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THE VOICE AND THE VACUUM : THE WANDERING WAVES OF WEIGHTLESS WORDS.

“There exists, for everyone, a sentence - a series of words - that has the power to destroy you.

Another sentence exists, another series of words, that could heal you.” - Philip K. Dick.

Let us imagine for a moment that the universe emerged through a single sound, a resonant poetic reverie of stars being dispersed like words through the cathedral of empty space. This resonance, carried along gravitational waves, belongs to another sensory spectrum than the sounds we are usually accustomed to hearing as vibrations through the air. The sound of the universe, by contrast, is the sound of a silent phrase being echoed through the vacuum of eternity as aether - a living language of light.

Words have long since been associated with creation and every creation story currently known invokes the idea of sound, song or the spoken word as the catalyst for the transformation of energy into matter.

In the New Testament, the Gospel of John begins, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” It was the Greek term ‘Logos’ which was translated into ‘word’, ‘speech’, ‘principle’ or ‘thought’ to become an active agent of divine resonance which enfolded itself within the immanence of nature.

The Word - ‘lexis’, shared a similar origin as Logos in the verb ‘légō’, itself meaning ‘to tell’, ‘to speak’ or ‘to bind’ - a concept out of which grew the term ‘religion’.

Following this tradition in the Classical texts of ancient Greece, as the ‘Invocation’ reads in the creation story of Ovid’s ‘Metamorphosis’, “My soul is wrought to sing of forms transformed to bodies new and strange! Immortal Gods inspire my heart, for you have changed yourselves and all things you have changed! Oh lead my song in smooth and measured strains, from olden days when earth began to this completed time!”. We can see the idea of sound being used as a cosmological phenomena, central in the creation process itself. Furthermore, it is also shared across all ancient traditions that can be considered either alchemical, astrological or shamanic in essence.

As far back in time as pre-Vedic traditions, in Vajrayana Buddhism and other tantric schools of thought, the Bijas (or fundamental syllables) are thought of as energy centres that exert their influence when chanted. There are seven Bijas found at the centre of each chakra, with each sound corresponding to the seven planets of classical astrology. Literally meaning ‘seed’, each Bija, when strung together as a mantra, creates a garland of letters (Varnamala), which become the sound embodiments of the Matrikas (the seven divine mothers of Hinduism).

Similarly, the creation story of the Vedic and Hindu deity Prajapati, describes how the world was created in collaboration with Agni - the god of Fire and speech.

Having being the first deity to be self-born of an egg (Hiranyagarbha - Golden Embryo), the symbolism of Prajapati is also closely related to the early European myth of the Orphic and Mithraic traditions, where Phanes (the light-bearer) is also the Protogonos (or First Born) and was known as the first god "expressible and acceptable to human ears”.

In Jungian Depth Psychology, as well as being visualised in Carl Jung’s Rod Book, language, the spoken word and the use of fire are all the result of psychic energy or libido (mana - mind) emanating from the rhythmic activity of the mouth. It is an expression formed in the cavity of the mouth which symbolically becomes a place of birth, analogous to the egg.

Jung, in his ‘Collected Works, Volume 6: Psychological Types’, describes it, after the Upanishads, as follows:

“These passages show that the principles into which the world-creator divides himself are themselves divided. They were at first contained in Prajapati, as is clear from the following: Prajapati desired: I wish to be many, I will multiply myself. Then he meditated silently in his Mind, and what was in his Mind became brihat (song). He bethought himself: This embryo of me is hidden in my body, through Speech I will bring it forth.”

Similarly, in the ancient Dogon traditions of Mali, that reach back into a time before Dynastic Egypt, the seven pulses of the Aduno Tal (the cosmic egg) were thought of as the seven sounds of Amma - the creator, who upon speaking these sounds, broke open the Aduno Tal to release fibres that extended towards the earth. These fibres were considered to be the first words known to man.

As a cross cultural influence upon the ancient Egyptian concept of the Zep Tepi (the First Occasion), the seven pulses of Amma then create the Ogdoad - the eight deities of creation. The seven and the eight often carrying esoteric knowledge of harmonic principles that would later inform Western Gnosticism.

The Ogdoad, in some accounts, speak of two particular deities known as Ptah and Amun. Ptah was a contemplative deity, who could manifest things when speaking from his heart, and Amun (a word meaning ‘to establish’, which is also spoken at the end of a prayer) held the meaning ‘to affirm’ or ‘to establish’.

This relationship between cosmology, astrology and the spoken word has been at the foundation of the psyche and of western science since Pythagoras acquired knowledge about the universe during his well documented studies in Egypt, India, and through contact with the Celts of western Europe and the Iberian peninsula.

This knowledge led to concepts such as the Celestial Monochord, an idea thought to have been revived by Pythagoras from even earlier Sumerian texts on cosmology and the musical scale -  with the musical scale itself being derived from the structure of the solar system.

At the heart of this concept was the sacralisation of the vowels (of which there were initially seven), which were used in rituals to invoke resonance. Throughout the ancient world and still practiced in some parts of the world today, these elements of speech are used to invoke the influence their corresponding planets:

A, alpha (a) - Moon

E, epsilon (short e) - Mercury

H, eta (long e) - Venus

I, iota (i) - Sun

O, omicron (short o) - Mars

Y, upsilon (u) - Jupiter

0, omega (long 0) - Saturn

(Sourced from: ‘The Mystery of the Seven Vowels’ , by Jocelyn Godwin)

In his book ‘The Manual of Harmonics’, Pythagorian philosopher, Nicomachus of Gerasa, wrote that  “the tones of the seven spheres, each of which by nature produces a particular sound, are the sources of the nomenclature of the vowels… (and their) tone in this context performs a role analogous to that of the monad in number, the point in geometry, and the letter in grammar.”

The monad in this sense relates to the gnostic concept of the unity of god, or the emanation point of light as it descends to form matter. Other names include Aiōn Teleos (the Perfect Aeon), Bythos (Depth or Profundity), Proarchē (Before the Beginning), Hē Archē (The Beginning) and all point towards the idea of emergence, voidness, a breaking open of a cosmic egg to release the first sounds, or the Pleroma - another gnostic term meaning ‘the fullness of divine powers’. These seven sacred vowels can be considered to have their own gravitational mass, around which the consonants of speech find their rhythmic order.

As all ancient esoteric teachings would suggest, resonance, periodicity and harmonic intervals are what give space its very structure. In the case of many ancient languages, vowels were sometimes unwritten, and in modern languages, vowels can be interchanged without much corruption to the meaning of a word.

At least in terms of metaphor, this idea can be extended to give a physical process to words as they are formed on a page or spoken into four dimensional space.

If we equate ideas of light and sound to the written and spoken word, and meaning to the idea of mass, then the formation of waves extends from a geometric point as meaning begins to accumulate. This is the inspiration behind the conception of the universe as a song, and changes in its physical structure can be expressed through the rhythm of words, sounds and symbols, as they pass through an invisible medium - an aether.

Although this poetic language might make this process difficult to grasp, its relevance as an esoteric metaphor is just as profoundly heard in modern conceptions of cosmology.

According to recent studies by Nasa, sound waves from the early universe, called Baryon Acoustic Oscillations, left a similar imprint upon the structure of the cosmos by influencing the periodicity of later galaxy distribution.

“For most of its first half-million years, the universe looked extremely different than it does today. Instead of being speckled with stars and galaxies, the cosmos was filled with a sea of plasma – charged particles – that formed a dense, almost uniform fluid.… Alternating between the pull of gravity and this repelling effect created waves of pressure – sound – that propagated through the plasma. Over time, the universe cooled and particles combined to form neutral atoms. Because the particles stopped repelling each other, the waves ceased. Their traces, however, still linger, etched on the cosmos.”

The non-physical, esoteric or musical aspect of reality has been considered as one of the most subtle elemental forms, necessary for the propagation of light through space on its journey towards its most gross elemental state of becoming physical matter. This movement has long been conceptualised symbolically in ancient and alchemical traditions as caiman, turtle, serpent, ladder, tree, mountain, pillar or tower. All being motifs of the ‘Axis Mundi’. As the central axis for all future orientation, they serve as bridges or conduits between different planes of existence.

Prior to being abandoned by physicists in the late 19th Century, this subtle, non-physical, elemental form was known as ether. As the fifth element, it was called by the Hindus ‘akasha’ (sky) and was closely correlated with the hypothetical ether of modern science, and was the interpenetrative substance that permeated all of the other elements.

However, since Einstein’s theories of Special and General Relativity, this conception of ether fell out of use, but according to Laughlin, in his book ‘A Different Universe: Reinventing Physics from the Bottom Down’, he states that “it is ironic that Einstein's most creative work, the general theory of relativity, should boil down to conceptualising space as a medium when his original premise was that no such medium existed. The word 'ether' has extremely negative connotations in theoretical physics because of its past association with opposition to relativity. This is unfortunate because, stripped of these connotations, it rather nicely captures the way most physicists actually think about the vacuum…”

Ether was thought of as an invisible substance, sometimes called Luminiferous Ether (or light-bearing ether), through which light particles travelled to give them their wave-like appearance.

As light moves in waves, it requires a medium to move through, and ether was the mystical substance, appearing thinner than air and without any apparent properties in and of itself, that was evoked in order for light to travel - its non-existence a reference perhaps to the ‘self-born’ nature of Prajapati.

Throughout history, ether has also been associated with many terms within the domains of metaphysics and the atmospheric phenomena associated with ethereal abilities such as astral projection and telepathy, of which the technology of the written word shares some mysterious attributes.

Referring to ’The History of Magic’ by Eliphas Levi, the occultist Manly P. Hall wrote that, “There is one vital substance in Nature upon which all things subsist. It is called ‘Archæus’, or vital life force, and is synonymous with the astral light or spiritual air of the ancients. Light, that creative agent, the vibrations of which are the movement and life of all things; light, latent in the universal ether, radiating about absorbing centres, which, being saturated thereby, project movement and life in their turn, so forming creative currents; light, astralised in the stars, animalised in animals, humanised in human beings; light, which vegetates all plants, glistens in metals, produces all forms of Nature and equilibrates all by the laws of universal sympathy - this is the light which exhibits the phenomena of magnetism, divined by Paracelsus, which tinctures the blood, being released from the air as it is inhaled and discharged by the hermetic bellows of the lungs."

A visual example of this can be seen in the geometry of the spoken ‘om’ - the Sanskrit syllable of creation, who’s cymatic signature (the visualisation of resonance through sand particles) resembles an ellipse, an egg and a human mouth.

Delving further into the region of the roots of spoken words we also come across the Sanskrit word, ‘Vac’, which means “speech” or “voice”, and can also be generally ascribed to the sound of inanimate objects as they fall or press against other surfaces.

As a personification in Hinduism, Vac is a goddess closely related to Sarasvati - the mother of the arts and sciences, who’s name also means ’She Who Flows Eloquently Onwards’. The close resemblance of Vac to the possible Sanskrit origins of English words such as ‘vocal’, ‘evoke’, ‘provoke’, ‘vocation’, ’vaccine’, ‘vacuous’, ‘vacuum’ and ‘voice’, show an obvious constellation of meanings referring to resonance and a calling towards, or an evocation of, a particular sensibility.

Their Latin associations of ‘vox’ (voice) and ‘vacca’ (cow) also conjure various metaphors referring to ancient mother cults of which the cow is often a central motif (the seven Hathors of ancient Egypt) especially relating to healing and the very source of life at the centre of the Milky Way.

What these examples seem to have in common, is that they rely upon resonance for their ability to function, and on a substance that passes through a medium, such as a liquid, a breath, a void, a chamber, a portal, a mouth, a word, which become catalysts to affect change upon a physical plane.

The kind of changes that the spoken word (and by extension the written word) can effect, may seem either obvious or purely imaginary at first thought, however, enfolded within the technology of the word is hidden a secret domain of physics that links our internal thoughts to the quality of space they exist inside of, when either spoken or written down.

In ’Science Set Free’, renowned biologist Rupert Sheldrake states that language itself is a form of mental extension that moves through physical space. “Extended minds are implicit in our language. The words “attention” and “intention” come from the Latin root tendere, to stretch, as in “tense” and “tension.” “Attention” is ad + tendere, “to stretch toward”; “intention,” in + tendere, “to stretch into.” Likewise, ‘technology’, for the media theorist Marshall Mcluhan, was anything that extended the sense faculties of the body. In the original sense of the word, from the Greek ‘techne’ - which means something closer to ‘technique’ - the whole technological sphere extends outwards through the use of tools, and by this extension, changes the very nature of the space that it extends into.

Interestingly, Mcluhan also thought that electricity, in its current mode of communication transfer, created an interface with reality that was much more akin to the ancient world’s perception of space and time as an all encompassing environment - a kind of ether as an acoustic field, in contrast to our modern detached world of linearity - linear time, linear space and linear script that favours the visual faculties and therefore ‘abstraction’. Mcluhan even suggested that the linearity of bricklaying was a form of language that shaped and regulated the function of modern urban spaces. Prior to this concept was the temple architecture (often embodying some geometric principles of the circle), which was summed up eloquently by Goethe’s phrase that “architecture is frozen, or crystallised, music”.

In some respects, there is a distinction between these ancient and modern conceptions of the spoken and written word which can be simplified even further into two dominant modes of perception - acoustic and visual.

The ear hears from all directions at once and so is simultaneous.

The eye sees from one direction at once and so is asynchronous

Do you see what I mean, or are you hearing what I’m saying?

The spoken and written word represents the drawing down of twisting energies from the aether - the all pervading plane of collective memory. When these energies are written in their graphic form, as letters, symbols or magical sigils, they impress upon reality the half fossilised signature of their original resonance through the ether. The invocation as a technique of manifestation then generates mass through sound in the same way that intention generates action. Like an accumulation of creative and destructive potential, these principles give gravitas (or gravity) to the weight of our words.

There is an interesting relation between ‘myth’ to its cognate ‘mute’, that would also suggest the new technology of the written word is moving the human psyche away from an acoustic world and toward a visual reality. For the acoustic person, the myth is simply a living dimension of memory, a form of hearing the resonant world and all the memories that are stored there.

Image: Ether by Ventral is Golden

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