The Ancient Tradition

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Music

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Listening to the Ancient Tradition.  A Wonk Media Production.  Music provided by Joseph McDade.  Here’s your host, Dr. Jack Logan.

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Welcome to the Ancient Tradition.  I’m your host, Jack Logan. Well, it’s great to have you listening in today. If you’re new to the program, welcome. This is a pretty unique podcast.  We like to travel all over the world and dig around in the world’s oldest religious texts. We’re checking out the ancient myths and symbols and rituals and architecture. And the main reason that we’re doing this is because

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we’re trying to decipher the theology and the cosmology that the ancients were trying to teach.  And what we’ve shown to this point of the program is that the ancients, regardless of whether or not we’re talking about the ancient Egyptians or Mesopotamians or Indo-Europeans or pretty much any other ancient people, taught a single cosmology. I know that sounds remarkable, but ancient peoples all over the globe taught the same thing.

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about how our universe began and how the cosmos are actually structured. Some of you may be familiar with the comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell. He was pretty famous in the 70s and 80s. He gained a lot of notoriety for his book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, where he presented evidence that a single myth, a monomyth, which he called mankind’s one great story,

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ran like a thread through all of the world’s myths. And we’ve demonstrated some of this too on our program. Campbell notes that the cosmological parody between myths is pretty darn profound. On page 30, he wrote, quote, the cosmogonic cycle is presented with astonishing consistency in the sacred writings of all the continents.

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Personally, I’m a pretty curious person, so I wanted to know what the ancients taught. I wanted to know what they had to say about what the cosmos were like before the universe began and what they had to say about how our universe began.  And I really wanted to know what they had to say about how the cosmos are structured. We haven’t talked about that too much on the program yet, but we’re going to. Now, regardless of what I think or

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pretty much what any of us thinks. What the ancients did teach about the origin and the structure of the cosmos and the theology that hangs on that scaffolding represents the grand backdrop, the grand religious heritage of every single person who has ever lived on planet earth. So, this stuff is worth studying just for that. But I

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you know, I’m studying it because I wanted to study what they had to say because I believed and I still believe that what the ancients were teaching contained truth. The Greek philosopher Strabo, who lived between 64 BC and about 24 AD, argued a similar thing. He argued that if we studied the world’s myths, we’d be able to quote conjecture out of them.

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what the truth is. In section 10.3.23 of his work, Geography, Strabo says this, quote, Now, it’s not easy to solve with accuracy all enigmas. But if the multitude of myths be set before us, some agree in and others contradicting one another, one might be able more readily

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to conjecture out of them what the truth is. I concur with Strabo. For me, at the core, this podcast is about finding and identifying truth. Of course, this is left up to each of us individually to decide whether or not we believe that what the ancients are teaching here is true.  I, for one, consider the stubborn bits, the key.

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theological and cosmological teachings that we keep finding show up again and again across the continents represent not only truths about how things really are, but they represent some of the richest treasures, if not the richest treasures possessed by the human race. The ancients cloaked most of these treasures in symbolism, which means that we have to

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learn how to read symbolic language if we’re ever going to decipher the truths that are behind them. As many of you well know, in the modern age we are just not accustomed to symbolic language, which is why one of the primary aims of this podcast is to help increase symbolism literacy. To help you see how the ancients used symbols, help you see the consistency in which they used those symbols across continents.

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and to help you understand some of the key cosmological and theological meanings behind those symbols. In the introduction to the hero with a thousand faces, Campbell writes, referring to the ancients, quote, the old teachers knew what they were saying. As I’ve studied the ancients, this is one of the most astonishing things that I found.

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that the ancients did know exactly what they were saying. And it’s astonishing like you’re gonna see today, because the old teachers were all saying pretty much the same thing. And if we don’t understand what they’re saying, and it all comes across as dragons and magic swords and cosmic waters and sacred trees, then that’s really on us. It’s because we haven’t learned how to read the symbolic language of the ancients.

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In today’s episode, we’re going to focus on one particular symbol, the sacred tree. Now there are many, many layers to the tree. So today we’re going to focus on just one symbolic aspect of this tree. By doing this, today’s discussion should give you a good feel for how symbols were used by the ancients to say what they wanted to say and to teach us some very important truths about the origin of human beings.

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Now before I jump in, I want to let our new listeners know about how the podcast is set up. It’s set up chronologically. In episode number 10, we start with what the ancients taught about the constitution of the cosmos before the universe was formed. And then we go into what the ancients taught about the creation of the universe and the creation of the earth.  And right now we’re discussing what the ancients taught about the origin of human beings on earth.

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So, if you’re interested in learning more about the creation, be sure and check out those back episodes. I can guarantee you’re gonna learn a lot of new things. On the program on occasion, I’ll refer to specific back episodes like I just did when I referred to episode number 10. The episodes are not numbered on any of the podcast listening apps like Apple Podcasts or Spotify.  And there’s actually a reason for this and that’s because research shows

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that numbered episodes create a psychological barrier for new listeners. The numbers make them feel like they’re already behind. So, a lot of them choose not to listen. And we don’t want our new listeners to feel that way. We want them to feel welcome and listen to an episode and see if they find the new things they learn here worthwhile. If you would like a numbered list, we do have a numbered list of past episodes, which is

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Very, very easy to access. It’s only a single click away on our companion website, theancienttradition.com. If you go straight to the website, now you should be able to find a link directly to the website right below this episode on your listing app and click on podcast in the menu. A numbered list with a link to each episode will immediately appear.

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or you can just Google the Ancient Tradition podcast and the link that usually appears is a link directly to this numbered list. It’s a great resource. All right, with that, let’s jump in. We’ve been looking at what the ancients can tell us about how we human beings got here on planet Earth. As I’ve mentioned, the vast majority of the human origin accounts we find around the world fit into six categories.

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five of which we discussed in the last two episodes, all of which tell us essentially the same story about how we got here. Two important stubborn bits emerge. First, these accounts attest that we human beings were created by another being or beings, a supreme god or by a divine pair, the high god and his wife, the high goddess.  Second,

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These accounts attest that the first human beings originated in the sacred center of the cosmos and then were born on earth or emerged through or first appeared on earth in the sacred center of the world. For example, Marinus van der Sluis, who we love on this program, notes on page 115 of volume one of traditional cosmology that the place of birth

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is associated with the sacred center, the navel of the world, and the altar. In 1.164, lines 33 to 35 of the Rig Veda, now this is the oldest sacred text in Hinduism, Vander Schluis writes, quote, the Vedic hymn symbolically equates the birthplace of Duhitor Garbham.

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which means the womb or the embryo or the seed of the daughter. The daughter’s germ at Bhuvanusya Nabhiv, which is the Vedic Sanskrit compound phrase that literally means the navel or hub or center of the world or worlds. I continue, quote, the navel of the world with the altar.

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So, take note of the connection between the sacred center of the world and the altar here. This will be quite important down the line. So, let’s read the Rig Vita 1.164, lines 33 to 35, which read, quote, between the widespread world halves is the birthplace. So, the world halves here refer to heaven and earth. Heaven is the top half and earth is the bottom half.

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Like we talked about in episode number 42, the earth and heavens embrace. So here the Rig Vita attests that the quote, birthplace of human beings was found between those two halves, between the widespread world halves, which is exactly what we saw several other people’s attest to in episode number 64 attestations of a pre-earth existence. In this passage, the Rig Vita goes on to tell us the precise

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location between heaven and earth where this quote birthplace is located the Rig Vita continues quote, I Ask thee of the earth’s extremist limit the extremist limit so this should conjure up in your mind height the very top of a mountain the extremist limit where the earth touches heaven the Rig Vita continues quote

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I ask thee of the earth’s extremist limit, where is the center of the world? So, the birthplace is located at the earth’s extremist limit on the top of a mountain in the very center of the world. The passage continues. I ask thee of the stallion’s seed prolific, I ask of highest heaven where speech abideth.

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Here we’re told that the quote, stallion’s seed is in this location and that it’s prolific. So there are a lot, a lot of children there. Interestingly, the Sanskrit word translated as stallion here doesn’t actually mean stallion or horse in English. The Sanskrit word is version, which actually has the core meaning of bull, virile one.

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or fertilizing male. Yeah, bull, which we’ve already seen in the ancient world, was a prominent symbol of the high god, precisely because it conveyed the message that God is not only male, but a virile male, one who, like a bull, has the exceptional capacity to produce offspring. Or, as it’s said in this passage, seed prolific.

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The bull or stallion referred to in this passage, according to Siena, a 14th century Vedic scholar, is of course the high god Brahma. The children born in the center place were Brahma’s seed. Now listen to how this passage connects the center place between heaven and earth where God’s children are born to the altar. The passage reads, quote, this altar is the earth’s extremist limit.

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So here we find that the altar, the true altar, is found in this same location, in the center of the earth, at the earth’s quote, extremist limit. It continues, this sacrifice of ours is the world’s center. So here we see that the sacrifice that takes place on this altar is also located in the sacred center, which is something that I also argued in episode number 38.

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and he went a little further. And this is very important aspect of the ancient theology, so we’re definitely going to develop this in much greater detail down the line. Vander Sluis summarizes this passage by saying, quote, in other words, the birthplace of a group called Vrishno-ashvasya, the stallions seed prolific, was the navel of the world.

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in the primordial domain between the widespread world halves. So, the Rig Vita does a really nice job here of illustrating the two stubborn bits that we’re seeing everywhere, and that’s that we human beings were produced by God, that we are God’s children, and that we were originally conceived in the Sacred Center and that we came into this world through the Sacred Center. As a quick aside, now this is an important

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Quick aside, in the very next line, line 36, it says the following about the stallion or bull’s seed who were born in the center. Quote, seven germs unripened, yet are heaven’s prolific seed, their functions they maintain by Vishnu’s ordinance. Here we learn that among, quote,

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heaven’s prolific seed were quote, seven germs or seeds unripened. Germs unripened indicates that these were not fully developed beings, which is something that we also saw attested to by the Zuni and other Native American tribes when they tell us that when we were born in between heaven and earth, we were unfinished creatures. The Hindus just say it in their own way as germs.

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unripened. Now seven’s a pretty symbolic number so the seven germs referred to in this passage could refer to a number of things. Symbols, as I’ve mentioned many times, are by nature multivalent, which means that they can take on multiple meanings and functions and they usually are meant to, which is probably the case here. But it’s worth noting that the aforementioned Vedic scholar, Sayana, argued in his commentary of the Rigveda

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that one of the possible meanings of the phrase, seven germs unripened is the seven sages, whom we talked about in episode number 65, the seven sages perfect in lofty wisdom. Believe it or not, seven sages were also known and spoken of in Hinduism. They’re known as the Saptarishis. In Sanskrit, saptar, as we’ve discussed several times, means seven.

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And rishis means seers or sages. In English, rishis is actually more accurately expressed as seer, one who sees divine truth directly than sage. But really seer and sage, they’re very, very similar. So, in English, the Saptarishis are the seven seers.

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I’m very much persuaded that one of the primary interpretations of the seven germs unripened in this VitiChem is a reference to these seven important seers who we saw on episode number 65 and who we’re going to see in a couple of months were primarily responsible for transmitting the sacred theology and cosmology of the ancient tradition to human beings. This VitiChem seems to be making a point that these seven seers were a part

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of the contingency of Brahma’s seed who were born in the birthplace when the two halves of heaven and earth were joined together in the beginning. Okay, so today we’re gonna look into the sixth and final and I think most fascinating category of human origin accounts. I’m gonna introduce this category by returning to the account, the Dutch explorer Jasper Danckert.

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recorded in his diary on October 16th, 1679, as was told to him by Tonkwe, a woodland Indian who lived in the northeastern territory of what is now Canada and the United States. I read the full account previously on the program in episode number 32, Turtle Island, and I read a part of it in our last episode. So please forgive me, because I’m going to read the full account again.

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In terms of symbolic language, this is one of the greatest accounts of human origins that I’ve come across. So, it’s absolutely worth reading again here in this episode. This entire account came about as a result of Jasper asking Tonkwai where the first human being came from, just like we’re asking on their program. So, starting on page 77 of his diary, Dantkurt

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recorded the following, quote, we asked him, and him here is Tonkwe, where he believed he came from. He answered, from his father. And where did your father come from, we said, and your grandfather and great grandfather, and so on to the first of the race. He was silent for a little while.

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either as if unable to climb up at once so high with his thoughts or to express them without help. And then he took a piece of coal out of the fire where he sat and began to write upon the floor. He first drew a circle, a little oval, to which he made four paws or feet, a head and a tail. This, said he, is a tortoise.

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lying in the water around it. And he moved his hand round the figure, continuing, this was or is all water. And so, at first was the world or the earth when the tortoise gradually raised its round back up high and the water ran off of it. And thus, the earth became dry. On the program, we’ve already deciphered the symbols Tonkwe uses here. So, I’m not going to go through that again, but

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Note that what Tonkwe did was give Jasper an account of the pre-creative state of the universe, the waters, and then the creation of the world, the tortoise. Jasper continues, quote, he then took a little straw and placed it on end in the middle of the figure, which is the tortoise, and proceeded. The earth was now dry.

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and there grew a tree in the middle of the earth. So, keep in mind that everything that Tonkwe is telling Jasper here is a preamble to the appearance of human beings on earth. Tonkwe tells Jasper that after the earth was formed, quote, there grew a tree in the middle of the earth. Tonkwe is telling us about this tree.

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because this tree is going to play a very important role in the appearance of people on earth. The tree Tonkwai is talking about in this account is symbolic. Tonkwai is not talking about a literal tortoise or a literal tree that grew in the very center of the earth. The tree represents something else. And because it’s a symbol,

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we know that it’s meant to contain within it multiple meanings, layers and layers of meaning. And in the ancient world, I’d argue that 100 % of the time, those meanings are profoundly theological and cosmological. Now, this is why it’s so critical that we learn how to read symbolic language.  So, if this tree in the center of the world that Tonkwai is telling us about is not an actual tree, then what is it? Then,

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What is this tree?  What is it meant to represent? So, these are great questions. This is where we should all start when we’re trying to learn to read symbolic language. But as you’re gonna see in just a second, these aren’t exactly the right questions that we should be asking about this tree. When we ask the right questions, the answers are a lot more fruitful.

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Let’s keep reading what Tonkway tells us about the tree and its connection to the origin of human beings. And then after that, I’ll break down the symbolic nature of the tree. Tonkway continues, quote, the earth was now dry and there grew a tree in the middle of the earth. And the root of this tree sent forth a sprout beside it and there grew upon it a man.

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who was the first male. This man was then alone and would have remained alone, but the tree bent over until its top touched the earth, and there shot therein another root, from which came forth another sprout, and there grew upon it the woman. And from these two are all men produced.

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So, this is a pretty amazing little account. Tonkwai tells us here that the tree that grew in the center of the earth grew two sprouts. And from those two sprouts grew the first man and the first woman, the woodland Adam and Eve, if you will. What Tonkwai is telling us is that the first human beings emerged, descended, or were born from a tree. If we have absolutely no knowledge,

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of the use of symbolic language in the ancient world. The notion that we human beings came from a tree would sound just like crazy talk. And no, in their right mind would believe that human beings came from a tree. Well, guess what?  Not even Tonkway believes that human beings came from a tree. Tonkway knows that he’s using symbols to convey some really important theological and cosmological ideas.

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And we know this because Tonkwai tells us as much. When he tells us that a tortoise came out of the waters and then he places a piece of straw right into the middle of the center of the turtle’s back and then he tells us quote, there grew a tree in the middle of the earth. So here Tonkwai tells us the primary meaning behind the tortoise. The tortoise is a symbol of the earth.

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Tonkway doesn’t believe that a giant tortoise actually came out of the primordial waters.  And just in that same light, Tonkway knows that the tree symbolizes something else. He just doesn’t tell Jasper what that tree symbolizes. So, it’s left up to us. We’ve got to figure it out. Tonkway doesn’t help us. Now I would have no idea what the tree symbolized.

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if I hadn’t studied the tree in the ancient world, which is why we have to start there. We have to start in the ancient world. And when we do, we quickly recognize that we’re asking the wrong question when we ask, what does the tree represent? The real question that we should be asking is, who does the tree represent?

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I found that in a lot of cases, symbols are much better approached by who does this represent and how does it represent that person than what does it represent. Now, this is not always the case. There’s lots of times there’s what’s, but we have to think about this in other ways than just what. We know from studying the symbol of the tree in the ancient world that it most often represents divine royalty, the king and or queen of heaven.

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and or their terrestrial counterpart, the earthly king, who was also widely believed to possess a divine nature. In a couple of episodes, and maybe even in the next episode, I’ll explain more fully why the ancients used a tree, you know, of all the symbols that are out there that they could have used to represent the king and or queen of heaven. It’ll make a lot more sense to you then.

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So what’s critical here is that we recognize that the tree in the center of the world symbolizes God, the King of heaven and or his wife, the Queen of heaven, who rest on their thrones in the hallowed center of all things in the center like Tonkway shows. So, when Tonkway tells us that the first man, a first woman grew from sprouts of this tree, what he’s really concealing is a

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pretty profound theological doctrine that the first human beings were the direct offspring, the direct progeny, the sprouts of the king and or queen of heaven. Of course, I recognize that we’re talking about Native Americans here and they didn’t conceive of kingship in exactly the same way as that it was conceived in the ancient world. But the way the woodland Indians used the tree,

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especially its placement in the very center of the earth and the timing of this tree, its growth at the onset of belies its symbolic origin, which was clearly in the ancient world where the tree also grew in the center of the world at the onset of the creation and where it did symbolize divine royalty, the king and or queen of heaven. This is a

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great example of how the same symbol is used in a remarkably consistent way, in the same theological and cosmological context no less, across continents. You know, it’s one thing if they just look similar, but when we see that they are being talked about in the same cosmological context and theological context, then we know that it speaks to a deep symbolic heritage.

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So, our sixth category of human origin accounts include accounts that tell how human beings descended from, emerged, grew out of, or were born from a sacred tree or plant. And we saw a version of this in our last episode in the Hopi Emergence account, which is really a combination of the emergence and tree descent categories, because the Hopi emerged into this world by way of a tree.

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bamboo tree. By the way, if you’re interested in listening to the full Hopi Emergence account, I’ve uploaded the first half to our sister podcast, the Ancient Tradition Audio Rit. It’s got some pretty interesting things in it. We talk about shapeshifters and magic songs, so some of you might find some of that interesting. I’m going to upload the second half in the next week or two. You can find the Ancient Tradition Audio Rit anywhere that you get your podcasts.

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When I started looking into these tree descent accounts, I was pretty darn surprised because there are so many of them. They’re literally all over the world. There’s so many of them that there’s just no way I could share them all with you. But I love these tree descent accounts. I think they’re super interesting. So, I am going to share several of them with you because I want to illustrate to you just how widely dispersed these tree descent accounts are. And also, because I want you to recognize

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how the same doctrine of divine descent is being taught around the world, which suggests, and I’m purposely gonna use tree symbolism here, that these accounts originated from a common trunk in deep antiquity. So, right here’s a great place to check your symbolism literacy, because by trunk, I’m referring to the tree, and by the tree, I’m referring to God. So, to say that these accounts originated from a common trunk,

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is like me symbolically saying that I believe that this doctrine of divine descent originally came from God. Okay, so let’s take a look at a few more accounts. I’m not going to present these accounts in any particular chronological or geographical order. I’m just going to share them. So, the next account comes to us from West Africa from the Sindawi people of Tanzania. The Sindawi people are really

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interesting people. They’re some of the most interesting people on planet Earth. Genetically speaking, their DNA can be traced all the way back to Africa’s earliest known hunter-gatherer populations. A geneticist by the name of Sarah Tishkoff conducted a genetic study of the origin of the Sandawi people and presented her findings in an article titled, History of Click-Speaking Populations of Africa

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inferred from mitochondrial DNA and Y chromosome genetic variation, published in the Journal of Molecular Biology and Evolution. And this is what she writes. She says, quote, new genetic data show that the Sundawi and Southern African click speakers share rare mitochondrial DNA in Y chromosome haplogroups. These data indicate

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that the ancestry of the Sundawi population dates back more than 15,000 years. It’s pretty amazing that the Sundawi people can trace their ancestry all the way back to Africa’s earliest peoples. And this is really important too, because when we couple this deep genetic history with the fact that the Sundawi people remained pretty isolated for centuries, geographically, culturally, and linguistically,

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which is evident by the way that they click their consonants when they speak. This is a very rare linguistic feature, so we know that they were isolated for a long time. This gives their account of human origins special weight, because it suggests that their account may represent one of the oldest surviving accounts of human origins on the African continent, which is pretty neat. The account that I’m going to read is the Dutch

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anthropologist and linguist Eric Tenra’s English translation of Von de Quimenaud’s French account, which was published in 1936 in volume 31 of the French journal Anthropos. Ra’s English translation can be found on page 319 of T.O. Bittleman’s book Translation of Culture.

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Raw notes in preface to this that this account is kind of a mixture of the Sundawi people and Vande Kimanad’s own exegesis. The account reads, quote, there is in the country a tree called Zell. This is the baobab. We need to stop for second and talk about the baobab tree. It’s a pretty amazing tree. It’s indigenous to mainland Africa. So

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This is clearly a cultural expression of the sacred tree. And this tree is pretty amazing because it’s basically a living water tank. When the tree is mature, it can store up to 30,000. Yeah, 30,000 gallons of water inside its trunk, which is spongy. And so how does it store all of that water in its trunk? Well,

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The trunk itself is mind-bogglingly huge. The diameter can reach up to 30 to 40 feet. During the drought season, elephants go by these trees and then they use their tusks to gouge at the trunk to extract the water from the spongy wood. And not only that, these trees can live for millennia. Carbon dating shows that some of the baobabs that we see today are

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between one to two thousand years old.  Contemporary storytellers actually refer to the baobab as the tree of life because of all these properties. Most importantly though, the baobab tree is considered sacred by many, many African peoples, which we’ll talk about more when we talk about the cosmic tree. If you’d like to see pictures of a couple of African baobabs, I’ve posted them to the webpage for this episode.

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Okay, back to the account. Quote, there is in the country a tree called Zell. This is the baobab. It is known that this tree lasts for centuries. It is often hollow and its cavity is sometimes so large that one could put a table and a bed in it. The Sundawi do not say who has made the baobab, but they let everything that exists come out of it. Matunda, who is God.

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stands in front of the baobab. Then a hyena emerges from it, which he lets go. Then a sheep, which he keeps. Then a woman with two children. Matunda asks her, where is your husband? My husband, says the woman, is in the tree. The man comes out of it. Here we see among the Sandawi,

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The tree is symbolically akin to the cosmic egg, the lotus, the ark, the raft, the holy of holies, all of which represent the sacred center where quote, everything that exists comes out of it. Here the Sundawi tell us that God, Matunda, was the first person to come out of the tree and when he came out, he stood in front of the tree. So, you should see a symbolic connection here between the tree and God.

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And then after that, various animals come out. And after they finish coming out, the first woman comes out of the tree with two children. And Matunda says to her, where’s your husband? And she says, my husband is in the tree. And then he comes out of the tree. So, in this account, like we saw in the Hopi Emergence account, this tree serves as a bridge or conduit between worlds, between heaven and earth. When you think about that,

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Think again on our question, who does the tree represent rather than what does the tree represent? If you do that, you’re going to gain some really important theological insights. All right. The Sendawi account that I just read is not the only version that we have. In the same book, Eric Tenra includes English translations of seven additional versions of the story. In other versions, the tree,

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is replaced by a hill or a rock, which is quite remarkable because this is precisely what we see in the ancient world. The interchangeability between the tree and the hill or rock and or the combination of the hill and the tree together. In the ancient world, the tree is usually depicted atop the hill, the primordial hill, which in ancient Egypt is depicted as a rock, the benben stone.

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So I find it pretty remarkable that these African Sundawe accounts preserve that same symbolic nuance. It’s just remarkable. It’s pretty great. I mentioned this here because earlier on today’s program we read in the Hindu Rigveda that the birthplace of human beings was between heaven and earth, between quote, the widespread world halves.  And that that was located at the top of a hill.

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quote, Earth’s extremist limit, which the Rigveda also told us is where the world center, the altar, and the sacrifice take place. Well, these same ideas are preserved in the Sandhawi account referred to as version number six. Keep in mind that the context of this account is the birth or origin of human beings on earth, just like the context in the Rigveda.

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Version number six is found on page 332 of Translation of Culture, which is Eric Tenra’s English translation of a version that was collected by Otto Dempwolf in 1910. The account reads, quote, this Matunda lived by a rock. Remember, Matunda is God. In the previous version, he’s the one that came out of the tree first and then stood in front of it.

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So, in this version, the tree is replaced by a rock. The account continues, quote, this Matunda lived by a rock and he built a house there and he killed a black cow and sacrificed it. Now the other people also sacrifice because God made the opening. And now he reared people, he reared many people and then there were many.

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This is a pretty amazing little account because what the Sendawi people are telling us here is what the rest of the ancient world has been telling us. If you recall before God created the earth, he could find no place to rest. So, he caused the land to form and where that land first formed on that rock, where that first cosmicized sanctified land was formed, the holiest, most sacred spot in the world.

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the center, God set his throne and built his home, a temple. And here, in this Tanzanian account, the African god Matunda does the same thing. He lives by a rock and, quote, builds a house on it, which is the aforementioned temple. But what’s really intriguing about this account is that it preserves another very important aspect of this rock.

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where Matunda builds his temple home. The Sindhawi tell us that there, in that temple home, God, Matunda, quote, killed a black cow and sacrificed it, which echoes the Rigveda, which tells us that this is the site of the altar and the location where the sacrifice takes place. In the ancient world, this stone marked the center of the world.

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In ancient Egypt, this rock is the Ben Ben stone. In ancient Israel, this rock is the foundation stone, the altar stone upon which Abraham was asked to sacrifice his son, Isaac. And here in Tanzania, we read that Matunda, God, sacrificed a black cow in his house that he built on or near this rock. The Sandawi then tell us,

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that the people follow Matunda’s example of sacrifice and they sacrifice too. The account reads, and listen to why the people sacrifice. Quote, this Matunda lived by a rock and he built a house there and he killed a black cow and sacrificed it. Now the other people also sacrificed because God made the opening.

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Here we read that the people made sacrifices because God made, quote, the opening.  What opening? Well, it’s talking about the opening between worlds. The opening the Hopi Council of Wisemen prayed and prayed and prayed would open between worlds so that we human beings could come to earth. The Sandhawa, you’re talking about the exact same opening.

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Here the Sandhawi tell us that Matunda was the one who quote, made that opening so that we human beings could come to earth. And it appears by all measures in this account that it is Matunda’s sacrifice of a cow, the sacrifice he makes on or near the rock in his house that opens the passage between worlds. Right after we’re told of Matunda’s sacrifice,

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We read, quote, and now he, Matunda, reared people. He reared many people, and then there were many. It’s difficult to know exactly what the Sindawi people meant by reared here, but we do know in version number one that people came out of an opening in the tree. And in version number five, people came out of an opening in the hill.

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And in version number seven, people came out of an opening in the rock. The tree, the rock, and the hill are all symbolically equivalent here. In version seven, like we’ve seen in so many other places, we learned that Matunda and his wife conceived we human beings inside the rock. Version number seven reads, and this is found on page 323 and was collected by Eric Tenra himself.

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Long ago, this Matunda lived in Talina. Talina is the primordial world. It’s akin to the pre-earth world. Alone and without a wife, hunting animals. And when he saw the moon, he saw her as a very beautiful girl. And then he followed her and climbed up into the sky and married her. And they lived at a large rock.

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and the moon she gave birth to many children. When she had borne them, then Matunda slaughtered a black cow, and the moon then made rain and the country became beautiful. And then Matunda opened up the rock and all the children flowed one another out and went on their way. So here we see the same themes that we’ve been seeing.

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In this account we see that in the pre-earth world, God marries a beautiful girl. Together they live in a special rock where this divine couple conceives many children. After moon, God’s wife gives birth to many children, Matunda God sacrifices a black cow. And moon, God’s wife, makes rain which turns the earth into a terrestrial paradise.

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And then after this, Matunda opens the rock and all of the children he and his beautiful wife conceived in the rock come to earth. So, when version number six tells us that Matunda reared many people, we get the picture of Matunda, God, nurturing and instructing his and Moon’s children.

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Keep in mind that the rearing of children that Matunda is doing here. He’s doing on earth a Paradisal earth no less Which is something that version number seven says more explicitly but the emphasis in this version is on moons rearing or teaching of their children the passage reads quote When the children were getting up and this refers to them coming out of the rock

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She, the moon, said, you must follow my words, you must follow my way, and you too must go and bear many children. So, in this version, we see God’s wife, moon, teaching her and Matunda’s children that they must follow what she teaches them. This takes place once their children have come to earth. So, this takes place on earth and we see God’s wife, moon,

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teaching her and Matunda’s children that they must follow what she teaches them. She’s teaching them. They must follow her words and follow her way, which indicates number one, that God and God’s wife taught their children when earth was in a paradisal state.  And number two, it indicates that God and his wife taught their children that they needed to conduct their lives here on earth in a particular quote way. And number three,

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In terms of the premise of this podcast, it indicates that God and God’s wife taught human beings a particular religious way or what I would call a particular religious tradition from the very onset, from the very beginning of human beings’ appearance on earth. Okay.

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So, for the next account, I’ve been unable to track down an early firsthand version of this particular account. But on page 16 of Tree and Pillar Worship, published in 1903 in volume 24 of Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature, a scholar by the name of Duncanfield Astley notes that in ancient Irish tradition, the first man and woman were believed to have emerged from

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trees.  Astley writes, quote, the ancient Irish believed that the first man spring from an alder, the first woman from a mountain ash.

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In another account of tree descent, Virgil, the greatest poet in ancient Rome, who lived between 70 and 19 BC, wrote in Book 8 of his work, the Aeneid, Rome’s national epic, about a race of ancient people who were born from oak trees. In this passage, Evander, the Arcadian king, is already living on the future site of Rome.

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He welcomes Aeneas, the Trojan prince, the hero who will become the legendary ancestor of Rome. And he gives him a tour of the landscape, walking through the hills and the forest, telling him the land’s oldest stories, including the story of the land’s earliest inhabitants, the First People, the legendary oak-born, the primordial ancestors of the Romans.

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line 313 to 315 read. And this is the John Dryden translation. And this is King Evander speaking to Prince Aeneas. Quote, these woods were first the seat of sylvan powers, of nymphs and fauns and salvage men who took their birth from trunks of trees and stubborn oak.

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Dixon College Commentaries notes that the Latin word truncus in line 315 means the stem, stock, or trunk of a tree. And the Latin word rober means hard oak. So, this is a group of people who are born from the trunk of an oak tree. This is important because in Rome, the oak tree was the sacred tree.

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of the god Jupiter. We haven’t really spent much time talking about the Romans on the program, but we should. In Rome, Jupiter was the highest god in the Roman pantheon. And yes, like we’ve seen on the program, he too was considered the king of the gods, the embodiment of law and order and justice. And just like the rest of the king of the gods that we’ve seen on the program, Jupiter too was married.

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He was married to the goddess Juno, the queen of the gods, who was the goddess of marriage and childbirth. For the Romans, Jupiter and Juno’s marriage was the supreme model of ordered sovereignty. Alone, Jupiter represented power, authority, and law.  And alone, Juno represented fertility, lineage, and protection.

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Together, their union represented the divine model the Roman state needed to follow if Rome was to survive. Jupiter and Juno’s union symbolized that kingship is not solitary.  It’s dynastic and maternal, too. The state can’t survive without law and order.

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And the state can’t survive without the birth of children. So together, Jupiter and Juno represented the survival of the Roman state. And everything that I just said to you are not my own ideas. This interpretation is grounded in mainstream scholarship on Roman religion. Scholars such as Robert Turkin, author of The Gods of Ancient Rome, and Mary Bird, John North, and Simon Price.

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authors of Religions of Rome, argue that the relationship between Jupiter and Juno reflects the structure of Roman civic and political order. Okay, so with that background, after Evander tells Aeneas about the oak-borne in lines 347 to 354, he takes Aeneas to the top of a hill, later known as capital line Hill.

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Tarpaian rock, a steep cliff, and together they look over the land below. And Evander tells Aeneas that this hill is sacred and that there have even been Arcadians who have seen Jupiter himself there. Jupiter resides on this hill and it’s on the summit of this hill that the Romans build a temple to Jupiter and Juno.

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which will serve as the religious center of the Roman Empire and the predestined center of the world. Because Jupiter, the King of the Gods, resides there.  Everything naturally radiates from it. This is cosmic kingship. And we, of course, are not at all surprised to find that in Rome, the King of the Gods and his wife, the Queen of the Gods,

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reside together in a temple on the top of a sacred hill because all of this is ancient tradition, cosmology, and theology. In fact, in preparation for the building of Jupiter’s temple, a state priest climbed Capitoline Hill with a crooked staff in his hand and began not with construction, but with orientation. Facing south,

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He fixed the cardinal directions and divided both the sky and the ground into ordered regions, right and left, front and back, effectively quartering the space. He then formally spoke the boundaries out loud, delimiting sacred space. This act inaugurated the hilltop as a templum, a consecrated zone.

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where Jupiter’s will could be observed. And all of this, the quartering of space and the establishment of a boundary, delimiting and consecrating sacred space, is ancient tradition, cosmology, and theology too. Why this matters for our discussion on the oak-born people, the first ancestors of the Roman people, is because Rome was originally built upon a royal

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theology of kings, the Rex. The Rex wasn’t just a ruler. He was a sacral king. He performed the state’s sacrifices and guaranteed the Pax Deorum, the peace with the gods. His authority flowed directly from Jupiter, the king of heaven, whose will he interpreted through augury and ritual.

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making the Roman king essentially Jupiter’s earthly stand-in, which I’ll talk about more down the line. Politics and religion were fused. Crown and altar were the same office. So, when we understand that the oak tree functioned as the living embodiment of Jupiter’s presence among the Romans,

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then the notion that the Romans’ earliest ancestors were oak-born takes on added meaning. When Evander tells Aeneas that Rome’s first ancestors were born from the trunk of an oak tree, Roman listeners heard that Rome’s first ancestors were born from Jupiter’s sacred tree. The term oak-born is saturated with theological, political, and royal significance.

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for Rome’s forebearers to be born of the oak is akin to saying that they are heaven-begotten, land-rooted, and divinely authorized to rule. A people whose kingship grows as naturally and permanently as the sacred oak itself. You should easily see here the connection between being oak-born and kingship. And as you know, if you’ve been listening to the program for a while, the ancient tradition

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at its core is about kingship and ultimately as modeled by Jupiter and Juno cosmic kingship. So it’s no wonder Evander tells Aeneas that their earliest ancestors were oak born. That’s it for me.

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We’ll pick it up right here in our next episode. got a lot more great tree descent accounts that I want to share with you. Till then, I’ll leave you 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.