TANTRIC PHILOSOPHY IN ANCIENT POMPEII
WATCH THE FULL VIDEO HERE for all the pictures and images about my research
***
I visited Pompeii for the first time many years ago, unaware of the visions that I know today, and which the studies that I made of Indian philosophy and esotericism have gradually illuminated with new colours and understanding.
In fact, one day, during a lesson on Indian philosophy, my professor very simply told us that the relationship between the so-called “ancient Rome” and the culture of India was very close, so much that both in Rome and in Pompeii there were Indian quarters, inhabited by brahmins, the ancient Indian sages and priests, who taught their philosophy directly in Rome, often as selected tutors and sought-after masters.
It was not for nothing that Alexander the Great had tried to bring a gymnosophist he met in the northen area of Gandhara from his expedition to India, and it is not for nothing that in Pompeii there is a very famous mosaic dedicated to Alexander the Great…
My professor also told us that, in the so called “Gabinetto Segreto” (secret cabinet), a secret section of the National Archaeological Museum of Naples where you can find specific erotic and sexual collections of objects from Roman time, there is a statue of the Indian goddess Lakshmi, found right in a villa in Pompeii.
The Cabinet occupies rooms 62 and 65, on the mezzanine floor of the museum.
So let’s start right here…
Venturing among the clues that strongly connect Roman culture (Pompeii in particular) to ancient Indian tantric culture
Lakshmi Pompeiana
Here is a picture of the famous Lakshmi Pompeiana. Let’s look at its characteristics.
The female figure is naked and richly adorned with jewels, flanked by two other female figures in smaller proportions.
On her forehead she wears a diadem and on her chest a rich necklace with a typical wavy shape, she wears many rings on her wrists and ankles. Her hair is long, in a hairstyle that reaches the waist, and hair is also richly decorated.
Lakshmi, wife of Vishnu, expresses the archetype of abundance, prosperity, fecundity.
Is this lady really Lakshmi?
The features and accessories are in fact similar to those of Indian Lakshmi, in particular to some other Indian statues found in Afghanistan, a symptom that the communication route was very active.
Actually if we look at other representations of Indian Lakshmi, we can find the same type of jewellery and necklaces.
Among other things, in this statue Lakshmi is holding a pine cone, the same pine cone of the statues of ancient Mesopotamia and which we will discuss later in detail.
Moreover…. the flower on the bracelet on Mesopotamian Tammuz’s wrist is the same one found on Indian statues.
What does official archeology say about this specific Lakshmi statue found in Pompei?
“The importance of the discovery was immediately perceived because, in addition to documenting the possible shipowner activity of the owner of the house (also confirmed by the discovery of some drawings of ships and graffiti in a cubicle), it shows how extensive the trade routes were to the East at that time.
However, the discovery of a hole above the head would suggest a different use of the object, a handle for a toilet bowl or perhaps a support for some piece of furniture.
There is also an inscription in Kharoshthi (an ancient North Indian language) at the base of the Pompeii statuette (the letter śi, like śi in Siva). This suggests that it may have originated from the northwestern regions of India, Pakistan or Afghanistan, or at least passed through these areas. Since the Pompeii statuette was necessarily made before 79 AD, and produced in Gandhara, this fact would suggest that the Begram ivories found in Afghanistan also actually date back to this date”.
It appears evident that the connections between Rome and these areas were close, but really very, very close. Fact that in general is not emphasized by history books at all.
The Faun and the Nymph or Shiva and Parvati?
We continue with another interesting element, always concerning the aspect of sexual representations, the faun and the nymph:
The position of the faun’s hand on the nymph’s breast is very indicative, because it exactly recalls the statues of Siva and Shakti (or Shiva and Paravati),or Vishnu and Lakshmi in the identical position.
There are so many of these statues everywhere in India. I saw one of them even in Lahore Museum and many examples can be found in Khajuraho temple.
It is evident that there is no need to make comments, it is as the fresco imitated the positions of the Indian statues in the “Roman” way.
The Phallus or the Lingam?
It is known that the symbol of Pompeii is the phallus, but why is a phallus the symbol of Pompeii? Because in Pompeii you can actually find phallus everywhere.
When I visited Pompei the first time the guide told me (quite superficially) that phalluses were an indication of brothels… but phalluses are really everywhere, even on the streets, in private houses, so maybe Pompeii was a city made up only of whorehouses?
Some scholars tell about a city whose inhabitants were adoring Priapus, son of Dionisus and were, lascivious and obscene, prey to unbridled Dionysian rites… but was it really like that?
How could such a beautiful, thriving, harmonious and prosperous city be able to exist and develop abundance for such a long time? Perhaps there is something missing in this interpretation…
More likely phalluses were an integral part of a culture that lived sexuality serenely, in direct connection (as it should be) with abundance, nature, seasonal cycles, with fertility, in short, as a natural part of the human experience, without obscenity, without shame and without hiding it, as is the case today instead to better control people.
Sexuality is the most powerful energy possessed by human beings, it is not for nothing that we are capable of creating a new life, of being co-creators, and if we do not learn to know it and be aware of its power we remain at the animal stage, being controlled by it.
So maybe wasn’t the city of Pompeii inhabited by free men and women because they were capable of knowing sexual energy in depth, of not being dominated by it, in order to be able to elevate themselves towards a superior spirituality beyond basic instincts, just as philosophy taught in India (and then in Greece)?
It seems that in Pompeii, as still in Bhutan nowadays, for example, the phallus was used precisely to educate people about something that is part of life: coupling, copulation.
Even today in Bhutan we find coloured phalluses displayed in full view on the doors of the houses.
And this images do not transmit any kind of obscene or offensive effect to us, on the contrary, they transmit the presence and memory of the sacred parts of our body that are responsible of creation of new life and transformation.
The more coupling and sex become forbidden, hidden, private, the more it becomes obscene, shameful, aggressive, unnatural, sick.
On the culture of sexuality in India, in addition to the well-known Kamasutra, which everyone knows, we also have the tantric rituals of Maithuna, and furthermore the extraordinary representations of the Indian temple of Khajuraho and the temple of the Yoginis of Chausath.
TANTRIC PHILOSOPHY: A RECENT PHILOSOPHY DONATED BY LORD SHIVA AT THE BEGINNING OF KALI YUGA
Let us remember that Tantra was born just like a recent philosophy in India, to help the human being to cross the Kali Yuga, the age of materialism. The great masters wanted to give a very powerful means of awareness (and it is no coincidence that it is connected in the school of the left hand with sexual energy), to remain vigilant observers even in the darkness of the storm of ignorance of our age.
THE SECRET CABINET OF ARCHEOLOGICAL MUSEUM OF NAPLES AND THE EROTIC SCENES
Together with the phallus, we also combine the representations of Pompeii with an erotic background, which are really many, and can be found again in the secret cabinet of the Archaeological Museum of Naples and the famous frescoes of the female “Dionysiac” initiations of the Villa dei Misteri, which have been strongly modified in the more explicit details concerning the phallic symbols by the restorations.
THE LARARIUM
These marvelous places are the keys to have a more complete vision about the culture of Pompei: a new Lararium was recently discovered, but there are many, also inside the Thermopolium (the restaurants).
Lararium was a sacred space inside the villa dedicated to rituals, for burning offers and praying, like inside the house of India, even nowadays, still exist the space of the sacred fire.
The word “Lararium” comes from Lares, the protectors of the house and family.
So a new Lararium was recently excavated and cleaned and here we find clearly all the symbols of abundance, fertility, sexual energy, duality, rebirth, kundalini, fractal.
We observe the snakes, we observe the pine cone, we observe the egg.
All typical symbols of India, too.
The guardian snakes (simbol of kundalini and symbol of the union between matter ans spirit) with long convoluted tails to the vertical votive column (with the eggs, or the offers or the Gayomards, connected with the Goddess of Snakes and Zoroastrism, and in the center the pine cone, the great symbol of ignition of universal energy and life, which we find not for nothing in the Vatican.
But are they really snakes? And what kind?
It seems that they have evident gills on the sides of their faces… And they don’t seem aggressive at all, on the contrary, they appear very nice and protective…
Perhaps the so-called “ancient Romans” had a very deep knowledge of ethology of snakes and reptiles, which we do not consider, or rather they represented an Axolotl, which also has the same pleasant smile, or in any case a member of the Sirenidae family, a salamander , an amphibian, a half-reptile, an asexual border being.
Or they are more kind of dragons, like the snakes of Medea, another kind of serpent sorceress, whose myth comes from Colchide, after the Black Sea, so they have a double crest on the head and under the chin…
On the other hand the serpent is also inside the symbol of Asklepios, son of Apollo (Latin, Aesculapius), and around the neck of Siva in India we find also snakes. In Chaldean and Arabic etymology, the words for “serpent” and “life” have a clear synergy. In Classical Greece, the Agathos Daimon was literally the “noble spirit”, a personal companion spirit ensuing health and good fortune.
And the Caduceus with 2 intertwined snakes also refers us to Hermes, and therefore to Hermaphroditus, son of Hermes and Aphrodite, a bisexual being, therefore once again to the idea of coupling as the human means to return to a unique original state, not separate, undivided, beyond the artificial polarity of human life (see the descriptions of love from Plato’s Phaedo in this regard).
PINE CONE AND FERTILITY
A few brief words on the pine cone, activator, attractor, fractal, always placed in the center between the two snakes on top of the caduceus or on top of the column. The pine cone is undoubtedly connected to the rites of Delphi in Greece, where it was called omphalos (om-phallus), the origin of life, again derived from the activation rituals of ancient Mesopotamia, where the so-called “tree of life” was created, a kind of symmetrical network, from which the Sephirot then derives, both more similar to an electric grid than to a tree, which was activated/inseminated through the pine cone.
And finally the column altars that perfectly resemble the Lingam, which was perhaps placed in the empty niches of the Lararium in the form of a phallus?
In any case, it does not seem appropriate to venture that in Pompeii there was a lascivious and obscene civilisation, on the contrary, the cultural level was certainly much advanced.
If there are any doubts left, let’s take a look at the Thermopoliums, the restaurants and taverns of Pompeii where nowadays we can find perfect Indian-type tandoor ovens, today still there in front of our eyes.
Thank you for following the story of Pompeii up to here.
The advanced civilisations of the world certainly had a common origin and Pompeii is a proof of this prosper past.
Giulia Maria Miscioscia
all rights reserved ©
