There were also fabulous wild beasts – such as the Nemean Lion, the
golden-fleeced ram and the winged horse Pegasus. I n Hindu mythology Garuda,
the creature upon which Vishnu rides, is depicted as a bird of prey having a golden
male body, a white face with three eyes, red wings and an eagle’s beak (Chevalier
and Gheerbrant, 1994:421). There were as well human manifestations of the
extraordinary with fabulous tribes like the Libyan Umbrella-Foots, the one-eyed
Arimaspians, and the African Dog-Heads.
The creatures described in Ezekiel I , 4-19, in the Christian Bible, have four
faces, one of a human being, another a lion, then a bull and finally an eagle, and
although having the likeness of a man, they were winged and the soles of their feet
were those of a calf.
Figure 7. W. Blake. Ezekiel’s vision. 1805 (www.moshereiss.org/ 12_ezekiel103.jpg).A second point of interest is the way in which the idea of the cave has
developed into an archetypal image, becoming a motif, across time and cultures, in
the collective consciousness in literature, myth and religion. For example, Zeus was
born in a cave on Mount Dikte on the I sland of Crete, Apollo was born where no
rays of sunlight could penetrate and the original sanctuary at Delos was a cave and,
indeed, sacred caves existed throughout ancient Greece. I n Palestine/ I srael many
sacred sites are located in grottoes; at Bethlehem the place of the manger is really
a cavern, the cave of Elijah is located on Mount Carmel, the body of the crucified
Jesus was taken to a cave-like sepulchre hewn out of rock. The most celebrated
cave in the Holy Land is the cave of Machpelah containing the sepulchres of the
three patriarchs Abraham, I saac and Jacob, and according to the early Christian
writers, Jesus lived with his mother in a grotto. Even in I ndian mythology, Krishna