Rhea or Rhave
The Feminine Saturn

Honored Miss Georgia Cobb was kind enough to send us the following reflections on the name of Rhea, or Sai Rhavë. The point she raises is highly important and the answer to it takes us into some of the deeper areas of Déanic/Filianic thealogy.

We hope our readers will find this of interest.

Dear Aristasia sisters,

I have done the following study on the meaning of the names of Rhea and Sai Rhave.

Rhea & Sai Rhave:

The Sanskrit word Srava or Latvian word Strava means "stream or current". There are Seven Greek Planetary Great Powers (Titanides). The name of the Greek Titanide Rhea means "She who flows". Rhea is the Titanide who governs the planet Saturn.

rheo-, rhea-, rhe-, rhy- Greek: a flow, wave; current of a stream, current; electrical current) -- Wordinfo

The word Janaka in Sanskrit means "generated or parent" and Janya means "born or derived from". Janya is used by Aristasians in Telluria to refer to "The Powers That Be", i.e. the Feminine Guardian Angels or Great Governing Goddesses of the Universe who are born or derived from Dea, God the Mother. There are Seven Aristasian Planetary Guardian Angels (Janyati). The name of the Aristasian Janya Sai Rhave means "She who flows". Sai Rhave is the Guardian Angel who governs the Planet Saturn.

The following is a word study on the meaning of the English word "flow"

English: (MicroSoft Word Dictionary and Thesaurus)

Flow:

Synonyms: run, pour, flood, stream, gush, surge, current, course

Thesaurus: run (pour, flood, stream, gush, surge); current (stream, course, drift, tide); spring (arise, emerge, emanate, issue, well up)

Definitions, Synonyms and Much More from Answers.com

Flow

v. flowed, flowing, flows

v. intr.

1a. To move or run smoothly with unbroken continuity, as in the manner characteristic of a fluid

1b. To issue in a stream; pour forth: Sap flowed from the gash in the tree.

2. To circulate, as the blood in the body

3. To move with a continual shifting of the component particles; wheat flowing into the bin; traffic flowing smoothly

4. To proceed steadily and easily: The preparations flowed smoothly.

5. To exhibit a smooth or graceful continuity: The poem's cadence flowed gracefully.

6. To hand loosely and gracefully: The cape flowed from her shoulders.

7. To rise. Used of the tide.

SYNONYMS: flow, current, flood, flux, rush, stream, tide. These nouns denote something suggestive of running water; a flow of thought; the current of history; a flood of ideas; a flux of words; a rush of sympathy; a stream of complaints; a tide of immigration.

See also synonyms at stem Flow.

The following is the description of the Janya Sai Rhave:

"Sai Rhavë is the "darkest" of the Janyati, often associated with severity and austerity. She is also associated with steadfastness and foundation. All that is solid and weighty belongs to her, as does all restriction and discipline.

"Thus Sai Rhavë is in one sense closely allied with Sai Thamë, as the discipline which maintains order, yet, in another sense, as the bringer of restriction, she appears to the the opposite of Sai Thamë, the "Great Benefic" who showers the world with her opulence, and of Sai Sushuri, the mother of all fecundity. Sai Thamë, Sai Sushuri and Sai Rhavë together represent a group whose complex interactions revolve about the principles of order, discipline, harmony, fecundity, restriction, mercy and severity.

"In Filianic thealogy, the two Luminaries, the Sun and Moon, represent the Mother and the Daughter respectively, while Sai Rhavë at her deepest level represents the Dark Mother: the unknowable Deity beyond form, beyond being and unbeing. From this perspective, the two Luminaries and Sai Rhavë represent a group of three (three being the spiritual number) and the other four represent the material group of four, corresponding, at a certain level of interpretation, to the four elements.

"On more everyday levels of interpretation, Sai Rhavë governs the discipline and strictness which help to keep a life of thamë or harmony "on the straight path". She also governs the qualities of steadfastness, reliability, and responsibility. She is called upon in the foundation of buildings and in all things that must stand and endure. She is also associated with time."

Not once in this entire section is the meaning "to flow" or any of its synonyms used. Instead, an entirely contrary portrait is painted of Sai Rhave as a being that is "stiff" and "unyielding".

I wonder if one of the Aristasian Sisters would care to rewrite the section on Sai Rhave with the true meaning of her name in mind. Remember that time flows, it does not stand still, it is fluid.

May Dea be with you,

Miss Georgia B. Cobb

Honored Miss Cobb, thank you so much for sharing this valuable research.

Your etymology is certainly correct, ma'am. Though at the same time there is no doubt that the Aristasian Sai Rhavë and the Greek Rhea embody the Saturnine principle, and that this principle is everywhere agreed to be that of consolidation and restriction.

It is necessary, therefore, to consider a little more closely these two apparently opposed "meanings".

The rhe etymon certainly means "to flow" – or, more accurately, "to stream" ("stream", indeed, is the direct English cognate). In its Greek form (cf Rhea) it was famously used in the dictum attributed to Heraclitus: panta rhei, "all things are streaming".

This metaphor of streaming was closely connected with the metaphor of a stream or river, contained in the related Heraclitan dictum, "One cannot step twice into the same river". It is likely that we are here dealing with a very ancient metaphor. It is commonly agreed that this stream, or river, is time itself, and of course Sai Rhavë or Rhea is closely associated with the concept of time (the later patriarchal Greek "god" corresponding to Saturn was called Kronos).

Panta rhei can be taken as a statement that all things are in a state of flux and change, which, in the sublunary realm is certainly true. The modernist doctrine of the recent West is that all things whatever are in a state of flux and "evolution" and that there are no absolutes or eternal truths. Hence the concept of "flowing" has an appeal to the modernist mind.

However, the same statement has always been a part of traditional doctrine, which urges maid to step off the Wheel of Werdë – to abandon the change and flux of worldly existences for the Oneness of the Absolute.

Now if Sai Rhavë (or Rhea) were simply the representative of flux and change, she would be a duplicate of Sai Werdë – who, as we know, is not one of the Great Janyati as Sai Rhavë is.

However, Heraclitus' doctrine (which we may take to be at least a remnant of the ancient doctrines associated with Rhea) is rather more subtle than that. The question of whether one can indeed step into the same river twice has an ambiguous answer – in some respects one can and in others one cannot. In some ways the river into which you step is a body of different water from the one that existed moments ago. And yet there is also a Principle of Identity called the River.

This may be seen as a particular aspect of the Atma/Maya doctrine, according to which, on one level, the world is nothing but illusion; on another we must recognize the existence of contingent things on their own plane, and yet again we must ultimately recognize that ultimately Maya is Atma: that all contingent things are not other than Dea Herself.

Now there is another important concept bound up with the strava/srave/rhave/stream word-group, and that is the concept represented by the english words strew and street: a street, being literally an artery strewn out from the heart-center (the temple-palace) of a sacred city.

Strewing or scattering out from the Heart-Center of Her Own Being is the act of Dea in creating the manifold things of the contingent world. As it says in The Clew of the Horse:

She that doth scatter the colours, 'tis She that doth govern the world.

Colors here refers to the differing qualities of Creation, as opposed to the single, white Light of Dea Herself.

Now since Sai Rhavë is a direct representative of Dea, should we take her to be a being-scattered, or the Scatterer Herself? In one sense she is a being-scattered since she is one of the Seven Colors at their very highest, but to all creation below her, she is the Scatterer.

We speak of the "stream" of each Janya, meaning her stream of influence – all the things of Creation that are in her special domain, and in a certain sense, Sai Rhavë may be regarded as the head of all streams.

What sense is this? It is the sense in which she takes her place beside the two Luminaries (Sai Raya and Sai Candrë – Sun and Moon) as the lesser representative of one part of the Holy Trinity itself (see our page on the Janyati) and specifically the Dark Mother: Dea beyond Form.

The relation between motion (flowing) and stillness is an important spiritual concept. It is expressed at the beginning of The Clew of the Horse in the famous words:

Earth moves, but Heaven is still. The rim revolves, but the Centre remains without motion.

The Clew continues as follows:

2. Yet from the still point all movement comes; and Earth is the shadow of Heaven. 3. Space doth extend without limit, nor is there any boundary to the worlds, but the Point is without extension; yet from the Point alone all space proceedeth. 4. All manifest things are bound to the three times; of that which is, which was, which is to come; but the Moment is without time. It neither is nor was, nor ever will be.

5. Yet the Moment is seed and germ of time; the timeless spring wherein time's mighty river hath its rise.

6. The Point and the Moment and the timeless Centre; these three are One and the One is the Spirit. 7. Each manifest thing hath a cause, and each cause hath a cause before it, but the First Cause hath no cause before Her, for She is the Spirit.

8. She that acts not is the Cause of all action. She that is not is the Cause of all being. She that is still is the Centre and Source of all movement.

Now, Who is it to whom, in the Filianic Creed are the following words are applied?

And I believe in She that stands beyond these Two,
Whose Name has not been spoken on this earth:
For She is the Beginning and the End;
the First Principle and the Final Cause;
the unoriginated Origin of being.

To the Dark Mother, of course. They might be applied to Dea as a whole, but the Dark Mother is truly the first Principle and the final Cause even of the more outward manifestations of Dea. She is the Head of all Streams, the Scatterer of All Colors. She is the Moveless Mover.

She is also seen as Death, or the Destroyer of the Worlds, for at the end of time all things will be in-breathed into She who breathed them out at time's dawning.

Sai Rhavë is not (except in her highest aspect, wherein, like each of the Janya she becomes indistinguishable from Dea Herself) the Dark Mother, but as she who conveys a certain "color" of Her to the world, she represents the ultimate stillness that is the center of all streams. In her higher aspects, she is the stream of Dea that is nearest to the Head of all streams, and thus nearest to the perfect stillness of the Still Center.

At lower levels she thus represents stability and fixity, not as the "consolidation and restriction" of the Snake in the Creation, but as its precise opposite, the fixity of the Divine Principle Herself. In earthly manifestation this can indeed be seen as severity, but it is the necessary severity that underpins the flow of thamë. It is also the firm and secure fixity that is invoked in, for example, the founding of houses or of cities.

We might go further and discuss the interesting counterchange between Sai Rhavë whose name means "stream, or flow" and who represents the very principle of fixity. and Sai Thamë whose name means that which is set or fixed, and who is the very embodiment of the Divine Motion of the Cosmic Dance.

But that is a topic for another day.

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