Ascalon
Justified & Ancient
- Joined
- Jul 3, 2009
- Messages
- 1,560
There are many depictions in ancient writings and paleo-art of half-man, half-beast hybrids. But what is generally thought of these is that they are symbolic.
In alchemical texts, among others, there is the depiction of half man on top and half beast below. This was usually taken to mean an adept who had achieved the level of mind development to have the beast aspect of his nature under complete control, giving way to more divine insights. It was a bit like saying wizard, level 7 (or whatever).
The other depictions, say as in Egyptian dynastic art, was for the head of an animal on a human body. This usually signified the human form of the god represented by the animal, and was again a fusion of divine with the human, rather than the animal per se. A good example would be Anubis, the jackal headed god, or Tuaeret (Sobek), the crocodile headed god.
I think later interpretation was to assume that what was meant by these depictions was some form of hybrid, as the idea of the divine became more, well, profane.
In pure terms, as recent DNA research has shown, we share a lot of DNA with all of our ancestors, and many creatures living today. We are in our current form, arguably, a hybrid of many animals from our past, with elements of our reptillian ancestors still well marked in both our DNA and our physiology. But actually have scales or slitted irises? No.
In alchemical texts, among others, there is the depiction of half man on top and half beast below. This was usually taken to mean an adept who had achieved the level of mind development to have the beast aspect of his nature under complete control, giving way to more divine insights. It was a bit like saying wizard, level 7 (or whatever).
The other depictions, say as in Egyptian dynastic art, was for the head of an animal on a human body. This usually signified the human form of the god represented by the animal, and was again a fusion of divine with the human, rather than the animal per se. A good example would be Anubis, the jackal headed god, or Tuaeret (Sobek), the crocodile headed god.
I think later interpretation was to assume that what was meant by these depictions was some form of hybrid, as the idea of the divine became more, well, profane.
In pure terms, as recent DNA research has shown, we share a lot of DNA with all of our ancestors, and many creatures living today. We are in our current form, arguably, a hybrid of many animals from our past, with elements of our reptillian ancestors still well marked in both our DNA and our physiology. But actually have scales or slitted irises? No.