Cosmos, Myth, and Mystery: Reflections on the Mysertium Tremendum

By John Knight Lundwall

As we enter into the 21st century the words of the stoic philosopher and Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius come to mind: “Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought to site than it is swept by and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away.” One wonders if Marcus Aurelius understood he was but a few generations away from the end of glorious Rome. Labeled as one of the “good Emperors” one also wonders if Marcus Aurelius also believed in the story of the beginning of Rome. In Tom Holland’s readable historical interpretation RVBICON he begins the story of Rome by recounting a very old myth:

“In the beginning, before the Republic, Rome was ruled by kings. About one of these, a haughty tyrant by the name of Tarquin, an eerie tale was told. Once, in his palace, an old woman came calling on him. In her arms she carried nine books. When she offered these to Tarquin he laughed in her face, so fabulous was the price she was demanding. The old woman, making no attempt to bargain, turned and left without a word. She burned three of the books and then, reappearing before the king, offered him the remaining volumes, still at the same price as before. A second time, although with less self-assurance now, the king refused, and a second time the old woman turned and left. By now Tarquin had grown nervous of what he might be turning down, and so when the mysterious crone reappeared, this time holding only three books, he hurriedly bought them, even though he had to pay the price originally demanded for all nine. Taking her money, the old woman then vanished, never to be seen again.” (1)

It was said that the three remaining volumes contained such potent prophecies and powerful truths that they were a catalyst for the beginning of a new civilization. Whatever the truth of this claim, Tarquin was indeed the last King of Rome. His end saw the end of monarchy and the birth of a consulship, the precursor to a republican democracy. With no small irony then, are similar tales told in many ancient civilizations of a mysterious prophetess or seer who comes to indigenous peoples with the most ancient and sacred texts from which each civilization grew. Enoch came with his tomes of science, prophecies, and the mysteries to the Ethiopians, as Oannes did to the Babylonians, Vyasa to the Hindus, Viracocha to the Peruvians, Orpheus to the Greeks, and Hermes Trismegistus to the Egyptians. Of the latter Christopher Bramford writes:

[...] He is Hermes Trismegistus Thrice Great, Master of the Three Worlds, and to him was ascribed all knowledge of the ancient world. As Archetypal Man he was the primordial culture-bringer, the instituter of all arts, crafts and sciences. He is healer, master architect, founder of agriculture, smelting and mining; his Temple was called the “House of the Net,” which may be taken to indicate cosmology or the weaving of the world fabric or garment, each knot of which represents a conjunction of life and death, impulse and resistance, contraction and expansion. From this point of view, Hermes-Thoth is one with Enoch, Idris, Quetzalcoatl, Odin–leaders of Humanity in the celestial world from which they guide and sustain terrestrial manifestation. (20)

Even so, Ellen Russell Emerson recounts an old Ojibway Indian tradition where the most sacred records of the tribe were kept buried in a secret place by Lake Superior. Every fifteen years ten holy men would exhume the ancient text and read from it; by this act great wisdom was gained and instilled within the tribe. The records were said to “contain the transcript of what the Great Spirit gave the Indian after the flood [...]. There is a code of moral laws, which the Indian calls a Path made by the Great Spirit. [...] The records contain certain emblems, which transmit the ancient form of worship, and the rules for the dedication to the four spirits who alone are to expound them” (225).

From these ancient records arise the shadows of the oldest stories of humankind. This great Wisdom was brought to the species by those who had ascertained authentic Humanity--called Awakening, Enlightenment, Revelation, Salvation–the end result is the same, perfect harmony with nature, other, and soul. This state of affairs is entirely unique, a singularity of its own. Most interestingly, however, it is these culture bearers who spark the engines of growth, according to the mythologic record, and promote human-forms out of their mute wilderness and into the gateway of their own infinite potentials. Civilization is thus forged not from a biological leap of evolution, but from a metaphysical leap of consciousness which completely outstrips modern models despite all their colorful and graphical accouterments.

It could be said that the genesis of each civilization grows upon and within the framework of their most sacred mythologies. Revelation is the primordial matrix of metaphysical creation. The ancient revelators left their records behind, but the original revelation cannot be understood save by those who have experienced it, for only like can comprehend like. Thus, the great Truth the ancient revelators brought civilization was put in metaphor. Myth descends from these metaphors. Mythology is the symbolic story or image which encapsulates the original Revelation. An idea not lost on the Jungian Joseph Campbell, who insightfully asserts, “Rites, then, together with the mythologies that support them, constitute the second womb, the matrix of the postnatal gestation of the placental Homo sapiens” (Flight, 55). This mythocosmic womb itself draws its nutrient from the surrounding fluid of life, in Cambpellian terms the mysterium tremendum. For Joseph Campbell, mythology has four primary functions, the first and foremost being the aligning of “[...] waking consciousness to the mysterium tremendum of this universe, as it is” (Thou, 2). The mysterium tremendum is the primal Revelation, the Awakening of consciousness, and it lies in the unplumbed depths of the soul from which all legitimate and authentic meaning springs:

“For the symbols of mythology are not manufactured; they cannot be ordered, invented, or permanently suppressed. They are spontaneous productions of the psyche, and each bears within it, undamaged, the germ power of its source. [...] It has always been the prime function of mythology and rite to supply the symbols that carry human spirit forward, in counteraction to those other constant human fantasies that tend to tie it back.” (Hero, 4,11)

The germ power of the source is connected to all living things. No matter the cultural context within which each civilization exists, the river of time which surges forward all forms and events, one after another, flows atop the bedrock of Cosmic Will, a mysterium tremendum indeed, for it, by no process or definition humankind can give, interconnects all energies into a living, breathing whole, developing intelligent consciousness not by accident, but by its own intelligence. This statement may seem grandiose, but one cannot help but to notice Fred Hoyle’s insight into the nature of creation. It is Hoyle who coins the term “big bang,” but who is an adversary of the Big Bang Theory: “For in accordance with the Big Bang Theory, for instance, at a time of 10[-43] seconds the universe has to know how many types of neutrino there are going to be at a time of 1 second. This is so in order that it starts off expanding at the right rate to fit the eventual number of neutrino types” (qtd. in Glynn 31). In other words, if just one more neutrino is emitted within the first nano-second of the Big Bang the actual Universe could not exist. In fact, within the first nano-second of that exploding singularity all future forms of energy must be pre-calculated for our universe to show up at all. This fact leaves Patrick Glynn to observe, “The fine-tuning of seemingly heterogeneous values and ratios necessary to get from the big bang to life as we know it involves intricate coordination over vast differences in scale–from the galactic level down to the subatomic one–and across multi-billion-year tracts of time” (Glynn 31).

For Hoyle and Glynn this grand game of cosmic coincidence cannot be explained by the Big Bang Theory. Yet, whatever theory is used to explain creation, the same set of facts face each theorist with startling unrest. The universe is truly enwrapped in the mysterium tremendum, for it apparently sorted itself out before it existed, if there is a before, so that all the ratios of every particle and wave could coalesce into functions that would eventually create matter, heat, stars, nebula, galaxies, planets, water, rocks, trees, birds, bees, quarks, atoms, molecules–indeed, the whole package. Another way of putting it, the existence of one thing implies the existence of all other things, for it is in the relationships of all other things which form the existence of one thing. An electric spark zapping primordial goo does not explain life; at least inasmuch as the spark and the goo are left unexplained, and in fact, inexplicable.

These difficulties are simply the tip of the cosmic iceberg. Given the Big Bang paradigm, what seems less obvious but equally true is that within the first nano-second of the cosmic expansion, consciousness, too, must also have already been accounted for. Again, this may seem like another grandiose statement, but the connection between consciousness and cosmos cannot be ignored. Erwin Schrodinger, one of the founding fathers of quantum mechanics, reflects on this relationship as he proposed a thought experiment known as the Schrodinger cat paradox. In this experiment, a live cat is placed in a closed box with a flask of poison and a small amount of uranium. If a random particle of uranium interacts with a device in the box the flask will be broken and the cat will die. “According to quantum mechanics, the wave function describing the cat after one hour is a superposition of a wave function representing a live cat and one representing a dead cat” (Thompson 59). According to Schrodinger, the quantum wave function collapses (another way of saying a new order of things emerges) only when the box is opened and the contents are observed. In other words, until the box is opened the cat remains in an indeterminate state–a field of infinite possibilities unknown. The point is, in order for the quantum leap to occur there must be an observer. This notion has led Nobel laureate Eugene Wigner to suggest “that the collapse of the wave function depends on as yet unknown physical laws and that it involves the action of consciousness” (qtd. in Thompson 62).

These ideas are anathema to secular science which packages everything in their own methodologies. However, there are boundaries across which modern science cannot pass, no matter the rhetorical refutations to the contrary. When faced with the mysterium tremendum, there is only honest silence. How does, for example, the biological brain create the transcendent mind? The science-philosopher Emil du Bois-Reymond gives the only true answer: “[...] consciousness can not be explained out of its material conditions, what apparently everybody would admit, but that by its own nature, it will never be explainable from these conditions” (Van Loocke 84).

The actual universe is not just a physical one. Embedded within the realm of stars and planets is a vast realm of sentient life: from the monarch butterfly to the human being. How could all this arise? Darwinism, for all its elegant hype, explains nothing about the mysterium tremendum. For only the blind is the true wonder and mystery removed.

In a turnabout event a worldwide conference on scientific cosmology was held in 1981 at the Vatican. Pope John Paul II began the conference with an address on the mystery of origins:

Any scientific hypothesis on the origin of the world, such as that of a primeval atom from which the whole of the physical world derived, leaves open the problem concerning the beginning of the Universe. Science cannot by itself resolve such a question: what is needed is that human knowledge that rises above physics and astrophysics and which is called metaphysics; it needs above all the knowledge that comes from the revelation of God. (Glynn 41)

There is no small irony in these words. The Pope, whose own dogmatic theology has been retreating from scientific advances for centuries, has ultimately addressed the heart of scientific and religious cosmology: the origins of life. These origins emerge from an inexplicable singularity. Modern cosmologists have invoked secular privilege by ironically downplaying the mysterium tremendum, replacing it with a vast armada of technical jargon. Yet this power play is nothing more than slight of hand. They have replaced one set of metaphysics with another set of metaphysics. To explain the origins of the universe in purely rational terms such notions as multiple universes, multi-dimensional-superspace, and imaginary time have been theorized. Perhaps modern cosmologists hope nobody notices all this metaphysical baggage? Just so, modern biologists explain the biological organism through Evolution and Natural Selection, while modern behavioral psychologists follow suit, explaining all of human nature, psychosis, and normality within a purely mechanistic paradigm. Ironically, in a secular world, anything can be believed as long as it comes attached with a positivist schematic. Reason, which has always been birthed by Revelation, has been counterfeited and replaced by Rationale, which has always been birthed by Expediency. In short, give us anything but the mysterium tremendum!

But what does all this have to do with mythology? As noted, the origins of civilization also arise from an analagous inexplicable singularity–a node of consciousness, recorded in the most sacred and oldest stories and texts, from which a particular kind of consciousness is preserved and progressed; one that leads to creation, civilization, and individuation. Thus, in cosmic terms, the rolling fields of cosmic clay are what Carl Jung calls an archetype, or fields of energy existing outside space and time, which “organize images and ideas” from the phenomenal world into the psychic (Storr, ed. 25-26). They are nodes of being which, within the first nano-second of their creation, must take into account all other existing and future nodes of consciousness in order for consciousness to evolve at all. This they do as they resonate within their source, what Carl Jung calls the Collective Unconscious, or what Michael Conforti calls an infinite field of relatedness in which all psychic beings and energies share (Conforit 2), and which I call the background radiation of the conscious universe.

Indeed, the only evolution that transforms matter is the evolution of consciousness, the background energy matrix out of which material systems emerge. If one truly believes in consciousness, one must realize that homo sapiens were created when a new organization of conscious energy (i.e. not new in time but only in space) arose and around which a biological form grew. Like the Tree of Life planted within the three cosmic worlds, the human being is a form of consciousness whose roots sink into the Underworld of infinite, pre-existing relationships fashioning sentience from the background radiation the cosmos has in infinite stores. As Glynn notes, stars and planets form when all the pre-existing heterogeneous values and ratios coalesce. Creation is not the beginning, rather it is the consequence of those pre-existing values and ratios. Just so, the human being has an infinite pre-life. Material homo sapiens are nothing but an analogy constructed as a consequence. We are the trunk of the Cosmic Tree, misinterpreting our bark for the whole of creation! Yet consciousness is not through, for the Tree of Life has branches which penetrate the higher world, elevating the pre-existing ratios into even greater forms of being. The purpose of material life for homo sapiens is in fact to create Cosmic Man, or, as Bramford states, “Here, then, is the true end of Hermetic Science–to give birth to a Son of God [...]” (33). Is such a state possible? Mythology declares it is so. To deny it is to utterly misunderstand myth.

Secular science snubs the mythic record, and in so doing ignores Enoch, Oannes, Vyasa, Virachocha, Quetzalcoatl, Odin, Orpheus, Hermes, not to mention the whole Western Tradition’s pantheon of prophetesses and seers--Adam, Abraham, Moses, Elijah, Deborah, Ruth, Mary, Jesus–all of which emerge from the horizon of conscious being with the self-same message which started this examination: the Awakening, Enlightenment, Revelation, and Salvation which comes from the individual’s authentic journey into the mysterium tremendum. Ironically, many of these ancient guides are said to have invented science.

Furthermore, in the material world homo sapiens are connected by those heterogeneous values and ratios which extend through all planes of existence. Thus, it is possible to penetrate into those planes. Mythic consciousness is to the human being as is the counter-entropic properties of the microscopic world is to the physical, natural order. It’s that which flows with the river of time distributing its potent and latent powers within the ever moving forms that float atop it. As long as mythic consciousness exists there is a counteracting force to the grinding tides of human entropy. Thus, those who plunge into the deep waters of the mysterium tremendum, the unplumbed depths of the human soul, and come out again on the shores of enlightenment and individuation, have power to present a new order of things–a new big bang of consciousness.

Of course, such Awakening is had only by the long, hard, straight road. It is the road that requires swimming in the depths, passing through the fire, taking up the cross. The mysterium tremendum has always existed upon the twilight horizon of secrecy and individual initiation. Because of this, the classicist Hugh Nibley reflects that the Hermetic ideals were always susceptible to counterfeit and fraud:

But the appeal of Hermetism is universal. The classic demonstration is the case of Faust, superscientist and magician, who, in the opening scene of Goethe’s great play, laments that he has spent all his days putting on an act; he wants to see what really holds the universe together, as he says, and not have to go on misleading his students with the false display of omniscience. He decides that the only solution is to take a great shortcut and turn to magic, and, in the most drastic step of all, makes a pact with the devil. [...] What Faust got from [the devil] anyway was bogus, an extravaganza of false Hermetism, make-believe, eyewash, and special effects.(397-398)

Faust, a prime symbol of modern homo sapiens, failed in his attempt at conceiving the universal truth within because he sought the answer from without. He made a pact with the devil, which in modern terms is akin to putting one’s own Salvation up with the masses--the Media, the Church, the State, the University, the Bank, the Political Party, and the rest. Enlightenment is not to be had by the masses, for “[the] mass crushes out the insight and reflection that are still possible with the individual [...]” (Storr 350). Nor is it to be distributed by theologic, political, or academic high priests. Despite all the criticisms piled against religion by the secular world, the State and the University are no different in their methodologies and manipulations whose ends are completely arbitrary, so far as Enlightenment is concerned, and what is oft given as Truth is indeed nothing more than “make-believe, eyewash, and special effects.”

This is not to ignore the advantageous and necessary forms these institutions produce. Only that in this material world where indeed one form of heterogeneous consciousness is prevalent, there are limitations in the group organization. As Jung writes:

When the Church tries to give shape to the amorphous mass by uniting individuals into a community of believers and to hold such an organization together with the help of suggestion, it is not only performing a great social service, but it also secures for the individual the inestimable boon of a meaningful form of life. These, however, are gifts which as a rule only confirm certain tendencies and do not change them. As experience unfortunately shows, the inner man remains unchanged however much community he has. His environment cannot give him as a gift something which he can win for himself only with effort and suffering. On the contrary, a favourable environment merely strengthens the dangerous tendency to expect everything from outside–even that metamorphosis which external reality cannot provide.” (Storr 376, italics his)

Ultimately, that which sparks individuation is the same as that which germinates civilization and has an energetic correspondence to the birth of the universe as a whole. Individuation is, as the word implies, a process only for the individual–its after effects are what the masses sop up. Individuation comes only when the individual psyche makes contact with the mysterium tremendum, not once, but multiple times in myriad ways over a lifetime, indeed, over an aeon. This universe has a role. It is fashioned so as not only to permit but to actively engage in the process of conscious evolution. Just so, Marcus Aurelias’s metaphor of the river and time is elegantly analogous to the revelation of Jehovah to Moses which revealed the cosmic unfolding: “And as one earth shall pass away, and the heavens thereof, even so shall another come, and there is no end to my works, neither to my words. For behold, this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man” (PGP, Moses 1:38-39).

Cosmos, myth, and mystery are all linked together, forming one living, breathing organism of life whose biological function is to mimic the underlying energetic function of consciousness upon which it exists. Make no mistake however, mythic consciousness is not about sitting around and reading old and odd stories. Nor is it a vocation for the creative or best understood by the artist. Mythic consciousness is a modality of being that favors the seekers, whoever they may be, wherever they show up, invoking the ancient Hermetic instruction, “[...] seek, and ye shall find” (Matthew 7:7). This world always looks for saviors in the external infrastructure of human systems, forgetting that the Son and Daughter of God is within, and the way to salvation is to become as a little child holding the hand of the mysterium tremendum.

Works Cited

Bramford, Christopher. “Foreword,” Nature Word. Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions International, 1990, pp. 11-42.

Campbell, Joseph. The Flight of the Wild Gander. Chicago: Regnery Gateway Inc., 1969.

– . The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Princeton: Princeton U P, 1973.

– . Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor. Novato, CA: New World Library, 2001.

Conforti, Michael. Field, Form, and Fate. Patterns in Mind, Nature, and Psyche. Woodstock, CT: Spring Publications Inc., 1999.

Discovery News.com, June 30, 2006. ttp://dsc.discovery.com/news/2006/06/30/
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Emerson, Ellen Russell. Indian Myths or Legends, Traditions and Symbols of the Aborigines of America. Minneapolis, Ross & Haines, Inc., 1965.

Glynn, Patrick. God, The Evidence: The Reconciliation of Faith and Reason in a Postsecular World. Rocklin, CA: Prima Publishing, 1999.

Holland, Tom. RVBICON: The Last Years of the Roman Republic. New York: Doubleday, 2003.

Holy Bible. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1999.

Nibley, Hugh. Temple and Cosmos. Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret Book Company, 1992.

Pearl of Great Price. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1999.

Storr, Anthony ed. The Essential Jung. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1983.

Thompson, Richard L. Maya: The World as Virtual Reality. Alachua, FL: Govardhan Hill Publishing, 2003.

Van Loocke, Philip. The Physical Nature of Consciousness. Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2001.

Posted by john at July 13, 2006 05:11 PM