13=Kaus Up. II.13), rendered above by "seeking to overcome instantly" in connection with the two "rolling mountains." This is an important case, whether we consider Day and Night as times or as light and darkness,—Mitrâvarunau. Its bearing will be realised if we recall that the Vedic Hero's greatest feat is performed at Dawn; Indra has agreed that he will not slay Namuci (Vrtra, and Buddhist Māra) "either by day or by night," and keeps his word to the letter by lifting his head at dawn, thus dividing heaven from earth and making the sun rise (for references see JAOS.XV.143ff. and LV.375), —dividing the light from the darkness, and day from night. It is no wonder, then, that the Mahavira's feat is so often described as having been performed "suddenly" and "once for all" (sakrt, etc.), for whatever is done when it is neither Day nor Night (cf. Rgveda X.129.3) is done ex tempore, sub specia aeternitatis and forever.

Conversely, for those who are already in time and would be liberated, would "become eternal", Day and Night are as it were two impassible, revolving Seas or wandering Pillars, and one should not perform the Agnihotra (Sacrifice of the Burnt-Offering) either by Day or by Night but only at dusk after sunset and before dark, and at dawn after dark and before sunrise (Jaiminīya Brāhmana, I.5)[16] "Night and Day are the Sea that carries all away, and the two Twilights are its fordable crossings; and as a man would cross over it by its fordable crossings, so he sacrifices [performs the Agnihotra] at Twilight[17]... Night and Day, again, are the encircling arms of Death; and just as a man about to grasp you with both arms can be escaped [atimucyeta] through the opening [antarena] between them, so he sacrifices at Twilight... this is the sign (ketu) of the Way-of-the-Gods [devayāna], which he takes hold of, and safely reaches Heaven" (Kausitaki Brāhmana II.9)[18] In the same way for Philo Day and Night, Light and Darkness, are archetypal contraries, divided in the beginning "lest they should be always clashing by median boundaries Dawn and Dusk, which are not sensible extents of time but "intelligible forms [ideai] or types" (Opif.33); and though he does not say so, it is evident that if anyone would return from the chiaroscuro of this world to the "supercelestial" Light of lights he will only be able to do so—if he is able—by the way of these "forms" in which the Day and Night are not divided from one another.

Thus the Way "to break out of the universe" (Hermes Trismegistos, Lib. XI.2.9, see note 46) into that other order of the Divine Darkness[19] that Dionysius describes as "blinding by excess of light" and where the Darkness and the Light "stand not distant from one another, but together in one another" (Jacob Boehme, Three Principles, XIV,78) is the single track and "strait way" that penetrates the cardinal "point" on which the contraries turn; their unity is only to be reached by entering in there where they actually coincide. And that is, in the last analysis, not any where or when, but within you; "World's End is not to be found by walking, but it is within this very fathom-long body that the pilgrimage must be made" (Samyutta Nikâya I.62),

"Our soul is, as it were, the day, and our body the night;
We, in the middle, are the dawn between our day and night"
(Shams-i-Tabriz, Tabriz ed., 252.12, cited by Nicholson, p. 239.)

H. Rink[20] records from Greenland the myth of the Eskimo hero Giviok, whose way to the Otherworld, in which he finds his dead son living, is confronted by "two clashing icebergs," with only a narrow passage between them, alternately opened and closed. He cannot circumnavigate them because, when he tries to do so, they always keep ahead of him ("for there is no approach by a side path here in the world," Maitri Upanisad VI.30!). He therefore speeds between them, and has barely passed when they close together, bruising the stern-point of his kayak. As Professor Cook sees, this is "a mariner's version of the gateway to the Otherworld." In this northern setting, the floating islands are naturally thought of as icebergs.

In a more recent collection of Eskimo folktales[21] the Clapping Mountains are connected, significantly, with the migrations of birds. "All of the birds who fly south must pass between them. Every little while they clap together, just as you clap your hands, and anyone caught between them is crushed to death. This dangerous passage is an ordeal appointed by the Great Spirit, and "any geese that cannot fly fast will be crushed." Whether or not the narrator "understood his material" we have no means of telling but it is impossible to doubt that the talking geese originally represented souls or that amongst them those who could not fly fast represented the uninitiated.

"Rocks-That-Come-Together" are well known all over America. They are mentioned by the Franciscan Fathers' Navaho Dictionary (loc. cit.) as "cliffs which bound together [crushing]"; in Fr. Berard Haile, Origin Legend of the Navaho Enemy Way (1938), p. 125, as "two rocks that clap together"; and in Wheelwright's Navajo Creation Myth (loc. cit.) as "crushing rocks" between which the Hero must pass. Other examples of the motif are cited from American sources by Paul Ehrenreich;[22] in the South American Tupi saga of the heavenly ascent of two brothers, respectively human and divine, the way leads between clashing rocks, by which the mortal is crushed. In one North American version the door of the king of heaven is made of the two halves of the Eagle's beak, or of his daughter's toothed vagina, and with this Ehrenreich compares the Polynesian tale of Maui's brother crushed between the thighs of the Night Goddess. Ehrenreich holds that the "clashing rocks" are heaven and earth, the cleft between them being that at the horizon.[23] Franz Boas[24] cites the North American Indian story of the heavenly ascent of two brothers, who on their way must strike out the wedges from certain cloven tree trunks, by which they will be in danger of being crushed as the sides spring together. T. Waltz records that the Mexican dead had to pass between clashing mountains" (Anthropologie der Natirvölker, Leipzig, 1864, IV.166); and in Codex Vindobonensis (leaf 21) there is a picture of two individuals climbing over a succession of mountains, of which two are cloven and no doubt to be understood as "clapping," which might illustrate this deathway.

The notion itself of "Floating Islands" is typically, although not by any means exclusively, Indian. The "worlds" or states of being are often spoken of as "islands" (dvipa), India, for example, being Jambudvipa. That Earth in particular is such an island, originally submerged, and brought up in the beginning from the depths, is the basis of the adequate symbolism of Earth by a lotus flower or leaf, expanded upon the surface of the cosmic waters in response to the light of and as a reflection of the Sun, "the one lotus of the sky": hence the lotus or, lotus-petal moulding (which becomes in late Greek art the "egg-and-dart") represents the archetypal "support" of existence. By the same token the terrestrial Agni is "lotus-born" (abja- ja);[25] and that the manifested Gods and the Buddha are represented with lotus-pedestals, thrones or footstools (as in the parallel case of the Egyptian Horus) is as much as to say that their feet are firmly based upon a ground that is really an "island" floating upon and surrounded by an ocean of all the possibilities of manifestation from which the particular compossibles of any given world must have been derived. For all this, moreover, there is a close parallel in the case of Rhodes, the "Island of the Rose"; for, as has often enough been demonstrated, the rose is the precise equivalent in European symbolism of the lotus in Asiatic, and Rhodes, a land that rose from the depths of the sea, is preeminently the Island of the Sun, who made her his wife and begot seven sons upon her (Cook, p. 986). The famous Colossus of Rhodes, was of course an image of the Sun, and however late the legend may be that the legs (jambes!) of this image straddled the harbor, to form the jambs of a mighty door through which every ship must pass on entering or leaving port, the figure is manifestly that of a Sun-door. [26]

It is a highly characteristic feature of the "Active Door" that who-ever or whatever passes through it must do so with all speed and suddenly, and even so may be docked of its "tail"; which tail may be, in the examples already considered, either the stern-point of a boat, or one of two brothers, or if there is a flock of birds (doves of Zeus or Eskimo geese) then the last of the line; or if the Hero wins through his pursuer may be caught. Striking examples of these features can be cited in the widely diffused art and folktale motif of the "Hare and Hounds." We need hardly say that the Hare is one of the many creatures ("birds," men or animals)[27] that play the part of the Hero in the life-quest, or that the Dog is one of the many types of the defender of the Tree of Life; whatever details are suited to the symbolism of the robbery of a defended "garden enclosed" or "castle" are to be found amongst our variants. The hare-hunt has been discussed at length by the great folklorist Karl von Spiess,[28] who cites a riddle, of Greek origin, but also widely diffused in Europe. It runs:

"A wooden key, a watery lock; the Hare runs through, the Dog was caught." One modern answer is: bucket and sea, But the original reference is to the crossing of the Red Sea, Moses being the Hare and the Pharoah the Dog. It will be seen immediately that the divided sea is a type of the Active Door (cf. above, on Day and Night). which in this case closes upon the pursuer. But the Hare does not always escape scot-free. Then, in the words of von Spiess, "This is the situation, viz., that the Hare has run into another world to fetch something—the Herb of Immortality. Thereupon the guardian Dog, pursuing the Hare, is hard upon it. But just where both worlds meet, and where the Dog's domain ends, it is only able to bite off the Hare's tail, so that the Hare returns to its own world docked. In this case the Dog's jaws are the "Clapping Rocks." In the other and more typical case in which the Hero is a "bird," and the Defender an archer,[29] the "minor penalty" is represented by the loss of a feather or a leaf of the herb, which falls to earth and takes root there, to spring up as a terrestrial tree of life and knowledge; in this case the Hero's wound is in his foot, and his vulnerability in this respect is related to the motif of "Achilles' heel."

Whoever seeks to interpret myths in a purely rationalistic way, and considers the story of the Hare by itself, might argue that it represents no more than an aetiological myth of popular origin. But actually, that such myths are transmitted, it may be for thousands of years, by the folk to whom they have been entrusted, is no proof of their popular origin; it is in quite another sense that Vox populi vox Dei. As von Spiess clearly saw, the Hare is not only to be equated with the heroic "bird," but also with the human and knightly heroes of otherworld adventures. We have, in fact, introduced the Hare at this point in order to lead up to the remarkable Celtic forms of the motif of the Active Door, in which the Hero escapes from its closing jaws almost literally by the skin of his teeth. In a typical form the story occurs in Chrétien's Iwain (vv. 907-969).[30] Iwain is riding in pursuit of the Defender of the Fountain Perilous, whom he has already wounded, and reaches the gateway of his palace, which was very high and wide, "yet it had such a narrow entrance-way that two men or two horses could scarcely enter abreast without interference or great difficulty; for it was constructed just like a trap which is set for the rat on mischief bent, and which has a blade above ready to fall and strike and catch, and which is suddenly released whenever anything, however gently, comes in contact with the spring. In like fashion, beneath the gate, there were two springs connected with a portcullis up above, edged with iron and very sharp... Precisely in the middle the passage lay as narrow as if it were a beaten (single) track. Straight through it exactly the (wounded) knight rushed on, with my lord Iwain madly following him apace, and so close to him that he held him by the saddle-bow behind. It was well for him that he was stretched forward, for had it not been for this piece of luck he would have been cut quite through; for his horse stepped upon the wooden spring which kept the portcullis in place. Like a hellish devil the gate dropped down, catching the saddle and the horse's haunches, which it cut off clean. But, thank God, my lord Iwain was only slightly touched when it grazed his back so closely that it cut both his spurs off even with his heels." [31]

Another variant occurs in La Mule sans Frein;[32] here Gawain has crossed the Perilous Bridge of Dread (by which the Active Door is always approached) and reaches the castle from which he is to recover the stolen bridle; the castle is always revolving, like a mill-wheel or top, and the gate must be entered as it comes round; he succeeds, but the side of the moving gate cuts off a part of the mule's tail; and in any case, as A. C. L. Brown justly remarks, "a revolving barrier, or an a active door of some kind, was a widespread motive of Celtic Otherworld story... before the time of Chrétien." So, too, for Kittredge, "these traits are not the personal property of Chrétien." [33]

The Sky is, of course, the "revolving barrier" (cf. Philo, Conf. 100+Opif. 37), and the Sun the "active door." It should be superfluous to emphasize that the traditional symbols are never the inventions of the particular author in whom we happen to find them: "the myth is not my own, I had it from my mother." Euripides, in these words, shows that he knew better than such naive scholars as Sir J. G. Frazer and A. A. Macdonell, of whom the former saw in the theme of the Clashing Rocks "a mere creation of the storyteller's fancy" and the latter in the related and almost equally widely distributed motif of the Fallen Feather "probably a mere embellishment added by the individual poet"! Our scholars, who think of myths as having been invented by "literary men," overlook that the traditional motifs and traditional themes are inseparately connected. The traditional raconteur's figures, which he has not invented, but has received and faithfully transmits, are never figures of speech, but always figures of thought; and one cannot ask, which came first, the symbol or its significance, the myth or its ritual enactment. Nor can anything be called a science of folklore, but only a collection of data, that considers only the formulae and not their doctrine, "que s'asconde sotto il velame dei strani versi." The materials collected even in the present short article should suffice to convince the reader that, as the late Sir Arthur Evans once wrote, "The coincidences of tradition are beyond the scope of accident."

"The whirling castle," as Kittredge says, "belongs to the same general category as perpetually slamming doors and clashing cliffs [symplegades]... The turning castle has also its significance with respect to the Other World." This Otherworld is at once a Paradise and the World of the Dead,[34] and in post-Christian folklore to be identified with Fairyland; it may be located overseas to the West, or Under-wave, or in the Sky, but is always in various ways protected from all but the destined Hero who achieves the Quest. It is the Indian "Father Shore" and Brahmaloka, and we are especially reminded of the latter by the fact that it is so often called the "land of no return" or "Val sans Retour." This Otherworld can be regarded either as itself a revolving castle or city, or as a castle provided with a perpetually closing or revolving door. A notable example of the turning castle can be cited in the Fled Bricrend [35] where it belongs to Cu Roi (to be equated with Mananan mac Lir and the Indian Varuna) and revolves as fast as a millstone, while that its gateway is really the Sundoor is clearly indicated by the fact that the entrance "was never to be found after sunset." The protection of the Otherworld and its treasures may consist in whole or part of a rampart of fire;[36] and whether it be the Empyrean or, more rarely, the Terrestrial Paradise, the Door itself has terrible defenders, of types including Scorpion-men, sleepless and baleful Serpents or Dragons, Centaurs (notably "Sagittarius"), Gandharvas, Cherubim (Genesis III.24, etc.) and in many cases armed Automata. We shall discuss these elsewhere in a longer article to be devoted to the "Early Iconography of Sagittarius."

Here we are primarily concerned with the Active Door itself and its significance. We shall conclude with a brief reference to the type of the Active Door that is described as a Wheel. A western example can be cited in Wigalois[37] here, in pursuit of the magician Roaz—"a parallel figure to Curoi" (Brown, Iwain, p. 81)—Wigalois reaches a castle, with a marble gate, in front of which there turned a wheel "set with sharp swords and clubs". The Mahabhârata (Puna ed., I. ch. 29) describes what is assuredly the same Wheel much more fully: "There before the Soma Garuda beheld a razor-edged Wheel [cakra] of steel, covered with sharp blades, and continually revolving, as terribly bright as the sun, an engine [yantra] of unspeakably dreadful aspect, fitly devised by the Gods for the cutting to pieces of Soma-thieves; the Skyfarer [khecara][38] seeing an opening therein, hovered, and making a cast of his body suddenly [ksanena][39] darted through between the spokes... flew off with the Water of Life" (amrta, Soma). So, too, in the Suparnadhyana (25.3,4) there is a mind-made Wheel of Indra's, ever revolving faster than the winking of an eye, which Garuda, the Soma-thief, with his "more than speed," passes (no doubt, through) and leaves behind him. To this very Wheel there is an illuminating reference in the much later Katha Sarit Sâgara (Bk. VI, ch. 29, in C. H. Tawney's version, 1880, I.257-259). Here Somaprabha is a daughter of the Asura Maya, the well-known Titan "artificer of the Gods" (to be identified with Tvastr, described in Rgveda X.53.9 as, mayâ [40]  vet, Sàyana devasilpi—and in the last analysis with Thaumas, father of Iris, Hesiod Th. 265, cf. Plato, Theatetus 155 D, and with such blacksmiths[41] as Daedalus, Hephaistos, Vulcan, Wayland and Regin). Somaprabhâ ("Soma-Radiance") assumes a human form and entertains her mortal friend Kalingasena with a variety of Automata, described as "self-empowered wooden puppets"[42] There she explains to Kalingasenâ's father as follows: "O King, these cunning engines, etc., in their endless variety, are works of art that were made by my father of old. And even as this great engine, the world, is in essence a product of the five elements, so are these engines. Hear about them, one by one: that one of them in which Earth is the basis is that which closes doors and the like, and even Indra could not open what it has closed; the forms that are produced from the Water-device seem to be alive; the engine that is wrought of Fire gives forth flames; the Air engine performs such acts as coming and going; the engine of which Ether is the constitution utters language distinctly.[43]

All these I got from my father But the Wheel-engine that guards the Water of Life that he only, and no one else, understands." Here it is highly significant that the magician, master of the Active Door, is also a maker of Automata, and further, that he is not originally a God, but a Titan. The Automata in this context are significant because, as remarked by J. Douglas Bruce,[44] the European "mediaeval automata.... are created for some special function, usually to guard an entrance." In the Perlesvaus, for example, Gawain comes to a turning castle, the door of which is guarded by two men "made by art and necromancy," while in the prose Lancelot the gate of the Dolorous Garde is defended by copper figures of armed knights.

The sun-bright Wheel that guards the supra-solar Otherworld is, naturally the Wheel of the Sun himself which Indra tears away from the Great Fiend when either he, or the Falcon for him, robs the Scorcher of "all life's support" (Rgveda IV.28.2, etc.).[45] It is also, in other words, the sparkling sun-hued Brahma Wheel of Fire of Maitri Upanisad VI.24; and the guarded Sundoor of Jaiminya Upanisad Brâhmana I.3, 5 and 6, where the "opening in the sky" is covered all over (concealed) by rays (the spokes of the "Wheel") and it is only by his Truth that the Comprehensor "is enabled to pass through the midst of the Sun" and is thus "altogether freed," attaining that Immortality, or Water of Life that rises in the Land of Darkness "beyond the Sun". Hence also the invocation, "Disperse thy rays and gather in thy radiance, that he-whose-norm-is-truth may see thy fairest form" (Isa Upanisad,15, 16 etc.). "Disperse"; because these rays are the multitude of his powers by which all things are quickened and moved, and collectively the actuality or truth by which the "Truth of the truth" is concealed (Brhadâranyaka Upanisad I.6.3, II. 1.20, with Jaimintya Upanisad Brâhmana as above), just as also for Philo (Opif 71) and Dionysius the uncreated is hidden "by the piercing splendor and rushing torrent of the rays."[46] The Sundoor itself, thus hidden by the dazzling rays that illumine and enliven every living being, in whom they operate as the "powers of the soul", is precisely the "point" at the centre of the fiery Wheel, at which they intersect; and since, in most general case. the sun is "seven-rayed,"[47] and is situated in the middle, whence the six directions of the cosmic cross (trivrd vajra) extend, so that the universe is "filled" with light, it will be seen that the way in by what is called the "seventh and best ray," viz., that which passes through the solar disk and so out of the dimensioned universe, leads as before in the case of the Clapping Rocks between contrary pairs, in this case East and West, North and South, Zenith and Nadir. The Way is always a "Middle Way," or as Boethius expresses it, "Truth is a mean between contrary heresies" (Contra Evtychen VII).

It remains only to consider the full doctrinal significance of the Symplegades. What the formula states literally is that whoever would transfer from this to the Otherworld, or return, must do so through the undimensioned and timeless "interval" that divides related but contrary forces, between which, if one is to pass at all, it must be "instantly". The passage is, of course, that which is also called the "strait gate" and the "needle's eye." What are these contraries, of which the operation is "automatic"? We have already seen that the antithesis may be of Fear and Hope, or North and South or Night and Day. These are but particular cases of the polarity that necessarily characterises any "conditioned" world. A "world" without pairs of opposites—good and evil, pleasure and pain, love and hate, near and far, thick and thin, male and female, positive and negative, "all these pairs" (Kausitaki Up. I.4, cf. Philo, Heres 132, 207-214)—would be an "unconditioned" world, a world without accidents, change or becoming, logically inconceivable and of which experience would be impossible.

It is, then, precisely from these "pairs" that liberation must be won, from their conflict that we must escape, if we are to be freed from our mortality and to be as and when we will: if, in other words, we are to reach the Farther Shore and Otherworld "where every where and every when are focussed," "for it is not in space, nor hath it poles" (Paradiso, XXIX.22 and XXII.67). Here, under the Sun, we are "overcome by the pairs" (Maitri Up.IIl.1): here, "every being in the emanated-world moves deluded by the mirage of the contrary-pairs, of which the origin is in our liking and disliking... but to those who are freed from this delusion of the pairs... freed from the pairs that are implied by the expression ­'weal and woe', these reach the place of invariability" Bhagavad Gita VII.27.28 and XV.5), i.e., the place of their coming together or coincidence (samaya), through their midst or in between (samaya) them.

It is then, deeply significant that, in the Greenland saga, the Hero, on his way to the Otherworld in which he finds his "dead" son "living," cannot circumvent the paired bergs (which are the "lions in his path"), for they "always get ahead of him" however far he goes to either side. It is inevitably so, because the contraries are of indefinite extension, and even if we could suppose an equally indefinite journey to the point at which "extremes meet," [48] this would be still a meeting place of both extremes, and there would be no way through to a beyond or a within except at their meeting point; a cardinal "point" that has no fixed position, since the distinction of the correlated members of any pair of contrary qualities (e.g., long and short) is only to be found where we actually make it; and without extent, seeing that it is one and the same "limit" that simultaneously unites and divides the contraries of which it is no part,—"strait is the gate and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it" (Matthew VII.I4). It is for the same reasons that the passage must be made so "suddenly" it is from the world of time (i.e:, past and future) to an eternal Now, and between these two worlds, temporal and timeless, there can be no possible contact but in the "moment without duration" that for us divides the past from the future, but for the Immortals includes all times.

The "moment" has come at last to understand the poignant words of Nicolas of Cusa in the De visione Dei (Ch.IX, fin.): "The wall of the Paradise in which Thou, Lord, dwellest, is built of contradictories, nor is there any way to enter but for one who has overcome the highest Spirit of Reason who guards its gate," and to recall the promise, "To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the Tree of Life, which is in the midst of the Paradise of God" (Revelation of St. John, II.7).[49] In this doctrine and assurance are reaffirmed what has always been the dogmatic significance of the Symplegades and of the Hero's Quest,—"I am the Door," and "No man cometh to the Father but by Me."