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~ SALOME ~

The bible via (Matthew 14:6-8) presents the Dance of the Seven Veils as a mere vulgar striptease performed by Salome to "please Herod". However, the Dance of the Seven Veils was an integral part of the sacred drama, depicting the death of the annual king, his descent into the underworld, and his retrieval by the Goddess. To gain access, She removed one of her seven garments at each of the seven gates. The priestess called Salome or "Peace" (Shalom) depicted the Goddess, passing through the seven gates in the temple of Jerusalem, meaning House of Peace. The veils signified the layers of earthly appearances or illusions falling away from those who approach the Mystery of the Deep.

This dancing priestess was more than a trivial entertainer. Salome had a husband, Joseph, who was killed after he lay with Queen, Mariamne or Miriam (Mary). Salome was even present with the virgin Mary, possibly with the same Mary who birthed Jesus. Some say she was the midwife who delivered the holy child. Salome also managed to be present with all three Marys at the death of Jesus according to (Mark 15:40). Obviously she was involved in the death of John the Baptist, which seems to have been not a murder but a ritual sacrifice.

Interestingly, the Mandaeans, an early Christian sect, ignored Jesus, worshipping John the Baptist as the true sacrificial Christ. As an initiated Essenic prophet, John would have been "chosen" to die as the surrogate for the king, whose blood was required for the fertility of the land. Thus John was beheaded, a common form of sacrificial death throughout the early Aegean and Levantine cultures. This ritual is even still practiced in some of the eastern temples of the Goddess, using animals instead of men.

What is recorded of Salome, for Christian posterity is according to both Matthew and Mark via their gospels. The story goes something like this: Her Father and Mother, Herod Philip and Herodias, divorced and Herodias married Herod Antipas, the Roman-appointed tetrarch, or king, of Galilee, who was also the half-brother of her first husband. John the Baptist opposed this union, saying:
"It is not lawful for thee to have thy brothers wife." Thus the king imprisoned John. The gospel, according to Mark, recounts that "Herodias had a quarrel against John and would have killed him, but she could not. For Herod feared John, knowing that he was a just man and an holy, and observed him; and when he heard him, he did many things, and heard him gladly" (Mark 6:19-20)

Herodias brooded over her lust for vengeance, awaiting the right moment. Just such an opportunity arrived during the kings birthday banquet. "Herodias daughter came in, and danced and please Herod." The king than promised to give her whatever she desired as a well-earned reward. Salome consulted her mother, and so at Herodias request, Salome announced, "I will that thou give me by and by on a charger the head of John the Baptist." Despite his distress, Herod could not break his promise, which he made in the presence of family and guests. A guard was sent to the prison cell containing John, to complete the task. Thus the guard "beheaded him in the prison, and brought his head in a charger, and gave it to the damsel; and the damsel gave it to her mother."

In 54 A.D., after this event, it is recorded that Salome married King Aristobulus. The Roman emperor Vespasian gave her the land of Chalcis in Greece, where she ruled as Queen. According to the Byzantine historian Nicephore, Salome died around 70 A.D. in tragic circumstances. It the dead of winter, while crossing the Rhone River, which was frozen over with ice, she fell through and severed her neck. Are we to believe that a head for head makes the whole world mindless?

During the 4th Century, the popularity and veneration of John the Baptist increased, and thus did the infamy of Salome. St. Jerome attacked her character and the church fathers used her story to illustrate the evils that dancing invoked.

Even up to the end of the19th Century, Decadent writers and artists continued to present Salome in this perverse light.
It is of interest to note, as did the French Decadent novelist, Joris-Karl Huysman, "Neither Saint Matthew, nor Saint Mark, nor Saint Luke, nor the other evangelists dwelt upon the dancerŐs extraordinary charms or her acts of depravity. She remains in the background, lost, mysterious and swooning, in the distant fog of the centuries, elusive to those with unimaginative and precise minds, only accessible to the unhinged, made visionary by their neurosis."

Salome is immortality, as John was mortal.

Dance on Great Queen!