We emerged with a triad of colour, red, white and black, as the first symbols of our life's needs and later to become the three most important colours of Alchemy.
According to standard orthodox black was emblematic of death and darkness, milky or semen white of new life and red of the blood of fertility or war. Although we will reveal in “The Serpent Grail” (www.serpentgrail.com) a deeper meaning behind these enigmatic colours. Early man developed his belief systems over a vast period of time, slowly growing the subtle power base of religious authority. These ideas fertilised and the vast spread of these ideas began. But this did not happen in isolation, as standard science would have us believe. This spread of ideas evolved in earnest and built up into a vast power base, which differed from the normal political or royal powers, in that it was to become a spiritual power-base much like the original Catholic Church: the church that can be found in most, if not all, of the countries of the world. As the cultures, politics and historical backgrounds of every country differ vastly, the church base simply takes on some of the local characteristics and blends in; so much so that in future historical writings we may never know that they were there. And yet the religious power of this church has stamped its authority on the various locales of the world, sometimes to their benefit, but not always in the best of ways.
The church influences the minds of the people, changing the history of the country without being held responsible for it. This is real power: to hold it without being accountable, to have the knowledge for yourself and to use that knowledge for whatever means you wish, regardless of the longer term goals; to have as members royalty, politicians, philosophers, warriors or the military and the masses. Exactly how many church leaders become politicians, kings and queens or great warriors is debatable, but is not as many as those already in power who become members of the church and can become influenced by their spiritual leaders. It is the secular leaders who are blamed for the woes of society, throughout history - not the religious leaders. These religious leaders are canonised, becoming unrecognisable saints. The Power of Church seen in the architecture In 46,000 BC, a Neanderthal man was buried in the south of what is now France. His remains were found in a cave and his body had been packed with red ochre clay. This substance has become known as the 'blood of the earth', and it is believed that this style of burial was a symbolic returning of the body to the earth from whence it came; a re-entering of the blood red womb of Mother Earth. Here we have a very different picture from the perceived view of Neanderthals.
This highly sophisticated ritual shows a remarkable understanding of the cycles of life and death: to rise up from the earth and return once again. If we take one of the future meanings of red ochre into account and work backwards to this find, we can say that it is symbolic of what the gods used to make man and therefore by stuffing the corpse in such a way it is symbolic of giving new life to the body and therefore a type of reincarnation or rebirth in the afterlife or ancestor home. This was the beginning of the rituals, which would encircle the globe, the rituals, which would take hold of the minds of men and be used against them.
In 6,400 BC, a young Indian child was buried at the settlement known as Koster in southern Illinois, America. The body had been dusted with red ochre. Asking the gods to give the prematurely dead child another chance and dusting him or her with the symbol of rebirth could have helped the mind of the gods in their decision to offer the child new life in the 'land of the ancestors' or paradise.
In Swaziland, the buried skeleton of a child was discovered, which had been returned to the earth and dusted with ashes and red ochre. Later beliefs from this and nearby areas held to the idea of rebirth and reincarnation, so there is no reason to assume this belief was not held earlier