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. It’s great to be with you today. I’m your host, Jack Logan. Before I get going here, I wanna tell you about our sister podcast, the Ancient Tradition Audio Rit. That podcast is important because it has full audio recordings of the texts that we talk about in this program, like the Enuma Elish, the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Book of Joseph and Azanath, along with a lot of others.

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In our last episode, I mentioned the Mesopotamian text, the Assyria temple text, which describes the Assyria temple, home to the sacred Kiskanu tree, as being situated right along the banks of the Euphrates river. Last week, I decided to upload an audio recording of that text to AudioWrit. So if you’re interested in checking it out, just search for the ancient tradition AudioWrit, wherever you get your podcasts.

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or you can also find it on our companion website, thea It’s a pretty short text, it’s pretty easy to follow, and I’ve even added a little bit of commentary. So if you are interested in listening to the ancients in their very own words, I recommend giving those ancient texts a listen. For today’s episode, I had originally planned to cover the link between the Ring Dance and the creation, but…

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I’ve decided that doing that is gonna take us too far a field from where we are right now in the podcast. So I’m gonna save that material for when we dive into religious ritual, which may be a little while yet. So today we’re gonna return to the creation. Up to this point, we’ve been talking about the major themes, the stubborn bits that the ancients taught in their texts and in their myths and symbols and in their architecture.

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that we can find remnants of right up to today in the religions of the world. It’s the contention of this program that these stubborn bits constituted fundamental theological doctrines taught in the world’s original religious tradition, which we refer to on this program as the ancient tradition. So let’s start by taking a minute to recap.

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the stubborn bits that we’ve covered to this point. The ancients taught, number one, the doctrine that the precreative universe consisted of a vast, endless expanse of matter. Matter which was disorganized and chaotic and disordered. Matter that was in a state of complete thermodynamic entropy.

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Matter which the ancients refer to symbolically as water or a sea or an ocean. Scholars refer to this vast expanse of ordered elements as the primordial waters or the primordial sea.

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Number two, the second thing that the ancients taught is that a divine being appeared over the disordered chaotic elements. The ancients used all kinds of symbols to convey this. Sometimes it was via the cracking open of a cosmic egg from which God emerged like a brilliant sun, kind of like the yolk of an egg and appeared over the waters. The ancients often associate the emergence of God from the cosmic egg

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or the gourd with a brilliant light, which is really similar to modern day astrophysicists’ notion of the Big Bang. Other times, the ancients portrayed God appearing above the primordial waters as a goose or a brilliant bird or a phoenix that soared above the waters.

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Number three, the ancients tell us that after appearing above the waters, God commanded by divine authority, the disordered primordial elements to organize themselves into a creation, into ordered matter. The ancients, in particular the ancient Egyptians, referred to this efficacious ability of God’s word or commands to cause things to happen as divine utterance.

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The ancients tell us that God commanded the elements to move from a state of disorder to a state of order, reversing thermodynamic entropy. And they tell us that the elements did. Number four, the ancients consistently taught that after God commanded the elements to order themselves, a wind, which represented

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something coming out of God’s being brooded over the primordial waters. The ancients tell us this brooding caused the elements to whirl in a vortex or a circular motion similar to a hurricane. The ancients tell us that the divine essence that came out of God permeated every single element right down to the subatomic level. Number five, the ancients tell us that

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The reason God had the ability to command the elements to move from a state of total disorder, which in scientific speak is thermodynamic entropy, to a state of order, which all of the current laws of physics tells us is impossible in a closed system, was on account of God’s upholding righteousness. And this was known among the ancients, as Maat, Tzedek, Rita, the Tao,

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The ancients unequivocally taught that God had the ability to reverse the second law of thermodynamics, to replace chaos with order because he upheld rightness or righteousness.

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Number six, the ancients tell us that one upheld righteousness by following the laws of the cosmos or the laws of heaven. They tell us that in the heavens, one of God’s sons rebelled against the high God and the laws of heaven when he tried to usurp the high God’s throne. This rebellious son who is symbolized uniformly in the ancient world as a sea serpent or monster

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was banished from the high gods kingdom and exiled to the outer realms of chaos. The realm of chaotic, disorganized, and disordered elements, the primordial waters, which is why the rebellious sun is almost always portrayed as a sea monster or a water dragon. Number seven, the ancients tell us that in a council that took place in the heavens before the earth was created,

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another one of the high god’s sons stepped forward and volunteered to battle the rebellious son who was threatening the high god’s kingdom. The ancients tell us that before this son, referred to in the ancient texts quite often as the beloved son, could obtain the authority to reverse the second law of thermodynamics. He first had to conquer the sea dragon, the rebellious son who lived in those

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Among scholars, this battle is referred to as the Great Primordial Theomache. Number 8. The ancients tell us that the high god gave the beloved son special weapons and armor in preparation for his battle against the rebellious son. Special weapons and armor which the ancients symbolized as weapons like swords and bows and arrows and maces and nets.

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indispensable in helping him battle and conquer the awful sea dragon. And as we learned in the last two episodes, important religious rituals like the ring dance were vital in the defeat of the dragon. Number nine. The ancients tell us that a terrible battle took place. A battle which the beloved son triumphantly won.

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The ancients tell us that the son of the high god conquered the rebellious son who aimed to destroy him, spiritually destroy him and usurp his father’s kingdom. The beloved son of the high god victoriously triumphed over the dragon. And having done so, he gained the authority to command the elements through divine utterance. Number 10.

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The ancients tell us that upon conquering the sea dragon, the high god crowned the victorious son, a heavenly king, gave him the power to divinely utter and granted him a kingdom over which he could reign as king. Having perfectly upheld ma’at or tzedek, he could be trusted, fully trusted to rule in rightness.

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as a heavenly king over a new heavenly kingdom.

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Number 11, the ancients tell us that upon defeating the sea dragon, this newly crowned heavenly king began the material creation of his new kingdom by commanding the elements to form the world that you and I are currently standing on, the earth. Number 12, the ancients tell us that

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as the heavenly king looked down upon the disordered elements that he was troubled because there was no place for him to rest from his battle with the sea dragon. He had no home or royal palace in which to dwell in his new kingdom. So he initiated the creation of this world by first forming a sanctuary or temple where he could dwell.

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Number 13, the ancients tell us that before he built the sacred sanctuary or temple where he could rest, he first built a firm rock foundation on which his temple could be built. Referred to in the ancient literature as the foundation stone. And where in the cosmos did he place the foundation stone? The ancients tell us that he placed the foundation stone for his temple in the very

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center of the world.

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Number 14. In the ancient record, the ancients describe the newly crowned Heavenly King’s temple sanctuary as a primordial mound or a mountain sanctuary or a garden sanctuary. And they tell us that it was from this sacred temple palace located at the center of the world that the earth began to expand.

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gradually forming into a fully ordered and harmonious creation that we understand today as the earth. These 14 stubborn bits dominate the ancients accounts of the creation. These are the main tenets the ancients taught about the creation and we find them taught over and over and over again in the ancient record and all across the globe.

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Okay, so what do the ancients tell us next? Well, the most famous detailed account given of the creation is found in Judeo-Christianity in the book of Genesis. And there we learned that God created the earth in a very orderly manner. We learned that over a series of seven days, he progressively perfected the creation of the earth. And you should note in the Genesis account, the prominent use of the number seven,

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And that’s because the number seven is tightly associated in ancient texts with temple liturgies and initiation rights. So I’m going to save our discussion on the Genesis creation account for when we talk about ancient temple rights. Just note that many scholars today believe the creation account given in Genesis is less about the actual material creation than it is about an account of spiritual perfection.

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which is associated with temple literatures. If these scholars are correct, and I believe that they are, this would make the Genesis creation account a temple text rather than a detailed account of the material creation. When we take a look at the ins and outs of the material creation in the ancient texts, like what was created first and what was created second and how long did it take to create certain aspects of the creation.

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we actually don’t find very much uniformity. The creation accounts are all over the map when it comes to this aspect of the creation. It’s pretty impossible to really establish any sort of coherent stubborn bit, which tells me that there may not have been a reliable account given of the actual ins and outs of the material creation given to the ancestors in the ancient tradition, which is actually something that’s indicated in the Book of the Holy Secrets of Enoch.

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where the secrets referred to in the title of the text actually refer to the secrets of creation. If you remember in chapter 22, Enoch was not given the secrets of the material creation until he, like the beloved son, had been crowned a heavenly king in the Holy of Holies. It was right after this in chapter 23 that God commanded Vervoil to teach Enoch the secrets of the material creation.

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And this took a long time. It took Vervoyal 30 days and 30 nights to teach Enoch how to reverse the second law of thermodynamics. And because this teaching took place in the Holy of Holies, we can conclude that the ins and outs of the material creation were and are some of the most protected and esoteric of all religious teachings. Think about it for a minute. To know how the material world was created.

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is to know for oneself how to create a world. Yeah, you would wanna protect that information. For that reason, I’m gonna skip the particular ins and outs of the creation, what was created first and what was created second and how long it took and just stick to the stubborn bits that we find in the ancient record. We’ll just establish that the earth is fully formed at this point and move on to the next stubborn bit because the next stubborn bit is as strong as they come.

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Do you remember Marinus Vandersloos? Well, he tells us on page 65 of volume one of his series called Traditional Cosmology, that there is incredible consistency in how the ancients describe the primordial state of the universe. This is what he says, quote, “‘The characteristics assigned to this primordial state in far-flung cultures are remarkably uniform

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and can be traced to the very earliest civilizations. That’s definitely what we’re gonna see with this next stubborn bit. And what is the next stubborn bit that we find? Well, it’s pretty darn remarkable. See, the ancients tell us that in the early days of the creation, the earth did not reside where it resides now. As mind-boggling as that is.

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They tell us that it resided instead right next to heaven in the center of the cosmos where dwelt the high god. Now that’s a pretty darn fascinating stubborn bit. So to see what I’m talking about, let’s take a look at one of the earliest accounts that we can find. And it’s found in ancient Egypt, in the oldest corpus of religious texts in the world, which you know by now are the ancient Egyptian pyramid texts. In this account,

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The ancient Egyptians refer to the earth as Geb and the vault of heaven as Newt. Pyramid text 432, which we can find in King Pepe the first and King Pepe the second’s tombs, reads, and this comes from the James P. Allen English translation, speaking of Newt, who represents the vault of heaven. The text reads, quote, great thing has happened in the sky.

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which is heaven, where you have taken control, become powerful and filled every place with your beauty. The entire land, and it’s referring to the earth, is under you, for you have acquired it. You have encircled for yourself the land, the earth, and everything within your arms.

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I love this text. I love how it depicts the earth at the onset of the creation as having been encircled in the arms of heaven. The last line of the text provides us with a really intimate depiction of the relationship between heaven and earth in the early days of the creation when it tells us that Newt, the vault of heaven, wrapped her arms around and embraced the earth.

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tells us on page 50 of his book, Speaking of Heaven Encircling its Arms Around the Earth, writes, quote, this symbolism, and note that he’s saying that this imagery is symbolic, is based on a legend that originally Earth and sky were together in total union.

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When we look at the text, we can see that the ancients personified heaven and earth as gods. One was always personified as male and the other one was always personified as female. In ancient Egypt, the vault of heaven was personified by the goddess Newt and the earth was personified by the god Geb. When the text describes Newt enveloping Geb, the earth in her embrace, the ancient Egyptians want us to imagine the close

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intimate relationship between heaven and earth in the early days of the creation. As one would, the loving union between a husband and a wife. What they want us to understand is that heaven and earth were that close, that intimate. The ancient Egyptians wanted us to understand that the closeness between heaven and earth was at one time as profound as the marital bond. It’s important to point out that

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the ancient Egyptians did not believe that the earth was literally male and that the heaven was literally female. You know in later times perhaps some did and that’s something that we see when the symbolic nature of the symbols lost and people start to interpret the symbol as literal that the earth was literally male and that the god Horus was literally a Falcon. When that happens which we see

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It signifies that the original meaning of the symbol had been lost or corrupted and had reached a highly deteriorated state. The ancient Egyptians are using male and female here as symbols to teach us about the reality of spiritual things. The symbolic nature of the personification of heaven and earth is pretty apparent in the next text in pyramid text 433, which reads, quote,

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and this is Newt speaking, the vault of heaven, have fertilized, and some translators have translated that as impregnated, you, speaking of Geb, the earth. From this passage, the ancient Egyptians want us to understand that heaven was the source of the fertilization of the earth. It was heaven that gave the earth fertility and abundance in life. They weren’t saying that literally heaven impregnated the earth.

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Okay, the next text that falls right after that, Pyramid Text 344, which we’re not gonna actually cover in this episode, tells us that something tragic happened. Something caused the close bond between heaven and earth to rupture. Something caused heaven and earth to separate, to move away from each other. The ancient texts around the world offer a lot of really interesting explanations for why this occurred. And some of them are kind of amusing.

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We’ll get into a couple of those today and in the next episode or so. It’s worth noting that the pyramid texts that I just read were recited as part of the dead king’s funeral rites. So these texts were used in rituals, which were patterned after the dead king Osiris. See, when the priest lowered the lid of the sarcophagus, which contained the dead king’s body, over the top of the sarcophagus,

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they uttered those texts. And why did they do that? They did that because the sarcophagus itself represented Geb, the earth, and the lid represented Nut, the vault of heaven. In fact, the ancient Egyptians often painted Nut, the personification of the vault of heaven, on the inside of the sarcophagi or coffin lids. If you’d like to see a couple of examples of this,

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I’ve posted them to the website for this episode. They also painted the ceiling above the King’s sarcophagus, dark blue, with those five pointed stars that we’ve talked about on the program. And they did this to represent heaven, Newt. When the priests sealed the sarcophagus with the lid, it represented the rejoining of heaven and earth. And where did the dead king lay in the sarcophagus?

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He lay literally smack dab in between the two of them, right where heaven and earth converged in the center of their union. He was in fact the quote, son, and I’m saying that in quotes, of their union. This idea is really similar to what we see in ancient Mesopotamia. Do you remember the Anunnaki, the council of the gods? If you don’t, the word Anuna comes from the word on.

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which was the Sumerian name for both the high god An and the place where he dwelt, heaven. The Sumerian word Anuna when translated into English literally means the offspring of An. Key in Anuna Key is the name of the Sumerian goddess

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Sumerian word for the earth. So in the name Anunnaki itself we get this really interesting dual message. First we get the message that the Anunnaki are the literal offspring of the union between the high god An and his wife Ki. They are the royal sons and daughters of the high god. All of the ancient Mesopotamian

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In fact, note how the placement of the words in the name Anunnaki itself convey the same idea. The Sumerian word for offspring, Unna, is physically placed between An and his wife, Ki, in the word itself. The royal offspring of An are the An-unna-ki, Anunnaki. The way the word is actually structured conveys the notion that these children came as a result of the union of

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and his wife, Key. The second message that we get is the implication of another type of birth, a spiritual birth of some type that occurs in the place where heaven and earth meet. Remember, in Sumerian, the word on also means heaven and the word key also means earth. So the offspring or quote sons or quote daughters here are talking about a birth.

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or rebirth of some type that takes place where heaven and earth meet, which the ancient Egyptians also implied when they buried dead Egyptian pharaohs in the middle of a coffin where the base represented the earth and the lid represented heaven, when they buried him right where heaven and earth meet. This suggests that

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to be a member of the Anunnaki, the council of the gods. One had to be both a literal son or daughter of the high god and his wife, Kee, and one had to be spiritually reborn in the place where heaven and earth meet. That’s what the name Anunnaki implies. We haven’t talked about this too much yet, but recall that

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Isis found Osiris’s dead body embedded in the trunk of a tree. The trunk, the wood of the tree, wrapped itself around his body like a coffin. All of this matters. It’s highly significant. I’m not going to divulge right here what all of this means, but I want to point it out while we’re talking about it so that it’s on your radar. And if you just can’t wait and you’d like to ponder this a little bit.

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consider how the trunk of a tree might be symbolically connected to where heaven and earth meet, and how that might be symbolically connected to King Osiris, and how all of this might be connected to spiritual rebirth. Note how all of this, the symbol and the myth and the ritual are tightly interconnected. On page 50,

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Rundle notes of Pyramid Texts 432 to 434. Myth and ritual are closely interwoven in this hymn. The deceased is Osiris who lies within the earth, still in great danger from Seth. And Seth is the dragon, the demon of death and decay. So there’s thermodynamic entropy.

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So he’s still dead, the king is still dead. So he’s still subject to Seth. As the lid is set down on the sarcophagus, the sky makes union with the earth. All right, there’s a lot to think about there. Let’s take a closer look at ancient Mesopotamia. An interesting text that comes to us from a Sumerian tablet found in Ur titled Gilgamesh and the Hulupu Tree. I love these titles.

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dated to approximately 2000 BC, tells the story of a Hulupu tree, believed by scholars to be a weeping willow, that had been planted, catch this, on the bank of the Euphrates River. In this account, the Mesopotamian goddess Inanna desires to use the wood of the tree to craft a throne and a bed, but surprise surprise,

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A dragon, quote, set up its nest at the base of the tree. Of course it did. The mighty Gilgamesh comes to Inanna’s aid, slays the terrible dragon, cuts down the trunk of the tree, note that it’s the trunk of the tree, and gives it to Inanna so that she can craft a throne and bed from it. If you’re a long time listener to the program, so, so much of that should have sounded familiar to you.

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In this episode, we’re not gonna talk about Enana making a throne in a bed out of the trunk of the tree, but we’ll definitely talk about it in a future episode when we’re talking about the building of ancient temples. In this episode, we’re gonna focus on a section of the text that tells us about heaven and earth. The first undamaged line of the text, which starts in line seven, reads, and this is the Samuel N. Cremer translation.

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published by the University of Chicago Press. Quote, after heaven had moved away from earth, after earth had been separated from heaven. In this text, we clearly see that the ancient Mesopotamians too taught that heaven and earth during the early creation were close together, that earth resided close to heaven, that the earth did not originally reside where it does today.

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The text tells us that after this period, heaven moved away from earth and that earth separated from heaven. The text continues in line nine, quote, after the name of mankind had been fixed, after Anu had carried off unto himself the heaven, after Enlil had carried off unto himself the earth. It’s important to recognize who Enlil is here.

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Enlil is a member of the Anunnaki. He’s one of the sons of the high god On and his wife Ki. Give a listen to what Britannica says of Enlil. Quote, Enlil meant Lord of the wind. Both the hurricane and the gentle winds of spring were thought of as the breath issuing from his mouth and eventually as his word or command.

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That description of Enlil ought to mean something to you long time listeners. What’s more, Enlil reigned from his palace temple, Ikur, also known as Durankhi in the ancient Sumerian city of Nippur. The name of Enlil’s temple should have caught your attention there, because note that it’s Durankhi. We see that the words on and ki are right in the name of the temple. In English, the name Durankhi actually means

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quote, the bond that unites heaven and earth. Now, this is interesting because this name explicitly links the place where heaven and earth meet with Enlil’s temple. The place where heaven and earth meet is the temple. That’s what the ancient Mesopotamians are telling us here. In this light, the ancient Egyptian coffin was essentially understood to be a little miniature temple.

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or at least to symbolize the importance of one. In Lille’s temple, Joranke was understood to be established in the center of the world, the location where heaven and earth united. The name Ikor, which is another name for the same temple, translates into mountain house. This reveals an additional layer of significance.

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linking the temple not only to the convergence of heaven and earth, but also to the imagery of a mountain, which will be quite significant a bit down the line. We find a similar reference to the original closeness of heaven and earth in a Mesopotamian text titled, The Creation of the Pickaxe. That’s another really interesting title. This Sumerian creation myth is

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preserved on a clay tablet that came from the Temple Library in Nepal. It’s dated to 2100 BC. If you want to take a look at this tablet, it’s housed in the Louvre in Paris. The text it’s sometimes referred to as a song begins with Enlil separating heaven and Earth. This translation comes from the electronic text corpus of Sumerian literature published by the University of Oxford.

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Beginning in the first couple of lines, the text reads, and Lil, who will make the human seed of the land come forth from the earth. Not only did he hasten to separate heaven from earth and hasten to separate earth from heaven, but in order to make it possible for humans to grow, in quote, where flesh came forth, he first suspended the axis of the world.

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He did this with the help of the hoe, which is the pickaxe. In this text, we learn why and little separated heaven from earth. The text tells us that he did it to quote, make the human seed of the land come forth from the earth. This statement implies that had heaven and earth stayed in close proximity to each other, humans, or as the text says, the human seed, would not have been able to come to earth.

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or as the text says, come forth from the earth. This aspect of the separation of heaven and earth is important and we’ll develop it more in just a minute. The other aspect of the text that I find interesting is the line that says, quote, in order to make it possible for humans to grow, he first suspended the axis of the world, Duranki. This line actually refers to Enlil building a temple.

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The text tells us that after and Lil separated heaven from earth, the first thing that he did was establish a temple, a temple named Duranki, which we just pointed out meant quote, the bond that unites heaven and earth. He built a temple that reestablished the bond that had been ruptured between heaven and earth. At any rate, these texts establish that the

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taught that during the early days of the creation, heaven and earth were in incredibly close proximity to one another.

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Among the Hurrians, who were people who lived in Syria and upper Mesopotamia, between about 30,300 and 1200 BC, we learn how a copper knife was used to sever earth from heaven. The text, which you can find in KUB 33, line 106, reads, quote, when it happened that one cut heaven and earth,

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with a copper knife. Susan Gork of Maynes University who wrote about this text on page 45 and 46 of the book, Heaven on Earth, finds a connection between this text and ancient Mesopotamia. She writes, quote, Otten and Sigalovah linked this passage to the Sumerian myth of Gilgamesh and Enkidu, when the heavens had been separated from the earth, when the earth had been delimited

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from the heavens, when On had taken the heavens for himself, when and Lil had taken the earth for himself.

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So let’s turn to ancient Greece. In Hesiod’s Theogony, which is considered the standard account of Greek mythology, the Greeks use conjugal imagery to describe the profound closeness between heaven and earth. Among the Greeks, the earth was personified as the goddess Gaia, and heaven was personified as the god Uranus.

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In the theogony between lines 105 and 135, we find the Greek account of the creation. The account reads, and I’m only gonna read lines that are relevant to this discussion. And I’m gonna be reading from the Hugh G. Evelyn White translation. The theogony reads, quote, Hail, children of Zeus, grant lovely song and celebrate the holy race of the deathly gods who are forever. Those that were born,

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of earth and starry heaven. Note here like we saw in ancient Mesopotamia, children or offspring are born out of the union between heaven and earth. Quote, tell me how at the first gods and earth came to be and the wide heaven above and the gods who were born of them. These things declared to me from the beginning. In truth, at first chaos came to be.

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That refers to the Primordial Waters. But next, Wide Pathed Earth, the Evershore Foundation and Eros, love. Recall how in a past episode, we talked about how the Greeks believed that the creation came about as a divine act of love. That’s what the text is saying here. The creation came as an act of Eros, love, the conjugal aspect of which we’re gonna see in just a second. Quote,

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first bore starry heaven equal to herself, to cover her on every side and to be an ever sure abiding place for the blessed gods.” Note how we’re getting the tight embrace aspect of heaven and earth here when the text says that the heaven quote, covered her on every side. Then listen to what the text says. It says quote, she referring to Gaia earth.

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lay with heaven, Uranus. This is an obvious reference to the sexual union of heaven and earth, out of which the text tells us offspring were born. The text continues, quote, she lay with heaven and bore deep swirling oceanus, coios, creus, and hyperion, and iopetus. And then the text goes on to name several other children.

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So like we saw with the Anunnaki, children or offspring are born out of the union between Gaia and Uranus, Heaven and Earth. Note in this Greek account how the closeness between Heaven and Earth takes place right after the creation. We’re talking about the onset of the creation again. This text attests that Heaven and Earth were in incredibly close proximity to one another at the time the Earth was formed. That’s what this text is telling us.

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The theogony goes on to tell us that at some point, Gaia, angry at Uranus, fashions a sickle and urges her son Cronus to castrate Uranus. Starting around line 160, the theogony reads, quote, she, Gaia, made the element of Gray Flint and shaped a great sickle and told her plan to her dear sons. Cronus the Wily.

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took courage and answered his dear mother, mother, I will undertake to do this deed. So he said, and vast earth rejoiced greatly in spirit and set and hid him in an ambush and put in his hands a jagged sickle and revealed to him the whole plot. And heaven, Uranus came and longing for love, he lay about earth spreading himself full upon her.

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Then the sun from his ambush stretched forth his left hand and in his right took the great long sickle with jagged teeth and swiftly lopped off his own father’s member and cast them away to fall behind him.” While I’m reading that, don’t forget that the sexual imagery that’s employed here, at least as it pertains to the physical earth and the nature of heaven, is employed symbolically.

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It’s supposed to teach us something about the loving nature and close proximity between heaven and earth in the early days of the creation. So for Cronus to castrate Uranus, to castrate heaven, to cut off Uranus’s phallus, the organ keeping heaven and earth in a loving embrace is to symbolically convey that the close proximity between heaven and earth was ruptured. Now they are cut off from one another. They’re separated.

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Now there’s distance between them. To castrate Uranus is to cut off the link between heaven and earth. The phallus symbolism used here, like the trunk of a tree, is gonna be incredibly important in a couple of episodes. So tuck that away in your pocket. Let’s take a look at Nigeria and the Yoruba people. These people tell how the ruler of the heavens and the creator of the Yoruba people, Elodomari,

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which means the great everlasting majesty, also called Olorun, the owner of heaven, created the earth out of a primeval swamp. So there’s the Primordial Waters. Oxford Reference published by Oxford University Press titled, Alotamari Moves Away From Earth, tells us the following Eurubian account. Quote, at one time, Alotamari

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sky, that is his abode, were nearer to earth than they are now. So near that one could reach up and touch the sky. Heaven and earth were so close that the denziens of heaven used to descend and ascend by means of a spider’s web or chain. If we turn to Polynesia we find the Maori myth of Papa and Rangi. In this myth heaven is personified by the male deity Rangi

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and the earth is personified by the female deity, Papatawanuku, referred to as Papa. On page 307 of David Liming’s Oxford Companion to World Mythology, he writes, quote, Papa was the earth goddess and Rangi the sky god, the mother and father of the Maori people of the Polynesian world. Earth and sky embraced tightly, leaving no room for creation between them.

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The cover art for this episode is actually a modern depiction of Rangi and Papa Tawanuku holding each other in a tight embrace. Note here in this account how Earth is personified as female whereas in ancient Egypt the earth was personified as male. David Leeming notes on page 18 and 19 of the world of myth quote, the male-female arrangement is unusual since it, and he’s

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the male representing the earth below Newt, the female who represents sky above him. The more usual arrangement in world mythology is reflected in the Polynesian version of the Maori people of New Zealand in which the sky above is the male God Rangi and the earth below is his female counterpart Papa. I suspect that this shift from personifying the earth as male to personifying the earth as female

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which is evident today in phrases like mother earth, can be traced to the conjugal symbolism associated with heaven and earth as a divine couple, where women are associated with a submissive conjugal position. We’re gonna see in a couple of episodes though, that the personification of the earth is male, as conceived by the ancient Egyptians, remains even today, the dominant symbolic.

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expression worldwide, even though it’s commonplace to refer to the earth as female. And there’s a reason for this and we’ll get to that. David Leeming on page 33 of World Mythology refers to the embrace of Rangi and Papa Tawanuku as a coital embrace. He says, quote, the Maori tell how Rangi and Papa were spoken into existence by the words of the great god

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Rongi and Papa cleaved together in a coital embrace, leaving little space for their offspring. Here again we see the ancients express the primordial closeness of heaven and earth symbolically or metaphorically as a sexual union. The rest of this myth though is pretty interesting. Leeming writes, quote, some Maori say that while Rongi and Papa were coupling, their children

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them but could not see because there was no light. This is interesting because here this Maori account is emphasizing children or offspring again and this reminds me of the Mesopotamian account, the creation of the pickaxe that we just read where the Sumerians taught that when heaven and earth were in close proximity, humans were not able to come forth on the earth and there seems to have been something about how close

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heaven and earth were at the outset of the creation that was particularly problematic for human beings in terms of occupying the earth. And we get the same idea here in the Maori myth. When Leeming tells us that when heaven and earth were coupling, the children were wandering around in darkness and they couldn’t see. The earliest written account that we have of Rangi and Papatawanuku comes from a manuscript titled.

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and I hope I really don’t mangle the pronunciation here. Ko nāg Tama’a Rāni’iki, which means children of heaven and earth, which was written in 1849 A.D. by Meihite Rangikahiki of the Ngāti Rangiwewe tribe of Rotorua, which is located southeast of modern day Auckland, New Zealand. In this text, we learn that the children that were stuck between heaven and earth

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held a council to decide what to do. Because as long as heaven and earth clove together, the humans could not come into existence on the earth. So what does the council decide to do? Well, let’s read. The text says, quote, “‘At last the beings who had been begotten by heaven and earth, worn out by the continued darkness, consulted among themselves saying, let us now determine what we should do with Rangi and Papa.’

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whether it would be better to slay them or to rend them apart. Then spoke Tumutuwanga, the fiercest of the children of heaven and earth. It is well, let us slay them. Let’s pause for a second. This is a really interesting account. Here we read of a council being held among the children or offspring of heaven and earth. And in this council, a figure

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who the text refers to as the fiercest of the children of heaven and earth, stands up and declares that the children ought to slay heaven and earth. If we read heaven and earth here as actual divine parents, then Tumatawanga is advocating the slaughtering of the high God and his wife. If we read heaven and earth in this text as the heavenly realm and planet earth, then

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Tumutuwinga is advocating destroying heaven and earth. In either case, Tumutuwinga, the fiercest of the children of heaven and earth is advocating for complete and utter destruction. Is any of this sounding familiar to you? Because it should. This Maori account sounds suspiciously similar to the Mesopotamian account found in the Enuma Elish where we read about a fierce sea monster named Tiamat.

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who aimed to usurp the high gods kingdom. And don’t forget that that account, like we see here, took place not on earth, but in the heavenly realm within the context of a council of gods. Tumutuwanga is the Maori rebellious son. Let’s return to the text. After Tumutuwanga offers up his plan to the council, another son,

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named Tani Mahuta steps forward. The text reads, quote, “‘Then spake Tani Tahu’a, the father of the forest and of all things that inhabit them or that are constructed from trees.'” Okay, I absolutely have to stop here. Did you catch what the text said about Tani Mahuta? It’s unbelievable. The Maori tell us that in the council that took place in the pre-earthly realm,

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The second son who came forward was, quote, the father of the forest. Now, you may not have thought much of this epitaph. You might have just glazed right over it, but we absolutely can’t, because this epitaph tells us so, so much. See, the text tells us that the son who stepped forward after the fierce Tumutuwanga was, quote, the father of the forest. And of all things that inhabit them,

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and that are constructed from trees. So here we are in New Zealand, thousands of years and thousands of miles from ancient Mesopotamia and we’re back to talking about trees. Right here in this text, the sun that counters the fierce Tumatauanga is associated with trees, trees. And not only that, he’s referred to as the father of the forest. And what is a forest? It’s a large stretch of trees.

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I don’t have time to develop this right now, but the reference here to Tane Mahuta as the father of the forest, when cross-referenced with everything else that we’ve learned from the ancients about trees and heavenly kingship, is a reference to Tane Mahuta as the father of heavenly kings, which is akin to Revelation chapter 3 verse 21. Christ tells those who ever cometh that they will sit on a throne.

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Christ is the father of heavenly kings. Tani Mahuta, the father of the forest, is the Maori beloved son. And don’t think for a second that the Maori just randomly picked out father of the forest as Tani Mahuta’s epitaph, because they didn’t. This epitaph is in complete conformity with the ancient tradition of symbolically depicting God as a tree.

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We’ve talked a lot on this program about the significance of the tree, the sap of the tree. And in a couple of episodes, we’re going to talk about the significance of the trunk of the tree. And the symbolism is magnificent. The following is Tani Mahuta’s response to Tumatawenga’s plan to destroy heaven and earth. Then spake Tani Mahuta, Nay, not so. It is better to rend them, them being heaven and earth.

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and to let the heavens stand far above us and the earth lie under our feet. Let the sky, heaven, become as a stranger to us, but the earth remain close to us as our nursing mother. Here, Tane Mahuta, in order to solve the problem of humans being stuck between heaven and earth and darkness, proposes to rend the heavens and earth apart. Upon hearing Tane’s words,

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the majority of the council agrees to the plan. At this point in the text, several different members of the council attempt to separate heaven and earth, but they fail. That is until Tani Mahuta, the Maori beloved son tries. And the text reads, quote, then at last slowly up rises Tani Mahuta, the god and father of forests. With his parents,

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In vain he strives to rend them apart with his hands and arms. Lo, he pauses. His head is now firmly planted on his mother, the earth. His feet he raises up and rests against his father the skies. He strains his back and limbs with mighty effort. Now are rent apart Orangay and Papa. Far, far beneath him he presses down the earth.

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sky. Note here that Tane is using his body to hold heaven and earth apart. Yet it’s also Tane’s body that still keeps them connected even though they are apart like a giant pillar or column or dare I say it like the trunk of a tree. Where Tane’s body is the trunk and the canopy of heaven is like the branches of a tree.

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Once Tawny does this, listen to what the children who had been stuck between heaven and earth do. The text reads, quote, From that time clear light increased upon the earth and all the beings which were hidden between Rongi and Papa before they were separated now multiplied upon the earth. So whereas humans couldn’t populate the earth when Rongi and Papa were in a tight embrace,

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Now that they were separated, humans could populate the Earth, which they did. This draws me back to the original problem. Why was it that humans couldn’t come to Earth when heaven and Earth were in such tight proximity? Unfortunately, for the answer to that, we’re gonna have to wait an episode or two. Before I leave this account, I’d like to highlight an important point. Note how this account indicates that human beings existed in a pre-earthly realm.

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before their birth on earth and that it was only after earth was pushed away from heaven that humans were able to populate the earth. This is an intriguing theological tenet and we’ll look into it more in the future. Among the Karachi people of Ghana and Togo, we see them similarly describe the closeness between heaven and earth in sexual terms. On page 33 of World

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The Karachi people of Togo and Ghana tell how in the beginning, Wulbari, which is heaven, lay on Asaseya, which is earth. So there’s the conjugal symbolism. Now listen to this, causing the humans crowded between them to squirm. So here again, this time in Africa, we see that children, humans, humans who have not yet been born,

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squirming between them. Quote, so much that Wulbari had to withdraw from Asasea. Here we see that the unsettled children, the unborn humans are the reason why the two, heaven and earth, must separate. Note how we’re getting the same connection between unsettled offspring and the need for the separation of heaven and earth, whether we’re in Mesopotamia, New Zealand, or Africa. In Polynesia, we find a myth

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similar to the myth of Rangi and Papa in Tahiti. In Tahitian mythology the closeness between heaven and earth is described as a marriage. Oxford reference says, quote, in Tuamotawan mythology, which is a Polynesian language that’s spoken in Tahiti, Atea was made into the sky god and Fa’ahotu became his wife.

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Marriage, of course, is being used symbolically here. It’s meant to teach us something about the loving bond that existed between heaven and earth in the beginning. These examples that I’ve just covered are really just the tip of the iceberg. There are literally dozens and dozens, if not hundreds of accounts all over the globe that attest that in the beginning, heaven and earth were in close proximity to one another, like in a loving embrace. In fact,

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Stephen Oppenheimer, a British writer in a book titled Eden in the East, traced this stubborn bit across the continent of Asia. If you’re interested in reading more about it, you can find a copy of Eden in the East on Internet Archive. On page 320, you’re going to find a map that traces the migration of this stubborn bit across the continent of Asia. And on page 322, you’ll find a really

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with other prominent stubborn bits that we’ve discussed on this program, which he refers to as the water dragon, which is the sea serpent, the creative word, which is divine utterance, the cosmic egg, and the appearance of light, the primordial singularity. Since there’s so many more examples of this stubborn bit that I’d like to share with you, and we’re running out of time.

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I’ll conclude this episode by reading a brief list of examples that were given by Marinus van der Sluis on page 69 and 71 of volume one of his series, Traditional Cosmology. Van der Sluis titles this section, The Sky Close to the Earth. It reads, quote, In the earliest state of the universe, mythologies report that the two future extremities of the cosmos, heaven and earth, were still united.

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The Kashi, and these are people who are located in Northeast India, avered, quote, in olden days when the earth was very young, they say that heaven and earth were very near to one another. And, quote, in the beginning, heaven and earth were near each other. The Wachabalik, which is in central Western Victoria, Australia, quote,

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account for the space between the earth and the sky by saying that at one time they touched each other. That is to say the sky lay on the earth. Again, a tribe of the Wajuri from the headwaters of the Marumbiji River, which is in central New South Wales, Australia, held that quote, the sky at one time in the ages ago was not up high where it is now.

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It was down so low to the ground that man could not walk upright. Similarly in Benin, which is located in West Africa, it quote is said that in early times, the sky was quite close, only about two meters from the earth. And members of the Sikwani Nation in Columbia, recall at a time when quote, the sky was rather low, quote, the sky still hung low, quote, and the sky was not as it is now.

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for, quote, previously it had been very low. A parallel type of tradition places not the sky itself, but the deity of the sky, the supreme being in former proximity to the earth, presumably implying a lower position for the sky as well. For example, the Ashanti, who live in Ghana, related that, quote, long ago, Onyankapan lived on earth, or at least was very near to us,

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quote, not then high in the sky. For the Dinka, which is in the Southern Sudan, the contention that quote, the sky at first was so low, equated with a close presence of God, as to touch the sky would be to quote, touch God. And listen to this last account. The Razi, which live in Western Zambia, claimed that quote, in the beginning, God created the earth and all living creatures.

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At that time, God and his wife lived here below among men. Throughout Africa, in fact, it is generally agreed that in the earliest times God lived on earth, though God inhabits the sky today. I think it’s interesting in this account how the Razi tell how not only God roamed the earth, but his wife did too.

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What we learned from all of these accounts we’ve discussed in today’s episode is that whether the ancients used the symbolism of an embrace, a sexual union, or a marriage, they all tell the same story. They tell us that in the beginning, heaven and earth were not far apart like they are today. Rather, they were very close, like in an intimate, loving embrace. I wonder what that must have been like.

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That’s it for me. As always, I’ll leave you with the words of William Shakespeare, knowledge is the wing we’re with when we fly to heaven. And of course, we have to fly there because heaven and earth are no longer in close proximity. I’m Jack Logan.

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