The Spark and the Vessel

Comparing the birth myths of Tārā and Aphrodite

Myths are an elemental part of human consciousness and culture since archaic times. They are regarded as special stories that serve to put in context different facets of life’s cycles, therefore working as a mirror to the person involved with it. Often, the storytelling mechanism used by myth relates life’s struggles to nature’s elements, such as bodies of water, animals or stars. This essay aims to investigate correspondent storytelling elements from two myths of distinct cultural traditions, being it the Tibetan myth of Tārā’s birth and the Greek myth of Aphrodite’s birth.

Tārā, one of the most esteemed deities of the Tibetan Buddhist pantheon, is said to be born out of the tears shed by her consort, Avalokiteśvara, as his extraordinary efforts were not enough to diminish the misery in which sentient beings were immersed. In this overwhelmed state, Avalokiteśvara’s tears accumulated, forming a pond, from which rose a beautiful lotus flower. From the flower appeared Tārā, a divine female form exquisite in beauty and made of endless compassion. She promised to help Avalokiteśvara to liberate all beings from suffering. A completely different tale concerning the goddess, which confers her a human birth, has also been recorded, but for the effects of the present study, we shall focus on the stories of her divine birth.

Avalokiteśvara, from the Sanskrit, means “the one who gazes down”, implying the deity’s position in the heavens and his supreme mercy upon earthly creatures. He is also regarded as the Lord of the World, lokeśvara. Avalokiteśvara is believed to sit at the top of the mythical Mount Meru, the Tibetan axis mundi, from where he looks upon all beings5. Tārā is born out of the most compassionate being’s tears - she is, therefore, the essence of compassion embodied.

Tārā literally means “star” and comes from the Sanskrit root tr, “to swim across”, as well as from tarika, “saviouress”. To her is granted the title of Supreme Mother, “Mother of All Buddhas”, as she is directly approachable, given most deities in the Tibetan tradition are only reachable with the aid of a priest.

Drawing from the iconography of the titles described above, Tārā is identified as the North or Pole Star - an almost stationary star in the night sky, given its proximity to the North Pole, and of prominent brightness. Scientifically identified as Polaris, this luminous body has been historically used for navigational purposes in numerous Northern cultures. Nonetheless, in a land of high mountains and vast plateaus like Tibet, the importance of such star in traditional navigation has been of utmost importance. Given the significance of such star and deity, one of Tārā’s main attributes is “She Who Carries Across”, pointing to her navigational aid in both earthly and spiritual realms, as well as “Lady Twilight”.

Linking her heavenly location to her consort’s, the North Star is found, in the Tibetan night sky, to appear directly at the top of Buddhism’s most sacred mountain, Mount Kailash. Such a mountain, located in Western Tibet’s portion of the Himalayan range, corresponds to the position of the mythical Tibetan axis mundi, Mount Meru, Avalokitesvara’s seat as already mentioned. Given it, Avalokiteśvara and Tārā preside together at the top of the center of the world, caring, in this way, for all beings living under it.

Archeological research was carried out to understand the origins of her cult, being it widely accepted to have started in the coastal areas of Western India and migrated North when the Buddhist belief declined in the country, becoming popular in Nepal and Tibet in the 11th century through the historic figure of the Buddhist saint Atiśa. Syncretic parallels with the Hindu goddess Durgā, found in a handful of examples in Vedic literature, have been proposed as the probable origin of Tara’s myth, given some major similarities in between the two beliefs.

The earlier imagery distinctly concerning the goddess was found in the Deccan Buddhist caves in India, most notably of Ellora and Ajanta, from the 6th and 7th centuries AD. There, she is depicted as the “Liberator from the Eight Great Fears”, being notably among it the peril of shipwreck. Further archeological evidence shows that the function of Tārā as protectress of navigation and guide to mariners as the Pole Star was very popular in her early depictions in the areas linked to maritime activity. In numerous accounts, Tārā is described as a boat-woman, the chief who navigates the boat or the boat itself, a popular symbol of salvation among different mythologies throughout the world.

“(...) it seems that certain key stars, particularly Dhruva-tārā, the Pole Star or North Star, acted as indispensable guides to navigation for both voyagers over the sea and travelers through the huge wilderness that once covered the Indian subcontinent. In the 108 Names of Holy Tārā,
Tārā is not only ‘leader of the caravans / who showeth the way to those who have lost it’, but one of her one hundred and eight names in the original Sanskrit is Dhruvā , a name probably borrowed, like many of her others, from the Brahminical figure of Durgā.”

Dharmachary Purna, ‘Tārā: Her Origins And Development,

The Western Buddhist Review, vol. 2, p. 6.

Tārā’s role as a ferry woman and guiding star decreased in popularity in modern Buddhism, the deity being more popularly identified with the roles of Mother and Saviouress. Such a phenomenon will be also pointed out in the next myth account, as well as other major correspondences.

Aphrodite is as popular a figure in the Western imaginary as Tārā is in the Hindu-Tibetan lore. In the myth concerning her birth, presented for the first time by Hesiod in the Theogony (176-200 BC), the god Kronos castrates his father Ouranos on behalf of his mother Gaia, who complains about Ouranos daily visits for sexual intercourse, permanently impregnating her. As Ouranos descends to lie over Gaia, Kronos severs his father’s erected phallus, throwing it out in the air. The phallus falls in the stormy sea, issuing a great amount of foam, from where the beautiful Aphrodite is born, rising in a clamshell as a fully grown woman, a maiden.

Aphros, from the Greek, means foam, also alluding to semen24 and linking the goddess's main identity to the prima materia of her birth. Although Hesiod doesn’t mention the sea to have fall pregnant, Aphrodite rises from the interaction between the oceanic waters and the sky’s fertile principle - Ouranos being the god of the sky - thus conferring her both the status of divinity of the sea and of the skies.

To understand the core of Aphrodite’s mythos, it is appropriate to look deeper into her generative principle, as it was done with Tara’s birth myth above. The name ouranos - from the Greek “sky” or “heaven”, alluding to his occupation as “Lord of the Heavens” - is suggested by researchers in Proto-Indo-European mythology as deriving from the root ṷérs, “to rain”, giving Ouranos the function of “rain-maker”, or “ṷérso”, meaning “the one standing on high”. In both cases, Ouranos is located high up, interacting with the human realm from the skies. The act of “making rain” as deploying something from above presents some similarity with his charged phallus falling from the sky, connecting both via the “moist” quality present in the rainmaking and the semen/urine in the ceased phallus.

Being so deeply connected to the sacred water principle, Aphrodite is related to “all things moist”, being natural that the goddess should preside, more than her popularly known Mields of love and sex, also over maritime affairs. In the pre-Hellenic period, Aphrodite’s main role was that of protectress of ships and seafarers, providing smooth sailing, guidance and safe return to the land - her first temples being naturally found in coastal areas in the Mediterrenean.

Honoring the title of Aphrodite Ouranos, the heavenly goddess, and relating to her connectedness with ocean and heaven, the brightest body in the night sky, apart from the Moon, was named after her - the planet Venus. Having its orbit studied since ancient times, the Greeks understood the behavior of the planet and its two different apparitions, identifying it as a morning and evening star. Due to its prominence in the night sky and predictable behavior, the planet Venus was one of the most important and used elements in traditional navigation.

Aphrodite’s myth is widely accepted in the academic field to have been adapted from the Near Eastern cult of Ishtar or Astarte. A dominant Mother Goddess figure in the ancient world, Astarte presided over fertility and sex, war and the heavens since the early third millennium BC. To her was also credited the qualities of the planet Venus, as well as being the daughter of Anu, the god of the skies.

“Of course, as the ‘Queen of Heaven’, as the planet Venus, as the Morning Star and the Evening Star full of grace, Ishtar - Ashtar - Aphrodite is also in charge of the sea. She dispels the stormy clouds and calms the waters. And she is the patroness of sailors in their advent across the seven seas.” Miroslav Markovich, ‘From Ishtar to Aphrodite’, The Journal of Aesthetic Education, vol. 30, no2. (Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1996), p. 48.

Although not apparently connected, the myths of Tārā's and Aphrodite’s births - taking into consideration their birth elements, birth-attributed qualities and early cult characteristics - present some illuminating symbolic correlations, perhaps offering an alternative path to the contemplation of the psychic resonances of Eastern and Western cosmologies and the functions they display in mythic storytelling.

The first notable similarity between the two myths is the presence of salt in the solution that gives birth to the goddesses, a solution which is provoked, in both cases, by a sub-product of the male’s body. Taking a symbolic approach, the action of the divine male principle, by producing a human-like fluid, infuses the water surface (thus mimicking the male-female act of conception), giving rise to a fully grown, attractive, female-like figure.

It is remarkable that both goddesses have a personified male source but no distinguishable female one, leaving the impression that the watery ground touched or produced by the male’s fluids is a womb element, thus composing the active and passive elements required for conception. Following the approach in which salt is the goddesses’ prima materia - as Avalokitesvara’s tears and Ouranos’ semen/sea foam -, the alchemical conception that salt binds spirit and matter together, resonates. While Paracelsus would identify salt directly with the soul, Jung explained salt as a cosmic principle, drawing the images of “the spirit, the turning of the body into light (the albedo), the spark of the anima mundi, imprisoned in the dark depths of the sea”. It is no surprise that Aphrodite rises from the depths of a stormy sea and Tārā, from a pond. In both myths, the allegory is very similar: the divine active sparkle, in relationship with the receptive earthly ground, is ripe to give birth to the ensouled being, who inhabits both worlds and is aware of it. The newborn being blossoms in its full maturity, in perfect balance with the shadowy depths and angelic heights. The awareness suggested by the conditions of their births implies that the goddesses are already born with pure wisdom, thus taking another quality of the alchemical salt, Sapientia - perfect knowledge. The Jungian analyst Jeffrey Raff, in his book Jung and the Alchemical Transformation, discusses salt as being the center of life, thus enabling the suggestion that both birth myths describe the coming of one’s own ensouled maturity - or in Junguian jargon, individuation - by mirroring the human potentiality of achieving such a state - and not merely describing the birth of a Mother Goddess.

It is important to refrain for a moment to take in James Hillman’s advice in dealing with the alchemical salt: one must be conscious of its metaphorical and philosophical nature. Salt is the distinguishable quality of the human body’s excretion - blood, sweat, tears and urine -, it is what humbles the human being to its corporality, exposing the experience of inhabiting a perishable body. Salt conserves, gives flavor, stings, cleanses and heals, although one should use just a pinch or two of it, as too much salt is unbearable. Salt is soluble, it takes the shape water takes, but it also crystallizes; it is not flammable, but in contact with certain substances, it can produce light. Salt makes things tangible, recognizable - salt initiates. Thus, a mere suggestion of salt in a myth is enough to take the spectator to a distinct realm of experience.

Physiologically speaking, every fluid in the human body - among it tears and semen - is composed of electrolytes, popularly known as salty ions as they are rich in sodium chloride. These electrolytes serve to create electricity that powers the brain and consequently, all bodily functions. In Alchemical Psychology, James Hillman describes the attempt made by the German alchemist Hennig Brand in 1669 to produce the Philosopher’s Stone, where, by cooking urine with sand, he discovered - by accident and for the first time - the chemical element phosphorus. One of the phosphorus's properties, by slow interaction with oxygen, is to produce light. Therefore, by adopting the metaphorical correspondence between microcosm and macrocosm, alchemical salt took also the quality of lumen naturalis, light of nature.

Following this though, it is curious to notice that both myths, by relating to salt, produce figures that will represent celestial bodies of singular brightness. If one would attempt to translate the complex mythical storytelling to a simple formula or scheme, it could resemble the following, where Carl Sagan’s famous saying “We’re made of star stuff” could also reverberate:

Salt + Water = Soul (+ Oxigen) = Light

Expanding the formula: alchemical salt, which has been already explained, is added to water, “the reservoir of all potentialities of existence; they [the waters] precede every form and sustain every creation”. Salt plus water, therefore, produces the alchemical solutio, the dissolving process, turning a solid into liquid:

“For the Alchemist, solutio often meant the return of differentiated matter to its original undifferentiated state - that is, to prima materia. Water was thought as the womb and solutio as a return to the womb for rebirth.” Edward Edinger, Anatomy Of The Psyche: Alchemical Symbolism In Psychotherapy. (Chicago: Open Court Publishing Company, 1991), p. 67.

By returning the matter to its original undifferentiated state (soul), and interacting slowly with oxygen (embodied divine person), that being produces light, therefore resembling a star. Death, rebirth and eternity are enclosed in a paradoxical tale. The producing of light, albedo in the Alchemical jargon, reaches the salt’s potentiality. In a true alchemical spirit, Brand’s experiment reenacted Tārā's and Aphrodite’s births.

As mentioned before, archeological evidence suggests that the early cults of Tārā and Aphrodite were linked to the fact that they personify two of the most important guiding stars in ancient Indo-European navigation. By locating both cults, in their early stages, to coastal areas, their figures took prominent significance in maritime affairs. Therefore, the elements of salt, water and stars were yet to be joined with one last element: the vessel or container. In Alchemy, the vessel is of utmost importance, as any substance, to be manipulated, needs a basin. In the alchemical soul-making work, the vessel is identified as one’s body, the carrier of substances. Hence, the maritime cult of Aphrodite and Tārā represents a historical metaphor, where the ship or vessel carries the substance at work, the travelers or sailors, through unknown seas - an image for their own psyches and/or the collective psyche.

Woman = body = vessel = world

Erich Neumann, The Great Mother. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), p. 43.

Although examining both myths from a symbolic point of view, it shouldn’t be undermined that both goddesses also act as emanations of the archetypal Great Mother. Tārā has been already contextualized in this role, yet Aphrodite, not readily recognized in such category, has been surely related to the Great Mother’s archetype in her early cult. As is evidenced in Marija Gimbutas’ The Living Goddess, Aphrodite lost all of her functions “but love and sexuality”, taking a new image that diminished the power of the old European goddesses, assuming traits of weakness and frailty. However, in Aphrodite’s early days, Mother Goddess was her chief title.

The symbolism of the mother carrying the yet-to-be-born child in her own body is what confers the female figure its quality of vessel. Following this clue, it becomes natural to a mythic figure that aims to represent the enlightened and individuated self, to be given - within the specifics of its own genesis - the body of a mature, attractive and healthy woman. Her body image, as much as all the other details already described, are dependent of each other, for the archetypal storytelling to work. The vessel and the substance, also interdependent to be signified, represents the whole world, not in an earthly perspective, but in a macrocosm/microcosm relationship.

In this way, it might be illuminating to look at some specific traits in each of the goddesses characters by exploring the characteristics of the heavenly bodies they came to personify:

Vessel + Light = Star

Curiously enough, Polaris - the North or Pole Star as it is popularly known - is linked, in a metaphorical way, to another property of the alchemical salt: that of being the center of the world. Such a quality alludes to the salt’s property of embodiment by bringing matter and spirit together in order to manifest the soul - the individual’s soul in relationship to the world’s soul, drawing again from the microcosm/macrocosm perspective. As it has been already described, Polaris receives such a title due to its proximity to the celestial North Pole in the night sky, resembling to be stationary as its apparent movement revolves slowly around the Earth’s axis. Polaris is part of the Ursa Minor constellation and possesses distinguishable shininess, making it a reliable navigational point, as its position in the night sky is constant. In Tibet, as already mentioned, the star also denotes the direction of the sacred Mount Kailash, corresponding to the Hindu-Tibetan axis mundi, Mount Meru. By designating the qualities of metaphorical salt to the Pole Star in linking it to Tārā, the stable nature of the axis, both present in the star and in the mountain, is again reiterated.

Stability, though, is a core value in the Buddhist tradition, as one’s goal in life is to achieve perfect balance, only possible by acquiring sapientia, salt’s quality of perfect knowledge. Reliability is also a quality echoed in all of the already described elements: the North Star’s constancy, the organizing element of the center and the unchangeable nature of the soul. Following these characteristics, by evoking Tārā in her quality of the North Star is to evoke the qualities of stability, reliability and perfect knowledge, all qualities inherent to the soul in the Tibetan Buddhist philosophy. In this way, to tell the myth of her birth is to invoke the same qualities, translated, in storytelling, to specific symbols.

The planet Venus, associated with Aphrodite, came to be regarded as a star in popular jargon due to its intense luminosity in the night sky. Venus' navigational function, as already described, draws from its proximity to the Sun, presenting an essential difference from the nature of the North Star’s function. While Polaris is constant, Venus is constantly changeable, following closely the Sun’s ecliptic and appearing, through cycles, in the morning or in the evening sky. The two words are significant here: while “constantly” suggests “soul”, drawing from Tārā and the Pole Star, “changeable” denotes the experience of the soul inhabiting the body, or in the words of the biologist Merlin Sheldrake: “We are patterns of stability within a sea of change”.

Aphrodite is commonly remembered for her passions, revealing a very mundane face of the divine - however, Venus as a star, denoting soul and eternity, serves to anchor the divinity contained in the living experience. Through Hillman, one learns that “desire” is also a quality of the alchemical salt, “salt desire itself”. A common organic experience, the more one eats salt, the more one craves for it: “(...) in extremis, salt eats its own nature” - a very illuminating image to illustrate Aphrodite’s psyche. Given it, desire - Aphrodite’s “salt mine” symbolized by the semen in her genesis - denotes the experience of the vessel in the world, a fundamental component of soul-making, as without the awareness created by such experience, one is not able to identify soul that commands it. Again, the commandant, chief of the caravan, are Tārā and Aphrodite. Soul and experience are cyclic.

Concluding the present analyses, the approximation of two apparently disconnected goddesses via similar elements concerning their genesis myths has been effective to illuminate the core principles of both stories, locating them in the archetypal realm. This realm is shared by men through storytelling, and informs, unconsciously, similar fields of experience. The re-signification of mythic storytelling elements can play an effective role in aiding men to re-engage in a participation mystique, by learning how to consciously leave the realm of literalism in order to experience life in a more significant way. Such necessity is informed by Analytical and Depth Psychology and chiefly carried by Carl Jung and James Hillman, with the aid of mythic storytelling analyses, notably conducted by Mircea Eliade. This essay was an attempt to exercise such a recommendation.

Essay written by Thais Coca for the Cultural Astronomy and Astrology Master's program at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David.