THE ASCENDING ENERGY

The journey up the steep mountain to the cave like space which is known as Edakkal (a term that may mean that which is between the rocks) could possibly have been a centre for some primal cult, in which both the hero and the feminine principle is celebrated. There are a number of images of what appear to be ladder or step like signs, which are in some places associated with wheels.

This has led some to suggest that these are attempts to represent some primitive form of wagon, or chariot. It would hardly have been possible to bring any wheeled cart up to this inaccessible place, but we know that the symbol of the chariot was from primal times associated with the sun, and that the hero, like in the story of Elijah, was taken up into the heavens by a fiery vehicle that symbolized the spiritual energy of the sun. Certainly these images of some kind of a ritual vehicle, like the Rathas associated with later temple worship in the South of India, must have been connected with a belief in a spiritual journey upwards to the heavens.