70: The Cintāmaṇi, the Auryn, and related language and philosophy topics

Written and published by Linden Alexander Pentecost. Article published on the 26th August 2025. No AI was used in the creation of this article or in any of my publications. This article is also unrelated and separate from any of my other publications. Other aspects (not discussed in this article) of certain things in this article are discussed in detail in some of my other publications, but nevertheless the information in this article is completely new. Note that much of the information in this article represents my own thoughts on fictional works and words in relation to attested real language words and philosophy and does likely not represent the intended meaning by the writers of said fictional works. This article contains no sub-sections but discusses many topics, this article contains 1211 words. 

I have in both books and online articles separately discussed before different aspects of the symbolism of Michael Ende's The Neverending Story in detail, this can be found in articles on this website, in some of which I mention aspects of The Neverending Story, Moonchild and Uyulala and related points, several times in different articles. Uyulala I will describe again here briefly as the collective, dual-voiced consciousness associated with the South Pole and also called “The Southern Oracle”. She will not be further discussed in this article, although Moonchild will be. I have also discussed much more on the Neverending Story in other articles and books. Another aspect to this which I have not yet discussed connects to Tibetan Buddhism. In The Neverending Story, the sacred amulet which Atreyu is given is called the Auryn. I have previously discussed this word in detail elsewhere, but not in terms of the aspects I talk about in this article.

One thing (of the several I discuss in this article), which I noticed relatively recently, is that the word Auryn also bares a similarity to the names Uranus, and also Urania The Goddess and to Orion the god and constellation. This connects to an interesting point in Buddhism and Hinduism, that of the sacred wish-fulfilling jewel known as the Cintāmaṇi in Sanskrit. Whilst the Cintāmaṇi is said to appear like a pearl, its wish-fulfilling nature is very much akin to the nature of the Auryn in The Neverending Story, being itself both an amulet of protection and which fulfills the wishes of whoever bares it. Whilst the name Cintāmaṇi is not etymologically connected to the name Auryn, the Cintāmaṇi stone is said to come from the constellation Orion in some accounts, with Orion sounding similar to Auryn. This word, this sacred sound, may I think encompass something of both light and eternity, it has a serpentine nature and is symbolically akin to the ring of light surrounding the sun, and to a kind of golden ring shape - which puts it in connection with "The One Ring" in J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. It too, the ring, grants one power, but Tolkien rightfully outlines the negative aspects of the archetype.

The thing about the Neverending Story is that, it also emphasises the more potentially negative nature of the Auryn, for by endlessly wishing, one loses their memory of self, and only by wishing for the right things, which the heart most truly wants, can the Auryn be wielded in the way spirit intended. In The Lord of the Rings which is arguably more akin to a Christian perspective, the One Ring has to be destroyed, thereby removing the temptation for power by destroying the corruption or ring, the illusion, that encircles us, representing cycular time and space. Note that the ring is akin to a toroid shape for instance. Another interesting connection between the Cintāmaṇi, the Auryn and Moonchild, is that sometimes the Cintāmaṇi is represented in a symbolic way as appearing like three globes within a flower or three globes upon a flower, or sometimes as a flower-like shape, with three flowers above it, each flower having three petals. This is very akin to the number ”three” in relation to different symbols I have recently discussed in two articles, although I have discussed and published some of these symbols before then too. The two recent articles in which I discuss other aspects to the number three in symbolism, are titled: On non-Norse language in Iceland, and Icelandic magical staves - a mysterious symbolic language (published in Silly Linguistics magazine), and: m1. More on The Great Mystery of the Cosmos and of Romance - and one Welsh, and one Finnish, symbols (published on my Clwàideac-na-Cuinne website (not the website you are currently on)). I also had a vivid dream back in 2022 in which I saw a statue or solidified form of the goddess Sophía as standing above the sea, I wrote about this and included artwork in some other publications, and I think in the dream in question the goddess had three-petal flowers, although in the artwork I have not specifically given them three petals.

But what is specifically interesting here in connection to the Neverending Story is that, in the 1980s film of The Neverending Story, the Ivory Tower, in which lives Moonchild, is depicted as u a glowing white or golden tower, at the top of which is a platform appearing like three round petals (just like the petals in the Cintāmaṇi symbols) and with a flower upon them. The idea of the Cintāmaṇi falling from Orion is also akin to the idea of the Ivory Tower, Moonchild and the Auryn being connected to the celestial realm of the sky. This is also a likely in my opinion connection between Moonchild, the Gnostic Sophia, and Ilmatar in the Finnish Kalevala.

I would also like to mention that I wonder whether or not Artex in The Neverending Story is akin to the Wind Horse of Tibetan Buddhism, a flying horse symbolic of the human spirit. And furthermore, the character Cairon from the Neverending Story, whilst described in the book as being a Centaur, in the film does for me bare a striking resemblance to how the Finnish god Väinämöinen has been occasionally depicted as ancient wizard with darker skin. Just as in the Neverending Story Cairon guards Moonchild and the Ivory Tower, in some ways similarly in Finnish mythology Väinämöinen is the son of Ilmatar. Of course Cairon is not the son of Moonchild, but in the context of the divine protector of the feminine and of the divine feminine or universal goddess present in The Neverending Story - in the Kalevala, Ilmatar represents the divine feminine or Sophia, and when Väinämöinen is born he already has the appearance of an old man - partly because he has been in the womb for 700 years. In the Neverending Story Moonchild is definately not the mother of Cairon, but Moonchild does seem to represent the innocent aspect of that same divine feminine force that is, in a less-specifically innocent way, also connected to Sophia and Ilmatar. So perhaps Cairon is the "son" of another aspect of that divine feminine creation.

This article is dedicated to horses, and those who care about horses (this dedication relates to the Windhorse and human spirit as discussed as a topic in this article).