UNITY OF FIRE & WATER IN ARMENIA DAMUZI INANNA ARIES PISCES
Inanna (Pisces) and Tammuz (Aries).
Inanna was the Sumerian goddess of love, fertility, and warfare. Her symbol is an eight-pointed star or a rosette. She was associated with lions – a symbol of power – and was frequently depicted standing on the backs of two lionesses.
Her cuneiform ideogram was a hook-shaped twisted knot of reeds, representing the doorpost of the storehouse (and thus fertility and plenty). She was associated with the planet Venus, which at that time was regarded as two stars, the “morning star” and the “evening star.”
Inanna was the goddess of the E-Anna (Sumerian: e-anna; Cuneiform: E.AN) temple or The House of Heaven at the city of Uruk, her main centre. She was the most prominent female deity in ancient Mesopotamia. As early as the Uruk period (ca. 4000–3100 BC), Inanna was associated with the city of Uruk.
These difficulties have led some early Assyriologists to suggest that originally Inanna may have been a Proto-Euphratean goddess, possibly related to the Hurrian mother goddess Hannahannah, accepted only latterly into the Sumerian pantheon, an idea supported by her youthfulness, and that, unlike the other Sumerian divinities, at first she had no sphere of responsibilities. The view that there was a Proto-Euphratean substrate language in Southern Iraq before Sumerian is not widely accepted by modern Assyriologists.
Her temple in Uruk was the greatest of these, where sacred prostitution was a common practice. The deity of this fourth-millennium city was probably originally An. After its dedication to Inanna the temple seems to has housed priestesses of the goddess. The high priestess would choose for her bed a young man who represented the shepherd Dumuzid, consort of Inanna, in a hieros gamos or sacred marriage, celebrated during the annual Akitu (New Year) ceremony, at the spring Equinox.
According to Samuel Noah Kramer in The Sacred Marriage Rite, in late Sumerian history (end of the third millennium) kings established their legitimacy by taking the place of Dumuzi in the temple for one night on the tenth day of the New Year festival. A Sacred Marriage to Inanna may have conferred legitimacy on a number of rulers of Uruk. Gilgamesh is reputed to have refused marriage to Inanna, on the grounds of her misalliance with such kings as Lugalbanda and Damuzi.
Inanna was associated with the eastern fish of the last of the zodiacal constellations, Pisces. Her consort Dumuzi was associated with the contiguous first constellation, Aries.
Pisces (constellation, Inanna)
Pisces (
) (Ancient Greek: Ἰχθύες Ikhthues) is the twelfth astrological sign in the Zodiac, originating from the Pisces constellation. Its name is the Latin plural for fish. The symbol of the fish is derived from the ichthyocentaurs, who aided Aphrodite (also considered Venus) when she was born from the sea. Divine associations with Pisces include Poseidon/Neptune, Vishnu, Christ, Aphrodite, Eros, and Typhon.
Pisces lies between Aquarius to the west and Aries to the east. The ecliptic and the celestial equator intersect within this constellation and in Virgo. The Vernal equinox is currently located in Pisces, due south of ω Psc, and, due to precession, slowly drifting below the western fish towards Aquarius. According to some tropical astrologers, the current astrological age is the Age of Pisces, while others maintain that it is the Age of Aquarius.
Pisces spans the 330° to 360° of the zodiac, between 332.75° and 360° of celestial longitude. Under the tropical zodiac the sun transits this area on average between February 19 and March 20, and under the sidereal zodiac, the sun transits this area between approximately March 13 and April 13. Individuals born during these dates, depending on which system of astrology they subscribe to, may be called “Pisceans.”
While the astrological sign Pisces per definition runs from elliptical longitude 330° to 0°, this position is now mostly covered by the constellation of Aquarius, due to the precession from when the constellation and the sign coincided. Today, the First Point of Aries, or the vernal equinox is in the Pisces constellation.
The fish are usually portrayed swimming in opposite directions; this represents the duality within the Piscean nature. Although they appear as a pair, the name of the sign in all languages originally referred to only one fish with the exception of Greek, Bulgarian and Dutch.
Pisces originates from some composition of the Babylonian constellations Šinunutu “the great swallow”, belonging to a group of passerine birds, in current western Pisces, and Antum, the Lady of the Heaven and the first consort of Anu, at the place of the northern fish.
In Akkadian mythology, Antu or Antum is a Babylonian goddess. She was the first consort of Anu, and the pair was the parents of the Anunnaki and the Utukki. Antu was a dominant feature of the Babylonian akit festival until as recently as 200 BC, her later pre-eminence possibly attributable to identification with the Greek goddess Hera. Antu was replaced as consort by Ishtar or Inanna, who may also be a daughter of Anu and Antu.
In the first Millennium BC texts known as the Astronomical Diaries, a collection of Babylonian cuneiform texts which contain systematic records of astronomical observations and political events, as well as predictions based on astronomical observations, part of the constellation was also called DU.NU.NU (Rikis-nu.mi, “the fish cord or ribbon”).
Pisces is associated with Aphrodite and Eros, who escaped from the monster Typhon by leaping into the sea and transforming themselves into fish. In order not to lose each other, they tied themselves together with rope. The Romans adopted the Greek legend, with Venus and Cupid acting as the counterparts for Aphrodite and Eros. The knot of the rope is marked by Alpha Piscium (α Psc), also called Al-Rischa (“the cord” in Arabic).
In 1754, the astronomer John Hill proposed to treat part of Pisces as a separate constellation, called Testudo (the Turtle) 24 – 27 – YY(30) – 33 – 29 Psc., centred a natural but faint asterism in which the star 20 Psc is intended to be the head of the turtle. However the proposal was largely neglected by other astronomers with the exception of Admiral Smyth, who mentioned it in his book The Bedford Catalogue, and it is now obsolete.
The Fishes are also associated with the German legend of Antenteh, who owned just a tub and a crude cabin when he met a magical fish. They offered him a wish, which he refused. However, his wife begged him to return to the fish and ask for a beautiful furnished home. This wish was granted, but her desires were not satisfied. She then asked to be a queen and have a palace, but when she asked to become a goddess, the fish became angry and took the palace and home, leaving the couple with the tub and cabin once again. The tub in the story is sometimes recognized as the Great Square of Pegasus.
The stars of Pisces were incorporated into several constellations in Chinese astronomy. Wai-ping (“Outer Enclosure”) was a fence that kept a pig farmer from falling into the marshes and kept the pigs where they belonged. It was represented by Alpha, Delta, Epsilon, Zeta, Mu, Nu, and Xi Piscium. The marshes were represented by the four stars designated Phi Ceti. The northern fish of Pisces was a part of the House of the Sandal, Koui-siou.
Alpha Piscium (star)
There are no prominent stars in the constellation, with the brightest stars being of only fourth magnitude. One star in the constellation, Alpha Piscium, is also known as Alrescha which comes from the Arabic al-rišā, meaning “the well rope,” or “the cord.” Ptolemy described Alpha Piscium as the point where the cords joining the two fish are knotted together. The astrological symbol shows the two fishes captured by a string, typically by the mouth or the tails.
Aries (constellation, Tammuz)
Aries is one of the constellations of the zodiac. It is located in the northern celestial hemisphere between Pisces to the west and Taurus to the east. The name Aries is Latin for ram, and its symbol is 
, representing a ram’s horns. It is a mid-sized constellation, ranking 39th overall size, with an area of 441 square degrees (1.1% of the celestial sphere).
Although Aries came to represent specifically the ram whose fleece became the Golden Fleece of Ancient Greek mythology, it has represented a ram since late Babylonian times. Before that, the stars of Aries formed a farmhand. Different cultures have incorporated the stars of Aries into different constellations including twin inspectors in China and a porpoise in the Marshall Islands.
In the description of the Babylonian zodiac given in the clay tablets known as the MUL.APIN, a comprehensive table of the risings and settings of stars, which likely served as an agricultural calendar, the constellation now known as Aries was the final station along the ecliptic. Modern-day Aries was known as MULLÚ.ḪUN.GÁ, “The Agrarian Worker” or “The Hired Man”.
Although likely compiled in the 12th or 11th century BC, the MUL.APIN reflects a tradition which marks the Pleiades as the vernal equinox, which was the case with some precision at the beginning of the Middle Bronze Age.
The earliest identifiable reference to Aries as a distinct constellation comes from the boundary stones that date from 1350 to 1000 BC. On several boundary stones, a zodiacal ram figure is distinct from the other characters present. The shift in identification from the constellation as the Agrarian Worker to the Ram likely occurred in later Babylonian tradition because of its growing association with Dumuzi the Shepherd.
By the time the MUL.APIN was created—by 1000 BC—modern Aries was identified with both Dumuzi’s ram and a hired laborer. The exact timing of this shift is difficult to determine due to the lack of images of Aries or other ram figures.
In ancient Egyptian astronomy, Aries was associated with the god Amon-Ra, who was depicted as a man with a ram’s head and represented fertility and creativity. Because it was the location of the vernal equinox, it was called the “Indicator of the Reborn Sun”.
During the times of the year when Aries was prominent, priests would process statues of Amon-Ra to temples, a practice that was modified by Persian astronomers centuries later. Aries acquired the title of “Lord of the Head” in Egypt, referring to its symbolic and mythological importance.
The natural creative forces of fire and water, which perceptibly exclude each other, are brought together in a unity of opposites in the worldviews of early archaic civilizations.
Water
Many of the qualities of water make it appear to be animated; on this basis it is psychologically understandable that water (e.g., rain, sea, lakes, and rivers) might become a natural phenomenon worthy of worship. Reverence in Armenia. Water is always in motion, flow, changes colour in the light of the stars, reflects the world, “speaks” with murmuring and roaring, brings new life to dry vegetation, refreshes living creatures, including the tired and the ill, and heals. Thus in Armenia Astghik, a feminine gender. Because it dissolves dirt, water is also most suitable for purifying the soul (e.g., after the violation of a taboo or the commission of a sin of any kind). Under certain circumstances, even icons have to be washed. Water also demonstrates destructive forces (seaquakes, floods, and storms). The most important mythical-religious facts symbolized by water are the following: the primal matter, the instrument of purification and expiation, a vivifying force, a fructifying force, and a revealing and judging instrument.
Water as primal matter in Armenia
The conception of a primal body of water from which everything is derived is especially prevalent among peoples living close to water sources, springs lakes, coasts or in river areasWell known is the Egyptian Nu (the primordial ocean) and the Mesopotamian Apsu (the primeval watery abyss) and Tiamat (the primeval chaos dragon). The earth may be fished out or emerges from the primeval water; heavenly beings appear on the earth emerge from the waters and birds lay an egg on the waters that is later divided into two halves (heaven and earth) on the chaotic sea and the creative imagery offered by the ancient poetry of the Armenians where Vahagni/fire and Astghik/water make love .... Thus, water is viewed as the foundation and formation/creation of all things.
Myths of a great flood (the Deluge) are widespread over Eurasia and America. This flood, which destroys with a few exceptions a disobedient original population, is an expiation by the water, after which a new type of world is created.
Water is also viewed as a vivifying force, like the heavenly rainwater that moistens the earth. Water also is equated with the flowing life forces of the body (e.g., blood, sweat, and semen).
Wherever early archaic culture spread the myth of heaven and earth as the world parents, there also was a belief that heaven fructifies the earth with heaven’s seed. The springs, pools, and rivers on the earth, therefore, may bring not only healing and expiation but also fertility. The Scamander River (now Turkey’s Küçükmenderes Çayı) in ancient Greece evidently was so personified; according to Aeschines, a 4th-century-BCE Greek orator, girls bathed in it before marrying and said: “Scamander, accept my virginity.” Magical rites in which water serves as a substitute for semen or the fertility of men are numerous.
Battles of gods and heroes with mythical beings, beasts, and monsters that hold back the fructifying water are widespread in mythology. A great example is the Vishap of Armenia that had the power to block the course of the arax river. The liberation of water during the mythical battle is equivalent to the end of the dry season or a drought, to the reviving of vegetation. In Indian mythology Indra slays Urtra; in Syrian and Palestinian mythology Baal battles with Leviathan; and in Huron mythology Joskeha, the spring hero, kills the frog that attempted to restrict the free flow of water.
In some cultures water serves as an instrument that reveals and judges. Reflections in the water led to a whole series of oracles originating from an alleged prophetic or divinatory power of water. A visionary look into the water surface was believed to reveal the future as well as past misdeeds. This ancient custom may have been preserved in the use of crystal balls by modern fortune-tellers. The custom of water divination is found in ancient Europe, North Africa, the Middle East (e.g., Babylonian fortune-telling by means of cups), eastern and northern Asia (where the use of metal mirrors by the shamans often replaces the water as a divining means), and Southeast Asia and Polynesia. Where such means of divination were severely repressed, as in sub-Saharan Africa, these methods of mirror- and water-gazing were changed into manipulated water ordeals. Water is used as a judging element in ordeals believed to demonstrate the judgment of the gods—water ordeals (e.g., immersion in water), as well as the more frequent fire ordeals. There, too, the purifying character of the water plays a role.
Fire
Worship of fire is widespread, especially in areas where the earthly fire is believed to be the image of the heavenly fire. For a number of psychological reasons, fire is considered to be a personified animated or living power: it moves vehemently, devours, and becomes hungrier; it spreads fast into a giant blaze and is red like human blood and warm like the human body. It makes the plants that it has devoured suitable for fertilizing the earth; it shines brightly in the night and, by transference, may have “eternal life” or by constant rekindling can be made into a “perpetual fire.” In cremation it separates the body from the soul; it drives away predatory animals and insects that cause pestilence.
Its chief functions are similar to those of its main adversary, water: to purify and to ward off evil, especially from home and hearth. Fire magically drives away rain but, with its smoke, also attracts rain clouds during a period of drought. Fire is believed to have both heavenly and earthly origins: it is brought by lightning, and it lives in the volcano of the underworld.
Stories are told of ancestors, heroes, or animals of primeval times who purloined the fire from the higher numina (spiritual powers). Bringers of civilization, such as the Greek god Prometheus, fetch it—often together with fruits of the field, iron, or musical instruments—from heaven. Like Prometheus, Nommo, the primal being among the Dogon of Mali, brings fire and the first fruits of the field down to the earth. Prometheus steals the fire from the blacksmith Hephaestus, but Nommo himself is the first blacksmith. In both regions this cultural achievement is celebrated with annual torchlight parades (in Greece, called Promethea festivals). Elsewhere birds or other animals—such as the dog (especially in Africa), who is closely allied to the hearth fire—are the bringers of fire. Animals often fetch the fire from the lord of the animals in the bush.
Where geysers and volcanos indicate that the oldest fire is beneath the surface of the earth, fire is brought forth by animals and heroes. The Maori hero Maui seizes it from his ancestress Mahuike in the depth of the earth and puts it into a tree. Since that time it has been possible to get fire from the wood of the trees (e.g., the fire borer). In areas practicing a definite ancestor worship, hunters obtained the fire from the subterranean world of the dead (as in East Africa). Before the Iron Age (15th–2nd centuries BCE), the generating of fire with the aid of fire borers, or fire saws, was viewed as a sexual act (male and female firewood), especially in eastern and southern Africa, India, Indonesia, and Mexico. In the creation myths of the Dayak of Borneo, fire is produced by rubbing a liana (male) on a tree (female) and is interpreted as coitus. The Tlingit of the American Northwest tell a story of the magical conception of a girl by the sawdust of the fire borer.
This conceptual framework seems to be a late consequence of earlier ideas of fire in the body of humans, especially of women, as a centre of sexual life. Such views are probably most pronounced among the indigenous peoples of Papua New Guinea and Australia. The Marind in New Guinea, whose myth of the origin of fire views it as deriving from the sexual act, undertake the new boring of fire in connection with a cultic act in which the raping of a girl is the central rite. Elsewhere in New Guinea, there is a myth that fire lies in the genitals of women, especially of the first woman.
When iron-smelting techniques by means of fire became common among Neolithic peoples, as in Indonesia and Africa, the making of iron in shaft furnaces (considered as female) and bellows (male) has been interpreted as coitus with a subsequent birth (especially among the Bantu).
In archaic civilizations with sacral kings, the sacred perpetual fire (i.e., the state fire) of the residences and temples of the royal ancestors was believed to have a phallic element. It was cared for by virgins, who were viewed as wives of the fire. Vestal virgins of this kind are documented in ancient Rome, Mwene Matapa (Zimbabwe), and pre-Columbian America. Among the Maya of Central America, an order of fire caretakers was founded by a deified “virgin of the fire.” Extinguishing and rekindling of fire at the inauguration of a prince points to the idea of a spirit of the princes in the state fire and also to the cyclic renewal of the state in the purifying fire, which signifies the beginning of a new era.
Iranian fire worship was derived from the cult of the god Ātar, but it was made a central act in Zoroastrianism. Fire worship continues to be practiced among the Parsis (modern Zoroastrians) of India: in temples the sacred fire is maintained by a priest using sandalwood, while his mouth is bound with a purifying shawl; fire in new temples is kindled from the fire of the old temples; household fires are not permitted to go out and are greeted in the morning by the members of the household and offered sandalwood. Parsis do not practice cremation, as do adherents of traditional Indian religions, lest the fire be contaminated; instead, they deposit their dead in the “towers of silence” (dakhmas), where vultures consume the flesh.
Zoroastrianism: temple fireModern Zoroastrian priest wearing mouth cover while tending a temple fire.Inge Morath/Magnum
Weather Atmosphere Ot in Armenian
The worship of atmospheric powers can only with difficulty be separated from the worship of heaven. In most cases the high god in heaven is also the god of thunderstorms and rain. Specific gods of wind clouds and storm are found everywhere in myth.
From northern Europe to the tropical forests, thunderstorm deities rule heaven and earth. The most famous group of these spiritual beings are the Indo-European thunder gods (Thor-Donar of the Germanic peoples, Taranis of the Celts, Perkunis of the Slavs, Indra of the Indians, Zeus-Jupiter of the Greeks and Romans), who throw their thunderbolts or bundles of lightning. The Finnish god Ukko and the Basque god Orko probably stem from the same root; these gods still continue in the popular beliefs of eastern Europe or Latin America today, such as St. Elijah or Santiago.
The goat, the ram, as companions of weather gods or as animals that pull the thundering sky vehicle. In other cultures thunderbirds are the companions of the thunder gods or are the lightning itself. The lightning bird Zu, or Imdugud, occurs in ancient Mesopotamia, and the Garuda (with Wadjra) in Vedic India. Thunderbirds are represented (sometimes with arrows or spears in their bills or fangs) on archaeological artifacts of the Bronze Age in Dodona in Greece, Minussinsk in Siberia etc.
Where prayers or sacrifices to gods and ancestors in the religious cult are not effective in producing rain, rain magic, which is practiced universally in similar rites, is often able to accomplish it. Trained magicians usually perform such rites, but ancestral priests or “persons holding power” also may do so. In rain magic, sprinkling, spitting, or immersion of people or things is often used to call down heavenly moisture. Vardavar is a great example, it is celebrated in Armenia and by the Armenian diaspora all over the world. Vardavar or Vartavar (Armenian: Վարդավառ, Homshetsi: Vartevor or Behur)[) is where people drench each other with water. The festival is also observed by Hemshin people of Turkey, a Muslim majority group of Armenian origin. .Smoke clouds to attract the rain accomplish the same purposeVardavar's history dates back to pagan times. The ancient festival is traditionally associated with the goddess Astghik, who was the goddess of water, beauty, love, and fertility. The festivities associated with this religious observance of Astghik were named “Vartavar” because Armenians offered her roses as a celebration (vart means "rose" in Armenian and var means "to burn/be burning", this is why it was celebrated in the harvest time).
The rainbow is viewed as a heavenly bridge that connects the worlds of gods and men: the Bifröst bridge in the Edda, the bridge of the soul boats in Indonesia or of the creator god in Africa, and the path of the Greek goddess Iris. In Christian iconography the rainbow is the throne of Christ; among Arabs and some Bantu of Central Africa it is the bow of god, and among the Nandi, the Masai, and the Californian Yuki it is the robe of god.
Hunting and gathering societies, rooted in the earliest human cultures, before the beginnings of settled agriculture, believed that they not only had to kill animals—which were economically important as nourishment and raw materials—but also that they had to avoid their revenge. The feeling of a close connection between humans and animals that was lost to the many highly industrialized societies (broadly speaking) led to an anthropomorphizing of animals to such an extent that animals were not only humanized but were held responsible for crises.
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