Post on 28-Sep-2015
description
CHAPTER 1: THE READING KEYS
Where the Reader may want to consider that only the Adam,
alone, is expelled from the Garden in Eden. This introduction
allows introducing the play in the writing, omnipresent in the
sacred texts, and the corresponding reading keys: the turning-
around of the letters, to read in the mirror, the symbolic value of
the letters, and the correspondence between the letters and the parts
of the human body.
Adam and Eve are expelled from paradise together; the whole
iconography of the Western world acknowledges that fact. And
Mans misery, the fact of being punished
from the Original Sin, is because of a
careless Eve, irresponsible, who has eaten
the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good
and Evil. This is our starting point: Woman
is irresponsible and temptress, the carefree
has been subdued by a serpent (she is usually
so horrified by serpents), and a God of
love has become red of anger, has blemished
on rage, and has expelled Adam and Eve
from the Garden in a moment of pure divine
wrath. And the world has never recovered
from it.
Good riddance!
Why is our civilisation founding myth built
on a divorce, on an expulsion, on a
punishment? On a tragedy? Why is the
Church so adamant about the original sin,
declaring every man and woman guilty at
Figure 1: The woman with the snake O church, 12th century (Photo PE. Augustine Museum; Toulouse). See chapter 18.
Adam & Eve: the solar temptation
2
birth? Why did Eve eat this forbidden fruit, at the origin of our
misfortune?
Lets have a look at what happens with the King James Version (Gen
3:23):
Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of
Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.
The New American Bible1 proposes:
The LORD God therefore banished him from the garden of Eden,
to till the ground from which he had been taken.
Who sends forth? The LORD God
whom I shall translate as YHVH-
Adona Elohim in this essay, keeping
the Hebrew wording. I shall also
explain why the two nouns YHVH-
Adona (Jehovah) and Elohim (God)
are put together. But, if one looks
closer, only Adam as the singular
personal pronoun he is mentioned:
no mention of Eve. I was expecting
something like The LORD
1 In the following, we shall use KJ for King James and NAB for New
American Bible.
Figure 2: Adam et ve chasss du Jardin
dEden. Gustave Dor
Adam & Eve: the solar temptation
God therefore banished them from the garden
In the following verse, the uniqueness of the Adam to be expelled
is reinforced and confirmed:
Gen 3:24 - So he drove out the man, and he placed at the east of
the garden of Eden Cherubims (KJ version)
Gen 3:24 - He expelled the man, stationing the cherubims and
the fiery revolving sword east of the garden of Eden (NAB)
So indeed the Adam alone is expelled after having been driven out or
expelled: Eve is not even mentioned. Why? Isnt she the true guilty
person in the story? Adam did eat the fruit, however Eve did eat it
too, and did propose it to Adam: she is fully responsible.
Here is the Hebrew text:
LaeBoD MiGaN-eDeN Elohim YHVH WaYeShaLHeHOu
to work from the garden-Eden YHVH Elohim And sent him forth
MiShaM LouQaH eSheR HaaDaMaH eT
from there [had been taken] from which the HaAdamaH (do)
And sent him forth, YHVH-Adona Elohim, to work the HaAdamaH
from which (he) had been taken: from there. Eve is not concerned with
the expulsion from the Garden.
Adam & Eve: the solar temptation
I also want to underline this word HaAdamaH so poorly
translated as ground by both our bibles. It is written as Adam
taken in the pincers of the two He-breath letters , which represent the vivifying breath. The consonant He represents the lung, the breath of life. It is vocalised by a rapid expulsion of the air through
the bronchial tubes. The Adamah is the fertile soil that needs to be
worked to grow things; it is not the passive, anonymous and neutral
ground that we must refer to, but the alive material from which
living forms arise. In Hebrew, the article is Ha placed in front of
the noun, so the Adamah is written HaAdamaH, and I
transcribe this way, with two capital He letters, that magic noun of
Adam taken in the pincers of the vivifying breath.
In order to grasp the meaning of these words, and then to grasp the
meaning of the founding message of our civilisation, it is necessary
to dive into the mysteries of the Hebrew writing system. Sometimes,
I shall have to make a detour on the side of Sumer, and also on the
side of the Egyptian hieroglyphs. The next 50 pages of this essay are
then trying to present this ground work, following the
organisation below:
- The play on words;
- The letters, recipients of the world energies;
- The structure of the world with grammar as a base;
- The turning-around, basis of the spirituality.
Here is our interest in the myth of the fall of
Adam and Eve: the Adam alone is mentioned,
and the text uses twice the singular form.
Adam & Eve: the solar temptation
These pages may not be easy to follow if one is a beginner in
Hebrew, but I have tried to render them as easy as possible. They
are necessary to understand the plays on words and the hidden
notions that are called by the use of certain words, from the way
they are spelled. These subtleties have of course disappeared from
our English, French of German translations, as they have
disappeared from the translations in Greek or Latin. Plays on words
are most of the time impossible to render in foreign languages. Lets
also remind the reader that the vowels have been added to the text
between the 1st and the 4th century A.D.: they are not part of the
original script.
Once I have finished this presentation of the notions inhabiting the
Hebrew letters, we shall be able to ride on a journey that is quite
eventful.
May I add, to end this preamble before developing the reading keys,
that I take the liberty to illustrate the described notions with
examples that do not respect any sort of chronological or
geographical scales. The notions that are developed in Genesis,
written between the 9th and the 6th century B.C., may very well be
illustrated with examples from the Middle-Age, Renaissance, or
from any other period or geographical area. What is important is the
message in its principle with the symbolic and timeless values it
contains, not the forms that such principles may take at this or that
period or country. These symbolic values remain understandable in
our modern time, with a bit of brain gymnastics: for instance, the
solar ram or the lunar bull as fertilizing forces of nature, or the Tree
as the principle of mutations during growth, to transform a seed into
a fruit thats a timeless image.
Adam & Eve: the solar temptation
The Reading Keys
First Key: the Play in the Writing
The script in Genesis (as well as in the other biblical books) is based
on the play with analogies. The plays on words or on letters have a
Sumerian and Egyptian origin; and they have been lost during the
translations in Greek and Latin. The plays on words, the puns are
omnipresent in sacred texts, because they associate tangible signs
(the drawing of the letters in stone, wood, papyrus or metal) with
the energies that Man2 feels in populating his universe. The letters
are there to transcribe these energies. The relationship that Man
sustains with these energies form levels of organisation and structure
that are with drawers. It is the organisation of the letters in the
word or in the sentence that is the reflexion of these energies,
sometimes conflicting with one another, sometimes in harmony in
the human spirit as in the natural world. It is as such that the writing
is a gift from the gods in the Sumerian, Egyptian and Greek myths
not to mention others. The script is a tangible representation,
physical, graspable by the human thoughts, of consciousness,
emotions, hopes, interrogations, relationships, choices: everything
that crosses the human mind in its entirety and that remains non
material. The first mission of the script is to transmit a message: it
is a transmission tool, and as such a projection of the will, an
externalisation of an interior willingness towards an external
universe. The words, the letters that form the words are the vectors
or vehicles of this transmission willingness. The letters are the
projections of the sensitive world.
2 We write Man as human being both male and female to differentiate it from the man as the masculine or male-only human being.
Adam & Eve: the solar temptation
The hieroglyphic script is first a sacred writing system, which senses
were kept hidden: the ones who knew how to decipher it were few,
and mostly religious people. Then an important source of
mythology comes from the plays on words or plays on writing. Many
cosmogony myths are based on pun. A consequence of this aptitude
to pun is obviously the possibility to establish essential equivalences
between objects that have, in reality, only their naming in common,
while there is a tendency to fuse the name and the thing, the image
and the thing, the image and the name.3
The reference to the image shows in the decoration of the Egyptian
temples such as Edfu or Denderah, where the decorative panels do
not seem to obey a reading order that makes any sense.
Even in the sanctuary where the decoration illustrates directly the rites from
which the Naos statue was the object, the reading order is not indicated. It is
through reasoning the modern archaeologists have found it, by establishing that
one had to jump constantly from one wall to another one in front. Somewhere
else, plays are even more subtle, and it is through a strange word in the context
that the necessity to jump to the other wall will be indicated, as in the Edfu
courtyard, where the order of the panels on one wall is directly dependent of the
one in facing it. In Denderah, correspondences were known only from the one
who reads the plan of the place, but do escape from the visitors. Indeed, one of
the most striking tricks in the decoration did consist in placing, on the back
of the big sistrum statue that lies in an inaccessible hole in the southern wall, an
equivalent statue (invisible from the courtyard) with inscriptions that indicate an
identity with the external (visible) one. Nobody, except the skilful priest-architect
who invented the play, and the Egyptologist who also has the plan of the temple,
was able to know this fact. He only would get the message. All this was
functioning in the name of the cosmogony, all of this was used to maintain the
3 The Egyptian Religion, Philippe Derchain, in History of Religions,
Volume 1, La Pleiades, 1070, p.76.
Adam & Eve: the solar temptation
stability of the world order, not without reason it seems, since as long as the social
Egyptian order did last, temples were built.4
The presentation of ritual scenes in a face-to-face situation also
exists in the rite that consists in maintaining the good order of the
solar and moon courses, between other things through the
presentation of two mirrors to the Hathor goddess (an avatar of
Isis). She would contemplate herself in the mirrors and provoke the
double light of day and night. The offering of two eyes would give
the same result. This offering could take a special value when the
recipient was the god of Letopolis (just north of Gizeh), who is
alternatively blind and sighted.
The position of the priest (or the reader) facing the statue (or the
text), as the one of the knight with respect to his emblazoned shield
he holds, implies a shift, or a turning-around from left to right or
right to left, in a similar way that the human microcosm is the
upside-down image of the cosmic and divine macrocosm. The two
correspond to each other, however it is necessary to establish, from
time to time, the proper directions of the divine or human energies:
right-left, above-below. Sometimes, a letter-energy that is essentially
spiritual will correspond to its equivalent essentially material: for
instance, the Aleph sign-of-Elohim as eternity and total spirituality
will correspond in the mirror to the Ayin sign of temporality and total materiality:
Aleph
Ayin
4 The Egyptian Religion, Philippe Derchain, op. cite; p.95.
Eternity and total spirituality
Temporality and total materiality
Adam & Eve: the solar temptation
In his book on alchemy5, Bernard Roger cites the works of Gracet
dOrcet, and above all of Fulcanelli, who highlighted the plays on
words that are abundantly used in Kabbalah: The phonetic kabbalah
is textually the horse of the speech, and its principle lies on the listening of the
sounds of words or sentences beyond their literal sense, outside of the grammatical
logics and the spelling rules. This language, that adapts itself to all languages in
the world, uses the quite about the same as, almost equal to, similar as,
not too far from as plays on words, pun, sometimes an anagram, often a rebus,
which have been used a lot for commercial signboards on the street and for the
design of coats of arms. [] It is on similar but spiritual plays on words that
the student in Science must exert himself, who has the true desire to penetrate the
meaning of old books. That he looks into anatomizing the words, breach their
barks and free their spirit, the divine light their hide under the letter, according
to Fulcanellis expression6, who gives the precious advice to get involved in Old
Greek: what is usually overseen is that the idiom that the [Middle Age]
authors were using in their terms was rooted in archaic Greek, mother tongue
according to the plurality of the Hermes disciples.
I conclude that it is impossible to grasp the complexity of the text,
and its symbolic and ontological depth7, without getting involved
in playing with words: the image of the shadow, that I shall study in
detail, the turning-over in the frame of the text, invite us to shift
around the direction of the reading, to shift energy-letters, and the
systematic deciphering of proper names, numbers and figures that
are built in the text for a reason. This is what renders the translation
so difficult, at the same time it is imprisoned in names, dates, ages
5 A la dcouverte de lalchimie, Bernard Roger, Dangles editions, 1984,
pp 50-53.
6 Le Mystre des Cathdrales, Fulcanelli, Omium Littraire, Paris, 1957
(cited by Bernard Roger).
7 What is ontological is what is related to the deep nature of Man.
Adam & Eve: the solar temptation
that arouse a historical and factual reading. Lets give a few examples
of such plays with letters:
First example: the HaAdamaH (the cultivable land) already
mentioned, and written He-Adam-He: that is to say Adam taken in
the pincers of the He breath (the He letter symbolizes the vivifying
breath).
HaAdamaH
H m d a H
The word adamah means cultivable land and is written
HaaDaMaH with the article He. That letter He represents the lung
that gives life to the things it animates and orientates. The culture,
related to the fertility of the land, is an essential quality of this land.
Fertility implies, for it to be accomplished, that the land must be
worked, tilled. And as Adam finds himself in the pincers of that
vivifying breath, it is a reference of the spiritual work that I am
talking about: we are always, in Genesis, dealing with the spiritual
working on the self on the Adam as each of us. This notion could
be seen in the garden in Eden: a garden is, by definition, a place
of work, and even of the work of love. It is opposed to the fallow
(the wasteland of T.S. Eliot), the plain, the pasture, the nature.
The tilled land that has not produced yet is the field with grass: rich
of all its potentialities of growth. It is here, in the field, that Cain
takes his avatar Abel and kills him8. The essential point is that a
8 Chapter 4 of Genesis: Abel is traditionally mentioned as the
brother, but the same Hebrew word designates the brother, the
alike, the ally, the avatar. It takes the meaning that La Fontaine
Adam & Eve: the solar temptation
garden is not a natural place; it is a place where nature has been
worked. Love is not a natural thing in this sense, as it needs to be
worked with efforts (and maintained). The land is natural; the garden
is cultural because it necessitates a work of transformation, of
mutation to be differentiated from that land. If the work of the
HaAdamaH is mentioned as the unique reason when the Adam is
expelled from the Garden of Eden, then we may think that the
reason of the expulsion is the absence of work I shall get back to
it.
Let us try another example: the word cursed, that first applies to
the serpent, and then to the HaAdamaH (with Cain). Cursed is
aROuR in Hebrew:
Cursed : (aROuR)
Aleph Resh Wav Resh
The Resh consonant is the head and represents the rationality, the intelligences that computes and deduces and also the
principle, and as a hieroglyphic sign, the straight line without
gives it in the Wolf and the Lamb fable: if not you, then your
brother. The word Cain comes from QaYiN centralising decision-
making power, as well as to forge a weapon, and plays with the
other meaning of jealousy. In our reading, Cain-the-spouse kills
Abel his avatar cloud, breath with no consistency. See Chapter
17.
Reading direction
Adam & Eve: the solar temptation
alteration. If I drop this rational head (to the left of the Aleph in
Hebrew above), I get the word OuR, which means light:
Light: Aleph Wav Resh (OuR)
This light is a spiritual light; we know it because in Genesis it appears
on Day ONE, before the creation of the two big luminaries that
will lighten the heavens and the earth on day four. This light OuR
is made of:
The Aleph letter : the infinite creative power of spirituality, the sign of Elohim as the Unity Principle materialised by
the apostrophe in our writing. The Aleph letter is
not pronounced in itself: it needs a vowel to be
heard.
The Wav letter : that letter has a function to rising things in a vertical position, it elevates in a straight-up direction,
and it also turns around, shifts around and
hooks two things. It is the equivalent of the
English word and that hooks two things
together in a sentence. It is written as capital O
in our script above;
The Resh letter : the principle (capital R), represented by the straight line as a hieroglyphic value, which means
that it has not been curbed by anything. It is in its
original state and it has not been subject to any
curvature.
The OuR light is the one that enlightens the thinking or meditating
head (Resh) in the axis of Elohim: total spirituality. It corresponds
to the enlightenment of the Buddha: a light that transcends the
rational intelligence. In French, the ravi qualifies the raving lunatic,
Adam & Eve: the solar temptation
whose soul has been taken away by the Devil. But the word
corresponds also to the adjective delighted: de-lighted; without
light. That is the meaning of the Fool tarot card, whose head is
separated from the body by a stick on his shoulder. I shall study the
fool in detail in Chapter 14. The capacity of being the subject of a
ravishment is a principle: it is true everywhere and all the time (at all
epochs), in all civilisations and it is the principle that underlines
the human psyche. It is most probably at the origin of the desire for
the caveman to represent animal energies on the walls of his caves.
It is the origin of the alive. It is this very light that allows the
vision.
This notion of spiritual light that does not go through the head is
also illustrated by a moving
Virgin with child from the 14th
century in the Museum of the
Augustans in Toulouse (see
Figure 3): the child Jesus holds
a globe, symbolising the Earth
and the sensible world, while
his right hand holds a bird on
Marys heart9. That is the
duality between the sensible
world and the spiritual world,
which integration, for the
Christian, is made through
Jesus. The spirituality,
symbolised by the bird with a
9 I have highlighted the contours of the bird on Marys heart on the
picture. The heart, as the organ of spirituality and divine love, is the
symbol of interiority. The bird, which head is turned around, is the
symbol of spirituality.
Figure 3: Mary with Child, Museum of the Augustans, Toulouse, 14th century (Photo PE)
Adam & Eve: the solar temptation
shifted head, is an affair of heart, and not of head (mental realm).
The rationality is opposed to the spirituality, and the rational
intelligence is not the path of the intelligence of the heart. The
rationality is essentially a normative concept [], which governs our
interpretation of a system of beliefs: the way with which we attribute beliefs and
rational behaviours to individuals10. We find here an axis that will be
developed in this essay: to access spirituality (the heart is the Beit
letter with a numerical value of 2), one must transcend the rationality (the head corresponding to the Resh letter with a numerical value of 200). This path goes through the mastering of
the analogy, represented in the Hebrew alphabet by the Kaf letter , with a numerical value of 20. The Kaf letter comes from the hieroglyph of the palm of the hand: to grasp (the meaning of
something), and is represented in this statue by the two palms of
Jesus-child that grasp the sensible world with one hand and the
spiritual world with the other hand. The analogy is another principle:
it is also true all the time, throughout the civilisations, and all over
the world: the aspiration to grasp the meaning of things and to
establish links between elements that, a priori, have no links between
them when they are considered by the rational intelligence.
I could also play by replacing the Aleph (total spirituality) of OuR
(spiritual light) by the other silent letter Ayin (total materiality): I get
OuR that means skin. The skin tunics that cover the Adam and
his spouse iShaH precede immediately the expulsion from the
Garden of Eden. We shall see what this tunics of skin represent; but
it is interesting to realise that they were used in funeral rites in the
10 Normes logiques et volution; Pascal Engel, Universit de Caen et
CREA, Ecole Polytechnique, Revue Internationale de Philosophie
2, 1997, pp 201-219.
Adam & Eve: the solar temptation
Kingdom of Meroe (todays Sudan), in which the kings were buried
only covered with such tunics of skin.
Another example: the serpent is spelled NaHaSh Nun-Heit-Shin. The guttural Heit letter derives from the hieroglyph that
represents the barrier of the field that limits and protects, and by
extension everything that requires a work, an effort, a fatigue. It is a
barrier that is needed to progress, as it has to be passed or jumped-
over, in the same way one progresses on a ladder by stepping on its
bars. So this barrier is also a support point at the same time it is an
obstacle. As a vocal sound, it expresses the elementary life,
everything that renders this existence manifest and patent. The Heit-
Shin root expresses in Hebrew as in Arabic the chaos (HoSheKh:
tenebrous, darkness): the deepest sign of the manifestation of this
existence. The Aleph-Heit root is used by no word, except in
onomatopoeia for the violence of an effort, an exclamation scream
or a hit on something. It is the Heit-Wav root that carries the energy of the symbol of the Heit, which we find in the name HaWaH
Eve.
The Heit of the serpent is here framed by Nun-Shin, which is the
spelled Shin letter reversed in the mirror (that is: the Shin letter is normally spelled Shin-Nun). The Shin letter is associated with the
desire for progressing on ones spiritual journey: it is the curb, the
pressure on the straight line Resh that has been made oblique, that
has changed its original (natural) course. The Shin letter is rendered
by the fire eSh Aleph-Shin. The Nun letter symbolises the mutating
individual on his spiritual journey, progressing along his path. We
may then consider the serpent as the obstacle to be crossed or
transgressed in order to progress in our initiation quest for
spirituality. The obstacle in the middle of the fully-spelled Shin
prevents the full realisation of the desire for the desire of
transcendence Shin. But the Shin letter is reversed in the mirror (Nun-
Shin rather than Shin-Nun), so the serpent could actually be seen as
Adam & Eve: the solar temptation
the obstacle to the spiritual reversal leading to the desire for
spirituality and transcendence. Remember the reversed head of the
bird in Jesus hand? The serpent prevents that reversal. This reversal
could be seen as analogous to the
shifting-around of the foetus
before birth.
So we shall find on our path words
that are reversed left to right that
are illustrations of the reversal
before being (re-)born at a higher
spiritual level higher than the
previous level we were on.
We shall see later that the property
of the biblical serpent is also to
crawl at the surface of the land-
humus: the serpent is also the
obstacle to the penetration of the
depth of the Waters-from-below
and it will have to be transgressed
in order to get down on ones self.
The story of the little David who
fights the giant Goliath wearing a
bronze helmet and armour uses
this symbol, as bronze is written
NeHoSheT in Hebrew, and is built
with the same root as the serpent
NaHaSh. Bronze and serpent share
the same qualities.
I may want to stress a common
point to all of these examples: they
only make sense once the
resonances they express, the chiming of their bells have been heard
Figure 4: Masaccio : Adam and Eve expelled from paradise. Santa Maria des Carmine, Brancacci chapell, Florence, 1425.
Adam & Eve: the solar temptation
and identified. In the case of the serpent, it will have to be identified
with its behavioural properties, on which I shall get back, but that
are essentially based on its forked tongue and its ability to renew its
skin and get reborn from itself: truth and lie, life and death.
The example of Eve who is not expelled from the Garden is a
magnificent illustration of the global darkening phenomenon of the
popular belief. Nobody needs to read Hebrew, or Greek, or Latin
to realise that Eve is not even mentioned during the expulsion of
the Garden; all translations agree on this point. And yet, the image
of Adam together with Eve both expelled from the Garden is at the
root of our occidental mythology, our civilisation values, and still
owes the women a vast oppression due to the guilt of being
responsible for the misfortune of Man on the surface of the Earth.
Where does this come from? That nobody actually reads what is
written? It is true that for centuries, only the Church was entitled to
read the Bible (in Latin only), and the first translations in vernacular
languages were seen as a major threat to its power.
The answer is in the text: we have to read this text in identifying
what is told, what is not told, and how things connect with one
another. From time to time, we are helped in our reading with
similar mythic stories: Isis and Osiris in Egypt, Enki in
Mesopotamia, the Greek and Roman mythology that comes to
reinforce a particular aspect; such as the Achilles warrior who dies
by a wound in the heel, for instance, and helps us to inform us about
Jacob YaaQoB meaning heel in Hebrew, but also cunning.
Hercules will help us a lot in Chapter 18.
I shall also use a mosaic from Carthage representing Neptune on his
chariot in order to illustrate a number of notions that are developed
in these pages; I shall explore Neptune in Chapter 10.
Kabbalah (term meaning transmission) is essentially based on the
use of the play on words in these texts; and I believe that the
Adam & Eve: the solar temptation
approach is totally justified. I remain more sceptical on the extensive
use of the numerical values of the letters within words, in an exercise
called Gematria. It consists in adding the values of the letters that
form key words, and that call for other words that share the same
total value. The plays on words that are studied in the Sumer or
Babylon times, as show Jean Botro and Samuel Noah Kramer11, are
also present in the Egyptian texts, as well as in our biblical texts; but
these are not (or very rarely) rooted in the numerical values of the
letters. The basis for these plays on words is made of the letters
themselves, when building names or key-words. This is the second
reading key that I shall develop now.
Second Key: the Letters-Energy
Hebrew letters are for the most of them derived from Egyptian
hieroglyphs; it means they are close to ideograms: they carry
complex notions a lot more elaborated than the mere sounds that
they materialise as vocalised as consonants or vowels. They are also
numbers that are themselves the syntax of the energies of the world.
Energy has a peculiar characteristic: when it is in the presence of
Man, a relationship immediately builds with Man, and he either
dominates that energy, or he is dominated by it. There is no half-
way. To say that the letters are the materialisation, the images or the
vectors of the world energies means that, through the letters,
energies can first be identified, then acknowledged, and then
mastered. To learn how to read is to learn how to decipher the signs
that will form the energetic relationships between the self and the
surrounding world. It is also the possibility to receive the message
of the other who wants to communicate through space and time that
representation, in a precise manner, with a precise quality.
11 Lorsque les dieux faisaient lhomme, NRF, Gallimard, 1989, reprint in
1993.
Adam & Eve: the solar temptation
In the modern
languages, we have
lost this relational
system between the
letter and the energy it
carries12. However it
does exist in the
colours that a painter
uses in order to render
the atmosphere of his
painting. In
manipulating the
colours, and
associating them, the painters paints an atmosphere, which is a kind
of energy qualifying the relationship between the painter and the
painting, and then between the painting and the observer who
contemplates that painting. The reader is in this way in a submissive
position with respect to the writer: he receives a message, which
form is qualified in a certain way, according to a structure that has
been wanted and thought through. To learn how to write, then, is
to learn how to communicate the qualities of the relationship
between the self and the outside world with wanted and thought-
through criteria and qualities that implies the necessity to master
these relationships in order to transcribe them into an original
structure.
The writer is in a dominant position vis--vis the reader. Lets
remind that there is no question about the reliability of the message:
in a world where the spoken word is dominant, men and women
have the memory of the message. The storytellers do not invent:
12 Except in the words that directly come from archaic Greek, which
are the vehicles of mystic meanings.
Figure 5: Nicolas de Stal: Seaside Railway (1955)
Adam & Eve: the solar temptation
they tell known stories with invariant frameworks. It is the structure
of the story that varies, the qualities associated with the written
message than can, from their construction, imply relationships
(energies) with notions that would be absent from the oral message.
This effect is reinforced by the fact that the vowels are absent from
the original written message in the Bible. These vowels were added
in the script much after the original writing, around the 5th and 6th
century A.D. The word Adam really is spelled > (Aleph
not pronounced except when a vowel is present but precisely,
there is no vowel in the written text; and then Dalet for d and Mem
for m: up to the reader to pronounce Adam or Edim Odem or
whatever else makes sense). As a consequence, the roots that form
the words carry an essential message in the way it is spelled out. But
then the original Hebrew text has no punctuation either: it is a
sentence without point to separate sentences, without coma,
without accents: up to the reader to separate the sentences, and then
the words from one another, in a way that makes sense (to him).
Here we are
The NAME
The biblical name of an individual traces, from the way it is written,
the energies that he has at his disposal when he receives his name
from his parents, or from God in the Bible13; and his mandate will
be to identify, acknowledge, integrate and master these energies. In
the way it is written, the substantive NAME indicates this notion:
SheM in Hebrew, written Shin-Mem: the space located between the sign of the curbed movement Shin I have already touched upon, and that I would call culture by opposition to nature (I
define here culture as any natural process that has been curbed by
13 For instance, Abram becomes Abraham, Sarai becomes Sarah,
Jacob becomes Israel, etc.
Adam & Eve: the solar temptation
Mans will in a dynamics of mastering that said process), and the
collective origin Mem of the down-under world: the matrix waters, the primordial collective and undifferentiated substance of
everything that has been created. The NAME SheM represents a
scheme that characterizes the relationships between the energies
that the individual will activate during his spiritual growth. It is the
static representation of a dynamics between the self and the
environment.
Example: Moses
The name of Moses, MoSheH in Hebrew, is formed by the
consonants Mem Shin He: , and may be read Ha-SheM as reversed in the mirror: The NAME (remember the proximal He
consonant is the article the). That word HaSheM The NAME is
a way to designate the LORD YHVH-Adona. Moses saved (or
rather: kneaded) from the waters represents then the capacity to
identify and acknowledge the energies of the NAME in a dynamics
of turning-over (turning MoSheH into HaSheM YHVH-Adona).
Moses Saved-kneaded from the Waters draws from the depth of
the Waters MaYiM the central Yod that symbolises the
manifestation of consciousness in the temporality, in order to
start his spiritual growth. The following part of the story will see the
entire Hebrew People under the lead of Moses cross the spiritual
boundary, as a collective baptism, and find itself on the dry-land: the
world of the tangible, of the physical and material reality I shall get
back to it later. The NAME is then an initiation journey in itself: the
path between the origin in materiality and what will be described as
the manifestation of Elohim on Earth: the divine presence that
carries his NAME, YHVH-Adona, symbolised by the Yod letter.
Each and every letter of the Hebrew alphabet is an emanation of the
Yod letter ; a letter-point that in itself is the manifestation of everything in the time. At this stage, I ask my reader to remember
Adam & Eve: the solar temptation
that the Yod letter is the letter of the manifestation of the human
consciousness in the temporal realm.
The Yod Letter
The Waters MaYiM written Mem-Yod-Mem is a term that would
be better translated as matter fecundated by spirit. They conceal
the central Yod, the germ of the human consciousness that will
become, and that symbolises its manifestation. The Yod y is a letter
in the form of a point, the graph of the spark of consciousness that
is present as a potential in the new-borns body. It is a dimensionless
point represented by the intersection of two straight lines that form
the human being: the line representing his natural and physical
dimension in the world of the material reality, and the line
representing his human consciousness, his faculty to project himself,
his manifested spiritual dimension. It materialises the manifestation
in the duration of the (divine) origin of his spiritual individual
dimension, which links in an indefectible manner the human being
to his cosmic and transcendent origin. The Yod comes from the
hieroglyph of the hand of the manifestation (the word YaD means
hand in Hebrew), which represents the conscious power of Man
on the world: the power to do things, to build tools, thoughts,
models and templates; the power to transform that essentially
differentiates Man from the animal. The Yod is then to be
understood as the germ of the to do, of the accomplishment, of
the work. By construction, the name YHVH-Adona represents the
manifestation of this spiritual work that Man can implement or
accomplish on himself when he searches his true nature, his NAME,
when he orientates himself. There is the spiritual life, by
opposition to life in its principle, independent from any orientation.
The Yod is then the energy-letter from YHVH-Adona, emanation of a manifested Elohim and that can be grasped by the human
thinking process: one goes from the world of the Creation to the
Adam & Eve: the solar temptation
world of the doing, and to its manifestation in the realm of
temporality, and to its accomplishment. The Yod is the
dimensionless point, the original drop that instils and inseminates
the collective and undifferentiated body of the human being (the
People), reflection or projection in the human spirit in becoming
of the cosmic and transcendent Aleph-Elohim.
The Letters Shin and Sin
The Shin letter shows three Yod associated as a crown. It is, in a
way, a cubed-Yod. The Shin letter comes from the hieroglyphic sign
representing the curbed movement, and in the alphabet, it
immediately follows the Resh letter straight line, proper
movement. The Shin is an alteration of the proper movement that
has changed direction, that has been modified, transformed,
mutated by the will to modify, transform, mutate. In Hebrew, the word
SheN means the tooth, that is the tooth of the jaw as much as the
stone of the mortar that can crush, grind, dilacerate and kill, or let
go and swallow without destroying. In this sense, it is an alteration
of the original natural element that is chewed, transformed, curbed
in order to be swallowed and digested. To say in in another way, the
alteration is cultural, as coming from a desire to mutate the
originally proper movement of a natural state. That tooth is the
one that bites into the metal to test its quality, in the same way a
jeweller will use his touchstone to validate the quality of a metal.
Metal here should not be understood with its modern sense: it
means raw matter, and the stone is the first of such raw matters. It
is in this sense that the alchemists will talk about the philosophers
stone, about the mercury, the sulphur, the mercury of the
philosophers, etc. The Shin fire-stone, stone of desire, the flaming
meteorite determines a test, an ordeal: the ordeal of the divine fire
that tests the desire to mutate, to be transformed, to peel off the
skin OuR in order to see that light OuR.
Adam & Eve: the solar temptation
This mutation may take one of two directions: towards the Point-
above aYiN written with an Aleph and representing the Principle of
Unity in eternity and universality; or towards the Point-below aYiN
written with an Ayin and representing the Principle of total
materiality (raw stone) in temporality.
When the desire to mutate is oriented towards the Aleph, the letter
is pronounced Shin and is written with a diacritic point on the right
of the letter, on the accomplished side: . When the desire to mutate is oriented towards the Ayin, the letter is pronounced Sin and is
written with a diacritic point on the left o the letter, on the
unaccomplished side: . The Shin and the Sin are two aspects of the same letter, and these forms count usually as one in dictionaries
among the 22 letters of the alphabet. The origin of the
differentiation between the Shin and the Sin is controversial, and
seems to be much later than the Hebrew alphabet itself. I cant help
thinking about the Mesopotamian couple Shemesh-Sin with respect
to this Shin duality: the Sun god Shemesh, son of the Moon god Sin.
When the Shin letter is associated with the Alpeh pure spiritual
power, it forms the word eSh fire (Aleph-Shin). The fire transforms as it cooks, and particularly it mutates the liquid water
into vapour, and it renders the food edible. If the eSh-fire is too
powerful, it destroys, it reduces to ashes and renders the food
inedible. Man is the only living creature that has mastered the fire:
Aleph: Point-above
Ayin: Point-below
Shin: tooth of mutation:
curbed line, desire to mutate.
Adam & Eve: the solar temptation
the double letter Shin-Sin in its relationship to the Aleph, to the Mem
and to the Resh, expresses the curvature of the proper movement (it
being Resh) in a dynamics of transformation, to render a natural
element digestible (on the way to integrate its power, its energies).
In this sense, the Shin-desire corresponds to culture that, when
this fire is chewing and cooking something in its jaws (SheN is the
tooth), corresponds to the action of Man on nature. The subtlety
that I ask my reader to consider is that the fire only transforms what
it cooks: it has to be fed: without food, the fire will run in neutral.
It wont be enough for the Adam to desire, to wish in a wildly
enthusiastic way, he will still have to imprint a direction on his desire
for it to turn to good account in a dynamics of accomplishment. In
this text, I refer many times, talking about the Shin, to the desire of
spirituality: it is then this Shin-desire-and-tooth developed by the power
of the Aleph that forms the fire eSh and that elevates culture to
the level of a desire for spiritual growth. The first creation of
Elohim is ShaMaYiM: Heavens (a dual plural form) that form the
marriage of the fire (eSh) together with the Waters MaYiM.
The Shin or the Sin tooth, and by extension the fire-stone, is the
image of the meteorite that comes from Heaven onto Earth: the
tangible illustration of a cosmic fire, a light in the nocturnal sky and
a link that unifies the cosmos with the Earth. It represents in the
mirror, that is when this meteorite is thrown back up to the sky, the
image of the last part of the initiation journey when Man faces
Aleph-Elohim. It can grind and destroy, or let go. In the
eschatological representation of the world, it expresses the desire of
Man for eternity, the desire of transcendence, the desire to go
beyond the sensible world, to inflect the proper movement of nature
in a curved cultural dynamics. The numerical value of Shin is 300: it
is the posterior step of the transcendence of dualities, represented
by the Resh letter of a value of 200. The 300-Shin plays the same
vibration (but two octaves above) as the Gimel letter (value 3), as a
Adam & Eve: the solar temptation
vibrating stage towards the Aleph. Champollion writes14: The sound
of the Shin in Hebrew is represented in the hieroglyphic alphabet by a character
that represents a sort of a garden, which hieratic sign corresponds to the Coptic
, and that may be exchanged, although rarely in the hieroglyphic texts, with
the goose, more common sign of the S consonant.
The Shin letter is sometimes the Sh
sound as represented by the
Mesopotamian Sun-god Shamash
(SheMeSh is sun in Hebrew,
represented with the flames that
surround his head on Figure 6, who
has the foot laid on the waters);
sometimes the S sound represented by
, image of the lunar Babylonian god Sin, Shamashs father. This name of the
lunar god of darkness evokes SaTaN
Sin Tet Nun , formed on the Tet shield, which will have to be pierced in
order to penetrate (identify) and
master the power of the night SiN . Why there seems to be this play between Shin and Sin remains to be explained; why these two
letters mean tooth, and why they are considered as the same but
still different... Maybe it is linked to the hissing sound that a
toothless mouth would do? Maybe a missing tooth either on the top
or on the bottom jaws? Or the sound of the flying arrow, which lisps
(verb aSaPh) when it leaves the bow? The truth of the matter is that
these letters are earmarked by the top and the bottom, and that they
14 Prcis du Systme Hiroglyphique des Anciens Egyptiens, Champollion, 2nde dition avec volume de planches, 1828 ; on line at : http://books.google.fr/books?id=604GAAAAQAAJ
Figure 6: Mesopotamian Sun-god Shemesh, god of justice (=straightness)
Adam & Eve: the solar temptation
act together in opposition: the top tooth (Shin) is only powerful as
long as it is opposed to the bottom tooth (Sin), and vice-versa.
In this essay, I shall use a lot the Shin letter as the desire to mutate, to transform, or to alter what has been untouched by Man
(what has been untouched by Man is natural). The subtlety of the
use of this notion comes from the fact that desire, which is
undergone, must be transformed into a will to become the engine
of conscious acts by Man on his own transformation. Desire is
attractive and is undergone; the will is a power that is exercised15.
I wish to express clearly the double image of the solar Shin and the
lunar Sin. The image could be as follows: the top tooth Shin is
immobile; the lower tooth Sin is mobile and has a dynamics; as the
moon shows a dynamics when compared to the sun, which
constantly keeps the same shape.
The duality Shin-Sin is one of the most mysterious, if not the big
mystery of the Hebrew alphabet. It is also one of the keys of hidden
dualities, which is not officially acknowledged, since these two
letters only count as one in the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet.
With the double letter Shin-Sin, we enter into the heart of the
mystery.
The Resh Letter
The Resh letter is the thinking head and it represents the rational
intelligence, the mental world that constitutes an obstacle to the
sensitivity of the heart and to spirituality. Fabre dOlivet describes it
as the proper movement: the movement that is insensitive to the
actions coming from the outside. It is also the state of nature
which precedes and faces (without being opposed to) the state of
culture. It is what applies to the general case; it is the letter used
15 Edmond Goblot.
Adam & Eve: the solar temptation
in the French grammar to characterise the infinitive form (-er, -ir, -
oir, etc.), before any conjugation applies, and outside of any context.
This mental head is set to be destroyed, or rather transformed,
worked, cultivated. When the divine fire desire to mutate is taken
in its spiritual meaning in Mans head (the Resh letter is the hieroglyph of the human head), it becomes ReSh : the principle written Resh, Aleph, Shin.
It is with this word that Genesis opens; In a principle, in a head;
In principio in Latin, BeReShYT in Hebrew, unfortunately translated by In the beginning in English, in
French or in German. Chouraqui translates it as Heading.
This beginning is not a historical beginning: it is a preamble to the
Creation and to the organisation of the world. A principle is a mental
representation of a rational causality: In a mental rational representation
of the primary cause, Elohim creates the Heavens and the Earth And
this mental
representation ReSh
is the one of the
divine fire of the
desire in the head: the
Fire of the Alliance.
The divine alliance
that Elohim strikes
with Abraham, and
the one that YHVH-
Adona strikes with
Noah is spelled
BeRiYT: Beit-Resh-Yod-
Tav. The fire eSh
(Aleph-Shin) gets into the head Resh through the power of Yod (Yod
is the letter-symbol of YHVH-Adona) in order to form that
BeReShiYT principle. The essential difference with In the
Figure 7: Michel-Angelo: The Creation. When God creates the Adam, He is already surrounded by his coat in the shape of a sagittal plane of the human brain. Photo PE.
Adam & Eve: the solar temptation
beginning is that In a principle immediately implies the presence
of an intelligent human brain to grasp that principle. In the
beginning is independent from mankind: the human being may be
or may not be there. It is a historical beginning.
In a principle, as the intellectual and mental representation of the rational
primary cause, implies Man in order to think this primary cause as a
principle. The human consciousness is involved in this
representation; it is implied from the beginning. This what Michel-
Angelo has painted in his representation of the Creation on the
ceilings of the Sixteen Chapel (Figure 7), where the Creator is
enveloped in a coat that is in the shape of a human brain.
The head ReSh spelled Resh Aleph Shin is built as the unity Aleph
(the Aleph letter represents the unity ONE) framed by (or, should I
say: separating) the Resh proper movement, straight line, natural
and mental on one side (proximal), and the Shin relative movement,
curbed line, cultural and fire on the other side (distal).
Lets come back to our energy-letters. They write the world, or more
exactly, the relationships that Man entertains with the world: the
qualities associated to the mental representations that Man
entertains with his environment. These energetic qualities engraved
in stone are the reflections of the human psyche, since the psyche is
the preamble to any mental representation of all things. In running
through the alphabet, these qualities are the ones of the matrix origin
(Mem letter), the aperture through the production or the
fructification (Pe letter), the infinite and universal power (Aleph
letter), of the direction of the will (Lamed letter), of the obstacle to
overcome while using it as a support [fulcrum?] (Heit letter), of the
augmentation through division (Dalet letter), of the mental
mastering of the coming to consciousness (Kaf letter), of the finality
of a dynamics (Tsade letter), of the vivifying and intuitive breath (He
letter), of the sign of the forms (Tav letter), of the verticalisation,
mutation and spiritual maturation (Wav letter), of the protection (Tet
Adam & Eve: the solar temptation
letter), of the transformation of the individuality and of the
personality (Nun letter), of the desire to become through the
alteration of the proper movement into a curbed and relative
movement (Shin letter), of the total materiality and temporality
(Ayin letter), of the manifestation (Yod letter), etc.
The proper movement Resh is destined to become relative through
the action of Man, and from a straight line, it becomes a curbed line.
It does not mean that this dynamics has become stupid or
delinquent, it means it
has become sensitive to
the immaterial, to the
ineffable, to the spiritual
ether that transcends, or
should I say turns around
nature. The Resh letter has
a numerical value of 200:
it plays on the
transcendence of the
dualities, and is placed
immediately before the
Shin (value 300) turning
nature around coming
from a desire to grow.
May I remind my reader
that, at the level of the Shin, this desire is not oriented. It is a fire
without substance: it will all depends on what Man wants to cook
When the Resh letter is spelled out, it is written : Resh Yod Shin. The legend of Saint Denys (Dionysus, god of arborescence, of all
vital fluids, of vineyards, of the wine that turns the head around and
leads to inebriation and mystical trance) shows him beheaded in
front of Hermes Temple in Paris, and then carrying his head until
the north of the town, to the place that is today Saint Denis (see
Figure 8: Saint Denis carrying his head. Saint Denis Basilica, Paris.
Adam & Eve: the solar temptation
Figure 8). It is the loss of the rational head that allows one to depart
on the journey (the reference to Hermes) to darkness, to the north,
where the renaissance to light is.
It is necessary to remember the symbols associated to these energy-
letters to decipher Genesis. In order to facilitate the reading of this
essay, these notions are briefly summarized on the flaps of the book
cover. The creation of the alphabet is a mental operation that aims
at rendering the world organisation to answer communication
needs. As the invention of writing is dated from the 3rd millennium
B.C., in Mesopotamia, the first alphabet is dated at around -2000,
and is Phoenician, that is to say Semite. It comes from a
transformation of Egyptian hieroglyphs, probably from Phoenician
mercenaries enrolled in the Egyptian army, and which traces have
been found with two important discoveries in 1905 in the Sinai
Mountain16, and in 1994 in the centre of Egypt17. These discoveries
are related by David Sacks18.
Each letter-symbol becomes then the owner of the concept it aims
at rendering, and the association of the letters create the mental
representation of the organisation of the world. Each letter also
carries a numerical value related to its rank in the alphabet, and
materialise the units, the tens and the hundreds. These numerical
values are traditionally used to paginate and number the chapters
and the verses, as well as for the calendar.
16 By the English archaeologist William Flenders Petrie. See Bibliography at the end of the volume. 17 By the American archaeologist John Coleman Darnell and his wife Debora. 18 A History of Alphabet, David Sacks, Les Editions de LHomme, 2003.
Adam & Eve: the solar temptation
The Mem Letter
Mem (or for the terminal form) represents the collective origin, the primordial substance, the matrix. It carries the value 40 (600 for
its terminal form). It is, in all languages all over the world, the letter
that renders the notion of mother. In Hebrew, the word mother
is simply the root of Mem expressing all the potentialities of the sign:
Aleph-Mem aM . As a primordial mother, it is the constituent of the water (see the corresponding hieroglyph ), which is written
MaYiM Mem-Yod-Mem. The Mem is the letter of the world-from-below, which when associated to the Yod forms YaM : the ocean, the sea as the manifestation (Yod letter) of the primordial
substance. The sea is the Mem matrix that covers (hides) the Yod,
symbol-letter of YHVH-Adona. This primordial sea is found in
many cosmogonies: the Chinese Sea of Light, the Hindu Sea of
Milk
The Aleph Letter
Aleph is the energy-letter of Elohim, the Unity Principle, cosmic creator expressing the infinite potential and power, and
transcending all human thoughts. It corresponds to the Hindu
Atman: the Inner Self that is eternal and not subjected to a body or
to any form. Its symbol is the lion: wild energy, ardent, primary, and
even more ungoverned than the radiant sun light. The Aleph is the
sign of the total power and total potentiality. Its numerical value is
1 (or 1000 when it is at the end of a word). The Tradition opposes
the nothing aYiN written with an Aleph Point from Above of
total spirituality and eternity (Aleph Yod Nun) to the nothing
aYiN written with an Ayin Point from Below, the nothing of
the total materiality and temporality (Ayin Yod Nun). Man registers
himself in the tension between these two letters, between these two
nothings. These two letters Aleph and Ayin are the only letters
Adam & Eve: the solar temptation
that are not pronounced, they correspond to a glottal stop19. They
are written with an apostrophe . Aleph is associated to almost all
of the other letters to express their initial root (for instance aB
Aleph-Beit for the initial root of the Beit, Aleph-Shin eSh for the initial root of the Shin, etc.). With this in mind, it is expressing
all the potentialities of the energies of the letters it is connected to.
The He Letter
The He is the lung, divine breath of a feminine essence, with an ascending dynamics. It is the energy that is constitutive of the
growth. It carries a numerical value of 5, half of the Yod. It is
forming the to be verb: HaYaH (He-Yod-He). It corresponds to
the hieroglyph of the praying man, with raised hands, and is at the
origin of our E letter.
The Wav Letter
The Wav letter is the hook that allows the turning-over, the mutation, and the passage from the unaccomplished to the
accomplished, and vice-versa. It carries a numerical value of 6: it
enters into action once the breath is working, and it corresponds to
the state of the 6th day of the Creation, that is to say the created Adam
but still unconscious of his divine destiny. It is a symbol of
verticalisation: it hooks Mans shadow in order to bring it upright
in full light.
The Heit Letter
The Heit is the effort, the work necessary to jump over the barrier; an obstacle to be considered as a supporting point to progress. The
19 A glottal stop can be felt when whispering Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! in the manner of a chimp (think of the Tarzan movies).
Adam & Eve: the solar temptation
obstacle is there to be passed, the Heit is then an effort applied to a
dynamics of progression, such as the bar of a ladder that one steps
on in order to climb up (see the corresponding hieroglyph on page
40). It is materialised in the body by the diaphragm: a muscle that
acts on the lungs to produce the expiration and the inspiration (by
contracting or relaxing itself). Without the diaphragm, there is no
breath. It is personified by Eve, HaWaH, whose name transmutes
(central Wav letter) the obstacle (Heit) into the vivifying breath (He).
The notion of effort that the Heit conveys renders it as the unit of
the life-existence, spelled HY (Heit-Yod). The Heit letter can then
be heard as the elementary sign of the existence. The verb HaWaH
actually means to exist.
The Tet Letter
The Tet is the armoured shell, the shield: it is a protection, and is materialised in the human body by the sternum, which receives
the insertion point of the ribs (which materialise the Samekh letter)
and close the rib cage. The Tet protects the lungs-breath, and above
all it protects the heart. The Tet-Lamed root forms the root to the
verb to shelter (TLL), to cover (TL with a terminal Aleph), to
join (TYL), to mend or repair (TLH). Its protection force is
also illustrated by the lamb TaLeH Tet-Lamed-He: protection for the breath, which can also be written Tet-Lamed-Aleph: protection for eL-God. The Hebrew graph Tet-Lamed-Aleph
represents the expression the lamb of God as junction towards
Elohim. The French for lamb is agneau and is linked to Agni,
the fire (of God) (think of igniting a fire), which is also the name
of the Hindu god who carries the same notion (the eternally burning
fire in the Self). This is why the lamb is related to Easter, the
Paschal Lamb as the new appearing fire at the gate (Paschal
comes from PeSSaH: to pass through the gate), at the moment of
the spring equinox. The word LamB in English would carry the same
Adam & Eve: the solar temptation
notion through Lamed-Beit meaning towards the heart (Beit is the
heart-foyer). The lamb is often associated with the wolf ZaaB written Zain-Aleph-Beit in the Bible (and showing in Aesops fables,
also in La Fontaines fables which are derived from Aesops ones);
and the ZaaB is letter-to-word: the weapon Zain of (or against
the) Father aB. So there is a play on symbols between the Tet that
protects the heart, and the Zain male wolf-weapon that pierces
through this protective shield (cf. Isaiah 11:6 and 65:25).
The Table 1 on page 40 summarises the symbolic notions that are
attached to the letters. The Table 2 page 41, taken from Les Lettres
Hbraques from Frank Lalou, presents the evolution of these letters
from the Egyptian hieroglyphs through the Proto-Sinitic[?the French
is Proto-Sinatique?], the Greek and to Latin.
The Nun Letter
The Nun letter ( in its terminal form) is the fish of the Abyss, which represents the mutation of the individuality, of the ego that is
hung on the realities of the sensible world (the Point-from-Below
mentioned above). This individuality is chewed by the Shin-tooth
(desire to mutate, Shin is spelled Shin-Nun) and then swallowed
without being destroyed in order to be reborn in a spiritually
ascending form in the direction of the Point-from-Above. It deals
with continuity in the existence, but with a new production by a new
generation: it is an important threshold. There are two terms that
represent the fish in Hebrew: the Nun from an Aramaic origin,
and then DaG. The Nun is the masculine fish: with a masculine
essence; the one that penetrates the depth of the abyss and
inseminates the (feminine) waters in the deep. The Dag is the
feminine fish: the one that is close to light, near the surface, and that
is materialised by the innumerable small fried fish. It is the fish of
the Waters from Above. In Arabic, the word Nun makes
reference to the whale, meaning the large big fish that comes to take
Adam & Eve: the solar temptation
air at the surface, and dives to fantastic depths, covering and
inseminating the integral part of the marine depth, the Waters from
Below. In Arabic, the Nun letter has a position at the end of the
first half of the alphabet (of 28 letters), and terminates the
descending path before switching upwards and ascend the second
half. In Hebrew, the Nun carries the numerical value 50, and
represents half of the value of perfection, which is 100 purity.
The word No (Nun-Aleph) means half-cooked; the totally cooked being understood as one becoming eSh-fire him- or herself,
which means to have reached the integral part of the all the
potentialities of the Shin letter.
The Nun letter materialises the threshold of the individuality that
passes from the world of materiality to the world of spirituality, half-
way of the route.
The word I (or myself) in Hebrew is written aNY Aleph-Nun-Yod: the travelling Nun taken in the tension between the Aleph-
Elohim and the Yod-YHVH-Adona. It is also the vessel, the ship
that carries Jonas on the sea; and it is then a feminine substantive.
AYiN: Point-from-Above (Aleph-Yod-Nun: total spirituality)
ANY: I, myself (Aleph-Nun-Yod as a mutating individual)
AYiN: Point-from-Below (Ayin-Nun-Yod: total materiality)
Another word on the Nun, taken as the mutating individuality, when
it gets divided through the mutation between one state and the next:
the division is materialised by the Dalet letter, which represents the
Adam & Eve: the solar temptation
notion of threshold, of a gate. The division of the Nun is Dalet-Nun: DeN the judgement.
A judgement decides the shares or the splitting of the parties: what
belongs to whom. The notion of splitting of territories is used by
the Indo-European root DN that forms the names of the large
Central-European rivers: the Don, Danube, Dnieper, Dniester, and
of course the name of the river central to our story: the River Jordan,
YaRDeN in Hebrew. In Turkish, the sea is DeNizi.
The Tsade-Flower Letter
The Tsade letter (and in its terminal form) is a letter that is traditionally associated with the
fishhook, to the javelin, but that derives from the
Sumerian Ti character (Figure 9). The Sumerian
Ti is related to life, it is present in the word fish
(ti, it is then under the sign of the water); in the
word bird (ti), the word woman (mu-ti-in), the
words side and rib (ti), at the origin of the
play on words at the birth of iShaH (iShaH
precedes Eve, she is born from the side as much
as from the rib of the Adam).
This Ti-life is the image of the reed-lotus flower that crosses the
surface of the water: the emerging life, the link between the aquatic
side (the matter-matrix-mother) and the aerial side. The
Mesopotamian marshes were the domain of the god Enki, god of
the earth, also associated to the tree, to the fish and to the birds20.
The Enki Reeds make a reference to a funerary rite in which the
20 Peter Espak Ancient Near Eastern Gods Enki and Ea; Tartu 2006, Master Thesis on line at: http://dspace.utlib.ee/dspace/bitstream/10062/958/5/espakpeeter.pdf , p109.
Figure 9: Sumerian Ti
Adam & Eve: the solar temptation
deceased is laid on a bed of reeds before being cremated, on a
reserved terrain in the middle of the marshes21. In Hebrew, this letter
belongs, according to Fabre dOlivet, in the quality of consonant to the
whistling touch, and depicts all the objects that have a relationship with the air
and the wind. As a symbolic image, it represents Mans asylum, and the term
where it leads. It is the final and terminative sign connected to the ideas of scission,
of term, of solution, of goal. When placed at the beginning of a word, it indicates
the movement that leads toward the term of which it is the sign. Placed at the
end of a word, it marks the very term where it has led.
The Tsade forms the word flower TsiYTs (Tsade-Yod-Tsade), tree or wood eTs Ayin-Tsade, which represent any vegetal matter as an evolutionary process. It is on this wood eTs that
Abraham will lay his son Isaac (YTsHaQ in Hebrew) in order to
sacrifice him, similar to the funerary rite of the decease on the Enki
Reeds. The Ayin letter Point-from-Below representing materiality and temporality, the tree eTs represents the end, the
term of materiality and temporality, that is to say the whole set of
steps that correspond to the progressive
mutation of total materiality into total
spirituality, and to the mutation of total
temporality into eternity: matter at work.
The tree is the symbol of the suite of the
spiritual mutations in Man, in the double
descending (Tree of Knowledge) and
ascending (Tree of Lives) directions. The
reed-flower is the key symbol of the early
part of Genesis. Christ has a reed in his right hand after his trial with
21 Tablettes sumriennes archaques, matriaux pour servir lhistoire de la socit sumrienne H. Genouillag, 1909, on line at :
http://www.archive.org/stream/tablettessumri00genouoft/tablettessumri00genouoft_djvu.txt. Jesus has a reed in his right hand when he is crucified (Matthew 27:29).
Figure 10: Tree in Chinese (mu)
Adam & Eve: the solar temptation
Ponce Pilate. The reed-lotus is an everlasting figure of spirituality
that connects the two worlds of the Waters-from-Below and the
Waters-from-Above. The Chinese hieroglyph of the tree also adopts
the drawing of getting from one world to the other. It is what the
Tsade letter represents: the dynamics of this evolution. In the word
tree eTs, the Ayin letter is matter and the Tsade is the mutating
dynamics applied to matter.
The Tsade-Qof: Larynx and Pharynx
Tsade is found in words that relate to vomiting (TseaH with a central Aleph), to blow (TsBH), to bloom (TsOTs), to get down
(TsNH). The Tsade may represent the passage towards the Qof , which is the next letter in the alphabet and that materialises a duct
canal of a process leading to somewhere. The Tsade together with
the Qof represent in our essay the couple larynx-pharynx, the throat,
the strategic crossing area of air and matter, leading towards the lung
or towards the belly, according to the end (QeTs: Qof-Tsade) of
what is swallowed by the mouth Pe . QaPaTs means to shut (the mouth); QaTsaPh is to get angry.
When the larynx and the pharynx are subjected to the action of the
diaphragm Heit , one gets the laugh TsaHaQ. QOTs is the disgust, the word could also mean to demolish, to tear; and
QYTs is to awake; QaYiTs is the summer, the summer fruits,
and QaTsiYR is the action to harvest what has ripen. To vomit
or regurgitate is QiYa (with Aleph) and we shall meet that word
with Jonas, who gets vomited by the big fish, together with the word
QiYQaYON usually translated as the castor oil plant that provokes
vomiting.
Adam & Eve: the solar temptation
Table 1: Hebrew letters and attached symbolic values
Lettre Notion porte par la lettre Lettre Notion porte par la lettre
Aleph not pronounced: symbol of
Elohim, cosmic energy, total
spirituality. Numbers 1 and 1000. Lamed L: link to the far away,
cartilaginous ribs, teaching, guide
through the humid; preposition
toward and for. Number 30.
Beit B: the foyer, the house, the
heart. Preposition in . Duality 2. Mem and final Mem M: Waters, sea,
origin, matrix, totality. Number 40
and 600.
Gimel G: the camel going around
the enclosure of the dry. Slow
dynamics of growth, of what
spread and envelops. Number 3.
Nun and final Nun N: Fish of the
Abyss, new mutating individuality, the
son, the generation. Number 50 and
700.
Dalet D: the gate. Growth through
division, emanation, structure,
threshold. Number 4. Samekh S: the supporting pillar, the
cycle, the circle, the circumference,
the round. The ribs structuring the
thoracic cage. Number 60.
He H: the breath, the lung,
feminine intuition, inspiration.
Number 5. Ayin not pronounced: the source of
knowledge, the eye. Symbol of total
materiality and temporality. Number
70.
Wav V: the hook. Sign of
verticalisation, also the word
and . Number 6.
Phe and Pe P: the mouth, the word,
the opening, the fructification.
Number 80 & 800
Zain Z: the male weapon that will
pierce the Tet shield. Masculine sex
organ. Number 7. Tsade and final Tsade Ts: the larynx
splitting air and matter; symbol of the
dynamics of the mutating matter
towards a term, an end. Number 90
and 900.
Heit H guttural: diaphragm.
Barrier used as a support point to
grow. Elementary life. Number 8.
Qof Q: the pharynx leading down and
through the eye of its needle (Adams
apple). Number 100
Tet T: Shield protecting the heart
and the Nun. Sternum. Sign of
resistance. Number 9.
Resh R: the head, the principle, the
straight line. Symbol of the rational
intelligence. Number 200
Yod Y: Symbol-letter for YHVH-
Adona, point with no dimension.
Yod is at the origin of all letters.
Symbol of accomplishment and
manifestation. Number 10.
Shin et Sin Sh et S: the tooth, the
rock. Carries the force of Shaddai the
Almighty (3 Yod). Desire to mutate,
trident. Number 300
Kaf and terminal Kaf K: open
palm of the hand: to grab the
dimension of something. Number
20 and 500.
Tav T: the form, the sign, the mark.
Lower end of the sternum (xiphoid
bone). Number 400
Adam & Eve: the solar temptation
Table 2: Evolution of the Hebrew alphabet (source: F. Lalou, all rights reserved)
Adam & Eve: the solar temptation
In the Celtic Gaul tongue, the Qof letter has become a hard G and
gave a number of words that relate to the throat: gosier, gorge
(throat), gosiller (to shout, but originally to vomit), and at the
pronominal form crier: to cry, to scream, to shout; QeRa in
Hebrew, from where the Arabic Koran word is derived (Koran
means the call, the shout).
An important term that we shall cross very often in our story is
MiTsRaYiM: Egypt, with a Tsade letter in second position. What is
Egypt? It is the most powerful kingdom on Earth at the time; its
authority is omnipresent, it administers all the territories from the
current Sudan in the south to the borders of Mesopotamia and
Assyria in the north. In Genesis, it is depicted as a territory of
servitude, of enslavement: Hebrew people are said to be slaves in
Egypt. Its wealth allows them to avoid scarcity: it is a kind of
territory that is held in contempt, but at the same time it supplies
food and safety. The face-to-face between Moses and Pharaoh (cf.
page XXX) will allow the Hebrew People to free themselves from
slavery by crossing the Waters (water is MaYiM in Hebrew), after
the terrible sequence of the plagues of Egypt. But then MiTsRaYiM
may be read MaYiM (water) with the root TsR Tsade-Resh in the
middle of the waters; and this root TsR means to cut through, to
split open, to crack. TsoR is the scissors or chisel, and the verb
YaTsoR used when YHVH-Adona Elohim makes Adam in
Genesis 2 means to cut through, to sharpen, to prune, to sculpt. So
Egypt is the country where waters are cut through, not only in the
story of the Exodus, but in its very name. This dynamics of cutting
through the Waters is to be compared to what I have said on the
Tsade letter itself, which goes from the hidden dark matrix in the
depth of the Abyss to cut through the surface of the Waters and
bloom in the open light, in the air. In other words, it is a passage
from the work of darkness into the world of light. It is a baptism. It
is a birth. The Hebrew People crosses the Waters to find itself in the
dry of the desert, and gives birth to the Yod (symbol-letter of
Adam & Eve: the solar temptation
YHVH-Adona) that is in the centre of the word MaYiM. It is then
nourished by the manna of YHVH-Adona.
Once turned around, the Ts-R root becomes R-Ts that forms the
verb RaTsaH: to will, to want.
I would like to remark, as a conclusion to this paragraph on letters,
that a number of Hebrew letters form roots in Latin or Saxon words
that look consistent with the Hebrew notions they carry; either
through their symbolic values, either more simply as ancestors of
letters that constitute words in English, in French (and other Latin
tongues) or German:
Table 1: Hebrew letters and analogous values in English, French or German
Hebrew Letter
Symbolic Value
Transformation in English,
French
Illustrations in English, French or German words
Resh
Principle, what is true in general
r final dans les verbes
Rule, regular. In French, the infinitive forms of the verbs ending with -er, -ir, -oir.
P
Fructification, liberation, aperture
ph ou f (via the
Greek Phi )
Fruit (English and French), Frschte (allemand) Product, production Port Aperture, open (English)
Qof
Crossing of air and matter q
hard g hard c
Gosier, gorge, goret, gosiller (French) Garrot (English, French) Col, collet, cou, collar Cry, scream, to cosset o.s.
Dalet
Augmentation by division
d
Division, differentiation, prefix de- in words indicating a division (depart, destroy, do, individual)
Tav
Mark, sign, form of the forms
-ty
Suffix -ty in the feminine words indicating the sign of a quality (novelty, honesty, femininity, etc.)
Lamed
Link, long : what is far united in being far away
l
Ligament, link, long. eL (Elohim) is at the origin of the French articles le la les via Arabic (Allah)
Adam & Eve: the solar temptation
Mem
Sign of the undifferentia-ted collective origin : the matrix (terminal Mem)
m
Marine, maritime, matrix. Maman (French) Mutter (German) Mother (English)
Ayin
Eye Source of knowledge from matter and time
et O dans ou ou om
In French : il, uvre, ouvrage, uf (notion of source). O in ombre (eBeR en hbreu) qui est ct, ce qui passe devant en marchant vers loccident.
Gimel
Organic enveloping enclosure
C G hard or soft
GN in gyne-, gown, vagina, engender, guard / guardian, gaine (French), Prefix gam- (marriage), Gahanna), recognize, suffix -gee (Gaia, hypogea, apogee, etc.), gestation, gesture, garden, Garten (German), jardin (French), gnosis.
Adam & Eve: the solar temptation
Third Key: the Grammar
After the letters, the grammar is a reading key in the sense that the
conjugation of the verbs excludes the present tense. Verbs are
conjugated according to two major tenses: the accomplished TOB
(as a past) and the unaccomplished Ra (as a future). Verbs
depict an action or a change of state: they belong to the domain of
mutations (German has kept the final Nun letter in most of its verbs
at the infinitive form: sein, leben, sehen, hren, essen), and verbs are
conjugated as a function of a dynamical evolution. What we call
present is very rarely rendered in the text, and when it is, it is
rendered through an active or passive participle: he is eating: he
eats. When it is rendered this way, there is no evolution; it is a static
state.
The Tetragrammaton is sometimes translated in English as I am the one who is, but in Hebrew this grammatical form does not
exist, and this Tetragrammaton, with which I can see a link with the
verb to be : the Yod of YHVH-Adona framed by the breath He, cannot be translated and is not pronounced. The best
translation would be I am the one who will make become. When
it appears in the text, one says Adona for Lord22. I write it in
this essay YHVH-Adona.
Another element to check is the turning-over, the reversal of the
unaccomplished into the accomplished, through adding the
consonant Wav as a prefix (so to the right of the verb) as illustrated Figure 11). The unaccomplished tense is also indicated by adding a
Yod at the beginning of a verb, immediately after a Wav in the right-to-left reading direction). The Yod is the sign of what remains to be
accomplished
22 Actually, My Lord.
Adam & Eve: the solar temptation
Lets read what Jesus tells about it in Matthew 5:17-18, here the King
James Version:
17 Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I
am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.
18 For verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot or
one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.
This jot that Jesus mentions is the iota: the smallest sign, the Yod
brick-sign that makes all the other letters. The Yod being the
smallest of all letters, to change one iota (the Greek Yod) means
that all the edifice of the alphabet, then the world is upside down
and overturned.
The Yod is the sign of the manifestation: the word YaD in Hebrew
means the hand (one sees the mani- word for hand in Latin in
manifestation: that can be grabbed in the hand). In front of a verb, it
indicates the unaccomplished mode (future) at the same time it is
the personal pronoun of the third person, singular form. This means
that all the verses that start with He will say YoMeR are usually
The elusive present Unaccomplished
Ra
Accomplished
TOB
Wav letter
Wav letter
Time arrow
Figure 11: The grammatical dynamics between accomplished and unaccomplished
Adam & Eve: the solar temptation
preceded by an reversal Wav in order to transform the
unaccomplished into an accomplished mode:
WaYoMeR : And he said at the accomplished mode, past tense;
YoMeR : He will say at the unaccomplished mode, future tense.
From a grammatical point, the present tense is then out of time,
it is an image of eternity. Eternity is in the present, in the elusive and
uncatchable moment of the reversal between the unaccomplished
and the accomplished.
Verbs have intensity variations, meaning an energetic differential in
the action or the state that they represent. One describes the modes
Qal (to appreciate or to eat, for instance), a passive Niphal (to be
appreciated, to be eaten), an active intensive Piel (to love, to devour),
a passive intensive Pual (to be loved, to be devoured), a reflexive
intensive Hitpael (to love itself, to devour itself), an active causal
mode Hiphil (to have made liked, to have made devoured), a passive
causative Hofal (to have been made loved, to have been made
devoured). The personal pronouns are included in the conjugated
forms; they do not appear as such (there are exceptions). The first
persons of singular and plural forms are common, while the 2nd and
3rd persons have specific masculine and feminine forms. There are
strong and weak verbs, which conjugations vary with the way the
consonants are structuring the verb.
The root eT Aleph-Tav is used in Hebrew to introduce an object
complement: the object of the verbal action. This root indicates the
potentiality and the power (Aleph letter) of the sign, the form (Tav
letter), and means the proper essence of the word to which it is
attached. As a word, it is almost never translated. In English and in
French, it could be seen as related to the suffix -ty illustrating the
Adam & Eve: the solar temptation
quality of feminine substantives or adjectives: sensitive
sensitivity; feminine femininity; etc. I shall mention during the
study