On the Priest as the original Patriarch (early August 2016).

As Chalier-Visuvalingam argues (e.g., in her “Bhairava and the Goddess: Tradition, Gender and Transgression”), the esoteric meaning of the orthodox Brahmanic fire-ritual is that the Brahmin represents the god Brahmā in (symbolically) sacrificing a stand-in for himself by invoking Bhairava (who lopped off the fifth head of Brahmā) from the flame. This in order to atone for subjugating (subsuming) the Mother Goddess (this is symbolized by Brahmā trying to rape his own daughter/claiming that he is the supreme God/dess (Śiva) and by Bhairava’s attempt to rape Vaiṣṇo Devī (for which she decapitated him)). The Brahmin, the Priest, is of course a “Holy Father”.

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“Bhairava, the terrifying aspect of Śiva, is the god of transgression par excellence, for he appears [i.e., manifests] only to cut off the head of Brahmā, brahmanicide being the most heinous crime in the Hindu tradition. Brahmā refused to recognize the supremacy of Śiva, who therefore created Bhairava and ordered him to decapitate Brahmā, promising him in return eternal suzerainty over his city of Kāśī (Vārānasī, Banaras)[.]” (Elizabeth Chalier-Visuvalingam, “Bhairava and the Goddess: Tradition, Gender and Transgression”.)

The fact that the beheading of Brahmā is considered brahmanicide (the killing of a brahmana, a Brahmin) suggests that a Brahmin is a Brahmā. But Brahmā, the Creator-God, is Brahma-a, “from Brahma”—that is, he sprang from Brahman, the World-Soul. And in Śaivism, Śiva is the personification of impersonal Brahman. The fact that Śiva created Bhairava, therefore, suggests that Bhairava, too, is a Brahmā (namely, “Śivā”). Now Brahmā’s capital offense is that he refuses to recognize the supremacy of Śiva, i.e., of Brahman. What this means, I surmise, is that being a Creator in the sense of a Brahmin is an enormous crime, an arrogation of Godhood, of supremacy over the World. It is therefore only by punishing himself that a Brahmin may take “suzerainty over his city”. Wikipedia defines suzerainty as follows:

“Suzerainty is a situation in which a powerful region or people controls the foreign policy and international relations of a tributary vassal state while allowing the subservient nation internal autonomy.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzerainty)

The most primitive political unit is the extended family or, in other words, the household in the classical sense. And a Brahmin is a priest, a “holy father”, a “paterfamilias”. The most primitive or primal form of suzerainty is therefore suzerainty over the household: suzerainty, and not sovereignty, for “before” the Father takes suzerainty, the sovereign is the materfamilias… This suzerainty means that the paterfamilias controls “the foreign policy and international relations” of the household and especially of its women, starting with the materfamilias. It’s actually the Father’s taking of this suzerainty which is the primordial crime, whereas his “decapitating” himself is his punishing himself for that crime.

“When myth and legend are juxtaposed in the light of present-day cult, Bhairava’s decapitation [by the chaste vegetarian goddess Vaiṣṇo Devī!] appears rather as the exemplary sacrifice to the terrible blood-thirsty hidden aspect of the benign Vaiṣṇo Devī [than as a punishment], for which reason alone he is accorded worship by the pilgrims who imitate his example. If presented instead as a punishment, this is due to his radically transgressive conduct[.]” (Chalier, op.cit.)