Because deluge legends and mythology are so intimately interwoven, I will start the lecture with brief descriptions of the meanings of these three words. A DELUGE is a great overwhelming of water, an inundation. It is also a theme found in ancient religions, describing primordial destruction of Man, and the world, by universal deluge.
A LEGEND is a non-historical or unverifiable story, about a person, or locality, handed down by tradition, and is popularly accepted as historical. It resembles folk tales, including elements of past mythologies or explanations of natural phenomena. A MYTH is a type of story, usually concerning gods, heroes, imaginary animals and superhuman beings, in an attempt to explain some belief, or natural phenomenon, or extra-ordinary events.
Most religions have their Creation Story, and the Biblical story follows the general pattern, an attempt to explain creation by tracing it back to its source or first cause. Similarly, the folk memory of the ancients seems to have been haunted by recollections of some cataclysmic flood, way back in their ancient history. The fact that myths and legends are found in the Bible, by no means establishes any priority of appearance in history. While no enlightened person of today can read the Bible as an authentic history, neither can one afford to dismiss it as childish myth. Like other tribal sagas, the Bible tells “The Morality Epic of the Sin Flood”. Because of Man’s wickedness God, repented that he had made Man, and decided to destroy him by sending a cleansing flood. Noah the righteous man and his family found grace in God’s eyes and was spared.
The Epic of Gilgamesh describes the adventures of the great king of Ur in his fruitless search for immortality.
Ur of ancient Sumaria, in Biblical times
Babylon, is today known as
Iraq. Contained in this epic is a flood legend that is considered to be of greater antiquity than the one in Genesis (possibly 1500 to 2000 years earlier). In 1872 Babylonian tablets with a cuneiform text were unearthed in
Mesopotamia. Cuneiform letters are formed with wedge shaped characters similar to gold ball tees and of Persian-Assyrian origin. In this story the righteous man is Utnapishtim. He also constructed a sea-worthy ark. In due course the Great God Marduk unleashes the retributive flood waters. At dawn a black cloud came from the horizon. Adad the Lord of the Storms was riding, the gods of the Abyss rose. Nergal pulled out the dams of the nether-waters, Ninurta the War Lord threw down the dykes. A stupor of despair went up to the heavens, when the God of the Storm turned daylight into darkness. “He smashed the land like a cup. Even the gods were terrified, and fled to the higher heavens. The gods of Heaven and Hell wept and covered their mouths. After seven days the sea grew calm. I looked at the face of the world – Mankind was turned to clay. I loosed a swallow, a dove and a raven, I threw everything open to the four winds. I made a sacrifice. Then the gods smelled the sweet savour and gathered like flies over the sacrifice. The ark came to rest in Minisir.”
There are remarkable resemblances, and also some striking differences between the Biblical and the Gilgamesh stories. The Bible does not name a city, but Shurrudak is the other name given. Noah’s one monotheistic god, Jehovah, acted because of man’s sinful existence. Because of a break in the text of the tablets, there does not seem to be an exact reason given for the gods’ decision to destroy Mankind. The text states that, “in those days the world teamed with people, the world bellowed like a wild bull, and the Great God was aroused by the clamour. Sleep was no longer possible because of the babel.” “The gods agree to destroy Mankind.”
Compared with the Biblical description, it is more elaborate and impressive, with so many gods participating in the catastrophe. Common to both are the measurements for the arks, animal entry, righteous people being saved, releasing of birds, and the sacrifices savour for the gods, and the arks coming to rest on mountain tops.
Coming a little closer to home, the next legend concerns our own indigenous people the Australian Aborigines. The myths that concern creation and nature, are accepted as revelations of absolute truth, and form the foundations of their social, secular and ceremonial life. The story is simply called The Flood. “One time the land in all the world was joined up in one great big country. The big flood came. The world was covered. As the water began to go down, the currents divided the land up into islands There were some people cut off on one of these islands. They were great throwers of the boomerang. One man threw his boomerang so hard into the sky out of sight, it landed in Australia. These people followed the path of the boomerang and found
Australia. They split up into different tribes, and went to different rivers, and this is why the tribes talk different languages all over
Australia”. In the February 1980 issue of our magazine, Sunrise, there appears a six page article entitled “Kuomboka – Ancient Wisdom of Malozi”. The Malozi live in
West Zambia in deep
Central Africa. Annually they observe a religious spectacle of renewal and ritual when around the end of February, the
Zambesi
River floods and turns their farm lands into a mighty lake. A ceremonial procession of many small boats and canoes with the Chief’s royal barge using drums and xylophones, call their people to follow them to the safety of higher ground. This is known as Kuomboka. Their legends tell that before the time of their first Chief, there came a great flood known as “The Waters that Swallowed Everything”. In this deluge, all the animals died, and every farm was swept away. Their high god Nyambe ordered a man named Nakambela to build the first great canoe “Nalikwanda” (which means “for the people”). Before voyaging out on the stormy waters, the great canoe was loaded with every type of seed, and animal dung. At the place where this great canoe came to rest, the seeds were scattered to become the progenitors of the plants as we know them today and the animals once again sprang forth from the animal dung.
Reflecting through their philosophy one can observe a possible deeper significance of remembrance of distant past cataclysmic cycles with parallels in the philosophies.
The legends of the Hopi tribe of the American Indians cover a wide area, with creation myths for three previous worlds, and their destruction. The emergence of the Hopi in each case, exodus, migrations over the face of the earth, and arrival at a predetermined homeland – an annual religious cycle, is still being observed.
The first world was empty space. Taiowa created Sotuknang to manifest the Universe. Sotuknang created Spider-Woman who produced twins from the earth and her saliva. They were sent to the poles to keep the world rotating properly. The first people multiplied. They were of different colour and language, but they felt as one. Eventually they sinned in the eyes of the Law. Sotuknang came with a mighty sound of wind to destroy the world by volcanic fire. The chosen ones lived with the ant people in a big mound and were saved.
A second world was built. The chosen ones emerged. In due course history repeated itself. The twins were ordered to leave the poles. The world teetered off balance. The deluge came, chaos resulted and the world froze solid. Eventually the twins returned, the planet rotated and World three was formed. Once again the cycle was repeated. Laws and beliefs were forgotten, flying machines were made from shields of hides, wars came to the world. Spider Woman was ordered to cut down huge reeds to house the chosen ones with food. While the third world was destroyed with water, they were saved to people the present fourth world, known as “The World Complete”.
Theosophy teaches us that in the symbolism of many nations “The Deluge” represents chaos – unsettled matter – water, The Great Deep. Violent minor cataclysms and colossal earthquakes are recorded in the annals of most nations. Elevation and subsidence is always in progress.
Huxley has shown that the British Isles have been four times depressed beneath the ocean, raised again and peopled. The Sahara Desert was the basin of a Miocene sea – within the last 5,000 or 6,000 years the shores of Sweden, Denmark and Norway have risen from 200 to 600 feet – Northern Europe is still rising from the sea – and South America has raised beaches over 1,000 miles in length, varying from 100 to 1,300 feet above sea level. Greenland is sinking fast – Greenlanders will not build by the shore. All these phenomena are certain.
The continents in turn perish by fire and water, either through earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, or by sinking and the great displacement of water. Our continents have to perish owing to these cataclysmic processes. The conformation or structure of the Arctic and Antarctic poles have but little altered. The polar lands unite and break off from each other into islands and peninsulas, yet remain ever the same. Therefore Northern Asia is called in Theosophy “The Eternal or Perpetual Land” and the Antarctic “The Ever Living and Concealed”, while the Mediterranean, Atlantic, Pacific and other regions disappear and reappear in turn, into and above the great waters. Modern science has shown that the continents are like rafts, floating on a sea of molten rock, and these rafts sometimes crash into each other causing uprising of mountains or sinking of continents. The whole globe is convulsed periodically and has been convulsed four times since the appearance of the first race. While on our globe we pass though seven stages called root races each lasting for millions of years. Each root race is shorter than its predecessor and there is some overlapping. Great geological changes separate each root race from its successor, and only a comparatively few survivors remain to provide seed for the next root race. A figure of around 150,000,000 years is given, since the beginning of the first root race. (We are only in the fifth root race). We read in our book The Secret Doctrine that land needs rest and renovation, new forces, and a change for its soul (so does the water). Thence arises a periodical redistribution of land and water, change of climates, etc. All brought on by geological revolution and ending in a final change in the axis. Catastrophes come on slowly, continents sink through the ages, Man migrates to fresh, better, and higher lands, leaving the sinking lands behind, new races are born out of the death of the old. No one should think that in these racial catastrophes everyone is swept away in a moment, in confusion, in wild despair, without hope.
The great cycle of the fourth race, “The Atlanteans” had reached its highest point. The great continent, the father of nearly all the present continents, showed the first symptoms of sinking, a process that occupied it down to 11,500 years ago when its last island, Poseidonis, went down. “It is the submersion of the great Atlantis which is the most interesting”. It is this cataclysm that the old records “The Jewish Book of Enoch” say that the ends of the earth got loose, and upon this the legends and allegories have been built. (The ends of the earth are its poles).
The Atlanteans spread over the earth from the continent of Atlantis, which united Western Europe and Africa with
Eastern America, and built some of the mightiest civilizations. The greater part of the world’s inhabitants still belong to it. The fifth, the Aryan, leads humanity today. The Greek Philosopher-Teacher, Plato, tells in one of his dialogues the story told to him by his ancestor Solon, and told to Solon by the priests of
Egypt. “There was a time when a horde came out of the
Atlantic Ocean, to settle on the land that is now
Greece and
Italy. You Greeks are but children of a day – your forefathers gathered together and repelled the invaders The Atlanteans.” The next section concerns the velocity or speed of rotation of our planet – Earth. When the wheel of Earth runs at its usual rate its extremities the poles agree with its middle circle the equator. When it runs slower and tilts in every direction, there is a greater disturbance on the face of the Earth – the waters flow towards the two ends and new lands arise in the middle belt, the Equatorial Lands, while those at the ends by submersion are subject to a time of rest, repose, the death of one phase followed by the rebirth of its succeeding phase.
Thus the wheel, the Earth, is subject to and regulated by, the spirit of the moon, the breath of its waters the tides. Towards the close of the age of a great root race, the Regents of the Moon, begin drawing harder and thus flatten the wheel about its belt. Then it goes down in some places and swells in others, with the swelling running towards the extremities (the poles). New lands will rise and old ones will be sucked in.
While searching for an Aboriginal flood legend, I found a few lines concerning the relationship between the moon and the tides, and I quote:
“At the sunrise and sunset when the tides are high, the water runs into and fills the moon. As the tides become lower the water runs out, until for three days, the moon is empty. Once more the tides rise, the moon fills, and the everlasting cycle repeats itself”.
You cannot but agree that this relationship is so much easier to follow than the last. Our Aborigines should be called ingenious indigenous. Their Dreamtime is so uncomplicated; in this they are most fortunate.
In conclusion, I would like to impress the importance of keeping an open mind during our studies. To become dogmatic would only crystallize the mind and prevent the recognition of new concepts. I believe that in our search for truth one must satisfy the three main facets of our nature, the Religious, the Scientific, and the Philosophical, and using Logic and Intuition, results can be achieved. I also believe that Cosmogenesis and Anthropogenesis evolve unceasingly, cycle after cycle. Nature destroys in order to rebuild and advance. Mankind is nature and must overcome obstacles in order to learn and hopefully then follow a better path. If our thoughts are indeed living entities that govern our actions, would it be possible through correct living for us to try to minimize the strength of nature’s retributive forces – cataclysms? In about 20,000 years we reach the mid point of our present Aryan fifth root race. When these cataclysms should be starting, certain religions predict “the coming of the end of the world”. Our Theosophical perspectives teach renewal and growth, through Reincarnation and Karma – Karma being the universal law of cause and effect.
The above is the text of a lecture presented to the Theosophical Society Pasadena in Melbourne Australia. The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of the Theosophical Society Pasadena.