The Indians
celebrated Trickster as part of the Great Mystery, which displayed many faces.
At the psychic trading post, we can trade our anger for compassion; we can
exchange our robe for animal skins and we can release our pain for laughter. We
can break the shell that holds us prisoner to the illusion of certainty,
unleashing renewal that dances like the whirlwind across the inner landscape. (page 159)
This quote from chapter
six acts as quite a good intro to chapter seven, and the epic of Gilgamesh.
Trickster is a familiar figure from American Indian folklore who transcends the
certainty of order and perfection, who walks the middle way (of the Raven, the
scavenger, coyote).
“The illusion of
certainty” can often apply to the mind that cannot access its own dreams, and
via the dream the mythical landscape. This is really where Gilgamesh is
set, and particularly in the person of Enkidu, created by Ishtar as a fitting
foil to the mighty Gilgamesh.
The plan is for
the increasingly vain and oppressive Gilgamesh to be taken down by the
embodiment of the steppes, who starts off eating grass with the beasts. After
getting close with a priestess of love, he gains wisdom, though his
hair still
resembles grass that sprouts on the steppes. (cf Ymir)
News then comes
of Gilgamesh’s rule of Uruk that is shocking and invites instant action.
Any new bride
from the people is his; Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, may mate with any new bride
even before the lawful husband may have her! (page 173)
They fight, but
then become good companions. Idleness sets in, prompting Gilgamesh to go on a
pilgrimage to the Cedar Forest, where rumour has it the Humbaba rules with
bestial fury. Gilgamesh aims to cut down the cedars to build his own memorial,
and he is acco0mpanied by Enkidu. The Cedar felling probably has historical
roots.
After
arriving at the Green Mountain, they both stood quite still. Silently they
looked at the Forest and saw how high the Great Cedars were. They gazed upon
the entrance and saw the tracks where Humbaba often trod.. They saw also the
Cedar Mountain where the gods lived. The Cedar rose aloft its great luxuriant
growth; what cool shade, what delight! Mountain and glade were green with brushwood.
(page 177)
Wooded Turanian
steppes outside Makkalet from Conan #23 © Marvel 1971
The Mesopotamia
of this ancient time bore more similarity to Howard’s opulent Eastern kingdoms,
and their sending off too.
They went to
Ninsun who offered up incense to Shamash (sun). With the smoke offering in
progress, she raised her hands.. She prayed for her son’s protection. (page 176)
Rude, sexual and
gusty, it bears useful comparison to Howard’s own prose, and Hohne devotes much
of chapter seven to a bracing translation (from Akkadian). Her interpretation
of Gilgamesh as dream incorporates Humbaba as repressed energy or a Shadow
Self.
The characters
come up against Humbaba who they believe must be destroyed. The elements lost
within will always appear first as a threat. This repressed energy can be sent underground
to fund the idea of the boogeyman out
there, although it holds the power of all we fear in here. (page
185)
Why, though, is
Humbaba the Shadow? Enkidu complains of a feeling of idleness, and this prompts
Gilgamesh to think of his own mortality, and how felling the Cedar Forest will
enable him to establish a noble monument to posterity.
The enclosed
idleness of Uruk, then, could be a foretaste of the idleness that Modern Man
feels, essentially enclosed in his head. The Cedar Forest represents
regenerative greenery that is repressed in the face of all that is hygienic in
modern life.
It’s not to say
that there isn’t any regenerative greenery out there, in National Parks and so
on, but how many folks actually live there? What I mean is that Enkidu embodies
the steppes in his own form (body). The cowboy and horse embody the corral and
steer-herding on the ranges and round the hills. The Indian embodies plains,
lakes, the thundering hoofs, sweetgrass.
The embodiment
of natural form is the opposite to idleness, it is action. The world of action
that encompasses the landscape and lakescape is lost to Man. His Shadow Self is
the regenerative greenery that is, after all, where hunting takes place.
The entire area
of Man’s link to “blood sports” – grouse shooting or hunting pursuits in
general – then becomes the boogeyman. That is, the entire area of the history
and prehistory of Man as a hunter-gatherer. The dreams he dreamt and the
landscape he dreamt them in (Cimmeria, land of darkness and deep night..
hill upon hill, each hooded like its brothers).
Enkidu and Gilgamesh
start as opponents, when the wild man Enkidu meets the prince of Uruk
Gilgamesh
meets Enkidu.. “as something mysterious coming out of the woods. Let him look as
into mirrors – Give a second self to him. Like bulls they held together as
rushing wind met rushing wind. Heart to heart and against, yet they held fast
and shattered the doorpost of the holy gate. The wall shook with the fateful
act.”
Their firm friendship
integrates their two apsects of psyche. Perhaps Enkidu subsequently became too
palace-bound, and this sets Gilgamesh off on their fateful quest for the
Guardian of the Forest
To actualize
our destiny, we discover how being civilized is not the true measure of self (page 187).. In this story Enkidu has
become civilized (page 189)
The civilized
man fears the Forest, the labyrinth of belief (myth) that is disordered and
where hidden things nose around at will.
If even Enkidu –
who was brought up by Humbaba – is urging Gilgamesh to kill him, how much more
is the fear of Modern Man, brought up from Kindergarten with civilization’s
Holy Grail of pure order? The Shadow in there that projects the
boogeyman out there.