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God divided the light from the darkness



It’s weird how certain small things that you learn retroactively affect bigger things you’ve known for a long time. For example, this linguistic connection between the word “science” and the Indo-European root it comes from meaning “cut” has really got me going.

Take this famous opening to a rather famous book:

1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.

It seems that the beginning of this tale of Earth’s history is a series of acts of cutting, of separating, of dividing one thing from another. Is this the dawn of science? In many other world creation myths, our realm is created by the dismemberment of a particular being or monster. Why is this theme so common to the world’s mythologies about the dawn of all there is?

The theory I’m operating under right now - and it’s anything but fully developed - is that the history of human consciousness and not of the actual universe is told in these myths. And the dawn of human consciousness something to do with this primeval act of science, of dividing one thing from another. And since then the history of the development of human consciousness has multiplied this act of science, cutting things into increasingly smaller and smaller pieces. To what end? In some ways, the myth of nanotechnology gone bad, a formless grey goo that envelops the cosmos seems to be the epitome of chopping into smaller and smaller pieces. Interesting too that nanotech is an agent of science, and one whose goal is reshaping according to its image. I think the idea of “grey goo”, nanotech gone haywire, has fell out of favor the past few years, but it makes me wonder if it wouldn’t actually have a poetic connection to the Book of Genesis:

And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the [grey goo]

Anyway, as I said, I’ve been kicking this connection around for a few days and just wanted to jot it down for later before I forgot about it. I’ll try to develop it further at some point.







2 Reader Responses

  1. Inder Says:
    July 21st, 2005 at 12:59 am

    The theory I’m operating under right now - and it’s anything but fully developed - is that the history of human consciousness and not of the actual universe is told in these myths. And the dawn of human consciousness something to do with this primeval act of science, of dividing one thing from another.

    God divides, and interestingly enough, he wills: “Let there be light!” “Let there be a fermament,” and so on. His/Her (but let’s face it, in our heads its a he) division of the world, separation, and labelling seems to be intimately tied with a pure expressive command. And the authors of Genesis seem to suggest that this use of the will to divide and separate is morally good just because it was done: God divides the water from the land, “and it was so,” or “it was good.”

    I haven’t read Genesis in years but it seems very Crowely-esque now, lol! “Do what thou wilst shall be the whole of the law.” If we flip perspectives (i.e. begin with Crowley), maybe Genesis suggests that the use of the will is at its most profound and powerful when it is just a simple act of division.

  2. Jack Says:
    July 21st, 2005 at 1:42 am

    All I have to contribute on this one are two book recommendations and a bit on each…

    Ishmael, which I would wager many here have read, had some interesting observations on the Bible, particularly the early bits, and how it was apparent to the observant that the Eden myth was from a “leaver” as opposed to the patriarchal “taker” myth of the rest of the OT. The book sez the Takers took the Leavers over and it all went bad from there. It might be useful in your ruminations thereon.
    I’ve had the divin e pleasure of listening to the Torah and Talmud being explained a little by old bearded guys, and they did lend a lot of weight in the direction of that being true. Fascinating stuff.

    The other thing is, all this talk about Greeks and now this division from the prime-ordeal, it brings to mind the book In the Dark Places of Wisdom
    by Peter Kingsley. It interestingly runs veins along the lines of many of the things discussed here the past few days, such as Socrates, megachurches, zombie-christs, creation myths, being co-opted by the man, etc….. Good book.

    And speaking of Greeks, not only do you have the Logos (Watch the Matrix and then read the first few lines of the Book of Matthew. On acid. A fine way to ruin a perfectly good mind.) to ponder here, which added to your “cutting” brings to mind the corpus callosum of the human brain and wondering if animals have those too (anyone know?) and that leads to thoughts on the 4 lower circuits or whatever terminology you’d like for them, but the fact that each one evolves, or cuts away from, the previous one, and rrrrrr….. sorry. Stream of consciousness. Back to my point.

    The 9, the pre-titans that created the world. In the beginning was Chaos, and from Chaos came etc etc…. The Greeks knew. From Chaos came night and day, earth and sky, water - Nix and Pontos and the rest. Great stuff, and very parallel to the OT. Go figure.

    The Greek Mystery is a strong path. Highly recommended, if even temporarily. Very primal.



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