This talk is about the Gemini twins, As you can see, they were horsemen.  I was inspired to explore this myth when a fellow student studied these colossal statues of humans and horses, which are called the “horse tamers”, situated on the Qurinale Hill in Rome, Italy. (see the illustrations on the whiteboard).

            The twins, Castor/Kastore and Pollux/Polydukes, are also called the Castores, the Dioscuri and the Kabiri; I will mostly refer to them as the Kabiri during the talk. In mythology, the “twins” numbered from between two and seven, and ten.

            The Kabiri are really the archangels of Christianity, but Christianity sees the Kabiri as devils. Kabiri means “mighty ones” in Hebrew, Gibborim, the pre and post diluvian giants of the Bible, the third race of mankind - the name “Kabirian” described all gods connected with fire. (1) The Kabiri were worshipped in Samothrace, Lacedaemonia (in the festival called the Dioscuria), and Asia Minor, especially in Phrygia, and in Macedonia and in other parts of northern, as well as southern Greece. (2) The name Kabiri means perhaps a derivation from Abin which is great, Ebir, an astrologer, and Kabir, an associate, and they were worshipped at a place Hebron, which is the city of the Anakes, or giants, which fits in with the size of the aforementioned statues, 20 feet tall.

            The Kabiri are said to have been worshipped by Phoenician sailors, as they were protectors of all mariners, especially when at sea, and they appeared in the form of St. Elmo’s fire, that is as fireballs on the mastheads of the ships. The Kabiri were later identified with the constellation of Gemini, and in Rome came to be known as the Castores, and as the “horse-tamers”. Also known as the Dioscuri they are in later mythology usually depicted as twin brothers.

            In the Iliad they sail with Jason as Polydukes is a skilled boxer and Castor a trainer of horses. During the expedition Pollux killed Amycus, king of Bebryces, in a boxing-match and they founded the town of Dioscurias in Colchis. In Greek lore, Polydukes was Hercules’ fencing-master. (3) The twins are mentioned in The Odyssey Book XI, the Book of the Dead, amid a series of brothers born of mortal mothers and divine fathers. Later historians have tried to discover whether these brothers were mortal heroes of ancient time promoted to godhood in the popular imagination, or whether they were gods degenerated through over-use, as it were, back to human-hood.

            Actually this is part of the theme of the tale, of an inseparable connection between pure spirit and pure materiality, of the Omega and Alpha and of man being never quite the one nor the other, on his long climb upwards. The story has many variations of one theme, the twins are born of Leda, a mortal woman, and of Zeus, highest of the gods, who came in the form of a swan, and the offspring were hatched from two eggs. Their twin sisters, Helen of Troy, most beautiful of women and wife of Melenaus (4) King of Sparta, and Clytemnestra, wife of Agamemnon who she later murdered, were born at the same time. (Clytemnestra also murdered Kassandra, a lady assigned to the king as part of the spoils of the Trojan War; Helen seems to have originally been an ancient tree-goddess, with rituals similar to those or Erigone – (5)

            Leda was said to be the daughter of Thestius, King of Aetolia, and wife of Tyndareus, King of Sparta. It is said that Castor was King Tyndareus’s true son, while Pollux was that of Zeus. Other variations include that Helen and her brothers were born from one egg, or the brothers in one and the sisters in the other, or Helen being Zeus’s daughter and Clytemnestra that of Tyndareus, or else one egg hatched Apollo and Letona. (Leto/Latona was Apollo and Diana’s mother by Zeus). Another variant gives a translation of one of the names of one of the brothers as Hermes. In Homer, both brothers are mortal, in the Homeric Hymn the brothers are immortal. (6)

            Blavatsky says that as the Tyndaridae, or sons of Tyndareus, they would symbolise night and day, as they were later wedded to the goddesses of dawn and twilight, daughters of Apollo. She says however that this does not mean that the brothers were Sun and Moon, as the Greek pantheon had a god and a goddess for these functions already and the twins were only godlings. One day there was a dispute, either over some stolen cattle, or over the stolen two daughters of the brother of Leukippos, whose name curiously means “the keeper of white horses” - the twins carried off the daughters who were betrothed to the twins’ twin cousins. Pollux killed Lynceus, who could see through the whole world and whose name means that he had penetrating sight. Lynceus’s friend Idas “he who sees and knows”, wounded Castor. (7) Pollux and another combatant had been the last to battle on and were killed by a thunderbolt thrown by Zeus to bring the battle to a halt. On finding his dying brother, Castor asked Zeus if he could die too, as he would follow his brother in everything. Zeus said they could not die altogether, as they are a divine race. Either Pollux remained immortal in Olympus or became semi-mortal along with Castor, living half of the time underground and half in the heavens; thus both lived, one by day and one by night. HPB writes that they constantly die and return to life together, while it is absolutely necessary that one should die that the other live. One force is being converted into another force. (8)

            Blair Moffett in the October ‘79 Sunrise, (9) about the Popul Vu, sacred book of the Maya mezzo-American Indians, said that the hero twins represent the bipolar character of the Mayan saviour deity who incarnates as a man to bring divine thought to man. His apotheosis or rising back to heaven brings about the fourth age when fully civilised humanity becomes conscious of its divine progenitors.

            From the Secret Doctrine volume two, pages 121-4, Blavatsky said that the myth describes the melding of the second route race into the third, as mere astral forms began to attract more life-atoms to them, thus forming bodies. This on a grand scale produced a whole new race. The auric egg is the source of the human aura and of all the human faculties of the sevenfold human constitution. Going from the SD, she says: “When the race became old, and the old waters mixed with the fresher waters, when the drops became turbid they vanished and disappeared in the new stream, in the hot stream of life, the outer of the first became the inner of the second, the old wing became the shadow and the shadow of the wing. The old primitive race merged into the second race and became one with it. This is the mysterious process of transformation and evolution of mankind. The material of the first forms, shadowy, ethereal and negative, was drawn or absorbed into, and thus became the complementary of, the forms of the second race. The first race never died as it was made of the astral shadows of the creative progenitors and had no astral or physical body. The old became absorbed into the new, physical progeny. The wing or ethereal form that produced the shadow and image became the shadow of the astral body, and its own progeny. Man became dual, transformed from animal-man to god-man, in an animal body only, yet immortal in its possession of a fifth principle and called to life by those who had informed him of this, connecting the monad to the earth, which is Pollux, as Castor when separated from the enlivened half is only an animal again. Twinship can only continue if Pollux chooses to give a share of his own immortality”.

            HPB also interprets it where Zeus is the father of the twins, as a cosmic myth of the world born from an egg. Leda herself becomes a white swan, that is, her upper triad unites with the divine swan. Six eggs of gold are laid, and a seventh of iron, which are the planets. The mundane egg symbolises the origin and secret of being. The “First Cause” was seen as an ever invisible, mysterious bird that dropped an egg into Chaos, which egg became the universe. So Brahm was called “the swan of eternity”, the Kalahansa, the swan in space and time. It lays a golden egg at the beginning of each Manvantara. The circle thus came to symbolise this earth, and the universe as a whole.

            In the Katha Upanishad, quoted by Blavatsky, it tells of Purusha, the

divine spirit, “standing before original matter from which came the soul of the world, Maha Atma Brahm, the spirit of life, the universal soul, the astral light. In the Secret Doctrine, I, 360, it tells that Vishnu Purana, or intellect mahat, the unmanifested gross elements inclusive, formed an egg and the lord of the universe himself abided in it, in the character of Brahma. In that egg, oh Brahma, were the continents, the seas, the mountains, the planets, and divisions of the universes, the gods, the demons, and mankind”.

            The January 1980 Sunrise article “One is one for evermore”, pp.145-152  by Manual Oderberg says that the one becomes the many through a triadic process, from one down to 10. This could fit in with the seven builders of the universe which have their counterparts on earth, as the seven or 10 Kabirim or teachers of mankind. There are seven divine dynasties, seven Lemurian and seven Atlantean divisions of the earth, and seven primitive and dual gods who came down to teach all the sciences, including agriculture. They are referred to in correlation with the race of titans, said to be born of the gods and early womankind, a race of giants which had to be destroyed. There is a connection here in that the Kabirim gods were all gods connected with fire and volcanism and the half man, half serpent titans killed in the battle with the gods were buried under Greek islands, many of which were volcanic.

            The Kabirim came as gods, then merged with men and finally became divine kings and rulers. This is the same as the ‘Lunar Pitris’ or ‘fathers’ from the last ‘global’ round. They are also referred to as the “sons of the twilight” or “self-born”, who became, who issued from Brahma’s body of twilight. The Dhyan Chohans were not born as we are as they came from the third race, of sweat-born beings. They will wait to be reborn in the flesh in the seventh round. When he dies, Narada, first of these pitris, will come into a new ready-made body. Others of his race were cursed to be formed as we are for interfering in our karma, not giving spirit to man along with knowledge. These are the Christian fallen angels, according to the Book of Enoch.

            The Kabirim gods were probably introduced to the Greeks from Phoenician Assyrian sources, to the Chaldees and Jews from Hindu origins, and from Hindu origins also to ancient America. They are also known as the Teraphim or serpent images given in the dowry of Dardenas, which he brought to Samothrace and Troy. They were Jewish idol oracles. There is a connection here with a practice of artificially hatching a winged serpent from a ball of incense for the initiates, to symbolise spirit-wisdom being distilled from its fleshy habitation.

            The Teraphim were worshipped by Terah, Abram’s father (10) and were celestial beings of human form, with three pairs of wings, and their name meant “bright, serpents”, and they were Cabalistic angels related to severity. This would relate to their representation as horse-breakers, the Aswins of Hinduism, who were horsemen or charioteers with a golden chariot drawn by various types of animals. In Vedic literature it says they are born of the sun and the sky. They herald the dawn after the night and are young, handsome, bright, agile, and swift as falcons. They are ocean-born and crowned with lotuses, and represent the transition from darkness to light. Other sources say that the Aswins represent ancient horsemen who were refused admission to a sacrifice because they had been on too familiar terms with mankind. A horse sacrifice was practiced by the Brahmans of ancient India, who thought that the cosmos was symbolised by a horse. The Aswins’ name derives from Aswa, meaning “horse”, literally “the pervader”. Their mother was a nymph who took the form of a mare, and their father was the sun or the sky (though the Dioskuri’s father was Jupiter in the form of a swan) - the horse is an animal symbolic of the luminous deities, especially the Sun, in Vedic and in Celtic lore. The Aswins were healers and restorers of youthfulness, and both twins fathered Pandu princes (the royal family from the Mahabharata); the twin called Dasra’s son was Sahadeva, a learned astronomer, and the twin called Nasatya’s son was called Nakula who became the King’s horse-master. The Aswins rise in the sky in a golden chariot drawn by horses or birds, and are harbingers of the dawn, and as personifications of twilight, the transition from dark to light and the intermingling of both, suggests the origin of their dual nature. (11) The Aswins are therefore of dual nature, due to their alliance of light and dark, and because pure monads incarnate during this materialistic manvantara. They also represent Kumara egos, originally the seven sons of Brahma, born from his limbs, in the ninth creation. They were called virgin gods because they do not populate as a race in this sphere. That is they are the same as the Lunar Pitris mentioned before.

            The Kabirim are also connected with the six Elohom which came

forth from the One. The SD, Volume one, 374-5 says that it was 6,000 years before the earth became ready to be renewed in itself. The six Sefiroth of construction are the six Dhyan Chohans or Manus, or Prajapati, synthesised by the seventh, the first emanation or logos, and who are called therefore builders of the lower or physical universe, all belonging below. The essence of these six is the seventh, the upati or the base or the fundamental stone on which the objective universe is built, that the pheneumanoi of all things. Hence they are at the same time the forces of nature, the seven angels of the presence, the sixth and seventh principals in Man, the spirito-pshcho, physical spheres of the septenary chain, the route races, all depending on the seven forms of the cranium up to the highest.

            There are seven original gods, from whom branched all the rest of life. Every god contains within the realm of his auric egg, which includes his vitality and consciousness, intellect, buddhic energy and atman, the whole range of less evolved beings. We are all life-atoms in the cosmic auric egg. All the life atoms are given direction and individuality by the overseeing deity’s vitality, individuality and intellect, which wells from the heart of us through him, making us the life-atoms of the cosmos. Now when Man became enfleshed he was also subject to hope via rebirth. The egg would symbolise life eternal.

            Now following the chain of worshippers from Hindu India to Asia Minor, to Greece, to Rome, certain aspects were lost and others accentuated. This wonderfully esoteric mythology seems to have devolved across Asia to Asia Minor to Greece and then to Rome, gaining a military and naval, aspect, for this conquering people, one of whose main gods was Mars.

            The hill on which the statues stand is Montecavallo (”horse mountain”), otherwise known as the Qurinale, northernmost of the Seven Hills of Rome, right beside the Servian Wall. The statues are on huge stone pedestals, standing in front of the Dioscuri Fountain on the Piazza Qurinale, in turn entered from the Via Quirinale. Behind the statues the Qurinale Palace was built, in and after 1574 (firstly the summer papal residence, then that of the President of the Republic). (12)

            Prior to the Romans, the Sabians worshipped Mars on this hill since remote antiquity, and “Qurinale” derives the Sabinian name for the god Mars. Mars was considered the father of Romulus, one of the other legendary twins, Romulus and Remus, who founded Rome. Mars in his aspect as Qurities, watched over the Roman citizens, and is identified with civil god Qurinus. When Romulus and Remus founded Rome; their army abducted the womenfolk of the aforementioned Sabines who gave the hill its name. (13)

            The Dioscuri also have a military and naval, significance for the Romans, as their exploits in mythology, suggest; like the Greek twin gods or heroes, twins were more likely to be remarkable, and are apt to be founders of cities. The twins for example were the patrons of the presidents of public games (which were originally for training in military arts such as horsemanship), and were the inventors of the war-dance, in that their adherents “danced” in their armour to do their military exercises, in the nearby campus martius or field of Mar, (14)

            As to their military exploits, as one would expect, since Helen was their (quadruplet) sister, and she had been abducted by Theseus and Pirithous, and while Theseus was in Hades (can anyone here tell me why ?), the brothers rescued her, taking her to Sparta and on the way taking the city of Athens – this was before Helen’s abduction by Paris which started the Trojan War. (15) The Dioscuri took part in the aforementioned battle with Idas and Lynceus, sons of Apareus, and helped many other warriors in the Calydonian Boar Hunt, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, book VIII, 361-399, saying they rode horses whiter than snow, and threw their spears after the boar, which retreated into impenetrable dark woods. Somewhat after this, the twins were raised to be stars in the heavens. The twins arerepresented in art with egg-shaped helmets, surmounted by stars, they carry spears, and have magnificent white horses – the helmets probably in reference to their being hatched from eggs. (16)

            The twins’ importance to Rome seems to spring from a tradition that in the time transitional between the monarchy and Republic, the Latins supported the ejected tyrant Tarquinius Superbus and fought the Romans at Lake Regillus; after the battle two young warriors were seen in the Forum in the heart of Rome, watering their white horses at the Spring of Juturna, and before they left they announced a great victory, “and in this they themselves had played the leading part”. The Romans understood that the twins had been the Dioscuri and built the Temple of Castor and Pollux for their worship, dedicated in 484 B.C and traces of this temple, blocks of stone dating from early times, have been found. At the spring where the horses were watered, were later found ancient fragments of archaic statues of twin gods, copied from Greek works of the early 5th century BC, proving the antiquity of the worship of the twins there.

            The twins’ prophesy resulted in a treaty between Rome and 30 Latin cities, the treaty lasted until the Latins were absorbed into the Roman state in 338 BC. In 117 BC Lucius Metellus Delmaticus financed the rebuilding Temple of Castor and Pollux, using much of the booty he captured from Dalmatian pirates (17) The Temple of Castor and Pollux is opposite the Temple of Vesta, in the Roman Forum; the twins’ temple was visited every four years, then every year, on 15th July, anniversary of the battle of Lake Regillus, by the Equites in a magnificent procession, for whom the twins were their patron. (18) The Equites were originally cavalry knights, later a youth organisation supporting the regime, they paraded in from the Temple of Mars, wearing rich clothes and olive garlands. The campus martius, where soldiers did military training, was nearby. – one can see their worship had both a military and naval, aspect – they helped win battles on land and sea, and thus they were worshipped in their martial aspect! 

            As to the twins’ naval exploits, and importance to sailors - The depiction of the twins with stars above their heads could also refer to their being sons of Zeus/Jupiter, as he was the wielder of lightning (his sacred tree was the oak, frequently hit by lightning and therefore thought to attract it), and St. Elmo’s fire is in a way the “son”, a lesser, more benign form of lightning, the twin lights of the electrical glow appearing in stormy weather (i.e. earthed static electricity?) (19) They’re like two poles of an electrical current, and I remember an old theosophist (Olga Buchanan), saying the word “fohat”, when I last read this talk.

            Just as Zeus rewarded the twins’ brotherly love by forming them into the constellation Gemini, Neptune/Poseidon (the sea-god) gave the twins power over the waves - they were stars of good omen to ships - the constellation for the month of May, and in art are represented pulling Venus’s chariot, accompanied by the Zephyrs (i.e. spring breezes, not the cars!), and by Cupid. (20) The nearby Mediterranean was particularly tricky to negotiate in the spring, sailors avoided doing so if possible. Once, just into the Christian era, Emperor Constantius II (AD 337-61) went back to the pagan temple of Castor and Pollux, one of the main temples in Ostia, port town of Rome (down the Tiber, on the Tyrrhenian Sea). While he was sacrificing in the temple the sea calmed and gentle breezes enabled the grain ships to enter the harbour and fill the granaries. This shows that the twins helped “those in peril on the sea”. The battle-victory the twins foretold was at the now drained Lake Regillus, 14 km from Rome; the historian Michael Grant thinking the Roman version of the story was a copy of the earlier Greek tale of the battle of the River Allaro in south Italy where the people of Locri, fighting against Croton, had borrowed the aid of the twin gods from their birthplace in Sparta, Greece. So the tale came from Greece to Lake Regillus, and also to Tusculum and Lavinium, thence it could easily have passed to Rome. (21) One can also see how the twins worship passed from the east through this and other port towns, by traders who worshipped them.

            Zodiacally, Gemini is the third sign of the Zodiac, its glyph looks like this: II and it symbolizes two children, The Twins, who represent a dual type of mind, of one who sees of both sides of a question and who jumps with interest to every new idea presented. The sun is in this sign from May 22 to June 21, the planetary ruler is Mercury (changeability); in the natural Zodiac it rules the Third House. It is masculine, positive, and an air sign, the element air is intellectual and communicative; its quality is mutable, meaning flexible and adaptable. This can be combined to describe Gemini as “adaptable intellect”, having the ability to see both sides of a question, thus they often fluctuate between two opposing views whilst having the gift of emotional detachment, to use their mind rather than their heart and be guided by logic and reason. (22) This again mirrors the dual, heaven/earth stance of the twins. Seeing both sides of the situation seems to lead naturally to “doing to others as you would have them do unto you”, which is the essence of theosophy and other systems of spirituality, as one twin “is”, the other, and naturally does what the other would do.

            What I find particularly inspiring about these statues is how in the Middle Ages they became enmeshed within the brickwork of a small house built between the bases of the statues, as in the engraving by Lanfreri in his Speculum Romanae magnificentiae, where the equestrian statues had fallen and rested on piles of brick; these were rearranged to their present positions, in the Qurinal Piazza, in the 16th & 18th centuries. As Rome expanded and housing was at a premium, many of Rome’s old monuments were used as shelters for the hovels of the poor, built from the ruins of the Baths of Constantine that once stood on this hill. (23) This seems a very potent, and apt, allusion to their mythical cohabitation on earth and the heavens, the inner, spiritual man being held but not imprisoned, in materiality in the world, but not of it. The extremely esoteric symbology of the twins in Eastern thought, became more encased, but not lost, in later military type symbolism of the Romans – the key is still there, to find again the hidden spirit within its worldly outer concealing covering.

ENDNOTES:

 

1: H.P. Blavatsky, The Theosophical Glossary, Los Angeles, The Theosophy Company, 1971 p. 168, and The Secret Doctrine, Pasadena, Theosophical University Press, 1952, Vol. 1, p. 415, & Vol. II, 70, 279, 340.

2: H.P. Blavatsky, Theosophical Glossary, p.102.

3: C.E. Clement, Legendary and Mythological Art, London, Bracken Books, 1994, p. 442, & Rose, A. Handbook of Greek Mythology, London, Methuen & Co., Ltd., 1974, p. 207.

4: J. Hall, Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art, Icon Editions, New York, Harper & Row, 1974, p.146.

5: Rose H.J., Op Cit., p. 143.

6: Hall, H.J., Op Cit, p.192, Clement, C.E., Op Cit, p.464, Rose, H.J., Op Cit, p. 230.

7: see Fasti 5:699 ff; Theocritus 20; Hyginus 80, according to Hall, J., Op Cit,, p. 58.

8: Rose, H.J., Op Cit, pp.230-235.

9: Moffett, B., “Ancient American Theosophy”, Sunrise, October ‘79 pp.5-10.

10: H.P. Blavatsky, Theosophical Glossary , p. 168)

11: Dowson, J., A Classical Dictionary of Hindu Mythology, Calcutta, Rupa & Co., 1989, pp. 29-31, 214, and 272.

12: On the pedestals a print shows the inscriptions: Opus Fidiae (Phidius) and Praxiteles, famous Hellenistic sculptors, but they were by a Roman, who based one of the torsos on that of the Poseidon of the Parthenon pediment, in Athens (which was taken away and badly damaged by the Venetian admiral Morosini ’s unsuccessful attempts to remove these statues their setting. In turn Michelangelo made his David in Florence a similar height (20 feet) and a similar contraposto pose, to one of the Dioscuri, per: B. Rowland, The Classical Tradition in Western Art, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1963,  pp.72 &. 198.

13: G. Fanfani, N. Ruspantini, Highlights of Rome, Florence, G. Ramella & Co., 1956, p.38 & Clement, C.E., Op Cit., p.465.

14: H.J. Rose, A Handbook of Greek Mythology, London, Methuen & Co., Ltd., 1958, pp. 206 & 316, and Hall, p. 442.

15: Clement, C.E., Op Cit., pp. 442 & 450.

16: Hall, J., Op Cit., p.146 & Clement, C.E., Op Cit., pp.448 & 412.

17: Grant, M., The Roman Forum, London, Spring Books, The Hamlyn Publishing Group, Ltd., 1974, p.85.

18: Clement, C.E. Op Cit., p.443 & J. Hall, Op Cit., p.58, Grant, M., Op. Cit., p.86.

19: Grant, M, Op Cit., p. 86.

20: Hall, J., Op Cit., pp. 58 & 314.

21: Grant, M., Op Cit., p. 86.

22: Lofthus, Myrna A Spiritual Approach to Astrology, Nevada, CRCS Publications, 1983, pp.50-52).

23: Rowland, B., Op Cit., pp.233-5.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, Pasadena, Theosophical University Press, 1952, Vols. 1 & II.

Blavatsky, H.P., The Theosophical Glossary, Los Angeles, The Theosophy Company, 1971

Clement, C.E. Legendary and Mythological Art, London, Bracken Books, 1994.

Dowson, J., A Classical Dictionary of Hindu Mythology, Calcutta, Rupa & Co., 1989.

Fanfani, G., & N. Ruspantini, Highlights of Rome, Florence, G. Ramella & Co., 1956.

Grant, M., The Roman Forum, London, Spring Books, The Hamlyn Publishing Group, Ltd., 1974,

Hall, J., Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art, Icon Editions, New York, Harper & Row, 1974.

Lofthus, Myrna, A Spiritual Approach to Astrology, Nevada, CRCS Publications, 1983,

Ovid, Metamorphoses, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1955.

Rose, H.J.,A. Handbook of Greek Mythology, London, Methuen & Co., Ltd., 1974.

Rowland, B., The Classical Tradition in Western Art, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1963.

 

 

The views expressed in this lecture are those of the author and not necessarily those of the Theosophical Society (Pasadena).

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