The Mysteries of Pre-Creation
Before the First Day
Unverified Personal Witness: A Way of Describing Our Experience, and Acknowledging its Limits
From The Zohar;1
What does the lily symbolize? It symbolizes the community of Israel. As the lily among thorns is tinged with red and white, so the Community of Israel is visited now with justice and now with mercy; as the lily possesses thirteen leaves, so the Community of Israel is vouchsafed thirteen categories of mercy which surround it on every side. For this reason, the term Elohim - mentioned here - (the very first verse of Genesis) is separated from the third by thirteen words from the next mention of Elohim, symbolizing the thirteen categories of mercy which surround the Community of Israel to protect it. The second mention of Elohim is separated by the third by five words, representing the five strong leaves that surround the lily, symbolic of the five ways of salvation which are the “five gates”.
This passage in the Zohar illustrates the tiniest glimpse of the ways which people have read, studied, and interpreted the very first words of Genesis. The writers of the Zohar, faithful Jews under duress in medieval Spain, looked for messages of protection and salvation behind the plain meaning of the words. I will not make the mistake of attempting to catalogue the ways in which these words have been read. Rather, I want to make a point about our relationship to the scriptures.
Once we establish the historical context in which we read scripture, knowing and acknowledging the limits of our own scriptural interpretation, and of the text itself, its’ living nature unfolds toward higher understandings of your relationship to God and the world in which you live.
The spiritual milieu of neopaganism and “occultism” use a concept called “unverified personal gnosis” to describe their own idiosyncratic understandings of their relationship to the divine. This avoids the common pitfall of mistaking one’s own perspective for that of the divine, itself. The number of pastors who, blithely and routinely, fall into that particular pit should be a source of shame and embarrasment for Christians.
A particularly egregious example of this is Antichrist Nationalist, Greg Locke, whose paranoia regarding “witches” blinds him to the nature of his own actions. As I mentioned before, I am very familiar with the magical practices of neopagans and occultists. As a result, I can recognize that Pastor Locke’s practices are absolutely indistinguishable from the practices of self-identified witches. The infamous incident where he wraps a bat with the pages of the Bible, then smashes a Barbie dollhouse with it2, is a textbook destruction spell. He has magical implements, endowed wth symbolic meaning, and is performing - to an audience, no less - a ritual with them. The purpose of this ritual is to cause the supernatural desctruction of his enemies.
If it quacks like a duck…
Ultimately, I don’t have any issue with these varieties of religious expression. However, it’s worthwhile to interrogate his intent and discern the spirit he’s invoking here. If he’s guided by the Holy Spirit, we should be able to see that. Anyone who thinks about it for more than ten seconds will immediately see that there is nothing loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, or self-controlled3 about his actions. If there were, he’d recognize his fellowship with others, and abandon his delusional notions of dominion.
So, to avoid this pitfall myself, I will borrow from those newer traditions and designate my perspective to be Unverified Personal Witness. That is to say, I will describe the ways in which the scriptures enrich my personal spiritual understanding. The purpose in me doing so, is to extend an opportunity of all who read it, so that they can participate in the continuity of the discourse of the Logos. My words are not the end of a discussion, but the beginning of one.
You are free to criticize, debunk, and even expand on my ideas. The point is that you engage sincerely, according to your own perspective in spacetime.
The Conditions of Pre-Creation
There is some disagreement about whether Genesis should say, “The earth was without form and void” or “The earth became without form and void”.4 From this ambiguity, I will begin to illustrate my perspective, according to my Unverified Personal Witness.
If the Earth became without form, then this implies that the condition of pre-creation was the result of a previous judgement. “Without Form and Void” more literally, “Waste and Void”, translated from the Hebrew Tohu v’ Bohu, is a turn of phrase which is found only two other times in the Tanakh, Isaiah 34:11 and Jeremiah 4:23. Both sources place the words together in context with the results of God’s judgement.5
The annotators of the NET Bible dismiss a connection. However, if the same annotators’ implication of a possible anti-Babylonian polemical context (The salt waters of the ocean as expressed in “The Watery Deep,” translated from the Hebrew Tehom, are under God’s control from the beginning; as opposed to the Babylonian context of the Goddess Tiamat or “The Salty Sea” needing to have been slayed as a condition of creation)6 are correct, that implies a possible editorial gloss by a redactor around the time of the Deuteronomic history’s composition. This, or by the redactor of the Pentateuch’s final form, which was commisioned by the Achaemenids. The same redactor could certainly have added both the phrasing of Isaiah and Jeremiah, in addition to the polemical material which exists alongside that particular turn of phrase.
The lively spirit of syncretism of Hindu religious faith is something that I find inspirational. In this spirit, which has resulted in delightfully novel interpretations of Jesus’ ministry, I borrow from their traditional stories. I pray this to be taken in a spirit of loving reciprocity, that mutual good-feeling between people may result.
Most Christians are familiar with Isaiah’s description of Lucifer’s fall.7 Many are not familiar with a similar story in the epic Ramayana, in which Ravana gains special favors, as a result of his great sacrifices to Brahma, the Creator. His blessing was that he could not be killed by any divine being. Like Lucifer, he was put above the rest of the Divine Host. Like Lucifer, he initiated a war on Heaven and also attacked the earth. In the Ramayana, his defeat is prophesied to come by both the hands of man and animal.8
Like in Christian tradition, the world undergoes a terminal spiritual crisis, and God is born on earth as a man. Here, the man’s name is Rama, and his divine allies also take birth. as his brothers and the intelligent ape, Hanuman. They defeat Ravana, as Lucifer was defeated by God in Isaiah, according to prophecy. Eventually, God returns as Krishna, and so creation is destroyed after that world’s final confrontation between good and evil, as depicted in the Mahabharata.
Krishna’s battlefield exhortation to the good king, Arjuna, is known to the Hindu tradition as the Bhagavat Gita, and is a powerful medicine to any who find themselves wondering about the terror-filled prospect of living in The Last Days.
As humanity, united with both the animal and divine natures, defined the course of the previous creation, so the course of our current earth’s development is defined by our alienation from both God and nature. Our terminal crisis was initiated at very nearly the moment of creation, and separated the sacred coalition which defeated evil in the world before ours.
Final Thoughts
In my opinion, this interpretation of the first two verses in Genesis represent a clear view of God’s plan for creation. Also, it offers a convincing answer to one Christianity’s most troubling ethical questions.
That is; why would a loving God allow anything like the Hell which exists in Christian theology, and even Jesus’ own words?
God creates a world, a terminal crisis occurs within that world, the resolution of that crisis occurs through God’s direct intervention, the development of that world continues to maturity, then God returns to enact his judgement upon it. The result of this judgement is that part of His creation is redeemed, and then returns to him and his world. The other part is reduced to Waste and Void, in order that work of God’s creation can continue, and is then reborn into renewed life.
Therefore, Hell isn‘t a punishment, but a circumstance which is the result of God’s own limitations. Borrowing again from another tradition, this time the Buddhist. In that tradition, human birth - or whatever created world’s equivalent - is a fortuitous and uncommon occurence. The pleasurable distractions and unbearable sufferings, which are the result of other kinds of births, prevent the kind of clear vision which is the condition of Spiritual Liberation.9
We can see the same cycles of crisis-with-the-result-of-intervention, and the intervention-with-the-result-of-dissolution play out in our lives, and we can take no static material reality for granted. Indeed, functionality as a human requires adaptability to constant change. Here, we have a unique opportunity to engage in spiritual practice, to study the holy scriptures of our species’ common history, to recognize the guidance of The Holy Spirit, and to return home.
If one’s body and soul is reduced into “waste and void,” they are not eternally lost, from God’s perspective, but the intervening ages between precious human births are experienced as such, and so the imperative is to take advantage of this incredibly narrow window of opportunity. Furthermore, considering the usual nature of divine beings, we are doubly fortunate to live in a world created by a god who engages in the duties of a Bodhisattva, whose entire aim is to liberate all creation from suffering, and who will block they way from hellish rebirth to all who accept his offer of advocacy before the judge of the living and the dead.
God’s plan then, isn’t a war. It is, as Grant Morrison put it in his comic, The Invisibles, a rescue mission.
According to that intent, I’ll end today’s message with a passage from The Gospel of Thomas:
(57) Jesus said, "The Kingdom of the Father is like a man who had good seed. His enemy came by night and sowed weeds among the good seed. The man did not allow them to pull up the weeds; he said to them, 'I am afraid that you will go intending to pull up the weeds and pull up the wheat along with them.' For on the day of the harvest the weeds will be plainly visible, and they will be pulled up and burned."
- To The Coming Winds
Tzvee Zahavy, The Zohar in English, self-published, 2022, p. 15
Pastor Greg Locke Smashes Barbie’s Dream House with a BIBLE-WRAPPED BASEBALL BAT (Full Version), Christian Preaching, posted on 8/20/2023 ,
NET Bible, Galatians 22-23
NET Bible, Genesis 1:2, footnote E, p.1
NET Bible, Genesis 1:2, footnote G, p.1
NET Bible, Genesis 1:2, footnote I, p.1
NET Bible, Isaiah 14:12-17
Krishna Dharma, Ramayana: India's Immortal Tale of Adventure, Love, and Wisdom, Mandala, 1999, p. 3-20
Dudjom Rinpoche, Jigdrel Yeshe Dorje, A Torch Lighting the Way to Freedom: Complete Instructions on the Preliminary Practices, translated from Tibetan by The Padmakara Translation Group, Shambhala Publications Inc, 2016, p.59-72