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.
The Separation of Heaven and Earth
A mythic archetype is a broadly distributed pattern
of ancient storytelling and magical re-enactment.
In the past century cross-cultural studies have identified hundreds of archetypes,
and our own study has added many themes to the list.
Of all the named archetypes, one of the most recognizable is
the towering God holding aloft the great sphere of Heaven.
Greek poets and philosophers named this Heaven bearing giant Atlas
but almost all of the early cultures seem to have remembered a similar mythic personality.
And how curious that this archetypal quasi-divine power
was said to have separated Heaven and Earth,
dividing a world above from a world below.
What natural phenomenon could have provoked this remarkable theme
-- the separation of above and below?
Our claim in these Discourses is that extraordinary natural events
occurring just prior to the emergence of the great civilizations
sparked an outpouring of creative activity and commemorative rites,
all encoding a universal human experience.
Hundreds of cross-cultural themes or archetypes
traced to the beginnings of human history
and to the early experience of what we've called the polar configuration.
In earlier Discourses, we introduced the role of the world mountain,
a visible pillar rising along Earth's rotational axis.
In response to this awe-inspiring presence, the early cultures consecrated sacred hills
and holy mountains as special symbols of a formerly witnessed cosmic column.
And they invested massive labors in monumental construction,
all commemorating the celestial home and resting place of an ancestral God.
In fact, the theme of the world mountain converges globally with another theme,
the cosmic giant bearing aloft the sphere of Heaven.
By following this theme back to its first expressions,
we uncover the original meaning of the phrase above and below,
a radical meaning that is essential to the story of the world mountain or cosmic pillar.
Egyptian texts and art depict the Heaven-supporting God Shu
as a pillar-like form with upraised arms.
The priests declared that these arms created the separation of above and below.
We explain this relationship by the role of the illuminated crescent.
In visual terms the crescent suggested two extensions of the pillar,
and it divided the vast sphere of the primeval unity, Atum, into upper and lower regions.
With this connection in mind, we can avoid
the fatal mistake in common treatments of the Atlas theme
-- the assumption that Atlas bore the Earth on his shoulders.
That idea is directly contradicted by the Greek chroniclers themselves,
who consistently recognized the celestial nature of the burden Atlas carried.
"...And he, no other, holds the tall pillars that keep the sky and Earth apart."
- Homer
"Atlas through hard constraint upholds the wide Heaven with unwearying head and arms."
- Hesiod
"Does not even now great Atlas struggle to bear up the weight of Heaven?"
- Pindar
Many additional citations could be given to make this point, but in these Discourses,
we're not just calling for a correction of one popular interpretation.
Those who followed earlier episodes will not be surprised by our identification
of the upraised arms of the Egyptian Shu as a crescent-form appearing as
extensions of a single pillar reaching upward along the polar axis of the Earth.
As detailed in previous episodes, the twin arms of Shu trace to the role of a visible crescent
upon the giant sphere of Saturn in the ancient sky close to Earth.
The language takes its meaning from the early phase of the polar configuration
as it emerged from the undifferentiated ambient glow of an earlier time.
In this earlier phase, the dusty plasma medium through which the gathered planets moved,
diffused and softened our Sun's natural illumination of these bodies.
The arrival of this crescent was a widely celebrated event.
It meant the beginning of a daily cycle which the mythmakers themselves
designated as the coming of the first day and night.
Our identification of the polar column with the activity of the planet Mars
constitutes a prediction as to the prime player in the so-called separation of Heaven and Earth.
Classical authors recognized in the Egyptian Shu their own archetypal warrior;
the Greeks named the God either as Heracles, a name they gave to the planet Mars,
or as the warrior Aries - the most common name for Mars.
The Romans followed suit, naming their own far-famed warrior as Mars
and identifying their semi-divine ancestor Hercules as that very planet.
When viewed as a mythic image of the crescent and polar column,
the explanation leaps out from the historical material.
The crescent arms of the Heaven- supporting divinity being the upright crescent form of the configuration,
visually extending the mythic function of the pillar itself
and most dramatically so in its symmetrical midnight position.
That was the most celebrated moment in the ancient day.
This archaic day began at sunset when the sky darkened
and the planetary configuration continue to grow brighter,
reaching its peak brightness at midnight.
Thus, it is that from earliest times in ancient Egypt,
we see the arms of Shu raising up the primeval sun-God Atum
from the darkness of the abyss.
So when Atum declares, "I do not fall on account of Shu",
it is the pillar and twin arms of Shu that give concrete meaning to the language;
the cosmic perch and resting place of the primeval sun-God Atum
as noted in our previous episode is the pillar of the sky,
its function emphasized by the twin arms of Shu.
The two extensions of the cosmic pillar, or in the two peaks of the world mountain,
mean precisely the same thing.
As presented in Egyptian sources, the creation story focuses on the separation
or holding apart of two regions typically mistranslated as Heaven and Earth.
Egyptian priests knew Atum as the primeval unity meaning the one -- the all.
In the creation events through the activity of Shu,
this unity gave way to profound differentiation into a duality.
What was then seen from Earth as the extended upright arms of Shu
produced the visual appearance of a division
-- a formerly unified whole divided into regions above and below.
Thus, our explanation of the pillar- God's two most vital functions;
as the stable support of Atum and as the ancient power
that created the so-called separation of Heaven and Earth.
Egypt: The Ka-arms of Shu separated above and below
We identify both functions with the visual contribution of the planet Mars
to the emergence and evolution of the polar configuration.
Specifically, the World Pillar or World Mountain.
Egypt: "I am raised aloft on my perch above yonder places of the Abyss."
Egypt: "I do not fall on account of Shu."
Of course, distance from these events over time
allowed the concepts to drift away from things originally seen.
And yet many centuries later,
we still see the God Shu standing upright as the pillar-God
filling the space between the arching form of the Goddess Nut above,
and the recumbent form of the male power Geb below.
When presented in this way as opposites,
the Egyptians named the domain marked out by the crescent above as Pet
-- equated with the Goddess Nut in the emerging duality;
and the region marked out by the crescent below as Ta -- equated with the God Geb.
But in the absence of anything presently observed in the sky,
the translators render the upper region of the sphere as Heaven and the lower region as Earth,
introducing contradictions that could only confuse these Egyptian concepts.
For any reliable interpretation, the reference must be considered
in their archetypal original and testable contexts.
For us the objective contexts mean concrete forms in the sky and concretely experienced
natural events reconstructed from the deepest cross-cultural agreement.
In fact, as we intend to show in the episodes to follow,
every archetype relating to the so-called separation of Heaven and Earth
will fall into place as predictable themes within the context of this reconstruction.
As you follow these Discourses, you can assess this testability for yourself
as we continue surveying the entire panorama of ancient myths, symbols and sacred practices.
The most critical themes are firstly,
an original undifferentiated condition or absence of form;
and secondly, an emerging geometry of creation with specific regions above and below;
and thirdly, a central role of the archetypal warrior hero as the cosmic pillar personified,
filling the role of the Demiurge -- a primeval power executing a divine or intelligent plan.
Thus, the role of the cosmic Warrior was paramount.
The separation of above and below was, in fact, the Warrior-God's first achievement,
even before he had earned his title as Warrior-God.