Timeless Symbols

Time is like the wind. It seems untethered from the linear way we view it as new discoveries transform our understanding of the past. We find ancient ideas, like seeds that were scattered from a mythological world tree.

The same story is repeated in locations across the earth with no obvious cultural connection. Archetypes emerge many thousands of years prior to when we believed they developed.

Symbols such as the Pisces Fish and Aquarius constellation appear as petroglyphs in Ratnagiri, India dated 12,000 years ago. We think of astrology as being developed in 3000 BC in Babylon and perfected in Greece in 280 BC.

The Scarab Beetle found in Egypt in 2000 BC, is also a petroglyph in Ratnagiri. Scientists at the University of Sweden discovered how these beetles navigate using the stars. Maybe this gave the beetle a strange sort of power as a celestial guide.

3 mysterious “handbags” appear at the top of a carving at Göbekli Tepe, also dated 12,000 years ago. While there is no written record during this period, there are plenty of astral-oriented monuments and carvings. When we consider the meaning of the handbags, we need to look to the stars.

Agriculture and Time

The development of agriculture required an understanding of time, and this was provided by the sky. Seasonal activity for planting came later, but herding also held a direct correlation to what was happening in the skies overhead.

Animals and birds migrate. As a matter of sustenance, virtually all cultures learned to read the stars.

Identical handbags are found in Assyrian panels dated to 800 BC and held by Quetzalcóatl in an Olmec carving of Mesoamerica from the 11th century BC. These ancient cultures thrived thousands of years and miles from one another.

It is interesting that the colossal heads found in Olmec archeology sites appear to have African features, although archeologists reject Africa as the origin of the Olmec. The Maya drew upon Olmec ideas in developing their understanding of time and the cosmos.

The Path of the Planets

The ancients noticed how a handful of planets appeared to move against a static backdrop of stars. Traveling along a narrow path through the sky, the planets only passed through the handful of constellations we know today as the zodiac.

Sometimes confused with the Big Dipper, Orion has an hour-glass shape, with a belt of 3 stars that are brightly visible from all over the earth. These stars sit on the celestial equator, an important navigational position to understand the progression of deep time or the precession of the equinox.

Many ancient cultures believed their gods descended from the 3 stars of Orion. Others saw Orion as a messenger of the highest god. At first glance, we might think the 3 handbags on the Göbekli Tepe monument represent these stars, but we need to look deeper.

Göbekli Tepe

Göbekli Tepe, in modern-day Turkey, has intrigued researchers since its discovery in the 1990s. Built around 9600–8000 BCE, the site predates ancient civilizations such as Mesopotamia and Egypt by millennia. At its heart lies an enigma: towering pillars with intricate carvings of animals, birds, and mysterious symbols.

The handbag motif appears not only at Göbekli Tepe, but also in other ancient cultures. In my book Decoding the Night Sky, I explore how the modern Square of Pegasus was called “Iku”, the Field in ancient times.

Iku was the seat of the 3 main Sumerian deities and was a common starting point to interpret cosmic activity. The 'square' nature of the bags may represent this Field.

The Magi, Ummanu or Apkallu could read the stars and perhaps, the square bags represented the divine wisdom they carried. You can view the video here.

Atop the famous Vulture Stone (Pillar 43), the 3 handbags seem to portray a shared belief among culures in the cosmos that traverses both space and time.

By exploring the symbolism at Göbekli Tepe and Ratnagiri, the potential connections to later Egyptian and Mesoamerican mythology, and the possibility of shared ancient cosmologies, we gain a glimpse into humanity’s earliest religious and astronomical ideas.

The Bird Motif: Vultures or Ibises?

Many ancient cultures used a bird motif or feathers to portray divinities. The Mesoamerican Kulkulkan (or Quetzalcoatl) was a feathered serpent. This embodied how Venus dips below the earth as a snake, and rises in the sky, like a bird.

Venus was also called Lucifer (Latin: bringer of light) and the original stories of Lucifer’s “fall” are actually the descent of Venus below the earth.

Called the “imposter of the sun”, Venus rises as the morning star before the sun and after sunset as the evening star. Because Venus orbits in between the Earth and the Sun, it seemed to disappear at certain periods during the year.

The Sumerian Inanna was associated with Venus and became trapped in the underworld. As the inspiration for later fertility goddesses like Persephone, we see how its movement was related to the underworld abduction of spring during winter.

Imagine what it might have been like to watch the foliage die away during Autumn at the same time that the birds disappear. New growth would emerge in the spring, apparently brought back to life by the mirgatory return of the feathered creatures.

To the ancients, the birds may have appeared as the life-givers or messengers of the divine.

An 18,000 year-old painting in the Lascaux Caves in France show what appears to be a shaman or man with a bird mask, next to a bird on a stick. Because birds fly upward toward the heavens, they may have symbolized enhanced human faculties, specifically those used by shamans.

Since shamans were accessing dreams or natural, psychoactive substances, our shared symbolism may have originated from the shaman’s visions. This would give credibility to Carl Jung’s idea that our ancient ideas came from the Collective Unconscious.

Anyone who has experienced Ayahuasca or psylocibin can attest to how the visions are similar – regardless of the participant’s culture of origin.

This is also why I believe our knowledge of astrology archetypes came to us prior to the development of language with its left-brain dominance. We may have been more open to visions, the same ones that arise from the right hemisphere during dreaming.

Thoth and the Sun

Central to the carving at Göbekli Tepe is the bird figure on the Vulture Stone, often interpreted as a vulture, a symbol of death in many ancient cultures. However, closer inspection of the bird’s shape and posture raises another possibility: could this bird actually be an ibis, resembling the later ibis-headed god Thoth of Egypt?

In Egyptian mythology, Thoth was a key figure in cosmic and funerary rites, assisting the sun as it journeyed through the underworld each night. On the statue, the Ibis is holding the sun – perhaps beneath the Milky Way (the sacred road for the Maya and the path the beetle follows.)

It may not be a vulture playing with a skull because the Scorpio constellation also appears on the same stone carving.

Whether it was the vulture or the ibis, birds in both Neolithic Anatolia and ancient Egypt served as divine mediators, representing passage between the earthly realm and the afterlife. The Ibis control crop pests and may have held special significance for the Egyptians.

Like many ancient monuments that record a date with astronomical references, the Vulture Stone may also be a record of celestial, not terrestrial activity.

On this stone, the bird figure is situated beneath wavy lines that could represent mountains or the horizon, through which the sun passes at the end of the day—another striking parallel to the sun’s journey through the underworld, guided by Thoth in Egyptian cosmology. However, Göbekli Tepe predates Egypt by many millennia.

The idea that the sun must navigate dangerous terrain to rise again each morning suggests that the people of Göbekli Tepe, like the Egyptians, were deeply attuned to celestial cycles and the mysteries of life, death, and rebirth.

Before we had any type of written record, the ancients were building celestial calendars, using stones and temples aligned with the sun at the solstice. They are found in the UK, New Mexico, Mexico, France, Spain, Cambodia, Peru and Egypt, among other places.

Building architecture to mirror constellations was also practiced in China and Egypt. Some believe the position of the Great Pyramids represent Orion’s belt.

Another common motif found in ancient carvings is the Master of Animals. Like the one found in Ratnagiri from 12,000 years ago, many heroes are depicted holding an animal from each extended arm. This may have given rise to the later stories in Genesis.

The "Handbags" and Cosmic Knowledge

The mysterious "handbag" motif has always fascinated me because it is like a cosmic joke – out of place and yet, everywhere. I believe they represent cosmic knowledge or tools for understanding the heavens. Much like how ancient astrologers used fixed points like the Square of Pegasus to navigate the stars, the handbags may symbolize the ability to "contain" or control cosmic forces.

The three handbags at Göbekli Tepe might represent the tripartite division of the world into heaven, earth, and the underworld—a common theme in many ancient mythologies.

In ancient Mesopotamia, Ea, Anu, and Enlil were the 3 primary deities. Together, they represented the entire cosmos and celestial movement in the 3 parts of the sky: equatorial, northern and southern. Anu, the highest god was originally the “Old Man” who came from the Field, or what we now call the Square of Pegasus.

In later Egyptian cosmology, the sun’s daily journey through these three realms became central to their understanding of the universe. The Egyptians appear to have lived life with a heavy emphasis on death, as if death was a part of life.

Thoth carries an Ankh, representing eternal life, similar in design to the bags we see carried by other deities. The handbags might symbolize divine control over these realms or over the cyclical processes governing life, death, and rebirth.

The Number 3

The number three appears frequently in ancient astronomical and cosmological systems. It could represent phases of the moon (waxing, full, and waning), the three key planets visible to the naked eye (Venus, Mars, and Jupiter), or even time itself (past, present, and future).

In chapter 18 of the book of Genesis, Yahweh first reveals himself to Abraham in the form of 3 people. When Abraham converses with them, they respond as one: "they said." However, there is a clear sense that it is the voice of Yahweh.

Moses sees a burning bush, yet hears the voice of Yahweh. The alternation of address and form. can represent the difficulty of describing a divine vision in words, translated over time.

Abraham's family left 'Ur of the Chaldees', according to Genesis. This is the place where Chaldeans were considered master astrologers, according to Diororus in his Bibliotecha Historia (1st cent. BC).

Prior to going to the promised land of Canaan, they lived in the land of Harran. This area is 60 kilometers south of Göbekli Tepe.

Since his father Terah was said to have died at 205 years old, and Methuselah and Adam lived almost 1000 years, time appears distorted in Genesis.

The extreme lifespans might be how they bridged large spans of history, so we really can't be certain of when Abraham lived. However, might one carve the story of being visited by 3 divine messengers as 3 bags?

In any case, the handbags seem to embody the sacred knowledge required to understand cosmic cycles, making the bags potent symbols of divine authority over the heavens and earth.

The Cosmic Triad: Sky, Earth, and the Underworld

If the three handbags at Göbekli Tepe represent deities, they may symbolize a triad governing the key forces of existence: the sky, the earth, and the underworld. Many ancient pantheons reflect a similar structure, with gods presiding over the celestial, terrestrial, and subterranean realms.

1. The Sky Deity: Representing the heavens, celestial order, and cosmic cycles, this deity might have been responsible for governing the movement of the stars, planets, and the passage of time. In later cultures, gods like Anu in Sumeria or Zeus in Greece took on similar roles, reflecting a widespread belief in a deity controlling the heavens.
2. The Earth Deity: Responsible for fertility, life, and sustenance, this deity would have been crucial to the agricultural societies that followed the Neolithic period. In Egypt, Geb, the earth god, and later fertility deities like Isis played this role. An earth deity like Enlil from Mesopotamia ensures the renewal of life through cycles of planting, growth, and harvest.
3. The Underworld Deity: This figure governs death, transformation, and the afterlife, similar to Thoth’s role in Egyptian mythology. Like Shiva, destruction was not seen as an end, but as part of a cycle leading to rebirth. Ea in Sumeria was responsible for the underworld, the abzu or deep ocean beneath the earth. Once humans understood how death during autumn gave way to the rebirth of spring, planting deepened their religious ideas.

Like the Trimurti of India, three deities form a cosmic triad, balancing the forces of creation, sustenance, and destruction. The three handbags, placed at the top of the Vulture Stone, may symbolize the cyclical nature of life and death that the people of Göbekli Tepe sought to understand and influence.

It is hard to imagine why the idea of 3 would have even emerged in early art. Why not just carve one handbag? To the later Greeks, the number 3 signified harmony, wisdom and understanding. It was the perfect number because it is the only number that is the sum of what precedes it.

In China, the I Ching hexagram 3 is the only one to include both Heaven/Yang (1) and Earth/Yin (2.) The rest are considered to be the cause or opposite of one another. This book is also very ancient.

The hexagram is called Difficult Beginnings, and like a seed pressing through dirt and rocks to reach the sun, we too, have an inner blueprint that propels us forward.

The German philosopher Hegel explored the number three as thesis, antithesis and synthesis. This three-part structure represents a process of transformation, where an idea (thesis) encounters its opposite (antithesis), and the two are reconciled in a higher unity (synthesis).

Indeed, in dreams, the number 3 offers an option beyond an either/or choice and a solution that can encompass both ideas.

Lastly, 3 can embody me, you and 'the Other' as we travel this path through life. Whatever it is and no matter how we describe it, the unknown Other brings magic and healing to life.