Tuesday, July 5, 2011

"This is Eshoq!" Fusing Goddess, animal and human



I have been working in a high place, like a hill fort with steep earthen walls, ringed by a deep trench and a wire enclosure. I am excited because I have in my hand the first piece, cast in metal from a very ancient mold. Flat on one side, contoured on the other, it resembles a mounted figure with a great flapping cloth or skin over the horse's body. Yet I think it is more than that; a single being combining elements of horse, human and something beyond what we easily recognize today. I can name this figure. It is "Eshoq".

I go to the apertures in the fort and shout down to people below, "This is Eshoq!" holding the figure up, triumphant. Humans and dogs press eagerly forward, staring and sniffing through the wire to see.

I woke from this dream excited.

I don't recognize "Eshoq" as a name or word, and it doesn't show up right away in an internet search, except (with variant spelling) as a part of others words, such as "foreshock". I have walked the ancient sites of hill forts in Europe, most recently in the Baltic. I have been continuing my researches into the interweaving of gods, animals and humans in early and shamanic consciousness, and am writing about that. I think I have been given another assignment in dream archaeology.


Sipping my dream memories, in the midst of the sunlit morning, I remember Jung’s counsel: “If one can stay in the middle, know one is human, relate to both the god and the animal of the god, one is all right. One must remember, over the animal is the god, with the god is the god’s animal.” Yes. Whatever or whoever Eshoq may be, I think the figurine comes from the realm of mind and being in which god and animal and human are porous to each other and capable of exchanging forms.

Image: A Gallo-Roman statue of Epona. Alise-Sainte-Reine, Musée Alesia The head of the Eshoq figurine in my dream is not clearly human.

2 comments:

Savannah said...

Exciting discovery! As I mentioned on your online forum as well, there's a 1970 film titled Nar Eshoq for which I couldn't track a translation but which suggest a Middle Eastern context. From an online discussion of Mel Gibson's film "The Passion of Christ" also came the suggestion that 'eshoq would have been Jesus' name in Aramaic. I don't have the resources to verify if that's true but the scant google leads I found look potentially promising and if the word were in fact Aramaic I'd be curious if it means anything more specific beyond the name Jesus.

Robert Moss said...

Savannah - Thanks for these clues. As we know, it's interesting where unusual dream words can lead. I have not been able to go far with the Aramaic suggestion as yet. It occurs to me that "Ashok" (a possible variant spelling) is a common name in India. Yet experience has taught me not to edit "funny" dream words but to stay with them until context and meaning appear when waking events catch up with the dream.