One of the strangest monuments of Delphi is not to be seen there today. Strolling on the site of the Hippodrome in Istanbul, several metres above the old ground level, one notices three monuments: an Egyptian obelisk from Luxor, which commemorates Thutmose III's victory on the Euphrates around 1425 BC and was brought here in 390, in the time of Theodosius. The second is also an obelisk, which marked the turning post on the course of the horse races. This so-called Walled Obelisk was not made from a single block but pieced together from dressed stones, and its bronze facing plates were plundered during the Fourth Crusade.
Between the two obelisks stands a strange figural column, the famous Serpent Column. To adorn his new capital, Constantinople, Constantine the Great (301–337) brought with him one of the most remarkable votive offerings from the city of Delphi, seat of the sun cult's oracle.
At one of the defining events of Greek history, the Battle of Plataea, a tenth of the captured weapons was melted down, and from it a splendid monument was made – three intertwining bronze serpents formed the column, nearly ten metres high, on which were engraved the names of the city-states that had fought in the war against the Persians. Between the serpents' heads a golden cauldron shone; the sacrificial offerings were presumably cast into it.
The symbol of the triple-braided serpent invites reflection, and a parallel suggests itself: the kundalini serpent-power, one of the mystical symbols of yoga. The ida and pingala meridian-paths intertwine around the sushumna channel that runs through the spinal column, thus embodying the trinitarian unity of the male and female energies, of the powers of the Sun and the Moon. In any case, it is a truly noble gesture that from the enemy's weapons they forged no new weapons but made a monument to the gods: not to a struggle for peace, but to the glory of a peace triumphant over struggle.
In the wars of more recent times we find the very opposite. To secure the copper indispensable for making arms and ammunition, church bells were confiscated and melted down in many places. Thus bells that had glorified God or bidden farewell to the dead became parts of death-dealing weapons. What a metamorphosis! The master founder of bells and cannon must have been a veritable master sorcerer, who in the earthly world could serve the cause of the upper world and the underworld at once: with his bells he served the heavenly spheres and eternity just as well as the hellish underworld of wars. Such a master sorcerer is never out of work, for either there is peace, and then he casts bells, or there is war, and then, calling back his earlier works, he melts down the great bell and the passing bell, and casts cannon.
He who commands the extremes holds exceptional power. The master founder of bells and cannon is also an initiate into the mystery of life and death. And so the bell-founder is not necessarily a pacifist, nor is the cannon-founder necessarily a murderous atheist.
The success of casting a bell is its first toll, the success of casting a cannon its first boom – each reaches its climax in sound. We are not necessarily master founders of bells and cannon, and yet it happens that we must unite the extreme forces of life, all the strength of our better self and our worse self, to accomplish certain of our tasks. For the sake of a higher goal, even the less flattering qualities can be integrated. The six moral enemies – lust, anger, greed, illusion, madness and envy – are hardly flattering traits, yet, as with the metamorphosis of copper, these traits too can be drawn into the course of spiritual development, when you crave the truth, are angry with your faults, or greedily long for perfection. Illusion, but divine illusion, if you forget the greatness of God in order to come closer to him, and so one of the treasures of the mystics can be yours, divine rapture. Envy alone is worth eliminating: it is the dross that neither the cannon nor the bell needs.