The Mysterious Primordial Waters

You're listening to The Ancient Tradition. A Wonk Media Production. Music provided by Joseph McDade. Here's your host, Dr. Jack Logan.

Welcome to the program. I'm your host, Jack Logan. So happy to have you back and welcome to all of our new listeners. So glad to have you with us as well. We have a great program today. I'm anxious to jump right in and get started. I want to start with a brief recap from last episode. We started with the creation. Why? Because that's where the ancients started, by addressing the greatest mystery in the world, how life came to be.

The ancients assigned extraordinary importance to the creation, which in scholar speak is known as the cosmogony, the story of the origin of the universe. And in this episode, we'll delve a little more into why they started with the creation and why they felt it was so important to begin there. We also established that the ancients didn't tell radically different creation stories.

From Vandersloosh's research, we learned that the ancients told a strikingly similar story of how the universe, the earth, and life came to be. And they told that same story all over the globe. from hemisphere to hemisphere and continent to continent, as improbable as that would seem, which Van der Sluis contends that the uniformity of the creation story is, quote, a strong... argument in favor of a homogeneous origin. And we refer to that origin here as the ancient tradition.

We also established that the ancients began their creation story with a description of the pre-creative state of the universe as water or a primordial sea. And this to the modern mind might seem odd or kind of bizarre to describe the pre-creative state of the universe as water or milk. But this perception, like I mentioned in the bonus section, is actually due to a modern day lack of symbolism literacy.

than it is to a lack of sophistication among the ancients. In fact, you'll find throughout these episodes that quite the opposite is true. The ancients used symbols in such a sophisticated way. Symbols that involved entire systems of correspondences to such a degree that even today scholars with multiple academic degrees from prominent universities

still struggle to unravel their complex relationships and attribute any sort of true religious meaning to them. And this is especially apparent in Egyptology.

It's important to point out here that the ancients didn't believe that their pre-creative state was made of actual milk or actual water. These descriptions are symbolic. Formal scholar of comparative religion, who you should know by now, Mircea Eliade, refers to this as, quote, aquatic symbolism or aquatic cosmology. He notes, quote, one point is essential here.

The structure of aquatic cosmogonies can be completely revealed only through aquatic symbolism, which is the only system capable of integrating all of the particular revelations of innumerable hierophanies. Now, if you're not familiar with what a herophany is, it's a manifestation of the sacred. It's a spiritual experience. This law, moreover, holds for every symbolism. It is the symbolism as a whole.

that valorizes the various significations of Hierophanes. The waters reveal their deeper meaning only to the extent to which the structure of aquatic symbolism is known. In other words, modern day men and women like you and myself must increase our symbolism literacy or we're just going to forever be in the dark. The ancients used symbols of everyday temporal objects like water and milk.

to express the inexpressible, to convey inexpressible, sacred, transcendent spiritual realities or spiritual truths. Symbols are a way for human beings to express things that they have a difficult time expressing, or such as the spiritual, are impossible to perfectly express. For example, writers do this all the time when they use similes, when they say something like, Joe is like a bull.

We all know that Joe is not literally a bull, but the writer uses a bull as a way to express that Joe has characteristics that are similar to that of a bull. And the author is hoping that the reader knows enough about bulls to recognize characteristics of bullish behavior, power and aggression and fertility in the person that he's comparing to a bull.

Now, the difference with sacred symbols is that they can never perfectly convey sacred reality because that reality is by nature ineffable or inexpressible. A good modern-day example of this might be to try and express in words the deep love that you have for another person, that almost spiritual type of love that you might have for, say, your mother.

Whenever I've tried to do this I end up looking down at the cards I've written you know and thinking how the words completely lack in conveying what I deeply feel. The ancients would tell you, don't worry about this because it's not even possible to convey with temporal words the reality of spiritual love. It's too profound, too multidimensional.

too awesome to put into our limited vocabulary. There isn't vocabulary for it. So then how do you express it? With a massive bouquet of roses, poetry by poets. who seem to come a whole lot closer to expressing the inexpressible than the rest of us, with a hug, a card. We use all of these things we can think of to convey the spiritual reality of the deep love we are feeling. But we always know inside that we haven't expressed it exactly how we are experiencing it.

Everything of a spiritual reality is this way. It's not possible to fully express spiritual reality to another person. You just can't do it. The only way another person can understand it is by experiencing it for themselves. And this comes in only one way, through spiritual revelation. Spiritual reality is revealed. It doesn't come any other way.

For example, the closest we can come to conveying spiritual realities such as spiritual love is through symbolic approximations, which is why we often use roses. or beautiful flowers. They convey how spiritual love is beautiful and inspiring, alive, how spiritual love blossoms and grows. And if we sit there and contemplate their beauty long enough, they can give us glimpses of the spiritual love. But however much those flowers approximate spiritual love, they're still only an approximation.

They are not spiritual love itself. Because the only way to know what spiritual love is, is to experience it for oneself. Those flowers are really helpful, however, because they point us in the right direction. They make the inexpressible a bit more accessible. I mentioned this quote in the bonus section. I want to give it to you again. It comes from...

French scholar René Gugnon, and he says it like this, quote, one of the general functions of symbolism is effectively to suggest the inexpressible, to give a pre-sentiment of it. or better said, to render it accessible from what can be grasped immediately to what can be grasped only with much greater difficulty.

I have a whole lot I want to add to these points on symbolism, but I'll sprinkle them throughout the episodes. What's important here is that religious symbols are tools to help direct our minds, to help us ponder the spiritual. to hint at the spiritual realities that are accessible to us if we're only willing to pay the price. Back to the primordial waters.

Now, of course, there will always be those who claim that the ancients conceived of a pre-creative state composed of literal milk and water. And that assertion really lays bare the asserter's symbolism illiteracy, or basically their lack of understanding, and not the ancients' lack of understanding. Guignon said it best, and he says it with a bit of a sting to it. He says, quote, 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. Gotta love Gunion. It's popular in scholarship today to portray the ancients as primitive humans of intellectual inferiority. But I think you'll see as your symbolism literacy increases throughout these episodes that the ancients were anything but intellectual inferiors. In fact, I think you'll find that you are impressed, even inspired.

by the sophisticated layers upon layers of meaning and correspondences that are concealed in the symbols the ancients used to express spiritual reality. So it's one thing to describe the ancients' cosmology, but it's another thing entirely to understand what the ancients meant by using the images and symbols that they did to express the creation of the universe.

Religion is and always has been about meaning, spiritual meaning, not the actual temporal symbols used. So we have to search for the shared meaning behind the symbols of water and milk. or the ancients' conception of the pre-creative state ends up looking like nothing more than a fantastical, improbable, childish description of creation.

if we want to unravel the central mystery of the world how the universe the earth and life came to be we have to start by deciphering the symbols the ancients used to describe it and when we do it will unlock the amazing spiritual principles

and realities hidden behind those symbols. So let's start with water or aquatic cosmology. David Leaming, a graduate of Princeton University and a well-known expert in mythology, when describing the primordial waters, wrote in the Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion the following, quote, all cultures naturally recognize water as a necessary source of life and survival. making it a useful symbol of creative fertility, spiritual and psychological fertility, as well as physical fertility.

An Indian text in the Vedic tradition says something quite similar. It says, quote, Water, thou art the source of all things and of all existence. Dr. Leeming continues, quote, at the same time, large masses of water are uncontrollable and therefore aptly representative of chaos, the chaos that precedes creation. These two symbolic functions, source of life and chaos, lead us to the idea of potential as yet unformed reality. The waters also speak to the larger metaphor of creation as birth.

We are all born of the maternal waters. And so in creation mythology, worlds are typically born of the waters. So the ancients used water to express three very important, and there's probably a whole lot more than these three because that's how symbolism works, aspects of the pre-creative state. So first... They use water to express that the pre-creative state had the potential for life. In the temporal world, the relationship between water and life is pretty clear. It's abundant.

Water is essential to the growth of plants, fields of grain, trees, and it's also essential for the life of human beings. Our bodies require a constant replenishing of water to stay alive. All of our vital organs require water to survive. As human beings, you can't survive longer than three days without water. Water sustains every creation.

The ancients selected water to describe the pre-creative state precisely because in the temporal world, it is essential to the fertility of the earth and the sustainment of life. It is the source of life. the sustaining source of existence. We see water used symbolically in the Christian tradition in the New Testament in John chapter 4 verse 14. when Christ associates the life-giving properties of water to the life-giving properties of his doctrine.

the life-giving properties of following his teachings. And in John chapter 4, verse 14, it reads, quote, But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst. But the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. In this verse, Christ is using water as a symbol.

to teach the woman at the well a really important spiritual principle. He's teaching her that like water, which is the source of physical life, fertility and growth, that he and his doctrine is the source of spiritual life, the life of the soul. He's teaching her that if she will drink from his doctrine, which contains the source of everlasting life, that it will nourish her spirit.

It will sprout like a seed and grow within her, enlarging her soul, enlightening her understanding and expanding her mind until symbolically the tree of life, the tree of everlasting life. has taken root within her and reached full bloom within her soul. Christ is teaching that his living water is the source of that spiritual growth. I hope you can see here how Christ is using a temporal symbol, water, to express much, much greater spiritual realities. Second,

The ancients used water to express the pre-creative state of the universe was just that, pre-creative. It was without creation. It was characterized as a state of disorder or... chaos. The ancients used descriptions like roiling waters and churning milk to symbolize a formless, disordered, confused, chaotic unorganized, uncontrollable, diffuse, undifferentiated, amorphous state. Basically all of the words that are the antithesis of creation and order.

You know, one way you might think of this is like Legos. And I don't know if you have any kids or anything like that where you've got these buckets of Legos and the Legos are just spread out all over the floor. And there's just Legos everywhere. It's like a sea. or an ocean of Legos. There is no creation to them. There is no form to them. They have the potential for...

incredible, incredible innovations and creations the kids can make out of them. But in the state that they are, they are amorphous. They're without creation. They're undifferentiated. Now it's not a perfect analogy, but it's kind of a good one for what they're trying to do by using water to express the pre-creative state.

van der sluess refers to it as quote the primordial condition of unorganized singularity you know what's really interesting about the ancient description of the pre-creative state is that it is not depicted as empty. The ancients don't characterize it as bare or unfilled or containing nothing. In fact, it's just the opposite. They characterize it as a pre-creative substance that's brimming with the potential for life.

They use words like see to convey that this substance is vast and fills the pre-creative state for as far as the eye can see.

Vandersloosh notes after cataloging thousands of ancient cosmologies the following. He says, quote, the concept of creation ex nihilo. 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, quote, nothing. Only a few exceptions to this pattern exist. Vandersloos concludes that this characterization of a substance-filled pre-creative state brimming with creative potential is, quote, The earliest remembered putative, now putative means generally considered or understood, state of the universe.

He hasn't found an earlier different characterization of the pre-creative state in his inventory of traditional cosmology. And I think that's pretty interesting. Knowing a bit about the history of the notion of creation as creation ex nihilo is kind of helpful. The notion of creation ex nihilo, a creation out of nothing.

actually doesn't show up in the written form until the second century AD. Thousands and thousands of years after the ancients declared the pre-creative state was made up of some type of unorganized substance or matter. This notion of creation ex nihilo was first proposed in writing by Theophilus of Antioch. He was the patriarch of Antioch between 169 and 182 AD.

You can find his write-up on ex nihilo creation in his work to Odysseus. Theophilus' ideas were later then adopted by the church fathers as a tenant of Christian theology. It's telling that Theophilus comes to creation ex nihilo on his own via reason or philosophical invention. He never makes a single claim that creation ex nihilo was divinely revealed to him. And 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 beginning. It turns out that the ancients were truly onto something.

What's really interesting is that both the ancient creation story and modern science have converged, and they give us reason to genuinely question the late adoption of the ex nihilo model of creation. In Latin, the ancient depiction of the pre-creative state of the universe is a universe ex nihilo nihil fit, which means nothing comes from nothing.

Which means that the creation of the universe wasn't formed out of nothing. It was formed out of some type of eternal, unorganized, undifferentiated matter. Real matter. And interestingly, between 1824 and 1912, three scientists, Sadie Carnot, Rudolf Classius, and William Thompson. Oh, and there's a fourth one, Walther nursed.

established the fundamental laws of thermodynamics, of which there are three. The first law of thermodynamics states, quote, the total energy of an isolated system is constant. Energy can be transformed from one form to another, but can be neither created nor destroyed. In other words, the total amount of energy in the universe never changes.

No matter what, energy can't be created or destroyed. It can only change form. It might be a little difficult to wrap our brains around this idea, but it's been confirmed again and again by science. Energy, which is made up of matter, is eternal. It can't be destroyed. Albert Einstein demonstrated this. tight relationship between energy and matter in his famous equation E equals mc squared or energy equals mass times the speed of light squared when he showed that energy was a property of matter.

And Einstein argued that the amount of energy and matter in the universe was fixed. And what's more, recent scientific modeling suggests that matter and energy might be one and the same thing. Larry Silverberg, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering out of North Carolina State University, and his colleague Jeffrey Eichen, Silverberg wrote in December 2020, quote,

My colleague and I have described an updated way to think about matter. We propose that matter is not made of particle or waves. as was long thought, but more fundamentally that matter is made of fragments of energy. And so far, their models have been stunningly accurate. So according to the first law of thermodynamics, energy can't be created or destroyed. It's eternal. And if we couple this with Silverberg and Aishin's work demonstrating that matter is made up of fragments of energy,

then we can say the same thing about matter as you can say about energy. It can't be created or destroyed. It's eternal. Just like the ancients described, the primordial ocean, a sea of materia prima, raw material or first matter, a mass of unordered matter. best visualized as water or milk for the life it has the potential to bring forth. One last scientific insight. Scientists have never been able to create anything ex nihilo.

not a thing. They've never been able to create something out of nothing. They can't do it. They have however been able to create matter out of light which is extremely interesting. Basically, they used the RHIC or Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider and they slammed photons of light together and pairs of electrons and positrons of matter were created.

The Brookhaven National Laboratory, which conducted the research, notes this, quote, This conversion of energetic light into matter is a direct consequence of Einstein's famous E equals mc squared equation. which states that energy and matter are interchangeable. Nuclear reactions in the sun and at the nuclear power plants regularly convert matter into energy. Now scientists have converted light energy into energy.

directly into matter in a single step. So yes it does look like it is possible to make matter but it's extremely important to point out that the scientists didn't create matter. They manufactured matter, and there's a huge difference. They manufactured matter out of something else, something that existed previous to it, light photons.

Just like the ancients maintained, creation today is only possible ex nihilo nihil fit. You can't make something out of nothing. You can only create something out of something. And that something is...

Eternal. The ancients were really on to something, something that we are barely beginning to understand about creation and cosmology in the 21st century. Van der Schluis reiterates, Traditions of nothing as the earliest state of the universe are far outnumbered by creation accounts that postulate the original existence of matter in some typically disorganized

undifferentiated or undesirable form. The presentation of scientific evidence here demands a quick intermission. You know, religious individuals don't need to reject science. I for one don't. I love so many of the things I've learned through scientific investigation. I might reject the assumptions that underlie the scientific method.

But I do not reject that science can and has illuminated my understanding of the natural world. I don't see a need to pit one against the other. However, I would argue that science is in its infancy and limited by available evidence, whereas God... The Supreme Being is not. I'd argue that one day, if given enough time, the two would converge. For now, I believe God, the Supreme Being,

keeps some things hidden from science so that faith can and has to be developed. Living in a temporal existence, we may demand a cause for the existence of this said matter. So it may be difficult for us to wrap our heads around the possibility that matter has always existed, that it's fixed and can't be created or destroyed, that it's eternal.

But we don't get very far if we go down this rabbit hole. Let's give it a whirl. If God created matter, then who or what created God? And if God was created by a God, then who or what created that God? You get the picture. It's an infinite regress. The answer to who created God will always take one back to an uncaused cause. In this temporal world, we demand to know its causative agent. But as mind-bending as it might be, there is the possibility that it has always existed.

That matter and God are the supreme being have always existed. That nothing, quote, caused them to be. Philosopher William Free argued that there are really only two options, either existence always existed, or it spontaneously emerged. In either case, there is not a cause. as unsettling as that is to we terrestrial types. We are socialized in our temporal experience that A must precede B in time.

and therefore everything must have a cause. But this expectation of and search for a cause is not necessarily a necessity, especially for a realm outside of the terrestrial that may well be atemporal. or outside of time. In such a case, a causative agent for eternal matter or a supreme being would not be a necessity. All right.

Back to how the ancients used water to express three important characteristics of the pre-creative state. I'm going to unravel the mysteries behind the primordial water here. The first... emphasized the precreative state as a state full of potential for life. The second emphasized the precreative state as a state of abundant, chaotic, disorganized matter. Third,

Water as aquatic cosmology speaks to the much more profound motif of birth. This is really important in terms of the spiritual implications of aquatic symbolism. When a woman's water breaks, the physical birth of a child takes place. Water is the precursor to birth, be it the birth of the cosmos, the birth of the earth, the birth of a child.

And as we'll see throughout these episodes, the birth of the spiritual being. We'll see that aquatic cosmology will serve as one of the most profound expressions, if not the expression par none of spiritual birth. So a recounting of the creation of the cosmos in the earth serves as a living template for the creation of the new man, one who has sloughed off the chaotic, confused, disordered life of the profane.

and is born anew. He or she is spiritually born. We can see clear examples between water, the primordial waters of creation, and birth in the ancient record. The birth motif shows up in three contexts. First we find ancient texts that refer to the primordial birth of the king or the gods out of the primordial waters. In Egypt, the primordial waters are referred to as new.

in Mesopotamia as the Apsu, and in ancient Israel as Tehom. In ancient Egypt, one of the ancient Egyptian pyramid texts, inscribed on King Pepe I's pyramid, which is dated to around 2400 BC, Pyramid text 486 speaks of the premortal birth of King Pepe out of the primordial waters of New, and it reads, quote, I was born and knew while the sky had not yet come into being, while the earth had not yet come into being.

In this text, King Pepe I is declaring that his ka, or spirit, as we pointed out in episode number 10, was born out of the primordial waters of Nu. For our purposes here, it illustrates this connection between the birth of the king's ba or spirit and the primordial waters. If you're interested in learning more about this, check out episode number 10 where we go into it in greater detail.

In Pyramid Text 669, also in King Pepe the First Pyramid, we see the connection between the waters and the birth of the king's bar soul. And it reads, quote, the waters that are in new. have been formed at the sound of the scream of the mother of Pepe Nefricara, Newt, when she gave birth to him and the headbound crown on Pepe Nefricara.

In this text, we have reference to the primordial waters and the pains of the goddess Newt at the time of the primordial birth of her son Pepe Nefricara, whom, from this text we read, she crowned... a premortal king, which is really intriguing. The connection between the primordial waters and birth are clear here. In Mesopotamia, in the hymn to Nana, the Mesopotamian moon god, it reads,

Quote, O son of a prince, when you come out of the holy sea, you are resplendent. In this verse, the god Nana is born out of the holy sea, or the Apsu, the primordial waters. And it's interesting that he's referred to here as resplendent after his birth from these waters. Keep this in your mind and we'll hit on it in a couple minutes. It continues telling us more of his resplendent nature. It says, quote, from the underground water, Apsu.

carrying a terrifying splendor, a luster. You raise your head toward your happy destiny. So here we have the same three motifs, the primordial waters, birth, and the king. These waters are clearly understood here as the source of life. In the Hebrew Bible, we see the connection between a primordial existence and the primordial waters. In Proverbs chapter 8, starting with verse 22. Here King Solomon speaks of wisdom existing in the Lord, and thus the Lord.

before the creation of the earth at the time of the quote face of the deep which is Tejom or the primordial waters and it reads The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, wherever the earth was. When there were no depths, I was brought forth. When there were no fountains abounding with water.

Before the mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought forth, while as yet had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the highest part of the dust of the world, when he prepared the heavens, I was there. when he set a compass upon the earth upon the face of the depth.

Here, compass or circle may refer to God as the grand architect circling out the earth for creation. Or as Job seems to indicate, it could be God placing bounds around the primordial water so that creation can take place. place but in any case you have the lord here declaring that he was there at the time of the creation the pre-existence or primordial existence in each of these cases be they from egypt mesopotamia

or the ancient Israelites, we see this association between the primordial waters and the premortal birth of the king or a god like the Mesopotamian Nana or the Christian son of God, Christ. Second,

We find ancient texts that refer to the birth of the earth, physical creation out of the primordial waters. It's from these waters, as we pointed out in episode number 10, that the Egyptians, Mesopotamians, and ancient Israelites attested that the physical earth was born or created in an ancient Egyptian hymn dated to around 200 BC.

It reads, quote, thou hast stood as king on the land during its lassitude. Thou hast taken it out of the primeval waters. In Mesopotamia, in cuneiform tablet number 13, It tells of the god Marduk, how he creates the earth from his raft, which is situated on the primordial waters. And it reads, quote, Marduk constructed a raft upon the face of the water.

The grass, the rush of the marsh, the reed, and the forest he created, the green herb of the field he created, the lands and the marshes and the swamps, orchards and forests. So again, here we have the earth born out of the op suit, the primordial waters.

In Genesis chapter 1, it is also out of these primordial waters, referred to in Hebrew, like I mentioned, as Tehom, that the earth was born. Genesis chapter 1, verses 2 and 9, read, quote, Darkness was on the face of the deep and God said let the dry land appear and it was so.

Third, we find ancient texts that refer to the spiritual rebirth of the king or God and the primordial waters of creation.

In these passages, we see the lines blur between the primordial waters and the primordial birth of the Ba, the physical birth of the earth, and spiritual rebirth of the king or aspirants. In most of these cases, The latter, spiritual rebirth, was the primary theological tenet the ancients were trying to stress, because spiritual rebirth was the supernal doctrine taught in each of their respective traditions.

And since, as we've argued, that these derived from one source, the ancient tradition taught by God in the beginning, this implies that spiritual rebirth was the supernal doctrine taught in the ancient tradition. And here are a couple of examples. In Pyramid Text 607, which is translated by James P. Allen, it reads, quote, New has given me birth on his left hand, young and not yet experienced.

He has saved me from the gods of disorder. Dr. Popeljewska-Grzbowska says this of this text, quote, passage through new or existence in new, awkward, which...

means heralded, evolution of a being, a change so vividly crucial in the progressive metamorphoses of the pharaoh. It seems obvious that immersion into primordial non-existence which simultaneously was the beginning of every element of life, was indispensable to undergo a final metamorphosis into the creator Atum and hence assume a final form. That is why the king comes back to the age of a child, young and inexperienced, but pure.

Conforming to this conception, the deceased Pharaoh reaches the places of new, and there he, the child of the Creator, rejuvenates and consequently comes into being continually. and eternally. So according to Poplieszka Grzybowska, the king must be immersed in the pre-creative waters of New and be reborn as a child. before he can take on the, quote, form of the god Atum. The waters of Nu symbolically represent the maternal waters of Atum.

actual physical birth, the amniotic fluid out of which all babies are physically born. And nobody's born an adult. We are born as infants who grow into adults. So the symbolism of the king passing through the primordial waters of Nu implies that the king must spiritually be reborn as a child before he can take on the attributes and, quote, form of the gods.

The theme of spiritual rebirth is a quintessential feature of the ancient Egyptian religious tradition, and we'll return to it in much greater detail in a future episode. We see a similar text in King Pepe's pyramid, pyramid text 577, and it reads, quote, Welcome, my one of new. Welcome, our senior brother, first one of his father.

firstborn of his mother, say the gods, for it is the sky who conceived him and the morning star gave him birth. So we see the rebirth symbolism in this passage in reference to new. the primordial waters. He is the one of new, but also in reference to the rise of the morning star, the dawn star. And you can see the rebirth symbolism in both of those. In Mesopotamia,

In the hymn to Nana, which I read earlier, we see the god Nana born in the primordial waters, but the language used here seems to emphasize spiritual rebirth. It reads, quote, carrying a terrifying splendor, a luster. You raise your head towards your happy destiny. Here, when Nana rises from the primordial waters, his luster and splendor or glory is terrifying, suggesting that some type of spiritual rebirth or spiritual transformation has taken place by going into the opsu, into the waters.

And this is similar to King Pepe, the first becoming like Atum, after he has been immersed in the waters of New. Among the ancient Hebrews, the most fascinating example involves the ancient patriarch Noah. and the catastrophic global deluge that we know as the flood. In the flood story, it is the floodwaters that immerse the earth, ridding it of the unrighteous. This is spiritual rebirth on a global scale.

Comparative religion scholar Mircea Eliade said this of the flood, immersion in water, and spiritual rebirth. Immersion is the equivalent at the human level of death. and at the cosmic level of the cataclysm, the flood, which periodically dissolves the world into the primeval ocean, breaking up all forms, doing away with all the past.

Water possesses the power to purify, purify and regenerate and give new birth. For what is immersed in it dies. And rising again from the water is like a child without any sin. or any past able to receive a new revelation and begin a new and real life. When the floodwaters receded, the earth was born anew.

Take a moment here and think, how do all of these same motifs of water and rebirth show up in Christianity? If you thought of baptism, then you are well on your way to understanding some of the profound spiritual principles implied in aquatic symbolism. In the New Testament in John chapter 3 verse 5, we get this wonderful interaction between Jesus.

and Nicodemus, who was a prominent Jewish leader and a member of the Sanhedrin, who are the religious authorities who made decisions on matters of Jewish law and governance. In other words, Nicodemus was someone as a learned Jew who should have recognized the principles of rebirth. But in this story, it completely eludes him. In John chapter 3, verses 1 to 7, it reads,

There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. The same came to Jesus by night and said to him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God. For no man can do these miracles that thou does, except God be with him. Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a man be born again, he cannot see.

the kingdom of God. Nicodemus says, saith unto him, how can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter the second time into his mother's womb and be born? Jesus answered, verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, ye must be born again. So two really interesting things are happening in this passage.

First, Nicodemus seems to have no knowledge or comprehension of the notion of spiritual rebirth. He has no idea what Jesus means by being, quote, born again. In a way, it's quite shocking that Nicodemus doesn't understand what Jesus means by this, because spiritual rebirth was a prominent tenant of the ancient Hebrew and Israelite tradition.

as we just noted with the flood story. So if anyone should have understood the principle of spiritual rebirth, it should have been Nicodemus. I mean, he served on the Sanhedrin as a Jewish religious authority, one who knew the law. And this might have been part of the problem. It seems that through the supremacy and minutia of the law of Moses, that the doctrine of spiritual rebirth was somehow lost or replaced or overlooked.

to the extent that it was a foreign concept at this point to Nicodemus. Second, Nicodemus seems to have no understanding of how spiritual rebirth is tied to being, quote, born of water. Jesus tells him to marvel not, so Nicodemus must have been a little bit confused. It seems Nicodemus needed a little time to think through the presence of water or amniotic fluid in physical birth.

and the symbolic use of water or baptism in spiritual rebirth. In this passage, Jesus is telling Nicodemus that unless he is born of water, unless he is baptized, Unless he participates in this holy rite, he can in no wise see the kingdom of God. Spiritual rebirth is essential. That's what Jesus is telling Nicodemus. Mircea Eliade says this of the connection between the primordial waters, which are the wellspring from which life emerges, and baptism in the Christian tradition. He says, quote,

Baptism becomes the chief instrument of spiritual regeneration. For immersion in the water of baptism is equivalent to being buried with Christ. Know ye not, wrote Paul. that all we who are baptized in Christ Jesus are baptized in his death. Man dies symbolically with immersion and is reborn. purified, renewed just as Christ rose from the tomb. As a quick aside, the adherent would need to be fully submerged in the primordial waters, the waters of baptism, for the symbolism to hold true.

which we see when the earth was fully immersed in the floodwaters, and when Jesus was fully immersed during his baptism in the River Jordan, where we read in Matthew 3, verse 16, that... quote, Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straight way out of the water. Important symbolic connections between physical birth and spiritual rebirth are completely lost. if the baptism is not a baptism of full immersion. And this seems to have constituted an important characteristic of the original rite.

There's so much here, layers and layers, which will have to defer to future episodes, but note that this symbolism implies that the natural man's life remains forever broken, disorganized, and formless. unless he or she is born out of the primordial waters until he or she is born spiritually. One who has not been born spiritually remains perpetually unborn. created in a state of confusion and chaos every creation then especially the new man has a paradigmatic model

in the creation of the universe itself and that's kind of the big kicker. There's a lot to ponder here which is precisely what sacred symbols are supposed to do to stimulate interior reflection. to cause us to meditate on the things of the greatest import. By pondering the creation of the cosmos, as was taught in the ancient tradition, we can glean invaluable knowledge about what is needed to move our own lives

from a state of chaos to a state of creation. In summary, let's catalog a couple tenets of the ancient tradition. First, within the ancient tradition, the creation. The creation of the cosmos, earth, and life was assigned extraordinary importance. It was paramount. The ancients didn't shy away from addressing the greatest mystery in the world, how life came to be, and why.

Because it, the creation, sets the stage literally and symbolically for the understanding of everything else. It's that scaffolding I talked about in the last episode. especially the scaffolding for teaching important spiritual principles and truths, like spiritual rebirth. The ancients placed the creation front and center. It's as if they knew that if human beings didn't understand how the cosmos, the earth, and life came to be, that we wouldn't have a correct understanding of anything else.

It all begins with the cosmogony or the creation of the cosmos and life itself. Second, within the ancient tradition, the pre-creative state is consistently presented as primordial waters. The ancients used water to symbolize at a minimum, and there are likely many more reasons. three important aspects of the pre-creative state. Number one, water expressed that the pre-creative state had the potential to bring forth life, like we see water do in the physical world.

Two, churning or roiling water expressed that the pre-creative state was made up of an abundant As abundant as a sea substance, which was without form, a substance that was chaotic and unorganized. Thus, an important tenant of the ancient tradition is that the cosmos were created. out of pre-existing eternal matter, a description that fully complies with modern science. The ancient tradition rejects creation ex nihilo outright.

Number three, water expressed the pre-creative state of much more than the physical universe. It was used by the ancients to symbolize the profound importance of birth, all types of birth, but especially... spiritual birth. Thus, we expect to see spiritual birth play an extremely important role in the doctrine taught within the theology of the ancient tradition.

To this point, if you've been an astute listener, you'll notice that I never explained how life or how the cosmos came to be yet, only that they came to be out of symbolic primordial waters. For the answer to the central mystery of the world, how the cosmos, the earth, and life came to be, you'll have to tune in to our next episode, where I promise to reveal the answer.

If you're interested in learning more about the evidence presented in this episode, check out theancienttradition.com and search for this episode under evidence. That wraps up this edition of The Ancient Tradition. For now, remember in the words of William Shakespeare, knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven. I'm Jack Logan. I'll see you on the next episode of The Ancient Tradition. You've been listening to The Ancient Tradition. A Wonk Media Production.