Plato claims that the oldest inhabitants of Greece, the Pelasgians, gave their gods the name ‘Runners’ (θεούς, theous), because they saw the stellar and planetary gods ‘running’ across the sky. The name is said to come from the verb θέω, theo, ‘to run’.ⁱ The Cratylus abounds in somewhat fanciful etymologies, in the service of Platonic verve and irony. However, one of the meanings of the verb θέω is indeed ‘to run’. But there is a second, no less relevant: ‘to shine’.

The first meaning (‘to run; to rush; to extend, to develop’) allows Plato to consider this link, established by the Pelasgians, between the name of the gods and their celestial ‘course’. According to Chantraine’s Greek dictionary, this meaning of the verb θέω is etymologically related to a Sanskrit verb, dhavate, ‘to flow’. However, the second meaning of θέω, theo, ‘to shine’, would also be compatible with the ancient way of representing the divine essence. It is closer to another Sanskrit root, dyaus, द्यौष्, which is in fact the origin of the French word ‘dieu’, the English word ‘divine’ and the Greek name ‘Zeus’. In the Veda, the word ‘god’ (deva) meant the ‘Brilliant One’.

In other, even older traditions, the orderly march of the stars has been interpreted as an immense ‘army’ setting out to battle. This metaphor combines the two meanings of the verb θέω, evoking both the regular ‘course’ of the starry vault and the brilliant ‘brilliance’ of the ‘gods’ in arms. Schelling proposed giving the name ‘Sabaeism’ to this ‘astral’ religion, which he said should be recognised as the oldest religion of mankind. « This astral religion, which is universally and unquestionably recognised as the first and oldest of mankind, and which I call Sabaeism, from saba, army, and in particular the celestial army, was subsequently identified with the idea of a kingdom of spirits radiating around the throne of the supreme king of the heavens, who did not so much see the stars as gods, as vice versa in the gods, the stars ».ⁱⁱ In other texts, Schelling calls it « sabism » (Zabismus), retrospectively considering that the word sabism (Sabeismus) could lead to misunderstanding by implying that the name could come from the Sabaeans, the people of happy Arabia known for its astrolatry.ⁱⁱⁱ The word saba, which Schelling mentions in passing without giving any further details, certainly refers to the Hebrew word צָבָא, tsaba‘, « army ». This word is actually used in the Hebrew Bible to denote the stars, tsaba ha-chamaïm, as being « the army of heaven » (Jer. 33:22), an expression that is also applied to denote the sun, the moon and the stars (Deut. 4:19). It also refers to the angels as the « host of heaven » (1 Kings 22:19). In the Hebrew Bible, the Lord is often called « YHVH of hosts » (YHVH Tsebaoth), or « Lord of hosts » (Elohim Tsebaoth), and even « YHVH Lord of hosts » (YHVH Elohim Tsebaoth).

The expression « the armies from the height », in Hebrew צְבָא הַמָּרוֹם , tseba ha-marom, is also used by Isaiah, but in an unexpected, paradoxical context. For Isaiah, the « armies from the height » will not be used by YHVH to punish the kings of the earth on the day of judgement, but they themselves, just as much as the latter, will be the object of His wrath: « On that day, YHVH will punish the armies of heaven in heaven and the kings of the earth on the earth. » (Is. 24:21). Be that as it may, a kind of historical and conceptual continuity links the « astral armies » of ancient religions and the « armies (tsebaoth) », celestial or angelic, gathered under the law of YHVH in Hebrew tradition.

In parallel, so to speak, in the Greek world, the mythological tradition portrayed the intense, passionate and exuberant lives of the gods. Hesiod’s Theogony describes in detail their war against the Titans, and their final victory, under the aegis of Zeus. Homeric polytheism presented many aspects of the divine pleroma, while also recognising the primacy of the greatest of them all, Zeus, in terms of power, intelligence and wisdom. In the Mysteries of Eleusis or Samothrace, it has been said that the initiation was in fact about the esoteric revelation of the supreme God, subsuming the exoteric multiplicity of gods and their various figures or attributes.

The unity of the Divine, insofar as it is called the One, was undoubtedly evoked very early on in the Greek tradition by pre-Socratic philosophers such as Heraclitus, Parmenides and Empedocles.

Heraclitus said, for example:

« The One, the only wise One, does not want to be called and wants the name of Zeus. »^iv

« Law too, obey the will of the One.^v

He wrote these lines, which earned him the epithet Obscure:

« Embracing all and not all

In tune and out of tune

Consonant and dissonant

And of all things the One

And from the One all things ».^vi

He was aware of the esoteric nature of divine truths:

« The Logos, that which is, men are always unable to understand, either before hearing it or after hearing it for the first time ».^vii

As for Parmenides, he was the first philosopher to assert that the path to Divinity is that of ‘it is’.

« But now there’s only one way left

Of which we can speak; it is that of ‘it is’.

As for the path of non-being, it leads nowhere. »^viii

For his part, Empedocles, in the first book of his Physics, dialectically combines the being of the One and the being of the Multiple:

« I have two points to make. Indeed, sometimes the One

Increases to the point of existing alone

From the Multiple; and then again

Divides, and so out of the One comes the Many ».^ix

In archaic times, long before the pre-Socratics, human consciousness was undoubtedly still undivided and fundamentally unified. The idea of divine multiplicity was meaningless then, compared with the immediate intuition of cosmic unity, the unity of the human world, nature and spirit. In ancient times, people worshipped rough stones or meteors as sacred images. This original cult symbolised the divine as a formless material, a ‘raw’ material, lithic, unalterable, shapeless stone, which sometimes fell from the sky. It corresponded to an immanent, muted, auroral consciousness. It represented the divine presence, unique, undivided, unbroken.

Originally, man’s first religion was naturally oriented towards the One and the All. Later, the cult and contemplative erection of individual sculptures, detached from the mass of the mountains or carved into the walls of caves, and the staging of idols made by human hands, visible and tangible, corresponded to another stage in religious awareness. The more visible the idols, the more paradoxically people became aware of the mystery hidden in the invisible.

Consciousness became freer, because it became more aware of its capacity to apprehend the existence of mystery behind the appearance of symbols, and all the more so because it had visible symbols in front of it. Visible, and therefore powerless to show the hidden, the concealed, the buried, the invisible essence. In so doing, consciousness began to divide itself; it oscillated between the exotericism of the visible, accessible to all, to ordinary mortals, and the esotericism of the ineffable, the indescribable, which only the rare initiated could conceive and contemplate. For the uninitiated, the multiplication of visible representations diffracted the light of the divine down here. They were specific, singular, vernacular, linked to the countless needs and vicissitudes of human existence.

Much later, other, more abstract ideas appeared, enriching the conception inherent in the single idea of « the One », with which they were associated. They represented the divine powers that accompanied the One, even before the Creation of the world. These powers were called ‘Wisdom’, ‘Intelligence’ or ‘Finesse’, and they are respectively quoted in the Hebrew Bible as חָכְמָה, ḥokhmah, בִינוּ , binah, and עָרְמָה , ‘ormah, The Scriptures also revealed that these divine powers were created before all things: « YHVH created me in the beginning of His ways »^x . From this verse, we deduce that there was a time when YHVH began in his ways. So, before the world began its genesis, after having been created by Elohim, there was another « beginning » (rechit), a beginning of the « ways » (darakh) of which YHVH was the author.

To sum up: at the very beginning of the history of human consciousness, there was the intuition of the embracing of the One and the All. Then, after the muted intuition of this divine and immobile unity of the Whole, came the idea of the divine in movement, in action, in this world and in the next. This idea spread to the Vedic, Egyptian and Greek worlds, as well as to the Hebrew world. From this we can infer the genesis of a similar, overarching idea, that of the movement or overcoming of human consciousness, in its relationship to the divine and in its relationship with itself. What does this overcoming of consciousness mean? How can consciousness abandon itself and go beyond itself? For consciousness to be able to surpass itself, it must make itself surpassable, it must prepare to welcome within itself a power greater than its essence. ‘Rebirth’ could be an image of this potential overcoming.

The history of the divine in consciousness has only just begun. The next steps may seem all the more obscure for being so far away. But some Prophets see far ahead. David sung that, one day, « it will be said that in Zion every man is born' »^xi . One may add: one day, every man will be born again, in consciousness, and will surpass himself by being « reborn ». All consciousness is both ‘in act’ and ‘in potential’. In essence, it is an « intermediary being », a metaxu^xii , meaning that its function is « to make known and transmit to the Gods what comes from men, and to men what comes from the Gods »^xiii . This ability to link worlds can be interpreted as belonging simultaneously, and without contradiction, to different orders of reality. An intermediate being is a ‘being’ from one point of view and a ‘non-being’ from another.

When YHVH revealed his name: « I will be who I will be »^xiv , did He not imply that He too was both, in a sense, « being » and « non-being »? This name, « I will be » (Ehyeh), is grammatically, in Hebrew, the first person of the verb to be, conjugated in the imperfect (used generally to describe actions that are not completed or actions that occur in the present or future). One could argue that the Hebrew grammar then recognizes that God’s name is in essence ‘imperfect’ or ‘uncompleted’^xv . As a being, He is still a non-being in relation to what He will be. But is not God also the Whole? We could conjecture that this Whole does not yet exist in its entirety, and that it is not entirely in action. In essence, a large part of the Whole remains unfinished, imperfect, and is perhaps still inconceivable, given the freedom of the actors who contribute to it and will contribute in the future. All that can be said is that the Whole exists partly « in act » and partly, « in potential ». The Whole is therefore also an « intermediate being », a metaxu.

As for God, what we can say is that there is a principle in Him according to which « He is who He is », and there is another principle, according to which « He will be who He will be », which the grammar of biblical Hebrew expresses by the imperfect conjugation of the verb to be, as we said.

Could it be that the very existence of everything God is not contributes to the emergence of His ‘power’, as yet unfulfilled and always in the process of becoming?

Creation evolves in temporal tandem with the timelessness of divine eternity. Does temporal creation play a role in God’s timeless ‘power’?

In consciousness there is already a substantial principle at work, which literally underlies consciousness (the English word ‘sub-stantial‘ comes form the Latin sub-stare, « to stand under »). It can be considered as a material principle, to which consciousness adds a formal principle. It is also a maternal principle (etymologically, mother = matter = matrix), through which consciousness generates a new principle, succeeding the previous one, and through which consciousness increases and surpasses itself. The feminisation of consciousness is the occasion for a transition from the old to the new, from the virgin to the wife, from the wife to the mother, and from the couple to the new-born child.

The separation of consciousness between a masculine and a feminine aspect (symbolised in mythology by the contrast between the male gods and the virgin goddesses, the wives and mothers goddesses) has been the occasion, in certain cultures, for the emergence of the idea of dualism, which links in absolute unity two apparently opposed principles, – one excluding the new creature and being hostile to it, and the other being benevolent to it.

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i« The men who first lived in Hellas knew no other gods than those who are now the gods of most Barbarians: Sun, Moon, Earth, Stars, Sky. Also, because they saw them all running in an endless race, theonta, they took this property, the property of ‘running’, theïn, as the basis for calling them ‘gods’, theoï. » Plato , Cratylus, 397d

iiF.W.J. Schelling. Philosophy of Revelation. Translation edited by J.F. Marquet and J.F. Courtine. PUF, 1991, Book II, p.244

iii F.W.J. Schelling. Philosophy of Mythology. Translated by Alain Pernet. Ed. Millon, Grenoble, 2018, Lesson 9, p.119

ivHeraclitus, Fragment XXXII. The Presocratics. Gallimard, 1988, p.154

vHeraclitus, Fragment XXXIII. The Presocratics. Gallimard, 1988, p.154

viHeraclitus, Fragment X. The Presocratics. Gallimard, 1988, p.148

viiHeraclitus, Fragment I. The Presocratics. Gallimard, 1988, p.145

viiiParmenides. Fragment II, Les Présocratiques. Gallimard, 1988, p. 257-258

ixEmpedocles. Fragment XVII. The Presocratics. Gallimard, 1988, p.379

x יְהוָה–קָנָנִי, רֵאשִׁית דַּרְכּוֹ: (Prov. 8,22)

xiPs 87,5 : וּלְצִיּוֹן, יֵאָמַר– אִישׁ וְאִישׁ, יֻלַּד-בָּהּ; Vé l-Zion yamar – ich v-ich youlad bah « And they will say of Zion, every man was born there ».

xiiPlato, The Symposium, 201d-212c

xiiiPlato. The Symposium, 202nd

xivEx. 3,14

xvIn his Grammar of Biblical Hebrew, Paul Joüon explains: « The temporal forms of Hebrew express both tenses and certain modalities of action. As in our languages, they mainly express tenses, namely past, future and present; but they often express them less perfectly than in our languages because they also express certain modes of action, or aspects. These aspects are 1) the unicity and plurality of the action, depending on whether the action is represented as unique or as repeated; 2) the instantaneity and duration of the action, depending on whether the action is represented as being accomplished in an instant or over a more or less prolonged period of time. » Paul Joüon, Grammaire de l’hébreu biblique, Rome, 1923, p. 111 c