In Ge Hong’s (ca 280 – 340/360 AD) Baopuzi (master embracing simplicity) Neipian (Inner Chapters), the Pace of Yu (Yubu) is described in detail as a sequence of three movements comprising of nine steps (3X3), and is a ritual dance performed by daoist masters. This shamanic dance, also described as a limp, is modeled on Yu the great, who, walking by the ocean, witnessed some birds performing a dance, and used the same technique to overcome the floodwaters that threatened the country of nine regions.
It is also said that Yu’s limp was the result of an injury, caused by his unrelenting effort to control the floods. Yu also had the ability to transform himself into a bear, walking with a waddle known as a bears gait. The cosmic significance of Yu’s dance is further bound up in the ritual of Pacing the Big Dipper Constellation of 7 (+ 2 invisible = 9) stars.
The discovery of the Lo Shu magic tortoise square is also attributed to Yu, who witnessed a tortoise emerge from the Lo river, with a 3X3 shell pattern consisting of dot’s arranged from one to nine. when read either horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, the Lo Shu calculated fifteen.
Nine was also the total of heads of Xiang Liu, killed by Yu. Xiang Liu had the body of a serpent, and was the servant of Gong Gong, the demon responsible for causing the Floods.
The defeat of the serpentine Xiang Liu is comparable with the slaying of the Hydra by Herakles, and in Norse Myth with the binding of the wolf fenrir, and, in particular, with the double-death of Thor and Iormungand, symbolizing the binding of cosmic chaos, and recreating existence in the revolving wheel of time.
Just as Yu attained complete mastery over the floodwaters, Thor (who also crushed the nine headed giant Thrivaldi) overcame the ocean serpent that surrounds the nine realms of the Nordic cosmos, and both through the act of self-sacrifice. After Thor crushed the head of Iormungand, he was engulfed in the venom of the serpent, and managed to take nine steps backward, before he fell down dead.
The Midgard serpent represents androgyny, the cosmos, and revolving time in particular, the head and the tail conjoining (The symbol of the Ouroboros) at the threshold of the old cosmic order and the new. As nine seems to represent the cosmic totality, it is a reasonable assumption to understand the nine symbolic steps of Thor after crushing the serpent’s head, as somehow taking him back to the beginning (the end and the beginning being one), and in the euhemerized version concerning Yu, the disaster of the land of nine realms (saved through nine sacred steps), was in fact, a mythological catastrophe of cosmic, rather than local, proportions. Again we have essentially the same idea in the Jewish Targum Onkelos, commenting on the protevangelium (proto gospel) of Genesis 3:15, regarding time’s end, known as Ikveta D’Meshicha, The Heels (or footsteps) of the Messiah:
He will remember what you did to him in the beginning, and you shall be observing him in the end.
According to Skaldskaparmal and the Ragnarsdrapa, Thor also had a previous encounter with the Midgard serpent, while on a fishing trip with the giant Hymir. Using an ox head as bait, Thor hooked the sea serpent, much to the distress of Hymnir, who, terrified, finally cut the line, and the serpent sank back down to the ocean’s depths, but not before receiving a blow to the head from the unshrinking Thunder god’s hammer Mjolnir. Comparatively, according to the Huainanzi, Yu, while crossing the Yellow river, was confronted with the appearance of a dragon, causing the boatman’s face to change colour. Yu, as resolute as his Norse counterpart, smiled, perceiving the dragon as a mere lizard. And with that, the dragon departed.
Yu is also a type of Flood hero, like Noah or Ziusudra, whose mythologies are closely tied with the careers of cosmic threshold gods, such as Thor, caught between the old world and the new, confronting universal destruction head on. The invention of alcohol, that is ascribed to Noah, is also said to of occurred during the reign of Yu, although the invention itself is accredited, either to Yu’s daughter, or a member of the emperor’s staff. Both Yu and Noah became drunk, which is a common motif, shared by many mythological victims. Noah’s nakedness may also be paralleled in an account from the Huainanzi, stating that Yu disrobed before passing though the Lo kingdom, to avoid disturbing custom. Yu’s limp, which is also a common motif, the result of either, an injury to the foot, or, as in the case of Jacob, to the hip joint, is also shared by Noah, in the Kabbalistic Sefer ha-Zohar, who was struck by a lion within the ark, and permanently lamed.
The nine step limping pace of Yu, based on the dance of birds, is also reflective of the Crane Dance (Geranos), mentioned by Plutarch in his account of Theseus. After rescuing the young men and women of Athens from the Minotaur, Theseus visited the island of Delos, and there they performed a dance, imitating the complexities of the labyrinth. Also in the Iliad (18:590) we have a reference to Ariadne’s dance floor at Cnossos, built by Daedalus, who also devised the Cretan Labyrinth, where again young men and woman performed their dance.
The labyrinth, is again, another representation of the cosmos, the beginning middle and end of all things, and like the androgynous Ouroboros serpent, the beginning and the end are one. Housed within the labyrinth is the bull, who like the snake, is an incarnation of the divine in temporal form. Labyrinth means ‘the palce of the double-axe’, and it is logical that it is by means of the double-axe that the bull is slain, but also reborn. Like Thor’s hammer, the double-edge nature of the weapon wields both death and life, and as in the case of the definitive battle with Iormungand, death and life occur simultaneously. This enigmatic cosmic act, where the divine partakes in the double nature of the universe, contains within the mystery of divine separation and reunion, represented by the cosmic opposites, including male and female, enacted in the mythos of the double-axe, by Ariadne (also the bride of the bull god Dionysos) and Theseus.
Between Old and New Moons 