THERE IS NO ATTEMPT MADE TO DESCRIBE THE CREATIVE PROCESS REALISTICALLY

THE ACCOUNT IS SYMBOLIC AND SHOWS GOD CREATING THE WORLD BY MEANS OF LANGUAGE

AS THOUGH WRITING A BOOK BUT LANGUAGE ENTIRELY TRANSFORMED

THE MESSAGE OF CREATION IS CLEAR EACH LETTER OF

THE

ALPHABET

IS

GIVEN

A

NUMERICAL

VALUE BY COMBINING THE LETTERS WITH THE SACRED NUMBERS

REARRANGING THEM IN ENDLESS CONFIGURATIONS

THE MYSTIC WEANED THE MIND AWAY FROM THE NORMAL CONNOTATIONS OF WORDS

 

 

THE LIGHT IS RISING RISING IS THE LIGHT

 

THIS IS THE SCENE OF THE SCENE UNSEEN

THE UNSEEN SEEN OF THE SCENE UNSEEN THIS IS THE SCENE

 

 

THE

FAR YONDER SCRIBE

AND OFT TIMES SHADOWED SUBSTANCES WATCHED IN FINE AMAZE

THE

ZED ALIZ ZED

IN

SWIFT REPEAT SCATTER STAR DUST AMONGST THE LETTERS OF THEIR PROGRESS

 

 

NUMBER

9

THE SEARCH FOR THE SIGMA CODE

Cecil Balmond 1998

Cycles and Patterns

Page 165

Patterns

"The essence of mathematics is to look for patterns.

Our minds seem to be organised to search for relationships and sequences. We look for hidden orders.

These intuitions seem to be more important than the facts themselves, for there is always the thrill at finding something, a pattern, it is a discovery - what was unknown is now revealed. Imagine looking up at the stars and finding the zodiac!

Searching out patterns is a pure delight.

Suddenly the counters fall into place and a connection is found, not necessarily a geometric one, but a relationship between numbers, pictures of the mind, that were not obvious before. There is that excitement of finding order in something that was otherwise hidden.

And there is the knowledge that a huge unseen world lurks behind the facades we see of the numbers themselves."

 

 

FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

A QUEST FOR THE BEGINNING AND THE END

Graham Hancock 1995

Chapter 32

Speaking to the Unborn

Page 285

"It is understandable that a huge range of myths from all over the ancient world should describe geological catastrophes in graphic detail. Mankind survived the horror of the last Ice Age, and the most plausible source for our enduring traditions of flooding and freezing, massive volcanism and devastating earthquakes is in the tumultuous upheavals unleashed during the great meltdown of 15,000 to 8000 BC. The final retreat of the ice sheets, and the consequent 300-400 foot rise in global sea levels, took place only a few thousand years before the beginning of the historical period. It is therefore not surprising that all our early civilizations should have retained vivid memories of the vast cataclysms that had terrified their forefathers.
Much harder to explain is the peculiar but distinctive way the myths of cataclysm seem to bear the intelligent imprint of a guiding hand.l Indeed the degree of convergence between such ancient stories is frequently remarkable enough to raise the suspicion that they must all have been 'written' by the same 'author'.
Could that author have had anything to do with the wondrous deity, or superhuman, spoken of in so many of the myths we have reviewed, who appears immediately after the world has been shattered by a horrifying geological catastrophe and brings comfort and the gifts of civilization to the shocked and demoralized survivors?
White and bearded, Osiris is the Egyptian manifestation of this / Page 286 / universal figure, and it may not be an accident that one of the first acts he is remembered for in myth is the abolition of cannibalism among the primitive inhabitants of the Nile Valley.2 Viracocha, in South America, was said to have begun his civilizing mission immediately after a great flood; Quetzalcoatl, the discoverer of maize, brought the benefits of crops, mathematics, astronomy and a refined culture to Mexico after the Fourth Sun had been overwhelmed by a destroying deluge.
Could these strange myths contain a record of encounters between scattered palaeolithic tribes which survived the last Ice Age and an as yet unidentified high civilization which passed through the same epoch?
And could the myths be attempts to communicate?

A message in the bottle of time"

'Of all the other stupendous inventions,' Galileo once remarked,

what sublimity of mind must have been his who conceived how to communicate his most secret thoughts to any other person, though very distant either in time or place, speaking with those who are in the Indies, speaking to those who are not yet born, nor shall be this thousand or ten thousand years? And with no greater difficulty than the various arrangements of two dozen little signs on paper? Let this be the seal of all the admirable inventions of men.3

If the 'precessional message' identified by scholars like Santillana, von Dechend and Jane Sellers is indeed a deliberate attempt at communication by some lost civilization of antiquity, how come it wasn't just written down and left for us to find? Wouldn't that have been easier than encoding it in myths? Perhaps.
Nevertheless, suppose that whatever the message was written on got destroyed or worn away after many thousands of years? Or suppose that the language in which it was inscribed was later forgotten utterly (like the enigmatic Indus Valley script, which has been studied closely for more than half a century but has so far resisted all attempts at decoding)? It must be obvious that in such circumstances a written / Page 287 / legacy to the future would be of no value at all, because nobody would be able to make sense of it.
What one would look for, therefore, would be a universal language, the kind of language that would be comprehensible to any technologically advanced society in any epoch, even a thousand or ten thousand years into the future. Such languages are few and far between, but mathematics is one of them - and the city of Teotihuacan may be the calling-card of a lost civilization written in the eternal language of mathematics.
Geodetic data, related to the exact positioning of fixed geographical points and to the shape and size of the earth, would also remain valid and recognizable for tens of thousands of years, and might be most conveniently expressed by means of cartography (or in the construction of giant geodetic monuments like the Great Pyramid of Egypt, as we shall see).
Another 'constant' in our solar system is the language of time: the great but regular intervals of time calibrated by the inch-worm creep of precessional motion. Now, or ten thousand years in the future, a message that prints out numbers like 72 or 2160 or 4320 or 25,920 should be instantly intelligible to any civilization that has evolved a modest talent for mathematics and the ability to detect and measure the almost imperceptible reverse wobble that the sun appears to make along the ecliptic against the background of the fixed stars..."

"What one would look for, therefore, would be a universal language, the kind of language that would be comprehensible to any technologically advanced society in any epoch, even a thousand or ten thousand years into the future. Such languages are few and far between, but mathematics is one of them"

 

"WRITTEN IN THE ETERNAL LANGUAGE OF MATHEMATICS"

 

 

The FULCANELLI

Phenomenon

Kenneth Rayner Johnson 1980

The Praxis

Page 190

Theoretical physics has become more and more occult, cheerfully breaking every previously sacrosanct law of nature and leaning towards such supernatural concepts as holes in space, negative mass and time flowing backwards ... The greatest physicists ... have been groping towards a synthesis of physics and parapsychology. - Arthur Koestler: The Roots of Coincidence, (Hutchinson, 1972.)

 

THE LIGHT IS RISING NOW RISING IS THE LIGHT

 

 

MATHEMATICS A LANGUAGE OF LETTERS AND NUMBERS

 

 

MATHEMATICS A LANGUAGE OF LETTER AND NUMBER

 

 

 

The Upside Down of the Downside Up

 

But one last word about mankind's romance with number coincidences.The antagonist in John Updike's novel, Roger's Version, is a computer hacker, who, convinced.,that scientific evidence of God's existence is accumulating, endeavours to prove it by feeding -all the available scientific information. into a comuter. In his search for God 'breaking, through', he has become fascinated by certain numbers that have continually been cropping up. He explains them excitedly as 'the terms of Creation':

"...after a while I noticed that all over the sheet there seemed to hit these twenty-fours Jumping out at me. Two four; two,four.Planck time, for instance, divided by the radiation constant yields a figure near eight times ten again to the negative twenty-fourth, and the permittivity of free space, or electric constant, into the Bohr radiusekla almost exactly six times ten to the negative twenty-fourth. On positive side, the electromagnetic line-structure constant times Hubble radius - that is, the size of the universe as we now perceive it gives us something quite close to ten to the twenty-fourth, and the strong-force constant times the charge on the proton produces two point four times ten to the negative eighteenth, for another I began to circle twenty-four wherever it appeared on the Printout here' - he held it up. his piece of striped and striped wallpaper, decorated / Page 209 / with a number of scarlet circles - 'you can see it's more than random.'19
This inhabitant of the twentieth century is convinced that the striking occurrences of 2 and 4 reveal the sacred numbers by which God is speaking to us.

So much for any scorn directed to ancient man's fascination with number coincidences. That fascination is alive and well, Just a bit more incomprehensible"

 

 

All about the planets in our Solar System. The nine planets that orbit the sun are (in order from the sun): Mercury,Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, ... www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/astronomy/planets

Our solar system consists of the sun, eight planets, moons, dwarf planets, an asteroid belt, comets, meteors, and others. The sun is the center of our solar system; the planets, their moons, the asteroids, comets, and other rocks and gas all orbit the sun.

The nine planets that orbit the sun are (in order from the sun): Mercury,Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto (a dwarf planet). A belt of asteroids (minor planets made of rock and metal) lies between Mars and Jupiter. These objects all orbit the sun in roughly circular orbits that lie in the same plane, the ecliptic (Pluto is an exception; it has an elliptical orbit tilted over 17° from the ecliptic).

 

 

 

 

 

NUCLEAR UNCLEAR

 

 

Daily Mail

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Answers to Correspondents Compiled by Charles Legge

Page 59

QUESTION

I know the phrase 'curiosity killed the cat', but I have recently been told it continues 'satisfaction brought it back'. What is the origin of this?

ORIGINALLY 'care' killed the cat, not curiosity. That form of the expression is first found in Ben Jonson's play Every Man In His Humour, in 1598: 'Helterskelter, hang sorrow, care'll kill a cat, uptails all and a louse for the hangman.' In this sense, care meant 'worry or sorrow'. rather than the modern 'look after or provide for'. The play was first performed by the Lord Chamberlain's men, a troupe of actors of which Shakespeare was a member.

He obviously liked the line because he used it the following year in Much Ado About Nothing: 'What, courage man! What though care killed a cat, thou hast mettle in thee to kill care.'

The notion of curiosity has been frowned on, particularly by early theologians. St Augustine wrote in confessions (AD397) 'God fashioned hell for the inquisitive'', so the idea of curiosity killing the cat would seem logical.

Yet as late as 1898 the original form was still in use. Brewster's Dictionary Of Phrase And Fable had: 'Care killed the Cat. It is said that a cat has nine lives, but care would wear them all out.'

The. earliest known printed reference is in the O. Henry short story Schools And Schools from 1909: 'Curiosity can do more things than Kill a cat; and if emotions. well recognised as feminine, are inimical to feline life, then jealously would soon leave the world catless.'

The rejoinder 'satisfaction brought it back' is a curiosity in itself; the idea is obvious: if you are satisfied with your lot, you are unlikely to be curious about an alternative life.

When.the rejoinder was coined is uncertain, but it dates from the mid to late 20th century and seems to have been part of a ditty popularised
by a murderous Jack Nicholson in the movie The Shining (1980)

Curiosity killed the cat
Satisfaction brought it back
Safe and sound.
From hcad, to ground
From head.to ground
It was safe and sound.'

Jon Welham, Halifax

 

 

MATHEMATICS and the IMAGINATION

Edward Kasner and James Newman 1940

Page 357

"Cheshire-Puss, " she began rather timidly . . . " Would you tell me please, which way I ought to go from here? " " That depends a good deal on where you want to get to, " said the Cat. "I dont much care where-" said Alice. " Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat. "

 

 

JUST CATS
Fernand Mery

Souvenir Press. London 1957

Page 24

"In the year 999, in the tenth day of the Fifth Moon, at the Imperial Palace of Kyoto, a cat gave birth for the first time recorded here, and to five little kittens. The emperor so marvelled at this that he charged his ministers with the care of them; they were to bring the kittens up exactly the same way as they had been nursed as children. When the kittens were grown, he made it known at Court that he wished the breeding to continue."

 

 

ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND

Lewis Carroll

Page 161

"...and was just saying to herself, 'if one only knew the right way to change them-' when she was a little startled by seeing the Cheshire Cat sitting on a bough of a tree a few yards off.

The Cat only grinned when it saw Alice. It looked good-natured, she thought: still it had very long claws and a great many teeth, so she felt that it ought to be treated with respect.

'Cheshire Puss,' she began, rather timidly, as she did not at all know whether it would like the name: however, it only grinned a little wider. 'Come, it's pleased so far,' thought Alice, and she went on. 'Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?'

'That depends a good deal on whsre you want to get to,'said the Cat.

'I don't much care where-' said Alice.

'Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat. '-so long as I get somewhere,' Alice added as an explanation.

'Oh, you're sure to do that;' said the Cat, 'if you only walk long enough.'

Alice felt that this could not be denied, so she tried another question. 'What sort of people live about here?'

'In that direction,' the Cat said, waving its right paw round, 'lives a Hatter: and in that direction,' waving the other paw, 'lives a March Hare. Visit either you like: they're both mad.'

'But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked. 'Oh, you ca'n't help that,' said the Cat: 'we're all mad here.I'm mad, You're mad.'

'How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice.

'You must be,' said the Cat; 'or you wouldn't have come here,'

 

 

IN SEARCH OF SCHRODINGER'S CAT

John Gribbin 1984

QUANTUM PHYSICS AND REALITY

NOTHING IS REAL

"The cat of our title is a mythical beast, but Schrodinger was a real person. Erwin Schrodinger was an Austrian scientist instrumental in the development, in the mid-1920s, of the equations of a branch of science now known as quantum mechanics. Branch of science is hardly the correct expression, however, because quantum mechanics provides the fundamental underpinning of all of modem science. The equations describe the behavior of very small objects-gen-erally speaking, the size of atoms or smaller-and they provide the only understanding of the world of the very small. Without these equations, physicists would be unable to design working nuclear power stations (or bombs), build lasers, or explain how the sun stays hot. Without quantum mechanics, chemistry would still be in the Dark Ages, and there would be no science of molecular biology-no under-standing of DNA, no genetic engineering-at all "

QUANTUM THEORY

107 + 91 = 198 1 + 9 + 8 = 18 1 + 8 = 9

1 x 9 x 8 = 72

"Quantum theory represents the greatest achievement of science, far more significant and of far more direct, prac-tical use than relativity theory. And yet, it makes some very strange predictions. The world of quantum mechanics is so strange, indeed, that even Albert Einstein found it in-comprehensible, and refused to accept all of the implica-tions of the theory developed by Schrodinger and his colleagues. Einstein, and many other scientists, found it more comfortable to believe that the equations of quantum mechanics simply represent some sort of mathematical trick, which just happens to giye a reasonable working guide to the behavior of atomic and subatomic particles but that conceals some deeper truth that corresponds more closely to our everyday sense of reality. For what quantum mechanics says is that nothing is real and that we cannot say anything about what things are doing when we are not looking at them. Schrodinger's mythical cat was invoked to make the differences between the quantum world and the everyday world clear.

In the world of quantum mechanics, the laws of phys-ics that are familiar from the everyday world no longer work. Instead, events are governed by probabilities. A radio-active atom, for example, might decay, emitting an electron, say; or it might not. It is possible to set up an experiment in such a way that there is a precise fifty-fifty chance that one of the atoms in a lump of radioactive material will decay in a certain time and that a detector will register the decay if it does happen. Schrodinger, as upset as Einstein about the implications of quantum theory, tried to show the absurdity of those implications by imagining such an experiment set up in a closed room, or box, which also contains a live cat and a phial of poison, so arranged that if the radioactive decay does occur then the poison container is broken and the cat dies. In the everyday world, there is a fifty-fifty chance that the cat will be killed, and without looking in-side the box we can say, quite happily, that the cat inside is either dead or alive. But now we encounter the strangeness of the quantum world. According to the theory, neither of the two possibilities open to the radioactive material, and therefore to the cat, has any reality unless it is observed. The atomic decay has neither happened nor not happened, the cat has neither been killed nor not killed, / Page 3 / until we look inside the box to see what has happened. Theorists who accept the pure version of quantum mechanics say that the cat exists in some indeterminate state, neither dead nor alive, until an observer looks into the box to see how things are getting on. Nothing is real unless it is observed.

The idea was anathema to Einstein, among others. "God does not play dice," he said, referring to the theory that the world is governed by the accumulation of outcomes of essentially random "choices" of possibilities at the quan-tum level. As for the unreality of the state of Schrodinger's cat, he dismissed it, assuming that there must be some un-derlying "clockwork" that makes for a genuine fundamen-tal reality of things. He spent many years attempting to devise tests that might reveal this underlying reality at work but died before it became possible actually to carry out such a test. Perhaps it is as well that he did not live to see the outcome of one line of reasoning that he initiated.

In the summer of 1982, at the University of Paris-South, in France, a team headed by Alain Aspect completed a series of experiments designed to detect the underlying reality below the unreal world of the quantum. The under-lying reality-the fundamental clockwork-had been given the name " hidden variables," and the experiment con-cerned the behavior of two photons or particles of light fly-ing off in opposite directions from a source. It is described fully in Chapter Ten, but in essence it can be thought of as a test of reality. The two photons from the same source can be observed by two detectors, which measure a property called polarization. According to quantum theory, this prop-erty does not exist until it is measured. According to the hidden-variable idea, each photon has a "real" polarization from the moment it is created. Because the two photons are emitted together, their polarizations are correlated with one another. But the nature of the correlation that is actually measured is different according to the two views of reality.

The results of this crucial experiment are unam-biguous. The kind of correlation predicted by hidden- variable theory is not found; the kind of correlation pre- dicted by quantum mechanics is found, and what is more, again as predicted by quantum theory, the measurement / Page 4 / that is made on one photon has an instantaneous effect on the nature of the other photon. Some interaction links the two inextricably, even though they are flying apart at the speed of light, and relativity theory tells us that no signal can travel faster than light. The experiments prove that there is no underlying reality to the world. "Reality," in the everyday sense, is not a good way to think about the be-havior of the fundamental particles that make up the uni-verse; yet at the same time those particles seem to be inseparably connected into some indivisible whole, each aware of what happens to the other

The search for Schrodinger's cat was the search for quantum reality. From this brief outline, it may seem that the search has proved fruitless, since there is no reality in the everyday sense of the word. But this is not quite the end of the story, and the search for Schrodinger's cat may lead us to a new understanding of reality that transcends, and yet includes, the conventional interpretation of quantum mechanics. The trail is a long one, however, and it begins with a scientist who would probably have been even more horrified than Einstein if he could have seen the answers we now have to the questions he puzzled over. Isaac Newton, studying the nature of light three centuries ago, could have had no conception that he was already on the trail leading to Schrodinger's cat."

 

 

T.S.Eliot 1888-1965

Page 94

 9

"Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity,

There never was a Cat of such deceitfulness and suavity.

He always has an alibi, and one or two to spare:

  At whatever time the deed took place-

MACAVITY WASN'T THERE!"

Macavity: The Mystery Cat

 

10

Teach us to care and not to care

Teach us to sit still.

 

11

Round and round the circle

Completing the charm

So the knot be unknotted

The crossed be uncrossed

The crooked be made straight

And the curse be ended.

The Family Reunion,II.iii

 

 

Ash Wednesday

T. S. Eliot

I

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man’s gift and that man’s scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the agèd eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is
nothing again

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessèd face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

 

 

I AM THE OPPOSITE OF THE OPPOSITE I AM

THE

OPPOSITE OF OPPOSITE

IS

THE

AM

I

ALWAYS

AM

 

 

KEEPER OF GENESIS

A QUEST FOR THE HIDDEN LEGACY OF MANKIND

Robert Bauval Graham Hancock 1996

Page 254

"...Is there in any sense an interstellar Rosetta Stone?

We believe there is a common language that all technical civilizations, no matter how different, must have.

That common language is science and mathematics.

The laws of Nature are the same everywhere:..."

 

 

GODS CHOSEN RACE THE HUMAN RACE

 

 

THE

HOLY BIBLE

Scofield Reference

C 9 V 9

9 And I, behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your seed after you;

10 And with every living creature that is with you, of the fowl, of the cattle, and of every beast of the earth with you; from all that go out of the ark, to every beast of the earth.

11 And I will establish my covenant with you; neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth.

12 And God said, This is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations:

13 I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth.

14 And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud:

15 And I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh.

16 And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth.

17 And God said unto Noah, This is the token of the covenant, which I have established between me and all flesh that is upon the earth.

 

 

THE TOWER OF BABBLE

 

 

THE

HOLY BIBLE

Scofield Reference

GENESIS

C 11V 1-9

The Tower of Babel

1 Now the whole earth had one language and the same words.

2 And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.

3 And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar.

4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.”

5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built.

6 And the Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

7 Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech.”

8 So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city.

9 Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused [1] the language of all the earth. And from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth.

 

 

Tower of Babel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The Tower of Babel (Hebrew: מגדל בבל‎ Migdal Bavel Arabic: برج بابل‎ Burj Babil), according to the Book of Genesis, was an enormous tower built at the city ...

Biblical narrative and themes - Historical context - In other sources
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Babel

 

Tower of Babel
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
This article is about the Biblical story. For other uses, see Tower of Babel (disambiguation).

The Tower of Babel by Pieter Brueghel the Elder (1563).
Engraving The Confusion of Tongues by Gustave Doré (1865).The Tower of Babel (Hebrew: מגדל בבל‎ Migdal Bavel Arabic: برج بابل‎ Burj Babil), according to the Book of Genesis,[1] was an enormous tower built at the city of Babylon (Hebrew: Bavel, Akkadian: Babilu), a cosmopolitan city typified by a confusion of languages,[2] also called the "beginning" of Nimrod's kingdom. According to the biblical account, a united humanity of the generations following the Great Flood, speaking a single language and migrating from the east, participated in the building. The people decided their city should have a tower so immense that it would have "its top in the heavens."[3]

However, the Tower of Babel was not built for the worship and praise of Yahweh, but was instead dedicated to the glory of man, to "make a name" for the builders: "And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth." (Genesis 11:4). The Book of Genesis then relates how Yahweh, displeased with the builders' intent, came down and confused their languages and scattered the people throughout the earth (Genesis 11:5-8).

The Tower of Babel has often been associated with known structures, notably the Etemenanki, a ziggurat dedicated to Marduk by Nabopolassar (c. 610 BC). The Great Ziggurat of Babylon base was square (not round), 91m in height, but was finally demolished by Alexander the Great before his death in an attempt to rebuild it. A Sumerian story with some similar elements is preserved in Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta.

Contents [hide]
1 Biblical narrative and themes
1.1 Narrative
1.2 Themes
2 Historical context
3 In other sources
3.1 Destruction
3.2 Etemenanki, the ziggurat at Babylon
3.3 Book of Jubilees
3.4 Pseudo-Philo
3.5 Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews
3.6 Greek Apocalypse of Baruch
3.7 Midrash
3.8 Kabbalah
3.9 Qur'an and Islamic traditions
3.10 Book of Mormon
3.11 Irish folklore
3.12 In Western culture
4 Comparable mythemes
4.1 Sumerian parallel
4.2 Towers
4.3 Multiplication of languages
5 Height of the tower
6 Enumeration of scattered languages
7 See also
8 Notes
9 References
10 External links

[edit] Biblical narrative and themes

German Late Medieval (ca. 1370s) depiction of the construction of the tower.[edit] Narrative
The story is found in Genesis 11:1-9˄, and appears in the King James Version as follows:

1 And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. 2 And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. 3 And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. 4 And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. 5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children built. 6 And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do; and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. 7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. 8 So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. 9 Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.

The phrase "the Tower of Babel" does not actually appear in the Bible; it is always, "the city and its tower" (אֶת-הָעִיר וְאֶת-הַמִּגְדָּל) or just "the city" (הָעִיר). Various English translations use different vocabulary sometimes with different meanings; usually this causes no important difference to the story: one speech/vocabulary/same words, plain/valley, asphalt/bitumen/slime, children/men, confound/confuse; and sometimes the difference is important to later interpretations of the meaning of the story: may reach unto heaven/in the sky/will be in the skies (examples from King James, Holman Christian, and R E Friedman versions).

[edit] Themes
The story explains the origin of languages, and of Babylon (Babel). The story's theme of competition between the Lord and humans appears elsewhere in Genesis, in the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.[2] The story displays the Lord's contempt for human pride.

The first century Jewish interpretation, as found in Flavius Josephus, explains the construction of the tower as a hubristic act of defiance against God ordered by the arrogant tyrant Nimrod.

[edit] Historical context

Hanging Gardens of Babylon, an engraving by Martin Heemskerck, depicts the Tower of Babel in the background.The Greek form of the name is from the native Akkadian Bāb-ilim, which means "Gate of the god". This correctly summarizes the religious purpose of the great temple towers (the ziggurats) of ancient Sumer (Biblical Shinar). In Genesis 10, Babel is said to have formed part of Nimrod's kingdom. It is not specifically mentioned in the Bible that he ordered the tower to be built, but Nimrod is often associated with its construction in other sources. The Hebrew version of the name of the city and the tower, Babel, is attributed in Gen. 11:9 to the verb balal, which means to confuse or confound in Hebrew. The ruins of the city of Babylon are near Hillah, Babil Governorate, Iraq.

The peoples listed in Chapter 10 of Genesis (the Table of Nations) are stated by 11:8-9 to have been scattered over the face of the earth from Shinar only after the abandonment of the Tower. Some see an internal contradiction between the mention already in Genesis 10:5 that "From these the maritime peoples spread out into their territories by their clans within their nations, each with his own language" and the subsequent Babel story, which begins "Now the entire earth was of one language and uniform words" (Genesis 11:1).[4] However, this view presupposes a rigid chronological sequence of 10:5 and 11:1, whereas the traditional Judeo-Christian interpretation is that 10:5 refers to the same later scattering as mentioned more fully in 11:9. An alternative resolution to the apparent contradictory material of Genesis 10:5 and 11:8-9 is found in the documentary hypothesis which suggests different sources for those verses. The commonly held view of biblical scholars holding to the four-source origins of Genesis (J, E, P, D) is that 10:5 comes from the Priestly (P) text source and 11:8-9, and actually the entirety of the Babel narrative, from the Yahwehistic (J). The final editors of Genesis were not concerned with the narrative continuity between sources.

[edit] In other sources
[edit] Destruction
The account in Genesis makes no mention of any destruction of the tower. The people whose languages are confounded simply stop building their city, and are scattered from there over the face of the Earth. However, in other sources such as the Book of Jubilees (chapter 10 v.18-27), Cornelius Alexander (frag. 10), Abydenus (frags. 5 and 6), Josephus (Antiquities 1.4.3), and the Sibylline Oracles (iii. 117-129), God overturns the tower with a great wind. In the Midrash, it said that the top of the tower was burnt, the bottom was swallowed, and the middle was left standing to erode over time.

[edit] Etemenanki, the ziggurat at Babylon

Reconstruction of the Etemenanki (total height 91 m)Main article: Etemenanki
Etemenanki (Sumerian: "temple of the foundation of heaven and earth") was the name of a ziggurat dedicated to Marduk in the city of Babylon. It was famously rebuilt by the 6th century BC Neo-Babylonian dynasty rulers Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar II. According to modern scholars such as Stephen L. Harris, the biblical story of the Tower of Babel was likely influenced by Etemenanki during the Babylonian captivity of the Hebrews.

Nebuchadnezzar wrote that the original tower had been built in antiquity: "A former king built the Temple of the Seven Lights of the Earth, but he did not complete its head. Since a remote time, people had abandoned it, without order expressing their words. Since that time earthquakes and lightning had dispersed its sun-dried clay; the bricks of the casing had split, and the earth of the interior had been scattered in heaps."

The Greek historian Herodotus (440 BC) later wrote of this ziggurat, which he called the "Temple of Zeus Belus", giving an account of its vast dimensions.

The already decayed Great Ziggurat of Babylon was finally destroyed by Alexander the Great in an attempt to rebuild it. He managed to move the tiles of the tower in another location, but his death stopped the reconstruction. Since then only the basis remains, but it is visible from Google Earth.[5]

[edit] Book of Jubilees
The Book of Jubilees contains one of the most detailed accounts found anywhere of the Tower.

And they began to build, and in the fourth week they made brick with fire, and the bricks served them for stone, and the clay with which they cemented them together was asphalt which comes out of the sea, and out of the fountains of water in the land of Shinar. And they built it: forty and three years were they building it; its breadth was 203 bricks, and the height [of a brick] was the third of one; its height amounted to 5433 cubits and 2 palms, and [the extent of one wall was] thirteen stades [and of the other thirty stades]. (Jubilees 10:20-21, Charles' 1913 translation)

The Book of Jubilees recounts Genesis and the first twelve chapters of Exodus, elaborating on the text (similar to a Midrash). It is often categorized as one of the Pseudepigrapha and dated to the late 2nd century BC,[2] but it is still in the canon of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church.[6]

[edit] Pseudo-Philo
In Pseudo-Philo, one of the earliest accounts (c. AD 70) though not thought to be by Philo, the direction for the building is ascribed not only to Nimrod, who is made prince of the Hamites, but also to Joktan as prince of the Semites, and to Phenech son of Dodanim as prince of the Japethites. Twelve men are arrested for refusing to bring bricks, including Abraham, Lot, Nahor, and several sons of Joktan. However, Joktan finally saves the twelve from the wrath of the other two princes.[7]

[edit] Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews

Tower of Babel (painting by Lucas van Valckenborch)The Jewish historian & Roman Citizen Flavius Josephus, in his Antiquities of the Jews (c AD 94), recounted history as found in the Hebrew Bible and mentioned the Tower of Babel. He wrote that it was Nimrod who had the tower built and that Nimrod was a tyrant who tried to turn the people away from God. In this account, God confused the people rather than destroying them because destroying people with a Flood hadn't taught them to be godly.

Now it was Nimrod who excited them to such an affront and contempt of God. He was the grandson of Ham, the son of Noah, a bold man, and of great strength of hand. He persuaded them not to ascribe it to God, as if it were through his means they were happy, but to believe that it was their own courage which procured that happiness. He also gradually changed the government into tyranny, seeing no other way of turning men from the fear of God, but to bring them into a constant dependence on his power... Now the multitude were very ready to follow the determination of Nimrod and to esteem it a piece of cowardice to submit to God; and they built a tower, neither sparing any pains, nor being in any degree negligent about the work: and, by reason of the multitude of hands employed in it, it grew very high, sooner than any one could expect; but the thickness of it was so great, and it was so strongly built, that thereby its great height seemed, upon the view, to be less than it really was. It was built of burnt brick, cemented together with mortar, made of bitumen, that it might not be liable to admit water. When God saw that they acted so madly, he did not resolve to destroy them utterly, since they were not grown wiser by the destruction of the former sinners [in the Flood]; but he caused a tumult among them, by producing in them diverse languages, and causing that, through the multitude of those languages, they should not be able to understand one another. The place wherein they built the tower is now called Babylon, because of the confusion of that language which they readily understood before; for the Hebrews mean by the word Babel, confusion...

[edit] Greek Apocalypse of Baruch
Third Apocalypse of Baruch (or 3 Baruch, c 2nd century), one of the pseudepigrapha, describes the just rewards of sinners and the righteous in the afterlife.[2] Among the sinners are those who instigated the Tower of Babel. In the account, Baruch is first taken (in a vision) to see the resting place of the souls of "those who built the tower of strife against God, and the Lord banished them." Next he is shown another place, and there, occupying the form of dogs,

Those who gave counsel to build the tower, for they whom thou seest drove forth multitudes of both men and women, to make bricks; among whom, a woman making bricks was not allowed to be released in the hour of child-birth, but brought forth while she was making bricks, and carried her child in her apron, and continued to make bricks. And the Lord appeared to them and confused their speech, when they had built the tower to the height of four hundred and sixty-three cubits. And they took a gimlet, and sought to pierce the heavens, saying, Let us see (whether) the heaven is made of clay, or of brass, or of iron. When God saw this He did not permit them, but smote them with blindness and confusion of speech, and rendered them as thou seest. (Greek Apocalypse of Baruch, 3:5-8)

[edit] Midrash
Rabbinic literature offers many different accounts of other causes for building the Tower of Babel, and of the intentions of its builders. The Mishnah (the first written record of the Jewish Oral Law, c AD 200) describes the Tower as a rebellion against God. Some later midrash record that the builders of the Tower, called "the generation of secession" in the Jewish sources, said: "God has no right to choose the upper world for Himself, and to leave the lower world to us; therefore we will build us a tower, with an idol on the top holding a sword, so that it may appear as if it intended to war with God" (Gen. R. xxxviii. 7; Tan., ed. Buber, Noah, xxvii. et seq.).

The building of the Tower was meant to bid defiance not only to God, but also to Abraham, who exhorted the builders to reverence. The passage mentions that the builders spoke sharp words against God, not cited in the Bible, saying that once every 1,656 years, heaven tottered so that the water poured down upon the earth, therefore they would support it by columns that there might not be another deluge (Gen. R. l.c.; Tan. l.c.; similarly Josephus, "Ant." i. 4, § 2).

Some among that sinful generation even wanted to war against God in heaven (Talmud Sanhedrin 109a.) They were encouraged in this wild undertaking by the notion that arrows which they shot into the sky fell back dripping with blood, so that the people really believed that they could wage war against the inhabitants of the heavens (Sefer ha-Yashar, Noah, ed. Leghorn, 12b). According to Josephus and Midrash Pirke R. El. xxiv., it was mainly Nimrod who persuaded his contemporaries to build the Tower, while other rabbinical sources assert, on the contrary, that Nimrod separated from the builders.

[edit] Kabbalah
Some Kabbalistic mystics provide intriguing and unusual descriptions of the Tower of Babel. According to Menachem Tsioni, an Italian Torah commentator of 15th century, the Tower was a functional flying craft, empowered by some powerful magic or technology;[8] the device was originally intended for holy purposes, but was later misused in order to gain control over the whole world. Isaac of Acre wrote that the Tower builders had reached, or at least planned to reach the distance of 2,360,000,000 parsas or 9-10 billion kilometers above the Earth surface, which is about the radius of the Solar System, including most Trans-Neptunian objects.[9] Similar accounts are also found in the writing of Jonathan Eybeschutz and the ancient book Brith Menuchah,[10] according to which the builders of the Tower planned to equip it with some shield technology ("shielding wings") and powerful weapons. Many Kabbalists believed that the ancient peoples possessed magic knowledge of the Nephilim, which allowed them to construct such powerful devices. Moreover, according to some commentaries, some Talmudic sages possessed a manual for building such a flying tower.

According to another mysterious Kabbalistic account, one third of the Tower builders were punished by being transformed into semi-demonic creatures and banished into three parallel dimensions, inhabited now by their descendants.[11]

[edit] Qur'an and Islamic traditions
Though not mentioned by name, the Qur'an has a story with similarities to the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel, though set in the Egypt of Moses. In Suras 28:38 and 40:36-37, Pharaoh asks Haman to build him a stone, or clay tower so that he can mount up to heaven and confront the God of Moses.

Another story in Sura 2:102 mentions the name of Babil, but tells of when the two angels Haroot and Maroot taught the people of Babylon the tricks of magic and warned them that magic is a sin and that their teaching them magic is a test of faith. A tale about Babil appears more fully in the writings of Yaqut (i, 448 f.) and the Lisan el-'Arab (xiii. 72), but without the tower: mankind were swept together by winds into the plain that was afterward called "Babil", where they were assigned their separate languages by Allah, and were then scattered again in the same way.

In the History of the Prophets and Kings by the 9th century Muslim historian al-Tabari, a fuller version is given: Nimrod has the tower built in Babil, Allah destroys it, and the language of mankind, formerly Syriac, is then confused into 72 languages. Another Muslim historian of the 13th century, Abu al-Fida relates the same story, adding that the patriarch Eber (an ancestor of Abraham) was allowed to keep the original tongue, Hebrew in this case, because he would not partake in the building.

Though variations of the stories similar to the Judeo-Christian narrative of the tower of babel exist within Islamic traditions, the central theme of Allah separating humankind on the basis of language is alien to Islam according to author Yahya Emmerick. In Islamic belief Allah created nations to know each other and not to be separated.[1]

[edit] Book of Mormon
In the Book of Mormon (a scriptural text of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), a man named Jared and his family are warned by God about the destruction of the tower. Because of their prayers, God preserves their language and leads them across the sea into the Americas. See the Book of Ether [2] in the Book of Mormon.

[edit] Irish folklore
Irish texts such as Lebor Gabála Érenn and Auraicept na n-Éces claim that the legendary king Fenius Farsa chose the best features of all the confused languages and fused them together to create Goidelic, the forerunner of the Irish language.

[edit] In Western culture
Further information: confusion of tongues and origin of language
Historical linguistics has long wrestled with the idea of a single original language. In the Middle Ages, and down to the 17th century, attempts were made to identify a living descendent of the Adamic language, e.g. in the Irish legend of Fenius Farsa.

Pieter Brueghel's influential portrayal is based on the Colosseum in Rome, while later conical depictions of the tower (as depicted in Doré's illustration) resemble much later Muslim towers observed by 19th century explorers in the area, notably the Minaret of Samarra. M. C. Escher depicts a more stylized geometrical structure in his woodcut representing the story.

The composer Anton Rubinstein wrote an opera based on the story, Der Thurm zu Babel.

According to one modern legend, "sack" was the last word uttered before the confusion of languages.[12]

[edit] Comparable mythemes
[edit] Sumerian parallel
There is a Sumerian myth similar to that of the Tower of Babel, called Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta, where Enmerkar of Uruk is building a massive ziggurat in Eridu and demands a tribute of precious materials from Aratta for its construction, at one point reciting an incantation imploring the god Enki to restore (or in Kramer's translation, to disrupt) the linguistic unity of the inhabited regions — named as Shubur, Hamazi, Sumer, Uri-ki (Akkad), and the Martu land, "the whole universe, the well-guarded people — may they all address Enlil together in a single language."[13]

One recent theory first advanced by David Rohl associates Nimrod, the hunter, builder of Erech and Babel, with Enmerkar (i.e., Enmer the Hunter) king of Uruk, also said to have been the first builder of the Eridu temple. (Amar-Sin (c. 2046–2037 BC), third monarch of the Third Dynasty of Ur, later attempted to complete the Eridu ziggurat.) This theory proposes that the remains of the historical building that via Mesopotamian legend inspired the story of the Tower of Babel are the ruins of the ziggurat of Eridu, just south of Ur. Among the reasons for this association are the larger size of the ruins, the older age of the ruins, and the fact that one title of Eridu was NUN.KI ("mighty place"), which later became a title of Babylon.[14] Both cities also had temples called the E-Sagila.

[edit] Towers
Various traditions similar to that of the tower of Babel are found in Central America. One holds that Xelhua, one of the seven giants rescued from the deluge, built the Great Pyramid of Cholula in order to storm Heaven. The gods destroyed it with fire and confounded the language of the builders. The Dominican friar Diego Duran (1537-1588) reported hearing this account from a hundred-year-old priest at Cholula, shortly after the conquest of Mexico.

Another story, attributed by the native historian Don Ferdinand d'Alva Ixtilxochitl (c. 1565-1648) to the ancient Toltecs, states that after men had multiplied following a great deluge, they erected a tall zacuali or tower, to preserve themselves in the event of a second deluge. However, their languages were confounded and they went to separate parts of the earth.

Still another story, attributed to the Tohono O'odham Indians, holds that Montezuma escaped a great flood, then became wicked and attempted to build a house reaching to heaven, but the Great Spirit destroyed it with thunderbolts. (Bancroft, vol. 3, p. 76; also in History of Arizona)

According to Dr Livingstone, the Africans whom he met living near Lake Ngami in 1849 had such a tradition, but with the builders' heads getting "cracked by the fall of the scaffolding" (Missionary Travels, chap. 26).

In his 1918 book, Folklore in the Old Testament, Scottish social anthropologist Sir James George Frazer documented similarities between Old Testament stories, such as the Flood, and indigenous legends around the world. He identified Livingston's account with a tale found in Lozi mythology, wherein the wicked men build a tower of masts to pursue the Creator-God, Nyambe, who has fled to Heaven on a spider-web, but the men perish when the masts collapse. He further relates similar tales of the Ashanti that substitute a pile of porridge pestles for the masts. Frazer moreover cites such legends found among the Kongo people, as well as in Tanzania, where the men stack poles or trees in a failed attempt to reach the moon [15]. He further cited the Karbi and Kuki people of Assam as having a similar story. The traditions of the Karen people of Myanmar, which Frazer considered to show clear 'Abrahamic' influence, also relate that their ancestors migrated there following the abandonment of a great pagoda in the land of the Karenni 30 generations from Adam, when the languages were confused and the Karen separated from the Karenni. He notes yet another version current in the Admiralty Islands where mankind's languages are confused following a failed attempt to build houses reaching to heaven. Some of these stories were later revealed to have derived recently from Christian missionary teaching.

Traces of a somewhat similar story have also been reported among the Tharus of Nepal and northern India (Report of the Census of Bengal, 1872, p. 160).

[edit] Multiplication of languages
There have also been a number of traditions around the world that describe a divine confusion of the one original language into several, albeit without any tower. Aside from the Ancient Greek myth that Hermes confused the languages, causing Zeus to give his throne to Phoroneus, Frazer specifically mentions such accounts among the Wasania of Kenya, the Kacha Naga people of Assam, the inhabitants of Encounter Bay in Australia, the Maidu of California, the Tlingit of Alaska, and the K'iche' Maya of Guatemala.[16] (See also: Mythical origins of language)

The Estonian myth of "the Cooking of Languages"[17] has also been compared.

[edit] Height of the tower
The narrative in the book of Genesis does not mention how tall the Biblical tower was, but the tower's height is discussed in various extra-canonical sources.

The Book of Jubilees mentions the tower's height as being 5433 cubits and 2 palms, or nearly 2.5 kilometers (about 1.55 miles). The Third Apocalypse of Baruch mentions that the 'tower of strife' reached a height of 463 cubits (696 feet or 212 meters), taller than any structure built in human history until the construction of the Eiffel Tower (1,063 feet or 324 metres) in 1889.

Gregory of Tours (I, 6) writing ca. 594, quotes the earlier historian Orosius (ca. 417) as saying the tower was "laid out foursquare on a very level plain. Its wall, made of baked brick cemented with pitch, is fifty cubits wide, two hundred high, and four hundred and seventy stades in circumference. A stade contains five agripennes. Twenty-five gates are situated on each side, which make in all one hundred. The doors of these gates, which are of wonderful size, are cast in bronze. The same historian [Orosius] tells many other tales of this city, and says: 'Although such was the glory of its building still it was conquered and destroyed.'"

A typical mediaeval account is given by Giovanni Villani (1300): He relates that "it measured eighty miles round, and it was already 4,000 paces high (5,920 m (19,423 ft)) and 1,000 paces thick, and each pace is three of our feet."[18] The 14th century traveler John Mandeville also included an account of the tower, and reported that its height had been 64 furlongs (about 13 km), according to the local inhabitants.

The 17th century historian Verstegan provides yet another figure - quoting Isidore, he says that the tower was 5164 paces high, about 7.6 kilometers, and quoting Josephus that the tower was wider than it was high, more like a mountain than a tower. He also quotes unnamed authors who say that the spiral path was so wide that it contained lodgings for workers and animals, and other authors who claim that the path was wide enough to have fields for growing grain for the animals used in the construction.

In his book, Structures or why things don't fall down (Pelican 1978–1984), Professor J.E. Gordon considers the height of the Tower of Babel. He wrote, 'brick and stone weigh about 120 lb per cubic foot (2000 kg per cubic metre) and the crushing strength of these materials is generally rather better than 6000 lbf per square inch or 40 megapascals. Elementary arithmetic shows that a tower with parallel walls could have been built to a height of 7000 feet or 2 kilometres before the bricks at the bottom were crushed. However by making the walls taper towards the top they ... could well have been built to a height where the men of Shinnar would run short of oxygen and had difficulty in breathing before the brick walls crushed beneath their own dead weight."

[edit] Enumeration of scattered languages
There are several mediaeval historiographic accounts that attempt to make an enumeration of the languages scattered at the Tower of Babel. Because a count of all the descendants of Noah listed by name in chapter 10 of Genesis (LXX) provides 15 names for Japheth's descendants, 30 for Ham's, and 27 for Shem's, these figures became established as the 72 languages resulting from the confusion at Babel — although the exact listing of these languages tended to vary over time. (The LXX Bible has two additional names, Elisa and Cainan, not found in the Masoretic text of this chapter, so early rabbinic traditions such as the Mishna speak instead of "70 languages".) Some of the earliest sources for 72 (sometimes 73) languages are the 2nd century Christian writers Clement of Alexandria (Stromata I, 21) and Hippolytus of Rome (On the Psalms 9); it is repeated in the Syriac book Cave of Treasures (c. AD 350), Epiphanius of Salamis' Panarion (c. 375) and St. Augustine's The City of God 16.6 (c. 410). The chronicles attributed to Hippolytus (c. 234) contain one of the first attempts to list each of the 72 peoples who were believed to have spoken these languages.

Isidore of Seville in his Etymologiae (c. 600) mentions the number of 72, however his list of names from the Bible drops the sons of Joktan and substitutes the sons of Abraham and Lot, resulting in only about 56 names total; he then appends a list of some of the nations known in his own day, such as the Longobards and the Franks. This listing was to prove quite influential on later accounts which made the Lombards and Franks themselves into descendants of eponymous grandsons of Japheth, eg. the Historia Brittonum (c. 833), The Meadows of Gold by al Masudi (c. 947) and Book of Roads and Kingdoms by al-Bakri (1068), the 11th cent. Lebor Gabála Érenn, and the midrashic compilations Yosippon (c. 950), Chronicles of Jerahmeel, and Sefer haYashar.

Other sources that mention 72 (or 70) languages scattered from Babel are the Old Irish poem Cu cen mathair by Luccreth moccu Chiara (c. 600); the Irish monastic work Auraicept na n-Éces; History of the Prophets and Kings by the Persian historian Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari (c. 915); the Anglo-Saxon dialogue Solomon and Saturn; the Russian Primary Chronicle (c. 1113); the Jewish Kabbalistic work Bahir (1174); the Prose Edda of Snorri Sturluson (c. 1200); the Syriac Book of the Bee (c. 1221); the Gesta Hunnorum et Hungarorum (c. 1284; mentions 22 for Shem, 31 for Ham and 17 for Japheth for a total of 70); Villani's 1300 account; and the rabbinic Midrash ha-Gadol (14th c.). Villani adds that it "was begun 700 years after the Flood, and there were 2,354 years from the beginning of the world to the confusion of the Tower of Babel. And we find that they were 107 years working at it; and men lived long in those times". According to the Gesta Hunnorum et Hungarorum, however, the project was begun only 200 years following the Deluge.

The tradition of 72 languages persisted into later times. Both José de Acosta in his 1576 treatise De procuranda indorum salute, and António Vieira a century later in his Sermão da Epifania, expressed amazement at how much this 'number of tongues' could be surpassed, there being hundreds of mutually unintelligible languages indigenous only to Peru and Brazil, respectively.

[edit] See also
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Tower of Babel

Babel at Wiktionary
Babel fish
Babylonia
Borsippa
Linguistic divergence
Origin of language
The Tower (Tarot card), a Tarot trump or "Major Arcana" card
Sons of Noah
Space tower
The Tower of Babel (Brueghel)
Tower of Babel (M. C. Escher)
Diana Al-Hadid
[edit] Notes
1.^ Book of Genesis, Chapter 11
2.^ a b c d Harris, Stephen L., Understanding the Bible. Palo Alto: Mayfield. 1985.
3.^ Hebrew: וְרֹאשׁוֹ בַשָּׁמַיִם
4.^ http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/contra/babel.html
5.^ The remains of Etemenanki, the ziggurat at Babylon on WikiMapia
6.^ The Book of Jubilees, translated by R. H. Charles
7.^ Pseudo Philo Chapter 6
8.^ http://www.seforimonline.org/unsorted/%d7%a6%d7%99%d7%95%d7%a0%d7%99.pdf
9.^ http://www.seforimonline.org/unsorted/%d7%9e%d7%90%d7%99%d7%a8%d7%aa%20%d7%a2%d7%99%d7%a0%d7%99%d7%9d.pdf
10.^ http://www.hebrew.grimoar.cz/merimon_sefardi/berit_menucha.htm
11.^ The Inhabitants of the Seven Earths - Vol. 1 - Legends of the Jews - Louis Ginzberg
12.^ Entry on "Sack" in Betty Kirkpatrick (ed), Brewer's Concise Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, Cassell, London, 1992.
13.^ 145f.: an-ki ningin2-na ung3 sang sig10-ga den-lil2-ra eme 1-am3 he2-en-na-da-ab-dug4.
14.^ Rohl, David. Legend: The Genesis of Civilization, 1998.
15.^ Frazer, Folk-Lore in the Old Testament(1918), chap. 5.
16.^ Folk-lore in the Old Testament by James George Frazer, p. 384 ff.
17.^ Kohl, Reisen in die 'Ostseeprovinzen, ii. 251-255
18.^ Selections from Giovanni's Chronicle in English.
[edit] References
"Babel". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). 1911.
Pr. Diego Duran, Historia Antiqua de la Nueva Espana (Madrid, 1585)
Ixtilxochitl, Don Ferdinand d'Alva, Historia Chichimeca, 1658
Lord Kingsborough, Antiquities of Mexico, vol. 9
H.H. Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States (New York, 1874)
Klaus Seybold, Der Turmbau zu Babel: Zur Entstehung von Genesis XI 1-9, Vetus Testamentum (1976).
Samuel Noah Kramer, The "Babel of Tongues": A Sumerian Version, Journal of the American Oriental Society (1968).
[edit] External links
"Tower of Babel." Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
The Encyclopedia of Babel - collection of references to Babel in history, arts and literature
Babel In Biblia: The Tower in Ancient Literature by Jim Rovira
Our People: A History of the Jews - The Tower of Babel
Livius.org: The tower of Babel
Book of Genesis, Chapter 11
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Babel"
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Fingerprints Of The Gods

Graham Hancock 1995

Page 98

"An artificial language"

"Another possible legacy of Tiahuanaco, and of the Viracochas,lay embedded in the language spoken by the local Aymara Indians - a language regarded by some specialists as the oldest in the world.

In the 1980s Ivan Guzman de Rojas,a Bolivian computer scientist, accidentally demonstrated that Aymara might be not only very ancient but , significantly , that it might be a made - up "language - something deliberately and skilfully designed. Of particular note was the seemingly artificial character of its syntax, which was rigidly structured and unambiguous to an extent thought inconceivable in normal
"organic" speech.This synthetic and highly organized structure meant that Aymara could easily be transformed into a computer algorithm to be used to translate one language into another:"The Aymara Algorithm is used as a bridge language. The language of an original document is translated into Aymara and then into any number of other languages.Was it just coincidence that an apparently artificial language governed by
a computer - friendly syntax should be spoken today in the environs of Tiahuanaco? Or could Aymara be a legacy of the high learning that legend attributed to the Viracochas?

 

 

THE SIRIUS MYSTERY

Robert K.G.Temple 1976

Page 82

The Sacred Fifty

"We must return to the treatise 'The Virgin of the World'. This treatise is quite explicit in saying that Isis and Osiris were sent to help the Earth by giving primitive mankind the arts of civilization:
And Horus thereon said:

'How was it, mother, then, that Earth received God's Efflux?' And Isis said:

'I may not tell the story of (this) birth; for it is not permitted to describe the origin of thy descent, O Horus (son) of mighty power, lest afterwards the way-of-birth of the immortal gods should be known unto men - except so far that God the Monarch, the universal Orderer and Architect, sent for a little while thy mighty sire Osiris, and the mightiest goddess Isis, that they might help the world, for all things needed them.
'Tis they who filled life full of life. 'Tis they who caused the savagery of mutual slaughtering of men to cease. 'Tis they who hallowed precincts to the Gods their ancestors and spots for holy rites. 'Tis they who gave to men laws, food and shelter.'

"Page 73

A Fairy Tale

'I INVOKE THEE, LADY ISIS, WITH WHOM THE GOOD DAIMON DOTH UNITE,

HE WHO IS LORD IN THE PERFECT BLACK.'

 

 

THE SIRIUS MYSTERY

Robert K.G.Temple 1976

Page 74

"Mead quotes an Egyptian magic papyrus, this being an uncontested Egyptian document which he compares to a passage in the Trismegistic literature: 'I invoke thee, Lady Isis, with whom the Good Daimon doth unite, He who is Lord in the perfect black. '37
We know that Isis is identified with Sirius A, and here we may have a / Page 74 / description of her star-companion 'who is Lord in the perfect black', namely the invisible companion with whom she is united, Sirius B.
Mead, of course, had no inkling of the Sirius question. But he cited this magic papyrus in order to shed comparative light on some extraordinary passages in a Trismegistic treatise he translated which has the title 'The Virgin of the World'. In his comments on the magic papyrus Mead says: 'It is natural to make the Agathodaimon ("the Good Daimon") of the Papyrus refer to Osiris; for indeed it is one of his most frequent designations. Moreover, it is precisely Osiris who is pre-eminently connected with the so-called "under­world", the unseen world, the "mysterious dark". He is lord there. . . and indeed one of the ancient mystery-sayings was precisely, "Osiris is a dark God." ,
'The Virgin of the World' is an extraordinary Trismegistic treatise in the form of a dialogue between the hierophant (high priest) as spokesman for Isis and the neophyte who represents Horus. Thus the priest instructing the initiate is portrayed as Isis instructing her son Horus.
The treatise begins by claiming it is 'her holiest discourse' which 'so speaking Isis doth pour forth'. There is, throughout, a strong emphasis on the hierarchical principle of lower and higher beings in the universe - that earthly mortals are presided over at intervals by other, higher, beings who interfere in Earth's affairs when things here become hopeless, etc. Isis says in the treatise: 'It needs must, therefore, be the less should give place to the greater mysteries.' What she is to disclose to Horus is a great mystery. Mead describes it as the mystery practised by the arch-hierophant. It was the degree (here 'degree' is in the sense of 'degree' in the Masonic 'mysteries', which are hopelessly garbled and watered-down versions of genuine mysteries of earlier times) 'called the "Dark Mystery" or "Black Rite". It was a rite performed only for those who were judged worthy of it after long probation in lower degrees, something of a far more sacred character, apparently, than the instruction in the mysteries enacted in the light.'
Mead adds: 'I would suggest, therefore, that we have here a reference to the most esoteric institution of the Isiac tradition. . .', Isiac meaning of course 'Isis-tradition', and not to be confused with the Book of Isaiah in the Bible (so that perhaps it is best for us not to use the word-form 'Isiac').
It is in attempting to explain the mysterious 'Black Rite' of Isis at the highest degree of the Egyptian mysteries that Mead cited the magic papyrus which I have already quoted. He explains the 'Black Rite' as being connected with Osiris being a 'dark god' who is 'Lord of the perfect black' which is 'the unseen world, the mysterious black'.
This treatise 'The Virgin of the World' describes a personage called Hermes who seems to represent a race of beings who taught earthly mankind the arts of civilization after which: 'And thus, with charge unto his kinsmen of the Gods to keep sure watch, he mounted to the Stars'.
According to this treatise mankind have been a troublesome lot requiring scrutiny and, at rare intervals of crisis, intervention.
After Hermes left Earth to return to the stars there was or were in Egypt someone or some people designated as 'Tat' (Thoth) who were initiates into the celestial mysteries."

Page 77

"Bearing these books in mind (and I am sure they are there waiting under­ground like a time bomb for us), it is interesting to read this passage in 'The Virgin of the World' following shortly upon that previously quoted:
The sacred symbols of the cosmic elements were hid away hard by the secrets of Osiris. Hermes, ere he returned to Heaven, invoked a spell on them, and spake these words: . . . 'O holy books, who have been made by my immortal hands, by incorruption's magic spells. . . (at this point there is a lacuna as the text is hopeless) . . . free from decay throughout eternity remain and incorrupt from time! Become unseeable, unfindable, for every one whose foot shall tread the plains of this land, until old Heaven doth bring forth meet instruments for you, whom the Creator shall call souls.'
Thus spake he; and, laying spells on them by means of his own works, he shut them safe away in their own zones. And long enough the time has been since they were hid away.
In the treatise the highest objective of ignorant men searching for the truth
is described as: '(Men) will seek out. . . the inner nature of the holy spaces which no foot may tread, and will chase after them into the height, desiring to observe the nature of the motion of the Heaven.
'These are as yet moderate things. For nothing more remains than Earth's remotest realms; nay, in their daring they will track out Night, the farthest Night of all.'..."

Page 82

"We must note Stecchini's remarks about Delphi as follows :38
The god of Delphi, Apollo, whose name means 'the stone', was identified with an object, the omphalos, 'navel', which has been found. It consisted of an ovoidal stone. . . . The omphalos of Delphi was similar to the object which represented the god Amon in Thebes, the 'navel' of Egypt. In 1966 I presented to the annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America a paper in which I maintained that historical accounts, myths, and legends, and some monuments of Delphi, indicate that the oracle was established there by the Pharaohs of the Ethiopian Dynasty.

 

 

IN

THE

BEGINNING

WAS THE WORD AND THE WORD WAS

WITH

GOD AND THE WORD WAS GOD

THE

SAME WAS IN THE BEGINNING WITH

GOD ALL THINGS WERE MADE BY GOD AND WITHOUT GOD

WAS

NOT

ANYTHING

MADE THAT WAS MADE

IN

GOD

WAS LIFE AND THE LIFE WAS

THE

LIGHT

OF

HUMANKIND

AND THE

LIGHT

SHINETH IN THE DARKNESS AND THE DARKNESS COMPREHENDED IT NOT

 

 

I

AM

ALPHA AND OMEGA

THE BEGINNING AND THE END THE FIRST AND THE LAST

I

AM

THE ROOT AND THE OFFSPRING

OF

DAVID

AND

THE BRIGHT AND MORNING STAR

AND

THE SPIRIT AND THE BRIDE SAY COME

AND

LET THEM THAT HEARETH SAY COME

AND

LET THEM THAT IS ATHIRST COME

AND

WHOSOEVER WILL LET THEM TAKE THE WATER OF LIFE FREELY

 

 

THE CHRISTOS THE

CHRIST

 

CHRISTOS SEE HERE IS THE CHRISTOS

 

OSIRIS

 

 

THE SUPERGODS

Maurice M Cotterell

1997

ANCIENT LANDS AND NEW REVELATIONS

The Supergods

Page 107

"The Amazing Lid of Palenque (Volume 1) tells us there are various desti-nations for the dead (in the story of The Paradises) and of periodic phys-ical destruction (in the story of The Four Previous Ages). It tells us how this destruction comes about: through infertility cycles inspired by solar activity, increases in infant mutations, drought through mini iceages and catastrophic destruction through pole tilting adjustments of the Earth's crust and axis, in response to a variable solar magnetic field.
Volume 2 (see Chapter 5 and plates 9-24) tells us that a choice exists hetween purification of the soul through sacrifice, or alternatively a journey through the underworld, and purgatory, before rebirth on Earth. It tells us of a better place, and a worse one than Earth, and that each of us is born of the one God who created himself along with the universe. It teaches us that I am you and you are me, that night becomes day as certainly as day becomes night; life follows death as certainly as death follows life.
Clues in the Temple of Inscriptions tell us that the man in the tomb was no ordinary man, while the Mosaic Mask tells us that he gave life, and took life away. We learn that the numbering system is built into the Mayas' pyramid and that the duration of the sun-spot cycle is contained / Page 108 / in the lid as well as in the pyramid, just in case we missed it first time around. And we learn from their use of jade that the Maya understood better than we do how the universe works. They have shown us in their art and their decoding system that the mind of Lord Pacal was far supe-rior to that of his contemporaries who were not involved with the 'wrapping up' or 'encoding' of the "information, and far superior to the mind of modern man. When he died he became one with the highest God through purification and sacrifice which makes us ask: 'Who was this man who left behind these living miracles'?
Similarly, many races have spoken of spiritual teachers. In olden times a man called Jesus was said to have performed 'miracles'. They say he could walk upon water and heal the sick by the laying on of hands and stories say that in one single day he fed 5,000 people with the food from one basket. He walked among his own people and spoke of a God not of this Earth and he preached purification through love and sacri-fice, which would lead to rebirth after death, and an everlasting life. And they say that when he died he rose from the tomb and from a mountain ascended to 'heaven'.
 This was in our own year of zero, 2,000 years ago. This man Jesus was said to have been born through an 'immaculate conception' without a physical, biological 'father'. They say he was the son of God.
Five hundred years before this the Indian holy book, the Bhagava- Geeta (The Lord's Song), tells the story of a man called Krishna who claimed to represent the living God who created the universe. He too could perform miracles and spoke to the prodigy Arjuna, on the battle- field of Kurekshetra thus: 'Whenever spirituality decays and material- ism is rampant, then O Arjuna, I reincarnate myself...I am reborn from "age to age.. .He who realizes the divine truth concerning my birth and life is not born again; and when he leaves his body, he becomes one with me: (BG, 4:7-9)
These teachers, from 'outside', from 'somewhere else', have visited recent civilizations, bringing over and over again the super knowledge known by the Muvians, Atlanteans, Mayans and others which enabled the flowering of the great civilizations and the evidence suggests they came specifically to teach us of the higher spiritual and scientific orders."

 

 

THE SUPERGODS

Maurice M Cotterell

1997

ANCIENT LANDS AND NEW REVELATIONS

Page 109

 "I have chosen to call these visitors 'Supergods', because they brought their super knowledge to mankind, and because they were not from this planet. That these visitors are 'related' became apparent while decoding the Mosaic Mask of Palenque. Was it just coincidence that the compos- ite picture of the god of the East, Xihtechutli, looked very similar to depictions of a stained glass representation of Christ? Was it just coinci-dence that the cross-legged figure covering the nose and mouth of the Christ-like face resembled the praying Buddha of India?
And why was the number 666 missing from the tomb of Lord Pacal? The book of Revelations, in the Christian Bible, tells of the revelation which appeared to St John, a disciple of Christ. It prophesies a future apocalypse and global destruction.
Few can agree on the true meaning of the undoubted allegory of the book, which is both strange and mysterious. Chapter XIII tells of a beast that rises out of the sea. The beast has seven heads and ten horns and 'upon his heads the name of blasphemy' and continues 'here is wis-dom, let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is six hundred threescore and six...' (666)."

 

"In John 6: 51, Jesus describes himself as 'that living bread which has come down from heaven'. As I explained earlier, the Egyptian hieroglyph for bread is identical in shape to the King's Chamber seal/boss (see figure 66).
We have already noted previously that the Grand Gallery is 153 feet in length. The number 153 has a long Christian tradition associated with the notion of enlightened souls, primarily drawn from the symbolism of 153 fish as outlined towards the end of John's Gospel. Here the disciples are told to cast their nets to the right, which they promptly do - and so catch the said 153 fish. The King's Chamber floor is exactly 153 courses of masonry below the summit platform. Years after reading about the connections of 153 within the Great Pyramid, and biblical passages that outlined the number in relation to fishing and the specific term of casting the nets to the right, I was not surprised to read almost identical symbolism within the Egyptian Book of the Dead.
Pyramid rituals
The basic concept behind the ancient Egyptian initiate trying to get from this world into the next focused upon passing through 4 frontiers of the sky. This required the departed spirit to convince the guardians to grant a free passage, only granted by knowing secret words and names, which, when repeated, were guaranteed to ward off any aggressor or evil apparition. As a consequence, any person daring to venture into the underworld would require magical skills of the very highest order. In ferrying oneself across the 4 frontiers of the sky the services of a ferryman were essential, and the initiate needed to know the correct answers to the ferryman's questions in order to use his boat, which was of course a celestial boat. The knowledge required involved knowing mythology, the gods' names, and the magic of Egypt, as well as possessing mathematical and practical scientific skills. I see in these rituals a memory that the hitherto unknown pre-dynastic priests, from whom the Egyptians obtained their knowledge, were scientists, technologists and perhaps even metaphysicists."

 

 

THE HOLY BIBLE

Scofield Reference

REVELATIONS

C13 V 18

"HERE IS WISDOM LET HIM THAT HATH UNDERSTANDING COUNT THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST

FOR IT IS THE NUMBER OF A MAN AND HIS NUMBER IS SIX HUNDRED THREE SCORE AND SIX"

 

 

THE ROOTS OF COINCIDENCE

Arthur Koestler

1972

 Page 88 

"Euclidian geometries, invented by earlier mathematicians more or less as a game, provided the basis for his relativistic cosmology

Another great physicist whose thoughts moved in a similar direction was Wolfgang Pauli.

At the end of the 1932 conference on nuclear physics in Copenhagen the participants, as was their custom on these occasions, performed a skit full of that quantum humour of which we have already had a few samples. In that particular year they produced a parody of Goethe's Faust, in which Wolfgang Pauli was cast in the role of Mephistopheles; his Gretchen was the neutrino, whose existence Pauli had predicted, but which had not yet been discovered.

 

MEPHISTOPHELES

(to Faust):

 Beware, beware, of Reason and of Science

Man's highest powers, unholy in alliance.

You'll let yourself, through dazzling witchcraft yield

To weird temptations of the quantum field.

Enter Gretchen; she sings to Faust. Melody: "Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel" by Schubert.

GRETCHEN: 

My rest-mass is zero

My charge is the same

You are my hero

Neutrino's my name."

 

ZAZAZAZAZAZAZAZAZAAZAZAZAZAZAZAZAZAZ 

 

 

THE HERMETICA

THE LOST WISDOM OF THE PHARAOHS

Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy

To the Memory of Giordano Bruno 1548 - 1600

Mundus Nihil Pulcherrimum

The World is a Beautiful Nothing

Page 23

"Although we have used the familiar term 'God' in the explanatory notes which accompany each chapter, we have avoided this term in the text itself. Instead we have used 'Atum - one of the ancient Egyptian names for the Supreme One God."

 

Page 45

The Being of Atum

"Atum is Primal Mind."

Page 45

The Being of Atum

Give me your whole awareness, and concentrate your thoughts, for Knowledge of Atum's Being requires deep insight, which comes only as a gift of grace.

It is like a plunging torrent of water whose swiftness outstrips any man who strives to follow it, leaving behind not only the hearer, but even the teacher himself.

To conceive of Atum is difficult.

To define him is impossible.

The imperfect and impermanent cannot easily apprehend the eternally perfected.

Atum is whole and conconstant.

In himself he is motionless, yet he is self-moving.

He is immaculate, incorruptible and ever-lasting.

He is the Supreme Absolute Reality. He is filled with ideas which are imperceptible to the senses, and with all-embracing Knowledge.

Atum is Primal Mind.

Page 46

He is too great to be called by the name 'Atum'. He is hidden, yet obvious everywhere.

His Being is known through thought alone, yet we see his form before our eyes.

He is bodiless, yet embodied in everything. There is nothing which he is not. He has no name, because all names are his name. He is the unity in all things, so we must know him by all names and call everything 'Atum'.

He is the root and source of all. Everything has a source, except this source itself, which springs from nothing.

Atum is complete like the number one, which remains itself whether multiplied or divided, and yet generates all numbers.

Atum is the Whole which contains everything. He is One, not two.

He is All, not many.

The All is not many separate things, but the Oneness that subsumes the parts.

The All and the One are identical.

You think that things are many when you view them as separate, but when you see they all hang on the One, /Page 47/ and flow from the One, you will realise they are united­linked together, and connected by a chain of Being from the highest to the lowest, all subject to the will of Atum.

The Cosmos is one as the sun is one, the moon is one and the Earth is one.

Do you think there are many Gods? That's absurd - God is one.

Atum alone is the Creator of all that is immortal, and all that is mutable.

If that seems incredible, just consider yourself. You see, speak, hear, touch, taste, walk, think and breathe.

It is not a different you who does these various things, but one being who does them all.

To understand how Atum makes all things, consider a farmer sowing seeds; here wheat - there barley,
now planting a vine - then an apple tree.

Just as the same man plants all these seeds, so Atum sows immortality in heaven and change on Earth.

Throughout the Cosmos he disseminates Life and movement­the two great elements that comprise Atum and his creation, and so everything that is.

Page 48

Atum is called 'Father' because he begets all things, and, from his example, the wise hold begetting children the most sacred pursuit of human life. Atum works with Nature, within the laws of Necessity, causing extinction and renewal, constantly creating creation to display his wisdom.

Yet, the things that the eye can see are mere phantoms and illusions.

Only those things invisible to the eye are real. Above all are the ideas of Beauty and Goodness.

Just as the eye cannot see the Being of Atum, so it cannot see these great ideas.

They are attributes of Atum alone, and are inseparable from him.

They are so perfectly without blemish that Atum himself is in love with them.

There is nothing which Atum lacks, so nothing that he desires.

There is nothing that Atum can lose, so nothing can cause him grief. Atum is everything.

Atum makes everything, and everything is a part of Atum.

Atum, therefore, makes himself.

This is Atum's glory - he is all-creative, and this creating is his very Being.

It is impossible for him ever to stop creating­for Atum can never cease to be.

Page 49

Atum is everywhere.

Mind cannot be enclosed, because everything exists within Mind.

Nothing is so quick and powerful.

Just look at your own experience. Imagine yourself in any foreign land, and quick as your intention you will be there!

Think of the ocean - and there you are.

You have not moved as things move, but you have travelled, nevertheless.

Fly up into the heavens - you won't need wings!

Nothing can obstruct you - not the burning heat of the sun, or the swirling planets.

Pass on to the limits of creation. Do you want to break out beyond the boundaries of the Cosmos?

For your mind, even that is possible.

Can you sense what power you possess? If you can do all this, then what about your Creator?

Try and understand that Atum is Mind.

This is how he contains the Cosmos. All things are thoughts which the Creator thinks."

 

 

The Sacred Symbol OM
OM The most sacred syllable in Hinduism is OM. It stands for Brahman, ... By following the trail of OM you attain Brahman, of which the Word is the symbol. ...
www.ramakrishna.org/om.htm

OM
The most sacred syllable in Hinduism is OM.
It stands for Brahman, both as personal and impersonal God. The passage below is one of the clearest of the countless references to OM in the Hindu scripture.

The goal which all the Vedas declare, which all austerities aim at, and which men desire when they lead the life of continence, I will tell you briefly: it is OM. This syllable OM is indeed Brahman. This syllable is the Highest. Whosoever knows this syllable obtains all that he desires. This is the best support; this is the highest support. Whosoever knows this support is adored in the world of Brahma.

-- Katha Upanishad I, ii, 15-17 ¹

 

The sound OM is Brahman. The rishis and sages practiced austerity to realize that Sound-Brahman. After attaining perfection one hears the sound of this eternal Word rising spontaneously from the navel. "'What will you gain', some sages ask, 'by merely hearing this sound?' You hear the roar of the ocean from a distance. By following the roar you can reach the ocean. As long as there is the roar, there must also be the ocean. By following the trail of OM you attain Brahman, of which the Word is the symbol. That Brahman has been described by the Vedas as the ultimate goal."

-- The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna ²

 

(To Mahima) "You explain 'Aum' with reference to 'a', 'u', and 'm' only."
Mahima: "'A', 'u', and 'm' mean creation, preservation, and destruction."
Master: "But I give the illustration of the sound of a gong: 'tom', t-o-m. It is the merging of the Lila in the Nitya: the gross, the subtle, and the causal merge in the Great Cause; waking, dream, and deep sleep merge in Turiya. The striking of the gong is like the falling of a heavy weight into a big ocean. Waves begin to rise: the Relative rises from the Absolute; the causal, subtle, and gross bodies appear out of the Great Cause; from Turiya emerge the states of deep sleep, dream, and waking. These waves arising from the Great Ocean merge again in the Great Ocean. From the Absolute to the Relative, and from the Relative to the Absolute. Therefore I give the illustration of the gong's sound, 'tom'. I have clearly perceived all these things. It has been revealed to me that there exists an Ocean of Consciousness without limit. From It come all things of the relative plane, and in It they merge again."

-- The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna ²

 

"The sandhya merges in the Gayatri, the Gayatri in Om, and Om in samadhi. It is like the sound of a bell: t-a-m. The yogi, by following in the trail of the sound Om, gradually merges himself in the Supreme Brahman."

 

OM = 1
THE UNIVERSAL

 

OHM = 9 = 9

The Sacred Symbol OM
OM The most sacred syllable in Hinduism is OM. It stands for Brahman, ... By following the trail of OM you attain Brahman, of which the Word is the symbol. ...www.ramakrishna.org/om.htm

OM
The most sacred syllable in Hinduism is OM.
It stands for Brahman, both as personal and impersonal God. The passage below is one of the clearest of the countless references to OM in the Hindu scripture.

The goal which all the Vedas declare, which all austerities aim at, and which men desire when they lead the life of continence, I will tell you briefly: it is OM. This syllable OM is indeed Brahman. This syllable is the Highest. Whosoever knows this syllable obtains all that he desires. This is the best support; this is the highest support. Whosoever knows this support is adored in the world of Brahma.

-- Katha Upanishad I, ii, 15-17 ¹

The sound OM is Brahman. The rishis and sages practiced austerity to realize that Sound-Brahman. After attaining perfection one hears the sound of this eternal Word rising spontaneously from the navel. "'What will you gain', some sages ask, 'by merely hearing this sound?' You hear the roar of the ocean from a distance. By following the roar you can reach the ocean. As long as there is the roar, there must also be the ocean. By following the trail of OM you attain Brahman, of which the Word is the symbol. That Brahman has been described by the Vedas as the ultimate goal."

-- The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna ²

(To Mahima) "You explain 'Aum' with reference to 'a', 'u', and 'm' only."
Mahima: "'A', 'u', and 'm' mean creation, preservation, and destruction."
Master: "But I give the illustration of the sound of a gong: 'tom', t-o-m. It is the merging of the Lila in the Nitya: the gross, the subtle, and the causal merge in the Great Cause; waking, dream, and deep sleep merge in Turiya. The striking of the gong is like the falling of a heavy weight into a big ocean. Waves begin to rise: the Relative rises from the Absolute; the causal, subtle, and gross bodies appear out of the Great Cause; from Turiya emerge the states of deep sleep, dream, and waking. These waves arising from the Great Ocean merge again in the Great Ocean. From the Absolute to the Relative, and from the Relative to the Absolute. Therefore I give the illustration of the gong's sound, 'tom'. I have clearly perceived all these things. It has been revealed to me that there exists an Ocean of Consciousness without limit. From It come all things of the relative plane, and in It they merge again."

-- The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna ²

"The sandhya merges in the Gayatri, the Gayatri in Om, and Om in samadhi. It is like the sound of a bell: t-a-m. The yogi, by following in the trail of the sound Om, gradually merges himself in the Supreme Brahman."

OM Symbol, Hindu OM, Hindu Symbol, OM Sound, OM Chant, AUM, AUM Mantra
The Om symbol is a sacred syllable representing Brahman, the impersonal ... of all matras or divine word (shabda), brahman (ultimate reality) itself. ...
www.lotussculpture.com/my_articles_om.htm
The Hindu OM Symbol, The Sacred Sound of AUM
"The goal which all the Vedas declare, which all austerities aim at, and which men desire when they lead the life of continence . is OM. This syllable OM is indeed Brahman. Whosoever knows this syllable obtains all that he desires. This is the best support; this is the highest support. Whosoever knows this support is adored in the world of Brahma."
~ Upanishad I~

Dancing Ganesh with Om sign on trunk
The Om (or Aum) sign is the main symbol of Hinduism.
Most religions indicate that creation began with sound-- In the beginning was the word...
For the Hindus & Buddhists, Om is the primordial sound, the first breath of creation, the vibration that ensures existence. Om sign signifies God, Creation, & the One-ness of all creation.

The Om symbol is a sacred syllable representing Brahman, the impersonal Absolute - omnipotent, omnipresent, and the source of all manifest existence. Brahman, in itself, is incomprehensible; so a symbol becomes mandatory to help us realize the Unknowable. Om, therefore, represents both the unmanifest (nirguna) and manifest (saguna) aspects of God. That is why it is called Pranava, to mean that it pervades life and runs through our prana or breath.

Aum is said to be the essence of all mantras, the highest of all matras or divine word (shabda), brahman (ultimate reality) itself. Aum is said to be the essence of the Vedas.

By sound and form, AUM symbolizes the infinite Brahman (ultimate reality) and the entire universe.

A stands for Creation

U stands for Preservation

M stands for Destruction or dissolution

This is representative of the Trinity of God in Hindu dharma (Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva)

The three portions of AUM relate to the states of waking, dream and deep sleep and the three gunas (rajas, satva, tamas)

The three letters also indicates three planes of existence, heaven (swarga), earth (martya) and netherworld (patala)

All the words produced by the human vocal organ can be represented by AUM. A is produced by the throat, U & M by the lips

In the Vedas, AUM is the sound of the Sun, the sound of Light. It is the sound of assent (affirmation) and ascent (it has an upwards movement and uplifts the soul, as the sound of the divine eagle or falcon.

 

 

Meaning Of OM
It is also strongly believed that OM is the embodiment of all sounds in the universe. The AUM of Hinduism also possibly became the sacred word of “Hum” of ...
shirdisaidham.com/om.htm - Cached

Is it “OM” or “AUM”? The syllable AUM is a Sanskrit word and is pronounced as A+U+M (AUM) and while symbol OM is more like English oriented and hence recited as O+M (OM). However, there exists no difference and is part of our most revered religious scriptures. OM is also undeniably the central pillar of Hinduism and the part of its traditions and literature over the ages. It is the essence of all mantras and Vedas and has the sound of infinite Brahman.

AUM has more than hundred meanings and one of them is “Welcome to the God”. Though its origin and history is shrouded in mystery but it is undoubtedly a gift or jewel from the Vedic Rishis (seers). AUM is the name of the divine cosmic spirit. It is not separate or different from the supreme god. The word AUM itself is total divinity manifested, invincible supreme god. This palpable world is an expression of that divinity. It is considered to be the oldest mantras of our time. The word has enormous power and significance, simple recitation dispel all our worldly thoughts and instill a new vigor in our body.

We do not find any specific mention of OM in early Vedic period or Rig-Veda. However, we do come across an indirect reference in one of the hymns in the form of ‘Akshara' meaning Imperishable – and has the same meaning as OM. The world ‘Akshara’ is a synonym for OM in many scriptures including Bhagvad Gita. The possible reason for Omission of syllable OM in early Vedic life could be due to its utmost ‘sanctity and purity’ attached to it and was not allowed to be used outside the text of the Vedic sacrifices. It was used with utmost care and caution and passed on from preceptor to the disciple and from father to the son in strict confidence. However the case may be, recitation of any Vedic hymn would not be complete unless it is prefixed with the syllable OM. Over a period of time, the society became more relaxed and flexible and we find its first mention in Yajur Veda.

History is replete in praise of OM though it had different names and meanings at different periods. Swami Sankarananda alluded it to word Soma and concluded that OM represents Sun. Similarly notion is propounded in Aitareya Brahmana, which says that the object, which glows, illuminates, and give light [sun] is OM. The word ‘Akshara’ which is eternally unchanging and part of the Supreme Being points to OM. In the early Upanishads, it is called ‘Symbol of God’. Another later term for OM is ‘tara’ – meaning crossing the mundane existence. In our earliest Upanishads it was also known as ‘udgitha’. Hence, AUM represents light, which is not other than infinite Brahma. However the case may be, it is symbol of God and on recitation dissolves the mind in the Divinity. It is also strongly believed that OM is the embodiment of all sounds in the universe. The AUM of Hinduism also possibly became the sacred word of “Hum” of the Buddhists, Amin of the Muslims and Amen for Christians.

After a lapse of two millennia an unknown sage who composed the brief Mandukya Upanishad and sought to unfold its importance or expound its metaphysics i.e. Ultimate Nature of Existence. Though it is short but subtle of all the major Upanishads, yet the most revered scriptures of Hinduism. In this Upanishad, we have the classic exposition of the meaning of AUM, the most sacred of all mantras. It is the quintessence of Vedanta. OM is spoken in this Upanishad as the primeval word, which stands for the entire universe permeated by Brahman and therefore Brahman itself. The English translation of the mantra in the Upanishad is something like this:

Hari AUM. AUM, the word, is all this.

A clear explanation of it is the following

All that is past, present and future is verily AUM

That, which is beyond the triple conception of time, is also truly AUM.

According to Katha Upanishad also the goal that all the Vedas declare, which all austerities aim at and which men desire when they lead the life of continence, it is OM. The syllable OM is indeed Brahman. Whosoever knows this syllable obtains all that he desires. This is the highest and best support. Whosoever knows this support is adorned in the world of Brahma.

The significance of OM is wide and deep and has been the subject matter of discussion of the Upanishads, Vedas, Bhagvad Gita and other religious scriptures over the myriad of connotations that they stand for. AUM is made of four-syllable a+u+m and fourth one is Silence. OM has been an important aspect of teaching and represents four stages of Brahman – Ultimate Reality.

A - Stands for earth or Creation of the Brahma. It envelops the whole universe including minutest particles and corresponds with our waking state.

U - Stands for Preservation and atmosphere. It represents cosmo hemisphere inhabiting all deities, gandharvas, rakshas and pichasas and beyond our mind and thought and is creation of Vishnu. In other words, it is our dreaming state of mind.

M - Stands for Dissolution and cessation of all worldly thoughts because we are into complete unconsciousness or deep sleep and is creation of Shiva. Though we are not conscious but still remember in the morning that we went to sleep. The Mandukya Upanishad says that in the state of deep sleep the aatman (soul) has been the witness to the sleep of the body and it is this which brings back the memory. It is the aatman (soul) that is above the three stages and this fourth stage refers to the Silence.
The fourth stage ‘Silence’ is present in all of them. It represents Consciousness that illuminates the three above stages and pervades them all and is independent of each of them. It is Eternal, Supreme and Imperishable. Gaudapada in his commentary on this Upanishad said that if we identify three stages with the Silence one and on continuous meditation, one would realize one’s self and there would be no return for a man to the sphere of empirical life as it ushers in true peace, releases the mind from the tyranny of ego, renunciation of worldly thoughts, objects and motions and so on.

The three portions of AUM also represent to the three gunas, which are Rajas, Satvik and Tamas. It also indicates three parts of existence, heaven, earth and netherworld. The syllable OM has endless meaning, explanation and glorification.

Hence AUM is a part of divinity and represents as such to Trinity – Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesh. AUM is the sound of Sun, the sound of Light and the sound of assent (affirmation) and ascent as it has an upward movement and uplifts the soul, as the sound of the divine eagle or falcon. It has the sense of totality as is evident from the English word of Omnipresent, Omniscient and Omnipotent.

Thus, OM is the ancient and sacred symbol, which represents the sound of all creation. It symbolizes infinite, eternal and is inclusive of all religions, caste, color and creed. OM is the most sacred syllables, the first sound of Almighty – from which all sounds emanate. If chanted with correct intonation, it can resonate in the whole body and merge in the fourth stage as mentioned above. It is past, present and future.

The efficacy of OM is unbound and limitless. Its recitation absolves us from all errors, sins and removes impediments in the performance of our worship. It is an unending source of energy. This is the highest mantra for mankind. It removes our negative emotions and protects us from all misdeeds.

OM is the power of bliss consciousness. Those who recite it with pure and pious mind are transformed into pure body, speech and mind. Their mind becomes serene, calm and powerful. Its regular chanting brings forth-tremendous power and divine luster on the face. OM is the foundation of all mantras and such is its effect that the wave of bad karma abates and brings forth prosperity and happy life. It is a prefix to all auspicious matters including God names and such is the power of mantra ‘OM’ that all vicissitudes, bad thoughts and actions cease before we take His Name or recite any Mantra. Hence OM a symbol of God. It is the source of entire universe. It is beginning and end encompassing space, time and the entire phenomena meaning thoughts and feelings as well as physical objects. Thus someone has rightly said “He who knows “OM” knows God”.

 

Search ResultsOm mani padme hum - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Om mani padme hum (derived from the Sanskrit, Devanagari ओं मणिपद्मे हूं, IAST oṃ maṇipadme hūṃ) is a mantra particularly associated with the ...

Transliterations - Meaning - Authentication - Music
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Om mani padme hum
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The mantra in Tibetan script
"om manipadme hūṃ", written in Tibetan script on a rock outside the Potala Palace in TibetOm mani padme hum[1] (derived from the Sanskrit, Devanagari ओं मणिपद्मे हूं, IAST oṃ maṇipadme hūṃ) is a mantra particularly associated with the four-armed Shadakshari form of Avalokiteshvara. Mani means the jewel and Padma-the lotus. It is the six syllabled mantra of the bodhisattva of compassion, Avalokiteshvara (Tibetan Chenrezig, Chinese Guanyin).

The mantra is especially revered by the devotees of the Dalai Lama, as he is said to be an incarnation of Chenrezig or Avalokiteshvara.

It is commonly carved onto rocks and written on paper which is inserted into prayer wheels, said to increase the mantra's effects.

Contents [hide]
1 Transliterations
2 Meaning
2.1 Karandavyuha Sutra definition
2.2 H.H. the 14th Dalai Lama's definition
2.3 Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche's definition
2.4 Karma Thubten Trinley's definition
2.5 Variation
3 Authentication
4 Music
5 Bibliography
6 See also
7 Footnotes
8 Further reading
9 External links

[edit] Transliterations

Om Mani Peme Hung in Tibetan scriptIn English the mantra is variously transliterated, depending on the schools of Buddhism as well as individual teachers.

Note that Buddhist mantras always use oṃ ओं and never auṃ औं. Specifically the form ॐ with its strong Hindu associations is inappropriate in a Buddhist context [citation needed]. Most authorities consider maṇipadme to be one compound word rather than two simple words [citation needed]. Sanskrit does not have capital letters leaving capitalisation of transliterated mantras varying irrationally from all caps, to initial caps, to no caps. All caps is typical of older scholarly works, and in Tibetan Sadhana texts.

Possible spellings and their romanizations include:

Tibetan: ཨོཾ་མ་ཎི་པ་དྨེ་ཧཱུྃ། Om Mani Peme Hung or Om Mani Beh Meh Hung
Devanagari: ओं मणि पद्मे हूँ; IAST: oṃ maṇipadme hūṃ
Bengali: ওঁ মণিপদ্মে হুঁ
Tamil: ஓம் மணி பத்மே ஹூம்
Chinese 唵嘛呢叭咪吽, pinyin Ǎn mání bāmī hōng (due to changes over time in pronunciation, this transcription has been adopted in favor of the transliteration found in the Karandavyuha Sutra, 唵麼抳缽訥銘吽 Ǎn mání bōnàmíng hōng)
Korean Hangul 옴 마니 파드메 훔 Om mani padeume hum or 옴 마니 반메 훔 Om mani banme hum
Japanese Katakana オンマニハンドメイウン On mani handomei un [citation needed]
Mongolian: Ум маани бадми хум or Um maani badmi khum
Vietnamese: Úm ma ni bát ni hồng or Án ma ni bát mê hồng
Thai: โอม มณี ปัทเม หุม
[edit] Meaning

The mantra with the six syllables colouredMantras may be interpreted by practitioners in many ways, or even as mere sequences of sound whose effects lie beyond strict meaning.

The middle part of the mantra, maṇipadme, is often interpreted as "jewel in the lotus," Sanskrit maṇí "jewel, gem, cintamani" and the locative of padma "lotus", but according to Donald Lopez it is much more likely that maṇipadme is in fact a vocative, not a locative, addressing a bodhisattva called maṇipadma, "Jewel-Lotus"- an alternate epithet of the bodhisattva Avalokitesvara.[2] It is preceded by the oṃ syllable and followed by the hūṃ syllable, both interjections without linguistic meaning.

Lopez also notes that the majority of Tibetan Buddhist texts have regarded the translation of the mantra as secondary, focusing instead on the correspondence of the six syllables of the mantra to various other groupings of six in the Buddhist tradition.[3] For example, in the Chenrezig Sadhana, Tsangsar Tulku Rinpoche expands upon the mantra's meaning, taking its six syllables to represent the purification of the six realms of existence:[4]

Syllable Six Pāramitās Purifies Samsaric realm Colours Symbol of the Deity (Wish them) To be born in
Om Generosity Pride / Bliss Devas White Wisdom Perfect Realm of Potala
Ma Ethics Jealousy / Lust for entertainment Asuras Green Compassion Perfect Realm of Potala
Ni Patience Passion / desire Humans Yellow Body, speech, mind
quality and activity Dewachen
Pad Diligence Ignorance / prejudice Animals Blue Equanimity the presence of Protector (Chenrezig)
Me Renunciation Poverty / possessiveness Pretas (hungry ghosts) Red Bliss Perfect Realm of Potala
Hum Wisdom Aggression / hatred Naraka Black Quality of Compassion the presence of the Lotus Throne (of Chenrezig)

[edit] Karandavyuha Sutra definition
The first known description of the mantra appears in the Karandavyuha Sutra (Chinese: 佛說大乘莊嚴寶王經 (Taisho Tripitaka 1050) [5]; English: Buddha speaks Mahayana Sublime Treasure King Sutra), which is part of certain Mahayana canons such as the Tibetan. In this sutra, Shakyamuni Buddha states, "This is the most beneficial mantra. Even I made this aspiration to all the million Buddhas and subsequently received this teaching from Buddha Amitabha."[6]

[edit] H.H. the 14th Dalai Lama's definition
"It is very good to recite the mantra Om mani padme hum, but while you are doing it, you should be thinking on its meaning, for the meaning of the six syllables is great and vast... The first, Om [...] symbolizes the practitioner's impure body, speech, and mind; it also symbolizes the pure exalted body, speech, and mind of a Buddha[...]"
"The path is indicated by the next four syllables. Mani, meaning jewel, symbolizes the factors of method: (the) altruistic intention to become enlightened, compassion, and love.[...]"
"The two syllables, padme, meaning lotus, symbolize wisdom[...]"
"Purity must be achieved by an indivisible unity of method and wisdom, symbolized by the final syllable hum, which indicates indivisibility[...]"
"Thus the six syllables, om mani padme hum, mean that in dependence on the practice of a path which is an indivisible union of method and wisdom, you can transform your impure body, speech, and mind into the pure exalted body, speech, and mind of a Buddha[...]"
-- H.H. Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama, "Om Mani Padme Hum"[7]
[edit] Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche's definition
"The mantra Om Mani Päme Hum is easy to say yet quite powerful, because it contains the essence of the entire teaching. When you say the first syllable Om it is blessed to help you achieve perfection in the practice of generosity, Ma helps perfect the practice of pure ethics, and Ni helps achieve perfection in the practice of tolerance and patience. Pä, the fourth syllable, helps to achieve perfection of perseverance, Me helps achieve perfection in the practice of concentration, and the final sixth syllable Hum helps achieve perfection in the practice of wisdom.
"So in this way recitation of the mantra helps achieve perfection in the six practices from generosity to wisdom. The path of these six perfections is the path walked by all the Buddhas of the three times. What could then be more meaningful than to say the mantra and accomplish the six perfections?"
— Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, Heart Treasure of the Enlightened Ones[8]
[edit] Karma Thubten Trinley's definition
"These are the six syllables which prevent rebirth into the six realms of cyclic existence. It translates literally as 'OM the jewel in the lotus HUM'. OM prevents rebirth in the god realm, MA prevents rebirth in the Asura (Titan) Realm, NI prevents rebirth in the Human realm, PA prevents rebirth in the Animal realm, ME prevents rebirth in the Hungry ghost realm, and HUM prevents rebirth in the Hell realm."
—Karma Thubten Trinley[citation needed]
[edit] Variation

The mantra: Om Mani Peme Hung HriAs Bucknell, et al. (1986: p. 15) opine, the complete Avalokiteshvara Mantra includes a final Hrīh (hrih, pronounced "heRee"[needs IPA]), which is iconographically depicted in the central space of the syllabic mandala as seen in the ceiling decoration of the Potala Palace.[9] The hrīh is not always vocalized audibly, and may be resonated 'internally' or 'secretly' through intentionality.

[edit] Authentication
As mentioned above, the mantra originated in the Karandavyuha Sutra in the Chinese Buddhist canon.[5] However, some other Buddhist scholars argue that the mantra as practiced in Tibetan Buddhism was based on the Sadhanamala published in the twelfth century.[10]

[edit] Music
DharmaSound: Oṃ Maṇi Padme Hūṃ (see Buddhismo Ch'an/Zen and Buddhismo Vajrayāna)
"Om Mani Padme Hum" Song Demo (25"45s) on "Tibetan Incantations" Album
[1] on "Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence - FYI" lyric of Utada Hikaru's song

"Om Mani Padme Hum" by Snuffaluffagus
[edit] Bibliography
Teachings from the Mani retreat, Chenrezig Institute, December 2000 (2001) by Shramana Lama Zopa Rinpoche, ISBN 978-1891868108, Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive downloadable
Bucknell, Roderick & Stuart-Fox, Martin (1986). The Twilight Language: Explorations in Buddhist Meditation and Symbolism. Curzon Press: London. ISBN 0-312-82540-4
Lopez, Donald (1998). Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West. University of Chicago Press: Chicago. ISBN 0-226-49311-3.
The phrase "Om mani padme Hum" also occurs in the song "Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence - FYI" by Japanese-American singer Utada Hikaru, and in the song "Strange Phenomena" by English artist Kate Bush.
"Under the Blanket" by Trevor Hall last lyric of the whole song.

Used in the song "Inori ~Monlam~", by Akiko Shikata, whose lyrics are completely in ancient Tibetan.
Mixed Martial Arts fighter Dan Hardy has Om mani padme hum tattooed on his stomach.
The phrase "Om mani padme Hum" also sung by Jerry (John Spencer) in the opening scenes of WarGames (1983).
[edit] See also
Shurangama Mantra – Expanded Protective Power of Om Mani Padma Hum
Great Compassion Mantra – Expanded Compassion of Om Mani Padma Hum
Buddhism
Heart sutra
Mantra
Mani stone
Samsara
Ashtamangala
Karandavyuha Sutra
[edit] Footnotes
1.^ Pronunciation of the mantra as chanted by a Tibetan refugee: Wave Format and Real Audio Format.
2.^ Lopez, 331; the vocative would have to be feminine
3.^ Lopez, 130
4.^ Tsangsar Tulku Rinpoche, Chenrezig sadhana
5.^ a b Studholme, Alexander (2002). The Origins of Om Manipadme Hum: A Study of the Karandavyuha Sutra. State University of New York Press. pp. 256. ISBN 0791453901.
6.^ Khandro.net: Mantras
7.^ Gyatso, Tenzin. Om Mani Padme Hum
8.^ Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, Heart Treasure of the Enlightened Ones. ISBN 0-87773-493-3
9.^ Bucknell, Roderick & Stuart-Fox, Martin (1986). The Twilight Language: Explorations in Buddhist Meditation and Symbolism. Curzon Press: London. ISBN 0-312-82540-4, p.15
10.^ Li, Yu. "Analysis of the Six Syllable practice - the relationship between The Six Syllable and Amitabha". http://www.cqvip.com/QK/80443X/2003002/8922419.html. Retrieved September 1, 2008.
[edit] Further reading
Alexander Studholme: The Origins of Om Manipadme Hum. Albany NY: State University of New York Press, 2002 ISBN 0-7914-5389-8 (incl. Table of Contents)
Mark Unno: Shingon Refractions: Myōe and the Mantra of Light. Somerville MA, USA: Wisdom Publications, 2004 ISBN 0-86171-390-7
Bucknell, Roderick & Stuart-Fox, Martin (1986). The Twilight Language: Explorations in Buddhist Meditation and Symbolism. Curzon Press: London. ISBN 0-312-82540-4
A.H. Francke: The Meaning of Om Mani Padme-Hum, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1915
Lama Anagarika Govinda: Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism, 1969. Samuel Weiser, Inc: NYC, NY. ISBN 0-87728-064-9.
Rodger Kamenetz: The Jew in the Lotus (PLUS) with an afterword by the author. (HarperOne, 2007) non-fiction. Table of Contents
[edit] External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Om mani padme hum

Dharma Haven: Om Mani Padme Hum
Khandro.net: Mantra
An article on the phrase at BabelStone
Buddha speaks Mahayana Sublime Treasure King Sutra English translation of Karandavyuha Sutra
"Om Mani Padme Hum" Songs - collection 13 version of "Om Mani Padme Hum" songs (on 4 albums Mantra)

 

 

OM MANI PADME HUM

OM MANE PADME GUM

AUM MANI PADME HUM

AUM MANE PADME HUM

AUM 123 AUM

ATUM 1234 ATUM

 

 

Middle Eastern Mythology

S. H. Hooke 1963

Middle Eastern Mythology

Recent Sumerian studies 5 have shown that the conception or a divine garden and of a state when sickness and death did not exist and wild animals did not prey on one another is to be found in Sumerian mythology. The description of this earthly Paradise is contained in the Sumerian poem which Dr Kramer has called the Epic of Emmerkar:

The land Dilmun is a pure place, the land Dilmun is a clean place

The land Dilmun is a clean place, the land Dilmun is a bright place

In Dilmun the raven uttered no cry,

The kite uttered not the cry of the kite,

The lion killed not,

The wolf snatched not the lamb,

Unknown was the kid-killing dog,

Unknown was the grain-devouring boar ...

The sick·eyed says not '1 am sick-eyed',

The sick-headed says not '1 am sick-headed',

Its (Dilmun's) old woman says not 'I am an old woman',

Its old man says not 'I am an old man',

Unbathed is the maid, no sparkling water is poured in the city,

Who crosses the river (of death?) utters no ...

The 'wailing priests walk not about him,

The singer utters no wail,

By the side of the city he utters no lament.

Later, in the Semitic editing of the Sumerian myths, Dilmun became the dwelling of the immortals, where Utnapishtim and his wife were allowed to live after the Flood (p. 49). It was apparently located at the mouth of the Persian Gulf.

According to the Sumerian myth the only thing which Dilmun lacked was fresh water; the god Enki (or Ea) ordered Utu, the sun-god, to 'bring up fresh water from the earth to water the garden. Here we may have the source of the / Page 115 / mysterious 'ed of which the Yahwist speaks as coming up from the ground to water the garden.

In the myth of Enki and Ninhursag it is related that the mother-goddess Ninhursag caused eight plants to grow in the garden of the gods. Enki desired to eat these plants and sent his messenger Isimud to fetch them. Enki ate them one by one, and Ninhursag in her rage pronounced the curse of death upon Enki. As the result of the curse eight of Enki's bodily organs were attacked by disease and he was at the point of death. The great gods were in dismay and Enlil was powerless to help. Ninhursag was induced to return and deal with the situation. She created eight goddesses of healing who proceeded to heal each of the diseased parts of Enki's body. One of these parts was the god's rib, and the goddess who was created to deal with the rib was named Ninti, which means 'the lady of the rib'. But the Sumerian word ti has the double meaning of 'life' as well as ' rib', so that Ninti could also mean 'the lady of life'. We have seen that in the Hebrew myth the woman who was fashioned from Adam's rib was named by him Hawwah, meaning 'Life'. Hence one of the most curious features of the Hebrew myth of Paradise clearly has its origin in this somewhat crude Sumerian myth.

Other elements in the Yahwist's form of the Paradise myth have striking parallels in various Akkadian myths. The importance of the possession of knowledge, which is always magical knowledge, is a recurring theme. We have seen that the myth of Adapa and the Gilgamesh Epic are both concerned with the search for immortality and the problem of death and the existence of disease. These and other examples which we have cited will serve to illustrate the point that the Akkadian myths were concerned with the themes which appear in the Yahwist's Paradise story.

 

 

QUO VADIS

 

Quo vadis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Quo vadis? is a Latin phrase meaning "Where are you going?" or "Whither goest thou?". The modern usage of the phrase refers to a legend in Christian ... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quo_vadis

Quo vadis? is a Latin phrase meaning "Where are you going?" or "Whither goest thou?". The modern usage of the phrase refers to a legend in Christian tradition, related in the apocryphal Acts of Peter (Vercelli Acts XXXV), in which Saint Peter meets Jesus as Peter is fleeing from likely crucifixion in Rome. Peter asks Jesus the question; Jesus' answer, "I am going to Rome to be crucified again" (Eo Romam iterum crucifigi), prompts Peter to gain the courage to continue his ministry and eventually become a martyr.

The phrase also occurs a few times in the Vulgate translation of the Bible, notably including the occurrence in John 13:36 in which Peter also asks the question of Jesus, after the latter announces he is going to where his followers cannot come.

 

 

7	WHITHER	91	46	1
5	GOEST	66	21	3
4	THOU	64	19	1
16	-	221	86	5
1+6	-	2+2+1	8+6	-
7	-	5	14	5
-	-	-	1+4	-
7	-	5	5	5

 

 

 

 

HOLY BIBLE

Scofield References

C 1 V 16

THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES

Page 1148 (Part quoted)

 

 

CHEIRO'S BOOK OF NUMBERS

Circa 1926

Page106
"Shakespeare, that Prince of Philosophers, whose thoughts will adorn English literature for all time, laid down the well-known axiom: There is a tide in the affairs of men which if taken at the flood, leads on to fortune." The question has been asked again and again, Is there some means of knowing when the moment has come to take the tide at the flood?
My answer to this question is that the Great Architect of the Universe in His Infinite Wisdom so created all things in such harmony of design that He endowed the human mind with some part of that omnipotent knowledge which is the attribute of the Divine Mind as the Creator of all.

The question has been asked again and again, Is there some means of knowing when the moment has come to take the tide at the flood?

 

 

 THE

QUESTION

HAS BEEN ASKED AGAIN AND AGAIN

IS THERE SOME MEANS OF KNOWING WHEN THE MOMENT HAS COME TO TAKE

THE TIDE AT THE

FLOOD

 

 

8	QUO VADIS	108	36	9
6	VOX POP	108	36	9
11	SORROW	108	36	9
8	INSTINCT	108	36	9
11	DESCENDANTS	108	36	9
8	STARTING	108	36	9
9	NARRATIVE	108	36	9
9	SEQUENCES	108	36	9
9	COMPLETES	108	36	9
9	AMBIGUOUS	108	36	9
7	JOURNEY	108	36	9

 

 

-	9	S	E	Q	U	E	N	C	E	S	-	-	-	-	-	--	-	-	-	-
-	-	1	-	-	-	-	5	-	-	1	+	=	7	-	=	7	=	7	=	7
-	-	19	-	-	-	-	14	-	-	19	+	=	52	5+2	=	7	=	7	=	7
-	9	S	E	Q	U	E	N	C	E	S	-	-	-	-	-	--	-	-	-	-
-	-	-	5	8	3	5	-	3	5	-	+	=	29	2+9	=	11	1+1	2	=	2
-	-	-	5	17	21	5	-	3	5	-	+	=	56	5+6	=	11	1+1	2	=	2
-	9	S	E	Q	U	E	N	C	E	S	-	-	-	-	-	--	-	-	-	-
-	-	19	5	17	21	5	14	3	5	19	+	=	108	1+0+8	=	9	=	9	=	9
-	-	1	5	8	3	5	5	3	5	1	+	=	36	3+6	=	9	=	9	=	9
-	9	S	E	Q	U	E	N	C	E	S	-	-	-	-	-	--	-	-	-	-
-	-	1	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	1	-	-	1	occurs	x	2	=	2	=	2
2	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	2	TWO	2	-	-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-	-	3	-	-	3	-	-	-	-	3	occurs	x	2	=	6	=	6
4	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	4	FOUR	4	-	-	-	-	-
-	-	-	5	-	-	5	5	-	5	-	-	-	5	occurs	x	4	=	20	2+0	2
6	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	6	SIX	6	-	-	-	-	-
7	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	7	SEVEN	7	-	-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-	8	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	8	occurs	x	1	=	8	=	8
9	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	9	NINE	9	-	-	-	-	-
28	9	S	E	Q	U	E	N	C	E	S	-	-	17	-	-	9	-	36	-	18
2+8	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	1+7	-	-	-	-	3+6	-	1+8
10	9	S	E	Q	U	E	N	C	E	S	-	-	8	-	-	9	-	9	-	9
1+0	-	1	5	8	3	5	5	3	5	1	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
1	9	S	E	Q	U	E	N	C	E	S	-	-	8	-	-	6	-	9	-	9

 

 

9	S	E	Q	U	E	N	C	E	S	-	-	-	-	-	--	-	-	-	-
-	1	-	-	-	-	5	-	-	1	+	=	7	-	=	7	=	7	=	7
-	19	-	-	-	-	14	-	-	19	+	=	52	5+2	=	7	=	7	=	7
9	S	E	Q	U	E	N	C	E	S	-	-	-	-	-	--	-	-	-	-
-	-	5	8	3	5	-	3	5	-	+	=	29	2+9	=	11	1+1	2	=	2
-	-	5	17	21	5	-	3	5	-	+	=	56	5+6	=	11	1+1	2	=	2
9	S	E	Q	U	E	N	C	E	S	-	-	-	-	-	--	-	-	-	-
-	19	5	17	21	5	14	3	5	19	+	=	108	1+0+8	=	9	=	9	=	9
-	1	5	8	3	5	5	3	5	1	+	=	36	3+6	=	9	=	9	=	9
9	S	E	Q	U	E	N	C	E	S	-	-	-	-	-	--	-	-	-	-
-	1	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	1	-	-	1	occurs	x	2	=	2	=	2
-	-	-	-	3	-	-	3	-	-	-	-	3	occurs	x	2	=	6	=	6
-	-	5	-	-	5	5	-	5	-	-	-	5	occurs	x	4	=	20	2+0	2
-	-	-	8	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	8	occurs	x	1	=	8	=	8
9	S	E	Q	U	E	N	C	E	S	-	-	17	-	-	9	-	36	-	18
-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	1+7	-	-	-	-	3+6	-	1+8
9	S	E	Q	U	E	N	C	E	S	-	-	8	-	-	9	-	9	-	9
-	1	5	8	3	5	5	3	5	1	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
9	S	E	Q	U	E	N	C	E	S	-	-	8	-	-	6	-	9	-	9

 

 

KEEPER OF GENESIS

A QUEST FOR THE HIDDEN LEGACY OF MANKIND

Robert Bauval Graham Hancock 1996

Page 254

"...Is there in any sense an interstellar Rosetta Stone?

We believe there is a common language that all technical civilizations, no matter how different, must have.

That common language is science and mathematics.

The laws of Nature are the same everywhere:..."

 

 

THE LURE AND ROMANCE OF ALCHEMY.

A history of the secret link between magic and science

1990
C. J. S.Thompson

Page# 31 / 32

note 1 Julius Ruska ,Tabula Smaragdini 1926

"THE EMERALD TABLE OF HERMES: "

"True it is, without falsehood certain most true.That which is
above is like to that which is below, and that which is below is like
to that which is above, to accomplish the miracles of one thing.
And as in all things whereby contemplation of one, so in all things
arose from this one thing by a single act of adoption.
The father thereof is the Sun the mother the Moon.
The wind carried it in its womb,the earth is the source thereof.
It is the father of all works throughout the world.
The power thereof is perfect.
If it be cast on to earth, it will separate the element of earth
from that of fire, the subtle from the gross.
With great sagacity it doth ascend gently from earth to heaven.
Again it doth descend to earth and uniteth in itself from
things superior and things inferior.
Thus thou wilt possess the brightness of the world, and all
obscurity will fly far from thee.
This thing is the strong fortitude of all strength, for it over-
cometh every subtle thing and doth penetrate every solid substance.
Thus was this world created.
Hence will there be marvellous adaptations achieved of which
the manner is this.
For this reason I am called Hermes Trismegistus because I hold
three parts of the wisdom of the whole world.
That which I had to say about the operation of Sol is completed."

 

 

Freiheit - Keeping The Dream Alive lyrics. From the Original Motion Picture ... In my fantasy I remember their faces The hopes we had were much too high ... www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/f/freiheit/keeping_the_dream_alive.html

Tonight the rain is falling
Full of memories of people and places
And while the past is calling
In my fantasy I remember their faces

The hopes we had were much too high
Way out of reach but we have to try
The game will never be over
Because we're keeping the dream alive

I hear myself recalling
Things you said to me
The night it all started
And still the rain is falling
Makes me feel the way
I felt when we parted

The hopes we had were much too high
Way out of reach but we have to try
No need to hide no need to run
'Cause all the answers come one by one
The game will never be over
Because we're keeping the dream alive

I need you
I love you

The game will never be over
Because we're keeping the dream alive

The hopes we had were much too high
Way out of reach but we have to try
No need to hide no need to run
'Cause all the answers come one by one

The hopes we had were much too high
Way out of reach but we have to try
No need to hide no need to run
'Cause all the answers come one by one

The game will never be over
Because we're keeping the dream alive

The game will never be over
Because we're keeping the dream alive

The game will never be over

Mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm.

 

 

THOU KNOWEST NOT

Jeremiah 33:3 Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great ...
Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and will show thee great things, and difficult, ... and show thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not. ... bible.cc/jeremiah/33-3.htm

 

 

CALL UNTO ME AND I WILL SHOW THEE GREAT AND MIGHTY THINGS WHICH THOU KNOWEST NOT "

 

 

I

SAY

IS THIS THE OTHER SIDE OF THE GREAT DIVIDE

?

NO ITS OVER THERE

I

HAVE JUST BEEN OVER THERE AND THEY SAID ITS OVER HERE

 

 

OF TIME AND STARS

Arthur C. Clarke 1972

THE

SENTINEL

Page 205

I CAN NEVER LOOK NOW AT THE MILKY WAY WITHOUT WONDERING FROM WHICH OF THOSE BANKED

CLOUDS OF STARS THE EMISSARIES ARE COMING.IF YOU WILL PARDON SO COMMONPLACE A SIMILE,

WE HAVE SET OFF THE FIRE ALARM AND HAVE NOTHING TO DO BUT WAIT.

I DO NOT THINK WE WILL HAVE TO WAIT LONG

 

 

Did Spacemen Colonise the Earth?

Robin Collyns 1974

Page 206

"FINIS"

 

 

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

Thomas Mann 1924

THE THUNDERBOLT

Page 715

"There is our friend, there is Hans Castorp! We recognize him at a distance, by the little beard he assumed 'while sitting at the " bad" Russian table. Like all the others, he is wet through and glowing. He is running, his feet heavy with mould, the bayonet swinging in his, hand. Look! He treads on the hand of a fallen comrade; with his hobnailed boot he treads the hand deep into the slimy, branch-strewn ground. But it is he. What, singing? As one sings, unaware, staring stark ahead, yes, thus. he spends his hurrying breath, to sing half soundlessly:

"And loving words I've carven
Upon its branches fair-"

He stumbles, No, he has flung himself down, a hell-hound is coming howling, a huge explosive shell, a disgusting sugar-loaf from the infernal regions. He lies with his face in the cool mire, legs. sprawled out, feet twisted, heels turned down. The product of a perverted science, laden with death, slopes earthward thirty paces in front of him and buries its nose in the ground; explodes inside there, with hideous expense of power, and raises up a fountain high as a house, of mud, fire, iron, molten metal, scattered fragments of humanity. Where it fell, two youths had lain, friends who in their need flung themselves down together - now they are scattered, commingled and gone.
Shame of our shadow-safety! Away! No more!-But our friend? Was he hit? He thought so, for the moment. A great clod of earth struck him on the shin, it hurt, but he smiles at it. Up he gets, and staggers on, limping on his earth-bound feet, all unconsciously singing:

"Its waving branches whiispered
A message in my ear -"

and thus, in the tumult, in the rain, in the dusk, vanishes out of our sight.
Farewell, honest Hans Castorp, farewell, Life's delicate child!
Your tale is told. We have told it to the end, and it was neither short nor long, but hermetic. We have told it for its own sake, not for yours, for you were simple. But after all, it was your story, it befell you, you must have more in you than we thought; we will not disclaim the pedagogic weakness we conceived for / Page 716 / you in the telling; which could even lead us to press a finger delicately to our eyes at the thought that we shall see you no more, hear you no more for ever.
Farewell - and if thou livest or diest! Thy prospects are poor. The desperate dance, in which thy fortunes are caught up, will last yet many a sinful year; we should not care to set a high stake on thy life by the time it ends. We even confess that it is without great concern we leave the question open. Adventures of the flesh and in the spirit, while enhancing thy simplicity, granted thee to know in the spirit what in the flesh thou scarcely couldst have done. Moments there were, when out of death, and the rebellion of the flesh, there came to thee, as thou tookest stock of thyself, a dream of love. Out of this universal feast of death, out of this extremity of fever, kindling. the rain-washed evening sky to a fiery glow, may it be that Love one day shall mount?

FINIS OPERIS