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An examination of 'heel clutcher' mythology and its grip on modern living.
Heels and Other Clones
Heels and Other Clonesby JANSEN ESTRUP
Adapted from Tales of a Clear, Dark Night
I Grasping the Heel
What is to be made of the ancient notion of ‘grasping' or ‘striking' the heel? It seems an odd idea, therefore interesting. A human heel fits the hand well enough, in the manner of a hand-axe or other tool, but one suspects the subject is far more complex.
There are at least five mythological stories involving this act.
The most recent, chronologically, comes from Christian Apocrypha, a story in which resurrected Jesus fought an aerial duel with his Samarian counterpart and rival, Simon. They battled in the night among the stars, performing magic, healing and ‘other-worldly' acts until the climax, when Jesus grasped Simon by the heel and dashed him to the ground, breaking his leg. This broken 'bone', apparently, was equated with utter defeat and Simon ‘disappeared' (forever).
The second myth is possibly co-existent with the first and was taken north by peoples in fear of Roman Legions. Their god, Balder, was baptized in salty fluid (the sea? the womb?) in order to make him immortal. During this rite he was held by his ankle, which remained vulnerable. Later, the prankster god Loki, using an arrow of poison mistletoe, shot Balder in the heel and killed him.
The next story is perhaps eight hundred years older and concerns Achilles, son of Aphrodite, Mistress of the ‘Sea' (and that frothy foam bed of the Milky Way). She held the infant by a heel while dipping him into the sea, making all but that small part immortal. But at the walls of Troy, Paris shot an arrow into the warrior's exposed heel and, as forwarned, the Greek hero died.
The fourth incident is that of Jacob, who grasped his twin brother's heel at the moment of birth in order to wrest from him a first born's birthright. By various deceits over a long lifetime, Jacob succeeded. His brother disappeared, or otherwise became insignificant to the history of his people.
Last, probably oldest/earliest (at least 2300BCE), is the Hurio-Hittite tale of Anus and Kumarbis, elemental brothers who warred upon each other on the vacuous earth. 'King' Anus, on the verge of defeat, fled skyward. But Kumarbis took hold of his heel and ascended with him. Holding his brother firmly, he climbed his legs and sucked from his ‘knee' all of the future generations, which he spat upon the earth, creating the rivers, animals and the first men, made of mud. Readers will have noted yet another hint at sexual incapacity in Anus' loss of his 'generations' - his heritage, future, especially the continuation of his lineage.
This story was much re-invented by Doric Greeks. In their version, Anus became Uranus and also Cronus (Space, or Heaven, and Time). Cronus, they told, devoured his own offspring. Doesn't Time do that to all of us?
Central to each tale is the concept of survival, deification and immortality. What has the heel to do with immortality? Definitions of ‘heel', four thousand years later, do not shed much light on the question. Among the oldest meanings are under control or subjugation (Old English), to hold inclined, i.e., at a list/angle (Old High German and Lithuanian), and perhaps most intriguing, archaic as it is (from an unlisted source), the base of a tuber or cutting of a plant.
Thus a heel, like the eye of a potato, papyrus root or length of grape cane, is intended for use in agriculture. It is not a seed ‘contaminated' by propagation (sex) or cross pollination (inter-breeding) or natural variations (mutations). As with the fig, widely variant and prolific - which Adam and Eve discovered when they became as figs in their fig-leaf garb. Rather, a heel is a continuation and extension of something which is already extant, alive, of the same stock and pure, a 'sure thing', a duplicate, a replicant - a clone.
Because the heel stories deal with such propagation and ‘eternal' life, this may well be something akin to the original meaning. All early civilization was based in agriculture, and weather/sky watching was a vital activity. Ergo the linkage to star myths.
II Sowing the Seeds
We are all familiar with the old adage about mustard seed, so prolific and, once rooted, extremely difficult to eradicate. Mustard is a member of the turnip family, genus rapha (Greek hrapys). It had meaning far beyond hotdog condiments in ancient times. It crowds out other species, other varieties, and makes 'the land' its own. It dominates. Rapha was a serious matter, one which still confounds modern cultures and causes untold miseries, from rape (cultural domination) to war (ethnic cleansing) to famine (physical death), all are characteristics of the dominating heel. They are also aspects of its vulnerability.
Was this the understanding among the ancients, those pre-classical and even pre-historic people we know so little about, but suspect with good reason that they were a lot like us? Was the longevity of plants and trees, their fecundancy and nutrients a religious matter for them?
How many of us, when (if) we think of a tuber as rapha, consider it the root of the word rape? More likely we'd recall Raphael, a demi-god and archangel, a messenger who is said to have whispered the words which impregnated the Virgin Mary. Both he and Mary, therefore, are given strong asexual, perpetually virginal characteristics.
It has never been clear whether or not Mary was a willing vessel for this pregnancy, but we have understood for at least half a century that rape is not a sexual act, not on a personal, community or international level. It is an act of domination, often violent, and as such can apply to anything from ‘sensibilities' to landscape, much like the Old English definition of ‘heel'.
The notion that Mary's incubation was ‘whispered' makes it seem all the more perverse, the act of an incubus or rake or troubadour.
Wait a minute! That was Gabriel, not Raphael, wasn't it? Even more appropriate (Og-Ab-Ari-El). ‘Og' was a giant known for sexual violence by the time his cult reached Britain, and earlier, no doubt. Scripture describes a ‘race' of stellar giants who came down to Earth to take human women and the genetic result was the race of the unworthy, although the myth does not detail the differences between one 'heavenly' impregnation and another. 'Ab' is generally accepted to mean 'Father'. 'Ari' implies barbarian nomads out of the Caucausus and 'El' is a well known applelation for 'deity'.
III Fruit of the Vine
But Raphael has his rapine side, too. A prayer for healing is one for restoration, for making oneself renewed and 'as before', i.e., unchanged. Said to mean "God as healer" raphanus is a genus of flowering plants which is marked by bulbous roots, the yam, potato, taro so essential as a starchy food staple around the world. From such 'in kind' outward appearances we probably developed our twisted notions of family, behavior and even race. Certainly we clammor for perpetual youth, beauty and virility.
Maybe, if we imagine that we are made in the image of a particular deity, it stimulates our thinking about beauty, of unsullied purity and, something which will not perish. Such 'healing' rejects any alterations or changes, any aging or adaptations to environmental needs. Such a prayer, if answered, requires the abrogation of natural law, a renunciation of the deity's own essence. It would require the divinity to sacrifice Itself at the whim of those billions who send broadside after broadside of demands into the Cosmos.
Therein lies the weakness of the heel, the clone. As during the Irish potato famine, severe droughts and current GMO failures, it is genetically vulnerable, inflexible, intollerant of environmental change. It is assailed by unfriendly elements at every turn. Each arrow of its rivals kills it from within. It cannot evolve and is therefore doomed to extinction. Is it relevant that certain tubers are related to poisons of the night shade family?
Perhaps this is why dominant financial, political and religious powers so often cry out that they are being threatened, warred upon, irradicated. They know, somewhere down deep, that to change is to die, to become as dinosaurs, as Simon and Balder and Anus, as coal beds - just another wanna-be eternal whose core was flawed, inflexible, unabe to adapt or compromise. It was not up to the task of evolving.
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I love that conclusion… Brings the whole article right up to date.
Ron