The Ancient Tradition

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Episode #3- The Primordial Waters

In the universal ancient cosmogony, the ancients described the pre-creative state of the universe as water- a dark, primordial sea. Why? Did they really believe the pre-creative state of the universe was made up of a vast ocean of water? If not, what did they mean by “water”? Join us in this episode as we decipher the ancient conception of “water” and consider what it implied about the emergence of life and what it expressed about the emergence of the “new” man/woman.

The Ancients' Use of Symbols

The ancients used symbols to convey sacred, inexpressible, transcendent, spiritual truths and reality.

The ancients often used everyday terrestrial objects, objects they felt conveyed the essence of spiritual realities, knowing that those symbols would fall short of full expression of that reality- a reality, that by its nature, was transcendent, and therefore inexpressible. Those who had experienced the spiritual, used sacred symbols to point others, who were seeking the spiritual, in the right direction, to guide them along the path. They knew that knowledge of spiritual realities came in only one way- via revelation. By their nature, spiritual realities had to be “revealed” or “opened up” to the aspirant by the divine. One had to experience the spiritual for oneself in order to “know”. For the ancients (as well as today), sacred symbols were used as a sacred language, a language to express the inexpressible, a language to reveal the process of obtaining the seemingly unobtainable- a full “knowledge” of the divine. Rene Guenon notes (Symbols of Sacred Science, pg. 5),

“Symbolism is the means best adapted to the teaching of truths of a superior order…”

Symbolism Illiteracy

Lack of symbolism literacy among modern human beings is a sign of secularization and/or spiritual deterioration.

A chief characteristic of the ancients and The Ancient Tradition was the ubiquitous use of sacred symbols to
communicate inexpressible, spiritual truths. If modern scholars, philosophers, and aspirants are to decipher the spiritual truths taught by the ancients they will be incapable of doing so without increasing their symbolism literacy- a process that requires study, research, contemplation, and revelation. Scholars, philosophers and aspirants who neglect symbolism literacy will fail to unveil a true characterization of the ancients and will unquestionably misunderstand, misrepresent and marginalize them. Ultimately, those individuals will end up painting a false portrait of the ancients and their beliefs. Worse yet, they will fail to grasp the deep spiritual truths the ancients were aiming to convey. Rene Guenon said it best (Perspectives on Initiation, pg. 125),

“…philosophers…will never succeed in penetrating the deeper meaning of even the
least important symbol, because symbolism goes entirely beyond their manner of thinking and thus inevitably eludes their grasp.”

Since spiritual realities are impossible to transmit, due to their ineffable nature, modern human beings are just as dependent on sacred symbols to convey transcendent spiritual realities as were the ancients. Most religious traditions today incorporate sacred symbols in their architecture, literature, vestments, etc.; however, the deep spiritual meaning of those symbols is often lost to congregants and are considered by many to be inconsequential, if not archaic. Some even go as far as to consider them an obstacle to spiritual understanding. Such symbolism illiteracy, suggests a state of spiritual degeneration in the modern world.

Aquatic Symbolism

The ancients’s description of the pre-creative state as a cosmic sea or primordial ocean was symbolic.

The ancients used water to symbolize the potential of the pre-creative state to bring forth life, express the unformed, unorganized, chaotic state of matter before the creation, and to symbolize the profound image of creation as new birth, be it cosmological, physical, or spiritual.

*creatio ex materia

In Latin, meaning, “creation out of pre-existing raw materials”, creatio ex materia matches the ancients’ description of the pre-creative state of the universe- a state characterized by abundant, unformed, chaotic matter brimming with the potential for creation and life. Van der Sluijs’ research (Traditional Cosmology, Volume 1, pg. 66) provides substantial evidence for this claim…

“The concept of creation ex nihilism or a formation of all existing things out of nothing is largely a figment of modern speculations, foreign to archaic thought. In mythical and early cosmological traditions, the world is almost always stated to have been formed from some sort of pre-existent material, be it confused and disorganized, a state of ‘chaos’ that possessed substance and was not preceded by an era of ‘nothing’. Only a few exceptions to this pattern exist.”

The notion of creation ex nihilo, or creation out of nothing, doesn’t show up in written form until the 2nd century AD in the writings of Theophilus of Antioch (To Autocyclus), Patriarch of Antioch (169-182 AD). Although Theophilus’ ideas were later adopted by the Church Fathers as a tenet of Christian theology, it is telling that Theophilus comes to creation ex nihilo on his own, via reason, or philosophical invention. He makes no claim that creation ex nihilo was divinely revealed to him. This is in stark contrast to the ancients who, across the globe, reiterate that the knowledge of the cosmogony, a creation born out of pre-existent matter, was revealed to human beings in the “First Time”, “…in the beginning”, ill tempore (“in that time”) “when divine…beings were active on earth” (Eliade, The Sacred and Profane, pgs. 92 and 87+).

James Hubler, University of Pennsylvania, (Creation Ex Nihilo, pg. 102) writes,

“Creatio ex nihilo appeared suddenly in the latter half of the second century C.E. Not only did creatio ex nihilo lack precedent, it stood in firm opposition to all of the philosophical schools of the Greco-Roman world. As we have seen, the doctrine was not forced upon the Christian community by their revealed tradition, either Biblical texts or the Early Jewish interpretation of them. As we will also see it was not a position attested in the New Testament or even sub-apostolic writings. It was a position taken by apologists of the late second century, Tatian and Theophilus, and developed by various ecclesiastical writers thereafter, Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Origen. Creatio ex nihilo represents an innovation in the interpretive traditions of revelation and cannot be explained merely as a continuation of tradition.”

Modern Science- Coming to the Same Conclusion

Nicolas Leonard Sadi Carnot

Carnot, known as the “Father of Thermodynamics”, between 1824- 1912, along with other scientists, established the fundamental laws of thermodynamics. The 1st Law states, “The total energy of an isolated system is constant; energy can be transformed from one format another, but can be neither created nor destroyed.”

Albert Einstein

Einstein established the tight relationship between energy and matter (1905) with his famous equation E=mc 2 (Energy= mass times the speed of light squared). Einstein’s research established that energy was a property of matter.

Larry Sliverberg

Siverberg, along with his colleague, Jeffrey Eischen, after stunningly accurate scientific models (2020), contend that “matter is not made of particles or waves…but more fundamentally that matter is made of fragments of energy.”

Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider

Scientists at the Brookhaven National Laboratory slammed photons of light together in the RHIC and manufactured matter (2021) out of light. “Now scientists have converted light energy directly into matter in a single step.”

Together, these scientists establish several important facts- 1) energy can’t be created or destroyed; 3) there is a tight relationship between energy, matter, and light; 3) extremely accurate scientific models demonstrate that matter is made of fragments of energy; 4) scientists have successfully manufactured matter from light energy. Since matter looks to be made of energy, and energy can’t be created or destroyed, then the same would have to be said of matter. It can’t be created or destroyed -it’s eternal- just as the ancients described.

It’s also important to note that scientists have never been able to create matter ex nihilo. It’s simply never been done.

What did we learn about The Ancient Tradition in this Episode?

Within The Ancient Tradition, adherents used, and were highly dependent upon, sacred symbols (because of the ineffable nature of spiritual realities) to convey spiritual realities to aspirants.

The ancients used aquatic symbolism to describe the pre-creative state of the universe. Water symbolized the potential of the pre-creative state to bring forth life, expressed the unformed, unorganized, chaotic state of matter before the creation, and symbolized the profound image of creation as new birth, be it cosmological, physical, or spiritual.

Thousands of years before the Church Fathers adopted creation ex nihilo, adherents of The Ancient Tradition taught that the earth was made of pre-existent matter- creatio ex materia. Remarkably, recent scientific research indicates that matter, just as the ancients maintained, can neither be created nor destroyed; it is fixed- eternal.

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