The Chinese Year of the Ox and the Religious Symbol of the Bull
It is so bitterly cold outside, that it must be New Year’s Eve. Chinese New Year is here, heralding the year of the Ox. So I thought I’d switch gears a bit and analyze the image of the Ox to get an insight as to what this symbol means and what we can expect from an “ox year”.
Dictionary tells us that the ox is a castrated version of bull (1). In other words, it is a bull whose wild, unpredictable energy has been converted to useful, manageable strength. Therefore, I will proceed by taking a look at the religious image of the Bull to decipher its general meaning.
Today, we associate bulls with energizing drinks, company logos, the astrological sign and rising financial markets. Chances are, unless you live on a farm, there will be very few instances in your life where you would actually meet a bull. Probably the only places that can still give you an idea of the force and stamina of the bull are rodeos and Spanish bullfighting. Therefore, we can only imagine the type of religious awe that this animal exercised in the early days of human history. The bull was an image of brute, untamable force that could destroy anything or anyone in its path. Thus, it was one of the first, and most pervasive religious symbols of mankind.
The Bull first appears on the prehistoric cave paintings of Lascaux in France, and most scholars accept that the images implied a cult of the bull (2). During the High Neolithic period, stylized bulls appear on pottery from the so-called Taurus Mountains in southern Turkey (3). In Sumerian-Assyrian culture, god Gugalana, the “Bull of Heaven”, is slain by hero Gilgamesh; the deity was no doubt associated with the Taurus constellation (4). The bulls are also prominent in Egyptian and Minoan Greek culture. The cult of the Apis bull was widespread in ancient Egypt, being associated with the slain god Osiris (5). The Bull also figured prominently in the religion of ancient Crete. The famous myth of the Cretan Labyrinth and the Minotaur must be a pale recollection of an earlier bull-cult. The Minotaur, the half-bull half-human creature destroyed by Greek hero Theseus, appears to have embodied the underworld god Minos, the archetypal king of Crete. Significantly, Minos was the offspring of the love between virgin Europa and Zeus in the shape of a bull god (6).
Classical Greece and Rome, which preferred anthropomorphic gods, relegated the bull cult to the background, although this was echoed in mythology. Yet it is interesting to note that in Late Antiquity, the bull-cult seems to have made a come-back. First it was the Orphic myth of Dionysus-Zagreus, the horned child-god slain by Titans (7). Then it was the powerful Mithraic religion, which at one time was in competition with Christianity for the hearts and minds of the postclassical world. Mithras was celebrated as ‘the slayer of the bull’ and his worship included sacrificing bulls in a circus called taurobolium (8). Following the advent of Christianity, however, the divine bull not only decreased in importance, but it began to be associated with the devil. The classical image of the devil, red and horned, springs to mind. I will not deal with this transformation, but it had to do with the underworld associations of the bull, the wildness of the Dionysian cult and the general rejection of animal deities.
After this sketch of bull beliefs found mainly in the Mediterranean basin, I should go a little further in deciphering the symbolism behind the bull figure. As I have already mentioned, the bull was usually associated with the earth and particularly the underworld. Osiris, Minos, the Minotaur and the slain Dionysus were all gods of the underworld. Even more significantly, they were dying gods. Deities associated with bull-worship were killed, mostly through brutal dismembering, and were revived usually through female agency. The sacrificing of the bull, witnessed in many cultures and still performed in corridas, was hence a re-enactment of the slaying of the earth divinity.
Thus, the underworld bull can be seen as the dynamic power at the core of the earth. He was imagined to cause earthquakes through his angry roar (9).In his more benign form, he was also the fertile force that intercoursed with the virgin goddess. The blood spilled through his sacrifice was a sperm-like creative principle that bestowed new life. It is likely that the ancient peoples took the spluttering of sacrificial blood on the ground as literally fertilizing the earth. For instance, in the Zoroastrian Bundahishn, the killing of the sacrificial bull brought forth the first plants (10). In ancient Athens, an ox was sacrificed to end drought and dearth (11). Thus, the death of the bull-god was a guarantee of renewal. The restorative power of the bull’s blood is recalled by the Spaniards that still drink a ‘sangre de toro’ (bull blood) wine and by the Red Bull brand.
Such a powerful, fertilizing force was often unpredictable and unfriendly to man. Therefore, it must have been an early dream for man to control and harness this force. A telling story is that of Theseus, who prior to coming to slay the Minotaur, catches and tames the destructive bull of Marathon. It was the transformation of the bull into an ox that embodied mankind’s dream. In the ox, human beings channeled the fire of the bull by directing his force to agriculture or transport. Unfortunately, in the process, the ox became a pale image of the once fearsome bull, hence the general demise of reverence to him. Yet behind the apparent peacefulness and obedience of the ox still lies the almighty strength of the bull’s blood.
In light of this analysis, I will summarize what I would expect from a Year of the Ox. I would see the year as being one of potentiality, just as the ox represents the subdued power hidden inside the earth. The ox contains the force of the bull in an occult way. There may be small ‘earthquakes’ betraying the Bull’s presence, but for the most part he will hide behind the curtain. Hence I would expect an ox year to be the ferment of things to come, ‘cooking’ things that will spring forth later. This would then be a low-key, apparently peaceful year where the seeds of future events would be sown. Let us not forget that the Taurus sign is a spring sign: a time of budding creation.
References
(1) Cambridge Dictionaries Online. Ox. Online. Available at: http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?key=56821&dict=CALD . Accessed on 31 Jan 2009.
(2) NationMaster Encyclopedia. Sacred Bull. Online. Available at: http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Sacred-bull . Accessed on 30 Jan 2009.
(3), (9) Campbell, J. (1976). Masks of God: Primitive Mythology. London: Penguin Books.
(4) History of Constellations. Taurus. Online. Available at: http://hsci.ou.edu/exhibits/exhibit.php?exbgrp=3&exbid=20&exbpg=106 . Accessed on 30 Jan 2009.
(5), (7), (11) Frazer, J. G. (1922). The Golden Bough. New York: MacMillan.
(6) Wikipedia. Minos. Online. Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minos . Accessed on 31 Jan 2009.
(8), (10) The Circle of Ancient Iranian Studies. Mithra and Mithraism. Online. Available at: http://www.cais-soas.com/CAIS/Religions/iranian/Mithraism/m_m/pt1.htm. Accessed on 31 Jan 2009.
Tags: apis, bull, bull blood, chinese, egyptian, fertility, labyrinth, lascaux, minoan, minotaur, mithras, Mythology, Osiris, ox, religious, taurus, year
