We have seen a 3-partite caption in front (top right of the picture):
The bottom of the central jar shows a triangular blank (time)space which probably has been there ever since the picture was created. It is a different kind of (ké) blank. Furthermore, the 4th corner of the blanket has disappeared in a puff of smoke. The newborn god has no arms (rima) as yet. Coming straight up from the water arms ('fire') cannot be with him. He is looking back towards his mother. The jar of birth has a double rim, the jar of death has a single rim. A rim is like an enveloping snake-like arm. Above the jar of death there is only a goat head remaining, hanging in the sky: ... The tradition preserved by Hyginus in his Poetic Astronomy that the constellation Capricorn ('He-goat') was Zeus's foster-brother Aegipan, the Kid of the Goat Amalthea whose horn Zeus also place among the stars, shows that Zeus was born at mid-winter when the Sun entered the house of Capricorn ... (The White Goddess) In the top right corner is a cross, possibly a symbol of death. Also, the goathead is looking back. The blanket at left could be the 'cloth' which covers life at its end. Maybe it is a white cloth north of the equator. We can then reinterpret the caption to mean how the end is a necessary precursor to the cosmic twin birth - the female twin is like a jar with fluid and the male twin is spelling death. The waterfilled jar now forms into an image of a fat Venus with two conical legs (which explains the missing triangle at bottom center of the jar), and we should remember the very old Chinese cooking vessels with 3 legs (ref. Lindqvist):
The picture we now are studying comes from 'A. Gruenwedel, Altbuddhistische Kulturstaetten in Chinesisch Turkestan, D. Reimer, Berlin, 1912'. The 3rd leg needed to stabilize the jar must be at the back. It is therefore not visible in the picture from Turkestan. Which motivates why it should not be shown, because what lies at the back is not out in the light. Just as what happens behind a blanket. If we interpret the newborn goddess as the Moon, then the 3rd leg will be her time of nonvisiblity, whereas the front legs will represent waxing and waning. The central part will be the time of full moon, which has no leg. These legs are breasts, but at full moon focus will be otherwhere:
The nourishing breasts are like legs and in the 'broken stick' at center bottom we should recognize how waxing abruptly is changed into waning. It is the time of 'cooking'. From this 'cooking' a new moon will eventually be born. |