Epic Initiation: Odysseus and Ishmael as Lord of Waters
By John Knight Lundwall
In epic fashion, the great cosmological word of the Old Testament begins at the initiatory moment–the moment before time, before the sun, moon, and stars are established. The whole epic cosmos is organized, not from ex nihilo, out of nothing, but from a great ocean of cosmic waters which exists a priori the creation itself. Genesis records, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters” (Genesis 1:1-2). It is only after God’s Spirit, a function of God Himself, moves upon and over the waters that God can declare: “Let there be light” (Genesis 1:3). From this light came an infinitude of moment and possibility–a cosmos. Yet the light itself could not spring forth until God had forded the deep.
Curiously, a host of cosmogonic traditions record this same creation imagery: cosmos cannot be birthed until the creator deity crosses or emerges from deep waters. Thus, in the Zuni creation myth, Awonawilone organized the cosmos by “conceiv[ing] within himself and [thinking] outward in space, whereby mists of increase, steams potent of growth, were evolved and uplifted...” and from these rolling waters Awonawilone emerged as the Sun (Fagg 77). In Hindu myth, the creator god Vishnu is most often pictured reclining upon the coils of Ananta, the serpent of endless water from which Vishnu fashions creation (Zimmer 37-38). For this reason, Vishnu calls himself “The Lord of Waters” (Zimmer 44).
Furthermore, in ancient lore and ritual, humankind’s access to the gods came only through a re-enactment of the water-born, initiatory moment. Thus, when the pious prophet Narayana requests to comprehend the maya of Vishnu he is made to submerge in a sacred pond. Narayana re-emerges as a woman, that is, as a completely new form from which he can experience Vishnu in a completely new way (Zimmer 30). Just so, Rama cannot discover his true identity as Vishnu, until he crosses the great southern ocean and enters Lanka (the underworld) to save his wife Sita (Narayan 141-160). Ritually, baptism is the immersion into waters in which the neophyte attains a new form. Re-emerging from the baptismal ocean the initiate is said to be “born again” as an image of deity. In fact, Christ so states “Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven” (John 3:5).
In religious traditions around the globe the pathway of the soul after this life is initiated by the crossing of waters. Thus in the Egyptian tradition, the soul’s entrance into the underworld is presented as a valley traversed by a turbulent river which must be crossed. Greek mythology borrows this imagery for their own River Styx. In the Orphic tradition, the soul finds itself upon a path where two springs of water are flowing. Drinking from the Waters of Forgetfulness will doom the initiate to the wheel of mortal life. Only by drinking and crossing the Lake of Memory will the soul enter into peace (Guthrie 176-177).
The creation of cosmos and the journey of the soul through it is a prime theme of epic literature. Indeed, as Louise Cowan writes, epic is that which “when what is observed from within it activates a full and complete cosmos” (Allums, ed. 3). Cowan continues: “A primary feature of the epic cosmos is its penetration of the veil separating material and immaterial existence, allowing an intimate relation between gods and men and a resultant metaphysical extension in space” (Allums, ed. 11). As already suggested, this “metaphysical extension in space” binding gods and mortals is often represented as deep waters across which deity and humankind must journey. In the case of the gods, this water crossing represents the actual creation itself. In the case of mortals, the transiting of these epic waters signifies the creation of the cosmic individual, an immersion into the transcendent-self where Man becomes Lord of Waters. While religious epics are replete with these themes and images, two works of epic literature poignantly demonstrate the epic cosmos and the epic hero’s transformation as the crossing of waters: Homer’s Odyssey and Melville’s Moby Dick.
It is no coincidence that Homer’s Odysseus finds himself at the beginning of the epic tale trapped upon the island of Calypso. Here, Odysseus has already lost all his crew and all his ships. The manner in which he loses all his men requires a very brief summary; this is so because every encounter is riddled with themes of cosmic creation on a grandiose scale. Odysseus alone is able to tread the literal waters of these encounters. The summary is as follows:
Returning home from Troy, Odysseus lands upon the isle of the Lotus-eaters. Sending men to meet these inhabitants the Lotus-eaters provide a honey-sweet fruit which make all who partake of it forgetful, extinguishing their desire for home (IX, 83-99). This is an uncanny parallel to the Orphic tradition where those who partake of the Spring of Forgetfulness are barred from their true destiny (Guthrie 177-178). Just so, all the men Odysseus sends to the Lotus-eaters imbibe upon this fruit. Only Odysseus saves them. Like the Orphic parallel it could be said that Odysseus alone partakes of the Lake of Memory. Indeed, Odysseus is unyielding, ever seeking the shores of Ithaca, or even to glimpse the transfiguring smoke rising from his land (I,58-59).
Odysseus next encounters Polyphemos, the cyclops that lives in a mountain cave. The mountain in antiquity represents the axis-mundi, or turns of the world--the fact it is home to a cyclopean, polar eye seems to confirm this supposition. Polyphemos, offspring of Poseidon, traps them in the mountain and consumes Odysseus’s men. Only Odysseus, who is transfixed upon the shores of his destiny, crafts an alternate axis-mundi, an olive pole twirled like a drill (IX, 384), to blind the cyclops and escape the mountain under the belly of sheep. This imagery smacks of astronomy, where the pole of the world is shifted from Taurus to Aires due to precession. Just so, Odysseus proves that he is able to trespass the stellar seas and escape the cave of Polyphemos, forging a new cosmos (the olive drill) under new stars (the sheep).
There is a severe sacrifice required, however, in every act of true creation. It is universal law: all things newly formed emerge upon the sustenance of decaying, previous forms. Creation and destruction are the yin and yang of cosmos. Therefore, as Odysseus prepares to create a new cosmos from within himself as represented by the blinding of Polyphemos, it is at this transitional moment that the Cyclops prays to Poseidon and asks that the waters of transformation immerse Odysseus in troubles (IX, 528-535). This is a pivotal moment in the life of Odysseus, one too easily glossed over and bears some rumination, for it is at this moment that Poseidon becomes a powerful force over Odysseus.
Poseidon or Neptune, like Vishnu, is Lord of the Waters. In Juan Cirlot’s Dictionary of Symbols we read that Neptune, with his trident and sea-horses, signifies “the cosmic forces and the swelling rhythm of the foamy waves” (227). If the ocean is taken as a symbol of the unconscious, then Neptune is associated with “...the deepest layers of the individual, and the universal soul.... He is king of the deeps of the subconscious and of the turbulent waters of life” (227). Thus it is this god of waters that creates potential and being, not from the Light, as Yahweh, but from the dark abysmal waters through which every cosmic traveler must journey.
Additionally, as the matrix of creation, the waters themselves take upon significant meaning. Again, in Cirlot’s work we read that water is a symbol of the unfathomable, of wisdom, of the mysterious. It is associated with death and resurrection (as in baptism) and thus with destruction and creation (365). A textual analysis of Mandelbaum’s translation of The Odyssey reveals how appropriate these definitions of Neptune and the waters are (see appendix). The word “sea” in the text is often associated with such descriptions as “wine dark,” “shadowed,” “misty,” and “restless.” These words identify the sea as a place of transformation just as wine is a drink of transformation. To use Cirlot’s words, the waters are the unfathomable depths of the unconscious. Jung would say the waters are the unconscious, and for unconsciousness to breach into consciousness nodes of conciliation must form. These nodes are like the first dry land to appear out of the waters, and thus in this epic are the isles which Odysseus and his men visit; each island an experience with the breaching waters of the unconscious, each trial a descent into enshrouded depths.
Further textual analysis shows the sea is also a place "surging," "splendid," “glowing,” and “brilliant.” The word “water” in the text is associated with washings, offerings, and sustains spirits of the underworld. Ultimately, in the Odyssey water causes destruction by drowning, but sustains life by its consumption and integration. Thus far in Homer’s epic it is Odysseus, unlike his men, who not only crosses the waters but incorporates them into his being. The Odyssey can thus be seen as the epic initiation, akin to baptism, of transforming the unfathomable depths into consciousness, and eventually into transcendence. In reverse, it dashes the souls of those who are unprepared for this journey through the “wine-dark” sea of the self.
And dash to pieces these waters do. After Polyphemus, Odysseus and his crew go through several more trials where they struggle against the winds of Aiolos, are blasted by the Laistrygonians, are transformed by the sorceress Circe, enter the realms of the underworld, and finally land upon Thrinakia where Odysseus’s men eat the cattle of Helios. One by one ships and men fail at every nodal point upon the waters. Finally, Odysseus alone is left floating upon debris to the island of Calypso. Upon this island the epic begins, and it is altogether proper, for the island of Calypso is “...a flood-circled island where the navel of the sea is” (I, 50). Odysseus finds himself at the very center of the waters, upon the island of the offspring of Atlas who holds up the very pillars of cosmos. Like Noah, Odysseus is the only one who has survived the flood of the unfathomable depths; like Oannes, the Babylonian Noah who brought culture and knowledge to the ancient world, and who is poetically pictured as half-man, half-fish, Odysseus finds himself no longer a man of kleos, a man of war, a man of the world, a man blinded by the illusion of self, rather, Odysseus has been initiated into the waters of creation, becoming a man of nostos, a man of journeys into the depths, a man of memory, Lord of Waters. From this moment on, while trouble does not abandon Odysseus, he finds himself on his way home and his destiny. He converses with Athena, repels the evil suitors and restores his family to the throne. His long, journey into the self and across the waters has, in effect, created a new pole star from which harmony is brought back into the Ithaca cosmos.
In the modern epic Moby Dick the imagery of water is wedded to the imagery of cosmic creation. In fact, Melville makes synonymous the waters of sea with the milky firmament. We are told, for example, that Queequeg’s people believed “that the stars are isles, but that far beyond all visible horizons, their own mild, uncontinented seas, interflow with the blue heavens; and so form the white breakers of the milky way...” (396). The seas of earth are, in Moby Dick, the seas of heaven, and vice versa. Like the Old Testament creation, the waters above and the waters below co-mingle to create cosmos: “...the firmaments of air and sea were hardly separable in that all pervading azure...” (442).
It is no wonder then that Melville’s white whale is also a cosmogonic image. Indeed, Moby Dick takes the place of Poseidon in the Odyssey. Curiously, Poseidon is the god of the depths, but he also has a home upon Mount Olympus. Likewise, Moby Dick is the physical manifestation of the unfathomable depths. The white whale “[of] all divers [has] dived the deepest... [and] has moved amid this world’s foundations” (264). Yet, like Poseidon, the white whale also has a home in the heavens, for he could be seen “gliding at high noon through a dark blue sea, leaving a milky-way wake of creamy foam, all spangled with golden gleamings” (158-9). As such, Moby Dick is ubiquitous and immortal, ever present as both an image of the waters above and below that provide the genesis of a new cosmos.
So it is that Ishmael is the Nantucket Odysseus. Like Homer’s hero, Ishmael is drawn to the waters. As in the Odyssey, Moby Dick utilizes the same water motif’s as an initiation into the transcendent self. In fact, Melville makes the comparison blatant, writing “For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life.... Push not off from that isle, thou canst never return” (236). Yet, in another section Melville reverses the imagery, declaring “...that all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore.... it is better to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety” (97).
Thus the inner sea is a place of horrors and also a place of infinite possibility. In Jungian terms, the unconscious can both destroy and create. Facing the unconscious is facing the unfathomable in one’s self; where the unconscious breaches into consciousness trials and troubles are sure to result. As both Odysseus and Ishmael show, however, the sailor of the deep who can triumph over these trials transforms like the gods into creator and created.
Just so, a textual analysis of the word “water” in Melville’s tale clearly shows this underlying theme of inner creation. The word “water” appears 161 times in the Locomotions edition. In many contexts the word is used as a substance of sustenance, but also of resistance, as one must oar his way through it. Eleven times the word is associated with māyā of the soul, or the illusion set between the body and the soul, as in chapter seven, where Ishmael contemplates “...we are too much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air. Methinks my body is but the lees of my better being” (41). Other contexts show the word “water” used for the Triworks, the place where the whale is assimilated into usable human product–where the whale becomes man. Also, the word is associated with depths and dying.
Perhaps the most striking water image in Moby Dick, other than the whale, is Ishmael’s bunkmate Queequeg. Queequeg is both cannibal and Ishmael’s best friend. As a cannibal he is a foreigner whom many mistrust. But for Ishmael, Queequeg is the individualization of his own being. Indeed, Queequeg is the symbolic double of the white whale. It is no coincidence that Queequeg is a harpooner who twice dives deep into the waters to save his fellow shipmates. Once he even dives into the whale itself to retrieve Tashtego, who was “sinking utterly down to the bottom of the sea” (289). Besides knowing the depths, Queequeg is also familiar with the heights. His skin is covered, head to toe, with tattoos, imprinted upon him by one of his people’s seers; those tattoos were “hieroglyphic marks... a complete theory of the heavens and the earth, and a mystical treatise on the art of attaining truth” (399). Thus Queequeg is the symbol of the transcendent, individuated self who can tread across the cosmic waters, above and below. This is made clear when all the shipmates upon the Pequod perish at the meeting of the white whale, save Ishmael. Even Queequeg is lost in the waters, yet it is understood that his symbolic role as Ishmael’s individuated self is completed, for Ishmael now floats upon the deep in Queequeg’s casket which too is engraved with the same hieroglyphic marks of heaven and earth. Again in epic fashion, the crossing of the waters as microcosm and macrocosm creation is seen in this imagery. Queequeg’s casket is Odysseus’s raft, which in turn is the ark of Noah, the serpent of Vishnu, or the spirit of Yahweh that broods upon the waters.
The epic cosmos is born from the waters. The epic hero is the traveler who journeys across the waters. This journey, or immersion, is an initiation into the transcendent, individuated self. Only a person who commits to this journey with one’s whole soul can face the storms of Poseidon or the head of the white whale. Odysseus becomes Lord of Waters not just by sailing over the deep, but by overcoming every challenge the deep provides in his encounters upon the isles of the sea. Each encounter can be seen as a breaching of the unconscious into the conscious, where finally Odysseus finds himself at the very navel of the cosmos. Ishmael too is an epic hero. Only he integrates Queequeg, an image of the deep above and below, and a double for the white whale, and is thus the only one saved in the tattooed ark of the starry firmament. For the mortal refusing to face the unfathomable inner self, the meeting with white whale is always fatal. So it is that, like Odysseus, all of Ishmael’s shipmates drown in the deep waters of the self. In both Odysseus and Ishmael the epic hero is seen as Lord of Waters, who creates a new cosmos by crossing the ocean deeps. Perhaps, after all, this is the essential meaning of the first words of creation: “Let there be light!”
Appendix: Water Word Analysis in Homer’s Odyssey and Melville’s Moby Dick
These three charts are a textual analysis of the words “sea” and “water” in the described texts. I went through and counted each occurrence of the word. Chart A shows 160 references of the word “sea” in the Odyssey. Half the time the word is used in context of a body of water, but interestingly the sea is also described by a host of adjectives which belie its symbolic meaning as substance of transformation and creation. The sea is both a place of darkness and of light, of crossing and of drowning, of progress and of regress. It is thus the ultimate symbol of inner individuation between the conscious and unconscious. Chart B shows 60 references of the word “water” in the Odyssey. Water is a substance not just sailed upon, but as the analysis shows, it is also used as sustenance, washing, anointing, offering, and comes from wells, springs, and the deep places of the earth. Chart C is a textual analysis of the word “water” in Moby Dick. The word is used in numerous contexts, describing its ultimate function as the matrix of all created forms. Predominantly it is used to describe the ocean, but also is used as a symbol for resistence, the soul, illusion, integration, as well as for food, cleaning, and death. Ultimately, waters is the prima material from which all created things, and creation itself emerges. Thus, to become Lord of the Waters is to become Cosmic Man.
Works Cited
Allums, Larry, editor. The Epic Cosmos. Dallas: Dallas Institute Publications, 2000.
Cirlot, Juan Eduardo C. Dictionary of Symbols. London, UK: Routledge, 1983.
Fagg, Lawrence W. Electromagnetism and the Sacred: At the Frontier of Spirit and Matter. New York: Continuum Publishing Company, 1999.
Guthrie, W. K. C. Orpheus and Greek Religion: A Study of the Orphic Movement. London: Methuen & Company Ltd., 1935.
Homer. Odyssey of Homer. Translated by Allen Mandelbaum. Westminster, MD: Bantam Dell Publishing Group, 1991.
--The Odyssey. Edited and translated by Albert Cook. New York: Norton, 1993. 3-268.
Melville, Herman. Moby Dick. New York: Norton, 1967. 7- 492.
–Moby Dick; Or the Whale. South Bend, IN: Infomotions, Inc., 2001.
Narayan, R. K. The Ramayana. London: Penguin Books, 1977.
The Holy Bible, King James Version, 1992.
Zimmer, Heinrich. Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization. New Jersey: Princeton UP, 1992.
Posted by john at August 18, 2005 05:05 PM
