The 7 Directions of Space
"In the beginning of everything, God created heaven and the earth. 2 The earth had no form then; all was a deep sea covered with darkness, and the spirit of God moved over the waters..." Genesis 1:2
The above Bible verses are equivalent to the Babylonian sacred texts. In the Babylonian myth the swampy and sweet waters, Apsu, were mixed and stirred together with the deep and salty waters, Tiamat. The biblical writers give a similar version, although eliminating the names of the Babylonian gods. The Dark and Primordial Waters of the theogonies represent two things, on the one hand they are waters because these are considered the origin of life, and on the other they are dark because they represent non-existence prior to manifestation.
The Sacred Geography that we are analyzing in this series of articles means the possibility for human beings to establish a link between the terrestrial world and the cosmic mythical world. There is a geo-graphy as a result of a geo-metry, and there is no geometry without mathematics. Numbers in their symbolism, in their generation, represent the unfolding of intelligence and its accompanying forces and the movement of consciousness. Precisely, in the heliopolitan theogony, the Egyptian creation myth is a succession of states and numbers.
THE HELIOPOLITAN CREATION MYTH
Hidden in the Primordial Waters of the Nun, lies Atum, like an invisible serpent that bites its own tail, that is, the infinite cycles of time. "Atum" is a curious name, because in Egyptian grammar, depending on where the word is placed, it means "Nothing" or "Everything", because Atum, although hidden and submerged in the primordial waters of the origin as well as the end of the world, possesses the seeds of what will be, of the entire universe that will appear from those waters. It is a state that we could be defined... as Nothingness, Inertia, Stillness, Full Emptiness, its mathematical symbol is 0.
In those still waters, inert from the human point of view, suddenly something stirs, something stirs, and time begins... and this is marked by the appearance of Khepri, the beetle, whose hieroglyph means "evolution", "movement", "time"... and who "pushes" Atum, makes it move and evolve. The mysterious Atum, the Nothing-All, becomes Atum-Ra, the Sun in its beginnings. Ra is represented by a hieroglyph that has the shape of a mouth, the Word, the mouth that emits the first creative words:
It represents the First Unity of Creation from which everything starts. We have gone from 0 to 1.
Creation has already begun, and that one becomes two: Shu and Tefnut. The First Couple, the first yin-yang we would say using Chinese terms. Shu the dryness, bright and ethereal, and Tefnut the dark humidity. This couple together with Atum-Ra form the first Triad, the number three.
The process is repeated and the couple Shu and Tefnut give birth to Nut and Geb, the sky and the earth. Here we have arrived at the number 4, the 4 elements, because Shu is the Ethereal Fire, Tefnut the Water or moisture, Nut or Air, and Geb or Earth.
The union of Earth and Heaven, Geb and Nut, generate the first gods close to human beings, the four brother gods: Osiris, Isis, Seth and Nephtys and one more: Horus the Elder, the celestial Horus, not to be confused with Horus the son of Osiris and Isis. Thus we reach the number five completing the series from 0. It is the number of the stars that cover the roof of the temples and that fly towards the sacred spot of the main altar, it is the number that represents the human beings that have awakened: the next step of semi-divine beings.
As in other peoples, the 4 directions of space were fundamental for orientation, but also, since we are talking about Sacred Geography, these directions are also related to celestial concepts and to the gods themselves. In such a way that the 4 gods, sons of heaven and brothers, Isis, Osiris, Seth and Nepthys, form a game of light and shadow, day and night, dry and wet, that is to say, all the possible intercalated polarities. Thus, Osiris represents the life-giving waters of the Nile, while Seth, his opponent and brother at the same time, is the dry and arid desert. On the other hand, the ever-fertile part of the banks of the Nile represents Isis, while the adjoining strip towards the desert, which only in the flood becomes wet and then dry, is her sister Nepthys, wife of Seth. Isis is the bright side of the Moon, Nepthys its dark side. Isis is the East, goddess of births, and Nepthys the west where the dead go.
But the waters of the Nile not only relate the East and the West, or the coming to life and the sacred passage of death symbolized in the setting of the sun, also the waters of the Nile link the Egypt of the South and the Egypt of the North, again the duality: the dry Egypt of the south and the wet Egypt of the north.
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| Neith and Serkit |
All these relationships and many others that we do not mention, make up a living world, where nothing is dead matter, but magical forces that interact with all living things. But in order to form the necessary connections between things it is also necessary to know the geometric and mathematical relationships, because after all, that is what the space we inhabit is all about.
And the goddess of Measurements, Mathematics and Sacred Geography, is none other than Seshat, the feminine counterpart of Thoth, the god of Wisdom. She is always to be reckoned with in the sacred act where a new bond is formed between heaven and earth, in the act of inaugural settlement of a new temple or pyramid. Seshat is the goddess who, together with the pharaoh, establishes the measures and coordinates that relate space and time to the sacred moment of the beginnings.
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| Seshat, takes measures and notes on a palm branch, symbol of the infinite years that repeat themselves, and that is sustained by the by the little frog Heket below, rebirth and life, and both the branch and the frog rest on a ring: infinite time. |
In the ceremony of "extension of the rope", the pharaoh assisted by Seshat measures the correct time and place to establish the sacred place. This ceremony connected the celestial meridian with the earth:
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| Rope Extension Ceremony |
"I hold the staff. I grip the handle and hold the measuring string next to Seshat. I direct my sight towards the movement of the stars.... I set the corners of my temple..." (Inscription in the temple of Edfu).
The goddess Seshat carries a curious sign on her head. It is an inverted pair of horns, its translation is "uap pt", the "opening of the sky", and below it there is a headdress with 7 leaves. Each of them represents a direction of space:
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| Six directions of the Space |
The Seventh direction is the one that goes to the opening of the sky: "uapt", the one that connects with another dimension, which it is precisely the internal or mystical direction of space, the one that connects with the Sacred in the Universe and in Man... The Egyptian Creation Myth shows us numerically how beings unfold, and the Sacred Geometry and Mathematics of the goddess Seshat show us the way of return.
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