Perhaps it is possible to understand the experience of wonder of the Shaman and the Earth Mother, as depicted in Sumerian legends, if the myth of Creation of Man (and Woman) is considered. The ideas of the Earth and Matter as living substances are clearly outlined there in a wonderful metaphor, and the operations that gave origin to humankind can also be described as alchemical operations in the moulds of the ancient maxim "solidify the spirit and volatile matter". The storyline says that in the beginning, much has to be done to build the world, and the young gods carried the load for the older gods. As they grew tired of working that much to effect existence, the younger generation of gods turned to Enki, the God of Sweet Waters and Magic, for help. Enki immediately contacted Ninhursag, and together with some other men and women, they gathered to create human beings.
To start with, Enki and Ninhursag held rituals of purification along a full moon cycle. Then, a god called Geshtu-e, is ‘symbolically sacrificed’, and Ninhursag mixes Geshtu-e´s blood in clay of the sweet waters of the Great Deep, to fashion the base material to give origin to humankind. The younger gods, the Igigi, spat on the clay and womb goddesses are called to help in the operations, and together they bring forth seven men and seven women. To remind humankind of their divine essence, the spirit of the sacrificed god resonates like a drumbeat in every heart, mind, body and soul forever after. This myth is a wondrous metaphor of the mystery of incarnation, whereby the spirit is made flesh, and the flesh is raised to spiritual heights, and whose main mystery is devotion and love.
There is seed of truth embedded in this great myth. Think of a man, a shaman, and a woman, a sorceress, who lived in the marshes of Ancient Mesopotamia a long, long time ago. Follow this man and that woman as very probably the newcomers, the black-headed Sumerians just arrived in the Southern marshes close to the Persian gulf, and think of the mighty work they realized they had to carry out to build their homes in that place. Much had to be done, and they did it, but the workload was enormous, especially when it involved working with the older settlers of the region. Thus, with time a symbiosis is accomplished between the old culture and the hardworking newcomers, whereby the Spirit of the ancient settlers dies out as a willing sacrifice to ensure the grounding of new ideas represented by the new settlers.
Clay, the sacred image of the Earth Mother, the Spirit of the ancient local consciousness and the fashioning of new beings are all accomplished by men and women, led by the Shaman and his beloved consort, the sorceress and representative of the Earth Mother, whose joint efforts built together a metaphor to explain the creation of humans as creatures endowed by Inner Life to Reveal it in the Outer Worlds, by a bond with the gods to continue with them and for them the workings of Existence. Divine Consciousness was the willing sacrifice, because to enter the Realms of the Sacred it is necessary to embrace vulnerability and surrender to a new and necessary growth that may bring death to previous choices, views and lifestyles.
Therefore, when Enki and Ninhursag created Humankind out of the fertile clay of the Apsu and endowed man and woman with the Spirit of a ‘sacrificed’ God, or primeval consciousness, what The Magician and the Great Mother desired was for humankind to fulfill its human essence by being the gods' co-workers and representatives of the Spirit on Earth. From the Depths Above to the Great Below, we are the Bond between Heaven and Earth, and bound to the gods we are, as They are to us, by love, service and dedication to Never-ending Workings of Creation. This is also the reason why many invocations inscribed with the cuneiform writing system contain the expression "BY THE DURANKI" (BY THE BOND OF HEAVEN AND EARTH), which possibly expresses the dynamic and intrinsic relationship between the Great Above and the Great Below, later expressed more synchronically in the alchemical maxim AS ABOVE SO BELOW much before the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus in Egypt. Thus, the roots of such alchemical maxim may not be in
It is not by chance that humanity is created out of clay, the base material that abounds and is the prima material of the living earth. But the living earth also contain within the seeds of precious metals and stones, and within humanity resonates the Living Spirit of a sacrificed god like a drumbeat to be heard until the end of times, says the myth of Creation of Man and Woman according to the Sumerians.
The potter is the first shaper of things, but s/he was also the worshipper and beloved of the Earth Mother, the artificer and artisan of creation. (Gateways to Babylon)
