THE PYRAMID: World of the God-King

Symbol: Pyramid or octahedron

Civilization:

• The theocratic nation or city state as the largest cohesive social unit
• Highly stratified society having classes and castes headed by a ruling elite (usually a priesthood), with a divine-ruler at the apex of the social pyramid
• Dynastic succession of rulers
• Typical features of statehood, such as a standing army, public works programs, codes of law, taxation or tribute systems, administrative bureaucracies, written records and histories, food stores and redistribution systems, state religious ceremonies, urban centers and capital cities
• Patriarchal family structures and social systems (although a residue of older matrilineal traditions may persist as in pharaonic Egypt)
• Substitution of ceramic effigies of members of the king's retinue who formerly would have been buried with him (may be related to the secure establishment of the nation state)
• Spiritual and political power of the state theocratically vested in the God-King, his priest hood, and the state religion
• A syncretic state religion with a pyramidal pantheon reflecting the social structure
• An elite priesthood with a secret knowledge of science, astronomy, and spiritual matters
• Note: this phase is usually considered the 'Classic Era" or "Golden Age" of the high civilizations of the past
• Examples: Old Kingdom Egypt; Sumerian Civilization; India under Asoka and the Buddhist and Hindu dynasties; Ch'in tlrrough Sung dynasties in China; Teotihuacan cul ture and the Maya in Mesoamerica; Tiahuacan culture in Peru; Classical Greece; Medieval and Early Renaissance Europe

Psyche:

• Cosmos as the World Mountain, the creation and kingdom of the Father-God
• In childhood, solidification of the ego, identification with the father to complete the sep aration from the mother, establishment of individual identity, and assumption of adult re sponsibilities in the world
• At any age, identification with the logos principle
• Perceiving the world as a Pyramid (e.g., the chronological stratification of time, pyrami dal ranks of social power and classes); concern with moving up the Pyramid, with the goal of reaching the apex of power and wisdom
• Linear sense of time, preoccupation with immortality and the transcendence of temporal reality, use of a solar calendar
• Mythic images and rites concerning the World Mountain, the Mountain arising from the Sea of Chaos, the nightly or annual hieros gamos on the World Mountain to restore the king's vitality or sovereignty; the Separation of the World Parents and their reuniting (through the hieros gamos; shamanic journeys on the axis mu ndi (mastery of heaven, earth, and underworld); iminortality, mortuary rituals, embalming; the second birth through the Father; ritualized tests of the king's fitness to rule (e.g., the Heb Sed Festival in Egypt)
• Increasing dominance of techne-logos; emphasis on the functions of the logos principle, such as creation through the Word, order and enlightenment through the Law, belief in the sacredness of rational forms numbers, geometry, names, mathematics, standards of measurement, canonical proportions; interest in the sky and the mind as opposed to the earth and the body
• Continuation of dualistic thought, as in the Four Quarters, symbolized by the upward and downward pointing pyramids
• Psychological stagnation in the Pyramid can produce a rigid adherence to conventional codes of behavior and dogmatic religious doctrines, and an excessive identification with the mascuhne principle as highly authoritarian father figure
• Psychological liberation in the Pyramid generates the perception of Self as the incarna tion of transcendent being, which, having negotiated the axis mundi to comprehend the three planes of existence (heaven, earth, and underworld or pure consciousness, ordinary waking consciousness, and the unconscious), sees the order of the universe

Space:

• Space as the World Mountain, whose layers and faces symbolize the realms of existence, the heavens and hells, and the social structure
• Great emphasis on the axis mundi the vertical axis between heaven and earth mediated by the God-King (seen as the Son of Heaven, as in China, or the son, agent, or incarnation of the Father God, as in Egypt and the pre-Columbian civilizations)
• Social pyramid reflected in class-differentiated residences and burials
• Architectural representations of the World Mountain-pyramids, ziggurats, stupas as the most important structures, which may serve as temples, royal tombs, reliquaries, or astronomical observatories