002 Maps of Meaning: 2 Contending with Chaos (TVO)

So today I’m gonna tell you the best three stories that I know, I think, and I think these stories are absolutely, phenomenally potent. The reason for that is that I think they illustrate in an extraordinarily powerful way the nature of the processes that led to the establishment of western democratic ideals.

Mircea Eliade, whose work I rely on substantially to make the following argument, has taken western academic culture to task in a manner that hasn’t fully been revealed yet. He said that, like all human cultures, the west is parochial and narrow in its viewpoint. Although over the last three hundred years there’s been a substantial amount of cross-cultural intermingling and a potential broadening of philosophical and religious horizon, that broadening has not been sufficiently complete.

If we build on the viewpoint that I’ve been developing with you over the last few courses and make the presupposition that religious modes of thinking are more phenomenological than they are rational, which means that they deal more with what you experience, say, than with the objective world, if we look at archaic religious stories through that lens, then they can start to open up. Given that, I want to open up three religious stories to you today: two in depth, and one only in passing because we’ll return to it later.

I’ll start with the Judeo-Christian Myth of Genesis, and when I say myth, of course, you all know this already. But when I say myth, I don’t mean untruth; I mean a form of knowledge that’s narrative in structure and predicated on presumptions that aren’t empirical. A myth describes processes of transformation; a myth describes them, a myth describes the process whereby elements of experience come into being and transform.

On Genesis, the fundamental structural elements of Genesis are the Word of God and chaos. The Hebrew words for chaos and waste are tehom, for chaos, and tohu, for waste. Tehom in particular, although tohu as well, are very interesting words because you can track their derivation historically. Sometimes if you contract the derivation of words historically, you can get some sense of the cultural milieu out of which the word sprang.

We know what tyomat means because we have written records of a story that involves a character named Tiamat. Tiamat is a dragon who lives at the bottom of the ocean. In the oldest creation myth we have, which is the Enuma Elish, the Sumerian creation myth, Sumeria, Babylon, Acadia, are rightly regarded as the birthplace of modern western civilization.

In Genesis, two processes unite to produce being. The first of those processes or states is chaos, represented by tehom or tohu. The second of those processes is logos, and logos is another word that has an extraordinarily broad range of meaning. It’s generally transcribed in the Christian tradition as the Word, and it’s identified with Christ.

This is a very peculiar identification because it’s the Word of God that creates order out of chaos. The Word of God in Genesis is a phenomenon that predates the birth of Christ infinitely from a classical religious perspective, so the fact that the two beings are identified is of great peculiarity and also of great interest.

The fundamental story of Genesis is something like this, and it’s perhaps the most brilliant contribution of Judeo-Christian thought to world history; its total impact is virtually incalculable. The idea is this: that chaos can be conceptualized as something that has an essentially feminine aspect as a matrix, and a matrix is a structure from which other structures emerge.

The story in Genesis makes the hypothesis that logos, which is the Word of God, a phenomenon associated with speech, communication, and logic—logos: logic, rationality, courage, exploration—all combined into a single entity or trait. The combination of logos and chaos is what brings order into being; that’s what the story in Genesis means.

It’s not an empirical description of the origin of objects; it’s a phenomenological description of the origin of experience, the idea being that without the piercing glance of whatever consciousness is, whatever the background of experience is, the matrix, chaos cannot be conceptualized as real. It takes the interplay between the feminine principle, chaos, and the masculine principle, logos, in order to produce being.

Now that’s of substantial importance when you give some consideration to the fact that immediately in Genesis, after the establishment of livable order, the deity Yahweh identifies the individual human being with logos. Right, made in God’s image; that’s the essential characteristic of the human being. What that means is that the logos that operates in human beings, which is this capacity to make order out of chaos, is identical to the principle that gives rise to the cosmos from a mythological perspective, so it partakes of the deity in a very direct sense insofar as being itself is dependent on its operation.

Now it’s still possible to claim, given that perspective, that a story with that sort of structure is superstitious and that it doesn’t bear any relationship to what reality is, what actually constitutes reality. But you have to understand that that story, old as it is, is predicated on older stories, and it’s on the ground that those older stories establish that our entire concept of natural rights rests.

So if you believe that natural rights have an existence more than merely arbitrary, the reason you believe that is because those rights are predicated on the ideas that are expressed in these myths. Okay, so now we’re gonna go back in time to Sumeria, and I’m gonna show you how the Sumerian creation myth lays itself out. Not only that, I’m going to describe to you the direct political implications of the Enuma Elish, the Sumerian creation myth, because the political implications of that myth are well understood.

The political structure of Sumeria was directly associated with the structure of the myth because Sumeria was regarded as the earthly representative of the highest God in the Mesopotamian Pantheon, whose name was Marduk. So insofar as you were Emperor, the reason that you were Emperor—and this is what gave your sovereignty legitimacy—right, because sovereignty has to have legitimacy; otherwise, there are constant revolutions. What gave sovereignty legitimacy in Mesopotamia was the identification of the emperor with Marduk, and that had certain implications for the emperor, which we’ll discuss in some detail.

So the story starts like this. You’ve got this Dragon, Tiamat, and Tiamat is a great primordial beast who lives at the bottom of the ocean. The ocean is water, and water is associated with the primal element in archaic thinking. I told you there are reasons for that already. If you viewed the transformation of deserts as a consequence of rain, you can understand why water would be considered the element that gives life, right? That the element that brings life forth, and we know from an evolutionary perspective that that’s accurate. We know that we’re 90 percent water.

So to consider water the primal element is no trivial conclusion. No less than presuming that the sun is the ultimate source of light, the ultimate god, because the sun is the ultimate source of life as far as the earth is concerned, right? Because it’s the source of all our energy. These aren’t stupid concepts, all right?

So Tiamat is this horrible creature that lurks at the bottom of the primal element, all right? Now she has a husband, Apsu. Now the Mesopotamian creation myth doesn’t say much about Apsu. We only know that he’s the male consort of the Dragon of Chaos. We know from reading other sources of mythology that the male consort of the Dragon of Chaos generally represents either logos or culture. So we’re gonna make the presupposition in this particular case that the husband of Chaos is Order or Culture, okay?

Then the Mesopotamians don’t say much about that; the development of the idea of Apsu or Order or Culture doesn’t take new force until the ancient Egyptians, and we’ll talk about them today too. Okay, so Tiamat and Apsu are locked into a kind of sexual embrace according to the Mesopotamian creation. What does that mean? It kind of means two things. It means that they’re not really distinguishable because they’re locked into this embrace, and it also means that they’re up to something creative because the act of sexual congress in mythology is most usefully, most frequently utilized as representation of something creative or as representation of the probability of some new form coming to be, right?

All right. So Apsu and Tiamat are locked into this embrace in a state that other creation myths describe as egg-like, the Pre-Cosmogonic egg. Their intermingling gives rise to the initial state of being according to the Sumerians, and the initial state of being according to the Sumerians is characterized by the dominion of the elder gods.

These gods, being none too bright, make a tremendous amount of racket doing things. Well, what does that mean exactly? Well, it means something like this. They make a lot of racket and they cause a lot of trouble. They make a lot of wind, and all of their racket and trouble and wind and activity rouses Tiamat. What does that mean? Well, it means if you do things, you get in trouble. It means even if you’re trying to solve problems, you get into trouble because the solution to a problem tends to generate a whole bunch of new problems, right? It’s like the Hydra.

So what it means is that it’s more or less fated that any form of activity whatsoever is likely to produce the threat of catastrophe. Of course, we’re absolutely keenly aware of that in the modern world because we’re possessed by this sense that all of our frenetic activity, all of our frenetic motivated activity, is producing alterations in the world order such that Nature itself is going to be destroyed and eliminate us, right? That’s classic Sumerian fear. Nothing’s changed in the last 5,000 years.

The Sumerians presumed that once the elder gods were constructed and started moving around on the planet, their activity—their mindless activity—because remember these aren’t well-integrated motivational forces, they’re more like primordial beasts, right? Their unintegrated activity risks plunging everything back into Chaos. Well, Tiamat’s the representative of Chaos—this generative Chaos—but so what if the Sumerians say, “Well, the elder gods cause a lot of racket, they move around the planet and they upset Tiamat" and she decides that enough is enough and she’s gonna wipe them out.

So she’s sitting at the bottom of the ocean, fuming away, as the elder gods go about their business, and then they take one step too many and they kill Apsu, who’s her husband. Now, the Sumerian creation myth doesn’t say much about this, but we know that Apsu is the male consort of Chaos. That makes him Order.

So what happens is the elder gods destroy Order itself. They destroy Culture itself, and as soon as you destroy Culture, all hell breaks loose, and that’s exactly what happens in this Sumerian creation myth. Tiamat emerges; she’s gonna wipe everything out, and the world will revert back to its primordial, non-existent state.

Now all the gods get wind of this, and of course, they’re just terrified because they know that this thing that gave rise to them, whatever it is—the matrix of being—can easily wipe them out at a moment’s notice. Despite the fact that they are transpersonal and immortal, and characterized by a certain amount of power, in the face of absolute Chaos, they’re insufficient.

Now this occurrence is extending over a protracted period of time, and as the elder gods are threatened, they’re also breeding and mating and producing new forms. They produce a great, great grandson, whose name is Marduk. Now Marduk has a lot of very interesting attributes.

So the attributes are described in the Enuma Elish in the following manner: this is what Marduk’s father sees when his wife, Damkina, gives birth to Marduk. “So when he—who’s Marduk’s father—saw his son, he rejoiced, he beamed, his heart was filled with joy. He distinguished him and conferred upon him double equality with the gods.”

Okay, so that’s that first indication that whatever Marduk represents is something that’s elevated beyond the normal status of a primordial deity. “So that he was highly exalted and surpassed them in everything. Artfully arranged beyond comprehension were his members, not fit for human understanding, hard to look upon; four were his eyes, four were his ears. When his lips moved, fire blazed forth. Each of his four ears grew large and likewise, his eyes, to see everything. He was exalted among gods. Surpassing was his form. His members were gigantic. He was surpassing in height. Mariyutu, Mariyutu.” One of his names. “Sun of the sun god, the sun god of the gods.”

Okay. Complex bit of poetry. Says a bunch of things. It says well whatever Marduk is, is the offspring of the gods. Whatever Marduk is, is characterized by heightened awareness, right? Because he has four ears, and they’re large. Whatever Marduk is characterized by is the status that surpasses that of his fathers.

Whatever he’s characterized by is associated with the power of speech, real power, because when he speaks, fire spurts forth. Marduk is also huge, but more importantly, he’s associated in this particular poem with the sun. Why is that? Well, the sun dominates consciousness, right? Because we’re conscious during the day. Most of our brain is visual cortex, so we’re visual creatures.

So when the sun rises is when the day begins. So Marduk is also associated with whatever deity dominates the day, and that’s the deity of consciousness. There’s more to the story of the Sun, right? Because the sun is also something that rises and sets repeatedly, and that means that the deity that dominates consciousness is characterized by a cyclical nature. That’s a Sun myth.

Sun rises in the morning, renewed as a consequence of fighting a terrible battle in the night with the enemies of everything that’s associated with consciousness: a classic solar myth. So Apsu and Tiamat give rise to the world of the gods. The activity of the world of gods reawakens Tiamat; she decides to destroy everything.

But at that moment, the gods give birth to Marduk. Now that’s a typical motif, which is that the hero is always born at the time of maximal crisis. The reason for that is, in part, it’s simple. Look, if your culture is dealing well with the forces of the unknown, so that everything is static but productive, so that problems themselves don’t arise, there’s no reason for the hero, right? There’s no reason to confront the unknown. It’s only when crisis beckons that the birth of the hero is necessary.

Marduk constitutes the birth of the hero, and they say, “Look, you know, we’re in real trouble. Unless someone goes out there and confronts Tiamat straight on, she’s gonna wipe everything out. It’s a dangerous and terrifying job, but somebody has to do it.” Marduk says, “Oh that’s no problem, but I got a few rules here, and this is the first rule: I’m in charge from here on forward.”

What does that mean exactly? Well, these archaic stories are polysemous, or polysemic in Northrup Frye’s terminology, and what that means is that they can be read validly at multiple levels of analysis simultaneously. And so one thing it means is that if you take the 2-year-old child who’s essentially under the dominion of assorted primordial gods and goddesses—right? Aggression, fear, panic, and according to Freud, a certain degree of sexual aggression—the child moves from motivated state to domination for motivated state.

It isn’t until the age of 3 and 4 when, under the pressure applied by the social world and as a consequence of the maturation of the prefrontal cortex, which matures throughout childhood and adolescence and doesn’t reach its final form until perhaps into the early 20s, all of those fundamental motivational forces start taking on a structured relationship to one another.

Which is to say that once your personality becomes integrated, a single motive force forward has to bring all of these underlying motivational systems into some sort of harmonious arrangement. Okay, so let’s see what the Sumerians are doing here. First of all, they’re doing psychology. They’re trying to figure out, given the dominion of the elder gods— the indisputable dominion of the elder gods—instincts, who should rule? Right? What should be in charge? How do you construct a hierarchy of values?

Then more complexly, when you integrate a state—which is what the Mesopotamians did, right? The first great civilization—the first time hundreds of tribes were hammered into some sort of stable, hierarchical order, how do you represent that order? “So Marduk gets his act together; the gods all meet in a huge chamber; they elect him king and then they prepare him for battle.

When the gods, the fathers, beheld the power of his word, they were glad and did homage, saying ‘Marduk is king’. They bestowed upon him a scepter, a throne, and a royal robe. They gave him an irresistible weapon, smiting the enemy, saying, ‘Go and cut off the life of Tiamat. May the winds carry her blood to out-of-the-way places.’ After the gods, his fathers, had determined the destiny of Marduk, they set him on the road, the way to success and attainment.”

So then he goes to the “heart of darkness,” so to speak, and confronts Tiamat, accuses her of treachery, and challenges her to battle. “When Tiamat heard this, she became like one in a frenzy and lost her reason. She cried out loud and furiously. To the very roots, her two legs shook back and forth. She recited an incantation, repeatedly casting her spell. As for the gods of battle, they sharpened their weapons. Tiamat and Marduk, the wisest of the gods, advanced against one another. They pressed on into combat and approached for battle.”

Okay, well things don’t go so well for Tiamat from this point forward. The first thing that Marduk does is encapsulate her in a net, and I think that’s a really interesting metaphor because that’s essentially what human beings do when they encounter the unknown, right? They encapsulate it in an explanatory network, so it’s a way of binding up the anomaly, or the unknown, and giving it a substantive form.

“Then he cuts her into pieces, and then he makes the world out of her pieces. In fact, one of Marduk’s names is ‘He Who Makes Ingenious Things’ as a consequence of the combat with Tiamat.” Now that’s very, very interesting because what it means is that the Sumerians are presenting in metaphorical form the notion that when the chips are down, the survival of being depends on the capacity of whatever Marduk represents—the solar god—to encounter the matrix of being, to cut it into pieces, and to make the world.

If you think about it in those terms, it’s a very straightforward story, right? It’s basically the story of human beings; fundamentally, the story of human beings because we, in the words of a famous evolutionary psychologist, whose name completely escapes me, occupy the cognitive niche, right? Our mode of being is creativity in the face of the unknown, and when Chaos threatens the established mode of being, it’s necessary for us to put our creativity into action and to carve out new territory as a consequence of encounter with the unknown.

Why? Well, because we can take the world apart with our hands and put it together in new ways. Then we can code what we’ve done verbally, and we can transmit it to another person, and then they can do the same thing. We’re all doing this all the time, and we’re all telling each other how we’re doing it. That’s how the embodiment of logos in the human being, which is precisely equivalent to the Sumerian notion of Marduk, that’s precisely how it is that we’re constantly capable of redeeming the world.

That’s why you make resolutions at New Year’s; because the new you is supposed to be born at the new year. Okay, so what do the Mesopotamians do at the new year? They take their king and bring him outside the city. Now you have to understand: outside the city is chaos, right? Because these are city-states. When you go outside the dominion of the human, you’re in chaos. Then the priest makes the emperor kneel and takes all his marks of status off him, so he’s reduced to his essence fundamentally, bereft of his social persona.

Then he slaps him with a glove and humiliates him, and the king is forced to recount his sins, right? Everything he did in the last year that wasn’t up to Marduk standards, so to speak. You can see that would be a pretty useful thing to have somebody who’s in power do on a regular basis, right? Because it reminds them that they’re in fact subject to a transpersonal structure whose nature isn’t precisely evident but is nonetheless there, which is the case.

Act like Marduk, or all hell will break loose and demolish your kingdom, which of course is true now, as it was then. So the emperor gets humiliated, he has to recount his sins, then he’s locked up, and then he reenacts the battle with Tiamat, and when he emerges victorious, he’s locked up with a ritual prostitute, a hierodule, and they mate.

Why? Well, the hierodule, the ritual prostitute, represents Tiamat. Now why the hell would that be? Because Tiamat’s a dragon, right? A horrible man-eating dragon that lives at the bottom of the ocean, which is to say that in any encounter with the unknown, as difficult, traumatic, and violent as that might be, there’s also the possibility for something creative to emerge as a consequence.

Right? Because it’s out of the unknown that we mine new information. So insofar as the Mesopotamian emperor acted out the role of Marduk, then he was a good emperor. Then he deserved his sovereignty, and literally as well as figuratively, insofar as he did play that role, then the society was going to remain not only stable but constantly updated. Because he’s engaged in this constant creative contact with the unknown, aided and abetted by his attempts to remember his own inadequacies and weaknesses and to do something about them.

Okay, so that’s a pretty interesting story, and it gets even more interesting when you start to understand that the Judeo-Christian myth is assimilated to the Sumerian creation myth by the union of the notions of chaos and Tiamat. So the logos in Judeo-Christian thinking, the word of God that produces order out of chaos, is also essentially equivalent, at least metaphorically speaking, to whatever Marduk represents in the Sumerian creation myth.

We know that—I mean, our relationship with the Enuma Elish is obscured by time, but our relationship with the stories that lay out the fundamental substructure of western culture is not so ameliorated, even though we may not believe them explicitly anymore. They still sit at the basis of our society.