by Harvey Kraft
Following the custom of legally binding contracts among traders in Mesopotamia, Abraham and Elohim made a Covenant. God instructed him to lead his clan to a bountiful land located “between the Nile and Euphrates Rivers” in return for his devotion and allegiance.
Abraham had hoped that his family and their generations to follow would submit to the will of God. In this way they would be able to live the life God intended for them and participate in the completion of their own purpose on Earth. God promised Abraham that in return for their loyalty he would guide them to paradise on Earth.
THE RIG VEDA
Heading in the opposite direction, following the dawn of the rising sun, a group of high-minded sages on horseback led a host of nomadic tribes. They were also on a quest for paradise, an echo of Sumerian myths describing an idyllic, divine land on the “eastern edge of the world.“ They rode in waves through Mesopotamia into south central Asia and India descending from the Pontic Steppes region between the Black Sea in Europe and the Caspian Sea.
Some of these shaman-led Arya tribes found their green paradise in the Indus region where they established the Kingdom of Gandhara (modern day northern Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan). This was where their sages recorded the poetic Rig Veda, the ancient Sanskrit hymnal. Although the tribes worshipped a variety of gods, their egalitarian seers envisioned them all as many aspects, facets, and faces of a Universal God. His divine expressions were formed of an amalgamation of thirty-three deva enclaves (groupings of spirit-beings made of light) representing the beneficial and protective attributes of Heaven.
The Arya migrations had included a formidable alliance of cultures with many languages, beliefs, and customs. Composed of nomadic kingdom-tribes, each had its own military might, the skills for herding domesticated animals, and the ability to practice agriculture where the land would allow. The allied tribes formed a flexible population able to spread out in multiple directions or unite when needed. They coordinated their movements like the orchestrated cycles in nature, by coming together, breaking away, and re-assembling as needed. Their sages fostered an unambiguous tolerance for differences among the tribes and their beliefs and engendered profound optimism in the face of natural challenges. The people relied on their sage-guides to decipher the patterns in the heavens and in nature before undertaking activities such as military battles, hunting, racing, relationships, and celebrations.
Descendents of the Lion-Sun Fellowship of shamans, the visionary Arya sages had turned to a cosmic igniter, Agni, the god-force who inflamed the mind with the fire of inner awakening. His passion would be needed for penetrating the super-conscious cosmic mind. In an “inflamed” state of meditation, the sage would be able to enter fourteen spiritual worlds, including seven Heavens and seven Hells.
Some of the Arya sages continued from Central Asia across the Indus River Valley into India where they encountered indigenous cultures. There they advanced another new religion, Brahmanism, based on the worship of a supreme divine Creator, Brahma. To establish the rule of their clergy, the Brahmins distinguished between those who were spiritually advanced and the remainder of the population. These seers were first to propose the Doctrines of Rebirth and Soul Reincarnation, an alternative system of accountability, and a dramatic departure from former beliefs in the afterlife. The Brahmins declared that every human soul would be reborn, and in the next life would reincarnate in a body and dimension befitting their behavior in prior lives. The only way to break out of this cycle would be to evolve spiritually until one’s soul was worthy of release from the bindings of the mortal plane. But the option to gain entry into the divine mind of Brahma, however, was available only to the Brahmin caste.
FUTURE STREAMS
Two competing religious cosmologies had emerged as the world was recovering from natural disaster. One defined human life as a single mortal existence; the other subscribed to rebirth. In the first, the virtue of a soul was judged and sentenced in the afterlife. In the second, the soul sought to escape suffering by evolving through repeated cycles of birth.
1. The Doctrines of the Afterlife and Divine Judgment in a Dual Cosmology Human beings would experience a single lifetime on Earth. Upon death, the human soul would separate from the body and ascend to appear before the court of the immortal realm. In the name of divine order, the judgment of the soul would be based upon status, merits, or sins accumulated during mortal existence. Once adjudicated, forever more the soul would be reconstituted in a physical form in one of two afterlife realms, transported either to an entombed netherworld or to a blissful paradise the gods had built in a distant section of the Earth. Souls judged to be corrupted or guilty of criminal activities would be served to a monster.
The Doctrine of the Afterlife set the stage for a cosmic duel between good and evil. Starting with the Persian religion of Zoroastrian, the fate of human beings in the afterlife would depend on one’s allegiance in life to a Good God rather than a Devil God. The concept later adopted by Western religions, harbored intolerance for competing deities.
2. The Doctrines of Rebirth and Soul Reincarnation in a Multidimensional Cosmos Like all things in nature, mortal beings would cycle in and out of existence. They would experience a multiplicity of lifetimes. Upon death the physical being would pass away and be reconstituted in another form, place, and time. Depending on the purity of one’s soul, the resurrected being could manifest in any one of a variety of forms anywhere in the multilevel Universe, including rebirth as human, animal, or spirit. The circumstances and destination of rebirth invariably depended on the purity of the soul.
In this cyclical cosmology good-natured spirits kept the world functioning harmoniously following the laws set up by the Creator, and Overseer of World Order. In opposition demonic forces perpetuated chaos and disaster. Those who followed Heaven by embracing the Laws of Divine Order on earth created social harmony and would be rewarded with better rebirth or escape from the cycle.
These two doctrines would form the foundation for future religions. The Doctrine of the Afterlife had evolved from Egyptian and Sumerian cultures. Aside from the question of monotheism versus polytheism, it would provide the basis for western religions, including Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
The Doctrine of Rebirth arose from the Lion-Sun shamanic cultures of Egypt and Eurasia. Just as the sun was reborn each morning, the soul would reappear in a new birth. And just as the lion could defeat any opponent, the shaman would aspire to defeat mortality. The seed for this view developed in Arya cultures, emerging in Vedism, became the foundation of Brahmanism and was further modified in the ensuing Sramana traditions of Buddhism and Jaina, until eventually it was encompassed in Hinduism.
Eastern religions were founded on some form of renewal process across cosmic time. However, with the exception of births in a heavenly domain, all other incarnations, including the human condition, would reflect some level of pain and suffering. This system provided an incentive for adopting virtuous actions that might in due course liberate human beings from the grip of cyclical mortality. As a result believers were encouraged to adopt exemplary paths of living, by embracing compassion, charity, doing no harm, and overcoming destructive patterns.
CHAPTER TWO
From Domination to Immortality
Nature nurtured life
Men desired immortality
The rains stopped
Dust fell from the sky.
Before the three hundred-year Epic Drought brought down the first established civilizations from Egypt to the Indus (2100–1800 BCE), the people had flocked to bejeweled temple centers to praise the gods. They danced on monumental ceremonial platforms among colorful flowers and devotional music as they praised the beneficence they had received from their divine overseers. The success of their farming settlements had created a euphoric belief in the power of the elemental immortals to deliver food, clothing, shelter, and wealth. People gladly made their sacrificial offerings, filled the temple vessels with precious metals, and volunteer
ed to help build the polished housing for the divine ones—the sources of all blessings. The economic, social, and spiritual institutions of permanent settlements were a giant leap forward from nomadic survival in the wild.
In the Mesopotamian city-states religious enterprisers had been responsible for establishing a society with stability and predictability. The clergy had drawn up a social contract between humans and the deities, an understanding aimed at establishing harmonious Natural Order. As managers of the contract, the priests offered ritual reverence and glorification to the gods and collected appropriate tribute payment for the influence the gods would exert to calm nature’s volatile forces. The gods also expected rent for allowing people to live on their land and a usage fee for the natural resources they created. A fair percentage share of everyone’s assets could compel nature’s forces to cooperate with human needs so that farming and herding can be conducted successfully. Compliance with the demands of the owner-gods was of utmost importance in the daily life of communities. Failure to do so could have dire consequences.
CREATION OF THE GODS
The shamanic legacy of the Mondial Cosmology had opened the way for the deification of the Elemental-Gods of the Sky, Earth, and Water and the Celestial-Gods of the Sun, Moon, and Stars. These two titanic trinities reflected the clergy’s effort to humanize the relationships between people and nature with themselves in the role of spokespersons or arbitrators for the gods. By embodying human attributes in the gods—distinct characteristics, physical bodies and features, sensual desires, opinions, job roles and skills—the priests could listen to them, converse with them, and call upon them. In their personified forms, the gods would speak, express thoughts and feelings, wear clothing, want food, wash, travel, and use weapons.
However, due to nature’s unpredictable behavior, the personal aspects of the gods could range from aggressive to graceful, prejudiced to fair, angry to cheerful, clever to rash, skillful to incompetent, and self-centered to cooperative. Nonetheless, in one significant way the gods were very different from human beings. They were immortal. Time, or the lack of it, drew a hard line in the sand between the relative low value of mortal life and the grand highness of the immortals.
Humans, unlike the gods, had to face the inevitability of death and its consequences, but the timing and means of one’s demise was in the hands of the gods. A relatively weak, inferior human race depended entirely on the powers and goodwill of Nature gods. Without water, earth, air, or the light from above, no plants, no animals, no nutrition, no fertility and no living beings could exist.
Looking down from above, some gods were better disposed toward humanity than others. They either regarded people as children who needed care or as mere nuisances, like pests. Declaring their absolute authority over society, the Sumer/Akkad priesthood had proposed that human existence itself came about merely because the gods needed workers to dig canals in the dirt. Irrigation canals were used to turn dry lands into fertile green fields. The gods wanted to create a beautiful paradise on Earth for their own pleasure.
The gods created the world, but how were the gods created? The priest-seers sat in trance until the vision of the beginning came forth. The first Creation of the World myth10 emerged from the Goddess of the Primordial Cosmos, Nammu (Akkad. Antu).
From the muddy womb of the Primordial Mother, Nammu, the God of Heaven, Anum, emerged. Then the semen of the father in Heaven copulated with the dark waters of the Primordial Mother, bringing forth two gods, the Sweet Waters and the Earth. First Heaven’s son Enki (Akk. Ea), the God of Waters was born, and with him the Fresh Waters, Abzu (Akk. Engur) separated from the liquid womb of the Cosmos. Next the terrestrial world materialized as the Goddess of Earth, Ninhursag. She arose from her mother’s liquid to produce the landmass that settled over the Fresh Waters. To complete the world, the God of Heaven then impregnated his daughter Earth. She conceived the God of the Sky, Air, Winds and Storms, Enlil (Akk. Ilu). He breathed air into the atmosphere.
Each of the three elemental World-Gods, Enki, Ninhursag and Enlil (Water, Earth, Sky) would appoint a priesthood to represent his or her voice. Each of those clergies articulated the mission and vision these gods had for the world, and built around them a divine hierarchy.
The Primordial Cosmos and the God of Heaven continued to reproduce a host of additional gods and goddesses (Annunaki) and assembled them in the immortal realm. These gods, in turn, gave birth to the spirits, both good and demonic, (Sum. Udug; Akk. Utukku) and with them populated the Underworld. These creatures prepared and served nourishment for the gods—sacrifices of animal organs, the blood of “sweetmeat” spirits, or the vital energy of burnt offerings.
The Akkadian invasion had unified Sumer’s city-states and synchronized its pantheon (2334 BCE). According to the myths written by the priests of Sumer and Akkad, after the World-Gods had come into being, final decisions regarding life on Earth would be legislated by the Assembly of Gods (Annunaki). The Assembly was composed of all the gods, major and minor, including hundreds of natural phenomena and elemental forces, and deities whom Mesopotamian city-states had adopted as their patron gods.
The Assembly looked down upon the Earth and decided to cultivate her, just as landlords would seek to improve the value of their estate. They instructed the Gods of Water and Earth to produce green pastures. Then, they appointed the Sky God, Enlil, as overseer and charged him with building for them a divine paradise on Earth.
He ordered the youngest gods (Akk. igigi) to do the work, but they soon rebelled. Considering the work of laborers to be beneath them, they refused the hardship of toiling the land. As this initial effort failed, the Annunaki decided that they needed to create slave workers. So they made humans out of clay figurines that were mixed with flesh and blood extracted from the food offerings the Spirits provided them.
Hereafter they put humans to work and gave them living quarters. As transient tenants renting property belonging to the gods, their lots would depend on their usefulness to the powers above. But after seeing the poorly dug ditches human labor produced the impatient commander of the world, Enlil, became dissatisfied with their shortcomings. Growing weary of human failures, he banished them from Dilmun, the paradise the divine beings had been building.
Three major priesthoods represented the elemental trinity of Sky, Water, and Earth.
A sacred tower-temple was perched on an elevated promontory in the center of the Tigris-Euphrates valley. This was the “House That Rose Like a Mountain” (Sum. E.KUR), which for the priests of Nippur (Sum. Nibru) was the “Cosmic Mountain,” the axial center of the Universe and the home of Enlil.
As champions of Enlil’s authority, the clergy of Nippur exerted a great deal of influence over the selection of kings in many Sumerian cities. At the elite religious center of Nippur the priests refused to have a king of their own. They deemed the god Enlil to be king, not only for their locality, but the entire world. In him the priests had fashioned the model for divine authority describing the Sky God as a stern autocrat and strict wielder of power. Representing him in the world, they sought to establish a religious dictatorship based on the fearful view that only fealty to his divinity could avert the unleashing of his wrath upon mortals.
They fostered the myth that the Assembly of Gods voted him to the position of Chief God of Gods, superseding his older half-brother, the Water God, Enki, basing their claim on Enlil’s superior proximity to Heaven. In the Sumerian cosmogony the Sky was the domed enclosure vaulting over the earthly disc with only the divine realm of Heaven above it. They reasoned that Enlil’s territory, the atmosphere, reached up and touched the realm of the divine Father in Heaven (Anum), whereas Enki’s realm of the Waters climbed only as high as the rainclouds. As Enlil had a higher vantage for observing all human activities at once, the clergy of Nippur reported that the gods chose him to oversee the dispensation of human destinies.
Careful not to disparage the dictums of the Annunaki, priests from other Sumerian cities diploma
tically resisted Nippur’s claim of supremacy by arguing that the divine rights of gods gave each deity the option to intercede individually on humanity’s behalf.
In contrast to Enlil’s authoritarian disdain for human worth, Enki, the patron deity of the Sumerian delta city of Eridu, embraced humankind. This city, the world’s most successful developer of early agriculture, was made possible with the construction of irrigation canals drawn from the Euphrates River. Eridu’s clergy attributed to Enki the qualities of wisdom, magical creativity, and compassion for mortals, and depicted his nature as one of “Loving Kindness.” Built to honor Enki, the Eridu Temple Tower, possibly the first and tallest of all ziggurats, linked the Heavens and Earth. In a great banquet hall within it, the priests hosted celebrations and ritual ceremonies. Atop the ziggurat was a dark sacred room housing the seat of their “holiest of gods,” Enki, who was regarded as the source of both the metaphysical and physical, as well as the cause and the effect of all the bounty in existence.
Eridu formed a pro-human alliance with the herder city of Kish, located in the green intersection of the Tigris-Euphrates. Its priests worshipped the Goddess Ninhursag-Ki. She personified the land that had arisen above the Waters, upon which terrestrial life could grow. As Ki, she was Mother Earth, literally the embodiment of the city-state and figuratively the goddess in her aspect as the Earthly mound-world. As the Goddess Ninhursag, she was Mother Nature, the nurturer of life on Earth, vowing to protect and sustain the emergence of plants, animals and humans. They built red brick ziggurats in her honor and dressed her in a bovine headdress. She was depicted as the milk-giving mother-goddess of men and beasts and the embodiment of nature’s power to produce the grazing lands required for herding activities.
