Note 65 — Chapter XIII · The Symbolism of Jade

The oldest known form of the suckling legend is found in the Pyramid Texts of Ancient Egypt. When the soul of the Pharaoh went to the Otherworld he was suckled by a goddess or by the goddesses of the north and south. The latter are referred to in the Texts as “the two vultures with long hair and hanging breasts”.65 Here the vultures take the place of the cow-goddess Hathor. In Troy the cow-mother, covered with stars, becomes the star-adorned sow-mother.66 Demeter had a sow form and Athene a goat form, and other goddesses had dove, eagle, wolf, bitch, &c., forms. The Chinese tigress-goddess is evidently a Far Eastern animal form of the Great Mother who suckles the souls of the dead and the abandoned children who are destined to become notables. Thus behind the wind-god, in the Chinese Fung-shui system, we meet with complex ideas regarding the source of the “air of life”, and the source of the food-supply. The Blue Dragon of the East is the Naga form of the Aryo-Indian Indra,67 the rain-controller, the fertilizer, who is closely associated with Vayu, the wind-god; the dragon is the thunderer, too, like Indra. The close association of the tiger- and dragon-gods in the Fung-shui system may account for the custom of decorating jade symbols of the tiger with the thunder pattern.68