Sumerian Mythology, Seas of Octagons and Nobel Prize Concerts

Ahhhh, December. The month that makes you cringe because you should be doing stuff in preparation for the end of the month, but you’re not. I am slurping down a delicious split pea soup, though. One of the advantages of colder weather: you can enjoy all sorts of thick, hearty soups you normally don’t eat when it’s warmer.

A sudden onslaught of readers from Sweden (21 of them in one day) and the Netherlands (2, ditto) had me thinking, "Wha ...?" until I remembered the Nobel Prize concert, 3 days from now, in Stockholm. Well, hello, Sweden and Netherlands!

Anyway, It’s December. I’ve just finished reading Samuel Noah Kramer’s Sumerian Mythology* as preparation for the second "book" of poetry: "Paradise Lost" turned upside down.

I’ve written the first seven sets of verses, which, in my theological world, began with a dream. Difficult to explain: an endless field of octagons, brightly lit from within, moving gently, and within each, twin souls, wrapped around each other, like a "yin" and a "yang" symbol, but not exactly. The souls were cared for, but I have no memory from that dream of anyone or anything beyond what I’ve described: a distant view of the nursery, the knowledge that I began there and the touch of my soul mate. This was my "memory" of a "soul’s nursery". I also remember the music in this dream, which could never be recreated, as it consisted also of sounds and notes which don’t exist in our world, so I can’t even describe them, other than to say that the sound was the very source of bliss.
*Kramer, Samuel Noah. Sumerian Mythology: A Study of Spiritual and Literary Achievement in the Third Millennium B.C. Harper & Brothers, New York. 1961, Revised Edition. First published in 1944, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia.

I was reading the story of Ashnan (the much beloved and very ancient Sumerian grain goddess, "the wise") and Lahar ("the cattle god"). Ashnan, by the way, was ancient enough that She first appears in the Sumerian Early Dynastic period (2900-2350 B.C.E.) according to Black, Cunningham, Robson and Zólyomi in 2004. As I read, I came across this sentence: "in those days, in the creation chamber of the Gods ... Lahar and Ashnan were fashioned." (page 73). I stopped reading and said, "creation chamber ...!"

Okay, that may not have specifically referenced a "sea of clear octagons in a soul nursery", but that was the closest I’d come in my studies to something I had seen in my dreams.

Even more fascinating was seeing the earliest cosmological stories that found their way into the three major religions of that region, and knowing that so many people thought they had "the only correct belief", without any awareness of the origins of their belief systems. While quite a few people know that the deluge story did NOT originate with the Book of Genesis, but with the Epic of Gilgamesh,  many have no idea how important it was that their primary patriarch - Abraham, present in all three - was  Sumerian.

Abraham the Sumerian was the primary patriarch of at least three major religions; I’m guessing that not a soul within those belief systems knows that Abraham’s father was a powerful oracle within the Sumerian religion - basically a priest in the Sumerian magickal system. I’m also quite sure that no one within those belief systems understands that when they refer to the "God of Abraham", they are referring only to a household God within Abraham’s pagan household. One of the greatest Gods within the Sumerian system was certainly not an insignificant household god in one household, even though the patriarch of that household (Abraham’s father) was a powerful psychic and oracle in Sumer. No, one of the greatest Gods of Sumer at the time would have been the God that the bible trashed repeatedly: Marduk.

More later.