The Ancient Tradition

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Music

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You’re listening to The Ancient Tradition. A Wonk Media Production. Music provided by Joseph McDade. He is your host, Dr. Jack Logan.

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Welcome to The Ancient Tradition. I’m your host, Jack Logan. If you’re a new listener, we welcome you to the program. Glad to have you listening in. If you’re a regular listener, of course we’re glad to have you back. Today’s episode is the incomprehensible brooding wind. It’s gonna take a bit for me to set the stage for this episode, but stick with me because there’s some really great stuff towards the end. For our new listeners, the objective of this podcast, The Ancient Tradition,

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is to dig around in the ancient record and to dig through the world’s oldest religious texts and myths, legends, liturgies, artifacts, symbols, to see if we can’t reconstruct the theology of the original religious tradition imparted to human beings in the very beginning. The religious tradition that the ancients universally claim was taught directly to human beings by God.

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In this podcast, we refer to this primordial religious tradition as the ancient tradition. In the past two episodes, episode number 11 and number 12, the mysterious primordial waters and the word that changed the universe, we established that the creation played a very, very important role in the overarching theology taught in the ancient tradition. And of course, this raises a question, why? Why did the ancients place?

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so much importance on the creation of the physical universe. Well, I can think of a number of reasons why. For starters, if we don’t have a correct understanding of the physical creation, we won’t have a correct understanding of pretty much anything else. If the creation happened by chance, then there’s no real purpose to our existence. We just exist by chance. If the physical creation as the ancients attest was created by a sub…

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being, well then that changes a lot of things. It suggests that God had a divine purpose in creating the physical world and a divine purpose in creating you and me, which suggests that there must be a divine purpose to our lives, a purpose for us being here. The theology of the ancient tradition tackles this purpose of life head-on and trust me, it does not disappoint.

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This doctrine of the purpose of life, as I’ve mentioned a couple of times in the podcast, is theologically rich and it’s beyond what most of us could ever imagine. But we’ll have to save that for a future episode because it’s not today’s topic. So stay tuned. The ancients emphasize the creation of the physical world, not only for what I just mentioned, but because it provided the perfect template to teach human beings about the process of

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creation but not just the process of the creation of the physical world. The ancients used the creation to teach the process of spiritual creation, the creation of the new man, the process of spiritual rebirth. And this was particularly evident in our in the previous episode, in episode number 11, the mysterious primordial waters. When we examined the symbolic parallels

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the birth of the earth out of the primordial waters of creation, and the birth of the new man out of the waters of baptism in the Judeo-Christian tradition. We find similar parallels among many ancient purification rites, like the Pharaoh washing each morning in the symbolic waters of new, the primordial waters, which were represented by an artificial lake. From what we can surmise,

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God used a tangible object, the creation of the physical world, something human beings could readily wrap their heads around, and used it to symbolize the process of intangible spiritual creation, something that human beings, because of its spiritual nature, couldn’t readily be understood. As I’ve mentioned a couple of times, this is the purpose of true religious symbols, the use of a tangible object like a seed, a tree,

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salt, candles, water birds, whatever, to symbolize and teach intangible spiritual principles, processes and doctrines. From the very start, it looks like symbols seem to have been used as a primary teaching tool within the ancient tradition. And this really should come as no surprise because without symbols, human beings would have really no idea what God was talking about since

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spiritual things by definition are outside of the realm of empirical sensory knowledge. With symbols, however, human beings can be pointed in the right direction. We can get the gist of what spiritual reality might be like or how spiritual progress might take place until they actually do directly experience that spiritual reality for themselves. And once they do,

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then they’ll have to use those symbols themselves to convey that spiritual reality to others who have not yet experienced it. So as such, symbols play an absolutely critical role in the teaching of spiritual things. In today’s episode, as we examine the physical creation in further detail, see if you can’t think of ways the physical creation is used to teach about or symbolize spiritual creation or spiritual rebirth.

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In particular, see if you can think of ways religious rituals are used, even today, that echo the process of the physical creation. My main goal in these episodes on the physical creation is to extrapolate from the ancient record the primary themes or what I would call the doctrines of the creation that were taught in the ancient tradition. I kind of want to see if we can figure out what what they taught, what was believed. So we’re going to look at the doctrines that come up time and time again in the ancient record.

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that we can trace all the way back to deep antiquity. So for ease of reference, I’m gonna refer to these doctrines as the pillars of creation. The first pillar of creation found in the ancient record is number one, that the doctrine that the pre-creative state of the universe was dark and literally brimming with an infinite sea of lifeless, disorganized elements, pre-creative elements that were teeming with potential for life. Egyptologist Richard H.

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Wilkinson wrote, quote, these original elements were believed to be inert, yet to contain the potential for creation. The notion of an empty pre creative universe of nothingness is completely foreign to the ancient tradition. The ancients taught the pre creative universe was literally overflowing like water with materia prima, the raw materials are first matter needed for creation.

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If you haven’t listened to episode number 11, the mysterious primordial waters where we cover this first pillar of creation, it’s really worth a listen and you can find it wherever you get your podcasts. In episode number 12, the word that changed the universe, we covered another pillar of creation, the doctrine that God initiated the physical creation by the words of his mouth through divine utterance or command.

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According to the ancient record, this seems to actually be the third pillar, which means I need to kind of backtrack just a little bit because we need to talk about the second pillar. So today I’m gonna rectify that and we’re gonna cover the second pillar of creation, the brooding wind of life, or as I’ve coined it, the incomprehensible brooding wind. Today I’m gonna start with the Judeo-Christian tradition and then I’m gonna work backwards for a little bit.

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And I’m gonna do this because I found that the original Hebrew words used in the Bible actually helped clarify for me what I was reading in the ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian records. So let’s start with Genesis chapter one, verse two, which reads, quote, and the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

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In this verse, we have the first pillar of creation. We’ve got the dark primordial waters or the sea of raw materials. And then we’re introduced into the second pillar, the spirit of God moving on the waters. All right, I wanna talk about the phrase, the spirit of God here. Many people interpret this as the Holy Ghost moving upon the waters. But I’m gonna respectfully challenge this interpretation.

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And to do this, we need to take a look at the original Hebrew. The translators of the King James Version of the Bible translated the Hebrew word Ruah, R-U-A-H, Ruah, as the spirit. The Cambridge Bible for schools and colleges says this of the word Ruah. In this verse, it says, quote, the word for wind. Hebrew Ruah.

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was accepted as the most suitable term to express the invisible agency of God. In consequence, it is sometimes difficult to decide whether the word is used literally in its meaning of wind or breath, or metaphorically in its meaning of spirit, as the symbol of the invisible operation and influence of the Almighty. Okay, a couple of things here. First, the Hebrew word Ruwah, which is one word.

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can represent in English three discrete concepts, wind, breath, and spirit. So when translating the Bibles, the translators had to do the best they could to translate Ruah, depending on the context of the passage into one of these three English words. But keep in mind that among the Hebrews, these concepts were somewhat interchangeable and ultimately represented divine power, a power similar or akin to wind.

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or having the life-giving potentiality of breath. Interestingly, the Cambridge Bible commentators say this of this passage, quote, the student should be warned against identifying this expression with the Holy Ghost in Christian doctrine. In other words, the commentators were concerned that the Holy Ghost might not be the correct interpretation of what’s going on in this passage. Dr. Harry M. Olensky,

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who wrote an entire paper on Genesis chapter one verse two in the Jewish quarterly review He argues that the best translation of ruah here is not spirit of god but wind of god In the paper he argued that the english translators translated ruah as Spirit as the result of hellenistic influences See the problem with translating ruah as spirit

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suggests to most Christians that it was the Holy Ghost that brooded upon the waters. And this just may not be the case, as you’ll see in a minute. If we look at Ellicott’s commentary for English readers, it says this of this passage, quote, When then creation is ascribed to the wind, as we see in Job 26.13 and Psalm 104.30, we justly see not the mere instrumental force employed, but rather the divine operative

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energy which resides especially in the third person of the Holy Trinity. But we must be upon our guard against the common error of commentators who read into the text of these most ancient documents perfect doctrines which were not revealed in their fullness until the gospel was given. So here too we have the Ellicott commentators concerned that this passage might not be referring

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but as some other form of divine power. And I agree, and I’ll explain why in just a minute, but keep in mind here that the ancient Hebrews used only one word to link the temporal symbol, wind, to its spiritual counterpart, divine power. In the ancient Hebrew mind, which was Ruah, by the way, in the ancient Hebrew mind, the link between wind and divine power didn’t need to be explained, it was one word.

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Everybody understood that the wind was the temporal symbol par excellence for the characteristics of divine power. And then this is where we get into some of the symbolism. Listen to, we can see some of the symbolism between this divine power and wind, because just like the wind, the divine power was invisible. And it worked in ways that were unseen to the human eye. Like the wind, the results of the divine power could be seen or felt.

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just like the ruffling of leaves when the wind blows through the trees, even though the power itself could not be seen. Like the wind, the divine power had the ability to produce life. Like when the wind spreads seeds across the field, like the wind, the divine power was a powerful force. It had the ability to destroy kind of like a hurricane or tornado. Like the wind, the divine power is not

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subject to the control of human beings. It was controlled by God and it was used at will. Like the wind, the divine power could come suddenly and seemingly out of nowhere. And like the wind, the divine power could lift or ascend one up to the divine presence like a bird riding a current in the sky. See wind or Ru’ah in this passage is being used symbolically.

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to represent something spiritual. So in this case, I’m arguing that the wind here represents divine power, God’s power, which is sometimes referred to as priesthood power. And again, I’ll explain in a couple of minutes why I’ve come to this interpretation, but this is not to say that the wind couldn’t also serve as an apropos symbol for the spirit because it could, and it often does. And it was used by Jesus himself in John chapter three, verse eight.

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when he teaches Nicodemus about how the spirit operates. Before I leave this section, I wanna highlight one other Hebrew word in Genesis chapter one, verse two. The English translation reads, and the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. Okay, here the English word moved is actually the translation of the Hebrew word, merget. The Cambridge Bible commentary tells us that this Hebrew word means, quote,

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was brooding upon and furnishes the picture of a bird spreading its wing over its nest. For the use of the same unusual Hebrew word cross-reference Deuteronomy chapter 32 verse 11, as an eagle that stirreth up her nest, that fluttereth over her young, he spread abroad his wings, he took them, he bare them on his pinions. By the selection of this word, the writer conveys the thought

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fostering care of the Almighty was given to the welter of primeval chaos. Ellicott’s commentary says, quote, in Syriac the verb is a very common one for the incubation of birds. It was a beautiful and loving energy which tenderly and gradually with fostering care called forth the latent possibilities of a nascent world.

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The avian imagery used here by the writers of Genesis and Deuteronomy should not be overlooked because you’ll see in just a moment ancient cosmogonies all over the globe tell creation accounts of a bird hovering over the primordial waters. And in a minute I’ll explain why a bird is used but I want to point out how I just love the Genesis creation account. When translated correctly describes the divine power or

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power of God as a brooding wind, a tender caring power that worked upon the inert disorganized primordial elements like a loving mother. I love the imagery because it conveys that the creation was a very loving act. Now let’s go back as far as we can to the sands of ancient Egypt and see if there’s anything similar in the ancient Egyptian record.

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Let’s start by jumping into the oldest Egyptian religious writings, the ancient Egyptian pyramid texts, and let’s go to the pyramid of King Pepe II who reigned as the fifth king of the sixth dynasty, which was around 2600 BC. In King Pepe II’s pyramid, we find one of the most important ancient accounts of the creation. Pyramid text 600. It’s kind of a short text, but it’s loaded with some great stuff.

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In this text, we’re told that the creator god Atum emerged from the dark, disorganized waters of Nune, the primordial waters, as a shining mythical bird, referred to in the pyramid texts as the Benu bird. The bird’s name is actually derived from the Egyptian verb,

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In addition, according to the Egyptologist Richard H. Wilkinson, the Benu bird was, quote, also said to be the Ba. Now the Ba was an aspect of one’s soul or spirit. So this bird was also said to be the Ba of Re, who was the sun god. And by the late period, the hieroglyphic sign depicting the bird was used to write the name of the chief sun god. So we’re associating this bird with this brilliant god, Re.

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Now, had we not gone through the original Hebrew in Genesis 1 verse 2, we might have glazed over this ancient Egyptian creation count. We might have thought that it was nothing more than just, you know, another fanciful creation myth. But here we have a striking parallel. We have a bird, just like what’s implied in the Genesis account when the author of Genesis used the Hebrew word merahket meaning to brood.

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to convey that the power of God, like a bird, brooding over its nest, brooded over the primordial waters. So in both cases, the authors use the imagery or symbol of a bird to convey to the readers something really important about the spiritual process of what was taking place. It’s here that I should probably take a moment and talk about avian or bird symbolism in the ancient world. As you’re gonna see in future episodes, birds are routinely associated with, or,

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depictions of divine beings because they express the ability to fly or ascend freely to the upper regions of the celestial world. And these birds are often, very often, associated with the sun or a sun god because the sun’s brilliance represents the fiery light of glorified beings. So you can see the symbolism here is

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Magnificent. We can see all of these symbolic motifs in the creation account that’s given in the pyramid text. We have a bird, a shining brilliant bird, which the ancient Egyptians tell us represents an aspect of the creator god Atum. The wings and flight of the bird represent that Atum as a god has the freedom to travel or ascend to the highest regions of the celestial realms. His shining brilliant feather coat

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represents his celestial nature as a being of supernal light. But keep in mind here in this account, the Bennu bird is symbolic. Let’s not forget that the ancient gypsies didn’t believe that an actual bird flew over an ocean of actual water before the creation. The bird’s a symbol to convey that God hovered or as the Hebrews say, brooded over the disorganized inert elements.

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that filled the expanse of the primordial universe. And through some sort of spiritual process, which I’ll get to in just a minute, this brooding infused the primordial elements with something that prepared them for creation and life. So with this in mind, let’s read a little bit of Pyramid Text 600. And this comes from the Samuel Mercer translation. It reads, O atum kepri.

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when thou didst mount as a hill, and didst shine as Bennu of the Benben in the temple of the Bennu in Heliopolis, and didst spew out shoo. Okay, according to this passage, in the beginning, a beautiful shining bird, which we just established represents the creator, God Atu, stands on a primordial hill and begins his creation. He starts by creating another God, the God Shoo.

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And this is spelled S-H-U, so that this God can assist him in the creation. Shu is the very first God to emerge out of Atum. And this is a very, very important aspect of the story, because can you guess what the God Shu was the God of? The God of wind. That’s right. Shu personified the wind, which should of course conjure up in your mind thoughts of Genesis chapter one, verse two, and the Hebrew word.

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Ruah which the King James translators translated as spirit, but also meant wind the James P Allen translation says that Atum quote sneezed out shoe This is interesting because sneezing Conveys the imagery of wind a powerful wind air or breath Coming out of the God Atum’s nose So here like we see with the Hebrew word

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Ruwah, the Egyptians are associating wind with the life-giving capacity of breath. But keep in mind that these are also symbolic. These images are symbolic. The Egyptians did not believe that Atum actually sneezed a god out of his nostrils. The image is used here to convey that the god Atum issued out of his being some sort of powerful life-giving force.

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And the closest thing that the ancients could think of to describe this powerful life-giving force to human beings was wind or breath. In the Mercer translation, it reads that Atum, quote, didst spew out as Shu. The language used here is important because it suggests as many Egyptologists have argued that Shu, although personified as a distinct God,

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was in fact meant to be understood as an attribute or form of Atum. Wilkinson writes, quote, “‘It could be argued that in almost all cases, the various names and manifestations of deities are simply forms of the same underlying God.'” Okay, so in this light, to say that Atum spews out as Shu is to say that what Atum spews from his being

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not literally another God, but some aspect of his own being. He issues some part of himself over the primordial waters in a manner similar to the wind. And this process in some way prepares the primordial elements so that God can organize them into a beautiful physical earth, one that’s teeming with life. It’s here that we should take a minute and learn a little bit more about the ancient

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According to R.T. Rundle Clark, who wrote myth and symbol in ancient Egypt, the god Shu was not only the personification of wind, he was also associated with air and thus quote the breath of life, the vital principle of all living things. In coffin text spell number 80, Shu says quote, my life is what is in their nostrils. Spell

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75 says quote my clothing is the breath of life which issued after me from the mouth of atun so here embodied in shu we’re starting to see the same concepts we see associated with the hebrew word ruwah wind and breath but there’s more shu was also associated with light dr edward p butler

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who wrote the theological encyclopedia of the goddesses and gods of the ancient Egyptians said this of Shu, quote, the link between Shu and sunlight is especially close to the extent that it’s been posited that the Egyptians did not really distinguish between air in the sense represented by Shu and light itself. The rays of the sun are the Shu forms of ray.

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In other words, since Shu symbolically represents air, air in all of its aspects is wind or breath. And because air is the medium through which sunlight is visible, Shu is essentially indistinguishable from light, the light that emanates from the sun god, Ray. And keep Shu’s association with light in the back of your mind, because we’re gonna come back to it in the next episode. And one last very important aspect of Shu.

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The ancient Egyptians, as we noted in our previous episode, believed that divine words, when spoken out loud, were efficacious, they caused things to happen. In fact, the pyramid texts themselves are essentially a catalog of recitations or divine utterances that needed to be spoken out loud so that the deceased pharaoh could safely ascend to the gods. Divine utterances were believed to harness the

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power of natural laws. But it was modern Egyptologists that referred to these utterances as spells or the use of magic. But these are modern interpretations and they’re not necessarily a great interpretation of how the ancient Egyptians conceived of divine utterances. But we can see the parallels. When a magician says abracadabra out loud, a rabbit magically

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Abracadabra is what produces the effect. In fact, I would argue that the entire modern conception of magic, just like the warlocks wand and the witch’s special brew or magical potions like we discussed in previous episodes, is yet another example of the degeneration of a very important spiritual doctrine taught within the ancient tradition. And keep in mind that it was God himself.

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introduced this concept of divine utterance when at the onset of the creation he commanded the earth to take shape out of the primordial waters. So when I reference Egyptian spells like I’m going to do here in a second, don’t let this throw you off, when Egyptologists use the word spell or magic they’re really referring to divine utterances and the ability of those utterances to harness

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Back to Shu. Dr. Butler notes in the coffin text, quote, Shu affirms in these spells that he does not obey magic, for I have already come into being. Shu’s immunity from magical compulsion here is from the fact that the very breath from which magic is performed must be borrowed, in effect from Shu. The logic on this one’s pretty clear.

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air is required to speak and since Shu is the god of air, all who desire to speak or utter must get their air from him. So they’re subordinate to him. All so-called magic, which is only efficacious through utterance, is subordinate to Shu. Shu need only take away one’s air and he eliminates their ability to utter any so-called spell against him. So without that ability, the ability to utter, they can have no

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power over him. It’s Shu’s ownership of this special air or wind that enables him to have power over all things, including power over the elements swimming in the primordial waters. Which is why if we’re going to figure out how the creation took place and how life came to be, we need to figure out everything we can about this special air or wind that Atum

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And keep in mind that again, Shu is really just a personified attribute of the supreme god Atum. So this is just another way of saying that nobody has greater power than Atum. All are subordinate to him. And note something very interesting here. It’s only after Atum sneezes out the wind, or Shu, that Atum, as the Bennu bird, does something else. Listen closely.

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quote, as an aspect of atu the Benu bird was said to have flown over the waters of noon before the original creation. According to this view, the bird finally came to rest on a rock, at which point its cry broke the primeval silence and was said to have determined what was and what was not to be in the unfolding creation. Okay. So if you’re a regular listener, your ears should have really perked up.

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After the Bennu bird flew over the waters of Nune, pyramid text 600 tells us that Atum sneezed out a wind. And then we learn in the coffin text that the Bennu bird squawked. Since we already know the bird is a symbolic representation of the god Atum, then we know this squawking is symbolic of Atum saying something. The bird squawking

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is symbolic of divine utterance, creation by divine utterance. In the ancient world, when a bird squawks after gliding over the primordial waters, you know they’re talking about creation by divine utterance. So next time you hear a bird caw, think of God brooding over the primordial waters and then commanding by his voice the creation to emerge.

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In ancient Egypt, sometimes this bird was conceived of as a goose. The Gengen were Wilkinson writes quote, Gengen were manifested the power of creation through his honking call. The God’s name is based on the goose’s characteristically raucous call or cackle. Gengen means honker and were means great meaning the great honker. And he was also called the name neg egg or cackler.

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According to some texts, it was the honking call of Amun in the form of this god that quote, awoke the creation. I wonder how God would feel about being called the great honker. Interestingly though, the ancient Egyptians kept a flock of sacred geese on the artificial lake that was adjacent to Amun’s great temple at Karnak. And as we pointed out in episode number 11, these artificial lakes were meant to be representations of the

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primordial waters. All right, let’s go back to the wind. In much later ancient Egyptian texts, we see the origin of the primordial wind directly attributed to a chief deity. And most of these texts come from the Temple of Canoem, who was also considered a later creator god. And this is from the Temple of Canoem at Ezna. Let’s read a couple of these texts and see what we can glean about

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When there was no earth, he created yet for the gods and goddesses in his name, Tahinnon. Here we have Osiris as the one who began the wind and that this wind preceded the creation. Quote, Oh, Canoom, the great one who came forth from noon, the wind came forth from his mouth and the northern wind from his nose. So in this passage, the wind comes directly from the creator, God Canoom’s mouth and

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Canoom who creates you from the wind which he breathes from his mouth, he creates all the animals from the breath of his mouth. Just like Atum sneezes out the wind shoo in the pyramid text, here we are explicitly told that the breath issued from the creator God’s own being, which the text refers to as wind. It’s what initiated and animated the creation of human beings and animals.

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In another passage, this wind is specifically referred to as the wind of life. It reads, and this is speaking of the creator God, Canoam, quote, all existences he created, the wind of life is upon his mouth. Another passage reads, oh, Canoam, who gives the wind in order to create all the existences. And another quote, this is his wind, which makes the branches.

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balloon. From all of the passages I’ve included in this episode, we gained some really critical information about this wind, which according to Genesis, brooded over the primordial elements before the creation took place. Number one, we learned that this wind came directly out of God himself. The ancient Egyptians describe it as being either sneezed out of God’s nostrils or breathed directly out of God’s mouth. Either way, the imagery here conveys that

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whatever it was that issued out of God, it was originally a part of him, a part of his being. We can see the transference of whatever is in God into his creations really warmly depicted in Pyramid Text 600, which we just read earlier. After Atum sneezes out Shu, the wind, the text reads, quote, “‘Then thou didst put thine arms about them.'”

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as the arms of a kha that thy kha might be in them. Here we have Atum wrapping his arms around or embracing Shu, the wind, so that Atum’s kha could be in the wind. In ancient Egypt, the kha represented the concept of vital essence. And it should come as no surprise that this vital essence was what distinguished the difference between a living and a dead person. So here in this passage,

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Atum embraces Shu and through this embrace God’s vital essence is transferred from Atum’s being into Shu the wind. Number two, we learn that God spread this vital essence across the primordial elements. The ancients describe this spreading process like an eagle spreading its wings over its nest in a brooding, incubating fashion or they describe it as wind.

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ruffling the primordial waters. And we can surmise from the wind imagery that whatever God spread, we’re meant to understand that it touched every single element swimming in the primordial waters. When a wind blows through a forest, every single leaf on every single tree is touched by the wind. Number three, we learned that this wind had a transformative effect on the primordial elements. Before this wind passed through,

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The primordial elements were lifeless, inert, disorganized. They were without form. But after the wind passed through and touched the elements, they changed. This wind had an absolutely transformative effect on the elements. Where the elements were originally lifeless, now they were imbued with life, which is why this wind is often described as breath.

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because breath in the temporal world is what gives life to human beings. Without breath, there is no life. Without the primordial wind, there was no life in the elements. And remember, a lot of this is symbolic. And this is where things get really, really interesting. First, this implies that every single element has some sort of life force in it. Something…

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that we would describe as living or responsive. Normally when we think of a rock, we think of it as dead or lifeless. But according to the ancients, God imbued his life force, which was a part of him, into the primordial elements, every single one of them. And it was out of these elements that the creation was formed. Which means that everything we see

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the rocks, the mountains, Mother Earth herself is in some way living, is in some way responsive. Native Americans have been telling us this for centuries, and this is why they have such a tremendous reverence and respect for Mother Earth. Jack Forbes, an American historian and also a descendant of the Lenape tribe says this,

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The indigenous tendency to see the earth and other non-organic entities as being part of the bios or life or living is seen by many post 15th century Europeans as simply romantic or nonsensical. When native students enroll in many biology or chemistry classes today, they’re often confronted by professors who are absolutely certain that rocks are not alive. But in reality, these professors are themselves

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products of an idea system of materialism and mechanism that is relatively modern. It is true that most or perhaps all Native Americans see the entire universe as being alive. That is as having movement and an ability to act. Jack Forbes wrote that 20 years ago and today

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scientists are not so easily dismissing the notion that what we consider to be inanimate objects may in fact have some level of awareness or responsiveness to them, something living. And we’ll talk about this more in the next episode. Recall in the previous episode that this is what the texts inscribed on the Shabaka stone said of the creator god Ptah. It said, quote, Ptah is in

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And Ptah is in every mouth of all gods, all men, all cattle, all creeping things, whatever lives. We see the same thing in the Judeo-Christian tradition in Ephesians chapter 4 verse 6, which reads, quote, one God and father over all who is above all and through all and in all. And we find the same thing taught in the Hindu tradition.

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In fact, it’s one of the most dominant doctrines taught in Hinduism. The Hindu scripture, the Eight Raya Upanishad 2.6.1 states, quote, He Brahman, which is God, wished, quote, Let me be many. Let me be born. He undertook a deliberation. Having deliberated, he created all this that exists that Brahman, having created, entered into that very thing.

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and having entered there, it became the formed. As a quick side note on this, I think it’s interesting in this passage that we see God deliberating, which is similar to what we see in the Shabbatka stone when it says that the creation was first devised in Ptah’s heart, in his mind, before it was formed. All of these religious traditions, and there’s many others, attest that the creator, by virtue of the wind that came out of his being, imbued the primordial elements with life.

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and it reasons that if this divine essence were removed from the elements, the elements would symbolically die and return to their inert, lifeless state. In other words, the divine essence would need remain a permanent part of each element if it were to sustain life. This implies that you and me and everything we see in the universe is at the very elemental level infused with some aspect of God.

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It means we literally have some aspect of God, the creator in every cell in our body. And this is one of the reasons why I think we’re not talking about the Holy Ghost in Genesis 1 verse 2. When we consider this, the creation gets even more interesting. Let me read you a fascinating passage in the Book of the Dead, the Pyrus of Annie, which is dated to 1240 BC. It reads, and this is speaking of the god Osiris, quote, The god of the celestial ocean knew the primordial waters.

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draw from thee his waters, thou sendest forth the north wind at even tide, and breath from his nostrils to the satisfaction of thy heart. The stars in the celestial heights are obedient unto thee.” So here we have the primordial waters and Osiris sending the wind across the waters, out of which the stars are created. But then the passage says something super intriguing. It says,

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The stars in the celestial heights are obedient unto thee. Let me say that again. It says the stars in the celestial heights are obedient unto thee. Whoa, the creation has the ability to obey. It’s one thing to say the elements are living, but it’s a whole different level to say that the elements can be responsive to God’s will. This is a bit mind bending, but it makes perfect sense when we consider

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that the elements were given life by God. His essence is in them. Thus they obey His command. The elements are like an extension of Himself. So no wonder they respond. And that’s exactly what we see happen when God commands the elements through divine utterance to form the earth. They respond.

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You might wonder why we as human beings don’t automatically obey God like the elements since God is in us too. Well, I’ll save that for another episode, but it suggests that God not only created things that automatically respond to his will, things that are acted upon, but also things that could act for themselves. Give us agency. On a cosmic level, this suggests that this divine essence within all things also operates as the law.

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that governs all things. And we see this idea in many ancient texts too. If we go back to the Shabaka Stone, this principle is exactly what is being taught. Speaking of Ptah’s creation of the world by thought and divine utterance, it reads, quote, thus heart and tongue rule over all the limbs in accordance with the teaching that Ptah.

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is in everybody and Ptah is in every mouth of all gods all men all cattle all creepy things whatever lives Here it’s saying that Ptah has the ability to rule over all things Because he is in all things We see a similar teaching in the Judeo-Christian tradition in Matthew chapter 8 verses 26 and 27 When Christ calms a tempest on the sea of Galilee it reads

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Then he arose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm. But the men marveled, saying, What manner of men is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?” We see a similar thing when Christ walks on the water in Matthew chapter 14 verse 25 and 26 which reads, And in the fourth watch of the night Jesus went unto them, walking on the sea. And when the

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they were troubled. Taken to its logical extension, this means that God, by virtue of the teaching that He is in all things, holds through His power and authority all things in place. Holds the planets in their orbits, the stars in their places, and the mountains in their place, for they obey His command. It’s through His vital essence that He brings order to the disorganized

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primordial elements. It’s through his vital essence that order is established in the universe. This very thing is said in Hebrews chapter 1 verse 3, which reads, and this is speaking of Christ, who being the brightness of his glory, this is comparing him to the Father, and the expressed image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his name.

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power and there’s divine utterance again. In this light, it’s much easier to understand why when God uttered, let there be light that there was light. The elements obeyed his command. I’ll have a lot more to say about this in our next episode, because as I mentioned in the previous episode, I have a sneaking suspicion that the divine wind we’ve been talking about is intimately connected to light.

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That wraps up this edition of the ancient tradition. As always, we conclude with the words of William Shakespeare, knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven. I’m Jack Logan.

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You’ve been listening to the Ancient Tradition. A Wonk Media Production.