-Caveat Lector-
from "THOTH: A Catastrophics Newsletter," VOL III, No. 14, Nov 1, 1999
THE MYTHIC ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
Dave Talbott
[Excerpted from a discussion of etymology onthe Kronia electronic
discussion group]
Language points back to its source, and the source is unified.
The first systematic, written languages are rooted in the urge of
ancient peoples to restore and to re-live the original
"wholeness" of the world. Language arose as an integral
component of sacred activity. Our word "sacred" itself comes
from the Latin _sacer_, "holy", the core idea of which is
"wholeness". To honor the wholeness of the First Time is to
"remember". Written language emerged from ritual practices, as
an instrument of remembering--of this principle I am highly
confident.
The common assumption, however, is that the early languages
reflect little more than separate fragments of human experience.
And this is where we must confront the fundamental mistake of
conventional etymology, I believe. The experts will see a
thousand discrete objects and rudimentary human experiences
associated with them. And they will assume that, from the
primitive sounds linked to these experiential fragments, ancient
cultures gradually forged the first systematic languages. Though
this may be a reasonable assumption, given other assumptions
about the nature of human origins, the Saturn model offers a
radically different possibility--that the ancient languages arose
with remarkable suddenness, as an effect of intensely experienced
events, and with unified references in the sky.
Unified references can only mean a unified substratum of
language, no less significant than the unified substratum of the
rites, myths, and celestial symbols to which language is so
indebted. Moreover, the myths, rites, and symbols preserve
countless nuances of the original experience, and together they
offer a useful guide for exposing the underpinnings of language
itself. A range of seemingly DIFFERENT meanings, connected to
similar or identical roots, will reflect the things which human
imagination saw in celestial forms no longer present and events
no longer occurring. In the cosmic pillar imagination will see a
mountain AND a river, though in our world a mountain does not
look like a river. In the spiraling Venus it will see a serpent
AND the spiraling sidelock worn by the warrior-hero, though a
serpent "down here" does not look like a lock of hair. In the
polar enclosure it will see a circular serpent (uroborus) AND a
cosmic city. In the four-fold "radiance" of Venus it will see
four pillars of the sky AND four luminous "winds". But remove the
celestial references, and the similar or identical words they
inspired will have little or no common link, and attempts to
relate them will appear far-fetched at best.
It is a fundamental mistake, I believe, to separate the study of
language origins from the study of myth. The first languages
speak for the "defining" events in the mythical age of the gods--
the archetypes. But the true unity of these first expressions
will remain unnoticed until the celestial references are fully
acknowledged. The origins of written language take us back to
the Golden Age of Saturn--the forms and aspects of the primeval
Unity--and the more complex episodes which followed the Saturnian
epoch. To remember does not just mean to recall; it means
symbolically to re-live or recreate the organic whole, which was
lost through catastrophe. In its original ritual contexts, this
is a very "Saturnian" concept--to "re-MEMBER", to re-constitute
symbolically the "limbs" or distinct aspects of the original
Unity.
But wait! What is the basis for this not-so-subtle suggestion of
an archaic linkage of words which, as far as I am aware, no self-
respecting etymologist would countenance? Is there any ground
for suspecting a connection between the Latin _membrum_, the
limbs or constituents of a whole, and _memor_, remembering?
I do not mean to insult the experts. But the question deserves
to be investigated from a new vantage point, one outside all
familiar boundaries. A conceptual relationship is not only
intimated by the root meaning of sacred activity, but by the
earliest language relating to "words" (the instrument of
remembering) and "limbs". Egyptian religious texts, for example,
celebrate the VISIBLE words spoken by the creator-god,
identifying these "words" with the forms and aspects of creation
itself. This identity is embedded in both the Egyptian language
and in the declarations of the religious texts. The "words"
shouted by the creator, the Unity, meant nothing else than the
god's radiant "limbs". Once such connections are noted, is it
appropriate to treat the ideas (words/memory and limbs) as wholly
disconnected? And if the ideas ARE clearly connected in the
earliest expressions of language, is it reasonable to ignore the
possibility that these very connections might have echoed into
more recent languages as identical or similar roots, the nature
of the original connections (celestial references) having been
lost?
I am convinced that we are surrounded by the echoes of myth-
making imagination, and that language (even modern English,
despite the millennia separating our time from the roots of myth)
offers unlimited opportunity to explore the connections. But to
discuss this possibility one must suspend certain "rules" of
etymology. Specifically, one must suspend any assumption which
could not be correct if the hypothesized age of Saturn and the
planetary gods actually occurred. Though giving this benefit of
the doubt to the Saturn model asks a lot from the specialists, a
new idea cannot be properly assessed without confronting its
logical implications.
Ev Cochrane says:
I would offer the following thoughts from a trained linguist-
Rens van der Slujis. Dr. van der Slujis is from the Netherlands
and wrote to me from out of nowhere about how much he had
benefited from his chance stumbling across the Saturn theory on
my web site. Here are his comments:
Dr. van der Slujis:
"You seem quite convinced that the Saturn theory will influence
linguistic theory greatly. It is not altogether clear to me what
you're pointing at with these words. In my view, language must
already have arisen long before the celestial events began to
happen, so that the impact of the Saturn theory on our
speculations with respect to the origin of language might be
negligible.
Dave Talbott responds:
I do not believe that the languages familiar to us can be traced
back to, or will point back to, any systematic language prior to
the polar configuration. Myth, rites, pictographs, sacred
architecture, and written language appear to have emerged
simultaneously, and they appear to be so fully entwined as to
preclude a primitive formulation of one in isolation from the
others. This doesn't mean that certain building blocks of
language couldn't have existed previously, but even on that
question I suspect that we're in for some surprises.
In the Egyptian hieroglyphic system, for example, one finds
numerous connections of rudimentary building blocks to aspects of
the polar configuration, and I now believe that this includes the
full range of hieroglyphs themselves. There are no terrestrial
references. Though most (but not all) of the SYMBOLS are drawn
from nature and from human activity, the THING SYMBOLIZED, when
investigated, always turns out to be an attribute of the
configuration, standing in a defined relationship to other
aspects of the configuration. And in a sense, this shouldn't
surprise us, considering that the entire focus of the earliest
sources is religious. The sources celebrate only two things: 1)
the forms and activities of the gods, and 2) a human connection
to the gods, particularly through the person of the king, who is
seen as the priest or servant of the universal sovereign.
The royal and priestly function of the sacred written language
is, however, progressively extended, democratized, and
specialized, and that appears to be part of a rapid process of
fragmentation in the absence of the original celestial
references. In fact, it is in the very nature of language that
it will evolve more rapidly toward localization and
specialization than the myths and symbols. And this is why the
nuances of specific word roots did not contribute significantly
to the development of the Saturn model. Recurring myths and
symbols retained a more complete sense of context than would be
easily noted in the anatomy of words. But once the larger
patterns and the model accounting for them are clear, however,
the anatomy of words always seemed to provide the specific link
that was asked for (though in fact we have not explored one
percent of the potential here).
It needs to be emphasized that if the model is correct, the
groundrules for the investigation of language will need to change
also. It has always been assumed that the original references in
the development of language will be found "down here". And when
two or more nuances of a word are present, the specialist will
always look for the "true root" in a singular thing or quality,
assuming that the additional nuances linked to the root came
later. And if there is no reasonable way to account for
different meanings attached to the same word, it is assumed that
two DIFFERENT lineages are involved. They are not actually the
same root at all. That two different meanings are expressed by
the same word then becomes an accident.
The Saturn theory, however, permits us to believe that the most
ancient core of language is unified because the original
references are unified. Numerous, seemingly incompatible
meanings will gather around the same root because the reference
is a single thing or event in the sky, onto which human
imagination projected a wide range of interpretations. Venus,
the feminine "heart" of the sun, is also the radiant "soul", but
also the eye, the nave of the sun wheel, the navel, the "breast"
of the sky and much, much more. When we see ancient word-roots
reflecting a range of meanings, in correspondence with the
diverse mythical interpretations attached to a single form in the
sky, we do not believe we are looking at an accidental
convergence.
(The other side of this point is that, if the Saturn theory is
correct, a systematic investigation should reveal hundreds of
examples of this principle within the Indo-European languages
alone, and the same kinds of convergence should be present in all
other major language groups. But it will be essential that the
investigator know the Saturn model like the back of his hand, or
more actual connections will be missed than are identified)
Dr. van der Slujis continues:
The only linguistic traces certainly left by the Saturn
phenomenon are the so called homonyms: identical roots with
apparently different meanings. In many cases, it will appear
that both meanings stem from one original meaning, which became
fragmented after the polar configuration had been distorted,
i.e., in like way as all divine epithets and stories became
fragmented. Different phenomena which had formerly been seen as
an organic unity from the vantage-point of the polar
configuration now missed an obvious link, so that the formal
identity was now felt as a mere coincidence. From Pokorny's
etymological dictionary I collected a number of examples to
illustrate this:
The root *g(w)er means 'mountain', while another root *g(w)er
means 'heavy, mill' and still another root *g(w)er-u means 'rod,
spear'. A palatalised velar is reconstructed in *gwer 'be hot,
lighten up'. The latter form can in an earlier stage of Proto-
Indo-European easily be connected with the former ones, for the
difference between plain velars and palatalised velars seems a
secondary innovation, perhaps involving the phonematisation of
the labialisation [Do you agree with this Dave?]. My point is
clear: whereas no single natural object or phenomenon comprises
the notions of 'mill, spear, enlightenment' and 'mountain' all in
one, the polar configuration is exactly what we are looking for.
It is stated elsewhere that the celestial pillar, supporting
Saturn's heaven, was variously interpreted as a mountain, a sword
and a glowing stream. The combination of pillar and wheel led in
broad cycles to the metamorphic mill. [other examples provided]
Further examples can easily be collected from the respective
dictionaries.
Dave Talbott adds:
This is a good summary of the reasoning process, using one of the
equations we have mentioned frequently. I would add that there
are probably more symbolic identities attached to the cosmic
column than Dr. van der Slujis is aware (e.g., path of souls,
bridge, phallus, erect serpent, wind of the below, boar, tusk,
single leg, upraised arm, stem of the plant of life, trunk of the
tree of life.) Also, the good doctor's point below may be
answered quite convincingly as he is able to consider the larger
imagery of the configuration to which the column was inseparably
connected.
Dr. van der Slujis:
Nevertheless, one must be aware that the argument only goes
insofar as homonymous roots are restricted to ones that can be
connected with help of the Saturn thesis. Consider a case of ten
homonymous roots, three of which can be associated as shown
above. The point is not convincing in such a case, because seven
homonyms are not adequately explained.
Talbott:
I think we can all accept this point with respect to homonyms,
and I would imagine that with the full flowering of language in
our own time, virtually all homonyms would represent accidental
convergences. But the Saturn theory would predict that the
farther back you look, the more a unified complex of meanings
will be seen around the homonyms. (Also, many variations which
would appear to involve separate distinct word-roots should turn
out to reflect the different mythical nuances of the same
celestial form.) In fact, certain unique and highly
"incongruous" equations should be found more than once within the
SAME language, but around DIFFERENT roots. The same "absurdity"
evident in one root should also appear in connection with
other roots. The Egyptian system will provide excellent
examples of this, I believe. Here is just one: The model says
that the sidelock of the warrior-hero is the spiraling serpent,
and that both are an explicit form of the mother goddess. At
least a half dozen instances could be given of this "absurd"
equation in Egypt-where one word, such as _shen_, means "hair",
but is the name of a serpent as well. (Some time back I posted a
listing, and could dig it up if anyone is interested.) It is the
global imagery of the "hairy" serpent that will account for the
seemingly ludicrous juxtaposition of words and symbols.
Dr. van der Slujis:
On the other hand, the argument can be strengthened with the help
of other language families. When a like nucleus of virtually
unconnected homonyms can be shown to occur not only in the Indo-
European area, but elsewhere, structural typology demands an
explanation in terms of historical-genetic relationship. If that
can be shown--and we have good reasons to assume that it can-
linguistics has contributed its part to the establishment of the
Saturn theory. Lots of work remains to be done here."
Talbott:
No doubt about it. And we need some well-trained linguists to
help us sift through the material. The wind-water-pillar-
mountain would be a good principle to explore around the world,
precisely because it's so incongruous in the absence of the
celestial reference. Egyptian Shu is the nether wind (the wind
below the central sun Re), the pillar supporting Re, the world
mountain or primeval hill, and the "waterway." As Shu-Anhur, he
is represented by the spear. (And that is only the beginning.)
Sumerian Enlil is the "wind" but also the Great Mountain. Greek
Boreas is the "North wind", the erect serpent (impregnating the
goddess), and the primeval _bor_ or mountain. (We also find
around Boreas the boreal path of souls and other symbols of the
column, perhaps even the boar, if the word doctors will permit
it; that the boar is identified symbolically with Mars and the
polar mountain is well established.) Hindu Indra is the wind or
smoke rising along the world axis, but also a shining pillar.
The same pillar is called the phallus of Shiva, but elsewhere it
becomes the polar mountain of Meru. Aztec Ce Acatl is a heaven-
supporting pillar, but also the "wind".
To be continued ...
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