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[This is a guest post by Brian Pellar]

. . . the consonants are the letters or ciphers which assemble around the vowels to form the words, just as the constellations assemble around the Sun, image of the Divinity, and compose the community of stars over which it presides.                                                                        — Hebreu Primiti

The Consonants of Command

Dear Professor Mair,

In regard to your question, “Is there some sense in which we could think of the 12 aspects/signs/symbols of the alphazodiac as comprising/encompassing the basic sounds of the universe?” I’ve dabbled a bit with some intriguing answers in my papers. For instance, in my very first paper, SPP 196, I placed in the endnotes a very interesting reference from the Gospel of the Egyptians (a Nag Hammadi text) that I feel might bear a relationship to the structure and the underlying “sacred” vowels that comprise the Logos/Word — the breath of God — of the alphazodiac. More specifically,

the “three powers” (the Father, Mother, and Son) give praise to the unnamable Spirit — and the “hidden invisible mystery” that came forth is composed of seven sacred vowels (i.e., the Son “brings forth from the bosom/the seven powers of the great / light of the seven voices, and the word/[is] their completion”), with each of those seven vowels repeated exactly twenty-two times (“iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii[iii]/ ēēēēēēēēēēēēēēēēēēēēēē /oooooooooooooooooooooo/uu[uuu] uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu/eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee/aaaaaaa[aaaa]aaaaaaaaaaa/ ōōōōōōōōōōōō ōōōōōōōōōō”) (Robinson 1990: 209–210). [SPP 196, pp. 38-39].

In that endnote, I did not elaborate much at all. But looking at it again, what’s particularly interesting regarding this particular passage, which is a subset of “the holy book of the Egyptians about the great invisible Spirit,” are the elements of Pi: 22/7 = 3.14 (22 repeats of 7 powers, 3 powers), which, in turn, is part of the structure of the alphazodiac (22 consonants joining at the 7^th letter/Gemini Gate = 3.14), which also comes out of Egypt (i.e., its roots, as I have tried to show in my work, are in the Egyptian Celestial Diagrams of the Pharaohs. Furthermore, this Gnostic text is based on Greek ideas, which, when taken in context of Pythagorus’ Solids, appear to also have their roots in Egyptian ideas — as Pythagorus and other Greek scholars studied in Egypt). To speculate a bit, the three powers of the Gospel of the Egyptians, thus, could correlate to Osiris, Isis, and Horus, who, no doubt, praise the “hidden invisible mystery” within the Word/Sun/Seed.  Thus, it is their “praise” or breath that brings forth the seven “sacred vowels” that give rise to the “Word” itself. But critically, as I mentioned in SPP 263, p.117 (and below), the Hebreu Primitif, states,

The Hebrew letters are the ciphers or signs of the zodiac, from which the words of the Hebrew language itself are formed; the consonants are the letters or ciphers which assemble around the vowels to form the words, just as the constellations assemble around the Sun, image of the Divinity, and compose the community of stars over which it presides. The constellations of the Zodiac formed the twelve great gods of Graeco-Roman antiquity, corresponding to the twelve stations of the Sun, and these constellations were distinguished by the letters from Aleph to Thau; attributes or energies of the same divinity, they are so to speak the pearls which have formed the necklace of the Zodiac, and the vowels corresponding to the seven planets which surround the Sun are the voices which give sound or color to the consonants; they form the word, and the word is the Divinity itself. The priests of Abydos would recite the mystic hymn of the seven vowels, or the name of Jehovah which unites them.”

Thus, not only does this directly link the gods and the zodiac to the Hebrew alphabet (and, thus, the earlier Phoenician), but, more importantly, it links the Hebrew letters to the earlier priests of Egypt (where the Phoenician alphabet was ultimately derived. Note that in my first paper, SPP 196, I discussed important connections between the Zefer Yetzirah: The Book of Creation, and the Hebrew and Phoenician alphabet/alphazodiac, and in my latest paper, SPP 341, I strengthened those connections by showing a strong relationship between the Phoenician alphabet and the zodiac by way of the Phoenician author Sanchuniathon, etc). Those Egyptian priests, like the three powers in the Gospel of the Egyptians, give praise to divinity, as they recite the “seven vowels” that compose the “name of Jehovah which unites them,” the “word” or “divinity itself. Thus, like in the Gospel of the Egyptians, from the silence of divinity, the “hidden invisible mystery,” comes “sound” — the vowels, which unfold into the “Word” of God.

But more specifically, it is the son, Horus, who is the culmination of that mystery — the sound and light/color and matter. Thus, Isis and the dead Osiris (via a pre-Christian immaculate conception) are needed to couple to produce the son, who is none other than the sun itself, as well as the new select wheat that rose from the body of the harvested father/Osiris as wheat. Horus is also the new Pharaoh of Egypt, who, as king, carries within “his bosom” those seven sacred vowels/breath from which to issue his edicts to Egypt. His breath, composed of those 7 vowels of light, will be carried within the consonants of his commands, and will thus manifest in the divine and eternal “Word” (i.e., the “hidden invisible mystery” at the center is nested within the father, who is nested within the mother who is nested within the son, which is akin to the “hidden invisible mystery” at the center being nested within the breath/vowel, which is nested within the consonants, which is nested within the Word). The impotent and mortal Seth will nourish the bodies of Egypt (“he who causes to live”) as the seed that is eaten, but Horus, the living Pharaoh, via the Word as seed/sun, will nourish the minds of Egypt as the select ruling power and eternal Word/sun/seed of Egypt.

But what’s vital in regard to this is that the myth was enacted in the sky first — as above, so (w) below. Thus, from the northern womb of Nut in the circumpolar region was born the sun/seed/Word at the southern Gemini Gate, the 7^th letter out of the 22.  As the exit to the Duat/Heaven/Womb, it is a symbol of the birth of the eternal sun as the Word as the seed passing through all 22 consonants (the 11 couplets that comprise the 11 houses of the zodiac) during the course of the year and the cycle of the wheat (with the animals of some of the those houses of the zodiac comprising the various stages of the wheat, as discussed in SPP 328 and SPP 341). Thus, it makes sense that each of the seven vowels of the “hidden invisible mystery” are repeated 22 times. This is due to the vowel symbolizing the sacred breath that passes through the consonants. As it all mirrors the cycle of the sun and the cycle of the wheat during the year, this means that all seven vowels/breath of divinity must pass through all the 22 couplets of the alphazodiac. Those seven vowels are then born from the Gemini Gate (Duat), the seventh Phoenician consonant Zayin, as the “Word” — the son, Horus, as the sun/seed that will then give rise to, and nourish, matter — flesh.  It’s also relevant that the Egyptian Celestial Diagram of Senemut (see Figure 16B, SPP 328, p. 51) shows a seed-like shape at the heart of the hidden bovine on the south wall that I’ve shown to be the Hyades in Taurus — the Phoenician letter “Aleph.” That seed-shaped “A” (which is the head of Taurus, which itself is shaped as, and forms the origin of, the letter “A”) is composed of three “nested” seeds (this nested seed shape in the form of the bull, which matches the bull god Osiris as the bull wheat, is also seen in several other Celestial diagrams, such as Ramses II, Pedamenope, etc.). Those nested seeds, which are connected to, and arose from, the new head of the wheat plant (thus Aries, the vernal equinox at the time, is visually shown as a sheep in Senemut — the new “head” of wheat just prior to the more mature bull head of wheat of Taurus) are akin to the “three powers” and are thus the nested seeds of sound, of the nested “invisible mystery” within the vowel/breath that is in turn, within the Word as seed/sun/son that will be born from the Gemini Gate at the harvest of the wheat, which the sequence in Senemut clearly shows (as discussed in several of my papers, this link between the “son” and “seed” and “sound” and the zodiac is also demonstrated in the Chinese ganzhi in the start of the Earthly Branches, the Rat, which is equivalent to the start of the earlier Western zodiac, as Aries, and like the Western zodiac, it symbolizes the new head of wheat, or rice in China, that emerges in spring. For the character Zi, Rat, not only has the shape of Aries, but, like earlier Western symbolism, is linked in meaning to “child,” “seed,” and “word.” See SPP 328, p. 87). 

As discussed in the recent Language Log posts on the Dodecahedron, the Gnostic texts also discuss the idea of the “Monad” and the unfolding the cosmos from the “silence” (the idea of the monad, once again, comes out of Greece, and most likely, Egypt. It’s also interesting that word “monad” is also a “Greek feminine noun” — thus, there’s a possible residual connection to the earlier Great Goddess, the creatrix, of the Neolithic and Upper Paleolithic, that is still seen in the Rigveda of India. According to the Devi Sukta (10.125), the “eternal and infinite consciousness” is feminine — “I created earth and heaven and reside as their inner controller. On the world’s summit, I bring forth sky the Father. . .”  But more importantly, she is also associated with Word, and she alone speaks it from that eternal and infinite consciousness: “Hear, one and all, the truth as I declare it. I, verily, myself announce and utter the word that Gods and mean alike shall welcome”). Furthermore, like the 12 sides of the dodecahedron being linked by Plato to the 12 constellations of the zodiac, as well as to the Gods of the Aeons (see LL post Roman Dodecahedra Between Southeast Asian and England, Part 4), the Hebreu Primitif also links the 12 zodiac signs to gods (12 gods of Greece-Rome, and the one Hebrew god Jehovah) and to numbers and sounds — the letters of the Hebrew (Phoenician) alphabet that contain the vowels/breath of divinity.

But more importantly, in the Gospel of the Egyptians, note the focus and emphasis of “silence”:  “Three powers came forth from him; they are the Father, the Mother, (and) the Son, from the living silence, what came forth from the incorruptible Father. These came forth from the silence of the unknown Father.” That is, there was first “silence,” and then non-silence — sound (the vowels and then the Word), with the gods themselves, the Aeons, being composed of both  “numbers and sounds.” Those Aeons also form male/female “pairs” that are called “syzygies,” which, might be correlated to the male/female couplets that compose the 22 consonants of the alphazodiac. That is, the Aeons form 15 pairs of 30 each, which might be correlated to the 30 earlier lunar houses (28 lunar mansions in China). As mentioned in several places in my published papers, the solar alphazodiac is merely a later subset of that earlier lunar one. 

Some similar ideas regarding sound and the Word into flesh/matter are within my paper SPP 263:

            Zodiac/Alphabet (Word into Flesh) [pp. 117-118]

a.) Figures of the constellations of the zodiac are extensions of the same astro-theological 
processes within the circumpolar region (Pellar, 2009). Thus, the arrow of Sagittarius is symbolic of the axis mundi, as is the arrow of the hunter Orion, who lifts his hand up into the Gemini gate/horizon of the goddess within the Milky Way/celestial waters on the ecliptic (the birthplace of the sun/son/seed/Logos). 


b). Figures of the constellations correlate to the letters of Phoenician/Hebrew alphabet, which in turn is an extension of the twenty-four uniconsonant hieroglyphs of Egypt. Unknown to me until just recently, Adolphe Lethierry-Barrois (died 1863), no doubt following up on the same seminal idea in the Sefer Yetzriah, wrote in the opening of his posthumous Hebreu Primitif, 


The Hebrew letters are the ciphers or signs of the zodiac, from which the words of the Hebrew language itself are formed; the consonants are the letters or ciphers which assemble around the vowels to form the words, just as the constellations assemble around the Sun, image of the Divinity, 
and compose the community of stars over which it presides. The constellations of the Zodiac formed the twelve great gods of Graeco- Roman antiquity, corresponding to the twelve stations of the Sun, and these constellations were distinguished by the letters from Aleph to Thau; attributes or energies of the same divinity, they are so to speak the pearls which have formed the necklace of the Zodiac, and the vowels corresponding to the seven planets which surround the Sun are the voices which give sound or color to the consonants; they form the word, and the word is the Divinity itself. The priests of Abydos would recite the mystic hymn of the seven vowels, or the name of Jehovah which unites them. It is through the word or Son of God that all creation was made, for the voice and the vowel give life to the consonants, just as the sun gives color to bodies, to matter; and the consonants or radical letters, animated by the vowels, form the roots that compose the primitive, monosyllabic language, just as the koua contain the system of the Chinese language. (Godwin, 1991: 63).

c). Plato in Timaeus noted that the Demiurge created the universe from two circles that he joined “in the form of the letter X” (quoted from Ulansey, 1991: 47). As noted in my paper “On the Origins of the Alphabet,” the alphabet is composed of two loops (circles) that form an “X” at their intersection, and has two letters with an “X” in them, Taw and Teth, both symbolizing the solstices (the winter/Capricorn and summer/Cancer solstices respectively), and thus the reversal of the direction of the letters in the Phoenician alphabet at those two letters (mirroring the reversal of the sun on the horizon when it hits the solstices). The “X” referred to by Plato is the “X” formed by the intersection of the circle of the celestial equator and the circle of the ecliptic (the two poles at their center: the north celestial pole and the pole of the ecliptic, the latter having a “center,” by definition, in the center of the sun).

And also from SPP 263:

Thought as Spiritual Text [pp. 153-159]


Breath/Vowel/Logos. The Word behind the word. The idea of the god or divine wisdom within the spoken word must be as old as humankind itself, and must have informed its early rituals and astro-theological constructs and images. This is seen in the written record, at least, from the ancient god Ptah in Egypt who created all things via the word, to Thoth, “Lord of the Sacred Word,” to Hermes, the messenger of the gods (the Greek counterpart of Thoth), to the Christian Gnostics, such as the Ophitic Christian sect, the Perates, who, as earlier mentioned, believed that the cosmos consisted of the Father, Matter, and the Son/Logos, or Marcus, who said that the seven vowels, uniting in harmony, rise to glorify God as the world builder, and that echoes of this hymn ascend to the Divine Logos and then “descend to earth to model and generate the souls of men” (Godwin, 1991: 25). It is not an accident that those seven vowels, which are cradled within the twenty-two consonants as vessels (like the horizon symbol Ahket cradles the sun/head), symbolize the seventh letter of the astro-alphabet, Zaiyin, which in turn divides the twenty-two consonants (body/vessel of the monistic goddess) at the Gemini Gate, with the end product generating that magical/mystical number pi — 3.14 (see Pellar, 2009). The idea of the consonant as the vessel/body of the vowel/light/understanding god within, is seen in the Ugaritic alphabet, which is composed of thirty letters, symbolizing the days of the moon, which was the vessel of light, and which contained in it the twenty-two letters of the solar zodiac (see Pellar, 2009). In Hinduism, the word vāk is “the mother of knowledge, the seven vowels of the Sanskrit alphabet are still called the seven wombs, being the seven mothers of speech” (Chevalier and Gheerbrant, 1996: 1122). According to Demetrius (Godwin, 1991: 22) of Hellenistic Greece, the Egyptians had seven sacred vowels that they used in singing in praise to the gods. Along with the alphabet, these seven sacred vowels were carried into the Phoenician/Hebrew and then Greek alphabets. This concept of the seven vowels is further seen in the number seven being the gate of the goddess in the astro-alphabet (see Pellar, 2009), and mirrors the seven stars of Ursa Minor in the womb of the Great Goddess/Bull. Godwin also notes that Eusebius of Caesarea (260–340 AD), quoting Porphyry, remarks that Apollo, the sun god, is the “King of the seven notes, known to all” (Godwin, 1991: 21). Furthermore, Godwin, quoting Eusebius, remarked that … it was with the seven vowels that the Jews sought to express the name of God which cannot be spoken, but that they reduced these to four for the use of the multitude. He draws a parallel with a saying he remembers from one of the Wise Men of Greece (who may well be Porphyry again): “The seven vowels celebrate me, the great imperishable God, indefatigable father of all. I am the imperishable lyre, having tuned the lyric songs of the celestial vortex.” This is a formulation of the beautiful doctrine of astral paganism, according to which the Sun is the leader of the choir of planets, and Apollo’s lyre a symbol of the harmony of the spheres. It is Franz Dornseiff, however, who again cautions against too cut-and-dried an interpretation of ancient correspondences. He cites an invocation in one of the magical papyri of “α ε η ι ο υ ω that rise in the night,” heavenly bodies which evidently do not include the sun; they must be the seven stars of the Great Bear, he says, which, in a tradition that goes back to Babylonian times, are confused with the seven planets and even called by their names. This ambiguity — which is the same as that between the Hyperborean and the Delian Apollo — was recognized by the Sabaeans of Harran, that mysterious Hermetic sect which survived into Muslim times. They had seven temples dedicated to the planets, and seem to have originated the correspondences of planets to metals, but their worship also included a liturgy addressed to the Pole Star, around which the Great Bear turns. (Godwin, 1991: 21–22).

It is important to note that, though unknown to Dornseiff at the time, the seven vowels that rise in the night could indeed correspond to the seven planets, the sun, and the seven stars of Ursa Minor or Major, for the monistic goddess as the Great Bear/Bull, as previously noted, gave birth to the sun as the logos/seed/son via the action of the celestial pole. They are not mutually exclusive. The “opening of the mouth ceremony,” the most important ritual in ancient Egypt, which uses an adze in the shape of the seven stars of Ursa Major, and which also used a bull’s leg (which, again, is none other than the front leg of the Great Bull, Ursa Major, Meskhetiu, as discussed in Part One, with references to the research of Relke/Ernest) to open the mouth of one who is deceased so that he may speak, hear, breathe, see, etc., mirrors the importance of the seven sacred vowels as the seven sacred stars of the god (possibly referring to Ptah, who created all things via the word) in that they form the Word behind the words of the deceased. As the Egyptians looked at the number seven as a “symbol of eternal life” (Chevalier and Gheerbrant, 1996: 859), the correlation with the adze and the seven stars of Ursa Major is not a coincidence, as the ultimate aim of the opening of the mouth ceremony was to ensure eternal life for the deceased. It should also be noted that this opening of the mouth is related to not only the Egyptian Ankh, but, more importantly, to the Primal Pattern itself, as the mouth is none other than the horizon/vulva/gate of the goddess, and the bull’s leg/adze is the phallus/spear that opens the gate of the Goddess in an iteration of the astro-theological process of the opening of the Great Bull by Anu. This idea is further reflected, unknown to me till just recently, in the words of Nicomachus of Gerasa, a Pythagorean:

And the tones of the seven spheres, each of which by nature produces a particular sound, are the sources of the nomenclature of the vowels. These are described as unpronounceable in themselves and in all their combinations by wise men since the tone in this context performs a role analogous to that of the monad in number, the point in geometry, and the letter in grammar. However, when they are combined with the materiality of the consonants just as soul is combined with body and harmony with strings — the one producing a creature, the other notes and melodies — they have potencies which are efficacious and perfective of divine things. Thus whenever the theurgists are conducting such acts of worship they make invocations symbolically with hissing, clucking, and inarticulate and discordant sounds. (Godwin, 1991: 23–24)

Once again, I felt that this symbolized the vowels being cut up by the teeth (akin to arrow/spear/knife cutting up the god), where they would then sit within the womb of the consonant, like the sun within the constellations/letters of the astro-alphabet, ready to rise from the gate of the monistic goddess in light and understanding. The Seven Sages (the Indian Saptarshi, the Seven Rishis) of India seem to mirror this music via the vowels as well, as they are also the seven stars of Ursa Major. The seven sages insured that the “measures of a new world had to be procured from the depths of the celestial ocean and tuned with the measures from above” (Santillana and Von Dechend, 1969: 3). Furthermore, the “Line of the Seven Rishis,” the solstitial colure (solstice), “happened to run through one after the other of these stars during several millennia (starting with eta, around 4000 BC): and to establish this colure is ‘internationally’ termed ‘to suspend the sky’ — the Babylonians called the Big Dipper ‘bond of heaven,’ ‘mother bond of heaven,’ the Greeks spelled it ‘Omphaloessa’” (Santillana and Von Dechend, 1969: 301). In terms of the latter, see Omphalos, above. As spoken by the god (Great Goddess, Mommo, Ptah, Yahweh, Taiyi, etc.) in the upper celestial vault (the pole), the Word becomes manifest in the letters of the alphabet/zodiac at the middle level of the ecliptic, and is then born to the flesh through the gate of the goddess at the horizon. Furthermore, Breath is actually the Holy Spirit of the Old Testament (an apparent mistranslation as some have suggested, as when Genesis 1:2 says that the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters, it was really the breath of God that moved, which in turn, created the waves of sound, the Word/Logos, from which he “said” — “Let there be light: and there was light”). This breath/Logos is the intent/consciousness/wisdom of the Divine Intelligence of the Primal Androgyne/monistic Goddess. In the same way that the body of the god must be cut up, so must breath in the form of the vowel be cut up by the mouth so that meaning in the form of discrete units/consonants can enter the feminine ear (to “ear” is to sow/plough, hence the “ear” within “hear”) to give birth/resurrect the author/god/father within. Thus, the root of lingam and langala (plough) is not a coincidence, as the plough, like the lingam/penis, sows the seed into the earth/goddess. It is also not a coincidence that the plow of Egypt reflects the shape not only of a bull’s head, but the Hyades (Taurus), which is the letter “A,”

Aleph, the sun/son/seed that rises from the gate of the Goddess (see Pellar, 2009). This is why the North Celestial Pole is seen in an image of a plow in the center of the Zodiac of Dendera. The Word/seed/sun is sown from the center/axis mundi of the cosmic sphere. To dig a bit deeper, if writing is akin to plowing/sowing, then reading is akin to harvesting, where the mind grinds (philosopher’s stone) the word as seed to produce symbolic bread, which rises, nourishes, and carries the light/consciousness/wisdom within, etc. This idea found its way into the Poetic Tradition via the scribes of Egypt, to Greece, Rome, and Europe. This grinding/cutting up of the god/goddess is seen in the eastern myths, notably India, where the demiurge is not separate from its creation, but “is” the creation, as it divides itself, cuts itself up, to form all things. Lastly, in line with the Word/seed/womb/22/Logos, etc., it is interesting that the Dogon of Africa had two different words that they call ‘dry’ and ‘moist’ words.

The dry, or primordial, word was an attribute of the primeval Spirit, Amma, before he had begun the task of creation, and was undifferentiated speech, unaware of itself. It resides within mankind, but mankind does not know it. It has the potential property of divine thought, but at our microcosmic level is the unconscious. ‘Moist’ words germinated, like the principle of life itself, within the Cosmic egg and they were the words given to mankind. They comprise audible sounds, regarded as one of the ways in which procreative of the male are expressed, on a par with his semen. The word enters the woman’s ear — her other sexual organ — and then twines down into her womb to fertilize the seed and create the embryo. The word, in this same spiral form, is the light which descends on the sun’s rays to take physical shape in the earth’s womb as red copper. Moist words, like the water, light, spirals and red copper, are simply one of the different manifestations — or meanings — of a basic symbol, the world made manifest, or of its lord, the water-god Nommo. The sum of Bambara mystical knowledge is contained in the symbolism of the numbers one to twenty-two and the Bambara regard the primordial oneness, one, as the figure of the Lord of the Word and the Word itself. Within the same symbol, notions of chieftaincy, of the rights of primogeniture, of head and consciousness are all comprehended … the notion of the fecundating word, carrying the seeds of creation and with its place in the dawn of that creation as the first manifestation of the godhead and pre-existence before any created form, is to be found in the cosmogonic concepts of many peoples. We have noted it in Africa, among the Dogon, and it recurs among the Guarani Indians of Paraguay who believed that God created speech as the foundation, before he gave physical form to water, fire, the sun, to life-giving mists and lastly to the primordial earth. Many South American Indian tribes associate the Word with the principles of life and immortality. This is especially true of the Taulipang, who believe that the individual is endowed with five souls, of which only one reaches the other world after death. This is the soul that contains the Word and which leaves the body at regular intervals during sleep. Leenhardt records the Kanaka belief in New Caledonia that the word is an act, the very first act ever done…. In Biblical tradition, ‘The Old Testament speaks of the Word of God, and of his wisdom, present with God before the world was made…; by it all things were created; it is sent to earth to reveal the hidden designs of God; it returns to him with its work done…. For John, too…, the Word existed before the world in God….’ To Greek thinkers, Logos meant not only the word, phrase, speech, but also the reason and the intellect, ideas and the depths of a being’s meaning, even divine thought itself. The Stoics regarded the word as the rationality immanent in the universal structure. (Chevalier and Gheerbrant, 1996: 1125–1126)

But more research is needed to be done on this. I have just the bare essentials (as revealed in the actual structure of the two loops of the alphazodiac meeting at Zayin, and it’s direct link to divinity, silence, breath/vowels, consonants, and, more importantly, to the birth of the sun as the son/seed/Word).   

 

In summary, your question is quite interesting. In fact, it’s the one question that has continually taunted me over the years as I dealt with the who, what, and, particularly, the why of the alphazodiac. For after all, aren’t letters, at their most basic level, merely vessels of speech, of sound? And what is that sound?  It’s nothing short of conveyed consciousness — the directed movement of intentional meaning. Or to put it in a more symbolic way, it’s the transmission or rise of light or understanding from ignorance or darkness (i.e., from a medieval perspective, I personally believe that it’s the wisdom or gold within the slow lead/Latin of the black ink. Or from a much earlier Neolithic perspective, I feel that it’s the dawning of consciousness, of wisdom — for survival and higher thought. Thus, it’s the rising of the eternal solar mind/seed/Word of the ancient goddess from the mortal lunar horizon of her womb/body).

In a sense, speech and writing are meant to be “intercepted” consciousness/energy (that interception could be immediate, as in person to person speech, or even delayed via vast distances in time and place, as in modern scholars reading ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs). And it’s the eventual resonance and release of that transmission or motion of consciousness that, in turn, sets matter in motion. It can create it, manipulate it, and even destroy it. As a mythological symbol, the Word rises from the Flesh/matter and then sets back into it. For instance, and to speculate a bit further, what is DNA but code (a type of text) made protein (flesh)? What is willpower but thought into nerve into action? And has not science now shown how negative thoughts, words, can lead to a weakened immune system and to disease itself? And that’s just within a single body. How much more powerful is that transmission/interception of consciousness from person to person? From parent to child, from tribal leader to tribe, from shaman or priest to Mystic Body, from president to body politic? Though the technology has changed, the basic concept of, and need for, the movement of thought has not:  from soot and paint on a Paleolithic cave wall, to ink on parchment and then books, to electromagnetic radio and television waves zipping at light speed through the atmosphere, to the very sounds and images on two gold-plated records on the Voyager spacecraft, whose mission is to target some distant alien civilization in the unfathomable depths of frozen space — a homecoming of sorts, as the stars in that deep space are the cosmic birthplace of all the atoms within flesh of the very fingers that crafted those gold records.    

In a sense, it’s actually fitting that it was from the frigid dark depths of space (the heavens to the ancients) that sound was not only born, but was actually instrumental in both the mythological and actual scientific evolution of creation itself. That is, from a mythological perspective, the ancient deities, such as the Egyptian creator god Ptah, formed all things from the Word. Later, the Christian Bible, which has its roots in earlier stories from Mesopotamia and Egypt, starts with the creation of the universe with God’s “breath” (the Hebrew noun “Ruach,” “spirit,” also means, “breath” or “wind”) upon the waters, which is really shorthand for the sacred vowel of God giving birth to form (the Word made flesh). The Biblical god also used His breath to give life to Adam, and after the 7th day of creation, “He rested” (so, too, did the earlier Egyptian creation god:  “Ptah was satisfied after he had made everything, so Ptah rested”).

And more interesting still, from a modern scientific understanding, it is well known that the very instant of creation started with sound — The Big Bang!  In fact, it has now been shown that the very ripples in the matter density of the early universe that gave rise to galaxies was created by what is called baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO), “fluctuations in the density of the visible baryonic matter (normal matter) of the universe, caused by acoustic density waves in the primordial plasma of the early universe.” (Wiki). 

Thus, it was from the Big Bang, which seeded the material galaxies and conscious life itself, that first ushered forth that most mythic and primal cosmic cry of creation — the Word made flesh (or, to some, “the sound and the fury”).

 

Selected reading

• "Roman dodecahedra between Southeast Asia and England, part 5" (6/7/24)
• "Roman dodecahedra between Southeast Asia and England, part 4" (6/5/24) — especially this extended, detailed comment by Brian Pellar
• "Roman dodecahedra between Southeast Asia and England, part 3" (5/24/24)
• "Roman dodecahedra between Southeast Asia and England, part 2" (5/12/24)
• "Roman dodecahedra between Southeast Asia and England" (4/30/24)
• "Wheat and word: astronomy and the origins of the alphabet" (3/15/24) — with references to seven substantial papers on this subject by Brian Pellar
• "The Alphabet and the Zodiac" (12/6/22)
• "The Origin of Speeches? or just the collapse of Uruk?" (6/23/23) — this lengthy comment

June 30, 2024 @ 6:05 am · Filed by Victor Mair under Alphabets, Language and astronomy, Language and biology, Language and mathematics, Language and philosophy, Philology, Phonetics and phonology

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