ATLANTIC AIAIA - KIRKE, NEHALENNIA
FROM CUBA TO ZEELAND, THE NETHERLANDS
Odysseus' First voyage, part 7 (pdf-download)
KIRKE AND THE INITIATION RITES
Anyone who in the Odyssey sees nothing more than an adventure novel or an interesting series of stories and legends misses the essence of the epic. The work consists of several layers, intended for a different audience. The large crowd will indeed enjoy the stories about monsters and giants, but the skipper will also experience the Odyssey as a kind of route book, a "pilot", which gives the good listener directions of winds, routes, and ports of call. The initiate, however, will see the Odyssey as a description of the initiation of the hero Odysseus in the mysteries of rebirth, centered on his visit to Kirke on Aiaia, with whom he stays for one whole year, and on his visit to the underworld, where he is initiated into the death cult. After a further seven years of training at Kaluypso, he finally arrives in the nineteenth year as a fully initiated person at the Faiakes, who receive and worship him "as a god". Finally, he is also accepted by the Achaians of Ithaka as their former but altered (priest) king, but only after he first killed the 108 uninitiated suitors who claimed feudal rights to Penelope and her maids, which is symbolic for the victory of the new religion over the old feudal structures. This treatise will mainly concern this third layer: the initiation process. Wilkens answers the question of what the actual purpose of the initiation was. Quote p.235: "The rites were intended to purify carefully selected candidates from their imperfections and to deliver them from their prejudices and past errors before they gained access to the higher knowledge required to find the Cosmic Truth. It was believed that the soul of the initiated was immortal and could count on a privileged place in the Other World."
Where was Aiaia? As Kirke plays the leading role in the initiation rites of Odysseus, it is interesting to know where her island Aiaia (or Aia) was located. Homeros is very sparing with indications to course and distance from the last point where Odysseus and his companions had landed, the Laistrugones. There may be a course indication in 10,162 in which it is said that he kills a large stag with his bronze spear, which may indicate the zodiac sign Sagittarius, although he does not use a bow but a spear. According to the Wilkens schedule (p.199), this indicates a NE course from Havana, which will take his ship to Western Europe (see Atlantic Laistrugonia). The number of days of this trip is not specified, not because some text would have disappeared, as Wilkens states (p.219), but because such a trip has an uncertain duration due to changing winds. Gideon (p.68) provides an interesting explanation for the 'sudden transition' of the story at the Laistrugones to that of Kirke. According to him, Homeros indicates with this sudden leap that Odysseus is now moving to another world than the previous one. "He must now within his own interior walk the path that goes from life through death to being born again." Indeed, with the story of the Laistrugones, the first phase of the novice is concluded: his life as a non-initiate, who is still entirely at the mercy of matter and desires. Now the big initiation story starts with Kirke. Despite the lack of nautical data, all Atlantic authors (except for Vinci) agree that Aiaia is Scaldia, the current Schouwen in Zeeland (Scouwen on map Van Deventer, above). The derivation of the name Aiaia is according to most authors from aia, aue, gauwe, go, gaia, gea, ka = Land, earth. De Grave, who relies on Ihre (verbo A), thinks that the word means: "system of waters". In Greek it is aa, in Latin aqua, Angl.Sax. ea (pl. aea) and it could mean "Waterland", which is more expressive than "Land" alone.
Arguments for Schouwen -An important indication of the importance of Scaldia as the center of the new religion is the fact that it is the centre of the three rivers with their seven mouths in this Gallo-Germanic land of Batavians, Chauci and Menapians, which are the basis for many ancient religions and cultures. Main rivers elsewhere are invariably claimed to have three streams and seven mouths, although none of them has them. For example, the Ganges, the Nile, the Tanais, to name but a few, would have three streams and seven mouths. However, the Ganges has only one stream and countless mouths. The Nile is called tritonus ('with three watercourses') and septemplicis ostia Nili ('with seven mouths'), but has only one stream and a number of mouths ranging from 4 to 14, depending on the sources (PA 99). "The Black Sea swallows the water of the Don with seven mouths" (Seneca Troiades 19), while a glance at the map shows that there are one stream and many mouths. According to Hesiodos (Theog.338), the Neilos is even an Oceanian river, borne by Thetys, a symbol of the tide. That would make an etymology Nile from Nehal probable; for Nehal is the most important goddess of this three-river area, that has actually seven mouths. The spread of the Nehalennia cult of death and resurrection around the world can be explained by the centuries-long emigrations of Indo-Germans or rather Gallo-Germans from Western Europe.
