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When I finished the previous article, my family including myself was struck down with the delights of flu. But I am back in full flow again and pick up the threads of the last article.
The previous article about the use of Hebrew has a ‘Gnostic’ concept. In a nutshell, Gnosticism is the search for truth and accuracy that leads to ‘knowledge’. One school of Gnosticism has its roots in Syrian-Egyptian Mythology and the other school of Gnosticism is Persian. Both have evolved in different ways but have been influenced and or integrated Greek philosophy, Syrian and Egyptian Mythology, Zoroastrianism and Christianity. This will hopefully explain part of the completeness of integrated evolutionary concepts used in what is known as Western Esotericism.
Judaic scriptures may not be as old as their Eastern cousin ‘Sanskrit’ but many of its teachings do have a lot in common. This may come to some people as a surprise but look into the ‘Geographical’ perspective of human evolution. Science’s concept of human evolution will pinpoint Africa as the starting point.
According to palaeontology, the oldest human and pre-human remains have been found in Africa. The latest find in Ethiopia dates from around 160,000 years ago. The theory based on genetic research is that about 2 million years ago, early human left Africa to populate parts of Asia, the Middle East and Europe.
We also know that geographically the shape of the continents was very different to what they are now and makes this theory a very likely one.
And knowing about these scientific findings, compare it with the text from Genesis 11:4.
‘God seeing what the people were doing, confused their languages and scattered the people throughout the earth.’
If the origin of the human being lies in Africa, we can make the assumption that the origin of all of the world’s Religions has also started here.
This comparison may look like a huge leap to a conclusion but by studying creation stories from many different cultures and religions the similarities to the Judaic creation story is remarkable.
For those that would like to learn more about the uniting link in world religion through creation stories may be interested in reading the book by Joseph Campbell – The hero with a thousand faces.
There is only one creation story that is the ‘odd’ one out. This is the translated version of Genesis in the Christian bible ‘The Old Testament’.
The difference is that the Christian is lead to believe that God is a pure masculine entity and has been therefore incorrectly called ‘the father’.
God in the Christian concept creates everything without having a female force. This has resulted in early Christianity making ‘man’ superior over ‘woman’.
We can safely say that in Christianity truly a lot has been ‘lost in translation’. This is because of the Hebrew language making a distinct difference between ‘male’ and ‘female’ words. The translated book of Genesis isn’t able to highlight this in English. Also in other languages God has been freely translated as ‘he and him’ but the Hebrew name for God in Genesis 1:1-2:3 is ‘Elohim’. A Name combining Male and Female forces in one.
I will quote Alastair Crowley on this subject:
‘For some reason or other best known to themselves, the translators of the Bible have carefully crowded out of existence and smothered up every reference to the fact that the Deity is both masculine and feminine. They have translated a feminine plural by a masculine singular in the case of Elohim. They have however, left an inadvertent admission of their knowledge that it was plural in Genesis iv. 26: “And Elohim said: Let us make man.” Again (v.27), how could Adam be made in the image of Elohim, male and female, unless the Elohim were male and female also?’
And with this quote from Alastair Crowley, we have explained another reason why in Western Esotericism Hebrew is used.
The Judaic creation story (Genesis 1:1 to 2:3) is an adaptation to the Babylonian creation story (Enuma Elish). The Babylonian version is clear on the female and male forces by using the term God and Goddess. The Hebrew version has made ‘God’ a hermaphrodite. In other words, you could see it as the ‘Jewish’ version of Yin and Yang.
I will continue in the next article about this ‘Battle of the Sexes’ and the importance of the male and female aspects. To do this, I will go into more depth concerning the Judaic version of the creation story that has after all become the foundation to the ‘Tree of life’ (Ets Chayyim) better known as the art of the Qabalah.
Till next time...
Golden Flower
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