Sonic Soma:

Sound, Body and the Origins of the Alphabet

A Dissertation Submitted to the Division of Media and Communications of the
European Graduate School in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

By Anne Elise Kermani
(aka Elise Kermani)

October, 2007






Sonic Soma: Sound, Body and the Origins of the Alphabet
Elise Kermani
October 20, 2007
New York

THESIS: The origins of the alphabet come from the physical body not from
the abstract mind. There was a fissure in thinking when history, religion,
philosophy and linguistics split the mind from the body and declared that all true
languages and societies were born at the moment that man turned away from the
maternal toward an external culture. This fissure runs through all aspects of
modern society including our political, familial, and educational systems. The
goal of this paper is to find mythical and archeological evidence of this fissure, to
analyze its causes and remedy its affects. By realigning our institutions with a
more complete and inclusive point of view based on archeological and scientific
facts of gender equilibrium, we may be able to solve many systematic problems
now apparent in contemporary society.


ABSTRACT:
This paper begins with a historical and archeological analysis of the origins of the
alphabet with a specific focus of the origins of the letters A and B. The second
part of this paper continues the analysis of language and the alphabet as it
relates to the human body and to sound. The third part of the paper takes the
form of a 'new mythology' towards the broader subject of the origins of languages
as it relates to the future of humanity. The author uses an intuitive approach to
gathering factual information and a conceptual approach for the analysis and
interpretation of this information. Concurrent with the research of this paper, the
author created J ocasta - a performance video a 54 minute experimental film
which was inspired by and is artistically related to the findings of this paper.
Finally, the structural form of the paper alternates between minutely detailed,
focused and specific personal statements to broad and sweeping universal ones:
the purpose is to observe the subject matter from as many angles as possible.
The main subject of this paper is, specifically, the origins of the phonetic alphabet
as a subset within the larger category of the origin of languages. The mythology
composed by Ovid, Hesiod and Herodotus will be analyzed. The archeology of
civilizations as ancient as 8,000 B.C. composed and compiled by Maria
Gimbutas and J acquetta Hawkes will be discussed as well as the modern
continental philosophical theories of thinkers such as Deleuze and Derrida. A
brief analysis of Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Democritus, and Plato are presented as
a historical background to the theories of Rousseau, Vernant, Nietzsche,
Heidegger, Schirmacher, Irigaray, Kristeva and Cixous. The work of the linguists
Revesz, Pei, Robinson will be cited; and in literature, the Epic of Gilgamesh,
Euripides' The Phoenician Women, Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, and the
religious scriptures pertaining to the written word are discussed. Finally, linguistic
research based on the author's comparative analysis of ancient Persian and
Phoenician words are contributed to the thesis.


Sonic Soma
Sound, Body and the Origins of the Alphabet


Table of Contents

Title page


PART ONE: A Histori cal Study of Being and Language

1.1. The Letter as Law - Introduction and Methodologies

1.2. The Mythological Origins of the Alphabet
1.2.1 From the Greek: The Myth of Cadmus
1.2.2 The Teeth as Soldiers and Letters of the Alphabet
1.2.3 Genealogies of Cadmus
1.2.4 The Writing of Io
1.2.5 The Influence of Pagan Religions on the Alphabet

1.3. Pre-Origins of the Alphabet
1.3.1 The Origin of the Letter A
1.3.2 The Invention of Writing from the Divine
1.3.3 Ancient Phoenician Religious Thought: Who were the Phoenicians?
1.3.4 The Goddess of Ancient Phoenicia/Canaan

1.4. Archaeologies on the Origins of Writing and the State: Catal Huyuk and
Sumer
1.4.1 Catal Huyuk and Writing: Discoveries by Archeologist Marija
Gimbutas
1.4.2 Felix Guatarri and Gilles Deleuze: Catal Huyuk and the State
1.4.3 Sumerian Influences on the Alphabet by Archeologist J acquetta
Hawkes
1.4.4 Ritual and Symbols: the Ancient Urge to Communicate
1.4.5 Consciousness, Identity and Writing
1.4.6 Agricultural Influence on Writing; the Aleph and the Ox
1.4.7 The Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh as an Expression of Cultural
Revolution

1.5 Monotheistic Religion Resistance to Local Mythology and the
Relationship to the Written Word
1.5.1 The Hebrew Law-the prohibition of and destruction of graven images
1.5.2 Christianity
1.5.3 Islam


1.6 Hestia/Hermes in Architecture
1.6.1 The Sculptural Pairing of Hestia and Hermes
1.6.2 The Column and the Base
1.6.3 Greek Marriage and the Plough
1.6.4 The Hestian/Hermetic Polarity

1.7 Hestia and Being
1.7.1 The Story of Hestia: Giving up the Seat of Power to Dionysis
1.7.2 The Etymology of Hestia
1.7.3 Ousia, Flux and Being
1.7.4 The Great Hestia at Delphi
1.7.5 Hestia and Fire
1.7.6 The Scarlet Letter

1.8 Sound, Number and Existence
1.8.1 God as a Number
1.8.2 On the Monad in Pythagorean and Deleuzian Philosophy
1.8.3 Sound, Harmony and the Dyad

1.9 Linguistic Tracings
1.9.1 The Other Letters
1.9.2 Heideggers House of Being; Thinking, Dwelling, Being
1.9.3 Blaat, the House of the Mother Goddess
1.9.4 A=Creation, B=Being
1.9.5 Ancient Iranian Symbols
1.9.6 Persian and Phoenician Tracings
1.9.7 Names: Platos Cratylus

PART TWO: The Phil osophy of Sound, Body, and Language

2.1 Sound and the Origins of Language
2.1.1 Schirmacher and Silence
2.1.2 Silence and Music
2.1.3 Heidegger and The Clearing, The Listening
2.1.4 Heidegger and the House of Being
2.1.5 Nietzsche and the Origin of the Word
2.1.6 From Derridas Essay on the Origins of Language

2.2 The Body and the Origin of Writing
2.2.1 Irigarays An Ethics of Sexual Difference
2.2.2 The Taboo of Incest and Linguistic Histories
2.2.3 Kristeva: Womens Time
2.2.4 Deleuze and the Body
2.2.5 Helene Cixous: Sorties


PART THREE: Concl usions

3.1 Generation after Generation
3.1.1 The Mothers Tongue
3.1.2 Symbolic and Phonetic Writing
3.1.3 The Feminine Aspect
3.1.4 The Body and Virtual Reality

3.2 The Human Brain and Childbirth: a mythical tale of human history
3.2.1 The First Words
3.2.2 The First Images
3.2.3 The First Rituals

3.3 The Female Genius

3.4 In Conclusion

Bibli ography


Addendum Part One Illustrations

Addendum Part Two Additional Texts
A 2.1 Excerpts from Platos Cratylus
A 2.2 Excerpts from Old Testament

Addendum Part Three DVD of Jocasta-a performance video












PART ONE: A Historical Study of Being and Language

1.1. The Letter as Law - Introduction and Methodol ogies

The problem with the word origin is that it is often thought of as a single
point. But in reality there is rarely only one point of origin, but rather many original
points taking place at different times and at different locations. To seek the origin
of something stems from the desire to understand that something more fully.
Exact origins are never found, but one senses that one is approaching something
like an origin when incongruent facts begin to line up and relate to each other.
Often when there is a desire to seek the origin of something it is because one is
trying to fix a problem. Finding origins is a way to correct things that went wrong
over time: one tries to go back and retrace the steps in order to correct the
problem.
When a patient has a nebulous pain in his body the doctor must first find
the source of the pain before he can correct and relieve the body of suffering.
The doctor will ask What happened to you to cause this pain? and the patient
must try to remember what happened, to pinpoint the time and place where the
injury happened. Perhaps he can remember that there was an activity that
caused the injury or perhaps there was something that happened before that
activity that gradually lead up to the pain -- it is often difficult to pinpoint the exact
moment of injury. And sometimes it is necessary to keep going back, to try and
remember the incident, and, each time the patient might remember something
slightly different.
Writing about the origins of language is a bit like remembering a childhood
trauma: the facts are fuzzy but the feelings are strong. Mankinds collective
memory of the beginnings of writing have been obscured by the very act of
writing itself: as soon as men began writing they began to tell the story of writing,
but they did not tell the whole truth -- the factual origins had actually been
twisted, covered up and even reversed in the written accounts.
Attempting to write about the origins of the alphabet and language
presents its own set of problems, including not only the problem of memory but
also the problem of translation. Archeological evidence of early writing comes to
us in fragments of archaic languages, and some of those languages are still
undecipherable. Even in the languages that we can translate, such as Greek, or
Phoenician, it is difficult to translate a concept that is, or was common in the
original language, but foreign or nonexistent in English. Therefore, the author
decided to interpret and analyze fragmental evidence of the origins of the
alphabet in the 1) sculptural objects and in the 2) myths which have been
deposited in our historical canon of ancient literature. Using sculpture and
mythology as evidence of pre-historical existence was the most direct method the
author employed, allowing an access into the nature of the spiritual and creative
lifestyle of ancient man. Other methods, including textual analysis of alternative
theories on the origins of language were also employed.
The main subject of this paper is, specifically, the origins of the phonetic
alphabet as a subset within the larger category of the origin of languages. The
mythology composed by Ovid, Hesiod and Herodotus will be analyzed. The
archeology of civilizations as ancient as 8,000 B.C. composed and compiled by
Maria Gimbutas and J acquetta Hawkes will be discussed as well as the modern
continental philosophical theories of thinkers such as Deleuze and Derrida. A
brief analysis of Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Democritus, and Plato are presented as
a historical background to the theories of Rousseau, Vernant, Nietzsche,
Heidegger, Schirmacher, Irigaray, Kristeva and Cixous. The work of the linguists
Revesz, Pei, Robinson will be cited; and in literature, the Epic of Gilgamesh,
Euripides The Phoenician Women, Hawthornes The Scarlet Letter, and the
religious scriptures pertaining to the written word are discussed. Finally, linguistic
research based on the authors comparative analysis of ancient Persian and
Phoenician words are contributed to the thesis.
THESIS: The origins of the alphabet come from the physical body not from
the abstract mind. There was a fissure in thinking when history, religion,
philosophy and linguistics split the mind from the body and declared that all true
languages and societies were born at the moment that man turned away from the
maternal toward an external culture. This fissure runs through all aspects of
modern society including our political, familial, and educational systems. The
goal of this paper is to find mythical and archeological evidence of this fissure, to
analyze its causes and remedy its affects. By realigning our institutions with a
more complete and inclusive point of view based on archeological and scientific
facts of gender equilibrium, we may be able to solve many systematic problems
now apparent in contemporary society.
In discussing Rousseaus Essay on the Origin of Languages Derrida
writes: The displacing of the relationship with the mother, with nature, with
being as the fundamental signified, such indeed is the origin of society and
languages This statement is the exact opposite thesis of this paper which is that
the origin of societies and of languages comes from humanitys direct
relationship to the maternal and from humanitys direct relationship with laws of
nature and the universe. Language is not an abstract intellectual appendage nor
is it an instrument invented solely from the mind of man, but rather it is an
integrated extension of humanitys will to express itself through the body.
Universal concepts are reduced to symbols because the concepts are
beyond words and beyond any other form of expression. This is not a deficiency
of language but rather a necessity of communication. The symbol does not
subtract anything from the essence of the thing which it signifies, rather it
captures an essence which is useful to humans, to elevate their spirit and
increase their comprehension of the thing. Early written languages began with
these complex symbols, and this is an indication of the complex and perhaps
complete thought patterns of early man. These symbols do not limit or contain
the thing in absolute definity, rather the symbol infuses the thing with new
meaning and life, and with a flux of multiple meanings and interpretations.
This paper begins with a historical and archeological analysis of the
origins of the alphabet with a specific focus of the origins of the letters A and B.
The second part of this paper continues the analysis of language and the
alphabet as it relates to the human body and to sound. The third part of the paper
summarizes all the previous main points and takes the form of a new mythology
towards the broader subject of the origins of languages as it relates to the future
of humanity. The author uses an intuitive approach to gathering factual
information and a conceptual approach for the analysis and interpretation of this
information. Concurrent with the research of this paper, the author created
J ocasta - a performance video a 52 minute experimental film which was
inspired by and is artistically related to the findings of this paper. Finally, the
structural form of the paper alternates between minutely detailed, focused and
specific personal statements to broad and sweeping universal ones: the purpose
is to observe the subject matter from as many angles as possible, the micro as
well as the macro views, the subjective as well as the objective. The author
cannot claim to have found an absolute truth, but rather a mythology which
might be useful to mankind at this point in history.

Note: the author uses the pronouns he, she/he, him and the words
God, man and mankind to include both genders unless specifically noted that
the subject is either male or female. Also, the particular practice used by each
source will be adopted when discussing the same sources material.












1.2 The Mythological Origins of the Alphabet

1.2.1 From the Greek: The Myth of Cadmus


1.2.1a Archaeologies. According to ancient Greek mythology, it was
Prince Cadmus who brought the alphabet to the Greeks. It is possible that
Cadmus was also a historical figure, as archeologists have found written clay
tablets attesting to the verity of Cadmus existence. Ruth Edwards writes that
Cadmus was a Phoenician originally from the City of Tyre
1
who settled in a land
called Boeotia, in the east central part of Greece near Athens. Cadmus
biography, like many of the heroes of ancient Greece, has many versions. The
mythical as well as the historical biographies of Cadmus will be explored below,
including the writings of 1) Herodotus, who wrote Histories around 450 BC; 2)
Hesiod, a contemporary of Homers who wrote Theogonies some 400 years
before Herodotus; and 3) Ovid, whose Metamorphoses was begun around 1 AD.
The name Kadmos (or Cadmus) comes from the consonants k (or q) d
m meaning from the East
1
in Semitic languages. If Cadmus came from
Phoenicia (now modern Lebanon) this land is indeed east of Greece. Some
sources site that Cadmus and Europa were not only brother and sister, but also
lovers, and that they represented a divine couple, even though he officially
married Harmonia. The marriage between Harmonia and Cadmus brought civil

1
Tyre is an ancient city now located in modern Lebanon. In July, 2006, when Israel heavily bombed the
city of Tyre in its effort to defeat the Hezbollah of Southern Lebanon the author was coincidentally in
production of Jocasta in New Lebanon, in upstate New York. Jocasta, a film based on Euripides play
The Phoenician Women traces the fall of the City of Thebes to their ancestor, Cadmus. See bibliography.
1
There are several references for the etymology of Cadmus. One is in Ruth Edwards book Kadmos the
Phoenician
order to Greek society
2
. Cadmus tamed the wild nature of the dragon
3
and
transformed its deadly teeth into letters of the alphabet, in order to bring justice
and the law to the land, as well as to originate the founding cities and families of
Greece. It is interesting to note that the ancient Greeks traced their origins to an
exiled outsider and foreigner such as Cadmus since the Greeks were
antagonistic toward the Phoenicians, and early historians such as Herodotus
dedicated many pages to their barbaric and uncivilized customs.
4

1.2.1b. The Myth from Ovid. The Cadmus myth is as follows. Zeus, who
was disguised as a bull
5
, abducts Europa, the daughter of the Phoenician King
Agenor of Tyre and the sister of Cadmus. The King sends his son Cadmus to
Greece to search for her, and warns Cadmus to find Europa or be exiled from his
homeland forever. Cadmus, in exile, prays to the god Apollo for guidance. Apollo
tells him that he will see a cow and that wherever that cow happens to lay its
head Cadmus must build an empire. Ovid writes
6
:
A cow will meet you in a lonely land
the god replied, A cow that never wore
A yoke nor toiled to haul a curving plough.
with her to guide you make your way, and where
She rests upon the grass, there you must found
Your citys battlements, and name the place

2
See the book The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony by Roberto Calasso and the genealogies of Cadmus,
below.
3
The dragon (or serpent) is a symbol from the pagan prehistoric religions.
4
The Histories by Herodotus.
5
Ruth Edwards writes that this union of a god (Zeus/bull) with an earth or fertility goddess (Europa) is an
interpretation of the Cadmus story as religious mythology. Cadmus daughter Semele, often referred to as a
moon goddess, gives birth to the god Dionysis. That Cadmus and Harmonia turn into snakes in the latter
part of their lives is an indication that in the end, the struggle against nature is inevitable.
6
From Ovids Metamorphoses, Book III, translated by A. D. Melville.
Boeotia.
7
Cadmus left the holy cave
And saw, almost at once as he went down,
A heifer ambling loose that bore no sign
Of service on her neck.
In order to make a sacrifice in thanksgiving to the gods, Cadmus sends his
men to find a spring of water. Some versions of the story say it was not a spring
of water but rather a well or cave. These are opposing images: gushing spring
of water is a masculine image, whereas a well or cave is a hole, a feminine
image. The hole may be an older image, possibly borrowed from the Sumerian
Epic of Gilgamesh.
8
In any case, near the source of the water his men find a
snake hidden in a cave. This serpent kills all of Cadmus men:
Every man of them it slew,
With fang that struck or coil that crushed or breath
That dealt a putrid blast of poisoned death.
9


In some accounts of the story it is a dragon and not a serpent. The dragon
was not as obvious a symbol of the goddess religion as the snake was: the
dragon is one step removed from the feminine religious symbolism and therefore
could be used to obscure the original meaning of denigrating the goddess
religion without offending the believers. The early Christian St. George kills the
dragon in Northern Europe, meaning that he wiped out the pagan religions.
When Cadmus killed the snake/dragon he had also conquered the local pagan
religion. The symbolic language of Ovid indicates the fearsome and possibly

7
A country in central Greece, between Attica and Phocis. Thought to mean land of the cow from the
Greek root bous meaning ox, or cow. Note the Greek word: boustrophedon as the ox plows and the
English bovine.
deadly anatomy of the vagina which is feared by the subconscious and revealed
in psychoanalysis as the 'vagina dentata'.
Cadmus goes to look for his men, but finds that all of them have been
killed by the serpent/dragon:
My faithful fallen friends! he cried, Your deaths
Ill now avenge or share! and lifting high
A rock above his head with all his might
He hurled the mighty missile, such a blow
As shatters towers and soaring battlements.
10


Cadmus continues his struggle against the serpent until he finally kills it by
merging it with an oak tree:
Cadmus pressed on and drove the firm-lodged lance
Deep in the creatures gullet, till an oak
Blocked its retreat and snake and oak were nailed
Together.

1.2.1c The Sacred Tree. This reference to the tree indicates a natural,
pagan or female element of life. The goddess/witch/tree symbol is often found in
old European and Middle Eastern mythologies. For example, the goddess Inanna
sitting next to the sacred tree of life is a common image on Sumerian seals. Eve,
the snake, and the Tree of Knowledge in the Old Testament represent the
temptations of Satan and a turning away of Adam from the Hebrew God Yahweh.
The image of a tree symbolizes the physical force of Nature, which is one of the

8
See Chapter 1.4.7 on the similarities between the two myths.
9
Ovid, ibid.
10
Ovid, ibid.
forces that the monotheistic religions tried to eradicate and overcome. As we
shall see, the alphabet, an invention that led to writing and facilitated the spread
and control of monotheistic religion, has been historically aligned with linear,
logical thought and against the more chthonic Nature. Although the roots of the
alphabet are found in the prehistoric pagan religions of Old Europe and the
Middle East (as shown below), the alphabet was eventually appropriated and
used by States to reinforce and complete a cultural revolution against female
power.
1.2.1.d The Divine Snake. Ovid states that as Cadmus proudly
contemplates what he has just done, that he had conquered such a large and
powerful foe, he then hears the voice of Athena:
Why, Cadmus, why
Stare at the snake youve slain? You too shall be
A snake stared at.
11
For an age he stood
Rigid, frozen in fear, his hair on end,
His colour and his courage drained away.
But look, a guardian goddess! Gliding down
Out of the sky Pallas
12
appears and bids
Him plough the soil and plant the serpents teeth
From which a future people should arise.
Cadmus obeys, and with his ploughs deep share
Opens wide furrows, then across the soil
Scatters the teeth, the seed of humankind.
13



11
Ovid, ibid. Cadmus and his wife Harmonia are turned into snakes at the end of their life. See Euripides
play The Bacchae. As stated previously, this signifies the inevitability of natures force on humans.
12
Pallas is an alternate name for Athena.
13
Ovid, ibid. The teeth become the (warring) men who raise the founding families of Greece, and Greece is
the bedrock foundation of Western Civilization.
Cadmus successfully slays the dragon, the symbol of the ancient religions
power, and he castrates that symbol by pulling the teeth and planting the teeth in
the ground. These teeth simultaneously become soldiers and the letters of the
alphabet, both vehicles of maintaining order and power to Greece. To 'plough' is
a Greek term meaning to inseminate a woman in marriage with children.
Cadmus act is successful not only because he is able to stay alive but also
because he is able to procure his own children from the woman, to take control of
childbearing, and to organize societys child rearing process by marrying his men
to women and making them husbands over the fields. Before Cadmus' slays
the dragon, all of Cadmus' men were killed by the dragon, alluding to a ritual
sacrifice of young men to the local goddess in a sexual act. If these men were
killed in the sexual act, they were never present to witness their offspring, they
remained ignorant and not in control of the young children in their society. But
within the institution of marriage that Cadmus instigated, the male becomes the
lawful head of the household, controlling when and how to raise children.
Cadmus pulls the teeth from the dragon and plants the teeth, and, where
the teeth fell, up grew soldiers and the letters of the alphabet. The teeth are a
part of the body which allows one to dissect and digest food, but they are also a
symbol of power therefore, removing teeth from the dragon is taking away its
bite. To extract the teeth from the mouth of a female religious symbol is to take
away the power from the female, and in effect, the vagina or womb, is stripped of
its original cultural significance as the place of spiritual wisdom and mystery. The
womb then becomes an insult to mankind, and philosophers denigrate its
importance, even wishing that men could be born without the aid of women. The
Greek playwright Euripides has the son of King Theseus, Hippolytus, state in his
play Hippolytus, (first performed in 428 B.C.E.) Why, why, Lord Zeus, did you
put them in the world..if you were so determined to breed the race of man, the
source of it should not have been womenIn this we have a proof how great a
curse is woman Hippolytus, who is the object of his step mothers love,
continues: Ill hate you women, hate and hate and hate you, and never have
enough of hating
14

The sown teeth of the dragon became the letters, the alphabet became
the new tool of power over the old ways. The teeth also became soldiers
signifying a new world order which was based on warfare. The female, the
goddess and all evidence of a culture that worshipped the old gods were
consequently excluded, debased and destroyed. But this new power, the
alphabet, was sown from the original power, or the teeth of the womb of the
goddess.
Cadmus and his great grandson Oedipus
15
are similar, in that they both
conquer a pagan god/symbol, (Cadmus kills the dragon and Oedipus kills the
Sphinx) but both are also cursed. By fighting against the forces of nature they do
not completely 'win', as the great balance of the universe is always upset when
trying to control the chthonic forces. In both cases, Cadmus and Oedipus were

14
Hippolytus, by Euripides, translated by David Greene, 1942, the University of Chicago.
15
Oedipus, Cadmus' great grandson, solves the Sphinx' riddle: what being is at the same time, dipous,
tripous and terapous? (two foot, three footed and four footed). Oedipus answers 'man', because a child
crawls on all four, the adult walks on two feet, and the old man walks with three (with a cane). The Sphinx
is an ancient Egyptian religious symbol, and might be considered a foreign element needed to be eliminated
from Greek culture. Vernant states that the Sphinx might also be the illegitimate daughter, not a child of
trying to save their own people from the wild and deadly symbols, but in the end
the balance had to be restored back to the eternally hungry monsters. Cadmus is
turned into a snake at the end of his life, and Oedipus sleeps with his mother
creating monster children - both men are utterly out of control of their lives, and it
is the entropy and chaos of life that ultimately wins. In effect, modern man is still
under the curse of Cadmus, as for centuries humans have tried to control the
forces of nature, building golf courses in deserts, filling in swamps with residential
developments, damming rivers for electric powerall acts that ignore the earths
natural powers, but nature is stronger than man, and will rip buildings and cities
by the violent tsunamis, hurricanes, floods and earthquakes.
1.2.2 Teeth as Soldi ers and Letters of the Alphabet
1.2.2.a The Curse on Cadmus. In Euripides play The Phoenician
Women written in c.410 B.C.E, the tragic history of the people of Thebes after
the fall of Oedipus is explored, and the chorus traces the destruction of the
House of Laios (Oedipus father) back to the actions of Athena upon Cadmus:
O Pallas
16
, you who held
the stone that slew
the serpent, you who turned
the mind of Kadmos
to the deed from which
all this devouring
and destruction is derived!
17


Laius wife Jocasta, but from a harlot, and this is another indication of a pagan insemination. Laius was
said to be homosexual and visited harlots. The harlot might have been from the old religious tradition.
16
Athena is the Goddess who was born from Zeus head, from his brain, his rational thought. Euripides
traces the source of the madness and destruction from actions of Athena and Cadmus: the sowing of the
teeth from the Dragon, into the men that become the future generations of Thebes. The tragedy of Oedipus,
Antigone, and many other of the Greek tragedies are traced back to Cadmus fate.

After Athena 'turned' Cadmus' mind, she convinced and helped him to kill
the serpent. Athena was born out of Zeus' head, she represents civic order and is
the goddess of warfare. She tells Cadmus to plant the teeth which will be
transformed into the 'seeds of mankind'. According to legend, as previously
mentioned, each of the dragons teeth became a soldier and subsequently, a
letter of the alphabet. According to Herodotus, the Greeks called the letters
phoenicians because the Phoenicians were the ones who taught the Greeks the
alphabet.
18

The similarity of a line of soldiers marching on the field and a line of letters
on the page cannot be discounted. Early alphabets were written left to right and
then right to left, back and forth down the page in boustrophedon (literally, as the
ox plows) but the action of writing and reading also mirror the movement of
armies on the field. For example, in Chinese culture and contemporary film
19
, the
act of writing is portrayed as being closely associated with the life of the warrior.
Calligraphic skill and penmanship is closely linked to swordsmanship. The origins
of writing might have had purely ritualistic beginnings, but worldwide the
development of writing was simultaneous with advancements in human warfare.
1.2.2.b Sound and the Alphabet. It is interesting to note the similarity
between the words Phoenician, phonetic, and phone. The Greeks considered
humans to be 'phone' - of a single voice, and of a single essence, committed to a
temporal order which was represented by a sequence of succeeding

17
Lines 2003-2009 from Euripides The Phoenician Women
18
From book five, Section 58 of Herodotuss Histories
generations. Building culture and transferring information to the next generation
was seen as a way to avoid a return to chaos.
20
The phonetic alphabet was
developed out of symbols representing specific 'sounds', even though as shown
in the chapters below, the symbols originally were also graphic imitations of
visual objects. For the Greeks as well for as the Hebrews, the Phoenician letters
were appropriated for their accurate representation of sound. Having a writing
system which leaves no doubt to its interpretation or translation became an asset
for creating accurate laws and records for the Greek State. That the Greek
culture changed the shape of the letters, so that it no longer resembled the
original object for which it represented, might have been an attempt to obliterate
these original pagan cultures and their symbols.
The representation of vowels is the main difference between Semitic and
Greek alphabets. In Semitic writings systems including Arabic and Hebrew,
vowels are represented by accent marks; in Greek, vowels are given letters of
their own. Including vowels as separate letters of the alphabet make it possible to
create an even more accurate representation of sound. It also indicates that the
Greeks gave a greater emphasis to the 'non-fricative' sounds such as A, E, I, O
and U
21
. The name of Oedipus, or Oidipous, comes from Oi - a root that meant
one who knows or has consciousness
22
in ancient Greek and dipous, meaning

19
Hero by Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou.

21
Note the number of vowels in the Catalog of Women attributed to Hesiod called Hoiai in Greek or
Eoiae in Latin, meaning or such a woman as or like the name of a goddess. Only fragments remain of
this early work. See Bibliography for website of the fragment translations.
22
The Greek lexicon may also include the ancient biblical meaning of know to have intercourse with.
From oikeios, meaning belonging to a family, domestic, intimate; belonging to ones household, kindred,
related by blood; and belonging to the household of God. Therefore, the word might mean: one who has
two foot. Together his name means that two footed being (man) who knows
(himself). Since many important Greek words consist only of vowels, it was
necessary for them to create letters for those particular words. Vowels constitute
an extremely important element in the vocabulary and syntax of the Greek
language. The Greeks needed letters to accurately represent the similarities and
differences detailed in the various vocalized vowel sounds.
1.2.2.c The Foundation of Greece. According to Ovid all but five of
Cadmus soldiers were killed in an internal civil battle. It could also be
considered that these five soldiers represent the five vowels that were added to
the Greek alphabet, or rather the five sounds that replaced five consonants from
the Semitic alphabet. These five soldiers will represent the first families of Greek
society:
In the same mould of madness all that host,
That sudden brotherhood, in battle joined,
With wound for wound fell dead. That prime of youth,
Whose lot was life so short, lay writhing on
Their mothers bloodstained bosom - all save five,
Five who survived.
23


These five families will form the future 'sown' men of Greece, the home-
grown
24
men who originally came from the land of Boeotia and were not
foreigners. In Euripides' play "The Phoenician Women" it was required that a
'sown' man make the sacrifice to save Thebes. Euripides chooses Lauis' son

known his own family. The word is used in the New Testament as having the knowledge, aware, to
become conscious of.
23
Ovid., ibid.
24
Home grown possibly because they ploughed the local women in marriage.
Menoikeus, a pure young brave man but a minor character, as the only one who
can save Thebes. Menoikeus is the pharmakos, the convenient 'scapegoat' who
can easily be 'knocked' off without ruining the story line. Menoikeus suicidally
throws himself into the dragon's cave, and by this act satiates Ares' fury and the
curse is lifted off of Thebes.
Euripides wisely entitles his play "The Phoenician Women" as his play is
not so much about the character of Oedipus, as it is an investigation into the
origins of Greek culture and language. The Phoenician women are the Chorus, a
group of young girls who, because of the war, get stuck in Thebes along their
way to Delphi
25
. In Thebes they witness the destruction of the House of Lauis,
and discover that they are related to Oedipus through Cadmus, and as they
witness the violence they narrate the history: that it was caused by an ancient
curse put on their common ancestor, Cadmus. The curse was that Cadmus killed
the dragon, that he disobeyed the laws of nature and tried to build a new culture
founded with the letters of the alphabet. The families of the five sown men (from
the vowels of the alphabet) become the founding families of the Greek culture.
Greek culture, and all of western philosophy and science therefore was founded
by a Phoenician, one who abandoned his own ancient culture by abandoning his
own sister/lover, and built a new culture based on the debasement of the female
religions.

1.2.3 Geneal ogies of Cadmus

25
Interesting that these women would be able to travel alone without male supervision.
1.2.3.a Family trees. Cadmus marries the goddess Harmonia
26
, who is
the daughter of Mars (or Ares), the god of war, and Venus (or Aphrodite), the
goddess of love. Mars and Venus also gave birth to Panic and Terror, the
dreaded gods, who batter the dense battalions of men embattled in horrible war,
they with Ares, sacker of cities.
27
Harmonia and Cadmus give birth to the moon-
goddess Semele and, Semele with Zeus gives birth to Dionysis.
28
Dionysis
marries Ariadne, daughter of Minos. Cadmus father is Agenor and Cadmus
great grandsons are Oedipus and Acteon. Oedipus' lineage to Cadmus is traced
back through his father Laius, whose father was Labdakos (meaning the lame
one in Greek) whose father was Polydorus. Polydorus is the son of Cadmus and
Harmonia.
sing out now the names of those goddesses
who went to bed with mortal men and,
themselves immortal,
bore to these children in the likeness
of the immortals.
29


The marriage of Cadmus and Harmonia is significant because Cadmus
rejects the pagan marriage to his sister Europa for a foreign goddess. This
marriage outside the family is necessary for the propagation of a new race, and
for the creation of a new philosophy.


26
For more detail see the 12
th
chapter of Roberto Calassos The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony.
27
Line 935 from Hesiods Theogony.
28
Or Bacchus in Ovids Metamorphosis. He is the god of wine, who takes Hestias seat on Mt. Olympus.
Greek Tragedy found its roots in the Dionysisian rites. Christianity and Catholic rites are also influenced by
the Dionysis religion.
29
Line 968 from Hesiods Theogony.

1.2.3.b Foreign Woman or Goddess? The idea of goddesses going to
bed with mortals and raising a new culture of men in the likeness of the
immortals may be historically related to the Greeks who abducted the women
from a foreign country. The fact that the women were foreign might have made
them seem like goddesses. They looked and acted unusual and strange, they
had different customs which might have seemed like magic, and as the exotic
other they could be worshipped from afar. There must have been a sexual
attraction to the other. Women from the mens own culture on the other hand,
might have seemed too common to them, perhaps would understand them all too
well and possibly put them down or in their place because of the couples easy
familiarity with each others customs. Conversely, these foreign women would be
able to birth and bring up children who would look different from the fathers clan,
thereby enriching the human reproductive gene pool of that particular community.
This is the opposite of the drive to mate with one's own family members, as
mating with the 'foreigners' was sure to create a richer gene pool for struggling
early human societies. Conversely, mating with family members would produce
weaker handicapped children. There was an evolutionary advantage to mating
with foreign women.
Herodotus opens the very first lines of his History with stories of the rapes
of women by opposing peoples and the wars it created as result. It is as if history
itself began with the rape of women and with war: According to the Persians
best informed in history, the Phoenicians began to quarrel. This peoplehaving
migrated to the Mediterranean and settled in the parts which they now inhabit,
began at once, they say, to adventure on long voyages, freighting their vessels
with the wares of Egypt and Assyria. He continues to tell the story of how Io was
abducted by the Phoenicians and brought to Egypt:
Here they exposed their merchandise, and traded with the natives for five
or six days; at the end of which time, when almost everything was sold,
there came down to the beach a number of women, and among them the
daughter of the king, who was, they say, agreeing in this with the Greeks,
Io, the child of Inachus. The women were standing by the stern of the ship
intent upon their purchases, when the Phoenicians, with a general shout,
rushed upon them. The greater part made their escape, but some were
seized and carried off. Io herself was among the captives. The
Phoenicians put the women on board their vessel, and set sail for Egypt.
Thus did Io pass into Egypt, according to the Persian story, which differs
widely from the Phoenician: and thus commenced, according to their
authors, the series of outrages.
30


That Io and Europa are both abducted by foreign men signifies that in order
to build new civilizations and new cultures men and women went outside of the
family and away from their immediate tribe to find their mates. It is possible that
the families that interbred within themselves found themselves lacking in
technological advancement. Those men and women who were attracted and
mated to the other outside their immediate family had an evolutionary
advantage and brought forth mentally and physically superior children. This is the
opposite result of incest. When family members mate with each other, they are
mating with their own kind and not progressing mankind further.

30
From the First book, first section of Herodotus Histories.
The fear of incest and the creation of its taboo was a result of the reversal
and revolution of the new law-abiding cultures over the older pagan ones. The
newer cultures used the written word to instill this fear and to bury the guilt deep
within human subconscious of western man. But incest, the mating with ones
own family members for the procurement of children has always been
evolutionarily disadvantageous and was not practiced by the more intelligent
tribes of ancient man. Incestual practices were symbolic and/or practiced
selectively by the priests and priestesses of the ancient society as part of a
mythology or ritual of creation. The author believes that for procreation healthy
humans are naturally attracted to the other not to the same.

1.2.4 The Writi ng of Io
1.2.4.a Abductions. Herodotus tells the story that possibly it was the
Cretan Greeks, landing at Tyre, who took Europa as retaliation against the
Phoenician abduction of Io
31
. And, both women, Io and Europa, are considered
to be goddesses in their new homelands of Egypt and Crete. In later generations
the stories of abductions continue: it was Paris of Troy who took Helen of Greece
and by so doing destroyed the kingdom of Priam in the ensuing war. Whether or
not these stories are accurate, it is clear that the activity of raping and abducting
the women of the enemy was ubiquitous and a common excuse for war.
The story of the rape and silencing of Io has it own ties to the origin of the
alphabet and some stories say it was Io, as the cow, who instructed Cadmus to
build his empire in Boeotia (see chapter above). When Io is turned into a cow,
and she is unable to speak, she tries to tell her father who she is by writing her
name in the dirt:
Old Inachus picked grass and held it out;
She licked her fathers hand, cow-kissed his palms;
Her tears rolled down; if only words would come,
Shed speak her name, tell all, implore their aid.
For words her hoof traced letters in the dust
I, O sad tidings of her bodys change.
32


Io is forced to write because she cannot speak. In order to communicate
she invents another way besides vocal language. She has been turned into a
cow; she has been separated from her human species, has become silenced,
differentiated, hence the need to write. One could say that her turning into a cow
is analogous to her turning into womanhood, whence her duties in birthing and
nursing babies (to produce milk like a cow) begin. The freedom she had as a girl
to run and play, maybe even to speak and think are now curtailed, because she
now has an overwhelming duty as a potential mother, whose priority is no longer
her own but her childs. It is interesting and fascinating to note in light of this
discussion, that a girl turned into a cow (a woman who has the potentiality of
motherhood), is an inventor of written language. If we are to take this analogy
further, we might be able to come upon the origins of the alphabets first letter, A,
aleph meaning ox which has its origins in the Egyptian letter for A, apis
meaning bull. Io, as the girl turned into a cow by the god-bull Zeus, cannot

31
According to Greek myth, Io is the daughter of Ichanus and is worshipped as Isis in Egypt.
32
From Ovids Metamorphosis. The bodys change mentioned here might refer to a girls body maturing
into a womans ovulating body and with that comes a loss of mobility, a sadness in the loss of speech and
speak so she turns to written language because her urge to communicate is so
strong.
In J ulie Taymour's film "Titus",
33
the daughter's tongue is cut out and she,
like Io, is forced to write because she cannot speak. She must communicate to
her father by writing words in the dirt. Because the spoken word is not possible,
her creativity forces in her a new way to communicate. Writing becomes a form
of communication beyond the spoken word. Writing does not suppress or replace
the spoken word but becomes an independent form, a powerful alternative to the
spoken word. And here, writing is a form of communication between family
members, father and daughter in an expression I am here, It is me this is
what happened to me, and do you recognize me father, even though Ive been
raped?

1.2.4.b The Two basic Forms: I-O. J ohanna Drucker notes that some
historians have analyzed these two basic shapes as the basis of the entire
alphabet.
The myth of Io
34
, in which her hoof prints spell out her name in two
fundamental elements, the I and the O, returns particularly in the
writing of 17
th
and 18
th
century historians who analyzed the graphic
structure of the alphabet in terms of these two primary forms.
35



social freedom to move up in society. This is also sad for a father who loves his child and who sees her
freedom and opportunities diminished.
33
Titus is based on Shakespeares Tragic play Titus Andronicus. See Bibliography for a list of films
related to this paper.
34
For the myth of Io refer to Ovids Metamorphosis.
35
Drucker, p. 71 from The Alphabetic Labyrinth.
Digital technology uses these two forms exclusively in the one and zero of
computer code; and the Arabic alphabet can also be reduced to these two basic
visual forms the line and the circle, (or the alef and the he). All of geometry can
be reduced to these two shapes, and there is a significant tension between them
as one being an organic form found in nature as the circle or cycle and the other
as a human construct of the linear one-dimensional line, with definite beginning
and end points. Alif, the first letter of the Arabic and Persian script is a straight
vertical line, and also signifies the number one. Some pre-socratic and far
eastern philosophers state that the number one and zero are the only real
numbers that exist: the One and the Nothing. Note also that Io, is the sonic
opposite of Oi (from the Greek: I know, see above). Oi=Oedipus, and Io=Iocasta
(also known as J ocasta, or Epicasta)
36
form the incestual mother/son couple.
Oedipus, the one who knows himself, i.e. the one who knows his footing and
Iocasta, or Epicasta, the one who forms the end of an ancestral line from Io the
ancient cow goddess of Egypt.
37


1.2.4.c The Ionians. According to Herodotus, it was the Ionians that
learned the alphabet from the Phoenicians. In Aeschylus play Prometheus
Bound written in c. 430 B.C.E, Prometheus gives Io credit for founding the
Ionian race of people:
in time to come that inlet of the sea shall bear your name and shall be
called Ionian, a memorial to all men of your journeying: these are proofs

36
See Vernant, "Myth and Tragedy" p. 214
37
See bibliography for the authors film Jocasta in which Jocasta realizes that her identity is a direct heir
to the Egyptian Goddess Io..
for you, of how far my mind sees something farther than what is visible: for
what is left, to you and you this I shall say in common, taking up again the
track of my old tale.
38


The Ionian mode in early Western music became the major scale,
specifically the 7 note C major scale (C-D-E-F-G-A-B, or all the white keys on a
piano), the most important and widely used and accepted of all the musical
modes of ancient and modern Western European music. Aristotle taught that it
was the most perfect of all the modes and suggested that all youths learn to play
their instrument in the ionic mode.

1.2.4.d Symbolic incest. Some versions of the Cadmus myth state that
the cow who instructed Cadmus to build a new culture of men was Io, an
ancestor and the great grandmother of Cadmus, from Egypt. That Cadmus would
'lay' with Io and begin an empire indicates an incestuous relationship, although
the language of Ovid is clearly symbolic. Cadmus and his sister Europa were
also said to be lovers, but there was no shame or guilt in this union. Many
generations later though when Sophocles writes about Oedipus, the great
grandson of Cadmus, who sleeps with his mother J ocasta, the language is
interpreted as a 'literal' act of incest, even though it would have been improbable
for Oedipus to literally mate with the aged J ocasta.
39
In fact, it is Sophocles who
is actually defiling a divinely symbolic, holy Mother/Son couple. It is more likely
that the purpose behind Sophocles writing about the symbolic couple in a literal

38
Lines 838-845 from Aeschylus play Prometheus Bound.
way is that Oedipus, by marrying J ocasta, is marrying too close within his clan,
almost marrying himself
40
. By marrying his mother, he is marrying the genetically
familiar, returning back to his roots, repeating the mistakes of returning to the
'beginning' rather than taking a chance and breaking away toward 'progress',
toward the other and differentiation. The cyclical repetition of mistakes never
gets broken if generations keep returning to the point of origin without progress.
The Cadmus story is from an oral tradition, whereas the Oedipus Cycle,
the plays as created by Sophocles, were appropriated from an ancient oral
source but transformed into written tragedies mirroring the needs for c. 500-400
B.C.E. Greece. Sophocles took an ancient Greek story of divine love between a
symbolic mother and son and transformed it into a cultural taboo. It was
necessary to enforce the somewhat new knowledge upon Greek citizens that
sleeping and making children with one's immediate family members created
deformed humans. The name of Labdakos, the grandfather to Oedipus, means
the lame one
41
. As an historical reference, Herodotus writes that the Bacchiads
intermarried to keep power within the family
42
. Sophocles knew this fact, and
knew that deformity was becoming a common problem for the Greeks, and
therefore he solidified for the Greeks in the Oedipus character distaste and
deadly fear for families to interbreed with each other.

1.2.5 The Influence of Pagan Goddess Religions on the Alphabet

39
Jocasta spends many childless years with her first husband before giving birth to Oedipus, so when
Oedipus returns to Thebes as a young man, Jocasta would have been past childbearing age.
40
Remember the etymology of Oi, as one who knows himself.
41
See "Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece' by Jean-Pierr Vernant, 1988, Urzone, Inc., p. 136- 212.
42
Book, III, The Histories, by Herodotus.

To summarize, the historical theories of Herodotus and the mythological
stories by Ovid on the origins of the writing imply that the Greek alphabet and the
Greek culture was influenced by the travels of Phoenician peoples to Ancient
Greece. An analysis of the mythology of Cadmus (a person who might represent
the Phoenician influence and the founding families of Greek culture) pertaining to
his invention of the alphabet exposes roots to the goddess mythologies of
Ancient Egypt and Phoenicia. The geneaology of Cadmus includes Io, his great
grandmother (also known as the goddess Isis of Egypt); Europa, his sister and
sometimes lover; and Harmonia, his wife. A thorough investigation of the stories
surrounding these goddesses and Cadmus also reveal prehistorical symbols of
pagan religions of ancient Egypt, Sumeria and Old Europe, including the sacred
Tree, the serpent and the bull/cow/ox.
One theory on the origins of writing is that it was invented by ancient
Babylonians to facilitate accounting in the temples of agricultural economy and
trade in 3,000 B.C. Sumer.
43
Another theory is that it was invented by religious
priests in the Sinai around 2,000 B.C.
44
The peoples of pre-historic Old Europe
who inscribed decorative symbols on pottery as far back as 8,000 B.C. may hold
a still more ancient clue to the origins of writing.
45
The following chapters will
explore aspects of these three theories pertaining to the invention of writing and
its influence on Greek culture and the alphabet.


43
Jacquetta Hawkes, The First Great Civilizations, Life in the Valley of the Twin Rivers.
44
Andrew Robinson, The Story of Writing.
45
Marija Gimbutas, The Civilization of the Goddess

1.3 Pre-Origins of the Alphabet
We have just discussed the mythological origins of the alphabet coming to
the Greeks from the Phoenicians according to Ovid and Herodotus, and the
following chapters will be exploring how the precursors of the alphabet came to
the Phoenicians. It is the authors belief that the alphabet originally had a
religious function and that it began in the prehistorical cultures of Anatolia, Persia
Egypt and Sumer. We will now explore in detail the origins of A.
1.3.1 The Ori gi n of the Letter A
The origins of the letter A had religious connotations in the ancient
cultures of Old Europe and the Mediterranean. The research below proposes that
the source for the letter A may be traced back to marks made on the sculptural
objects and temple walls of the Neolithic cultures, including that of Catal Huyuk of
8,000-6,000 B.C. in Anatolia. In these cultures, the ox was a significant religious
symbol necessary to the survival of the species: the ox had an important position
in agriculture as well as to human procreation. The following passage from the
book The Miracle of Language written in 1953 by Carlton Laird is a description
of the origin of the letter A:
Our A comes from the Phoenician aleph
46
, which stood on what is now the
apex of the letter, like this: (draws an upsidedown A) . We supposed it was
intended to represent the head of the ox with his branching horns. It may
have come from the Babylonian aleph, which also represented an ox. The
Phoenicians acquired their papyrus from Egypt-it is thus that Bibles are

46
The original Phoenecian letter A was a gutteral consonant sound. P does not exist in Phoenician so ox
is spelled aleb and pronounced more like alep
named from the Phoenician city of Biblos-and they may have obtained the
symbols to write on the papyrus along with the writing materials. A may
have come from Egyptian apis, the sacred bull, and as sound it
corresponds to the Egyptian hieroglyph for eagle, a picture-word of which
it could be a stylized simplification, although we have little reason to
suppose that it is. A may have come from any of these sources, or it may
derive from an earlier, undiscovered source. Clearly, the civilizations of the
Eastern Mediterranean area had back of them (sic) some kind of culture
with common characteristics. One of the characteristics may have been
the ancestor of our symbol for A.
47


The letter A was transformed from an original image of the upside down A
(representing the ox and his horns, and/or the female reproductive system) as
used in places such as Anatolia, Iran,
48
Egypt, Crete and the Cycladic cultures, to
the 1000 B.C Phoenician form of aleph looking like an A on its side (perhaps
representing an ox plow), to the current and lasting form of the alpha, the right
side up A of 500 B.C. Greece.
The Greeks made, in time, many changes in the Phoenician
alphabetPhoenician had been written from right to left; early Greek was
written back and forth across the page in a manner called
boustrophedon, that is, as the ox plows, like this: (swiggly line). The
Greeks had no hesitation about changing the form of the letter so that it no
longer suggested an ox.
49


Excavations of the civilizations of Old Europe by archeologist Marija
Gimbutas reveals a pre-alphabetic writing which might have had an influence for

47
The Miracle of Language, Carlton Laird, 1953, p. 213.
48
see Addendum, figure 9.
the Linear A script of Crete.
50
Some archeologists postulate that these cultures of
Old Europe created early prototypal forms for the mythology of Crete as well as
for Canaan and possibly even Iran. In Old-Europe we find 1) origins of the
worship of the regenerative principle in the bull, we find 2) the worship of Anahita
(a pre-Zoroastrian goddess of ancient Iran representing water and mentioned in
the Avesta, the Holy Gathas of Zoroaster), 3) the worship of fire, and possibly
even 4) the sources of many letters of the alphabet including the letter A.
Marija Gimbutas writes
51
:
Sculptures of bull heads and wall paintings of large bulls and of bucrania
were discovered in most of the temples in Catal Huyuk.
52
We may pause
to inquire how this relates to regeneration, and why human skulls were
found beneath the heads of bulls.
53
the symbolism of the bucranium
was deciphered by the artist Dorothy Cameron
54
who identified the bull
head with the uterus and the horns with fallopian tubes. As a symbol of
regeneration, the bull head or skull is also found in the Near East and
extensively in the art of Old Europe. This symbol might actually originate
in the Paleolithic when human excarnation was customary. The
exposition of human organs would have offered the occasion to notice
such a similarity of images.


49
Laird, ibid. The Greeks seemed to be interested solely in the phonetic aspect of the Phoenician letters,
that is, so that they could exactly spell out the way a word sounds.
50
Linear A is still an undeciphered script. See p. 320 of Gimbutas Civilization of the Goddess for the
comparison of the two scripts. See also the appendix illustrations.
51
p. 256 Civilization of the Goddess, ibid.
52
Catal Huyuk is the largest known Neolithic town in the world, excavated by James Mallaart in the
1960s.
53
This could also be representative of a babies head coming out of the mother at birth, perhaps to ensure
rebirth in the after life.
54
Cameron worked with Mellaart on his excavations of Catal Huyuk and wrote the book Symbols of Birth
and Death in the Neolithic Era in 1981.
A study of Cycladic sculpture reveals that they also understood the
significance of using bucrania to represent the female reproductive organs.
Vases show a female form with a bulls head with large horns drawn at the place
of the figurines vulva. On some Cycladic sculptural objects an upside down
triangle is drawn to represent the vulva of the figurine.
55
This symbol looks like an
upside down or reversed A. It is comprehendible that the Greeks of 800-500
B.C., with the rising strength of their masculine and patriarchal-based culture
would have wanted to change this letter so that it no longer represented the
original form as the head of an ox and, the generative female principle.
1.3.2 The Invention of Writing from the Divine

Many peoples believe their language or system of writing to be of divine
origin. The name of the Sanskrit alphabet is Devanagari, which means
pertaining to the city of the gods. Hieroglyphic, used by the ancient
Egyptians for their formal documents, carved in stone, means sacred
stone writingThey believed that writing had been devised by Thoth, god
of wisdom, and the Egyptian name for writing was ndw-ntr (the speech of
the gods). The Assyrians had a legend to the effect that the cuneiform
characters were given to man by the god Nebo, who held sway over
human destiny.
56


In 1905, the archeologist Sir Flinders Petrie found a Sphinx sculpture
57

while he was excavating turquoise mines in the Sinai. Petrie discovered an
inscription on the sphinx that he thought might be one of the earliest of alphabetic

55
The form of the triangle with the apex at the bottom is a hieroglyphic for female in many ancient
scripts.
56
From Mario Peis The Story of Language Chapter IX.
57
It was the Sphinxs riddle that Oedipus solved.
inscriptions - a clue to the origins of the alphabet
58
. Ten years after Petries
discovery, Alan Gardiner translated the inscription of the four letters b--l-t-
phonetically as Balaat
59
, literally meaning The Lady, perhaps as the Egyptian
Hathor, the great One; eye of the sun-lady of heaven; mistress of all the gods.
60

Hathor is, then, one of the oldest deities in Egypt, worshipped from pre-
dynastic times in many forms, including the human form of a woman with
horned head-dress carry the sun between her horns, and she was
identified with numerous local goddesses.

Balaat is phonetically similar to the goddess Lat mentioned in the Quran -

Have ye seen
Lat. And Uzza,
And another,
The third (goddess), Manat?
61


and is written with the same letters in Arabic but without the b.
be in Arabic means with and is pronounced: bee. In Persian with
and is pronounced ba. A more complete translation then could be with the
Lady or with the Great Mother Goddess who could also be named Isis, Ishtar,
Inanna, Astarte, Asherah, or any of the many other names that have been given
to the feminine god of the greater Sinai area. The similarity of the Arabic Allah
and Allat cannot be overlooked: Allah, the masculine, and Allat, the feminine
form of the name of God. Also, the letter B (bet) means house in Semitic

58
Dated at 1500 B.C
59
See p. 161 of Andrew Robinsons The Story of Writing and Joanna Druckers The Alphabetic Labyrinth.
60
P. 67 from Sophie Drinkers Music and Women.
61
Sura LIII verse 20-21. From the Holy Quran.
languages, so it is possible that the Balaat inscription is a combination of a
symbolic phonetic and hieroglyphic meaning: The House of Lat or in the
dwelling place of the goddess.
In the Phoenician language, the suffix et is added to differentiate the
female form of the word. For instance, the Phoenician word for women is eshet;
man is esh, goddess is lylit and god is eel.
62
The word for house is bet. If
this inscription is written in the Phoenician language then it can be literally
translated as the House of the Goddess.
The Egyptian mythology attributes the invention of language and the
written script to Taautos who came from Phoenicia, and who was a worshipper of
Baalat Nikkal:
According to the Egyptians, language is attributed to Taautos who was
the father of tautology or imitation. He invented the first written characters
two thousand years BC or earlier. Taautos came from Byblos,
Phoenicia, that shows a continuous cultural tradition going back as far
as 8,000 B.C. Taautos played his flute to the chief deity of Byblos who
was a moon-goddess Ba'alat Nikkal.
63


In summary, one of the earliest alphabetic writings yet discovered
phonetically spells out the name of the most famous goddess of the Sinai area,
Balaat.
64
This is evidence that there is a strong relationship between early
alphabetic writing and religious experience and thought. Although one of the first
historical and literary uses of the full completed alphabet includes the writing of

62
http://phoenicia.org/phoeniciandictionary.html
63
http://phoenicia.org/alphabet.html
the Holy Scriptures about a monotheistic and male God, the origins of the
alphabet may be traced to the worship of feminine Divinities. These earlier
original inscriptions indicate a fuller, more holistic expression of writing which
expresses a visual, aural as well as symbolic representation of the object they
were writing about.
The earliest inscriptions might have had more in common with our modern
commercial logos and brands as they were powerful but simple marks with only
a few strokes the symbols might have been instantly recognizable by the
members of their particular tribe. Bet the letter B did not just mean house, but
also temple, and possibly then also the body of the goddess. Philosophically,
bet might also have meant dwelling or being in the Heideggerian sense.
Gimbutas has excavated small house structures made in the shape of a human
body, with the head of the goddess, arms and legs
65
. We can never know for
sure how the ancients thought and what they meant with their earliest
inscriptions, but it is worth the exploration to see if we what we have lost is a
certain strain of communication-and by careful examination of this lost history we
might be able to develop a more complete technique of thinking and a more
potent way of expressing our existence.

1.3.3 Anci ent Phoeni ci an Reli gi ous Thought


64
The name Blaat has also been connected to the goddess Lato who gave birth to Artemis and Apollo,
and to the name given to the language (Latin) spoken by the Etruscans, the inheritors of the Phoenician
culture.
65
See addendum, figure 7.
The Phoenicians mythology and customs were greatly misunderstood, as
they did not write their own histories. For instance, their ritual of sacrificing their
young children to a sacred fire to test their divinity seems barbaric and
uncivilized
66
. We do not have enough facts to put a complete picture together of
who these people were. According to Donald Harden, author of The
Phoenicians, the Phoenicians lived along a narrow strip on the coast of the
Levant between Tartus and Mount Carmel:

In the Bible the Bronze Age inhabitants of this strip of coast and its
hinterland were called Canaanites. Despite the genealogy in Genesis,
which makes Canaan the son of Ham, they were Semitic and spoke a
Semitic tongueWhat is certain is that by the fourteenth century BC
the inhabitants of Canaan were calling themselves in Akkadian Kinaha
or Kinanu.
67


To decipher what is Greek and what is Phoenician is difficult because the
two peoples traveled back and forth between their respective lands often and
their customs and beliefs indecipherably merged. The influences of Egypt and of
all of Mesopotamia on Greece however becomes less difficult to determine as
many individual mythologies, customs, artistic and scientific inventions and styles
were significantly intact when adopted by the Greeks:
Early Greek art imbibed much oriental influence from the eighth century
onwards. In this movement the Phoenicians and their art played a
prominent part. Now here, again, there was a two-way traffic

66
Note the similarity of this custom to the Greek ritual of circling newborns around the hearth to test their
spirituality.
67
The Phoenicians, by Donald Harden, p. 19-24. See also The Phoenicians by Gerhard Herm.

It is possible that the difficulty of separating Greek from the Phoenician is
also a result of the traveling Phoenician's assimilation into Greek culture. If
Cadmus was a Phoenician and he founded the first families of Greece, then
those Phoenician peoples became the first Greeks. There is evidence that the
Phoenicians also traveled to the Italian coasts and formed the Etruscan cultures.
The fact is that the Phoenician people did not stay solely on one particular piece
of land, but traveled extensively and brought their culture along with them to each
country in which they settled.

1.3.4 The goddess of Ancient Phoenicia/Canaan
According to Patai
68
, Astarte means that which issues from the womb.
Archeologist Marija Gimbutas wrote that the identification of the womb as the
Goddess is a central motif and an important key in understanding an entire series
of prehistoric symbols
69
and The Goddess who represents regeneration
appears in forms related to female generative organs: the pubic triangle,
expressed as triangles and hourglass shapes (double triangles); the vulva,
rendered as an oval with a dot and line in the center, as seed and bud shapes
and related images This is evidence that the origin of writing directly relates to
the experience of human childbirth and the realization of human regeneration.
Note the observation above by Carlton Laird that the origin of A looked
like a head of an ox with the point or apex of the letter at the bottom and its

68
From The Hebrew Goddess, by Patai.
69
The Civilization of the Goddess, by Gimbutas p. 244.
branching horns, but with the added evidence that these cultures used the bulls
head to represent the female vulva, couldnt this early form of A also take the
meaning of regeneration? The alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end
of life, the one and the zero.
In Arabic, the alif form, the first letter of their alphabet, and the sound of
A, takes the shape of a simple vertical line. It is possible that they, like the
Greeks, transformed the original image of aleph so it was unrecognizable and
untraceable to the goddess religions. (See figure 9 in Addendum. part 1) In
modern Hebrew, the first letter is also named aleph and means ox, but there
is no longer a recognizable shape resembling an ox. In Islam as well as in
J udaism, representing visual imagery is idolatry
70
. As shown in chapters below,
one of the goals of the early monotheistic religions was to obliterate the previous
cultures and people who occupied the land before them and who worshipped the
visual image or the female principle as the god-head/goddess. Yahweh asks his
people to burn their temples to the ground. This is the origin of the split between
mind and body: as Yahweh is experienced in the mind and the goddess is
experienced in the body in the moment of childbirth and procreation. In
destroying these goddess cultures, men also destroyed the spiritual identity of
woman. If such widespread destruction is truly historical, then the archeological
evidence excavated is only a tiny fragment of what once existed. Like the
Phoenicians, these destroyed goddess cultures did not leave evidence of written
history, and therefore it is the task of archeologists to piece together the
fragments in order to write a more complete story of human origins.
Many of the names of the goddesses that were worshipped in Canaan, the
land of the Phoenicians, began with the letter A including Ashtart, Asherah, Anat,
Allat and Al Uzza.
71
And all of these goddesses were spiritual representations of
human creativity and regeneration.

70
See more on this topic in chapter below on monotheistic religion and imagery.
71
For more on the goddesses of Canaan see Merlin Stones Ancient Mirrors.











































1.4 Archeologies on the Origins of Writing and the State:
Catal Huyuk and Sumer

This chapter discusses the theories of the origins of writing by archeologist
Marija Gimbutas and J acquetta Hawkes. We will focus on two main areas of
interest: Sumer (in modern day Iraq) and Catal Huyuk (in modern day Turkey).

1.4.1 Catal Huyuk and Wri ting: Discoveries by Archeol ogist
Marij a Gimbutas

1.4.1 a Early Markings. Marija Gimbutas archeological findings of marks
made on objects at Catal Huyuk, in Anatolia, (now in modern Turkey), led her to
believe that this ancient society had developed a complex script, one that
predates the Sumerian
72
script by several thousand years. She writes:

Although the Sumerians are generally thought to be the inventors of
written language, a script in east-central Europe appeared some two
thousand years earlier than any other that has yet been found. Unlike
Sumerian script, the writing of the Old Europeans was not devised for
economic, legal, or administrative purposes. It was developed, instead,
from a long use of graphic symbolic signs found only within the context of
an increasingly sophisticated worship of the Goddess. Inscriptions appear
on religious items only, indicating that these signs were intended to be
read as sacred hieroglyphs.
73






72
Sumer was located at the base of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in modern day Iraq. Elam, an ancient
city in western Iran, is closely associated with the Sumerian culture.
73
From The Civilization of the Goddess by Marija Gimbutas, p. 308.

The symbols that Gimbutas describes that were in use by the Old
Europeans were abstract and decorative. They had few pictoral representations
with the exception of rows of zig-zagged lines for the symbol for water, (possibly
also depicting the sound mu, mi or mem,) and the shapes of the chevron, the
cross, and the spiral. The script involved a complex combination of these basic
forms and may have been used to express or communicate their specific
religious rituals or observations of the human body or nature. The origin of written
language is related to the literal experience of the female body. One of the oldest
forms is that of the V sign presumably written to signify the female vulva:

Some signs are continuous from the Upper Paleolithic Gravettian and
Magdalenian cultures into the Neolithic, Copper Age, and even early
Bronze Age of Europe and Anatolia, a span of 15,000 years. An excellent
example is the V sign that derives from the vulva or pubic triangle, one of
the earliest symbols known from prehistoric art.

The female womb with its fallopian tubes resembles the shape of a bulls
head with horns, which may well account for the prevailing use of this
motif to represent regeneration.
74


1.4.1.b Metamorphosis of the letter A. Although Gimbutas does not
claim that she discovered the precursors to the letter A, she has established
evidence that its ancestor was first created in places like Catal Huyuk, where it
symbolized the female reproductive organs and hung on the temple walls as bull
bucrania. In later centuries this symbol traveled from the original Anatolian
cultures to Phoenicia and Crete where the symbol continued to metamorphize,
and in an effort to incorporate it into the new cultures, it took radically different
forms. One of these forms was the worship of the bull-god later called Zeus by
the Greeks. Another was the worship of the cow goddess-Hathor which spread
from an area covering Egypt to Canaan. Yet another was the ox, or the aleph
associated with the rise of agriculture in Sumer and traveling to other Semitic
societies in the form of the first letter of their alphabet, aleph, or "A".
The similarity of the bucranium with the shape of a womans uterus and
fallopian tubes was noticed by artist Dorothy Cameron while working with
J ames Mellaart at Catal HuyukOx heads can be seen depicted on
anthropomorphic vases in place of the uterus. A great deal of information
on the symbolic role of the bulls head is revealed by the wall paintings
from Catal Huyuk. In many, the bucranium is either shown in place of the
uterus in the body of the Goddess, or is shown below the frog-shaped
Goddess.
75


1.4.1.b Similarity of Linear A and the Old European Script. Gimbutas
states that the script used in Catal Huyuk might have had a direct influence on
the scripts later developed in ancient Greece, including those on the island of
Crete. This might be evidence of the transmigration of the peoples of Catal
Huyuk to Crete, as indeed many of the religious symbols are common to both
cultures.
The hieroglyphic script of Crete had a sacral function in ritual ceremonies
and represents a direct continuity in tradition from Old European script.
Linear A, a more evolved writing, was also associated with religious

74
p. 314, Gimbutas, ibid.
practises but not exclusively with ritual ceremonies. However, the
relationship in terms of a dependency on the original Old European script
can be substantiated by a comparison of the sign inventory of the two
writing systems. Harold Haarmann (1990) has arrived at a set of not less
than fifty sign parallels.
76


1.4.2 Feli x Guatarri and Gilles Deleuze: Catal Huyuk and the
State:
The following is a brief discussion of Deleuze/Guartarris writing on three
subjects: The origins of the state and of writing; that language is for translation
not for communication; and the simultaneous existence of nomadic and
sedentary cultures.

1.4.2a The First Formations of Agricultural Societies. In the book A
Thousand Plateaus, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guatarri state that in Catal Huyuk
the abundance of diverse and tamed animals and a large stock of seed created a
unique hybridization which allowed for the first farming of grains and the raising
animals. They write that Catal Huyuk, in Anatolia, makes possible a singularly
reinforced imperial paradigm: it is a stock of uncultivated seeds and relatively
tame animals from different territories that performs, and makes it possible to
perform, at first by chance, hybridizations and selections from which agriculture
and small-scale animal raising arise.
77

In primitive societies, writes Deleuze and Guatarri, the state presupposes
writing, as well as speech and language. There can be no language without the

75
p. 244, Gimbutas, ibid.
76
See figure 6, for script comparison, in Addendum.
state. Therefore, at Catal Huyuk, it is surmised that there was a highly organized
and complex state:
Catal Huyuk, however, would have had a zone of influence extending two
thousand miles; how can the very-recurring problem of the relation of
coexistence between primitive societies and empires, even those of
Paleolithic times, be left unattended to? As long as archaeology is passed
over, the question of the relation between ethnology and history is
reduced to an idealist confrontation, and fails to wrest itself from the
absurd theme of society without history, or society against history.
Everything is not of the State precisely because there have been States
always and everywhere. Not only does writing presuppose the State, but
so do speech and language.
78


Deleuze/Guartarri argue that language is created between two peoples
who do not understand one another, in order to maintain ties between different
groups of people.
79
They write that language is invented for translation, not for
communication:
It is plausible that from the beginning primitive societies have maintained
distant ties to one another, not just short-range ones, and that these ties
were channeled through States, even if States effected only a partial and
local capture of them. Speech communities and languages, independently
of writing, do not define closed groups of people who understand one
another but primarily determine relations between groups who do not
understand one another: if there is language, it is fundamentally between

77
Deleuze, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 428.
78
Deleuze, ibid, p. 429.
79
Remember Io who was turned into a cow invented writing to communicate with her father who was still a
human. Writing was necessary to translate meaning across different subjects, not necessarily outside the
family though.
those who do not speak the same tongue. Language is made for that, for
translation, not for communication.
80


Nomadism, without a state, does not necessarily historically preceed
sendentarism, with a state; and the war machine was invented by the nomads to
fill the space or lack of a state or government. This is true given the evidence of
our own current political landscape. In 2007, global terrorists are without a
homeland or governing state and they are fighting against the organized and
legitimized nations which belong to a larger world-wide group of states. The
worldwide group of states supposedly follow a common rule of law. On a
hermes/hestia
81
model the nomad is hermenic and the sedentary statesman is
hestian. Hestia brings balance and a calming order into the home or state.
Hermes is the trickster, the thief and traveller outside the perimeter of home and
state. The gypsies of Eastern Europe, with their nomadic nature could also be
identified with Hermes.
As a rule, the nomadic cultures are not predominantly literate cultures,
rather they are primarily aural and oral societies. Mohammed, in 700 AD came
from a nomadic culture, he was educated but he did not write. The non-literate
societies coexisted with the literate ones, it is not one before the other, but both
existing simultaneously in time; and it is also possible that sedentary cultures
become nomadic after abandoning sendentarianism:
the nomads do not precede the sedentaries, just as sedentarization is a
stoppage that settle the nomads. Griaznov has shown in this connection

80
Deleuze, ibid., p. 430.
81
See Patrcica Thompson in The Hestia Trilogy on Hestia/Hermes double helix model.
that the most ancient nomadism can be accurately attributed only to
populations that abandoned their semiurban sedentarity, or their primitive
itineration, to set off nomadizing. It is under these conditions that the
nomads invented the war machine, as that which occupies or fills nomad
space and opposes towns and States, which its tendency is to abolish.
82


Writing comes from the State which has an already established highly
sophisticated society with towns and a common rule of law. The seemingly
contradictory social waves of nomadism and sedentarianism exist simultaneously
and ultimately cancel each other out, much like two inverted and opposing sonic
waveforms which become silence when played simultaneously.
83

Once it has appeared, the State reacts back on the hunter-gatherers,
imposing upon them agriculture, animal raising, an extensive division of
labor, etc.: it acts, therefore, in the form of a centrifugal or divergent wave.
But before appearing, the State already acts in the form of the convergent
or centripetal wave of the hunter-gatherers, a wave that cancels itself out
precisely at the point of convergence marking the inversion of signs or the
appearance of the State (hence the functional and intrinsic instability of
these primitive societies). It is necessary from this standpoint to
conceptualize the contemporaneousness or coexistence of the two
inverse movements, of the two directions of time - of the primitive peoples
before the State, and of the State after the primitive people - as if the
two waves that seem to us to exclude or succeed each other unfolded
simultaneously in an archeological, micropolitical, micrological, molecular
field.
84



82
Deleuze, ibid.
83
see chapter 2.1.2 on silence.
84
From Deleuze and Guattari A Thousand Plateaus, Chapter 13: 7,000 B.C.: Apparatus of Capture

This observation above written by Guatarri/Deleuze may explain why the
state appropriated the ritualistic symbols from the primitive societies, inverted
them and put them to use to control the people by organizing their beliefs and
providing literal transcriptions of the divine Law. Without a written code the Law is
open to interpretation and can change with the whims of the people. Prior to
writing, agreements were made verbally and then entrusted to memory. Writing
establishes order to a chaotic system. It clarifies and articulates thought. In the
act of this particular articulation called writing exformation,
85
or unwanted
information, must be thrown out. The early States appropriated symbols that they
needed from the indigenous, more primitive cultures and they reversed,
literalized and simplified their meanings so that they could be used in order to
govern their societies. In the process of building these new societies whatever
was thrown away, the exformation, might be forever lost; or it might be safely
entombed in the remaining ancient archeological objects -- still awaiting
translation.

1.4.3 Sumerian Infl uences on the Al phabet

Writing was for the Sumerians an invention created to facilitate the
increasingly complex temple business transactions of the State. In nomadic
cultures which were based on smaller familial structures, transactions could be
upheld by verbal word or promises. In the temple state though, strangers would
trade with each other, and the need to write down was necessary as the verbal

85
See Tor Norretranders The User Illusion for a more thorough explanation of exformation.
word would not be upheld among strangers. An expanded form of language, i.e.
writing, was invented to exchange information and to keep records between two
different exterior cultures. J acquetta Hawkes writes: It is right to call the earliest
writing an invention, for it is clear that the scribes were consciously seeking a
practical system for setting down records. The fact that they were pushed into
doing so is in itself a sufficient proof that the development of the temple state was
already far advanced.
86

As the complexity of temple transactions grew, it became necessary to
write things down, not only for proof of the transaction but also for rationing out
distributions to the community and for future planning for the following year:
The lead may well have come from Uruk. Here the controllers of the
temple estates found themselves being overwhelmed by the growing
complexity and amount of their work. Year by year the quantities of grain,
sesame seed, vegetables, dates, cattle large and small, preserved fish,
wool, skins and the rest brought to the temple stores increased, as did the
number of citizens bringing them. Who could remember in his head how
much was stored or whether it would meet the need when the time came
for its distribution.

Hawkes postulates that it is possible that it was an individual genius
who thought of the idea of writing things down in order to keep track of the
surplus of goods, but even so, the idea quickly spread to many areas within the
trade route:
Perhaps it was an individual of genius who, towards the end of the fourth
millenium, first thought of representing things and numbers by symbolic

86
The First Great Civilizations, Jacquetta Hawkes.This book focuses on Egypt, Sumer and the Indus valley
marks. If so, the idea soon spread. These pioneer scribes chose for their
materials two of the most abundant: reeds and clayed mud Writing was
invented in Sumeria solely for the administration of the temple economy.

Hawkes states that the earliest forms of writing in Sumer were pictoral but
within a few generations the signs became phonetic:
It is significant that from the first, however, a kind of shorthand was used-
that is to say the pictograms were not only standard but much
conventionalized. For example, women were represented by the pubic
triangle, oxen by a triangular face and V of hornsWithin a few
generations the crucial steps had been taken from signs representing
things to signs representing sounds. By the end of the protoliterate period
the script that had begun in numbering sheep was almost ready to be
used to set down the creations of the human imagination. It was to prove
so flexible that it could be adapted to many languages, and so durable that
it remained in use for three thousand years.
87


Hawkes emphasizes that the Sumerian culture was strong and influential enough
to withstand the local wars and to be assimilated as a whole to other peoples in
the area, such as by the Semites. Compare the story of how the god Enki
brought writing to the Sumerians to the mythology of Cadmus: It was the god
Enki the Sumerians knew who had taught men the arts of writing and geometry,
how to build cities and temples. He had also filled the Tigris and Euphrates with
sparkling water and stocked them with fish:

The plough and the yoke he directed

as the first great civilizations of man.
87
Hawkes, ibid.
The great prince Enki
Opened the holy furrows.
Made grain grow in the perennial field.
88


Both are stories of great men who brought writing to their communities by
ploughing the field and planting the seeds of culture.

1.4.4 Ri tual and Symbols: the Ancient Urge to Communicate

The drive to communicate to a higher power, to connect humans to their
own spiritual nature found expression in making marks and symbols as art and
sometimes as writing. The urge to write is an expression of the knowledge of
human existence and is a compulsion that goes beyond mere purpose. Hawkes
questions whether the drive to write comes from an economical or a psychic
need:
Here the simple statement will be preferred that the dynamic within
civilization was the human psyche and what Suzanne Langer has
recognized as its innate image-and-symbol-making drive. The material
advances in food production, technology and the rest make it possible for
these mental forms to find a new magnificence of expressionThat they
were not new and that they were to a very large extent universals of
human self-consciousness responding to what it found in its inner and
outer worlds, can hardly be doubted in the face of the evidence.
89


The urge to make symbolic marks might have been a result of an excess of
emotional and psychic energies within the early humans. The continuously raw

88
Jacquetta Hawkes, Ibid., p. 3.
struggle of life and death heightened the awareness of the early humans to such
an degree that they had to draw in order to release these overbearing fears and
bring back a strength and balance to his somatic constitution.

The same drives, to some extent even the same symbolic forms, can be
seen already in the first ascendancy of Homo sapiens in late Palaeolithic
times. We can see that the same excitement and concern roused by birth
and fertility which found expression in the female figurines of the hunters
was also celebrated in the great temples and cult figures of Ninhursag,
Inanna and other versions of the Mother Goddess of ancient civilization.
90


Hawkes maintains that these humans who painted on the Paleolithic caves might
have been performing a religious rite for his tribe: that drawing was the go-
between the spirit and the physical world. These painters become the priests of
the community. They might have foretold future events or recounted the past,
such as a particularly successful hunt.

We can see how in the Paleolithic Age there was a tremendous urge to
symbolize in the visual forms of painting and sculpture. That shrines were
the first form of public building is suggested by the one that underlay all
other buildings at J ericho, and by the number and elaboration of those at
Catal Huyuk-a settlement which in many ways still embodies Paleolithic
tradition. Moreover, the animal painting and carving in the shrines at Catal
Huyuk tends to confirm what had already proved an irresistible conclusion

89
Hawkes, ibid.
90
Hawkes, ibid.
- that the painted and sculptured caves were sanctuaries and the scene of
magico-religious rites.
91


This function of the shaman/magician that J acqeutta Hawkes describes is not
dissimilar to the ideal role of the artist in contemporary society. Swedish
filmmaker Ingmar Bergman writes in his essay Film has Nothing to do with
Literature
92
that art lost its basic creative drive the moment it was separated
from worship. It severed an umbilical cord and now lives its own sterile life,
generating and degenerating itself. Bergman mourns the loss of the connection
between art and its original sacred function as a religious primal rite which had
originally tied man to the spirit world. Contemporary art is currently inflated with
the self-importance of the single-ego, of zenophonic non-visionaries all vying for
a top-dog position in a capital market based world. But artists have a
responsibility to society to be the watch dogs of a culture, with their extra sensory
and uncanny intuition, artists can bring a balanced truth and reality, if they would
only listen and create with this intuition.
Organized religion has taken over the role of connecting humans to spirit
from the artist/shaman, and since this function was given to religion with its strict
behavioural code of laws it was simultaneously severed from non-linear
creativity, and, artists have lost their once important status in society.

1.4.5 Consci ousness, Identity and Writing


91
Hawkes, Ibid. p. 8-9.
92
From the Introduction of Four Screen plays of Ingmar Bergman, New York Simon and Schuster, 1960.
Translated by Lars Malmstrom and David Kushner.
Hawkes suggests that the forces of the unconscious and the urge to
create might have been stronger in humans in the period before they developed
a detached intellect. The excessive fears and emotions felt by the early human
might have compelled him to create rituals to release energy brought on by the
enormous "Unknown". As humans gained consciousness and a sense of identity,
they created objects as a way of connecting to and as a way of making sense of
their outer world:
As consciousness heightened in our kind and the sense of "I-ness"
strengthened with it, this "I" sought to relate itself to the world-apart
through symbol, image, metaphor. At the same time forces from the
unconscious could invade the conscious mind charged with tremendous
psychic force. If this still happens today, and everyone who has
experienced creation through the arts or religious obsession knows that it
does, it happened far more readily in the millennia before the cultivation of
the detached intellect. Emotions of fear, of love and hate, of wonder at the
tremendous features of the outer world, could release the archetypal
invaders. Their expression then became a matter of compulsion rather
than of purpose.
93


Bergman writes: Today the individual has become the highest form and
the greatest bane of artistic creation. The smallest wound or pain of the ego is
examined under a microscope as if it were of eternal importance.
94
But this I of
the singular ego, of the singular identity is a myth. At the dawn of consciousness
it is possible that the first I of identity and of the first human consciousness was
identical to discovering the Being of God. Note that the Phoenician word for I is

93
Hawkes, ibid.
94
Bergman, Ibid.
Ana and that many of the goddesses began with this prefix.
95
It is possible then,
that only later on in history with the birth of a monotheistic god, humans believed
that our individual identity was to be separated from the whole of creation. This
is another indication of the split between mind and body. With the appearance of
an individual and exterior god separated from our bodies and separated from
creation, human beings also separated themselves from the world and became
subjects in the world, scientifically categorizing and observing the other
creatures.
96
This realization and birth of human consciousness brought with it a
great fear and humans dealt with the fear through creating ritual. And by
creating rituals, man created the gods.
As for their origin, we have to imagine individual experience running back
into the inherited experience of the species-of light and darkness, of birth,
sex and death, of the mother, of the father-leader. Now that it is being
recognized that animal nature is subject to formal laws of hierarchy and
territory and group responsibility, it appears that a transformation of these
instinctive behaviour patterns may lie behind the urge to ritual. The
enactment of ritual, it is well known, can itself give birth to gods.
97


1.4.6 Agricultural Infl uence on Wri ting; the Al eph and the Ox.
Along with the mental separation of mans consciousness from that of the
whole of creation, man observed the cause and effect of his actions. Man began
to control his environment and assert his will on creation. Instead of waiting for
bushes to yield good fruits, he began to plant trees and gardens and manipulate

95
see Chapter 1.3.4 above.
96
This is also the first articulation of sentences, the separation of subject/object is a sort of death. See
Chapter 2.2 and 3.2.
the output of the food toward an excess in order to feed his family and the tribe.
The ox was instrumental to mans agricultural prowess. Hawkes writes about the
importance of the ox for the early Sumerian farmers, that importance far
outweighed the importance of any other animal. As stated previously, the
Phoenician letter aleph looks like an ox head or an oxen plough, and means ox
in Semitic languages.
The origins of our alphabet came from several sources over many
millennia, including Catal Huyuk, Egypt and Elam/Sumeria. As a result of the
Phoenicians extensive nomadic travels and their ability to absorb other cultures,
the sources were intersected into the ordered forms of the Phoenician letters,
and further transformed by the Greeks and then the Romans into our current
contemporary Latin letter formations. So far, this paper has outlined the
influences of Catal Huyuk and Egypt on the alphabet, but the origin of the ox
has not yet been discussed. The origins of the letter A and the origin of writing
was influenced by the Sumerians and the action of an ox ploughing a field. Here
is a description by Hawkes of the plough that was used by the Sumerians:

The sowing was to be done with an instrument that may perhaps have
been invented in early historic times. This was a plough with a funnel to
drop seed at a steady rate and depth behind the tongue that was opening
the furrow.
98


The ox seemed to be a fundamental resource for farming:


97
Hawkes, ibid. p. 10.
98
Hawkes, ibid. p. 96
The Mesopotamian peoples might have been able to dispense with the
bull, the cow and their offspring as sources of food, drink, hides and hair,
but they could not have flourished without that source of energy, the
castrated male. Ox-power was essential for heavy transport. The slow and
stupid, but strong and tireless oxen, guided by nose-rings and their
strength quite efficiently harnessed through yoke and pole, drew solid-
wheeled wagons of various kindsThey were equally indispensable in the
fields. Ever since the time, probably before 3000 B.C., when the plough
displaced the hoe, oxen had served as tractors.
99


In summary, the ox with his plow fertilizing the fields allowed the tribe to
produce a surplus of food. This surplus led to the tribe being able to trade with
other sophisticated tribes, and this trading led to the need for accounting and
thus, it led to writing. The movement of the ox going back and forth on the field
was imitated by the early Greek scribes by writing back and forth on the page
and is called boustrophedon (literally translated, as the ox plows). To plough a
woman means to impregnate the woman much like ploughing a seed on the
earth. In this analogy, the soil is the body and skin of the woman and therefore it
is also the page, the letters become the soldiers, sprouting from the earth (i.e.
the woman). The soldiers line up in straight rows across the land much like
letters that line up forming words on a page of text. The yearly ritualized sacrifice
of the sons death and rebirth is symbolically related to the rebirth of the seed of
agriculture. This ritual was practiced to ensure a good yield of crops. Here the
son (seed
100
) mated with his mother (the earth or the field
101
) to guarantee a

99
Hawkes, ibid. p. 102
100
Seed in Phoenician is zer, sacrifice is zerm. See chapter 1.9.6.
101
The Phoenician word for woman is eshet the word for field is eshad.
good harvest. At some point this symbolic story became literal and consequently
the taboo of incest was born in order to reject the ancient goddess ritual of
rebirth. The taboo of incest has more to do with the suppression and fear of the
pagan religions than it has to do with the origin of languages. Languages,
societies and writing existed perhaps several millennia before the taboo was
established.

1.4.7 The Epic of Gil gamesh as an Expressi on of Cultural
Revol uti on.

The ancient Sumerian story of Ishtar and Gilgamesh, suggests a struggle
between the female and male forces in nature and society. The story belongs to
the larger oral tradition Epic of Gilgamesh, a widespread and influential
mythology transcribed on several clay tablets in the Akkadian script about 1800-
1600 BC in ancient Iraq, or Sumer
102
. Gilgamesh actually lived in Uruk in 2900-
2500 BC, and the stories surrounding him might be a mythical as well as a
historical testament to the loss of natures powers in favor of the strength and
logic of the human. This myth expresses a cultural revolution from the more
ancient agricultural societies, that is, those cultures adhering to the laws of
nature to the more warlike city states which adhered to the logical, abstract mind
or, the techne of man.

102
The Epic of Gilgamesh influenced Hebrew mythology, especially the myth of the Great Flood.
In the myth, Gilgamesh refuses Ishtars proposal of marriage, stating that
he would only suffer the deadly fate of her other lovers. In her fury, Ishtar asks
Anu, her father, to thrust the bull of heaven at Gilgamesh:

Anu addressed Princess Ishtar, saying:
If you demand the Bull of Heaven from me,
there will be seven years of empty husks for the land of Uruk.
Have you collected grain for the people?
Have you made grasses grow for the animals?
Ishtar addressed Anu, her father, saying:
I have heaped grain in the granaries for the people,
I made grasses grow for the animals,
in order that they might eat in the seven years of empty husks.
I have collected grain for the people,
I have made grasses grow for the animals.
103


Then Anu releases the Bull of Heaven to Ishtar, and she leads the bull to
the earth. The bull snorts and hundreds of men from Uruk fall into a large pit:
104


It climbed down to the Euphrates
At the snort of the Bull of Heaven a huge pit opened up,
and 100 Young Men of Uruk fell in.
At his second snort a huge pit opened up,
and 200 Young Men of Uruk fell in.
At his third snort a huge pit opened up,
and Enkidu fell in up to his waist.
Then Enkidu jumped out and seized the Bull of Heaven by its horns.
105


103
From Tablet VI, The Epic of Gilgamesh translated by Maureen Gallery Novacs, see bibiography.
104
Note the similarity of Gilgameshs men to Cadmus men falling into the dragons cave. In both stories
the men are devoured by natural demons from the earth.

When Enkidu, with Gilgamesh, kills the Bull of Heaven, Ishtar gives this
warning: Woe unto Gilgmesh who slandered me and killed the Bull of Heaven!
and Enkidu then retorts back to her: If I could only get at you I would do the
same to you! I would drape his innards over your arms! And, as Ishtar, with her
cultic women mourn the Bull of Heaven, Gilgamesh and the men of Uruk
celebrate their victory.
Because the Bull of Heaven was killed, Anu pronounces that either Enkidu
or Gilgamesh must die, and it is decided that Enkidu will die as he is merely the
servant helper of the great Gilgamesh. Enkidu recites a series of curses, and one
is toward the harlot Shamhat:
Come now, Harlot, I am going to decree your fate,
a fate that will never come to an end for eternity!
I will curse you with a Great Curse,
may my curses overwhelm you suddenly, in an instant!
May you not be able to make a household,
and not be able to love a child of your own (?)! (sic)
May you not dwell in the of girls,
may dregs of beer (?) stain your beautiful lap,
may a drunk soil your festal robe with vomit (?)
106


These words above seem to be describing the status of the modern
whore. Is it possible that the authors of these tablets foresaw the once-sacred
harlots future predicament? Or, had the status of the harlot already fallen and
they were merely explaining the reasons for the debasement of the sacred

105
Epic of Gilgamesh, ibid.
sexual profession? Gerhard Herm in writing about the fate of the Tyrian
(Phoenician) whore in the Bible (2 Kings 9) in his book The Phoenicians states
that anyone reading must be struck by the violent hatred shown, a hatred
which has not lost its impact in more than 2,800 years.
107
The story of
Gilgamesh and Ishtar documents the fall of woman from her sacred sexual
position into a nameless forgetful position. It is Gilgamesh that wrote his story on
the temple walls of Uruk, probably the temple that once belonged to Ishtar.
Not only do Gilgamesh and Enkidu kill the Bull of Heaven, the ancient
symbol of the goddess religion, but they also establish a morality and a certain
fame or immortality for themselves. By writing his story on the temple walls,
Gilgamesh is assured that he will be remembered in history as the bravest man,
because he was able to overcome and consequently overturn the prevailing
religion of the pre-historic Sumerian culture. This turning of power from the old to
a new religion, from the natural religions to the more technical logical religions,
seemed to happen in many geographical areas during the period of history from
2,000 BC-500 AD, almost as if it was evolutionary necessary for man (males and
females) to make a radical societal change in order to survive.
In these older cultures, there was a cyclical ritual sacrifice symbolizing the
beginning and ending of the agricultural year, the mother/son represented the
earth/seed respectively. The sacrifice of the new world culture would still include
the killing of young men, but its purpose was not the regeneration of the
agricultural field, but rather the domination of one tribe over the other in warfare.

106
From Tablet, VII, Epic of Gilgamesh.
107
P. 103 The Phoenicians, Gerhard Herm.
The new religion identified the male solely as the new subject, and praised the
accumulation and safeguarding of personal property such as a wife, children and
a private home/land. The emphasis was not on submitting to natural powers, but
rather of overtaking and dominating them. The experience of childbirth was no
longer a mystery and it had no function in warfare, therefore regeneration lost its
original spiritual significance.
Perhaps this change which included the invention and organization of
writing, the invention of a monotheistic religion, and an emphasis on violent
warfare, was necessary for the progress of the human species. This
transformation was mostly completed by the time of Mohammed by 600 AD.
Even though Mohammed came from a nomadic culture and was illiterate, his
book, the Holy Quran, is considered by Moslems worldwide to be the direct
recorded Word of Allah, and Islam had successfully erased the last of the local
pagan religions of Arabia and the middle east.
















1.5 Monotheistic Religion Resistance to Local
Mythology and the Relationship to the Written Word

There was a resistance of the newer monotheistic male-orientated God
religions against the older indigenous pagan/goddess religions even though the
research shows that the Great Mother Goddess was universal, she was
worshipped on all continents
108
, she was of the one essence that created life,
and therefore, she could also be considered mono theistic. It is possible that by
2,000 B.C. in the Near East, the Great Mother Goddess religions had splintered
into many minor gods and goddesses, and their rituals might have deteriorated,
and even threatened the males of the community with their frightening rituals. If
males were sacrificed to the goddess in yearly rituals, then, as victims of these
meaningless crimes, they had every right to rise up and fight the elders and
leaders of the older religions. These newer religions started a revolution against
the old ways, and they set the written word as law to help guide the people into
the new era. The Epic of Gilgamesh is one example of the written word as an
example of struggle against the goddess, but there are many other examples,
including the Holy Scriptures of the Hebrews, Christians and Moslems.

1.5.1 The Hebrew Law-the prohibition and destruction of graven
images.
The Hebrews who worshipped Yahweh came from cultures that had
previously worshipped the goddess. In the Chronicles of the Old Testament,
Yahweh instructs his people to destroy these religions and all of their images, so
that they could learn to worship Him alone. It was a mostly successful
propaganda, spreading the word that the older religions were evil (from Eve
and forming the word devil) and that the new God was good. The phenomena of
divine revelation was born, the people would be led out of the darkness and the
mysteries by following the holy word.
Often, with the appearance of a new religion, a new philosophy is born,
which makes is possible for humanity to advance scientifically, artistically and
politically. It is conceivable that the original pagan cultures might have been
backward, unenlightened and even destructive for the technical advancement of
the human species. One can imagine that those earlier religions were sticking
too much to old deteriorating traditions
109
, the pointless repetitive rituals that were
not progressing humanity forward, and that it seemed evolutionarily necessary to
obliterate their existence. The question here is, that in the destruction of these
cultures, was something lost to humanity? Was a way of thinking, a way of
worshipping, or remembering our past lost forever with the disappearance of
these traditions? This paper establishes that there was something lost: not only
the clues to humanitys cultural beginnings but also an important philosophy
which might hold alternate understandings for the meaning of human existence.
Many passages in the Bible and the Koran are witness to the violent
struggle between the J ewish, Christian and Islamic monotheistic God and the
aboriginal religions that came before Him. There was a resistance of the
monotheistic religions against the local mythology and the written word became
the vehicle for the resistance. Divine Revelation as the Written Word became the

108
She was worshipped at different times in all places of the world, but by different names, and sometimes
with slightly varying attributes.
Absolute. The Word was God. The alpha and the omega. This is the first
abstraction: that God is present in the Word, no longer in the flesh. The goddess
was experienced in the flesh, but the new male god would be experienced in the
mind. Consciousness was born and the dark and mysterious mind could be
transformed into the enlightened truth through the Laws written by Gods own
hand.
In the Old Testament (Exodus), God commands His people not to make
any images of His creation. Herodotus noted that the Persians also had no image
of god, no temple or altars and they considered the use of them a sign of folly
110

and therefore, it is possible that this Hebraic idea of not making images of God
was a Persian influence. In the Middle East of 1500 B.C. the Zoroastrians and
Hebrews, both monotheistic, were contemporaneous and greatly influenced each
other
111
. This belief that the gods are not of the same nature as man and that
imitation of His Creation is sacrilegious reappears in Islam.
1.5.2 Christianity
In the Old Testament (Deuteronomy), Moses lays down the law for the
Hebrews, written as commandments on stone and states that the Word was from
God and must be obeyed. The idea that God and the Word are one continues

109
See Gerhard Herm analysis in The Phoenicians, chapter on the Tyrian Whore, p. 113-
110
Book One, line131 from The Histories: The erection of statues, temples, and altars is not an accepted
practise amongst them, and anyone who does such a thing is considered a fool, because, presumably, the
Persian religion is not anthropomorphic like the Greek. Zeus, in their system, is the whole circle of the
heavens, and they sacrifice to him from the tops of mountains. They also worship the sun, moon, and earth,
fire, water, and winds, which are their only original deities.
111
Kashani, Abbas Aryanput. Iranian Influence in Judaism and Christianity. Kayhan Press, Tehran, 1970,
1973.

into Christianity. This passage of the Gospel of Saint J ohn reinforces that God is
the creator of all things, but that the Word was with God in the beginning:
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and
Word was God.
2 The same was in the beginning with God.
3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing
made that was made.

In Revelations St. J ohn calls Satan the devil, represented by the dragon,
or serpent. He connects the Great Whore of Babylon, with whom many kings
from many lands and many tongues lay, with Satan. He warns that the Lord will
utterly destroy her, her people and the city of Babylon. This is a historical account
of the continuing struggle between the J udeo-Christian monotheistic God and the
local religions. When St. J ohn says the devil persecuted woman, he put a curse
on all women, and it became increasingly difficult for women to participate in the
early formation of the Christian church. From Revelations:
12:13 And when the dragon saw that he was cast unto the earth, he
persecuted the woman which brought forth the man child.
17:5 and upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON
THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF
THE EARTH.
112
The waters which thou sawest, where the whore sitteth,
are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues.

Gerhard Herm writes that it remains to say that temple prostitution and
the public offering of virginity occurred in all eastern temples between the
Mediterranean and the Indus valley. But he also states that we have no way to


conceive of liturgies which pertained to sex; which saw the working of godly
powers in generation and conception.
113
Herodotus in writing about the
Babylonians in The Histories states that the ritual of the sacred prostitutes was
one custom that was wholly shameful:
There is one custom amongst the people which is wholly shameful: every
woman who is a native of the country must once in her life go and sit in
the temple of Aphrodite and there give herself to a strange manonce a
woman has taken her seat she is not allowed to go home until a man has
thrown a silver coin into her lap and taken her outside to lie with her.
114


There was a fear of the goddess among the leaders of the new male-
dominated monotheistic religions and a fear of her rituals-understandably so. The
goddesses priestesses had to perform sexual sacrifices (perhaps even against
their will) and sometimes these sacrifices included the killing of men. A cultural
revolution was rightly called for - for the safety of the people of that particular
society. A full and complete cultural revolution was needed to overturn these
seemingly barbaric and senseless practices. In Euripides play Iphigenia in
Tauras written in c. 400 B.C.E, Iphigenia is called on by the goddess Artemis to
kill the young foreign men that come to the shore of the island. But Iphigenia
refuses this practise when she is commanded to kill her own brother, she gets
away with defying the gods. Iphegenia did not blindly follow the superstitions.
115

The early Christian Church of the first century A.D. might have been a welcomed

113
p. 116 The Phoenicians, Herm.
114
The Histories, p. 79.
115
Iphigenia in Tauris, by Euripides, translated by Witter Bynner.
salvation from these rituals. St. J ohn continues in Revelations that God will judge
the goddess and burn her and Babylon entirely to the ground:
18:21 And a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone, and cast it
into the sea, saying, Thus with violence shall that great city Babylon be
thrown down, and shall be found no more at all.
1.5.3 Islam
Mohammed, the founder of Islam, was married to a powerful older wealthy
business woman, who helped him organize the early followers of His religion. It is
said that the Arabians had a custom of taking countless wives, so that
Mohammeds edict to marry only up to four wives was a compromise which was
both reasonable and accomplishable for the Arabs. Even around the years of 600
A.D. when Mohammed revealed the Quran, there were still remnants of the
goddess cultures, as mentioned below. But Mohamed cautions that these
goddesses are only names, and do not have any authority with God. He cautions
that men should not do whatever they please but rather they should follow only
the Guidance that God gives. Like the J ews and the Christians before them, the
Muslims follow the Quran as the Word of God and the only real source of truth
that exists.
Have ye seen
Lat. And Uzza,
And another,
The third (goddess), Manat?
What! For you
The male sex,
And for Him, the female?
116


116
From the Sura, LIII, translated by A. Yusuf Ali.

In conclusion, the J udaic, Christian and Muslim religions all have in
common a male god-head severed from the physical body of the goddess. Early
pagan religions worshipped the physical earth and the body of the female as the
representation of the mysteries of regeneration, but in order to enforce the newer
male dominated religions it was necessary to renounce the old symbols and with
this renunciation, came the debasement of the female body both literally and
symbolically.
It is possible that the rituals of the goddess religions had deteriorated so
much that the new religions offered a way toward mental and spiritual progress
for humanity: to be able to worship something unseen requires mental maturity.
This new unseen God might have encouraged the mind of man to discover the
world beyond his own physical body, allowing for the discoveries and inventions
in mathematics and science. For the most part, history tells us that the goddess
priestesses were not only seen but even the goddess Herself was experienced
in the flesh at the moment of sexual intercourse. An unapproachable abstract
male God is almost the polar opposite to the physical image and experience of
the goddess.
There is an exception to this anthropomorphism of the goddess in the
stories surrounding the ancient godhead of Hestia. The next chapter will explore
the Greek concept of Hestia as the unseen Universal Goddess of the fire, of
being/essence (ousia/essia) and as the source and motivation for language and
consciousness.


1.6 Hestia and Hermes in Architecture


1.6.1 The Scul ptural Pairing of Hesti a and Hermes

Like the godhead of the monotheistic religions Hestia is an abstract
concept not identifiable by any particular physical human characteristics.
In Ancient Greece, Hestia was often the first of the gods to receive libations,
prayers or honors. In Platos Cratylus, Hestia is the first god to be discussed,
Hermes is the last.
117
Even though Plato gives this important status to Hestia, she
is all but forgotten in Greek mythology. She is the elder sister of Zeus and sits in
the Olympian circle until the young god of wine, Dionysis, arrives, and the
popular story is that she offers up her seat to him without contest. She then takes
a place at the center of Olympia, at the hearth, and she keeps the eternal fire
burning. This is a description of Hestia from the Encyclopedia of Religion:
Hestia was often paired with Hermes: she always self-same, he a
shapeshifter; she homebound, he a wayfarer; she ultimately trustworthy,
he a trickster. That she was replaced on Olympus by Dionysis
118
suggests
the significance of the complementation: life in his realm had meaning at
the extreme, whereas life in hers had meaning at the center. Hestia
embodied the Greek recognition of the sanctity to be found in the most
ordinary and familiar things, those too easily ignored, too readily
devalued.
119

French historian J ean Pierre Vernant discovered that there was a
relationship between the goddess Hestia and the god Hermes which was

117
Platos Cratylus, line 401b and 407e.
118
See next chapter for details on the myth.
119
P. 308 Encyclopedia of Religion.
especially visible in Greek architecture and sculpture. He writes about Phidias
sculptural pairing of Hestia with Hermes as part of the Olympian circle:
120

In this series of eight divine couples there is one pair which poses a
problem: Hermes and Hestia. Why are they matched? Neither their
genealogies nor their legends can explain this association. What is the
link that, in Phidiass mind, unites a god and goddess who appear to be
without connection?

1.6.2 The Column and the Base

The column and the base which are ubiquitously utilized in modern day
architecture can be traced back to the two basic forms of the line and the circle.
The column is associated with the line, the herm and Hermes; the base is
associated with the circle, the omphalos, the disc or Hestia. The line is the
techne of man, the circle is the space or universe in which it exists. In language,
Hermes or Hermeneutics is the law governing thought into the word formation
and structure of sentences; Hestia is the silence, the hole or space of possibilities
before the articulation.
In architecture the herm is a rectangular pillar surmounted by a mans
head. Herms with the head of Hermes or Dionysos were often placed near or at
doorways or crossroads of Greece.
121
One can geometrically simplify the herm as
a vertical line like the English letter/word I or the number 1, the alef or letter A
in the Arabic alphabet or the I in the Egyptian goddess name Io.

120
Vernant, Jean-Pierre. Hestia-Hermes chapter from Myth and Thought in Ancient Greece, 1971.
pp.124-170.
121
p. 26 Greek Inscriptions, B.F. Cook.
The hestia or hearth can be geometrically simplified as the letter O, the
circle, the number zero, or the O in the goddess Io. The circle has no beginning
and no end and the line has a clear start and end point. According to Heraclitus:
the circumference of a circle as a whole no longer has a direction: for whatever
point on it you think of is both a beginning and an end
122
This architectural
outer herm and the interior omphalos or hearth represent the 1 and the 0
respectively, a pairing necessary for digital technology, for sexual union, and for
the visual stability of Greek Architecture. Vernant maintains that the circle was
important for Greek religious architecture:
During the city period and the establishment of the communal hearth in
the pyrtaneum, Hestia was associated with a building in the shape of a
rotunda, the tholos, the sole example of the circular form in Greek
religious architecture.
123


The maternal aspect of Hestia, or the hearth is not a passive or
unnecessary aspect of Greek culture. Rather, it was the originating source and
center of all their architecture, their city/civilization, as well as the center of their
politics, of religion and of the family. Even the very first architectural structures
built by humans had a hearth at the center, as fire was necessary for survival,
and it met early mans physical as well as spiritual needs.
This maternal aspect of Hestia strengthens the analogy, already
referred to, between the circular hearth and the omphalos, that other
symbolic object also circular in shape and centrally situated. In some
cases Hestia is pictured seated not on a domestic hearth but on an

122
Early Greek Philosophy, p. 115.
123
Vernant, ibid.
omphalos and we know that the omphalos of Delphi
124
was supposed to
be Hestias seat. In historic times the altar of the communal hearth of
Hestia koine, set in the centre of the town, was called the omphalos of the
city.
125


If the hearth (or omphalos) represented the calm center present in every
Greek institution, then it was also a ubiquitous and familiar structure, one so
common and so commonplace that historians and poets did not need to write
about it. Could this be one reason that not much has been written about the
godhead of Hestia? For instance, if an archeologist of the future looked back at
the twenty first century and found no classic literature explaining what a
television was used for, or how to use it does that mean that the television is not
an important object for contemporary humans?
126
It is the authors belief that
Hestia was so common to the Greeks that she did not have to be written about or
discussed. Hestia represented the everyday, the common place and everyone
understood who she was. Plato states that the first sacrifices were made to
Hestia, indicating that she is ancient
127
. Although there is no concrete proof it is
possible, that Hestias essence is the same fire god that permeated the Persian
pre-Zoroastrian culture, and that which inspired human consciousness and
morality. Hestia may be the same essence which inspired Nietzsches
philosophy, through Zoroaster, of the eternal return of the same.

124
From Early Greek Philosophy, p. 260: The old thinkers pictured the inhabited earth as round, placing
Greece in its centre and Delphi in the centre of Greece (for Delphi holds the navel of the earth)
125
Vernant, ibid.
126
One might be able to say that the television has replaced the function of the hearth in the modern family
home.
127
See Platos Cratylus.
Hestia represented an ordering of physical space, and by creating a calm
gravitational center in homes and in the cities of Ancient Greece, she created a
sense of being safe in the home -- guarding men from an otherwise dangerous
and chaotic universe.
1.6.3 Greek Marriage and the Plough
Vernant writes that in Greek culture it is the father who arranges the
daughters marriage for the purpose of bringing forth legitimate children:
(the father)pronounces as the pledge of betrothal: I bestow this girl in
order that ploughing should bring forth legitimate children. Plutarch,
referring to the existence in Athens of three ceremonies of sacred
ploughing remarks: But most sacred of all sowing is the marital sowing
and ploughing for the procreation of children.The woman, who at one
moment figures as an element of commerce, equivalent as moveable
property to the wealth of flocks, is now identified, in her procreative
function, with a field. Paradoxically, however, she personifies not her
native soil but that of her husband.
128


Woman, through the invention and institution of marriage, became a
receptive field
129
for the seed of the male, and she even gave up her own native
soil for that of her husbands. (Note that in Phoenician woman is the same word
as field: eshat) Let us suppose, that prior to the law of marriage, women birthed
and raised children with the other women of her tribe, and without any assistance
or interference of the males of the tribe. Protecting the institution of the family
and the raising and caring for children might have been mostly within the

128
Vernant, ibid.
129
See Linguistics Chapter on Phoenician tracings, as the word for field, eshad, is very close to the word
for woman, eshet
females realm of power. Men might not have even known who their own children
were. Names might have passed down from mother to child. In switching to a
newer patriarchal system, the females name and lineage is forgotten, as the new
genealogy would trace only the male line from father to son.
Our western culture still retains remnants of the patriarchy in our usage of
the family names. Womens names are lost-as in a patriarchy the lineage follows
from one male father to his son. Until the late 1960s in America, most married
women took the last name of the husband, and she gave her own children, even
her daughters, his last name. In the Old Testament many pages are dedicated to
naming the patriarchy by listing their male descendants but the women are
excluded from this list.
Most matters concerning the family and home are within the jurisdiction of
the women, but why is it that most women cannot choose how, if, or when to
have children? If the home is the single place where women might still have
some power, why have most societies taken this last vestige of their power
away? Laws which deny women control over their bodies and childbirth is
maintaining the patriarchal order and placating a deep-rooted psychological fear
of the ancient goddess culture.
1.6.4 The Hesti an/Hermian Polari ty
The hierarchical debasement of the female has tipped the balance
between the sexes and has created a distorted history of the world. Rather than
allowing for an equal female/male polarity which is dependent on each other for
survival, many cultures left all powerful decisions and inventions to the males,
completely circumventing and excluding the womens point of view. Some of
these decisions included the writing and enforcement of laws, and the writing of
history, and the design of educational and utilitarian materials. But, humanities
future chances for survival may be linked to restoring (or creating) a balance
between the two inner and outer poles, the oikos and the polis, the home and the
politics, the female and male forces in the universe. Mistakenly conceptualizing
the female element as a purely receptive and inactive force (i.e. a field or a
vessel for male thought and action, as described above) -- is keeping humanity
back from future progress. Creating a balance between the male and female
forces -- creating a double helix, and a blending of yin-yang energy will allow the
couple to become a dynamic force together, this unit of the couple, will break the
singular egotistical identity of a single person and create a more complete
perspective on all relevant issues from technology to sciences and the arts.
Patricia J . Thompson, professor at Lehman College, New York, (also known as
Yelena Vladimirovna Mayakovskya, the only child of famed Russian poet
Vladimir Mayakovsky) has written extensively about the Hestian/Hermian polarity
or double helix.
130
She writes that the two complement and complete each other
and create a dyadic tension between them. The pre-Socratic and early Greeks
believed that a Hermian/Hestian relationship existed and was dependent and
reactive toward each other, and that when one created a calm center in the inner
life of the home and family, this influence would extend into politics and the outer
realms of society. Theano of Crotona
131
, and other women from the Pythagorean

130
The Hestia Trilogy, New York: Peter Lang Publishing. Thompson calls this polarity the
double helix.
131
Theano was the wife of Pythagoras and one of his most accomplished students, she wrote several texts
since lost. Theano and Pythagoras daughters were supposed his ideal disciples. Early Greek Philosophy.
school of philosophy, discussed metaphysics and how to apply the principle of
harmonia in everyday life. The Pythagoreans addressed the women as equal to
their husbands, even though their spheres were separated. They taught that
there were four stages of life for a woman, each having its own goddess.
They were particularly concerned to show other women how to run just
harmonious households, how to raise just harmonious children, how to
preserve harmony in a marital relationship, and how to interact with
servants so as to preserve harmony at home. By contrast, mens role was
to establish harmony in society and to create a just state. It is clear that
they were thinking in terms of dual domains with distinctive goals and
purposes but sharing common underlying principles.
132


Thompson breaks down the hestian/hermean duality into the private/public
or oikos/polis spheres of Greek life. This binding of opposites into the harmonia
created separate spheres for men and womens work, but Thompson maintains
that there was a moral equivalency an equal value between oikos-centric
ideas, knowledge, and education with polis-centric ideas, knowledge and
education. The two spheres applied the same philosophical principles to the
inner as well as to the outer aspects of life.
Thompson says that the family is an important ecosystem, (the words
ecosystem and ecology both are from the root oikos) and that the discourse of
domesticity is lacking in most western philosophical systems
133
. The German
philosopher Heidegger defines language as the the house of being and he
writes about the geviert or the four-fold approach to achieving a balanced life;

132
P. 210, The Accidental Theorist from the Hestia Trilogy by Patricia Thompson.
133
Personal conversation May, 2007.
but he missed the point that an essential concept of Being is that of achieving
harmonia and balance in the oikos or the private, inner life of the family and the
home. Heidegger mention ousia but he does not connect this word to hestia as
Plato did in the Cratylus. By omitting the hestia from his discussion Heidegger is
omitting the essential and the feminine aspect of Being. (This will be discussed
in more detail on this in the following chapters).
Vernant also remarks that together Hestia and Hermes form a
indispensable unit one that represents an archaic conception of space and
could even be an effective symbol for how the cosmos of the universe works:
134

To Hestia belongs the world of the interior, the enclosed, the stable, the
retreat of the human group within itself; to Hermes, the outside world,
opportunity, movement, interchange with others. It could be said that, by
virtue of their polarity, the Hermes-Hestia couple represents the tension
which is so marked in the archaic conception of space: space requires a
centre, a nodal point, with a special value, from which all directions, all
different qualitatively, may be channeled and defined; yet at the same time
space appears as the medium of movement implying the possibility of
transition and passage from any point to another.

Hestia and Hermes together complete a feedback system of
communication one aspect cannot exist without the other. If Hermes is
language i.e. speaking and writing, then Hestia is at the original thought which
exists before language. Hestia might be the pushing force, the initial initiative,
motivation
135
or inspiration toward action, and Hermes is the action itself. If

134
Vernant, Jean-Pierre. Hestia-Hermes chapter from Myth and Thought in Ancient Greece, 1971.
pp.124-170.
135
See Chapter 2.1.1 On Schirmachers silence is the greatest motivation for language.
Hestia is pure thought, the silent Thought before it can be expressed or
articulated by humans, then Hermes might be the formation of words into
sentences, complete with syntax and correct grammar. The Hestian/Hermean
continuum is necessary for the formation of any language system.









































1.7 Hestia and Being


1.7.1 The Story of Hestia: Givi ng up the Seat of Power to
Dionysis

Let us return to the myth of Hestia. Hestia is an ancient goddess, and the
elder sister of Zeus. The story is that she gave up her seat on Mt. Olympus to the
younger god of wine, Dionysis. Hestia might be so ancient that she could be
considered as the original goddess of fire
136
, the Fugi Agni, and a precursor to
the Zoroastrian worship of fire. For Dionysis to take Hestias seat on Mt. Olympus
might be one more story symbolic of womens loss of power over spiritual and
religious rituals in ancient Greece. Hestia symbolizes the central inner harmony
in being, and Dionysis, the outer extreme limits of being. One could state
because Hestia lost her seat to Dionysis, humanity had lost its very own center of
being, and with that came a certain amount of insanity and madness. Dionysis
was the son of Semele and Zeus, and Semele is the daughter of Cadmus so
Hestias story is a continuation of the cultural reversal that Cadmus began.
In Euripides play The Bacchae, the struggle for power between the old
dark, wild nature-bound pagan religion and the new religion is indicated. The
symbols are complex and not easily broken down into black and white, good or
bad, male or female, nature and state; but it is evident that there was an
ideological transformation taking place at this particular time in Greece. That
Dionysis is a son of Semele, and is therefore Cadmus grandson, is interesting to
note with regard to Cadmus bringing the alphabet to the Greeks. All of Cadmus
descendents were a under a curse from Ares because Cadmus killed the dragon
and made Ares angry. Ares is father to Harmonia, Cadmus wife. Cadmus
struggle to bring order to Greece resulted in a wiping out of the old religions,
possibly even upsetting the equilibrium of Mt. Olympus. Even Cadmus marriage
to Harmonia indicates that Cadmus rejected the pagan practise of marrying his
sister, Europa. The marriage of Cadmus and Harmonia was a civil marriage,
and brought about the rule of law for Greece. Dionysis is from the genealogical
line of Cadmus and Harmonia. But this law is not natural it is a construct, or a
techne invented by man, and the descendants of Cadmus, including Dionysis,
suffer the fury of the nature gods. The result was madness.

1.7.2 The Etymol ogy of Hesti a
D. N. Sedley writes that in Platos discussion about the origins of the name
of Hestia in The Cratylus
137
, Hermogenes and Socrates discovered several
local variants of the word and a meaning of hestia from the root ousia a Greek
word which also means being. By connecting ousia to the Doric osia they also
discovered an ancient association between being and flux. Sedley writes:
We have learnt in the earlier etymologies especially those of Hestia and
Apollo (401c, 405c), that the etymologist should consider a word not just in
its Attic form but also in other dialect variants, since those variations may
enrich our understanding of the words overall profile. Thus for example it
was by taking account of a regional variant of ousia, the Doric osia, the
Socrates and Hermogenes discovered an ancient association between
being and flux. (401d).

136
Even though Freud considered fire a phallic force, the hestia (hearth) is a definite feminine symbol. See
Freuds The Acquisition and Control of Fire.
137
Platos Cratylus, D. N. Sedley., 2003.

In effect, Sedley argues that Hestia symbolized the fluidity and fluxuation
of the circular cosmos in the Heraclitean sense. This would make sense since
Heraclitus gives much thought about the nature of fire and about thinking by the
warmth and nearness to the commonplace hearth/stove. Porphyry writes in his
Notes on Homer, that the circumference of a circle as a whole no longer has a
direction; for whatever point on it you think of is both a beginning and an end
for beginning and end are common according to Heraclitus.
138

1.7.3 Ousia, Fl ux and Bei ng
In Platos Cratylus, Socrates discusses the fluctuating relationship of the
Greek words ousia (being), esti (is) , and essia (essence) as it relates to the
word hestia (hearth/fire) and to the goddess Hestia. Socrates knowledge of
local Greek dialects allows him to make a connection between Hestia and Being,
and also to Pushing, which might indicate the concept behind Heideggers
throwness. In the early days of writing and in the formation and solidification of
the Greek vocabulary, many letters were substituted for other letters, and some
sounds for other sounds, depending on the local preferences, but this also gives
insight into the rich origin of the word and to its flux of meaning.
Sedley argues that Hestia signified the ultimate Being, that undivided
Thing in which the act of naming and defining in words divide up. He writes that
Hestias theological primacy is evident in her being the first deity you sacrifice to.
It will therefore be of great significance if her name signifies that most basic of
philosophical concepts, ousia, Being itself the very thing that names have the
function of dividing up. His analysis continues with Socrates comparison of
hestia to the word esti (it is):
Hestia with ousia is strongly favoured, since its word for ousia is essia,
closely resembling Hestia, which itself even for Attic-speakers sounds
much like a nominalisation of the verb esti, it is.
139


Another form of the word, namely the Doric form of osia which is very
close sounding to pushing or othein, as already mentioned, is reminiscent of
Heideggers pushing or throwness principle. Sedley continues his interpretation
of Platos Cratylus:
In another variant however, namely Doric, the form is osia, which sounds
like pushing, from othein. Those who favour this latter variant, he
(Socrates) points out, would be likely to favour the Heraclitean thesis that
everything is in flux. The message appears to be that Hestia is definitely to
be associated with Being and symbolises the primacy of Being, but that at
least one dialect form associates Being itself with motion and change.
140


1.7.4 The Great Hestia at Delphi
Patricia Thompson writes that the famous temple at Delphi always had its
inner hestia, its continuously burning hearth fire.
141
Plato wrote about situating
the temples of Hestia, Zeus and Athena in the center of every ideal city, with the
temple of Hestia at the center. Delphi was an important city for the Greeks, and

138
P. 115 Early Greek Philosophy., chapter on Heraclitus.
139
Sedley, ibid.
140
Sedley, ibid., p. 99.
141
In Greek, Delphos meant womb, p. 129, Thompson, from In Bed with Procrustes. And of the proverbs
at Delphi know thyself is thought the most divine., p. 113, as quoted by Plutarch in Against Colotes
Early Greek Philosophy. It is interesting to note that the source of wisdom could come from symbol of the
anatomical female place of giving birth.
the Pythia, (which was originally a female oracle but later became male) was a
source of guidance and wisdom for the male priests.
there was an intense concentration of intellectual activity and energy,
prefiguring what we would today call a think tank. It thus played a major
role in the evolving world view of the Greeks. As it gained in secular
influence, its sacred character (and the oracles female identity) declined
in significance.
142


In Euripides play The Phoenician Women, which takes place at the time
of Oedipus, an ancestor to the Greeks, the chorus is made up of a group of
young holy women from Syria (Phoenicia) on their way to Delphi. They get stuck
in Thebes because of the outbreak of war between Oedipus two sons, Polynices
and Eteokles. Euripides had the insight to deposit this play in history, indicating
that at one time in Greek history, women were independent enough to venture
outside their homes, alone, and travel as religious pilgrims to the holy site in
Delphi.
Hestia was also worshipped at mealtime possibly with a similar rite to the
Catholic prayer before eating. Note the similarity between the German word for
eating essen and ousia, essia or hestia. There is also a linguistic link between
ist or es ist the German word for is and it is and esti the Greek word for it
is. To follow the analogy the einai of esti gar einai (there is being) is very
close to the sein, Dasein or Being in German. Hestia, as a god of magnificent
power and truth, might be, for the Greeks, beyond representation, myth making,
story telling and idolatry. Perhaps writing, talking and creating an image of Her

142
In Bed with Procrustes, Patricia Thompson.
was so sacrilegious to the Greeks, that it was similar to the prohibition of
speaking Gods name for the Israelites. Hestia was the ultimate Being, and
without need for visual representation or anthropomorphism.
Socrates warned that the risk of trying to see the gods was like trying to
see the sunblindness. Hestia, the undepicted divinity, is the essence of
sanctity, the coming into presence (to use Heideggers phrase) of a power
that is unseen, untouchable, but nevertheless profoundly experienced
because, being unavoidable and inescapable, it must sooner or later be
confronted honestly
143


1.7.5 Hestia and Fire
The Pre-socratic philosopher Heraclitus believed that fire was the
underlying reality guiding the cosmos. In his book Lives of the Philosophers
Diogenes Laertius summarizes Heralictus beliefs as follows: All things are
constituted from fire and resolve into fire. All things come about in accordance
with fate, and the things that exist are fitted together by the transformation of
opposites. All things are full of souls and spirits.
144
And again Laertius writes that
Heraclitus believed that: Fire is an element, and all things are an exchange for
fire, coming about by rarefaction and condensation. (But he expresses nothing
clearly.) All things come about through opposition, and the universe flows like a
river. The universe is finite, and there is one world. It is generated from fire and it
is consumed in fire again, alternating in fixed periods throughout the whole of
time. And this happens by fate.
145
Note the similarity to Nietzsches philosophy
of the eternal return of the same. Heraclitus thought had influenced the writings

143
Thompson, ibid.
144
Early Greek Philosophy, p. 106.
of Nietzsche specifically in Thus Spake Zarathustra. Zarathustra is the Greek
name for Zoroaster, the indigenous prophet of ancient Persia whose followers
worshipped fire as a divine manifestation of God. For Heraclitus, fire represented
the Logos. As quoted by Hippolytus in Refutation of All Heresies Heraclitus
conceived fire as, intelligent and the cause of the management of the
universe and Heraclitus says that the created universe is itself the maker
and creator of itself God is day and night, winter and summer, war and peace,
satiety and famine (all the opposites that is his meaning)
146

In Christian mythology, the formerly Divine, Eternal and Everlasting Fire is
transformed into the ultimate and permanent punishment after death, or Hell.
Early Christian writers such as St. J ohn and St. Paul subverted the fire symbol in
order to reverse the pagan religious holy symbol from a godly symbol into an
evil one, and to scare new believers into living their life without sin, else they
would burn in hell-fire. In some Christian religions, including the stricter Roman
Catholic sects, believers are taught that children and sinners who are never
baptised in Christ will literally go to hell or to purgatory and burn there for eternity.
Puritanical Christians burned the accused witches in fire to purge them of the
devil. (Note that Moses of the Old Testament sees God in a sacred burning
bush). Catholics and some Christian sects continue their worship of fire by the
lighting of candles in the Church. The Holy Spirit is represented by a single flame
symbol.

145
Early Greek Philosophy, p. 107.
146
Early Greek Philosophy, p. 104.
There is no ethics in fire: ethics is a human construction and does not
exist in nature. Fire is neither good or bad. Hippolytus quotes Heraclitus as
saying that dark and light, bad and good, are not different but one and the
same.
147
Ethics, and the separation of good and bad was invented for
enforcement of the rule of law. The early Gods of the Greeks were originally both
bad and good, and peaceful and destructive at the same time. For the most
ancient of humans, who worshipped the gods of nature: earth, water, sun, fire,
there was no concept of good and evil. Regarding the significance of fire for man,
it might be that the first humans realized their own existence in the experience of
looking into the fire and contemplating life. Perhaps this is the reason why fire is
considered the first logos for man. Rousseau states The sight of the flames,
from which animals flee, is attractive to man. People gather around a common
hearth where they feast and dance; the gentle bonds of habit tend imperceptibly
to draw man closer to his own kind. And on this simple hearth burns the sacred
fire that provokes in the depths of the heart the first feeling of humanity.
148
Its
possible that fire lit up and woke up the consciousness of man. Their concept of
time, of remembering what happened, perhaps remembering the successful hunt
during the day, and of hoping for another good hunt for tomorrow. They might
have felt their own life force for the first time, and the fire might have awakened in
them the first inklings of their spirit. Fire is related to the origins of language in
that before humans spoke they had thought. The thinking of the essence came

147
Early Greek Philosophy, p. 103.
148
Of Grammatology, p. 261. From The Essay on the Origins of Language.
first, then the image, then the sound and then the word.
149
Fire allows humans
the ability to think, to contemplate, it is his first logos.
It can be argued that flowing water had the same historical function-it
allowed man to contemplate his existence-yet something stronger is inherent in
the essence of fire which inspires in man the techne or invention toward human
progress. Like magic, man could make fire grow out of nothing but a few stones
or sticks. Fire is something more than and also something other than Nature.
Whereas the flowing water of a spring or river may remind man of his connection
to nature, fire reminds man that he is also of something other, and something
beyond nature; that we have a spirit that can go beyond nature and comprehend
it and the natural elements. Fire illuminates mans thought.
Fire made humans realize that they are creative animals and it inspired
the imagination, abstract thought and technical advancement. The ability to
control fire is one aspect which separated man from other mammals. Fire
allowed humans to cook their meat. Perhaps being able to consume the flesh of
powerful animals (such as the bull) gave us the physical strength, confidence, the
intellectual power and the belief that we are different and superior to them. By
sacrificing the bull on the altar and eating its flesh the bull gave us his own
strength and the animals power became our power.
The most ancient of pagan religions (and the pre-Socratic philosophers
including Heraclitus) did not split God into good and bad. The duality of good and
bad might have been invented with the evolution of the Zoroastrianism faith when
man began to split human behavior into a moral code of good and bad, right and

149
See Nietzsche and the Origin of the Word, Chapter 2.1.5.
wrong, truth and falsehood
150
. The truth and good actions are the founding
tenants of Zoroastrianism. By separating good from bad man could punish the
bad and reward the good. Our whole system of justice is based on the
separation of good from bad, but in reality there is a great fluctuation between
good and bad, and what is bad in one culture is good in another culture.
Clement in his Miscellanies quotes Heraclitus as saying that The world,
the same for all, neither any god nor any man made; but it was always and is and
will be, fire-ever-living, kindling in measures and being extinguished in
measures.
151
With the word esti the past present and future exist as One. In
the true moment of the Event, in the ereignis (Heidegger) all Time is present.
Hestia is the ever flowing Presence, and we as humans, according to Heraclitus,
are close to the Presence of this god, when we experience fire. Watching the
flames of the fire, being drawn into the heat and the ever flowing patterns of the
glowing light, we are as close as we can get to this divinity. One of the
manifestations of this divinity is Being itself, the is or the Hestia,
1.7.6 The Scarlet Letter

The author has found no place in literature or history where hestia and the
letter A is combined except in the character of Hester Prynne, in Nathaniel
Hawthornes novel The Scarlet Letter. Hawthorne brings two relevant elements of
this paper together: the iconic significance of the letter A which is worn by Hester,
and Hesters eventual embodiment of the maternal and nurturing fire goddess,
Hestia.

150
Ahuramazda, the Persian god who created the world, teaches that Truth and good moral behaviour are
fundamental principles.
The Scarlet Letter ends with the following sentence: On a field, sable, the
letter A, gules. The letter A is eternal, it is of the body and blood, it is red, it is
part of Hesters bosom, her heart and soul. To gule means to stain or dye the
colour red. Sable is to darken-but it could also mean brown (or black). The A
signifies flowing life, so that in all its cruelty and violence, birth, menstruation,
and wars it, A, is all of life. On the contrary a sable field is dead, is dark,
empty and inactivetherefore, this sentence means that the letter A brings life
and color to the dead and barren field, but we are also stained by this event.
The plot of the story is that Hester is imprisoned because she bore a child
outside of wedlock and she will not reveal the father. She suffers the scorn of her
community and is sentenced to wear the letter A (signifying adultry). It is
eventually revealed that she is in love with the young priest who is also the father
of her child, and as the priest begins to spiritually deteriorate because he cannot
live up to the truth and suffers his guilt silently, Hester gains strength and wisdom
through her public humiliation.
Hesters life and her morality was ruled by her passion and her
selflessness. Because of her own particular experiences of pain and suffering
she was able to listen and help other members of her society who were suffering.
At the end of her life Hester becomes a sort of Counseller/Priest/Oracle for the
people of her community:


151
Early Greek Philosophers, p. 122.
And, as Hester Prynne
152
had no selfish ends, nor lived in any measure for
her own profit and enjoyment, people brought all their sorrows and
perplexities, and besought her counsel, as one who had herself gone
through a mighty trouble. Women, more especially, -- in the continually
recurring trials of wounded, wasted, wronged, misplaced, or erring and
sinful passion, -- or with the dreary burden of a heart unyielded, because
unvalued and unsought, -- came to Hesters cottage, demanding why they
were so wretched, and what the remedy! Hester comforted and counselled
them, as best she might. She assured them, too, of her firm belief, that, at
some brighter period, when the world should have grown ripe for it, in
Heavens own time, a new truth would be revealed, in order to establish
the whole relation between man and woman on a surer ground of mutual
happiness.

Hawthorne predicts, through Hesters thoughts that the coming prophet
will be a woman, but not one who is stained with sin as Hester was. This
prophetess will be like a goddess who teaches about happiness and love: The
angel and apostle of the coming revelation must be a woman, indeed, but lofty,
pure, and beautiful; and wise, moreover, not through dusky grief, but the ethereal
medium of joy; and showing how sacred love should make us happy, by the
truest test of a life successful to such an end!
153

Hester is described by Hawthorne as a radiant and beautiful mother figure,
but because of her sin of adultery she is in contrast to the holy and sin-less
Queen Mother goddess, Mary of the Church. But because Hester is an image of

152
Note the similarity of her name Hester Prynne and Hestia, Pyre. Pyr is the Greek root word for
fire.
153
Second to last paragraph in the last chapter (Conclusion) of The Scarlet Letter.
sin incarnate the world is a darker and more confused, complex and ambivalent
place:
Had there been a Papist among the crowd of Puritans, he might have
seen in this beautiful woman, so picturesque in her attire and mien, and
with the infant at her bosom, an object to remind him of the image of
Divine Maternity, which so many illustrious painters have vied with one
another to represent; something which should remind him, indeed, but
only by contrast, of the sacred image of sinless motherhood, whose infant
was to redeem the world. Here, there was the taint of deepest sin in the
most sacred quality of human life, working such effect, that the world was
only the darker for this womans beauty, and the more lost for the infant
that she had borne.
154


Pearl, the child that Hester has borne is not male and they do not
represent the Illuminated Divine Couple of the mother/son, Mary/J esus,
Isis/Osiris, rather, her child is a female, and this symbolizes the even older pagan
religions namely that of Persephone and Demeter. Hawthornes Church
community is afraid of the little girl, thinking she is a witch or a little devil. The
child is from Nature and not from God. The father of Pearl is not known to the
community; unlike Christ who is known to be Gods Son. Pearl has special
powers but her thoughts and speech tear away at the foundation of the civilized
church.
Although one of the significations of the letter A for puritanical America
was adultery, in modern times it could be a symbol for abortion. Hawthorne also

154
Scarlet Letter, The Market Place.
makes a reference to the letter A though, as a sign of fertility and abundance, of
a beauty that went beyond what the colony could allow:

On the breast of her gown, in fine red cloth, surrounded with an elaborate
embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold thread, appeared the letter A. It
was so artistically done, and with so much fertility and gorgeous
luxuriance of fancy, that it had all the effect of last and fitting decoration to
the apparel which she wore; and which was of a splendor in accordance
with the taste of the age, but greatly beyond what was allowed by the
sumptuary regulations of the colony.
155



Hawthorne describes that the magical power of the Letter A brings Hester
into her own sphere very much like Hestia who is also independent and self
contained: It had the effect (the scarlet letter) of a spell, taking her out of the
ordinary relations with humanity, and inclosing her in a sphere by herself.
156

Hester is quietly at the center of her community, healing their wounds, making
beautiful clothes for them, and bringing new children into the world as a mid-wife.
She is an entity independent of the Law, and had survived the severe
punishments of the Church, and her society. Hester appropriates the letter A,
which originally signified the shame of her sin of procreating a child out of
wedlock. There is an even greater sin in that she slept with the priest, a man of
God. For Puritanical America, sex was evil, to have sex with a priest was to deny
Gods law. Hester violated the churchs Letter of the law and transforms the
letter into a powerful symbol of renewal and survival.

155
Scarlet Letter, ibid.
156
ibid.
Hester reclaims the original meaning of A, which is that of creation and
abundance. Like Hestia, she does this selflessly and without reward or fanfare.
Hester has a balance, knowledge and wisdom that comes from within herself, not
from external laws. In conclusion, Hester incarnates Hestia, as one being able to
maintain a center of calm Being that can not be shaken -- no matter what society
does to make her suffer.
Next we will turn to the subject of sound and the monad as it relates to
hestia and existence.





















1.8 Sound and Existence
1.8.1 God as a number

J ohn Strohmeir and Peter Westboork write in their book Divine Harmony:
that it was from the writings of Orpheus that Pythagoras learned that the eternal
essence of number is the source of immortality, and from this he reasoned that
the fundamental nature of the gods is numerical.
157

With digital technology humans have invented a new way to represent
visual as well as sonic images. All of the components of sound, its fundamental
frequency, its harmonic partials, its envelope and the resultant waveform as it
changes over time can be written in digital code. Color, line, shape and even
movement of the visual image can also be written in code. The image does not
exist inside the computer, but rather it is retranslated and projected into the real
world on a screen or printed out on paper or played back on audio speakers for
our real eyes and ears to see and hear.
This is the difference between digital and acoustic recordings: an acoustic
recording has a physical imprint of the music on a physical piece of tape or vinyl
disc whereas digital music does not really physically exist anywhere that we
can feel or touch in its moment of recording. The digital recording device must
translate the music into numbers, and in this translation much information must
be discarded. Even at the highest resolutions, digital recording cannot replicate
what nature produces. The digital music recording must take vertical sonic

157
Divine Harmony, ibid., p. 117.
slices of time much like a video camera which takes photographic slices of
time. Then the computer puts these slices back together on a timeline giving the
illusion of real time. Our eyes and ears, and our brain fills in the missing slices,
and we think that we are hearing and seeing reality. But real life is not in slices
of time-it flows out in a continual and undividable and perpetual Present. Henri
Bergson was correct when he said: We shall think of all change, all movement,
as being absolutely indivisible.
158
The continual and indivisible presence is the
flux and the essence or essia (Hestia) of life and can be represented by the
absolute number one or the monad.

1.8.2 On the monad i n Pythagorean phi losophy
According to Strohmeir and Westbrook, in Pythagorean theory
159
: The
monad, manifest as the number one, denotes the primordial unity at the basis of
creation. Pythagoras called the monad Being, ousia,
160
and considered it the
origin of all things and the source of permanence in the universe.

As Macobius (400 b.c.e.) explains: One is called monas, unity, and is
both male and female, odd and even, itself not a number, but the source
and origin of numbers. This monad, the beginning and ending of all things,
yet itself not knowing a beginning or ending, refers to the supreme
God.
161



158
Henri Bergson, The Perception of Change
159
From Divine Harmony, p. 70.
160
See the etymology of Hestia from the Greek ousia below.
161
Divine Harmony.
Using digital technology computer scientists and programmers have
succeeded in coding images of our universe with the numbers 1 and 0 (on and
off). The number one appears to exist as something and zero exists as nothing
162

but both numbers are needed in order to code our universe: Being and non-
being are equally necessary to show existence. But 1 +0 still =1, so it is
possible that the monad is both 1 and 0 at the same time, i.e. the unity of 1 and
0. If the monad is the unity of one and zero than it is what comes before the
rational number. The monad also is what comes before language and, what
comes before sound. The monad is the actual impetus and the original urge to a
vibration. In reality the monad cannot be represented with numbers, and perhaps
even God, if It is a number, cannot be represented at all.
The polarization of the monad (1 and 0 separated) transforms the singular
one into two numbers. This marks the first moment of creation. We cannot
fathom the time before creation, the time when 1 and 0 were unified into one
number. But it is possible to conceive of the time after creation, at the beginning
of the world, when the two numbers came into existence. This is the time referred
to in Genesis when God separated night from day, man from woman, light from
dark. According to Strohmeir, Pythagoras idea was that the transition from the
monad to the dyad represents the first step in the process of creation unity
polarizing within itself becomes duality. Thus the dyad signifies polarization,

162
In string theory zero has been banished from the universe; there is no such thing as zero distance or
zero time p. 196 Charles Seife, Zero-the biography of a dangerous idea.
opposition, divergence, inequality, divisibility and mutability, the principle of
existing at one time in one way, and another time in another way.
163


The Monad is to Hestia as the dyad is to Hermes: as moderation is to
excess, stasis to mobility, object to subject, the knower to the known. From this
knower/known duality a third is implied-that of consciousness and the flow of
existence. Strohmeir states that another pair of opposites implied by the dyad is
that of knower and known. From the duality a third element is implied, the act of
knowing, the flow of consciousness. And so it was that the dyad was also
associated with Rhea, the mother of the gods, whose name comes from the
Greek rhein,
164
meaning to flow.
165
The dyad in this instance could be associated
with hermeneutic systems, the structure that allows for communication.
The universe is made up of opposing dualities, and the force of conflict
and harmony between them. The monad is before and beyond the human limits
of understanding and possibly not even physically visible in our world. The
monas is not measurable or seen, it is the unapparent. In an example of the
paradoxical nature of the unapparent subject, According to Hippolytus, Heraclitus
gave equal rank and honour to the apparent and unapparent, as though the
apparent the unapparent were confessedly one.
166
And God is unapparent,
unseen, unknown to men..The unapparent connection is better than apparent.
167



163
Divine Harmony.
164
This Greek word can be traced to the Rhine River in Europe.
165
Divine Harmony.
166
Early Greek Philosophy, p. 102.
167
Early Greek Philosophy, p. 102.
1.8.3 Sound, Harmony and the Dyad

In our universe, the origin of sound is a wave produced by a vibration
within a physical medium or instrument. That medium, or instrument such as the
human voice, a string, the rim of a glass or a drum resonates with the original
vibration and sends out the wave which pushes through the air to the ear. The
ear then resonates in a pattern similar to the original vibration and then sends
those pattern signals to the brain. When those signals reach the brain, we hear
the sound. If one is conscious of the hearing, then one has listened to the
sound.
Sound exists because the world exists.
168
There would be no sound
without the universe. Without body there is no sound. Although it might be
conceivable to have a primal movement or vibration without medium, and, pure
movement may even be what creates a medium. The origin of the world may be
an unapparent vibration which created a medium by its movement in time. Most
likely sound and medium occurred at the same time-in a structure of the Sonic
Soma a double helix formed as pure Existence itself: Time and Matter, opposing
forces, but inseparable from each other.
As discussed above that the monad exists before and beyond our
universe, so too it is possible that the vibration alone first existed before and
beyond our universe
169
. But there is no sound until this vibration enters our
world. The essence of the monad pierces through our world as a vibration which
sets objects in motion and resonates other objects sympathetically. The monad
(of vibration) becomes a dyad (of sound) at the moment of entering our universe
and it consequently sets other objects off in motion as the source of harmonic
resonance. This is the origin of the first sound in the universe. The vibration
made the space and the space made the sound. The two forces are constantly
and simultaneously working together.
The Pythagorean philosophers believed that all the heavenly bodies made
a sound as they moved in circles (or cycles) of various speeds and together they
created the Harmony of the Spheres. They say this sound is not heard by
humans because the sound was already there from birth, and Aristotle writes that
it cannot be distinguished by reference to a contrary silence (for sound and
silence are discriminated by reference to one another)
170

Hermann Helmholtz proposed in 1863 that sounds were a result of a
combination of the fundamental frequency and its upper partials. Rarely is a
sound one single simple vibration. The broad spectrum of sonic phenomena
ranging between noise and tone is a matter of the complexity of the vibrational
pattern of the sound. The simplest tone, a sine wave, is a single vibration of the
whole at every cycle over a period of time. This single vibration is also known as
the first partial, or its fundamental vibration. The most discordant noise, on the
other hand, is a complex combination of many vibrations, the whole and many
parts of the whole vibrating at every cycle, heard together at once in a short
period of time. If those same complex vibrations of the discordant sound were
heard separately as single fundamental vibrations over a period of time, we

168
Similarly, Deleuze wrote that we have bodies because we have minds, see below.
169
Vibration without sound, is like organs without body (Deleuze).
would conceive of the sound as a melody, because we could hear the individual
tones. The human brain cannot process too much information at one time,
therefore it is difficult to hear the pitch of noise. Harmony is a result of simple
sympathetic vibrations which occur in nature. Harmonic resonance occurs when
a body vibrates in unison with the sound. This is perceived as being pleasant or
beautiful by most humans.
The subject of the monad reappears in the work of French philosopher,
Gilles Deleuze. The tones are virtual objects and the vibrations are possibilities.
In his book The Fold, Deleuze writes about the origins of sounds: The origins of
the sounds are monads or prehensions that are filled with joy in themselves, with
an intense satisfaction, as they fill up with their perceptions and move from one
perception to another. And the notes of the scale are eternal objects pure
Virtualities that are actualized in the origins, but also pure Possibilities that are
attained in vibrations or flux.
171

The perception place for the origin of sound is the body. There can be no
sound heard without body. The string theory postulates that all of existence is
made up of very small two-dimensional vibrations, but the vibration would not
reveal itself to humans without an organ of some kind. So we can say that there
is a possibility of vibration without body, but it is useless because there can be no
sound actualized without a vibrating substance of some sort. We have bodies,
because we have thought
172
, thus there is sound because there is a physicality of

170
Aristotle writing about the Pythagoreans, p. 211 Early Greek Philosophy.
171
Deleuze, p. 81 from The Fold
172
Deleuze, The Fold
objects. There is no sound inside computer code! Sound needs the real physical
world, the universe, in order to be actualized.
The nature or color of sound is dependent on the sum of its inner
qualities as it relates to where and how it is in the universe. Deleuze writes:
The inner characters of a sound include an actual intensity, a pitch, a
duration, a timbre; a color has a tint, a saturation, a valuethe real matter
is not only extension; it possesses an impenetrability, inertia, impetuosity
and attachment. It is what is called the texture of a body, it is specifically
the sum of its inner qualities, the latitude of their variation and the relation
of their limits; hence the texture of goldEverything real is a subject
whose predicate is a character put into a series, the sum of predicates
being the relation among the limits of these series.
173


Deleuze attempts to put a numerical formula for the individual and for God
when he writes that: The individual notion, the monad, is exactly the inverse of
God to the degree that reciprocals are numbers that exchange their numerator
and their denominator: 2, or 2/1, has a reciprocal . And God, whose formula is
infinity/1 , has as its reciprocal the monad, 1/infinity.
The early Pythagoreans believed that music was an expression of
Harmonia, a joining together of two separate and opposite values:
the etymology of the Greek word harmonia reveals that its meaning
goes beyond the English harmony While eventually it did take on the
meaning of a musical scale or mode, or, as in Plato, the metaphorical idea
of harmony or concord, its earlier meaning comes from carpentry or
shipbuilding and means a fastening or joining together, as in making a
carpentry joint. This core meaning of a joining together of disparate

173
From The Fold.
elements suggests a parallel with Sanskrit yoga, which, coming from a
root meaning to yoke, also suggest the combining of opposite values into
unity.
174


But, in music, combing two opposite sounds will create silence. When two
waveforms equal but vibrating in opposition to each other, the two waveforms
cancel each other out and silence results. Harmony results when different
waveforms, of either the 1
st
, 2
nd
or 3
rd
partials, vibrate together in sympathetic
motion, and rather than canceling each other out, they reinforce each other and
create a louder sound. Harmonic sound will resonate naturally in certain rooms or
instruments because the sounds waveforms are being reinforced sympathically
by the room or instrument, and the result is that the overall volume of the sound
will increase.
Deleuze is correct to say that harmony is a vertical writing
175
, as harmony
occurs as a blending of vibrations within a single slice of time but resonates
horizontally. He says that the world is analogous to a book of music. He writes:
That is why it can be said that harmony is a vertical writing that conveys the
horizontal line of the world: the world is like the book of music that is followed
successively or horizontally by singing.
176
Here Deleuze attempts to describe
the flux of life by comparing it to the indivisible nature of music. If one is trying to
understand the essence of lifemusic is a good choice of study for life as it
approximates what we know about the attributes of the actual world. Sound does
not exist at any one point in time or space, but reverberates in many spatial

174
Divine Harmony.
175
The Fold, ibid.
points and many moments in time. In fact sound exists in all points of the
medium, whether that medium is a string, air or the human body, and it continues
to reverberate long after we stop hearing the sound.


































176
The Fold.


1.9 Linguistic Tracings

1.9.1 The Other Letters

So far we have discussed in detail the meaning and origins of the letter
A, aleph, but some of the other letters have interesting origins as well. The
Phoenician letter B comes from the Semitic word bet meaning house in
Phoenician. The name of God (the letters that spell his name) is also a number,
and in many religious texts God is the letter A including that of the Bhagvad
Gita Of letters, I am the letter A; of compounds, the dual; I am also imperishable
time, and the dispenser facing all sides
177
. In Arabic and Persian Alif is the
letter A as well as the number 1 and it is etymologically similar to Allah, the
name of God. These two first letters of the alphabet, aleph and bet, also have
numerical equivalents: A=1 and B=2, so the word Ab, in Persian for instance,
would equal the number 3.
The letter D is from daleth meaning door in Phoenician; M from mem
meaning water; N from nun meaning fish. In Persian noon or nan means
bread. It is therefore possible that the Phoenicians and the early Persians
shared the same word for food as nun and as each of their languages
progressed they differentiated the word for food into fish and bread
respectively. For the maritime Phoenicians, fish would have been a more
prevalent food; and for the land-bound Persians bread would have been more

177
From the Bhagavad Gita: the Ethics of Decision Making, translated by Antonia T. de Nicolas.
common. Below, the author continues to explore the relationship between some
of the most basic words in modern Persian and ancient Phoenician languages.
This exploration is a linguistic meditation on the tracings of the letters and
words which relate to this papers thesis. Heidegger wrote: Is it playing with
words when we attempt to give heed to this play of language and to hear what
language really says when it speaks? If we succeed in hearing such play, then it
may happenprovided we proceed carefully that we get more truly to the
matter that is expressed in any telling and asking.
178


1.9.2 Heideggers House of Being . Thinking, dwelling, being.
In his Letter on Humanism Heidegger stated that Language is the house
of Being. In its home man dwells.
179
and that one must create a clearing and a
place, for ek-sistence and for thinking. Ancient humans thought. The objects that
archeologists have uncovered from these ancient civilizations are indications of
the pure expressions of those active minds. The ancient human though did not
think literally, nor did he think linearly. He thought vertically and expressed these
thoughts in complex codes. Figure 7(Temple Body), in the Addendum Part One
below, was discovered in western Macedonia of old Europe and is estimated to
be 8,000 years old. It signifies the body of the goddess. Much like the Catholic
cathedrals which were built in imitation of the body of Christ in human form with
its side chambers indicating the arms of a human body, this object uses a
chimney for the head and neck of the goddess. The Goddess of ancient times
was a place and the importance of her body cannot be understated. It was

178
Martin Heidegger, Basic Writings, What Calls for Thinking? p. 389
thought that through her body new life was born into the world and also that life
was taken back into her body at death.
Heidegger writes the talk about the house of Being is no transfer of the
image house to Being. But one day we will, by thinking the essence of Being in
a way appropriate to its matter, more readily be able to think what house and to
Dwell are.
180
As indicated above the precursor for the letter B (bet) visually
looked like a house.
181
The object in Figure 7 also looks like the letter bet and
with some imagination early humans might have transferred the image of the
house to a letter thus forming the beginnings of the phonetic alphabet.
182
So
even though Heidegger warns against a literal translation of house and being,
there are essential connections to be made between origins of the letter bet (B),
and the words house, being, dwelling as it pertains to the origins of language. In
writing that Language is the House of Being, the home of mans essence. In it
man dwells. And this dwelling is not catastrophic it is creative and in peace
183

Heidegger expresses a poetic connection to ancient mans invention of the letter
B, as Bet not only meant house but to be or to dwell.
1.9.3 Blat the House of the Mother Goddess
As was stated above, the discovery of the first known phonetic signs were
found in the Sinai that seemed to spell the letters B l t
184
, which the author has
translated one interpretation as the House of the Lady/Goddess Alat. What
does this house refer to? Is this house not only an actual temple, a place to

179
p. 217, Heidegger, Basic Writings Letter on Humanism.
180
p. 260 Heidegger, ibid.
181
see also this paper, Chapter 1.3.2a on B-l-t
182
bet was probably more phonetic than aleph. The sound for aleph/A is more problematic.
183
Heidegger, Basic Writings, Building, Dwelling, Thinking., p. 349.
worship, but also the actual body of the goddess? The place where new life
begins and a place where the Being of new humans takes hold? As written
below, it was in the temples of the goddess that the followers experienced public
sacred rituals of intercourse, this might have been the holiest day of the year,
when new life is brought into the community.
For ancient man to learn to build structures that would protect him from
the outside world and separate him from the dangerous and destructive forces of
nature, was significant progress toward creating societies, religion and language;
and the first structures of buildings were built in the form of a female.
185
More
specifically, the first homes were built from caves in the shape of the vulva, and
this form was then replicated as dwellings protruding from the earth, and
eventually took on a separate existence, but retaining a similar human form; they
began to create structures that would be considered their private inside space
and became the dwelling places protecting the intimacy of the family. To dwell
inside these homes perhaps was where the family felt the most at ease, and the
most protected from the harsh dangers of the outside. It is in this relaxed state,
probably in the home, that humans were free enough to be creative.
These ancient humans would also make small objects of the human form
often with marks written on them. Some of them have 9 or 10 lines or chevrons,
probably indicating lunar months of human gestation
186
. Could this be the

184
The letter B was phonetic as well as pictoral. It probably had at least a double meaning.
185
See Civilizations of the Goddess by Marija Gimbutas.
186
Addendum, figure 8.

beginning of mathematics and of counting? Is it possible that mathematics
originated from the experience of childbirth?
That fact that philosophers like Rousseau (see Chapter 2.1) have written
that society, language and writing are a result of a catastrophic event, or
something which separated man from the mother and from the peaceful golden
ages of prehistory is not archeologically sound.
187
Culture, writing, and language
are not a result of hardship and war, (i.e. not a result of a lacking or of a need)
but rather they are a result of a completeness and abundance in the human
spirit. Furthermore, language is the result of an overflowing energy of the human
mind, spirit and the body, all working together. With the discovery of Being man
was ecstatic with this knowledge of being alive, and he began to express this
with singing, with making marks on his environment, with making objects.
This is not to say that man did not know an excessive fear of death, as
staying alive must not have been easy. To stay alive was tantamount for early
humans: birthing new offspring healthy enough to live into adulthood must have
been the single most important goal for him. But fear and catastrophe alone does
not bring creativity.
In a state of war or natural catastrophic hardship, humans regress into
barbarianism and conservatism. In order to stay alive, humans will do whatever it
takes to feed himself and his family and this usually does not include creative
innovation or the invention of systems as superfluous as advanced language
systems. Perhaps in a state of emergency early humans invented tools and
shelter to protect himself, and perhaps a few important words were born, but no
true progress into literature or aesthetics is made in time of great physical or
mental hardship. True creativity is born out of excess not of need.
The object found by Petrie of the Sphinx with the writing Bl t is an
example of this creativity born out of excess, as is the temple sculpture built in
the shape of a woman
188
. These are examples of ancient man telling the author
(if she will listen) a story of language in a play of language (Heidegger)
transversing through time and space through the millennia.
Rousseau stated (see next chapter) that with the prohibition of incest
came the first languages, the first law and the first societies
189
. This statement is
flawed in many respects. It is not possible for early humans who were still part
animal not to know that interbreeding would cause deformities. If early humans
who lived in raw nature were still animals they would be at least as smart as the
other mammals such as the lions or gorillas, and these mammals know better
than to interbreed. If early humans were leaving their animal state and
becoming homo sapien, they would have been smart enough to learn within a
few generations that intercourse with family members led to deformities. And
finally, no human would have been able to survive in a nuclear family alone. It
was impossible that early man lived only with his mother, father, sisters and
brothers. The family of early man that historians speak of would have been very
large and included extended cousins, aunts and uncles. With this large of a gene
pool, interbreeding would not have been a problem.

187
p. 255-256, Of Grammatology.
188
See Appendix Part One.
189
P. 265, Of Grammatology.
Early humans who wanted more than anything else to survive realized that
by having children they were able to continue humanitys essence. Incest
appears in mythology and cults and even historical accounts of Egypt, Persia
190

and Greece, but it was reserved only for the gods, and the taboo of incest was
created after societies, language and the state were born. The pharaoh of Egypt
married his sister, but this was only allowed for them as they were seen as gods,
and it was not a taboo. The fact though that the royal families of Greece began to
intermarry with each other in order to keep power and wealth within their control,
but ultimately led to children with deformities, was going beyond what Greek
society could allow. Sophocles knew this, and this might be why when he wrote
the Oedipus Cycle plays he transformed the ancient story of Oedipus the King
who slept with his mother into a taboo, a shameful act. Certainly Sophocles wrote
this story after the state, society, language and writing had appeared!
The primitive rites of early man, and the stories about the holy mother/son
union were religious allegories. In Sumer, fertilizing the field (the mother earth)
with the new seed (son) was necessary for their survival. Writing came out of the
agricultural society. It is the authors belief that societies, writing and language
come from the mother, more specifically, from the time when man worshipped
the mother goddess body (Being) as the symbolic key to their very survival. The
taboo of incest was established at the time of the decline of the goddess religions
into the ascendancy of the male dominated monotheistic ones in order to
denigrate the female based religions..
1.9.4 A=Creation, B=Being

190
Iran in the Ancient East, p. 11
If we understand the original meaning of aleph to have meant ox, then we
must further investigate what the ox meant for early man. The ox was necessary
for plowing large fields of grain, the large fields meant an excess of food, the
excess of food meant that the tribe could trade the excesses for other goods, and
thus societies languages and writings systems are born because they needed a
way to keep accounts of the transactions year after year. But the ox also might
have come from an earlier worship of the Bull. The bull god is a ubiquitous
symbol of the Divine covering areas all the way from Egypt to Sumer, and from
Canaan to Crete to India, and it might have represented pure vital energy of
creation, the life-force itself.
191

As previously noted, creativity needs a place in order to manifest itself.
This place, this Body is necessary to house the Being of man. Pure creativity
needs a home. This home is not a receptive place holder but rather the body
which makes things manifest. Without the body, there is no creation. Without
substance there is no sound. This place, is the space itself. The place, the
making of space itself actually allows for the sound and/or the creation. The
universe is the place for creation to show itself. Without the universe there is no
creation. This bet, was the place for creation, it was the body or temple of the
goddess. It was the open space for creation -- for god to show itself.

1.9.5 Ancient Iranian Symbols

191
As stated below it is possible by eating the flesh of the bull humans believed they were partaking of the
bulls divine powers and ingesting his divinity. Fire allowed humans to cook the meat and make the flesh
digestable.
Herzfeld states in his book Iran and the Ancient East
192
that the prehistoric
Iranians, like most primitive people painted themselves. Many of the vessels that
he found in archeological digs around Persepolis contained vessels for black and
red paint. Swastikas and other marks are found frequently on figurines and
probably represented a way of painting or tattooing on the actual physical human
body.
193
Herzfeld states that so many pottery kilns have been found that he
assumes that everyone produced the sculptural objects that it was not yet a
special craft made just by talented artisans of the tribe. But he emphasizes, even
more specifically, that it was not everyone but rather that it was every woman
of the tribe that produced and decorated the pottery for her own needs.
In the early 1920s, Herzfeld, who was a German archeologist, excavated
a site near Persepolis. He states:
In Elam, which as far as its population goes, we may consider as part of
Iran, we know from inscriptions that female inheritance prevailed
throughout its long history of 2,500 years. Not the son of the father, but the
son of the kings sister was the legal heir to the throne. The kings call
themselves descendent from a common ancestress, and the line was
continued from daughter to daughterand the general custom of
endogamy, the marriage between brother and half-sister, must be
understood as an adjustment of the Aryan male inheritance to the
aboriginal female one.
194


If we are to trace the first symbols and signs of writing stemming from the
experiences of childbirth from the Paleolithic times to pottery of the Neolithic

192
Herzfeld, Iran in the Ancient East, p. 18.
193
See addendum figure 4 and 8.
194
Herzfeld, Iran in the Ancient East, p. 10-11.
which was created by females then we can safely deduce that women most likely
were among the first scribes of mankind. Not only did the first symbols come
from womens work, but it also was created in an unusually peaceful epoch:
The people must have been uncommonly peaceful, for they had no
weapons except some small mace-heads and a great many clay sling-
stones that were not fit for hunting big game and scarcely for fighting
hostile men.
195


The first writing was most likely decorative and was produced on pottery
for aesthetic reasons. The writing came from an excess and overflow of emotion
and from a sense of spiritual and physical equilibrium and not from an experience
of fear of cosmic catastrophe. It was an expression of Being, and of living a life
with balance and beauty. In short, writing originated from the existential and
complete experience of being alive, and from the common, day to day
experiences of a people who lived in luxurious and peaceful times.

1.9.6 Persian and Phoenician Tracings

Plato writes in the Cratylus That objects should be imitated in letters and
syllables, and so find expression, may appear ridiculous but it cannot be
avoided there is no better principle to which we can look for the truth of first
names.
196
Tracing the etymology of prehistoric words is a challenge and is not
an exact science. There are contradictions and inconsistencies in every step in
the process of analysis, but with enough information there comes a point when
the individual pieces seem to fit together and form a more complete picture,

195
Herzfeld, ibid., p. 11
although a puzzle it does indeed remain. The following discussion includes an
intuitive analysis and a conceptual comparison and contrast of some of the oldest
words in the Persian and Phoenician languages. The author composes these
tracings in the spirit of Platos intuitive play with the origins of words as
demonstrated in the Cratylus,
197
the dialogue between Socrates and
Hermogenes.
On a more historical and technical note, the analysis below seems to
indicate that these two cultures must have had much intersection and influence
over each other at the early formation of their respective languages, especially at
the stages of forming basic words such as father, mother, water, fire, field, I, you,
man, woman, sacrifice, seed, god, and goddess. Later on in time there are still
similarities in words such as book, writing, king, owner, sun, horse which seems
to indicate that even later in history during the formation of advanced societies of
these two cultures they continued to influence each other. The author has found
a piece of sculpture which indicated an origin of A and was created in prehistoric
northwestern Persia (Caspian Sea area)
198
it is possible to conclude that Iran
also had a direct influence on the Phoenicians in creating the alphabet.
According to Gerhard Herm, author of The Phoenicians, when Alexander
crucified the men of Tyre, the belief in the special nature of this race also
died.
199
Herm states: When they originally settled in fixed towns the Phoenicians
still behaved as if they were wandering nomads. ..thus there is a parallel between

196
Cratylus, Line 425d, Platos Collected Dialogues
197
See Bibliography and Appendix.
198
See Addendum figure 9.
199
P. 15, The Phoenicians, Gerhard Herm.
their close connection with the sea and the life-style developed by the ancestors
in the desert. One possible theory is that the Phoenicians were a people that
arrived from the Sinai desert
200
, and the people who settled there also brought
with them the deities from the Sinai.
Ernst Herzfeld states that all of the Near East (including Asia Minor,
Armenia, Syria, Mesopotamia, Assyria, Babylonia and the Iranian highland)
shared an original basis for their respective civilizations and that the Local
differentiations may be due partly to ethnical distinctionsthe phases of the
great stages of civilization characterized by such improvements may to a certain
degree overlap in the various regions, but as a general principle we must assume
that the stages of similar character practically simultaneous in all the parts of the
Near East.
201
Wolfram von Soden, author of The Ancient Orient, agrees with
this statement and adds: If we now consider the development of the whole we
will noticethe preeminent tendency of smaller groups to coalesce into larger
ones, which to be sure were in no way always unitary in anthropological terms
but did often share a common language. Although the author cannot prove the
exact relationship between the origins of the Phoenicians and the Persians, their
languages attest to a common heritage.
In Persian the word Ab formed with the first two letters of the alphabet,
means water
202
but in Phoenician the word Ab means father. As with the word
nun it is possible that these ancient peoples shared the same broader meaning
for the word ab and the articulated differences of definition came later. Originally

200
Gerhard Herm, ibid.
201
Herzfeld, Iran in the Ancient Near East.
the father is the one who gives water into the woman to give new life. The
concept of a father who took responsibility to raise his own children, might have
come much later; originally father might have been the one who simplicity gave
water into the woman.
The swiggly line meaning water and signifying the proto-Elamite letter A
(Proto-Elamite is the precursor to Persian cuneiform and of our letter M see
diagram below, addendum Figure 2 and 3) might have been a symbol for giver of
life-as both water and father give life. This is an interesting cross of meanings:
In Sumerian (and in proto-Elamite) the swiggly line meant water and was
sounded as A. This later became Ab and means water in Persian, The
swiggly line in Phoenician also meant water, but it was pronounced mem, and
it is close to the Phoenician word for mother, im. So it seems that the two
cultures shared the symbol for the same object (water), but had different phonetic
sounds for it (ab, and mem) and the visual symbol split into the two sounds and
eventually into two different meanings.
In Phoenician the word for I is ana; we is anahhna and the word for
you is itta. Note the similarity to the goddess names: Anahita and Inanna: it is
almost as if Anahita means I and YOU together and Inanna meant we, in
other words a community. In Persian the word for I is mann and the word for
you is toe - again, very similar to the Phoenician words
( I=ana=mann, and You=itta=toe).
The Phoenician suffix et makes a word into the feminine form, i.e. man
is esh and woman is eshet. Note that the Phoenician word for fire is also

202
It can also mean essence see translation of as in the Persian Hafez poetry.
esh and that field is eshad. Mans own identity might have been discovered at
the same time as the word for fire. Sigmund Freud wrote about fire and the
connection to the phallic power of the male.
203
Once man found fire, he also
found consciousness. It is possible that early humans associated the fire with the
male phallic powers. The field has already been referred to as a woman by the
early Greeks, as in a woman to be plowed in marriage
204
. In the research of the
beginnings of language it is apparent that early man did not separate himself
from his environment-but that he thought symbolically and built language by
finding similarities between objects and himself in his immediate surroundings.
In Persian, the word an means shit or excrement and the word is never
spoken in polite company. The Biblical Anne is the grandmother of God; and the
grandmother of J esus, or Marys mother
205
. The ancient Persians worshipped
Anahita as the goddess of water, and as has been stated above, the root an
forms many names for the goddesses in the whole of the ancient Middle East
206
.
It is quite possible that the Persians developed a curse word from this originally
holy root in order to overthrow the female based religions that originally had
power over their people. This is similar to the Christians subverting the once
sacred fire into a symbol of Satans hell.
In Phoenician god is eel and goddess is lylit. Thus we have the biblical
word Elohim for god, and Alylat for the goddess that the Hebrew god was trying

203
From the The Acquisition and Control of Fire ,by Sigmund Freud.
204
See chapter 1.6.3.
205
See bibliography on authors performance work entitled ANNE.
206
See chapter 1.3.4.
to overthrow. In Persian and in Phoenician Edam means the first man and in
the Bible Adam is the first man.
In Phoenician im is the word for mother and maym or mem (also the
letter M) means water. Here we have an interesting linguistic crossing: Ab
means water in Persian, but Father in Phoenician, Mem means water in
Phoenician, and mother/mom (maman) in Persian. Father/dad in Persian is
baba. These three words are very ancient, and possibly even the very oldest
words in all human languages. The letter M is considered to be the very first
letter discovered
207
, found prevalent on Paleolithic vases of 5-6,000 B.C. old
Europe and in decorative designs of ancient Persian sculptures from the same
period. This letter originating as the zig-zag sign for water; it breaks off
(simplifies) and transforms later into the chevron and becomes a method for
counting days of the month as in between the new moons; or months in a year
or, in the number of months before childbirth.
208
It is possible that this very oldl
symbol for water, the zigzag, changed into the chevron, and eventually
transformed into one of the geneses for our letter A (aleph).
In Phoenician the word sacrifice is ZRM The letter Z (zahin) meant
weapon or death. Seed or offspring in Phoenician is ZR. Symbolically, ritual
sacrifice for the ancient Phoenicians was related to new life. This is one
misunderstanding modern man has of the ancient Phoencians: they are
dismissed as being barbaric, cruel and uncivilized because of the archeological
evidence that historians have found that they sacrificed their young children - but

207
Gimbutas, see chapters below.
208
See Addendum for images, figures 5 and 9.
it is not possible for modern man to fully understand the myths and religion of a
people whose minds might not have separated human life from the things that
they observed in their surroundings, such as the water, the land and the animals.
Early mans identity might have been entwined with that of all of life. Sacrificing
ones own child was not killing it the way we believe it is today: it might have
been a genuine gift and a sharing in giving thanks back to the forces of the Life
Being itself. Consciousness was not yet a single consciousness, and there might
not have been a sense of property over ones own children. Once the concept of
family, of father, and of civil marriage took hold, the idea of protecting the
children from death became more important than performing a ritual sacrifice.
(This was Abrahams test: he chose not to sacrifice his childnot to follow
the pagan religion, rather, God first told him to sacrifice his child and then he told
him not to sacrifice his child -- not to follow the old god, but rather to move
forward and establish a new order, and a new religion, a new manifestation of
God, base on the system of the patriarchy. Abraham is thought to have been
born in Ur
209
. He would have been born then into the land of the Great Goddess
Ishtar.)
A few more words will round out our study of ancient word etymologies:
KTBT means writing, or letter in Phoenician and in Persian KTAB means
book. Sun is SHMSH in Phoenician and Sunday is Shambeh in Persian.
Horse in Persian is asp and Sus in Phoenician. Note the similarity of Sus

209
Gerhard Herm, The Phoenicians, p. 21.
and the ancient city of Susa, famous for its horses and a place with early records
of writing
210
. Malak is king in Phoenician and means owner in Persian. Mal
means property in Persian.
The ancient, proto-Persian cultural influence of 5,000 B.C. covered the
areas of modern day Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, parts of Turkey and southwest
Russia
211
, it is conceivable that their language and religion also influenced the
peoples of that area and extending further into Greece and Rome. Note the sonic
similarities of the words Vesta and Avesta: The Roman equivalent to the Hestia
Goddess is Vesta, the keeper of the city hearth; and the Avesta is the holy
book, the ancient Persian Gathas of Zoroaster. Fire is a strong religious symbol
in both ancient Roman and Iranian cultures, and the custom to keep the eternal
fire burning is common both in Zoroastrianism and in Greek and Roman cities.
Most of the books, the evidence and teachings of Zoroaster were burned in
Alexanders destruction of Persepolis. It is the authors belief that evidence of the
origin of the worship of fire and possibly even of Vesta/Hestia from ancient Persia
might have been held within the library shelves at Persepolis.

1.9.7 Names:

In Platos Cratylus Hermogenes argues in the beginning of the dialogue
that The name of each thing is only that which anybody agrees to call it.
212

Making words for language must come from agreements not disagreements. In
order to use a certain word the people who use it have to agree to its usage,

210
Herfeld claims Susa competes with Sumer for the pre-origins of writing of painted pottery dating from
4,000 B.C., Iran in the Ancient East, p. 5..
211
Herzfeld, ibid.
pronunciation and definition. When asked what is God J ean Luc Nancy
answered that God is none other than the name of God.
213
By naming our
universe we were able to bring it into being, to understand and use it. Language
has made us the keepers of our world, in the sense of Heideggers geviert
the fourfold balance humans should maintain (between spirit, earth, heavens and
humans) in our existence. We have a responsibility because we can understand
and can comprehend the world. Language is the House of Being (Heidegger) for
humans, but by naming the universe it is brought into being, protected and
contained.

In conclusion, from Socrates analysis of the word Hestia
214
, it would seem
that Hestia then is the unknowable, unattainable essence before language and
Hermes is the god of meaning and articulation and therefore of naming, speech
and writing. But the two cannot be separated; together they form a full
communication feedback system. Hestia is the knowledge that accumulates
behind our back (Schirmacher, see below) and Hermes is what gets articulated
in language. In his book The User Illusion, Tor Norretranders refers to
exformation as the amount of information that needs to be discarded in order to
send a message.
215
Both information and exformation are part of the full
communication system. And, sometimes it is necessary to go back and pick up
some of the exformation which was discarded to see if the new situation or the

212
Platos Cratylus, several translations, see bibliography.
213
Personal conversation in Saas Fee, June, 2005.
214
The conversation between Socrates and Hermogenes on the name of Hestia
214
from Platos Excerpts
from The Cratylus are included in the Appendix, Part Two of this paper.
215
The User Illlusion by Tor Norretranders
new problem requires a different equation or combination of exformation and
information. History is a system in which much information needs to be discarded
in order to be written; much information is thrown away in order to be functional.
We know that the brain also must throw away even more in order to process this
historical information.
History also requires a point of view. When the needs of the present
culture change, historians go back and rewrite history, sometimes including that
information which was discarded and sometimes changing or widening the point
of view to include the forgotten people.
Certainly the Cosmos, the Universe and the Reality of Being are too large
for language and for history. But language must then become a practical
container for what humans need in order to use and live in the universe. By
naming our universe we were able to live in it and to use it. By rewriting history,
by renaming our universe, we will be able to create a mythology and a language
which has practical implications for our very own survival into the future.










PART TWO: The Philosophy of Sound,
Body, and Language

2.1 Sound and the Origins of Language

2.1.1 Schirmacher and Silence

One actually ought to remain silent about all of this, for word-language
does not allow us to say what has to be said.
216


There is a deafening silence that envelopes between people who can not
talk to each other and who do not understand each other. They feel that there are
no words to be spoken, and in straining to find the correct words, in suffering in
the silence, in waiting and in thinking through the silence, they may come to a
new language and come to a new way of understanding or communicating with
each other. Perhaps this new way of communicating is nonverbal. Not being able
to find the correct word to express ones feelings, one remains silent and allows
the wealth of emotion just to be in its whole without reducing it to words. This is
one form of silence. This silence is necessary and it is a part of language, as it
builds up the true motivation for communication.
Wolfgang Schirmacher writes that silence is the most powerful motive of
language. But, silence is also death. In the 1980s silence=death was a slogan
for the political action against A.I.D.S
217
. To be silent, as the leaders instructed

216
Wolfgang Schirmacher Homo Generator in Artificial Life a conversation with J ean-Francois Lyotard,
April 22, 1992 at Yale University.
217
AIDS stands for the Auto-immune deficiency syndrome. The slogan silence=death was used by the
group ActUp! in America in the late 1980s to early 1990s.
the women of the early Christian church, meant to disappear.
218
It was an
instruction to the Christian women to stay invisible. Luce Irigaray writes: Creon,
who has forbidden burial for Polynices, who has suggested that Antigone keep
quiet from now on about her relations with the gods,
219
and If society is afraid
of certain men or certain women, we might ask ourselves what crime against
them that fear might connote. And wonder if it is impossible to imprison or
silence more than half of the worlds population, for example.
220
Silence
frightens people because it reminds them of death, of the void, and of the non-
existent; so many people will fill the silence with unnecessary words and actions.
But conscious restraint, silence, absence and perhaps even non-action itself can
communicate more than gratuitous thoughts, action and words. One must stay
silent for as long as it takes before one comes to language. Once one comes to
language (through silence) one experiences a flow and is in communication with
ones own soul. The anthromorphic being which lives in the flux of life and fears
no other Schirmacher calls the homo generator:

Homo generator follows an economy of extravagance (Bataille), in which
the self satisfies the silence of language as well as the overexuberance
of activity that laughs in the face of deathTo exist anthromorphically is
for Homo generator nothing for which s/he must fight: in the face of
alienated versions of the anthropomorphic, from the gods to the notion of
scientific objectivity, s/he remains calm (gelassen). There is no dangerous
other, nothing against which an ego itself would have to be constituted,
but communication is in and of itself the basic platonic dialogue of the soul

218
See the Chapter, Daughters of Eve in Merlin Stones When God was a Woman.
219
P. 119 from An Ethics of Sexual Difference.
220
Irigaray, ibid, p. 120.
with itself, and the human being develops as a finite event (Ereignis in the
sense of Heidegger).
221


One might say that homo generator is in resonance with his/her own
daimon (the Greek word for ones individualized character or personalized spirit)
and has achieved Heideggers gelassenheit and is at peace with him/herself.
Schirmachers homo generator is more of a verb, an action and an event than a
subject or a noun. It is in the creative activity that homo generator finds the flow
and in the creative act he finds his home, his dwelling, and his place of being.
This being can generate creativity in the simplest activities of every day living,
perhaps even without conscious knowledge of his/her achieving fulfillment:

Homo generator is an open call (Bestimmung), a concept only now
beginning to unfold that might well be interrupted, to begin anew, and then
perhaps double back. There exists no Homo yet, but rather s/he is a self-
fulfilling prophecy. S/he generates her/himself in the most important life
techniques, once simply in breathing, sleeping, gathering food, There
exist for us the force, the power, and the opportunity to generate that
alone is what is referred to by the concept Homo generator.
222


The homo generator does not wait for some exterior teacher or savior to show
him the way to a good life, but rather he forges his own new unique path by
deeply listening to him/herself. Homo generator uses a heuristic technique of
self- disciplined learning and has achieved eudamonia, a happiness which
comes from listening and following his or her own inner spirit. Homo generator
listens to his own honest voice above all others. In order to listen, he must be

221
Wolfgang Schirmacher Homo Generator in Artificial Life, ibid.
silent. Schirmacher writes that Consciously I will fail, but behind my back I will
just as inevitably achieve fulfillment. An open horizon, appropriate to
generating-as-transpiring (ereignen), proclaims the multiplicity of artificial life.
223


This open horizon is silence: it is zero. It is the clearing that Heidegger
speaks of. It is the blank page, the empty canvas, the empty mind and the silent
tongue. It is also all the words that are not spoken, and perhaps all the words that
are not even thought of. Silence is the concepts, words and thoughts that take
place behind our back or perhaps even in our dreaming or non-dreaming sleep
without our knowledge. To analyze a dream then, to break it up into recognizable
words and images, would be to break the silence. Schirmacher writes that it is
important to keep the silence, that full communication can only take place when
one allows for the unspoken and unexplainable to remain unspoken and not
explained. One might be able to perceive the silences, but one must not try to
completely define or explain them. Between the soul and itself there is a perfect
system and a complete feedback cycle of communication, and it is here in this
complete feedback system that the truly new can appear (transpire). The
imperceptible silences, the unarticulated feelings and unconscious concealments
are pregnant and full of information. Schirmacher states that Feeling, intuition,
care, justices, deconstruction are indicators of a life behind our backs, the
imperceptible perception of which must become more perceptible for the further
development of artificial life.
224


222
Schirmacher, ibid.
223
Schirmacher, ibid.
224
Schirmacher, ibid.
Homo generator is not in need of any exterior laws or ethical rules
because his ethics comes from his own daimon, or inner god. As in the utopian
city described in Platos Republic, homo generator is a citizen not in need of any
additional Laws of the State because homo generator has its own feedback
system which regulates a perfect ethical balance within himself and his
environment.

2.1.2 Music and Si lence

In music, silence is an important tool. Whatever sound is heard
immediately after silence has more emphasis. In Cages composition 433 all the
sounds that are heard in the silence of the composition are heard in a new way,
as never heard before. The audiences sniffles, the wiggles in the seats, the
breathing all of these are common everyday sounds, but when heard in the
context of performance in a classical music hall they take on a significance which
is possible only by a deeper and more alternative way of listening.
Pauline Oliveros, an American composer who coined the term deep
listening in the 1970s teaches her students to listen deeply to their own bodies,
and to their surrounding environment. She leads a group in a meditation where
they listen several minutes to silence, and then the group begins to chant a
sound which resonates with what they observed in their body/environment.
Oliveros maintains that sound is the first sensation that humans perceive in the
womb
225
, and that listening is a basic skill, but it is a skill which is not fully
developed or taught in music conservatories. Luce Irigaray also notes that in
utero: I see nothing, (except darkness) but I hear. Music comes before
meaning.
226

To hear pure silence is impossible; even when we plug our ears from
exterior sounds we begin to hear the interior workings of our bodies -- the
pumping of our blood, and the hum of living. Silence for humans has a ringing
tone to it. The more humans approach pure silence the louder the ringing
becomes. Listening to the bell toll of silence is probably as close as humans can
get to experiencing absolute silence.
All physical spaces are making audible sounds at all times. Some of those
sounds are masking sounds, and some of the sounds are reinforcing others,
depending on whether the waveform is sympathetic (similar) or contrary
(opposite) to the original waveform. If a space approaches silence, (many
waveforms canceling each other out) our ears begin to ring in sympathetic
vibration to the complicated patterns. Silence has a more complicated wave
pattern than sound or music. When we hear a sound it is because that sounds
waveform is being reinforced by other waveforms which are similar to it and
pulsing sympathetically with it. This description of sound in a space explains the
phenomena of when a room approaches silence it is actually the result of
opposite waveforms multiplying and canceling each other out in complicated
patterns, and these waveforms then vibrate in the ear, producing a ringing tone
to it. The space itself begins to sound:

225
Personal conversation with Oliveros, J une 2001.
226
P. 168, An Ethics of Sexual Difference.
the more the space approaches silence, the outputted pulse waves, or
sounds, increase, and compose a more complicated pulse production
pattern. Even if the sound is produced continuously, a certain degree of
regularity will be produced. On the other hand, in a quiet space the area
close to zero is quickly crossed in a complicated way. This indicates that,
through the reduction of sound, the space itself (complicated fluctuations
which are impossible to predict) appears (as sounds). This resembles the
phenomenon of ears ringing when one enters a silent space.
227


Luce Irigaray states that when music does not arise from a silent ground,
music repeats a message already spoken and which does not fit the moment in
which it is produced.
228
Music which is produced without listening to the silence
or, more correctly, without being receptive to the vibrations of silence, is not
genuine and will never be truthful to the moment in which it was created.
As explained in the previous chapter
229
when two equal but opposing
waveforms are lines up to each other they cancel each other out and the result is
silence. Below Heidegger writes about how Nietzsche, as the last metaphysical
philosopher, has silenced the philosophers. In order to go on after Nietzsche, one
has to stop, to listen and to relearn what it really means to think. Heidegger also
emphasizes that humans must learn what being is before we can achieve
fulfillment as human beings. Being involves listening, and thinking involves a
recognition of the listening.


227
From Site of Sound, p. 153. Concerning the Relationships between Space, Objects and the production
of Sound by J io Shimizu.
228
P. 136, in Key Writings Before and Beyond any Word by Luce Irigaray.
229
See Chapter 1.8 Sound and Existence.
2.1.3 Heidegger and The Clearing, The Listening

One cannot talk and listen at the same time. To really listen deeply is to be
in the act of true thinking. After real listening and thinking, then, perhaps one may
speak. Sometimes though it is not possible just to speak in a normal tone of
voice anymore, if no one is listening to you. At those times, one may have to
scream. Heidegger explains in his lecture What is called Thinking?
230
how
Nietzsches call to the world went unnoticed, and therefore he was forced to
scream his message. Heidegger writes:Nietzsche screamed out into the
world: The wasteland growsMust one smash their ears before they learn to
listen with their eyes?

Writing must not be an end in itself but rather an opening to further
thinking. Heidegger writes: This is also why all formulas and labels fail in a
special sense, and fall silent, in the face of Nietzsches thought. Nietzsche
created a clearing for new thought. Nietzsches writing is a dialogue and a
transition for the new beginning. Nietzsche knew of these relations of discovery,
finding, and losing and that Only when we have succeeded in finding it may we
try to lose again. This losing is a sort of undoing of the old, of letting go, or of
even going backward in some cases, so that a new thought can appear. In order
for many movements to take hold there are backlashes, and these backlashes
are necessary-it is the going backward in history so that the movement can
catch up with the people.

230
Martin Heidegger, Basic Writings, What calls for Thinking p. 369.
In Nietzsches writing what he left unwritten, what he kept silent was
vastly important:
Yes Nietzsches language, too, speaks only in the foreground, so long
as we understand it exclusively in terms of the language of traditional
thinking, instead of listening for what remains unspoken in it.
231


We must see that all those foreground things which Nietzsche had to
reject and oppose that fundamentally he passes them all by, that he
speaks only in order better to preserve his silence.
232



In true thinking there is room for at least a two-way interaction between
the thinker and the receiver; in shouting there is only one way and there is no
room for thinking by either party; neither the shouter nor the receiver of the shout
has space for thought.
In Lecture VII of Was Heisst Denken?, Heidegger discusses that what is
left unthought by a great thinker is not necessarily a deficiency. Similarly, a work
of art which delicately holds back its expression can be more powerful than the
work of art which tries to explain everything. In his essay The Origin for the Work
of Art Heidegger says that a great work of art sets up a world. The work holds
open the open region of the world
233
it creates a space for thinking. What is left
concealed is equally important as what is revealed.

The thinkers language tells what is. To hear it is in no case easy. Hearing
it presupposes that we meet a certain requirement, and we do so only on

231
Heidegger, Lecture V from Was Heisst Denken? or What calls for Thinking from Religious
Perspectives edited by Ruth Nanda Anshen., p. 55,
232
Ibid, Lecture VI, p. 65.
233
p. 170, Basic Writings.
rare occasions What is unthought in a thinkers thought is not a lack
inherent in his thought. What is un-thought is there in each case only as
the un-thought. The more original the thinking, the richer will be what is
unthought in it. The unthought is the greatest gift that thinking can
bestow.
234


What is thinking? Thinking is a clearing and a listening to the silence, a
listening to the nothing. This listening/thinking is Being. What is incomprehensible
is the truth. And the absolute truth brings silence. But truth can also be an
opening, and because of what is left unthought in the truth - it might be unraveled
and thought out for centuries to come.
2.1.4 Heidegger and the House of Being
Although Heidegger makes the connection between Being and ousia, and
between being, flux and Heraclitus, he does not mention Platos association of
ousia to Hestia
235
. This could be a conscious omission on the part of
Heideggers thinking, or it could be that Heidegger was uncomfortable with the
obvious simple connection, or it might be that the discussion of Greek
goddesses was outside his circle of interests. Being as simple presence is
problematic for Heidegger:
Language is the clearing-concealing advent of Being itself. That is why in
Being and Time the sentence often recurs, The substance of man is
existence. But Substance thought in terms of the history of Being, is
already a blanket translation of ousia, a word that designates the presence

234
Heidegger, ibid.
235
See Platos Cratylus, in the Dialogues of Plato.
of what is present and at the same time with puzzling ambiguity, usually
means what is present itself.
236

Plato mentions the pushing effect of ousia in the Cratylus
237
and Heidegger calls
this pushing the thrown effect. These words (the original and the translations)
are incapable of fully describing the essence of ousia. This is an example of the
inefficiency of words when trying to describe something which is beyond words;
and an example of the difficulty of translating complex or strange concepts into
other languages.
Man is rather thrown from Being itself into the truth of Being, so that ek-
sisting in the fashion he might guard the truth of BeingMan is the
Shepard of Being. According to this essence, language is the house of
Being, which is propriated by Being and pervaded by Being. And so it is
proper to think the essence of language from its correspondence to Being
and indeed as this correspondence, that is, as the home of mans
essenceLanguage is the house of Being in which man ek-sists by
dwelling, in that he belongs to the truth of Being, guarding it.
238


Human beings are the chosen species to guard existence, because we
are given the capacity to realize our Being. Heidegger talks about essences and
about truth, even though it is the impossible task, as Nietzsche knew all too well.
It is possible that this flux of Being is in reality all that there is. What is this is?
Is is what is. There is only is. Esti gar einai
239
. This is is the ousia, the essia,
the hestia. Heidegger states:

236
From Basic Writings of Martin Heidegger,Letter of Humanism p. 231
237
see Ch. 1.7.3 For relevant transcription of the Cratylus section on ousia.
238
p. 234 , Basic Writings., Letter on Humanism.
239
Greek for for there is being.
And yet Parmenides, in the early age of thinking, says esti gar einai, for
there is Being. The primal mystery for all thinking is concealed in this
phrase. ..The esti gar einai of Parmenides is still unthought today.
the clearing of BeingBeing is the transcendens pure and simple.
Being is essentially broader than all beings, because it is the clearing
itself(Being illumines Man)
240


Heidegger mentions that the timing of things, of those things which really
matter, always come at the right time. Perhaps the correct timing of their being
revealed must be respected by the silence which precedes it. The great classical
pianist Leon Fleisher tells his students: Silence is not the absence of
musicand that the students must play as late as possible, without being
late.
241
Heidegger writes:
Perhaps, then, language requires much less precipitate expression than
proper silence. But who of us today would want to imagine that his
attempts to think are at home on the path of silence?..Things that really
matter, although they are not defined for all eternity, even when they come
very late still come at the right time.
242


Heidegger discusses Heraclitus phrase (fragment 119) ethos anthropoi
daimon a mans character is his daimon and writes that Ethos means
abode/dwelling placethe word names the open region in which man dwells.
And again he mentions that the gods can be found in the everyday places and
events in every home. Heidegger is touching upon an obvious manifestation of
the hestia when he writes: Einai gar kai entautha theous-- Here too the gods

240
p. 420, Basic Writings.The Way to Language
241
The New York Times Arts and Leisure, p. 25, J une 10, 2007.
come to presence even at the familiar commonplace everyday stove-found in
every home and Ethos anthropoi daimon, The familiar abode for man is the
open region for the presencing of god .
243

To dwell also means to pause to dwell on a concept means to give
space, to spend time or linger over it so that one can understand it. Heidegger
states that Thinking builds upon the house of Being and that ..the talk about
the house of Being is no transfer of the image house to Being. But one day we
will, by thinking essence of Being in a way appropriate to its matter, more readily
be able to think what house and to Dwell are. This Language is a language
that includes all expressions of being, all communication, the verbal as well as
the nonverbal expressions, the art and the technology, all the inventions of
humankind and even silence are a part of this language.
2.1.5 Ni etzsche and the Ori gi n of the Word

In the Birth of Language Nietzsche writes that truth had not much to do with the
origins of languages. In the following passage he analyzes the origins of words:

What is a word? The copy of a nervous stimulation in sounds If truth
alone had been decisive in the genesis of language, if the viewpoint of
certainty had been decisive in creating designations, how could we
possibly be permitted to say, the stone is hard, as if hard were
something known to us in some other way, and not merely as an entirely
subjective stimulus?
244



242
Heidegger, p. 246 Basic Writings.Letter on Humanism.
243
Heidegger, Basic Writings.p. 256, Letter on Humanism.
244
From Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings Cambridge University Press, 1999, p. 144
Not only was truth not the goal of the inventors of language, but it was not
even possible nor was it desirable. Humans can never consider the thing-in-itself
without consequences, such as particular climate, culture or environment of the
person creating the word.

When different languages are set alongside one another it becomes clear
that, where words are concerned, what matters is never truth, never the
full and adequate expression; otherwise there would not be so many
languages. The thing-in-itself (which would be, precisely, pure truth, truth
without consequences) is impossible for even the creator of language to
grasp, and indeed this is not at all desirable.
245


According to Nietzsche, when the human being first encounters the
presence of the thing he experiences a stimulation of nerves in his brain and
sees an image, then the image is re-represented or imitated by a sound and
each time the human translates the thing into another metaphor he never gets
closer to the thing but rather one metaphor is simply replaced by another. The
human can never get to the truth or the absolute essence of the thing. Nietzsche
writes:
The stimulation of a nerve is first translated into an image: first
metaphor! The image is then imitated by a sound: second metaphor! And
each time there is a complete leap from one sphere into the heart of
another, new sphere.
246


The essences of the thing might be better represented in the translation
from one form into another, rather than in the descriptive word or paragraph of

245
ibid., p. 144
word language. The birth of human consciousness lead to the human becoming
an individualized subject in a world rather than a connected part of the world --
immersed without an identity separated from the environment. Man began to
experience the world subjectively and separately, as individual Is and because
1) he began to observe nature 2) he also began to name the things he saw and
3) finally he created language to tell about the things he saw. Language comes
not from the uniquenesses and differences of the essence of things-but in their
generalities, similarities and classifications into groups. But, Nietzsche states,
this is not truth-because in truth each thing is individual and different. But if we
for one moment separate ourselves from this world of word and metaphors-we
cease to be human beingsand will also cease to function. This is a necessary
lie it is the mythology and the edifice, and the house which protects humans
from nature. Historically, this lie has allowed humans to dominate over the
natural world.

for all of them must exhibit the laws of number, and number is precisely
that which is most astonishing about thingsfor this conceptual edifice is
an imitation of the relations of time, space, and number on the foundation
of metaphor.
247


Nietzsche is expressing matter as number. He uses the words Time, space
and number, not time space and matter. Everything else is an imitation of the
relationship between these three concepts. Perhaps this statement by Nietzsche

246
ibid., p. 144
247
ibid., p 150
confirms the belief that the best metaphor for God is a number
248
. In digital
technology we can express almost everything we observe with numbers.
Originally, as we have seen, it is language which works on building the
edifice of concepts; later it is science That drive to form metaphors, that
fundamental human drive which cannot be left out of consideration for
even a second without also leaving out human beings themselves, is in
truth not defeated, indeed hardly even tamed, by the process whereby a
regular and rigid new world is built from its own sublimated products
concepts - in order to imprison it in a fortress. The drive seeks out a
channel and a new area for its activity, and finds it in myth and in art
generally.
249


Here Nietzsche expresses that myth and art may be able to express reality more
truthfully than science. That in the early days of the Greeks, the ability to believe
that anything was possible allowed man to achieve great heights into the
essence of their Being. The only reason we think we are awake is because our
daily life seems to have consistent consequences which are verified and
explained by science: the ball falls when it is dropped from the roof of the
building, every day, and each time the ball is dropped, it falls down.
Actually the waking human being is only clear about the fact that he is
awake thanks to the rigid and regular web of concepts, and for that reason
he sometimes comes to believe that he is dreaming if once that web of
concepts is torn apart by art.
250



248
See Chapter 1.8 below, Sound, number and existence.
249
Birth of Tragedy, p. 150-151.
250
ibid, p. 151.
Myth was an integral part of early Greeks day-to-day reality. It is dreaming for
the modern human though that constitutes a more whole reality. Familiar
patterns are necessary for thinking that we are awake. If we had the same dream
every night, we might think that the dream is reality.

Thanks to the constantly effective miracle assumed by myth, the waking
day of a people who are stimulated by myth, as the ancient Greeks were,
does indeed resemble dream more than it does the day of a thinker whose
mind has been sobered by scienceIf, one day, any tree may speak as a
nymph, or if a god can carry off virgins in the guise of a bull and that is
what the honest Athenian believed - then anything is possible at any time,
as it is in dream
251


Infinite possibility is the beginning of the becoming of man and the birth of
the gods. The creative human being uses language and concepts and metaphors
as a construct to invent things-much like a healthy child will play on a structure-
not to hide and protect him from the outside world but to experiment with different
ways to play. This play is essential for human advancement and maturity as a
species. Plato states in The Republic that we must teach children through their
play so that their natural abilities become evident.
252
Nietzsche writes:

The vast assembly of beams and boards to which needy man clings,
thereby saving himself on his journey through life, is used by the liberated
intellect as a mere climbing frame and plaything on which to perform its
most reckless tricks; and when it smashes this framework, jumbles it up
and ironically re-assembles it, pairing the most unlike things and dividing
those things which are closest to one another, it reveals the fact that it

251
Ibid, p. 151.
does not require those makeshift aids of neediness, and that it is now
guided, not by concepts but by intuitions.
253


Humans should try to balance between both the person of reason and the
person of intuition. From Schirmachers theory of the modern and futuristic homo
generator to J acquetta Hawkes theory of ancient mans urge to create this is a
fundamental truth: that the human being essentially is a creative being. It is
human destiny to progress away from merely protecting ourselves from
misfortune and use our capacities to invent new technologies of living, and this
humans will achieve this by developing their sense of intuitive knowledge.
Whereas the man who is guided by concepts and abstractions only
succeeds thereby in warding off misfortune, is unable to compel the
abstractions themselves to yield him happiness, and strives merely to be
as free as possible of pain, the man of intuition, standing in the midst of a
culture, reaps directly from his intuitions not just protection from harm but
also a constant stream of brightness, a lightening of the spirit, redemption,
and release.
254


This is an intuitive knowledge that comes before language, it is behind our
back (Schirmacher) silent, powerful even truthful. Often intuition will lead to the
Truth and to the facts before the facts can be scientifically proved. In fact,
intuition holds the whole truth, the passion and emotion and feeling for the
truth, whereas scientific proof will break the truth into segments or sentences of
the whole.

252
Platos Republic, lines 537, (p. 768 Collected Dialouges)
253
ibid, p. 153.
254
Nietzsche, ibid.
2.1.6 From Derri da s Essay on the Origi ns of Language

In his essay Genesis and Structure of the Essay on the Origins of
Language
255
, Derrida deconstructs Rousseaus theoretical writings on the
origins of language. Rousseau wrote that early human speech was once
inseparable from song; but that the true logos of language developed in the
north, where the primitive people of the colder climates warmed themselves by
the fire, as opposed to the people of the south, for whom fire was not as
important in the desert lands as the wells of water. Rousseau states that the
articulation and structure of language also developed in the north, as the pre-
verbal non-articulated song continued to develop in the south. He says this may
explain why northern languages have more fricatives, consonants and gutteral
sounds, and why the languages of the south put an emphasis on vowel sounds
and perhaps even vary the pitch of their voices in more of a continuous sing-
song.
On the other hand, the linguist Revesz maintains that language evolved
from natural stages from the animal from 1) the cry (not directed to any specific
recipient) to 2) the call (directed to a definite recipient) to 3) the words and finally
to 4) full speech.
256
Animals participate in the first two stages, the cry and the call
but not in the latter two. Song evolved from the cry separately from the word into
music. Rousseau stated that there was no music/song before the word, but in
contrast Revesz states that the word evolved from the cry and the call, and that

255
From Of Grammatology by J acques Derrida.
256
The Origins and Prehistory of Language, Revesz.
song also evolved from the cry and the call but evolved at the same time but
parallel to the word.
Rousseau states that languages developed not inside ones own family
home but rather outside the home between differing tribes. This is in agreement
with Deleuze who stated that writing and language developed for translation, not
for expression or communication within ones own family.
257
Rousseau writes:

Genuine languages are not at all of domestic origin. They can be
established only under a more general, more durable covenant. The
American savages hardly speak at all except outside their homes. Each
keep silent in his hut, speaking to his family by signs. And these signs are
used infrequently, for a savage is less disquieted, less impatient than a
European; he has fewer needs and he is careful to meet them himself.
258


Derrida quotes this passage of Rousseau that The family, which Hegel too will
call prehistoric, the hut, the language of gestures and inarticulate sounds, are the
indication of the almost. The savage life of hunters, the barbaric and pre-
agricultural life of shepards, correspond to this state of almost-society. And
echoing Deleuzes statement about sedentarianism versus nomadism, writing,
and the state, Derrida writes: The nearly social state of barbarism may in fact
exist before or after, indeed during and under the state of society. This
statement was as true then as it is now -- as we know from watching the current
television news: there are people living sedentary non-electric, organic lives, in
simple tribal hut villages of Africa, Australia and Brazil but, at the same time

257
See Chapter 1.4 above. In the following chapter below a different theory by J ulia Kristeva will be
explored.
258
p. 254, Of Grammatology
blackberry-carrying nomadic businessmen of Tokyo, New York and London live
their highly digitalized technologically advanced ones. Technological
advancement, and the development of language is not uniform and never has
been, nor is it related to nomadism or sedentarianism.
Rousseau states: When children begin to talk they cry less. One
language supplants the other.
259
Rousseau says that one can observe the
origins of language by watching young infants babble in a preverbal vocalization.
Once children obtain words to express their needs they babble less and use the
word for what they want. One might also suppose that this nonverbal language is
not exclusive to children. Adult humans who do not have words for a particular
emotion that they are feeling often turn to a cry or wail to express their pain or
happiness. Opera is an art form said to be able to express deep human emotion
that goes beyond the mere words which are sung. Many musicians believe that
music usually begins where words leave off
260
.
Rousseau states that: an absolute silence leads to sadness; it offers us
an image of death.
261
Humans cry, sing, and speak to fill the absolute silence of
the void of death. When one holds or experiences an emotion which is beyond
words, beyond song, even beyond a cry or wail, this is ultimate sadness and a
muteness. The trauma of the experience has oppressed the individual to such a
state that no expression of any kind is possible.
Rousseau wrote that after the festival the age of the supplement, of
articulation, of signs, of representatives appears in early societies. That is the

259
p.248, Of Grammatology.
260
Leon Fleisher, New York Times, J une 10, 2007.
age of the prohibition of incest. Before the festival, there was no incest because
there was no prohibition of incest and no society. After the festival there is no
more incest because it is forbidden.
262
He explains:

Children of the same parents grew up together and gradually they found
ways of expressing themselves to each other: the sexes became obvious
with age: natural inclination sufficed to unite them. Instinct held the place
of passion: habit held the place of preference. They became husband and
wife without ceasing to be brother and sister.
263


But, humanity would not have survived or evolved if incest was the most
common form of sexual intercourse! It is illogical to think that small nuclear
families (father, mother sisters, brothers) lived just with each other in the primitive
human societiesrather, there would have been groups of families, and
extended cousins, perhaps in groups of 30-40 people. Humans are a pack
species. Humans would not have survived in small groups of one family alone.
Rousseau does not give early humans credit with either a natural animal instinct
not to breed with ones own family nor does he give early humans the intelligence
or curiosity to be attracted to the other outside the immediate home. The
humans which were superior would have chosen mates that would enrich the
gene pool. Incest was always a mythical, religious and/or sacred taboo, practiced
only by the gods and/or the royalty (in the case of Egyptian or Sumerian families)
who were related to the gods. Incest probably came after the first formations of

261
Of Grammatology.p. 250.
262
ibid. p. 263
263
ibid, p. 263.
society as a especially holy ritual practiced only by selected people from their
tribe.
Finally, in his analysis of Rousseaus essay on the origin of languages
Derrida writes: The displacing of the relationship with the mother, with nature,
with being as the fundamental signified, such indeed is the origin of society and
languages
264
. This statement is the exact opposite thesis of this paper which is
that the origin of societies and of languages comes from humanitys direct
relationship to the maternal and from humanitys direct relationship with laws of
nature and the universe. Language is not an abstract intellectual appendage nor
is it an instrument invented solely from the mind of man, but rather it is an
integrated extension of humanitys will to express itself through the body.
When Irigaray writes that in most cases the maternal-feminine is the
source of fear or repugnance for the subject who has buried the feminine deep in
the earth
265
one is reminded of the snake of Cadmus,
266
of the hole that
swallowed Gilmgameshs men
267
, and of Antigone
268
who is ordered to die in a
cave. In the next chapter we will explore more of Luce Irigarays thoughts on the
role of the body to language.




264
p. 266 Of Grammatology, ibid.
265
An Ethics of Sexual Difference, p. 105.
266
See Chapter 1.2 above.
267
See Chapter 1.4 above.
268
Sophocles play, Antigone, King Creon orders Antigone to be exiled from the city to die in a cave
because she disobeyed the laws of the city by wanting to bury her brother Polynices.
2.2 The Body and the Origin of Writing

On the etymology of the word body or soma Socrates says: not even a
letter of the word need be changed.
269


2.2.1 Luce Iri garay: The Ethics of Sexual Difference


Luce Irigaray writes in her book An Ethics for Sexual Difference that the
death of god that Nietzsche and Heidegger speak of is not about a total
disappearance of the gods but rather a new appearance of the divine ushering in
a new era in history and of the universe. The gods are dead because we no
longer bring them into being. She asks whether this might be the time when we
can start over and the two sexes can finally speak to each other:
Could this be the time when a meeting between the sexes becomes
possible? For the fact that man and woman have not spoken to each other
--- not since the first garden? -- is expressed also through the extinction of
in discourse, the forgetting of voice in language. From the voice of
Yahweh to that or those of Antigone, of Persephone, of the Erinyes, the
voices have been silenced. The text of the law, of all laws, holds sway in
silence. With no trace inscribed in the flesh.
270


Irigaray writes that the whole history of philosophy of being has not yet
been analysed in terms of body or flesh. She says: Thought and body have
remained separate
271



269
From Platos Cratylus,
270
p. 141, from Love of the Other in the book An Ethics of Sexual Difference, by Luce Iriguay.
271
p. 86 from An Ethics of Sexual Difference.
Irigaray writes that woman often goes back and repeats herself in cycles
of remembering the past often in search of something that might have been
forgotten. There is an urgency to speak or write about the past so that it will not
be forgotten: There is a pathos of remembering and forgetting. Moving backward
in search of something that has been erased, or inscribing it so that it shall not be
erased A sort of double nature or revolt of nature rising up through language.
She posits that the third era of the West might be the era of the couple-the
spirit and the bride: After the coming of the Father that is inscribed in the Old
Testament, after the coming of the Son in the New Testament, we would see the
beginning of the era of the spirit and the bride
272

Might this new era be a conscription and an inspiration for a new writing,
and an origin of a new language? Can there be marks of pure spirit, marks which
are an aspect of writing but are not trying to describe or define anythinga
writing behinds our backs
273
for a pure and ontological expression of Being?
Irigaray writes that sexual difference is the issue of our age. She is not
talking about creating an equality or about a submission of one or the other
sexes, but she is talking about each sex finding its own. Its possible that this
has never been done in history or prehistory. If, as our archeologists tell us, there
was a period when a fearsome goddess might have dominated over men,
women and children of the human species, and then followed a period when
male element dominated over humanity, might there now be a chance for males
and females to work together to bring our species as a whole to a new level of

272
Irigaray, ibid., p. 148
273
See Schirmachers Homo Generator.
existence? If from 2,000 B.C. to the present, women were excluded from all roles
of power, education and decision making, might our species be missing one half
of our potentiality? Do we even know how woman, at her greatest intellectual
heights, might think? Is there a whole part of the human brain that has not been
allowed to develop because it has been cut off, censored and repressed at its
source? Irigaray lists that the physical, mathematical, biological and other
sciences are being dwarfed because the subject in science has not been neutral,
nor has he been aware of himself. Science has been slow, or has even given
up, trying to analyze the in-finite of force fields and the research in the biological
sciences has been very slow to take on certain problems...are these not
problems directly correlated to the female and the maternal sexual imaginary?
274

Irigaray writes that Sexual difference is one of the major philosophical
issues, if not the issue, of our age. According to Heidegger, each age has one
issue to think through, and one only. Sexual difference is probably the issue in
our time which could be our salvation if we thought it through.
275
This
difference, and this new thinking requires a cosmological shift in the way we
perceive and define space and time: In order to make it possible to think
through, and live, this difference we must reconsider the whole problematic of
space and time.
276

Instead of having to rewrite history as some feminists have maintained,
Irigaray suggests that women should be able to find their history in the story,

274
p. 123 Irigaray, An Ethics of Sexual Difference. translated by Burke and Gill, Cornell University Press.
275
From Ethics of Sexual Difference p. 5.
literatures and knowledge already developed by men. Women should not base,
her existence on his work and his genealogy, but perhaps she can analyze and
develop her identity in the image (and non-image) already created and deposited
by men.
Woman ought to be able to find herself, among other things, through the
image of herself already deposited in history and the condition of
production of the work of man, and not on the basis of his work, his
genealogy.
277


It is impossible to recreate all of history and literature in order to give
equitable voice to women, but then we must re-read the existing historical
material with caution: if the male thinkers and philosophers such as Rousseau
were negligent on a point as fundamental as point of view they might have erred
on many other topics as well.

2.2.2 The Taboo of Incest and Lingui sti c Histories

Irigaray writes The divine correlated to the taboo of incest corresponds
out of necessity or not to a stage in history.
278
She writes that this happened
because at a specific time in history man had a need to identify himself as
separate from the mother because at one time he had worshipped and related
his identity to the maternal body. It was so difficult for man to be attached to the
mother, and still remains difficult for him today. Man, who has triumphed over the
maternal, has imposed his own identity as the only one possible and to

276
Irigaray Ibid. p. 7
277
Irigaray, ibid. p. 10
278
p. 108 Luce Irigaray, Key Writings.
accomplish this he has had to destroy all traces of womens cultures
279
. Irigaray
writes Nevertheless, the age of women does have a history, laws, and valid
writing, which it would be useful to respect, out of a concern for culture itself, and
also out of concern for social ethics, aesthetics and truth unsubjugated to
sectarian beliefs.
280

Irigaray continues to list four other historically determined necessities that
man created in order to separate himself from the maternal world and to assert
his superiority over women: 1) man give himself the taboo forbidding incest; 2) a
symbolic system appropriate to himself; 3) he imposed his gods as the only true
god; and finally, 4) man created a second nature more perfect than the given
one. With a complete abolishment of the female system, man maintained that his
system had always been in place, that it was the only natural law and that it
should be the law for all time. This belief is ubiquitous worldwide, and has it own
women leaders and followers
281
. Even Plato wrote in the Republic that the state:
which is to achieve the height of good government must have community of
wives and children and all education, and also that the pursuits of men and
women must be the same in peace and in war
282
The natural law is a balance
between the sexes of the human species, not of a dominance of one over the
other. The taboo against incest was created by man in order to dominate and
overturn the ancient religions of the goddess. The sexual union of the mother/son
was not a literal union, but a symbolic one, a ritual practiced by ancients to

279
Irigaray, Key Writings, p. 108.
280
Irigaray, Key Writings, p. 108.
281
Key Writings, p. 108.
282
From Platos The Collected Dialogues, Book VIII of the Republic, lines 543 (p. 772).
ensure the earth would continue to bring forth new crops. Language, literature,
and finally written script continue to be developed representing only the male
point of view as subject. Humanity is now at a place and time when the female
and male elements in society can form a couple when neither aspect dominates
the other. This may usher in a new appearance of a goda god of the coupled
spirit.

2.2.3 Juli a Kristeva Women s Time

In opposition to Deleuzes theory that language was invented between two
differing tribes or cultures who didnt understand one another but who still
needed to communicate to each other, J ulia Kristeva writes in her essay
Womens Time that language firsts develops between a newborn child and its
mother:
Subsequent studies on the acquisition of the symbolic function by children
show that the permanence and quality of maternal love condition the
appearance of the first spatial references which induce the childs laugh
and then induce the entire range of symbolic manifestations which lead
eventually to sign and syntax.
283


Kristeva maintains that the construction of linear time, like the structure of
language into its enunciation of sentences, creates its own stumbling block,
which is reminiscent of death: It might also be added that this linear time is that
of language considered as the enunciation of sentences (noun +verb; topic-
comment; beginning-ending) and that this time rests on its own stumbling block,

283
Julia Kristeva, Womens Time, p. 406 in Continental Philosophy: An anthology.
which is also the stumbling block of that enunciation death.
284
Sentences are
formed much like a finite line, with its beginning middle and end points, but
perhaps true language is in the form of a circle, with its infinite points and
fluctuating space.
Monumental time and ancient representations of temporality, on the other
hand, includes a spacious quality of presence: This temporality reminds one of
Kronos in Hesiods mythology, the incestuous son whose massive presence
covered all of Gea in order to separate her from Ouranos, the father. It is this
ancient aspect of time which is inseparable from the concept of space which
preoccupies modern science. Kristeva writes Is it not true that the problematic
of a time indissociable from space, of a space-time in infinite expansion, or
rhythmed by accidents or catastrophes, preoccupies both space science and
genetics?
285

Harking back to the Greek separation of the oikos from the polis into the
corresponding female and male responsibilities of state (Thompson), Kristeva
suggests that the female sphere of familial and religious rights have been
supplanted by a blank: Let us remember here that Hegel distinguished between
female right (familial and religious) and male law (civil and political). If our
societies know well the uses and abuses of male law, it must also be recognized
that female right is designated, for the moment, by a blank.
286

Finally, the event of pregnancy, which is peculiar to women alone, is

284
Kristeva, ibid. p. 407.
285
Kristeva, p. 107
286
Kristeva, p. 411
a unique opportunity for women to experience and to teach the splitting of the
subject (of at least by two) to herself and to others, and, to learn and to teach
how to unify the other with oneself. This is, at the same time, the most rare and
the most common experience for women, but, its lessons have yet to permeate
language or society: Pregnancy seems to be experienced as the radical ordeal
of the splitting of the subject: redoubling up of the body, separation and
coexistence of the self and of an other, of nature and consciousness, of
physiology and speech.
287

That Rouseau maintains that all of society and language is born at the
moment man turns away from the maternal is flawed in that it is not the maternal
which is rejected but only the maternal which is silenced. A fetus leaves the
mothers womb when he enters the world, and when he leaves his mothers side
as an infant, this is not a complete rejection of the maternal but simply leaving
one maternal (the physical mother) for another maternal (the world). The child
leaves the physical mother as a natural progression toward individuality, but man
never really leaves the maternal world as the maternal is universal and is our
bodies and is existence itself. The maternal is a necessary universal principle
that resides within all our institutions: our societies, our politics, our sciences and
our arts. To reject the maternal is to reject reality.

2.2.4 Deleuze and the Body

Deleuze writes that each individuated mind requires a body: The depths
of the mind are dark, and this dark nature is what explains and requires a body.

287
Kristeva, p. 411
It is because there is an infinity of individual monads that each one requires an
individuated body, this body resembling the shadow of other monads cast upon
it.
288
The body is the actual place where the mind is able to be expressed
clearly:
Deleuze states: Leibniz will go as far as stating that what I express clearly is
what relates to my bodyThe same holds for all other monads whose zone of
clear expression coincides with the bodys immediate environment.
289

The perceptions of the monads of the body relate to vibrational patterns:
vibrations of matter make up the minute perceptions of the body and the vibration
of organs relate to the conscious perceptions:
290


Minute perceptions = vibrations of matter
Conscious perceptions the organ


One interpretation for organs without bodies is that it is possible in the modern
world with our digital and virtual technologies to have objects without
consciousness and without perception and without place. We can create objects
from numerical calculations, but we cannot create perception, nor can we create
a body. To have a body means that one is expressing the world in a clear and
singular way, with consciousness and subjectivity. This presence and singularity
is only possible because of the existence of the body. Deleuze says that I
have a body because I have a clear or privileged zone of expression. What he
clearly expresses is what happens to his body. The monad expresses the world

288
Deleuze, p. 85, The Fold.
289
The Fold, p. 85
according to its body, according to the organs of its body, according to the
action of other bodies upon itself.
291


There is existence because there is body. Without body there is no
consciousness. Famed DNA scientist, Francis Crick said that in the fullness of
time educated people will believe there is no soul independent of the body, and
hence no life after death.
292
The body is the origin as well as the articulation of
language. There is no being without body; therefore body is at the origin of being.
Language is merely one expression of being-there are many other expressions
before and beyond any word or language. Languages are a distillation of Being,
but the Body is the true house of Being, the pure and simple place for existence.
The historical drive to exclude the body and invalidate its experiences has
lead to a fissure in our thinking. The symbolic act of writing on the body, be it by
tattoo, or with paint, reestablishes this eternal connection between Being,
Language and Body.
293
Language comes through to the body-- the body is the
resonator as well as the depositor for language. Words must ruminate in the
body before understanding them. The body is the house for language.
Thinking and Being are related to the Presence of Body. In several of the
authors performance works including Private Eye/Public Hand in 1993 and
J ocasta
294
in 2006, the central characters write on their body in an unknown
script. This writing signifies their existence in the world; the act of writing

290
The Fold, p. 96.
291
The Fold. P. 99.
292
The New York Times, Science Section, April 13, 2004.
293
See Bibliography for films and media work by the author and others relating to this
subject.
connects them to the experience of living in the ever-unfolding Now. Audience
are witnesses to this act, and are initiated into mysteries of a language that
cannot be transcribed or translated. It is a language of the past and of the future,
transversing culture and time.
295

In the authors film J ocasta, which is inspired by the Oedipus story,
J ocasta, the mother of Oedipus, writes on her body in a symbolic act of sacrifice
to save Thebes, she Remembers who she IS. She is descendant of Io the
creator of written language
296
. In his play Oedipus Rex
297
, Sophocles made
J ocastas actions and her character a taboo, she became a despicable
unthinkable horror of a mother, because she has slept with her son. But in the
authors film, J ocasta goes back in time, back into pre-history-at the origin of
language, before Sophocles, and reverses that taboo. J ocasta remembers that
she is the goddess that invented writing. Her original incest was symbolic. She,
the earth goddess, mated with her son, the seed, in order to create grains and
food for the people. She is the universal mother goddess that created all of
Being. She washes the script off her body and ingests the letters and spits them
out onto the dead earth in order to create new life. Her cry is the original cry that
invented all language. It is the primal cry that absorbs the pain of the entire world
and releases it again through cartharsis, her primal sound re-orders history.

2.2.5 Helene Cixous Sorties



294
See Addendum, part three.
295
The script that the author uses is an original imaginary script and cannot be translated.
296
See Chapter 1.2 below on the section of Io. An alternative name for Jocasta is Iocasta.
297
See The Oedipus Cycle by Sophocles, translated by Dudley Fitts and Robert Fitxgerald.
Woman is often the representative of body and space, (Man of mind and
of time) but historically the body and space has been passive and, as a place
holder for mans thought. Cixous writes in her essay Sorties: Out and Out
Attacks/Ways Out/Forays:
Moreover, woman is always associated with passivity in philosophy.
Whenever it is a question of woman, when one examine kinship
structures, when a family model is brought into play. ..It is even possible
not to notice that there is no place whatsoever for woman in the
calculations. Ultimately the world of being can function while precluding
the mother. Either woman is passive or she does not exist. What is left
of her is unthinkable, unthought.
298


In order for males to assume superiority in politics, religion and in
education, he had to subjugate the woman to an inferior place. In order for him to
be active, he had to put the woman in a passive position. But this is the stuff of
dualities, of ancient history, of metaphysics, and not the stuff of the future or even
of scientific reality. This artificial hierarchy has the appearance of being a
structural necessity the imposed ingredient to allow the machine to work:

And if we consult literary history, it is the same story. It all comes back to
man to his torment, his desire to be (at) the origin. Back to the father.
Philosophy is constructed on the premise of womans abasement.
Subordination of the feminine to the masculine order, which gives the
appearance of being the condition for the machinerys functioning.
Shut out of his systems space, she is the repressed that insures the
systems functioning.
299


298
Cixous, Continental Philosophy, p. 375
299
Cixous.ibid. p. 376.

In the past, simplifying objects and systems to dualities had been helpful
in circumscribing and defining its component parts. In order to prove that the
system existed man had to own it, and to dissect and classify it in order to
understand it. But Cixous writes that a feminine writing will supercede all
definition and boundary and cautions that that does not mean it does not exist:
At the present time, defining a feminine practice of writing is impossible with an
impossibility that will continue; for this practice will never be able to be theorized,
enclosed, coded, which does not mean it does not exist.
300
In this last passage,
Cixous writes that the unpredictability of feminine writing may be a necessary
step in the evolution of language. In writing, Woman redoubles herself going
back into history to retell, or to find another origin -- an origin which might include
hearing
301
the sound which comes before language. This is the beginning of
creativity:
She alone dares and wants to know from within where she, the one
excluded, has never ceased to hear what-comes-before-language
reverberating. She lets the other tongue of a thousand tongues speak
the tongue, sound without barrier or death. She refuses life nothing. Her
tongue doesnt hold back but holds forth, doesnt keep in but keeps on
enabling. Where the wonder of being several and turmoil is expressed,
she does not protect herself against these unknown feminines; she
surprises herself at seeing, being, pleasuring in her gift of changeability. I
am spacious singing Flesh: onto which is grafted no one knows which I

300
Cixous, ibid., p. 377.
301
Hearing as opposed to listening, as listening is conscious, and hearing includes those sounds
we are unaware of but that still effect our bodies and brain. I t is impossible to listen to the
sound that comes before language, because it is silent.
which masculine or feminine, more or less human but above all living,
because changing, I
302


One does not have to understand or translate this feminine writing nor
does one have to be able to explain the form it will take but one must allow it to
be, to be written, uncensored in all of its manifestations. This writing includes a
type of writing that exceeds and comprehends language in the Derridean sense.
It is a feminine writing which includes future performances, computer code,
mathematical equations, and scientific discoveries: any writing (mark) which is
deposited and remembered as part of the essential historical and classical canon
of human invention. This writing is part of the female voice and is not dissimilar
to the other female voices, in fact it may be the same voice and the same
message much like a sound which, even though it had already existed, it is
now only heard because a similar sound is reverberating in unison with it in
sympathetic motion, thereby increasing its volume into the threshold of hearing.









302
Cixous, Sorties, ibid, p. 376-377.
PART THREE: Conclusions

3.1 Generation after generation

3.1.1 The Mothers Tongue

The origins of language and of the phonetic alphabet is an inexhaustible
and indefinable subject. The author began to address the issues of the female
body and language in her performance work in the early 1990s
303
and in 2001
wrote her first essay on the subject.
304
The ideas came intuitively, and eventually
there was a need to support these ideas with factual evidence. Thus the research
widened to include Near East archeology and ancient history and the study of
ancient philosophers.
But, even with historical and archeological evidence, the ideas are difficult
to prove definitively. One of the conclusions the author can definitely stand by, is
that there is a need for a new mythology and a new history of mankind, one that
will include the story from the perspective of females. A history which will also
include important forgotten peoples, the people who were destroyed in warfare
but might have a philosophy and a way of life significant for the future of
humanity. The following cannot be proved, it is the summarizing musings of the
author on the origins of language. These speculative musings are written in a
free flow generality of thought, no dates or specific geographical locations are
given, and no footnotes will be cited for factual proof. The factual and historical
evidence is confirmed and strengthened by the authors personal experiences as

303
The HearTH (1990), Artem(Is) Rising, (1993), Private Eye/Public Hand(1995), Dreaming the Page: a
Trilogy (1995) ANNE:Shit or the grandmother of God? (1996), the Hestia Project (1999), and the Aleph
Project (2002).
a mother and subsequent evidence is verified by fifteen years of interdisciplinary
research into the subject. The book Women and Music by Sophie Drinker was
used as inspiration for the section on the first rituals and sound images made by
women in ancient tribal communities.

The evolution of the origin of languages was a long, natural process which
began with each tribe teaching their children the few words that were in use at
the time, and the next generation added a few new words of their own, and it
went on like that for many millennia. It is most likely that the mother
305
was the
one who taught the child to speak, as even now it is well known that when a
mother speaks a certain language the child will also speak that language. In
many cultures, children were left in the mothers care until the age of five or so,
and then they were admitted into the activities of the community. It is the same in
most parts of the world today: most children are at home in the care of their
mothers until they are five or six, and when they begin school they enter the
larger, more public group of society. Language is not born of societies but
societies are born of languages; and language was not created for translation
between different cultures, but rather it was initially invented for communication
within the family or tribe, and, more specifically, between the mother and her
child.
3.1.2 Symbolic and Phoneti c Writi ng

304
The Story of A: or the fall of Hestia, 2001, www.elisekermani.com/hestia.html.
305
The term mother here is used to represent the person who is the main caretaker of the child.
Written language was born from a need to communicate something
symbolic beyond the spoken word. The very earliest scripts were visual symbols,
or marks which widened the meaning of an object/concept and/or subject to its
multifarious religious, ritualistic, practical, phonetic, and/or narrative purposes.
Later, writing had the function of limiting a word or concept, by locking in an exact
phonetic pronunciation and distilling, clarifying and containing its definition.
More advanced systems of writing were developed to establish a rule of
law within societies, and as an aid to memory for large communities which traded
with each other. Stamps were used as a way to keep an account of marketplace
transactions. This practise of using stamps was the origin of money and
economics, but not the origins of written language as literature.
Phonetic writing was developed to create an exact aural imitation of the
word. This system of writing phonetically was very useful across many cultures
and languages.
The written word was also used to seal a contract, as the oral word could
not be committed to memory or be stored for posterity. For instance, in a court of
law, a verbal or aural agreement would not hold, but a statement written on paper
with your handwritten signature would.
Other advanced forms of writing were used to record mythological,
historical and religious stories of their own people and their gods. The message
of the monotheistic religions might have been to simplify the spiritual message, to
reduce the stories and personalities of many gods to one story and one God. In
order to communicate a message much information must be thrown away, even
if the material, which is discarded, is useful and has practical applications. In
reducing the message to one story and one god, much of history has been lost.
Through the written word, the monotheistic God of the J ewish people instructed
his followers to destroy all evidence of any other gods, and all the objects and
temples of the aboriginal pagan religions were decimated. The concept of one
truth, one story and one god had continued on into the Christian and the Islamic
religions.
3.1.3 The Femi nine Aspect
This ideology of one truth was written from the male perspective, and by
excluding the womens perspective history has been distorted. In reality, any
particular subject has more than four dimensions, constantly fluctuating in time
and space. At any moment, and from any viewpoint, one observer can capture a
glimpse of the object, but this will always be a flat observation, flattened by the
slice of time and the particular circumstances in which the object was viewed by
this singular subject. Women though, have historically and biologically
experienced a splitting and fluxation of the subject, especially in their
experience of pregnancy and childbirth. In pregnancy, a mother is always more
than just herself. Even after childbirth, her body remains an extension of the
childs. Because of this mostly feminine experience the idea of boundaries, the
separation between I and you, are more blurred in the female.
By omitting the female perspective in intellectual and spiritual endeavors,
humanity has handicapped its capacity to understand certain difficult subjects,
and the progress toward understanding how our universe works has been
stunted.
The ancient gods who were worshipped before the appearance of the
monotheistic J udeo-Christian God had characteristics of the maternal, and the
leaders of the new monotheistic religions felt the need to repress the female
aspect, or the feminine point of view in order to gain control over their people. By
repressing one half of the human population as subjects, the development of
humanity has been distorted. Women, because they are physically different than
men, have a unique perspective, which, if allowed to fully express itself, might be
an answer to humanitys most perplexing scientific and philosophical problems.
Men will benefit from a feminine point of view, just as women have
benefited from entering the world from the masculine perspective. The difference
between the genders is important and must be allowed to evolve without barriers.
This unexplored territory will undoubtedly create some delightful surprises as well
as some horrible outcomes and setbacks
306
, but it is evolutionarily necessary,
has already started (in the early 19
th
century) and now cannot be stopped. At the
beginning of the 21
st
century, the feminine aspect has finally found a solid
foundation in the western world: most girls are educated equally, women are
allowed to vote and run for political office, women can study science and
compose symphonies, women can demand equal pay for equal workbut even
beyond that, the feminine is an acceptable quality for both men and women to
develop and aspire to. This is a positive trend, but it has its own backlashes and

306
The author attributes the current subserviant role of women in some places of the world to a backlash to
the movement of womens rights in the West.
hiccoughs, and it may take many centuries until females can fully participate as
equals and at the same time as women in society. The cultural movement
toward the feminine element must and will continue into maturity.
3.1.4 The Body and Virtual Reality
Human beings have bodies because we have minds. When the body dies
(when the heart stops beating) the mind dies, unless it is artificially kept alive with
a medical intervention. The body is a curse inflicting multiple limitations and
defining mortality, but it is also the only reality for human existence. Virtual reality
is an interesting art form, but it is only thatit is a techne of man and will never
be able to contain the real body. There is only one world and that is the physical
one we live in.
By establishing virtual reality as an alternative to the real world, humans
have rejected Nature. But we can never overcome or recreate Nature. In the end,
Cadmus will always be transformed into a snake. This will to create a second or
alternative Nature extends from the same urge to dominate the earth and turn
away from the maternal. In the spirit of Heideggers Geviert, humans should step
up to the realization that they possess an understanding of Nature not to
dominate it but to protect it; and with that knowledge comes the responsibility of
not trying to control it, but rather to work within its laws. Virtual reality does not
physically exist it is an abstract intellectual excerise a valid excerise and art
form, but it is still just a shadow across the wall - 0s and 1s of computer code.
Humans should continue to study the simulacrum of virtual reality, perhaps not
only for the purposes of entertainment and education, but also for science and
other unexplored applications, and we should also never stop studying the
universe that really already exists. We should continue in our quest for
understanding the macro and micro realities of the physical world. Humans
believe they understand Nature there is an over confidence that we can
control itbut we are actually far from the full knowledge of Natures patterns
and secrets that which we will need in order to continue our existence safely into
the future.
3.2 The Human Brain and Childbirth:
a mythical tale of human history
3.2.1 The First Words
When the ancient humans skull began to grow to allow for a larger brain,
human babies became more and more difficult to birth. As the head of the fetus
grew, the pain and danger of childbirth also increased. Many years ago, figurine
sculptures were made in the positions that ancient women took to safeguard the
passage of the fetus, and these objects were made in order to ensure that the
next generation would also have the knowledge of how to give birth safely.
307

Since the fetus was large and difficult to birth, the pregnant female began
to vocalize to ease the pain of childbirth. Lower sounds, which actually vibrate
the lower parts of the body, were utilized, and the female was joined by other
females who vocalized and breathed with her, thereby increasing the power and
the volume of the sounds.
308
The rhythmic wailing helped the mother take her

307
See Gimbutas work in bibliography.
308
See Women and Music by Sophie Drinker.
mind off the pain and at the same time it helped her focus on the pushing work
she needed to do in order to birth the fetus. These communities of humanoids
were pre-verbal, but they had already learned to vocalize in extreme situations
such as when in pain and in danger. This is the cry or the wail stage of
language. The cry is given out with no recipient in mind, and no response is
expected.
At the moment infant is being born, the mother gives out a long cry and
when the child comes into the world, the child lets out a cry as well. Perhaps the
other females around the mother begin to cry in sympathy with the mother and
child.
The child is quieted by being put to the mothers breast and nursing. The
child falls asleep with the mother. The next time the child awakes he cries, and
the mother takes the child up in her arms and coos to him with a sh-sh sound, to
quiet his cries. This is the first sound made to elicit a response. The sounds
actually quieted the child, as the sounds reminded him of the safety of being
inside the mothers womb, and the infant falls asleep.
A few months pass, and when the infant wakes, he lets out a stronger cry,
the mother knows that the baby is hungry by the way the child is crying, and she
feeds him. The baby looks up into the mothers eyes, takes his mouth away from
nursing and makes a happy babbling sound with his mouth. The mother imitates
the childs sound and the child laughs. The mother repeats the sound and the
child laughs again. The other children in the tribe are watching one of the times
when the mother and child are cooing to each other, and they begin to make the
same babbling sound to the baby, and the baby laughs at them, too. If the father
returns from the hunt, he sits down next to the nursing mother and child and
watches as the mother and child who are cooing and smiling at each other, and
the father begins to smile.
After many, many years of this and other similar experiences, the tribe
begins to notice the animals around them and the noises they are making. The
birds are singing rhythmically, and wolves are howling with varying pitches. They
begin to understand what these animals are articulating and they instinctively
imitate these sounds for their own uses adding new sounds to their cries and
calls. Some of these sounds get formed into distinctive words. The first
languages were sentences of a few words but as the consciousness of the
humans grew their vocalizations of cries and calls transformed into more groups
of words and into the first sentences.
3.2.2 The First images
Meanwhile, while vocal language is developing, the humans are drawing
pictures and making objects of the things they see in their environment: the
bison, the stags, the river, the fish. Their imitation is vocal as well as visual.
Childbirth is still important to the tribe and they have learned the best ways to
safeguard the pregnant females and the newborn child. Every time a child is born
there is celebration. They begin to build shrines and temples to safeguard the
passage of new children into their tribe. They begin to inscribe sculptural
figurines with 9 or 10 marks on the vulva to superstitiously ensure a healthy
pregnancy. At the time of childbirth there is much singing and praying that the
child and mother will stay alive.
Some natural catastrophe occurs in the place where this tribe was settled.
They attribute the catastrophe to the vengeance of nature and decide to move
away from that cursed land in case it happens again. Many of the people died
but the ones that survived left their huts and moved to another location.
In this new location there is another tribe with similar customs, and for a
long time the two tribes were suspicious and hostile and kept separate from each
other. But eventually, they began to work together, for instance when a wild
animal was close and all of their lives were in danger. When they worked
together like this, they shared their customs and their few words with each other.
Their children began to breed with each other. Each tribe had different words for
different things and the vocabulary of the two tribes grew when they combined
their words all together. Since one of the tribes lived near water and caught fish
for food, they had a word for water and fish, and since the other tribe used fire
and cooked their meat, they had a word for fire and meat.
3.2.3 The first ri tuals
This, and similar things to this went on for many thousands of years.
Eventually tribes combined with other tribes and became larger communities of
people. In order to feed the larger groups, one of the tribes had discovered
planting seeds and growing crops. Once this technique was learned and
mastered, the tribe had installed a yearly ritual to remind the people how to sow
and harvest the grain, and they set up a celebration in thanksgiving every time
there was a good harvest. This tribe understood that the seed was planted in the
field and it took several months for the plant to be ready for harvesting, and they
also realized that something similar happens to the human when the male plants
his water in the female. Since the seed came from the earth and is returned to
the earth a philosophy of rebirth was imagined. It was also recognized that
symbolically the seed is the offspring, or the son of the earth. They began to
invent a yearly celebration when the males would inseminate the females to
coincide with the harvest -- believing that this would ensure enough food for all
the people.
In time, the harvests were so good that the tribe had excesses of food.
The neighboring tribe came to them and traded their own goods: perhaps their
livestock for the others grains. In the beginning they traded in a bartering
fashion, but eventually the transactions became so complicated that they made
stamps to account for what was traded and what was stored for the following
year. In the meantime, other tribes had settled in a different part of the world,
developing their own language and customs, and creating their own words and
writing systems. This tribe traveled by sea and was influenced by many cultures
and each time it traveled it picked up more information and integrated that
information into their own culture. But, because this tribe traveled so much it was
necessary for it to develop a system of writing that could be transliterated across
many languages and cultures. This tribe invented a phonetic way of writing. This
way proved so useful that many other tribes and cultures appropriated the
system, and modified it for their own uses.
During this time, the yearly harvest rituals of some of these agricultural
societies began to deteriorate into violent sacrifices and there was a quiet
revolution in some parts of the community to change the old ways of the people.
New stories that offered hope to the people were being circulated and some of
the stories were being written down. While this was happening the tribe was
attacked by outside forces, and these outside forces had weapons which were
much more powerful than what the agricultural communities had had. But, the
revolutionaries of the agricultural community had brighter minds than the warring
foreigners and they invented new weapons that were superior and they defeated
the outside intruders. These revolutionaries were celebrated as the true
protectors of the community and as they took over as the new kings, they took
over the older traditions; they instituted a new rule of law and instituted new ritual
practises. They wrote down these laws and also wrote down the stories of their
battles and began writing a history of their people. They also attributed their
victory to a god/king, and began to develop rituals to celebrate the new god/king
and the anniversary of their victory.
And this seemed to go on in many places at the same time, and as the
revolutionaries gained power and won their victories, they began to build new
societies and destroy the older cultures that went before them. Since the female
element and childbirth was such a strong and overwhelming aspect of the older
cultures, and since the event of childbirth was no longer a useful experience in
warfare, the position of the female in society in turn became the lowest, abased
place in society, like that of a slave. No longer was the woman a priestess in the
shrines dedicated to childbirth, no longer was she making marks on her pottery,
no longer was she even in control of her own children. Eventually, she was asked
to keep her voice low, to cover herself, not to worship with the men in the new
temple or to be seen anywhere publicly on the street, in fact, she was asked to
disappear within the four walls of her husbands house.
For thousands of years, warfare continued to be the focus of most
societies, especially the most powerful ones. But after much technical progress,
the tribes had developed weapons so superior that they could destroy the whole
earth and all the inhabitants, so the people began to wonder if another revolution
was necessary. They began to wonder if there might be another better way of
existing, and they looked back into ancient times to see if there was ever a period
in human history when warfare did not dominate all cultures.
3.3 The Female Genius
It is impossible to completely eliminate the Universal. When religion,
science and the arts had progressed throughout history, and at the same time
had systematically outcast, ridiculed and insulted the female principle as being
inferior, the female element continued to remain a constant. Humans could never
completely destroy the feminine element, because all life flows in a process that
follows maternal principles, and only woman experiences the literally maternal in
childbirth. It is well known that humanity still does not know all the secrets of how
our universe works, or even how our planet functions. Even within our physical
reality there are countless mysteries still to be solved, it is possible that humanity
needs the female perspective in order to unlock these mysteries.
The body, the spirit and the mind must all be actively engaged to solve the
puzzles which plague us. In order to progress as a species, humanity needs both
perspectives, the male and the female, to solve some of the most relevant
political and sociological problems. The female genius has yet to be manifested,
and it might take hundreds of years of repairing and preparing the way before
she can appear. Humanity has an obligation to keep preparing, repairing, and
waiting, alert -- just in case she is there in the next generation waiting to be
nurtured, and bring humanity into maturity. But, we must make space for Her.
The origin of language comes from the maternal body, not the abstract
mind, and in particular the first letters of the alphabet came from the female body
and ancient womens experience of childbirth. The origin of the letter A came
from the symbolic relationship of the anatomy of the female uterus, the bulls
horns and the magic ritual surrounding childbirth. The future of humanity rests on
the continuation of the realization of the primacy of the maternal, accepting it and
obeying its laws. In the maternal, there is no ethics, it just IS (esti). This set of
laws had been set in motion at the creation of the universe, and will continue until
its end. Humanity can choose to try and understand its laws, or to ignore them
and self-destruct. It is the purpose of this paper to leave a mark, and to deposit
some threads for the next generation to fully unravel.
3.4 In Conclusion
1. The mythological story of Cadmus the Phoenician about the origins of
the alphabet suggest that the alphabet came from goddess worshipping cultures,
and specifically, from the culture of ancient Egypt, and from the people who
worshipped Cadmus ancestor, the cow goddess, Io. Cadmus removes the
phallic teeth of the dragon, a symbol of the goddess, and plants the teeth in the
soil, and there where the seeds fell rose the future generations of Greece.
Cadmus founded the first families of Greece, but he is cursed because he defied
the law of Nature, by killing the Dragon. Oedipus and J ocasta are descendents
from Cadmus sown men -- the original families of Greece, and therefore, they
inherit Cadmus curse. The tragedy of Oedipus is not that he slept with his
mother, but that the symbolic religious language was overturned and reversed.
Oedipus and J ocasta form the ancient, holy mother/son couple linked to
agricultural societies. By writing The Oedipus Cycle, the plays which display a
literal story of incest, Sophocles destroyed a holy symbol and along with that a
whole symbolic way of thinking. Philosophers state that the origin of language
and societies began with the prohibition of incest, yet the pre-cursors to writing
are found in cultures that worshipped the goddess, and practiced the so-called
incestuous rituals. This is an indication that these cultures were made up of
highly organized states complete with their own laws and languages, but the
taboo of incest did not yet exist.
2.The origins of the letter A can be found in objects carved in ancient
Paleolithic (stone age) locations such as Catal Huyuk, of Turkey, and Elam, from
the Iranian plateau dating back to 4000-8000 BCE. The A comes from the
branching horns (bucrania) of the sacred bull, and it also originally represented
the female reproductive system. A, or alpha, is the beginning and is a symbol for
the beginning of life -- the moment that the child is born into the physical world.
3. As the newer writing cultures developed, the new literate leaders felt it
necessary to overturn and destroy the goddess cultures and remove all traces of
their existence. The Epic of Gilgamesh is one such story; but there are many
other stories in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, and in the Quran. With
the few archeological objects that have remained, and with the written Word
documenting the destruction of these ancient cultures, the puzzle of prehistory
can be pieced back together. There is historical evidence that some aboriginal
cultures victimized males as part of a seasonal ritual and it is quite possible that
there was a direct retribution against the goddess religion and this resulted in an
oppression of all females for these practices.
4. The historical violence toward the female element may be directly
related to the violence that some goddess cultures inflicted on males. If these
myths are true then it is possible that female priestesses systemically killed men
in yearly rituals, and that men were the victims in the pagan sacrifices. The new
revolution with a male god-head reversed the victimization as males became the
new perpetrators of violence and they subjected women into hateful submission.
5. The story of the fall of Hestia is another account of the submersion of
the female element in Greek Culture. Hestia, the goddess of the fire, gives up her
seat to Dionysis, the god of wine. Dionysis is the grandson of Cadmus, is one of
the sown men of Greece, and, he is a God. Dionysis taking of Hestias throne is
analogous to Cadmus slaying of the dragon, and Oedipus killing the Sphinx.
The etymology of Hestia indicates though, that she is the eternal one -- the ousia
(being), and essia (essence), and esti (it is) she is Being itself, and therefore
she/it cannot be destroyed.
6. Hawthorne continues the theme of the hestia in the character of Hester
Prynne (Hestia Pyre/Fire) in his novel The Scarlet Letter. Hester wears the letter
A, and is considered a goddess, although a cursed one, because she has sinned
and borne a child out of wedlock. This child of hers is not a male son, but rather a
female daughter, which is indicative of a religion older than Christianity, perhaps
of Demeter and Persephone, and the Early American Puritanical town is afraid
that the child is Evil and of the devil (from Eve).
7. Hestia is the monad, the silence before language, the ousia, esti. Hestia
is the what is. Paired with Hermes, the Hestia/Hermes couple forms a complete
feedback system of communication. Hestia is the thought or presence before the
word, Hermes the word or the telling (Eris) of speech.
8. Sound and the body form the proof of the actual physical reality of the
world. Humans cannot comprehend a world beyond sound (vibration) and body.
Without body there is no world, without body there is no sound, without sound (or
vibration) there is no existence. One does not come before the other, but exist
simultaneously in an interlocking structure of a double helix, to form the matter
and substance, the opposing but inseparable forces, the Sonic Soma of our
universe.
9. The origin of the alphabetical letters began with large vertical meanings,
encompassing symbolic, religious and existential signs. The early words started
general and moved toward the specific. In a comparison of two ancient
languages, Phoenician and Persian, we can see that the words for food (nun)
which was initially common to both cultures, only later differentiated into the
specific words fish and bread as the cultures required. Persia (Elam and Susa)
had a very important place in influencing western philosophy and culture, and
competed with Sumer in its historical influence on the origins of writing.
Nietzsche was influenced by the writings of Zoroaster and the Avesta, the holy
book of the indigenous Iranian prophet. The Avesta shares a sonic similarity to
the Roman Vesta (the goddess of the fire, from the Greek Hestia) and possibly
both the worship of fire and Hestia (Being/Essence) originate in ancient Iran.
The listening and the careful making of an opening are the origins of
language and of creativity there must always be a clearing for the new to begin.
In every clearing something will be destroyed-this is a law of Nature. The body is
a complex and ever-changing opening and can guide us back into the labyrinth of
the physical world - and let a future humanity be formed - a new humanity, and a
new origin, based on a fluctuating reality that has always been and, will always
be. Perhaps though, it is necessary to nurture a silence about this new reality,
that is, one should not try to censor, understand, define or capture it- but rather,
one should just allow it to be mysterious, unpredictable and inconsistent, with
all of its incomprehensible irregularities, living alongside us.






Sonic Soma
Elise Kermani

Bibliography :

Aeschylus. Prometheus Bound. Translated by David Grene. University of
Chicago Press, Chicago, 1942.

_________. Oresteia: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides.
Translated by Richmond Lattimore. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1953.

Agamben, Giorgio. Homo Sacer: sovereign power and bare life. Translated by
Daniel Heller-Roazen. Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1998.

Anger, Natalie. Woman: An intimate Geography. Anchor Books, New York. 2000.

Aravantinos, Vassilis. Thebes: fouilles de la Cadmae. 2002.

Avesta: The Gathas of Zoroaster (various translations)

Baring, Ann and J ules Cashford. The Myth of the Goddess: Evolution of an
image. Penguin Books, London, 1991.

Barnes, J onathan. Early Greek Philosophy. Penguin Group, London, 1987.

De Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. Knopf, New York, 1952.

Bhagavad Gita: the ethics of decision-making. Translated by Antonio T. de
Nicolas. Nicholos-Hayes, Inc., 2004.

Burkert, Walter. Greek Religion. Harvard University Press, 1985.

Calasso, Roberto. The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony. Knopf, Inc, New York.
1993.

Cixous, Helene. The Helene Cixous Reader. Edited by Susan Sellers. Routledge,
London, 1994.

Cogan, Robert and Pozzi Escot. Sonic Design: the nature of sound and music.
Prentic Hall, Englewood Cliffs, 1976.

Cook, B. F. Greek Inscriptions. University of California Press, Berkeley, 1998.

Cook, J . M. The Persian Empire. Barnes and Noble, New York, 1993.

Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guartarri. A Thousand Plateaus capitalism and
schizophrenia. University of Minnesota press, Minneaoplis, 1987.

Deleuze, Gilles. The Fold. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1993.

Derrida, J acques. Of Grammatology. Trans. by Gayatri Spivak. J ohns Hopkins
University Press, Baltimore, 1997.

Drinker, Sophie. Women and Music. Coward-McCann, New York, 1977.

Drucker, J ohanna. The Alphabetic Labyrinth The Letters in History and
Imagination. Thames and Hudson, New York, 1995.

__________________. Figuring the Word: Essays on Books, writing, and visual
poetics. Granary Books, New York, 1998.

Edwards, Ruth. Kadmos the Phoenician. Hakkert Press, Amsterdam, 1979.

Euripides. The Bacchae. Translated by William Arrowsmith. University of
Chicago Press, Chicago, 1959.

__________. The Bacchants. Dial Press, New York, 1936.

__________. The Phoenician Women. Translated by Peter Burian and Brian
Swann. Oxford University Press, New York, 1981.

Euripides I. The Complete Greek Tragedies Volume V. Edited by David Grene
and Richmond Lattimore. University of Chicago, 1955.

Freud, Sigmund. The Acquisition and Control of Fire in the Standard Edition of
the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, trans. by J ames Strachey,
vol. 22. London and New York, 1961.

Gimbutas, Marija. The Civilization of the Goddess, Harpers Collins Publishers,
1991.

Greene, Brian. The Elegant Universe. First Vintage Books Edition, New York,
2000.

Hardin, Donald. The Phoenicians. Praeger, Inc., New York, 1962.

Hawkes, J acquetta. The First Great Civilizations: Life in Mesopotamia, the Indus
Vally, and Egypt. Hutchinson and Co, Ltd., London, 1973.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter.

Heidegger, Martin. Basic Writings. Edited by David Farrell Krell. Harper Collins,
San Francisco, 1993.

Herm, Gerhard. The Phoenicians-the Purple Empire of the Ancient World.
Translated by Caroline Hillier.William Morrow and Company, Inc. New York.
1975.

Herodotus. The Histories. Translated by David Greene. University of Chicago
Press. Chicago, 1987.

Herodotus, The Histories. Translated by Aubrey de Selincourt with notes by J ohn
Marincola. Penguin Group, London, 1996.

Hesiod. The Works and Days, Theogony and The Shield of Herakles. Translated
by Richmond Lattimore. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 1987.

Herzfeld, Ernst. Iran in the Ancient East. Oxford University Press, New York,
1941.

Hesiod and Theognis. Translated by Dorothea Wender. Penquin Group, London,
1973.

Hite, Shere. The Hite Report. Dell Publishing, New York, 1976.

The Holy Bible, King J ames Version, Thomas Nelson, Inc, Nashville, 1977.

The Holy Quaran, translated by A. Yusuf Ali, Dal Al Arabia, Beirut, 1968.

Homer. The Illiad. Wordsworth Editions Limited, 1995.

________. The Odyssey. Trans. by Robert Fitzgerald. First Vintage Classics,
New York, 1990.

The Homeric Hymns. Trans. by Charles Buer, Spring Publication, Dallas, 1970.

The I-Ching. Translated by Thomas Cleary. Shambala, Boston and London,
2003.

Irigaray, Luce. An Ethics of Sexual Difference, Cornell University, Ithaca, 1993.

_____________. Key Writings. Continuum, London, 2004.

Kashani, Abbas Aryanput. Iranian Influence in Judaism and Christianity. Kayhan
Press, Tehran, 1970, 1973.

Kovacs, Maureen Gallery. The Epic of Gilgamesh. Stanford University Press,
Stanford, 1989.

LaBelle, Brandon and Steve Roden. Site of Sound: of architecture and the Ear.
Errant Bodies Press, Los Angeles, 1999.

Laird, Carlton. The Miracle of Language. The World Publishing Company, New
York, 1953.

Lewis, Bernard. The Middle East a brief history of the last 2,000 years.
Scribner, New York, 1995.

McLuhan, Marshall and Bruce R. Powers. The Global Village: Transformations in
world life and media in the 21
st
Century. Oxford University Press, New York,
1989.

McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extension of Man. McGraw Hill,
1965.

Mills, Lawrence Heyworth. Zarathustra and the Greeks. AMS Press, Inc. New
York, 1977. (reprinted from the 1903 Leipzig edition.)

Nakanishi, Akira. Writing Systems of the World-Alphabets, syllabaries,
pictograms. Charles Tuttle Company, Tokyo, 1980.

Nancy, J ean-Luc. A Finite Thinking. Stanford University Press, Stanford, 2003.

_______________. Being Singular Plural. Stanford University Press, Stanford,
2000.

Norretranders, Tor. The User Illusion: cutting consciousness down to size.
Penguin Group, New York, 1991, 1998.

Oliveros, Pauline. Deep Listening.

Ouaknin, Marc-Alain. The Mysteries of the Alphabet. Translated from French by
J osephine Bacon. Abbeville Press Publishers, New York, 1999.

Ovid. Metamorphoses. Translated by A. D. Melville. Oxford University Press,
Oxford, 1986.

Paglia, Camille. Sex, Art and American Culture. Vintage, New York, 1992.

Patai, Raphael. The Arab Mind. Charles Scribners Sons, New York, 1973.

____________. The Jewish Mind. Charles Scribners Sons, New York, 1977.

Pei, Mario. The Story of Language. Lippincott Company, New York, 1949.

Plato. The Collected Dialogues. Edited by Edith Hamilton. Princeton University
Press, Princeton, 1969.

_________. The Selected Dialogues. Translated by Benjamin J owett. Modern
Library, New York, 2000.

_________. Plato With an English Translation. Translated by Fowler. Harvard
University Press, Cambridge: London, 1926.

Powell, Barry. Homer and the Origin of the Greek Alphabet. 1991.

Revesz, G. The Origins and Prehistory of Language. Translated from the
German by J . Butler. The Philosophical Library, New York, 1956.

The Rig Veda: an anthology. Translated by Wendy Doniger Oflaherty. Penguin
Books, London, 1981.

Robinson, Andrew. The Man who Deciphered Linear B: the story of Michael
Ventris. Thames and Hudson, New York, 2002.

_______________. The Story of Writing. Thames and Hudson Ltd, London,
1995.

Ronell, Avital. Stupidity. University of Illinois Press, Chicago, 2002.

Schirmacher, Wolfgang. Homo Generator in Artificial Life: from a conversation
with Jean-Francois Lyotard. EGS Press, Toronto, 2005.

Sedley, D. N. Platos Cratylus. 2003.

Seife, Charles. Zero: the Biography of a Dangerous Idea. Penguin Books, New
York, 2000.

Sontag, Susan. A Barthes Reader. Hill and Wang, New York, 1982.

Sophocles. The Oedipus Cycle. Translated by Dudley Fitts and Robert
Fitzgerald. Harcourt, Inc. 1949.

Stierlin, Henri. Splendors of Ancient Persia. White Star S.P.A. Vercelli, Italy,
2006.

Strohmeier, J ohn and Peter Westbrook. Divine Harmony: the life and teachings
of Pythagoras. Berkeley Hills Books, Berkeley, 1999.

Thompson, Patricia. The Hestia Trilogy. Peter Lang, New York, 2002.

Thucycides. The History of the Peloponnesian War. Translated by Richard
Crawley, revised by R. Feetham. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc. Chicago, 1986.

Vernant, J ean-Pierre. Hestia-Hermes: Sur lexpression religieuse de lespace et
du mouvement chez las Grecs. In Myth et Pensees Chez les Grecs, 3
rd
Edition,
Vol. 1, pp124-170, Paris, 1971.

Von Soden, Wolfram. The Ancient Orient. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Company, Grand Rapids, 1994.

Wilson, Stephen. Information Arts-intersections of art, science, and technology.
MIT Press, Cambridge, 2002.

Zukofsky, Louis. A. University of California Press, Berkeley, 1978.



























Web site references:

Lambrou, Dimitris. The Controversy: Who invented the alphabet
http://phoenicia.org/alphabetcontrov.html

Burt Gamble, Elisa, The Phoenician or Hebrew God Set or Seth
http://phoenicia.org/godidea.html

Phoenician to English Dictionary:
http://www.aineldelb.com/activities/Dictionary//index.php

On Pythagoras:
http://phoenicia.org/pythagoras.html

Fragments from Hesiods Catalog of Women or Eoiae (or like her)
http://omacl.org/Hesiod/catalogs.html

Omniglot-scripts of the world
http://www.omniglot.com


Media References:


Hero a film by Hsieng Yi Lee

The Pillow Book a film by Peter Greenaway

The Shit of God a book and performances by Diamanda Galas

Titus a film by J ulie Taymour


Sonic Performance References by Elise Kermani: <www.elisekermani.com>

J ocasta a film based on Euripides play The Phoenician Women, 2007.
http://www.elisekermani.com/jocasta.html


The Aleph Project, intermedia installations at Deep Listening Space, 2002.
http://www.elisekermani.com/alephweb.pdf


Hestia Project CD-rom shown at Albany Center Galleries, 1999.
http://www.elisekermani.com/hestiaweb.mov


ANNE: Shit or the Grandmother of God? performed at the Experimental
Intermedia Foundation, 1996.
http://www.elisekermani.com/ANNE_peph.pdf



Private Eye/Public Hand performed at The Roulette, 1993, Cleveland
International Performance Art Festival, and P.S. 122, 1995.
http://www.elisekermani.com/pephweb.pdf


Dreaming the Page: A Trilogy performed at the Knitting Factory, 1996.
Script:
http://www.elisekermani.com/dream.html



Artem(Is) Rising, performed at The Kitchen, 1993.
http://www.elisekermani.com/AIRweb.pdf


THe HearTH performed at DiverseWorks Artspace, Houston, TX, 1991.
Solo vocal performance:
http://www.elisekermani.com/hearth.mp3



















Addendum Part One, Illustrations




Figure 1, a temple at Catal Huyuk, (from M. Gimbutas Civilization of the Goddess, p.
255)




Figure 2, Illustration of water motif on pottery from prehistoric southwest Iran, (from
Iran in the Ancient East, p. 43.)


Figure 3, Seal signs and early pictographic cuneiform from Elam and Sumer, (Iran in the
Ancient East, p. 44)



Figure 4, Early inscriptions on sculpture from W. Romania, (Civilization of the Goddess,
p. 311)



Figure 5, Old European core script signs, (Civilization of the Goddess, p. 310)


Figure 6, Comparison of Old European to Linear A scripts, both still undeciphered.
(Civilization, p. 320)




Figure 7, Body of Goddess as Temple, (Civilization, p. 257)




Figure 8, figurines with water signs, swastika and 9 chevrons signifying the 9 lunar
months of human gestation. (from Iran in the Ancient East)






Figure 9. Bronze figurine possibly from the Turang Tepe site in Iran. National Museum
Tehran, (p.44, Splendors of Ancient Persia)










Addendum Part Two: Supplemental Texts

A2.1 Excerpts from Platos Cratylus
309


Hermogenes: I think, Socrates, that we have said enough of the
class of words.
310
But have we any more explanations of the names of the
gods, like that which you were giving of Zeus? I should like to know
whether any similar principle of correctness is to be applied to them.
Socrates: Yes, indeed Hermogenes, and there is one excellent
principle which, as men of sense, we must acknowledgethat of the gods
we know nothing, either of their natures or of the names which they give
themselves, but we are sure that the names by which they call
themselves, whatever they may be, are true. And this is the best of all
principles, and the next best is to say, as in prayers, that we will call them
by any sort or kind of names or patronymics which they like, because we
do not know of any other. That also, I think, is a very good custom, and
one which I should much wish to observe. Let us, then, if you please, in
the first place announce to them that we are not inquiring about themwe
do not presume that we are able to do so.
311
But we are inquiring about
the meaning of men in giving them these namesin this there can be
small blame.

Hermogenes: I think Socrates, that you are quite right, and I should
like to do as you say.
Socrates: shall we begin, then, with Hestia, according to custom?
312

Hermogenes: Yes, that will be very proper.

309
Lines, 400d-401e translated by Benjamen Jowitt. Refer to this section for Chapter 1.7 and 1.9.
310
Socrates has just finished talking about body and soul. See Part Two of this paper, Chapter 2.2.1.
311
We only have the capacity to learn about ourselves by naming the gods, we cannot presume to learn
about them.
312
Hestia is often the first of the gods to receive prayers, libations or honor. See Chapter 1.7.4 for more
discussion of honoring Hestia when founding a city.
Socrates: What may we suppose him to have meant who gave the
name Hestia?
Hermogenes: That is another and certainly a most difficult question.
Socrates: My dear Hermogenes, the first imposers of names must
surely have been considerable persons; they were philosophers and had a
good deal to say.
Hermogenes: Well, and what of them?
Socrates: They are the men to whom I should attribute the
imposition of names. Even in foreign names
313
, if you analyze them, a
meaning is still discernible. For example, that which we term ousia is by
some called essia, and by others again osia. Now that the essence of
things should be called estia
314
, which is akin to the first of these
(essia=estia), is rational enough. And there is reason in the Athenians
calling that estia which participates in ousia. For in ancient times we too
seem to have said essia for ousia, and this you may note to have been
the idea of those who appointed that sacrifices should be first offered to
estia,
315
which was natural enough if they meant that estia was the
essence of things. Those again who said ousia seem to have inclined to
the opinion of Heraclitus, that all things flow and nothing stands; with them
the pushing principle (othoun?)
316
was the cause and ruling power of all
things, and was therefore rightly called osia.
Enough of this, which is all that we who know nothing can affirm.
317
Next in
order after Hestia we ought to consider Rhea and Cronus, although the
name of Cronus has been already discussed.


313
Its possible that Socrates is referring to Hestia as a foreign goddess/name.
314
estia is the same word as hestia as the letter H, the aspirate, arrives later in the Greek alphabet.
315
Another translation of this line is: the earliest (or the first) sacrifices were made to Hestia.
316
Related to Heideggers throwness or Dasein principle. Hestia is not a laid back entity, nor a submissive
goddess. The modern new age reputation of Hestia to be the accommodating one is wrong.

317
Socrates is frustrated with the inability to express such things in words, and the futility of going any
further, these are only his inspired guesses into the meaning of Hestia.
In the discussion of the gods names, Socrates began with Hestia and ended with
Hermes:
318

Hermogenes: Only one more god! I should like to know about
Hermes, of whom I am said not to be a true son. Let us make him out, and
then I shall know whether there is any meaning in what Cratylus says.
319

Socrates: I should imagine that the name Hermes has to do with
speech
320
, and signifies that he is the interpreter or messenger, or thief, or
liar, or bargainer; all that sort of thing has a great deal to do with language.
As I was telling you, the word eirein is expressive of the use of speech,
and there is an often-recurring Homeric word emeesato which means he
contrived. Out of these two words, eirein and meesasthai, the legislator
formed the name of the god who invented language and speech, and we
may imagine him dictating to us the use of this name. O my friends, says
he to us, seeing that he is the contriver of tales or speeches, you may
rightly call him Eiremees. And this has been improved by us, as we
think, into hermes. Iris also appears to have been called from the verb, to
tell (eirein), because she was a messenger.

If one examines foreign names, one does just as well at discovering the
meaning of each. For example, even in the case of this thing that we call
ousia (being), some people call it essia, (essential, essence) and other
osia. Well first, according to the former of these two names, the being
(ousia) of things has good reason to be called Hestia, and another reason
why it can correctly be called Hestia is that we ourselves, for our part, say
estin (is, ist) of what shares in being (ousia): for it seems that we too,
once upon a time, called being (ousia) essia. And second, even by
reflecting on sacrificial practice one could conclude that the name-makers

318
Line 407e, Cratylus.
319
Cratylus has joked with Hermogenes that his name is not true and that Hermogenes is nothing like the
god Hermes.
320
According to this paper Hestia then has more to do with the essence and silence of thought, and
Hermes with the expression, or speech of thought.
had this thought. It is, after all, quite reasonable that those people who
entitled the being of all things essia should have made Hestia the first
recipient of sacrifice
321
, ahead of all the other gods. But those who, for
their part, call it osia would believe what is tantamount to Heraclitus
doctrine that all the things there are on the move and that nothing stays
still
322
; hence they think that the cause and instigator of things is to
othoun (that which pushes(i.e. Heideggers throwness?) and that that
is why it is fine for it to have been named osia (pushing).
323


A2.2 Passages from the Holy Scriptures:
324


Exodus:
Thou shalt have no other gods before me. That shalt not make unto
thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven
above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the
earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the
Lord the God am a jealous God
325


God then instructed his people to destroy the altars and images of the other
gods, but His people found this difficult to worship something unseen and
abstract, and so they continued to worship the idols:
1.5.1b Deuteronomy
Ye shall utterly destroy all the places, wherein the nations which ye
shall possess served their gods, upon the high mountains, and upon the
hills, and under every green tree:

321
There are many translations of this phrase by Plato, each can be interpreted slightly differently as to
what is meant by Hestia is the first to receive sacrificessee discussion an alternate translation in
chapter 1.9.7. This could mean that Hestia was the very first god to receive sacrifices.
322
Chapter on Heraclitus, p. 117 Early Greek Philosophy: For it is not possible to step in the same river
twice.
323
Sedley, Cratylus line 401c-e, ibid.
324
Refer to this section for Chapter 1.5.
325
Exodus 20 verse 1-5, King James Version.
And ye shall overthrow their altars, and break their pillars, and burn
their groves with fire; and ye shall hew down the graven images of their
gods, and destroy the names of them out of that place.
Ye shall not do so unto the Lord your God.
326

And they left all the commandments of the Lord their God, and
made them molten images, even two calves, and made a grove, and
worshipped all the host of heaven, and served Baal.

Kings II
327

And they caused their sons and their daughters to pass through the
fire
328
, and used divination and enchantments, and sold themselves to do
evil in the sight of the Lord to provoke him to anger.
And the high places that were before J erusalem, which were on the
right hand of the mount of corruption, which Solomon the king of Israel
had builded for Ashto-reth the abomination of the Zi-doni-ans, and for
Milcom the abomination of the children of Ammon, did the king defile.
And he brake in pieces the images, and cut down the groves, and
filled their places with the bones of men.
Moreover the altar that was at Beth-el, and the high place which
J er-o-boam the son of Nebatm who made, both that altar and the high
place he brake down, and burned the high place, and stamped it small to
powder, and burned the grove.
And he slew all the priests of the high places that were there upon
the altars, and burned mens bones upon them, and returned to
J erusalem.
And the king commanded all the people, saying, Keep the passover
unto the Lord your God, as it is written in the book of the covenant.


326
Deuteronomy 12:2-3.
327
From Kings II, 21:5,6; 23:13-15 and 23:20-21.
328
Ancient rites of Canaan included the sacrifice and cremation of young children.
The next passage mentions Tammuz, the brother and lover of Ishtar.
Ishtar and Tammuz together form a divine couple from the ancient Babylonian
mythology. Every year Tammuz is mourned as the symbolic seed sacrificed to
ensure a good harvest. This ritual was so engrained into the early Israelite
culture that it must have been difficult for them to give it up.
Ezekial
8:10 So I went in and I saw; and behold every form of creeping
things, and abominable beasts, and all the idols of the house of Israel,
portrayed upon the wall round about.
8:14 Then he brought me to the door of the gate of the Lords
house which was toward the north; and, behold, there sat women weeping
for Tammuz.
8:16 And he brought me into the inner court of the Lords house,
and, behold, at the door of the temple of the Lord, between the porch and
the altar, were about five and twenty men, with their backs toward the
temple of the Lord, and their faces toward the east; and they worshipped
the sun toward the east.
9:4 And the Lord said unto him, Go through the midst of the city,
through the midst of J erusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the
men that sign and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the
midst thereof.
5 And to the others he said in mine hearing, Go ye after him
through the city, and smite: let not your eye spare, neither have ye pity:
6 Slay utterly old and young, both maids, and little children, and
women: but come not near any man upon whom is the mark; and begin at
my sanctuary. Then they began at the ancient men which were before the
house.
23:22 Therefore, o A-holI-bah, thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I
will raise up the lovers against thee, from whom thy mind is alienated, and
I will bring them against thee on every side;
25 And I will set my jealousy against thee, and they shall deal
furiously with thee: they shall take away thy nose and thine ears; and thy
remnant shall fall by the sword: they shall take thy sons and they
daughters; and thy residue shall be devoured by the fire.

The passage below mentions the whore from Egypt which could be Isis,
or Hathor. The Hebrews were trying to establish a patriarchy, and therefore it
was necessary to abolish the practise of anonymous intercourse with the
goddess/priestess:
27 Thus will I make thy lewdness to cease from thee, and thy
whoredom brought from the land of Egypt: so that thou shalt not lift up
thine eyes unto them, nor remember Egypt anymore.

The following refers to the Hebrews intermarrying with the local peoples,
and Yahweh commands them to separate themselves from the Canaanites
(Phoenicians). Even the kings and princes were guilty of intercultural marriages,
and God tells them to put away all the strange wives and children:

Ezra
9:1 Now when these things were done, the princes came to me,
saying, The people of Israel, and the priests, and the Levites, have not
separated themselves from the people of the lands, doing according to
their abominations, even of the Canaanites, the Hittites
2 For they have taken of their daughter for themselves, and for their
sons; so that the holy see have mingled themselves with the people of
those lands: yea, the hand of the princes and rulers hath been chief in this
trespass.
12 Now therefore give not your daughters unto their sons, neither
take their daughters unto your sons, nor seek their peace or their wealth
for ever
10:3 Now therefore let us make a covenant with our God to put
away all the wives, and such as are born of them, according to the
counsel of my lord, and of those that tremble at the commandment of our
God: and let it be done according to the law.
11 Now therefore make confession unto the Lord God of your
fathers, and do his pleasure: and separate yourselves from the people of
the land, and from the strange wives.
19 And they gave their hands that they would put away their wives;
and being guilty, they offered a ram of the flock for their trespass.

44 All these had taken strange wives: and some of them had wives
by whom they had children.




Addendum Part Three: the Jocasta DVD,
a film by Elise Kermani
(see web site: www.elisekermani.com/jocasta.html for information
and listing of theatrical screenings and DVD distribution)