You've just entered the theater of an alien sky.
If the words and images seem strange to you there's a reason for this,
our world was once a vastly different place.
To experience this won't hurt you and there is nothing to fear.
Twin Worlds- -Above and Below
Egypt: The god Atum, remembered as the creator and primeval sun
In our previous episode we considered the Egyptian stories of creation,
an original unity named as the god Atum gave way to a separation,
a division into regions above and below,
but lacking any concrete referent
most translators render the two regions vaguely as heaven and earth
or Heaven resting on an ambiguous horizon or twin peaked mountain.
A global archetype: "The separation of heaven and earth"
Global variations on the ancient theme repeat this remarkable idea
and in-numerable interpretations of the theme
have been published in both popular and academic media.
Under the common interpretation the ancient language itself is left permanently obscure
whereas in the most ancient sources highly concrete forms
and a spectacular shift in the cosmic environment are consistently emphasized.
In this series of Discourses we follow a different line of interpretation,
we can act ancient myths and global symbols to extraordinary formations in the sky.
The so-called creation has long been misunderstood;
creation was a remembered event when visible powers revered as gods,
appeared to construct a vast habitation in the Heavens.
In the language of the myths an emergence occurred,
a differentiation and clarification of form where no form previously existed.
The language for the original condition typically emphasizes chaos
- not in the usual meaning of that term today
but in the sense of dimness, fog or clouds, celestial waters, a pre-dawn glow.
No implication of turbulence, no hint of conflict or wars of the gods
all of which came later; the first meaning of the word chaos was formless.
In the Egyptian stories, the creator Atumn
was immersed in the boundless waters of the deep
- originally inactive and lacking any distinctive form.
Then in the acts of creation he acquired external limbs
through the explosive ejection of visible outflow called words of power;
the text say the God gave birth to himself through this acquisition of external form.
Words of Atum: "I am alone in the night. Icreated my own creation, gave birth to my own beginning."
More specifically, as we've noted in our reconstruction of these events,
this form was provided by the God's lower limbs,
his resting place, his perch - the cosmic pillar.
The pillar is in fact a center piece of antique creation stories
and it connects us to the archetypal sub-structure,
a foundational human experience from which all of the ancient cultures arose.
It's here that we encounter the so called separation of Heaven and Earth,
the words are all too familiar but nothing close to an explanation
or even an accurate use of words has ever appeared in scholarly studies of this theme.
We've offered a testable explanation in our historical reconstruction
- based on the earliest astronomical traditions.
It begins with an ancient gathering of planets close to the Earth.
We've called this planetary assembly the Polar Configuration
and our claim is that the early cultures recorded its distinctive forms
with every tool available to them -
long before a language of stable planetary motions was even possible.
Given the specificity of our visual reconstruction
it can be readily tested against a vast cross-cultural consensus.
The cosmic mountain or pillar consistently meant the resting place of a visible power
remembered the world over as the Creator, the figure named also as a primeval Sun
and identified in the early astronomical traditions as the planet Saturn.
But in the prior historic context the monumental cultures knew these powers
simply as the ruling Gods.
So as we've seen, the Egyptian priests could declare -
"The Great God Lives Fixed in the middle of the sky Upon his support."
and this central power Atum could announce with perfect consistency -
"I am raised aloft on my perch above yonder places of the Abyss".
In the original mythic context the Abyss meant the cosmic waters,
the primeval ocean of Nu, the very waters penetrated by the cosmic pillar
to give Atum both his resting place and his external form.
In our reconstruction it is the crescent arms of the pillar God,
standing out in a critical phase of the Polar Configuration,
that visually divided the great sphere of Saturn into upper and lower regions.
By following that surprising conclusion the ancient sources will never disappoint us.
And so we find in this archaic symbolism the origins of the Atlas theme;
a theme coming down to us in many variations
but here too conventional treatments of the subject lack any content and actual experience,
that's why the ground we've covered in earlier Discourses is so essential.
In the daily revolution of this crescent we see the original form of the cosmic twins.
Just as the twins to the left and right signified
contrasting positions of the crescent in the daily cycle,
so did the symbolism of above and below in the same cycle of an archaic day and night.
Archetypal crescent of the Polar Configuration in its "midnight" position, the supreme moment in the archaic "day"
Here we discovered the archetypal meaning of the Egyptian words Neter Ta
- the divine land, God's land - designated as two lands, more accurately -
the twin lands, since as we should expect, this symbolism is inseparable from that
of the cosmic twins - we've also discussed.
In this case the emphasis is on the revolving crescent positions
above and below in the daily cycle.
In Egypt the meaning of these opposing crescent positions
was localized in the symbolism of Upper and Lower Egypt;
the original inspiration lay not in terrestrial context
but in sacred cosmography symbolically projected onto geography,
the cosmic map of the holy land in the sky was the prototype
reflected in sacred temple cities and kingdoms on Earth
- always directing our attention back to the twin powers of Heaven.
The celestial model was by no means limited to Egypt,
all mythic archetypes traced to a unified source;
sometimes complex but always leaving an imprint, a signature,
a fundamental and lasting contribution to human thought
and religious practices the world over.
Central star, axial pillar and revolving crescent in the Polar Configuration
For the Sumerians and Babylonians the agent of the cosmic separation was the giant Enlil,
in a fashion he was really similar to that of the Egyptian Shu,
Enlil divided a primeval unity into two regions--one above, one below.
The word for that unity was AnKi, a combination of the very words for above and below,
An; The Above and Ki; The Below.
As in the story of the pillar God Shu
the Sumerian priest declared that it was the pillar God Enlil
that separated An and Ki.
This curious theme is well worth following;
how did it happen that in so many creation accounts the world over,
a fabulous pillar arises to separate an original unity into upper and lower divisions.
Such memories coming down to us from every corner of the ancient world
can only reinforce our conclusion
that the mythic archetypes originated in an unfamiliar world,
virtually no connection whatsoever to the celestial environment we experience today.
In all of this a key consideration must be driven home;
the ancient star worshippers did not just see a giant sphere in the Heavens above them,
they did not just see a Heaven reaching column appearing to hold that sphere aloft;
the polar configuration had a central definition
including the vertical column's universal link to a revolving crescent.
Follow today's common assumptions and the entire idea
of such a concrete global theme is preposterous
and yet as we explore the ancient context letting words mean what they say,
the implications become ever more clear.
Always look for the underlying form!