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We have considered how Primordial Being recapitulates the inner structure of deep temporality in the Primal Scene of the Indo-Europeans. We then saw how the transformation from the mytho-poetic epoch to the metaphysical epoch has preserved that structure, allbeit in a transmorgified form. Finally, we have seen what occurs when Conceptual Being is raised up as the metaphysical principle par excellence. The mirror of Being cracks, and in those cracks, we see the primal pattern of our own inner being flower before our eyes. This leads us to consider the meaning of Being more carefully. This can only be done by going back and looking at the prehistory of Being now that we have sketched the beginning and end of its history. The interesting thing that this prehistory tells us, is that the fragmentation of Being is just a return of Being to its nascent state. Being was fragmented to begin with. Even Primordial Being, with its inner structure, was relatively unified in relation to the prehistory of Being. This brings home to us the stages of the becoming of Being itself, and emphasizes its nature as a fated thing in the world like everything else.

It turns out, that Being in all Indo-European languages, is the most irregular verb. Its irregularity stems from the combination of several different roots into a single configuration which would normally be held by a single root. This is not as apparent in Greek as in other Indo-European languages like Old English. Yet, it is true of all the Indo-European languages. Several different roots meaning to remain, abide, persist or rest were combined together to compose the single verb "to be." In this we see the process by which the verb "to be" was artificially constructed out of other verbal roots. The process of constructions is still visible, showing that the verb "to be" is of a fundamentally different kind from other verbs in Indo-European languages. This difference was the attempt to construct an artificial verb with the sense of abiding, remaining or clinging to existence. As we have seen, one may only cling to existence by being unjust to other beings. Therefore, we have to question why our Indo-European forefathers undertook this strange and unsettling linguistic construction project which distorted our view of existence.

The construction project is seen as even more amazing because almost no other non-Indo-European languages have a concept or verb equivalent to "to be." The linguistic concepts brought together under the umbrella of Being are normally independent in other languages, if they exist at all. Prehistorical Being is an achievement which brings together several key concepts and unites them loosely under the umbrella of a single verb. It is an achievement which is unique in the development of languages and stands out because the evidence of construction is still visible. While the Egyptians, Sumarians, Chinese and peoples of the Indus Valley were building their civilizations, the Indo-Europeans were busy learning to ride horses and constructing the verb "to be." This was their great accomplishment like the pyramids in Egypt, the ziggurats in Sumaria, the rebuilt capital cities in China, and other monuments to human endeavor of that age. It is of passing interest to note that the Sumarians speak of their great enemy as the people of KUR which means both wilderness and hades. It turns out that over the mountains which the Sumarians designated as the home of the KUR, lay the probable homeland of the Indo-Europeans between the Caspian and the Black Seas. Of course, there is no known relation between the "kurgan" peoples and the KUR that were the enemies of the Sumarians. Yet, we can see a fundamental difference between civilization building undertaken by the Sumarians with their unique language and the civilization destruction carried out by the armed horsemen who also had a unique language in a completely different respect, relating to the fusion of various roots for abiding into a single verb. The Sumarian people's verb has only the usual sense of equality and is the same word that stands for the arts of civilization. It is named "me." Thus everything that the Sumarians valued as part of their civilization was rolled up in their word "me." The Kurgans, perhaps imitating them, built a single verb for possession which signified all the things they planned to take from more civilized peoples and keep. The many surges out of the steppes of the wild horsemen attest to their project of seizing and keeping the wealth of others. The verb "to be" was the underlying foundation in their language for this project oriented toward rape, pillaging and burning. Kurgan peoples have done injustice on a global scale to other peoples who did not have the crucial technology of horseback warfare since the dawn of time . They were the Centaurs, seen by peoples who did not understand until it was too late, that men could get on top of horses and control them as the basis for fighting. They were not some other creatures which were a combination of man and horse. The Kurgen people, the so-called mound builders, made the biggest land grab of prehistoric times, taking the whole of the known world, spreading from their homeland to Persia and India, to Mongolia, and into Europe. They were only stopped by the Sahara desert from going into Africa. Thus, there was a fundamental relation between the acquisition by the Kurgans of the world wresting it away from all others, and their artificial construction of the verb "to be" which embodies the ethic of injustice by clinging to existence at the expense of all others. This inner relation between global domination, still apparent in the descendents of the Kurgans, still active today, and the artificial construction of a special verb to embody clinging and craving is very significant. We need to understand this now because it has provided the underlying dynamic of our own history for the past six thousand years or so. Now it is important to understand because the will to power of global domination is running up against the limits of the finitude of the earth itself.

The connection of the Kurgan people with the Centaurs is also of interest. Especially the difference pointed out by Kirk between Cheiron and the other centaurs.

The Centaurs were chiefly at home in the mountains bordering the plain of Thessaly. The Centaur Cheiron, "Sage" and "friendly to men" according to Euripieds and Pindar, "justest of the Centaurs" according to Homer, lived in a Cave on Mount Pelion. The Homeric phrase is ambiguous: Chieron and one other Centaur, Pholus, were just and law-abiding, but the rest of them had nothing to do with justice, they were anarchic and uncontrollable, wild figures always to run amok.¹

In the Centaurs, we have the view of the non-equestrian peoples of their first contact with the Kurgan peoples preserved. The Kurgan peoples appeared wild and lawless, given to rape, murder and drunkenness and the breaking of every law. Yet, among the Centaurs, were a few who held to justice and upheld the laws of man. Cheiron was the case in point.

Cheiron has a totally different role from the others. He is neither fierce and unpredictable nor wild and uncultivated. On the contrary, he is the gentle and gifted teacher par excellence. Among his pupils who came to live and study with him in his cave on Mount Pelion were Achilles, Actaeon, Asclepius and his sons, Jason (Iason, "the healer") and Aristaeus, the son of Apollo and the nymph Cyrene. Isolated sources add others to the list, Hercules and Dionysus themselves as well as Medea's sons, Medeius and Teiresias. Membership in the group depended either on association with Cheiron in other episodes, or with medicine or prophecy, or in the case of Dionysus with wine, fertility, and mountain-roaming (which properly, however, belong to the other centaurs and not Cheiron). For Cheiron was master of nearly all the arts: hunting, spearmanship, riding (!), music, prophecy, and in particular healing -- certain herbs were named after him and were found in the glades of Pelion near his cave. Needless to say he has none of the ardor indiscrete of the other Centaurs, but is respectably married to the nymph Chariclo; his sons were relatively undistinguished, but his grand daughter was that Melanippe known as "the wise." In later tradition he was seen as a philosopher and in this respect is similar to the wise Silenus.²

Kirk sees the Centaurs as embodying the nature/culture or nomos/physis dichotomy through the contrast between man and beast, and between the behavior of Cheiron and the rest of the Centaurs. Dumazil associates them with the Indian Gandharva and Iranian Gadareva which where horsemen of Varuna. Kirk is persuaded that they are primarily nature deities representing mountain streams. However, I believe that the Centaur preserves first contact between the equestrian Krugans and other peoples. Other peoples saw a single being which was a combination of horse and man who was ruthless and wild. When Robert Bly led us to return to our Wild Man inside, it is primarily a connection to this destructive energy of the Kurgans that he is, perhaps unwittingly, attempting to make contact in order to make us real men again.

Yet, although most of the Centaurs are wild and destructive, there are a few among them who are philosophers or sages, like Democritus or Heraclitus who teach man the arts associated with equestrian life and make him noble. The Chinese believed that there could be no civilization for man without the horse. There is no doubt that over and against the tremendous strife and destruction brought by the Centaurs, there was also a special element of nobility, which also became visible, which other peoples recognized and wanted to attain themselves. As Heraclitus has said, out of strife comes a hidden harmony. Thus, in the Indo-European heritage, there is both good and bad mingled. The good of enhanced nobility and excellence in warfare, and the skills of equestrian life, must be balanced by the destructiveness and will to power of global domination. We must, therefore, be even-handed in our assessment, recognizing both of these aspects which exemplify the nomos and physis dichotomy. The fact that Dionysus went to study with Chieron is very significant. It shows that the Centaurs have a special relation to the dying god who exemplifies fatedness. When Dionysus studies with Chieron, it is the ennobling of the wildness and destructiveness of the Centaurs by the movement to the opposite extremes. Fate travels from the chaos of the wild revelry to the refinement of philosophy.

In some ways, the philosopher sage of the Centaurs represents the concern of the Indo-Europeans with defining their quest. This concern may be seen in the preontological project of constructing the verb "to be" from separate verbal roots, to the articulation of Primordial Being, to the break from the mythopoietic into the metaphysical realm, and finally, to the substitution of Being for the Arche. The philosophy of Conceptual Being as Arche may be seen as the final culmination of a project begun thousands of years ago. Throughout the development of the Indo-European peoples, the articulation of Being has been the pinnacle of their achievements carried on stage by stage as both the Indo-Europeans and their odd concept of clinging to existence undergoes its fated developmental sequence. The will to power of the Kurgan peoples is expressed by their project of global domination as well as their project of designing Being.

In order to understand the Prehistorical Being, we will need to move back to a consideration of Old English rather than concentrating on the Greek roots of Western culture. The Greek Primordial Being represents the culmination of the long project of constructing the artificial verb "to be" as *es. Instead, to study the prehistory of Being, it is more conducive to study a language which more clearly exemplifies the rough hewn still partially fragmented state prior to the final culmination of this process that occurred in the Greek language and then subsequently was impressed on Latin and all the Romance languages. Old English is apt because it has special properties that allow us to study the process of fusion of roots and because it, rather than other Indo-European languages, has turned out to be the global language. Whether there is some relation between the special features of Old English and the global dominance of the English language rather than its other Indo-European cousins, is an open question.

In Old English, there are four roots which were merged to make the verb "to be." We can see the traces of these roots in the irregular construction of the verb "to be." Those separate roots are beon, eom, arean, and wesan. Old English has two complete and different parallel conjugations of the verb "to be." All other Indo-european languages have only one set. Thus, Old English represents an era in which there was not just one verb "to be," but two competing verbs from different roots. So Old English takes us back as far as we can go into the prehistory of Primordial Being. The Indo-European roots which were mixed at this point were as follows:

TABLE 24 Old English roots that make up Being
beon	*bheu	To be, exist, grow
erean	*er	To move, set in motion, to be exist
wesan	*wes3	To stay, dwell, pass the night with derivatives meaning "to be"
eom	*es	To be

The past tense is expressed using the root WESAN. The preterite is a past without a corresponding future tense. Thus, the past tense has the implication of completion, whereas the present tense, as the incomplete, is a combination of all three other roots. However, the root BEON, which has to do with growth and becoming, dominates as providing one full set of conjugations of the verb. The other set of conjunctions is composed of the *er root in the form of erat, and the *es root in the form of eom, is and sud. The blending of two roots in one set of conjunctions shows the tempering of the existence of the *es by a root meaning to move which indicated becoming in a way similar to beon. If we were to construct a picture, we would see the past as night and stasis, and the day as growth and movement in the present. The day is the specious present in which becoming happens while the night men rest and thus stay themselves until daybreak again. The combination of the *es and *er roots signify to exist and move, whereas the parallel *bheu means to grow.

As we know, the *es root won out in Greek and became the center of Primordial Being. However, in the prehistory of Primordial Being, all four roots worked together to define the sense of remaining and abiding which eventually became the core meaning of the artificial verb "to be." However, remaining and abiding was not just static; it encompassed the movement and growth of the day when becoming was visible as well as the completion and stasis of the night. It embraced both the positive and negative fourfold. It contained the core idea that to keep, one must change with the thing that one is keeping. Keeping is not merely hoarding. Keeping means to run along beside. It is herding, shepherding. So one must move and grow in order to keep. Keeping is in some sense "following," in the sense that to keep, one must change with the situation. This is much like the rider with his horse. The rider has to move with the animal in order to stay on it. The rider is in control as long as he, too, is moving in tune with his mount. The Kurgan clinging is a dynamic process not a static hoarding. The stasis occurs when the things themselves rest at night. By day the rider must move and grow with his possessions as do all nomads.

Of special interest to us is the parallel construction in the present tense. In a culture such as ours infused with Being, after six thousand or more years, the question arises how to escape from its pall. The fragmented nature of Being in its prehistory gives us a hint in which direction to seek escape. We are driven to ask the nature of the cracks in prehistorical Being. Those cracks could not be discerned in Primordial Being centered around the *es root. However, if we go back to Old English, we note that there are clear cracks between not only the complete and incomplete, but even within the incomplete. There is a crack between the becoming of growth (physis) and the becoming of the movement of existing things. That crack cannot itself have any Being whatsoever. In fact, we note that from the point of view of linguistic history, Parmenides was wrong. Being is not continuous but fragmented intrinsically. What was fragmented became the dynamic whole of Primordial Being, the empty whole of Conceptual Being, only to return to its fragmentation by producing the meta-level at the end of ontological metaphysics. So we are bound to ask, what is the nature of the prehistorical cracks in the verb "to be."

I would suggest that these prehistorical cracks are, in fact, our own escape route from the dominance and fascination with Being. They themselves are the only thing to which Being cannot be applied. They have no Being because they are the differentiating mechanism. They have appeared again now in the differences between the meta-levels of Conceptual Being. It is clear that the house of Being has a window or an escape hatch. The question is, what is the nature of that window? I would suggest that when we look at those cracks, we are face to face with the void. As the Buddha showed, the antidote for Being is the Void. Our escape route is to leave Being behind and enter the Void.

However, it is clear that even if the nature of the cracks themselves are the void, and that this window in Being is indeed the entrance to the void, that still the configuration of the cracks are meaningful. Before entering the void, it is necessary to attempt to comprehend the message of the configuration of the cracks in prehistorical Being. In this, we beg the question whether the roots chosen by the Centaur philosophers and sages have any meaning in relation to each other. We know that over all, they attempt to describe that dynamic clinging like that of the rider on horseback which the Kurgan people exhibited that led to global domination and their will to power. However, is there any other significance in the relation of the roots to each other?

This brings us to the consideration of Dumazil's hypothesis of the threefold structure of Indo-European society. He advances the hypothesis that Indo-European society had three classes: Nobel, Warrior, and Peasant. These each had their own special functions: magic and juridical sovereignty; physical force; and fecundity. He offers many interpretations of Indo-European mythology to substantiate this hypothesis, showing that the myths legitimized this social structure. We are unfamiliar with this structure because in the Greek case, the family of gods are of semitic, not Indo-European origin. The Greeks represented a synthesis of various influences as befits their position on the edge of the Indo-European lands. However, it is possible to see beneath this overlay of semitic gods to the underlying structures still embodied in Greek rituals as studied by Burkhart. In our case, we are most interested in the pure Indo-European mythological structure because it explains so much of the nature of the later Europeans behavior and culture. The semitic influences, first by adoption of the family structure to explain relations between gods, and then later with the introduction of Judeo-Christian influences, are important. But it is our contention here that they remain essentially superficial when contrast with the god structure which was originally developed by the Indo-Europeans themselves, and which reflected their social structure.

When we look at the structure of our Indo-European roots which combine to make the verb "to be," we see a striking parallel of the day side and its three roots with the social functions described by Dumazil. This indicates that these roots were not picked at random to combine into the developing artificial verb "to be" which gave rise to Primordial Being. This bears out our proposition that the cracks in Being are significant, not merely random crevices. Even if the nature of the cracks are VOID ultimately, there is still the fact that each crack is also a relation between those different sorts of Being that appear on either side. In this case, each crack is a relation between the four base roots out of which artificial Prehistorical Being is forged. We need to look more deeply into this matter of the connection between the cracks in Being and original Indo-European mythology.

Notice that the Greek verb for Being centers around the highest subroot *es in which it gathers three meanings related to reality, truth and identity. Note also that the "to move" subroot *er, if seen opposite to the *bheu subroot, could be seen to relate to the basic dichotomy of the metaphysical era between the Arche and the Physis. For Anaxamander and Thales, the Arche was always moving. It is only with Parmenides that the Arche is seen as frozen. * Bheu becomes the word Physis in Greek. This eternal movement of the Arche contrast to the growth and outpouring of the Physis is exactly what is embodied in the metaphysical era. In some ways then, the move from Primordial Being within the Mythopoetic to the Metaphysical can be seen as a move from *es to *er-*bheu. However, *es is itself encompassing three meanings: the real, the true and the one. It is, of course, the *es that Parmenides says is the unmoving one which he tries to reduce to its holoidal element alone. Parmenides forgets or leaves aside the other meanings which make Primordial Being such a rich constellation of concepts. Parmenides confers stasis on the *es which is a property of the *wes. *Wes also has the property of night. Parmenides' static Conceptual Being eclipses the Good. The Good is a root related to *es, namely *esu. It appears that Parmenides, in Conceptual Being, combined *es and *wes which are separated seemingly opposite (from our diagram at least) subroots of Being. The combination of *es and *wes produced the eclipse of *esu: the Good. *Er and *bheu come between *es and *wes. *Er is related to the earth as well as movement. Earth and Physis are closely related in our minds. Thus, it appears that Parmenides really accomplishes a reconfiguration of the subroots.

It is left to Empedocles and other clever sophists down through Western history to attempt to break this fatal rearrangement. It is almost as if Dionysian formlessness in the guise of *wes took over the highest part of Primordial Being without understanding the dynamic unity of Primordial Being. It is significant that in this takeover, the goddess who embodied fate was forgotten. So fate reappears as a static doom that blots out the sun of the Good. What we see here is a static clinging taking over from the dynamic clinging which fascinated the early Indo-Europeans. Static clinging is brittle and always fails fairly quickly. The dynamic clinging, on the other hand, is far more successful even if it is still a clinging. The old configuration of subroots embodies the concept of dynamic clinging.

It embodies the dynamic interplay of night and day. At night there is a dwelling -- a staying; man is separated from his horse. During the day growth and movement are visible. One grows along with ones horse. The colt and the boy becomes the warrior on his steed. They move together upon the earth and under the sky. The earth is constantly changing, but in the sky, are the stars that remain fixed in their relation to each other. In the sky, are all the lights: fixed stars and moving Sun and planets. These light the sky, known by the Chinese as Major and Minor Yin and Yang, have the same type of dynamic unity as Primordial Being. There is movement in the sky as well as on the earth. The difference is that in the sky there is an element of fixity that does not appear on the earth. It is no wonder that the Greeks associated the fixed stars in constellations with their gods. Those stars are seen in the night only. Thus, the fixity of the stars and the night do not have a common element. Planets, Sun and Moon can all be seen in the daylight. However, to combine the stasis of the night in which travel is almost impossible and the stasis of the fixed stars breaks the dynamic unity of the celestial objects.

The Good, *esu, is the overflowing bounty of what arises and then returns to the single source. The Good is the true, real and one because it is the manifestation of the single source in the in-time realm. The Good is one because the single source is one. The good is one because it is a single outpouring of different things -- variety. The single source is one because it is the unity from which the outpouring arises and to which it returns. As Anaxamander says, "That from which things arise is the same as That to which they return by necessity." The necessity is the destiny, fate, bondage of the things that arise and perish to their origin and goal. That necessity has been analyzed by Parmenides as having four aspects: bond, fate, justice and persuasion. Anaximander states the necessity in the second half-famous statement. Beings will give justice and by retribution for injustice in the ordinance of time. This means that justice will ultimately be done. The outpouring is intrinsically whole and men and jinn only postpone the making whole, to the realm of endless time by their injustices. The law that causes justice to be done both in time, and in endless time is called RTA (ASA) by the Indo-Europeans. RTA means cosmic harmony. The outpouring which arises from and returns to the single source is characterized by RTA. The outpouring must be made whole because oneness is the essential characteristic of the single source. In order to become worthy of return, wholeness must occur sooner or later. Only men and jinn deflect the course of the outpouring from wholeness. Wholeness is maintained by the Angels. Thus, the world of angels balance the works of men and jinn. When that balance is maintained in-time, it is manifest as RTA. When the balance is restored in endlesstime, it is retribution also carried out by the angels. When the balance is achieved in-time, then the three meanings of *es are manifest, ie truth, reality and oneness. Achieving the balance in-time, aligns those within the outpouring to the single source so that its attributes come to infuse what exists. What exists within the outpouring only does so by borrowing from the single source and by being guided by its necessity willingly. The trouble caused by men and jinn makes illusory divergences from what exists by right. The maintenance or RTA allows the differentiation of what exists from the flotsam and jetsam of illusion which will be washed away.

The whole of the outpouring in its arising and perishing is characterized by movement, *er. This is why it is easily associated with water in the Primal Scene of deep temporality and by Thales. It is also like water in that water always seeks the lowest point. The movement toward RTA is a movement of lowering one's self. Lowering one's self means giving precedence to the other. Giving precedence to the other is the way of avoiding injustice to others. So that water has an essential quality that if emulated by men and jinn, leads to the preservation by the opposite movement where those at their pinnacle of development and power attempt to stay on top of the heap -- playing the game "king of the mountain." One can only stay high by doing injustice to others. It is due to the unity of opposites that whatever seeks highness is eventually brought low, and whatever seeks lowness is eventually brought high. This is the meaning of "the meek shall inherit the earth." This balancing effect between holon opposites is the essential movement within the outpouring. By this movement, there is a partial maintenance of RTA in time that is completed in endlesstime.

Within the outpouring, there is the movement of the opposites. This movement of opposites occurs between growing things. Things arise, grow, reach their pinnacle of development, decline and perish. This whole process is characteristic of the outpouring which simultaneously is inpouring back toward the single source. The *es exemplifies the harmony of interpenetration. The *er movement of opposites exemplifies the harmony of mutual dependence which are related to the holon (whole of antithetic opposites) and the integra. The *bheu, growth or physis, exemplifies the harmony of the interaction as it forms the basis by producing the separate autonomous individuals that interact. Their interaction makes manifest the next higher level of harmony. The *wer of stasis -- static clinging -- exemplifies the lowest level of harmony logical consistency. Logical consistency posits static relations between things or ideas. These are maintained over time and checked constantly by verification. Logical consistency reduces to a "dwelling with" -- that is, the maintenance of a static clinging to a state of affairs.

Harmony, which is the RTA, is the positive side of the dynamic clinging. When we are oriented toward the *esu -- good -- and when we uphold the true and expose the real and affirm the one, as single source, then when we follow the part of water toward that is low, giving preference to others before ourselves, the RTA becomes manifest. It is the whole of virtue. However, when we use this dynamic harmonization for our own purposes in order to extend our control further than static clinging would allow, then harmony turns into its opposite. In Persia, the opposite of RTA, called ASA, was the DRUJ. The Indo-European root was probably *dher,1 meaning to make muddy or darkness from which came the Old English word deorc (dark) and the Old English word dros (dross) and the Old Norse world dregg (dreg). Note the similar sound of our word DRUG which, although possibly related to another source root, has come to embody in this time the meaning of *dher, i.e. addiction and destruction). Dynamic clinging, which is unjust and out of harmony, is the opposite of what is right (rht; i.e. RTA/ASA.

We can see that the Indo-Europeans originally had a concept of cosmic harmony preserved in our concept of right. The different roots combined into the verb "to be" exemplified the different levels of this harmony. All of these levels of harmony were fused into the single gestalt of Primordial Being under one root, *es, by the Greeks. The differentiation of Primordial Being into its eight elements preserves the levels of harmony expressed by the subroots still visible in Old English. When the Indo-Europeans domesticated the horse and learned to use it in war, this harmony was turned into its opposite, the dynamic clinging of the Druj. Zoroaster identified this as the enemy of the people of ASA (RTA). Matas has shown how this conflict between these two groups is expressed in the Rg Veda itself³. What is interesting is that each part of society had their part in the construction of Being. Each caste within Indo-European society had their associated root verb, and the unity of Primordial Being is made up from a contribution from each class. Thus, we can see that as a dynamic system, each part of the Indo-European caste system had their function in the clinging of the world to existence. The dynamic clinging necessary to ride a horse was converted into a way of clinging to everything else in existence. The will to power of global domination was the result. The wisdom of the ancient Indo-Europeans that saw harmony as the way to maintain what is right became the basis for doing great injustice. A terrible fate for us all.

It helps us to understand our situation and its deep roots to grasp this transformation of RTA into the DRUJ. Zoroaster called them the people of the Lie. They were identified with the warriors on horseback. Specifically, as Matas says, they were the worshipers of Indra who believed in the sacrifice of God. He points out that no other theology has the destruction of God rather than some primordial being as the cosmic initiating event. They were the Centaurs. Most of them were wild and murderous, but a few had access to the ancient harmony which was the opposite of the Druj. Zoroaster attempted to define the difference between the horsemen of the apocalypse and the horsemen like Cherion who understood harmony and did not turn it into its opposite like the Druj. However, it is important to recognize that beyond the real terror of the will to power of global dominating, there was a wisdom which recognized cosmic harmony and held to it. Great evil is the turning over to its opposite of Great Good. The eclipse of the sun of the Good by ontology has its roots deeper in the transformation of ASA/RTA into the Druj.

But more immediately, we need to understand that Primordial Being comes into existence by the transfer of the levels of harmony exemplified by the sub-roots into the differentiation of meanings within Primordial Being itself. The differentiation of meaning within Primordial Being was a differentiation of separate roots which became submerged in a single root. In this transfer, what was preserved was the levels of harmony exemplified by the separate subroots. These levels of harmony became the implicit differentiation between the levels of the sub-elements of Primordial Being.

TABLE 25
Harmony within Primordial Being		Harmony of sub-roots
Holoid	interpenetration	*es	exists one-real-truth
Holon-Integra	mutual dependence	*er	moves
Novum-Epoch	interaction	*bhau	grows
Essencing-Eventity	logical consistency	*wer	stays the night
Ephemeron	lack of harmony	*eu	lacking; empty

At the core of this differentiation is the single source which is identified with the Good, *esu. The Good is the quintessence of the one true reality that gives rise to all things exemplifying harmony and disharmony. Disharmony leads to injustice which is put right upon return toward the single source. To the extent harmony is realized in the in-time realm -- to that extent no retribution will have to be paid for the injustices in this world in the next world.

Let me draw attention to Dumezil's treatment of the Centaurs in his book MITHRA-VARUNA. Dumezil contrasts Roman mytho-history with the mythology of India in his book. In particular, he picks out the Luperci of Rome and connects them with the Centaurs from Greek mythology and the Gandharva from Indian mythology. All three of these are equine secret societies which cause anarchy. The Luperci is contrast with the flaman dialis, and the Gandharva is contrast with the Brahman which represent law and order in their respective societies as against chaotic destruction by the horsemen.

Once at the end of every year, on the dies februatus in the middle of the month of februarius, the great purification called feburatio took place. It was celebrated with the aid of various accessories termed (in the neuter plural) februa and enspired by deities about whom the roman historians no longer knew a great deal: Iuno Februa (februata or febru(a)lis) and Februus. The rites were performed by a brotherhood that played no other role in Roman life but which on that day alone, threw aside all restraint. Two groups of Luperci, made up of young men from the equestrian order, ran through the city naked except for leather belts striking females with thongs of goat skin in order to make them fertile. We do not know what the concluding rites of this violent scenario were, although we do know that goats were sacrificed before the race through the city, that the bloodied sacrificial knife was aimed on the foreheads of the bands two young leaders, and that they were expected to laugh at that point. We also know that the Luperci sacrificed a dog.⁴

Dumezil traces this ritual back to an ancient incident between Romulus and Remus and their followers. When some cattle were stolen, they were said to run naked after the thieves. This, combined with the incident with the Sabine women who were stolen and found to be infertile, caused the fertility-inducing beatings at the behest of an oracle. Dumazil sees a link between the Luperci and the Centaurs who were also wild and rapacious as well as connected with horses as were the Gandharva.

In India, where the earliest literature is entirely sacerdotal in nature, one can nevertheless discern the existence of at least one such brotherhood. Though transformed into a band of supernatural beings, somewhat divine and somewhat demonic in character called Gandharva, it can be recognized by one typical characteristic: men may join it by initiation. Moreover, just as the Luperci and the Lupercalis are mythically underwritten by the childhood, beral upbringing and early adventures of Romulus and Remus so too the Gandherva educate heroes (Ayus, Arjuna, and so on). In the Rg Veda the outward appearance of the (singular masculine) Gandherva is left vague, but in later writings the (masculine plural) Gadharva are beings with horse's heads and men's torsos who live in a special world of their own. As early as the hymns, moreover, they already stand in a precise relationship to horses and to the harnessing of chariots, those of the Sun and those of men alike, and they retain this feature throughout epic literature. They are drinkers that steal [<?check?] Soma and other intoxicating drinks, who carry off women and nymphs (Apsaras), and who cheerfully live up to the ribald adjectives [<?check?] applied to them. Some ritual texts also claim that every woman's first mate, before her husband, is a Gandharva.⁵

Thus, the Centaurs are not the only mythical representations which present us with wild horsemen. Dumezil goes to great lengths to contrast these agents of chaos and lawlessness with the Brahman dan Flamen Dalis who preserve order the whole year except for the day on which the brotherhood of horsemen reign. It might be noted that this one day of chaos is reminiscent of the one day when the temple of Dionysus is open, and all the other temples are closed. Dionysus, the one god who dies, was trained by the centaurs and was the god presiding over intoxication and social disruption.

They are opposed also in their innermost purpose: Flamines and Brahmas are guardians of the sacred order; Luperci and Gandharva are agents of no less sacred disorder. Of the two religions they represent, one is static and regulated, calm; the other is dynamic free, violent. And it is precisely because of this inherent explosive nature that the latter cannot remain dominant for anything more than a very brief period of time, the time it takes to purify and also to revivify, to "recreate" the former in a single tumultuous irruption of energy. The activity of the flamnes and brahmas, in contrast, is coextensive with social life by its nature; they are the guarantors, and to some degree the embodiment, of the rules, of those sets of religious and in a general sense, social prescriptions which are symbolized in Iran by one of the Mazdian's great archangels and elsewhere led in two different directions -- in India to an unlimited proliferation of ritualistic knowledge and philosophy, and in Rome to a new art, that of human law.⁶

In this picture, we can see the epochal transformation has a very long history among the Indo-Europeans. Each year was an epoch which lasted 360 days. Then on the extra five days between years, and especially on the middle of these five, at the "dark of the moon," there reigned chaos when law no longer applied. Tumultuous changes would take place as lawless bands from the countryside would roam the streets, doing as they pleased beyond the reach of the law for that one day. In Europe, this was preserved as the feast of the fools. Thus, the rule of law traditionally carried with it a release valve. What happened on the day of chaos could very well fundamentally change the character of the next period of law and order. Instead of this, today we live with constant erratic outbreaks of violence which might catch us at any time. Among the Indo-Europeans, there was even a place for lawlessness and violence. A time when there was open season; when injustices and grudges could be avenged beyond the rule of law; when passions could be expressed without the legal limitations of marriage. The existence of this dialectic between order and chaos in Indo-European prehistory is very significant. Because it affirms that at least the epochal nature of history was recognized, and even institutionalized, from an early date. The opposite of law is chaos, and the Indo-Europeans social order had a place for both, showing a harmonization of opposites.

Also, the relation between horses and chaos is affirmed. The Flamen Dalis and the Brahman were not allowed to touch horses. In fact, many prohibitions on the Brahmans were precisely the things reserved for the equestrian brotherhood. For instance, the Brahman may not drink wine which is reserved for the unruly Gandharva. Or we note that the Brahman may not strip naked, whereas his opposite does so. It has been noted above that dynamic clinging developed by the Indo-Europeans and used as a means of world domination is probably modeled on the horseback rider clinging to his mount. We might go beyond this to speculate that the Indo-Europeans recognized that RTA had its own opposite, the DRUJ, and that they made a place for that, creating the contrast between Brahman and Gandharva. The Gandharva represented disharmony to an extreme, whereas the Brahman represented harmony. Yet, as we know opposites turned into their opposite in order to guide to harmony may degenerate into those that propagate disharmony. The injustices of Brahmans might be redressed during the day of amnesty for all unlawful acts. Also, among those whose role is expressing disharmony are perhaps a few like Cheiron who understand true harmony and may teach the hero or young god its true meaning. This not only does the model of Indo-European society recognize the difference between RTA (ASA) and DRUJ, it allows for the rolling over of opposites into each other. It also does so in a way which is inherently epochal in nature. This means that when we see scientific, social or political revolutions among the Indo-Europeans and recognize epochal change, there is a very long history in which Indo-Europeans have engaged in just this kind of behavior which was even institutionalized in their society.

Flamines and Luperci, Brahmas and Gandharva, all share equally the task of securing the life and fecundity of society. But here again it is instructive to note the contrast between the behaviors involved. Not only in the area dealt with earlier, of their conduct toward women -- on one side, individual, sacrosanct marriage and fidelity; on the other, kidnap, sensuality and anonymous fertilization -- but in the very purpose and principle of that behavior. One group ensures a continuous fecundity against interruption and accident; the other makes good an accident [<?check] and reestablishes an interrupted fertility.

If a celibate Flamen Dialis is inconceivable, if India "centers" the career of every Brahman on his role as husband and head of the family, if the flaminca and the brahamani are just as holy and important as their husbands, it is all because the presence and collaboration of this feminine element shows that the principle mechanism of fertility is in a healthy state, that all the female forces of nature are functioning fully and harmoniously. In Rome the evidence is particularly clear: should the flaminca die, the falmen dialis immediately becomes unfit to perform his functions, and he resigns. The Flemen-couple must have children, and those must also take part in the couple's sacred activity. If the couple do not have children of their own, then they take as flaminii the children of another family, both of whose parents are still alive. All these rules signify the potential or actual continuity of the vital flow. The many taboos that oblige the Flamen to keep away from funeral pyres, from dead animals, from barren trees, anything that has succumbed to natural decay and failure, are perhaps intended less to protect him from taint than to express the limitations of his activities: he is powerless against that which has already occurred. In other words, although, he can prolong life and fecundity through his sacrifices, he cannot restore them.

That miracle -- of restored fecundity -- is on the contrary the great feat performed by the men-animals. In Rome their whipping race commemorated the act by which their legendary prototypes ended the sterility of the women carried off by the first king Romulus. In India they restored the lost virility of the first sovereign Varuna with herbs known to them. The mystique underlying these traditions is not difficult to reconstitute: it is that of the emasculation of Varuna's Greek counterpart, Uranus, at once an unbridled, excessive procreator and a tyrannical, intolerable sovereign, who lost his genitals and sovereignty simultaneously. The sterility that strikes the Sabine women because Romulus had the audacity to abduct them from their husbands, the sterility that threatens Rome and the empire at the very moment of its formation, has the same meaning -- with a more precise reverence to the hubris of Uranus -- as the "divigoration" that strikes Varuna at the very moment of his consecration as summary or universal sovereign. It is no chance coincidence that the restorer of Varuna's virility is the (singular) Gandharva and that the restorers of the Sabine women's fertility are the Luperci with their fabrua. Excess -- the very cause of the accident -- also provides the remedy. It is precisely because they are "excessive" that the Gandharva and the Luperci are able to create; whereas the Flamnes and the Brahmas, because they are merely "correct," can only maintain.⁷

Here we get hint of how the epochal is also related to the Novum. From the point of view of biological reproduction, the birth of children and animals are crucial for carrying on the life of the different species. Maintaining fertility is important to every society. In relation to the epochs, it is the new individuals who determine the character of each epoch. Part of the setting up of the new gestalt for each epoch is the anonymous fertilizations caused by the horsemen. If nothing else, this keeps the variety in the gene pool high enough to avoid degeneration of the Brahmans. It also provides individuals who would not normally be born who may be different from the norm. Fecundity on a biological level, is related to the more abstract notion of the novum. The change of epochs is not merely a new gestalt based on the killing of those against whom there is a grudge. The change of epochs calls for the generation of new beings which would not have existed in the old order. These new beings change the character of the new epoch by their very presence. This keeps the forces which underlie the fecundity flowing as a vital energy which is renewed in the new epoch, not merely altered.

Thus, not only is the intrinsic epochal nature of Indo-European society established, but also we can see in the issue of renewal of fecundity the traces of the novum. The epochal and novum work together to define a particularly Indo-European approach to existence. That approach teeters between wholeness and hollowness. It expresses harmony, but also recognizes that harmony has an opposite of disharmony. It wisely realizes that those whose job it is to uphold harmony may become the very perpetrators of disharmony, so that those who represent disharmony can suddenly be the upholders of harmony. It sees harmony as dynamic rather than static. But it also teaches how, by dynamic clinging such as the horesemen's, one can realize the will to power of domination even stronger than those who cling to things in a static way. The Indo-Europeans attempted to express their knowledge about the relations between harmony and dynamic clinging in the project of constricting an artificial verb which we now call Primordial Being. It is a verb whose meanings were previously expressed by different subroots. An analysis of those subroots has shown that the inner structure of Primordial Being comes from the exact relations between the subroots, and that exact relation conveys the picture of harmony. All this leads to the conclusion that the Indo-Europeans had a certain wisdom, and that is undeniable. They expressed their wisdom in the formation of their language, and we can see its traces in their mythology and social structures. Yet, we can also see from subsequent history that although this wisdom existed, it was severely misused. Today, after thousands of years, we see the result of that misuse which has culminated in global domination and destruction of linguistic, cultural, political, species and many other kinds of variety. Yet we are getting closer to an understanding of ourselves as we look more deeply into the broken mirror of ontology. Prehistorical Being started out fragmented into separate subroots which were melded together as different meanings under one root. This gave rise to Primordial Being that had inner differentiation and expressed the dynamic range of the Indo-European approach to existence. Primordial Being entered the metaphysical epoch and was soon transformed into Conceptual Being which was one, static and isolated, also ultimately empty. Now at the end of the metaphysical epoch, Conceptual Being has fragmented into meta-levels. What started out as fragmented, has returned to its broken state. In so doing, it has shown itself unworthy as a metaphysical principle. It should have been suspect all along because of its emptiness of meaning. The fact that it lasted unchallenged for so long was a function of the powerful combination of concepts bound together within Being. It had a richness of meaning that has taken this long to explore and exhaust. But all those meanings of the relations between truth, reality and identity, as well as metaphor, did not cover up the fact that men were ultimately playing language games in an empty field. Instead, the Apeiron appears again from behind the disc of Conceptual Being. We need to reapproach the understanding of the Apeiron before the epoch closes, and we are facing a new gestalt altogether. That which arises and perishes like the concept of Being cannot serve as our Arche. The Arche must be independent of physis.

Before leaving the subject of the Centaurs and their associated chaotic equestrian brotherhoods, we should take note of the myths concerning Peleus, the father of Achilles. Peleus kills his youngest brother out of jealousy, with his brother Telamon's help in athletic games. Peleus then flees to Pythia where he marries and is given a third of the kingdom to rule. Peleus and Eurytion, a co-ruler of Pythia, take part in the hunt of the Calydonian Boar during which Peleus accidently kills Eurytion. Peleus flees once again to Iolcus. There the king's wife attempts to seduce Peleus, and he rejects her. She gets even by lying to Peleus' wife, causing her to commit suicide, and also to her husband, causing him to seek revenge. The husband challenges Peleus to a hunt which Peleus wins with the help of a magic sword coffered on him by the gods for his chastity in spite of treachery by the husband's men. Finally, as Peleus sleeps, he is abandoned and robbed of his magic sword. At this point, alone in the wilderness, Peleus meets the wild and murderous centaurs.

Up to this point, Peleus' tale is one of mixed fate. He kills his brother on purpose, but the second man was killed in the confusion of the Boar hunt when many others were slain accidentally as well. Finally, he himself is wronged by the wife who attempts to seduce him and then lies about him. What we see is the spectrum of fated human events -- those wrongs, done willingly out of some emotion like jealousy, those that occur by chance, and those done to oneself out of spite or malice. Peleus kills his brother, but in turn loses his wife. Thus, for Peleus the scales are fairly well balanced. Even though Peleus has had more than his share of fated events, those with dire consequences seem to occur to him more perhaps than most mortals.

Peleus, stripped of everything, meets the cruel centaurs in the forest, and they are about to kill him when Chieron rescues him. Chieron takes him in and restores his magic blade to him. Then the gods bestow upon him a marriage to an immortal sea nymph, Thetis, whose name means "disposer." Thus, under the auspices of Chieron, Peleus meets his fate, not by being murdered by the centaurs, but instead by marriage.

Now, Chieron foresaw that Thetis, being immortal, would at first resent marriage; and acting on his instructions, Peleus concealed himself behind a bush of parti-colored myrtle-berries on the shores of a Thessalian islet, where Thetis often came, riding naked on a harnessed dolphin, to enjoy her midday sleep in the cave which this bush half screened. No sooner had she entered the cave and fallen asleep, then Peleus seized hold of her. The struggle was silent and fierce. Thetis turned successively into fire, water, a lion and a serpent; but Peleus had been warned what to expect, and clung to her resolutely, even when she became an enormous slippery cuttle-fish and squirted ink at him -- a change which accounts for the name of Cape Sepias, the near-by promontory, now Sacred to the Nereids. Though burned, drenched, mauled, stung and covered with sticky sepia ink, Peleus would not let her go and, in time, she yielded and they lay locked in a passionate embrace.⁸

The confrontation between Peleus and Thetis can be construed as Peleus' initiation into the brotherhood of the centaurs. In that initiation he has to confront his destiny -- the one who disposes. Thetis was very powerful as the protector in the sea of Dionysus and Hephaestus as well as being the saviour of Zeus. In that confrontation, a very special relation to Thetis is taken by Peleus. Peleus practices an extreme form of dynamic clinging as Thetis transforms herself. We saw a similar type of scene between Menelaus and the Old Man of the Sea in the Odyssey. Thetis moves back and forth between opposite forms -- fire to water, the lion to serpent. In the process, Peleus is wounded but keeps his grip, and in the end, tames Thetis. This taming is analogous to the taming of wild horses by bronco riding. This is taken as evidence that dynamic clinging is indeed the central lesson or initiation experience learned by those entering the equestrian brotherhood. The movement from lion to serpent recalls the unknown of Mithrism -- a late initiatory all male cult that vied with Christianity for the position of dominant universal religion⁹. We can see in Mithrism the preservation until a late date of the spirit of the equestrian brotherhoods. The fact that it became one of the foundations of later day Catholic Christianity, which presents a similar split between the passive Jesus and the soldiers of Christ, that reminds us of the ever present split between Brahman and Gandharva within the Indo-European tradition. Thetis represents Aphrodite in the cave of initiation where the wounds are sustained which make Peleus a man. Peleus practices a dynamic clinging in spite of great suffering, and through that, tames the immortal -- coming to terms with this own destiny. Because he has the stamina and finally prevails, great honors are bestowed on him at his marriage. His marriage is at the same time his initiation into the Centaur's company which is indicated by at least one source which calls Peleus himself an Centaur.

An interesting side light is the fact that during his wedding, Eris drops the golden apple at the feet of Hera, Athena and Aphrodite with the inscription "For the one who is most fair." Peleus picks it up but does not know to whom give it. This incident ultimately leads to the Trojan War in which Peleus' own son, who was prophesied to be greater than his father, was to die. So, although Peleus confronts and conquers his own destiny, the seed of disharmony is sewn at the same time. This indicated that dynamic clinging is not the same as the establishment of harmony. In fact, we suspect that dynamic clinging is the opposite of the establishment of harmony. Yet, this leads us to the deeper consideration of the origin of the subroots of Primordial Being. As we shall see, it is no accident that the apple falls at the feet of Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite. They are seen by Dumezil to represent the three functions of his tripartite structure of Indo-European society. Thus, the myth of Peleus who performs his difficult task of learning dynamic clinging leads us directly to the deeper consideration of Dumazil's analysis of Indo-European mythology and its sociological and functional interpretation.

Peleus, when he picks up the apple planted by Eris who was not invited to the wedding and decides to sow discord, does not know to whom give it. Peleus could not make the non-nihilistic distinction between the three goddesses. But it was an impossible moment in which even if he could decide who to give it to, he would not dare to deliver it in case the others were insulted. The situation is an impossible one. The three goddesses represent the functions of Indo-European society which is made whole by the initiated one who learns to cling dynamically. That wholeness is a paradox which is separate but yet united. The giving of the golden apple to any one of the goddesses would sow discord and the not giving it also sows discord. The inability of Peleus to act is the opposite of his ability to act toward Thetis. Dynamic clinging before marriage is contrasted to the impossibility of action and decision after marriage. We thus get a taste of the difference between the situation inside the city and that outside the city. Outside the city, the horsemen do what they like and experience dynamic clinging directly. Inside the city, there is a paradoxical structure that leads to inaction and indecision. Once a year those who are kept outside are let in so that the impasses are broken down. But in the meantime, the secret service, or horsemen, wage the war of all against all in the noman's land between cities, and they initiate the young warriors in dynamic clinging and decisive action which leads to their being potent and resouceful. They get their magic sword back that was taken away by conniving women. But as soon as they are married within the city, they face the same impasse that they must act differently toward each part of the city as appropriate to each. But each demands different actions that sometimes conflict until you get into situations where you are damned if you do and damned if you don't. In other words, you become the Brahman or Flamin Dialis who is sanctified and must honor the taboos of marriage in order to preserve the flowing vitality of the city.

Peleus is caught between doing nothing and handing the apple to each of the goddesses. He has four choices, none of which he can take, and this leads to him oscillating between decisions and dithering, until in the end, he does nothing, but a bad situation is created which ultimately leads to war. As he dithers, he passes over each of the distinctions between the goddesses and non-action several times. Each of these choices relate to one of our sub-roots because of the parallelism between language and social functions within Indo-European society. In the impossible and wicked problem, one notices the alternatives but rarely notices the differences that separate these alternatives. It is those differences that must be explored fully. The inability to decide, as in the case of Peleus, makes the differences appear. As he looks at each goddess, he notes her particular beauty and cannot decide, or if he can decide, he dare not act in any way to displease them. His indecision turns into the fate of his son as it generated the war in which Achilles expresses his mortality and achieves his fame.