The Differentiation of the World and the Restoration of Unity

“At the beginning of time
there was nothing in the world —
neither sand nor sea,
nor any cold waves.
There was no earth yet,
nor firmament;
the abyss gaped,
no grass had yet grown.”
(Prophecy of the Völva)

As mentioned, Pagan myth regards as the primordial basis of the cosmos the Supreme Biner – the Great Father and the Great Mother, who emerged from the depths of the Most High to bring about the process of creation. In other words, the world arises when, within the universal unity, an original activity — primordial mind — and an original receptivity — primordial being — are distinguished. At the first stage they remain undivided (Ymir, Rod), and it is precisely Their separation and mutual attraction that creates the potential difference propelling the World Process.

Then the Great Father, entering the Great Mother, uniting with Her, gives rise to differential elements that form the framework of the Cosmos. This subsequent union of Mind with Being is no longer potential; it is actual, realized, operative.

From the pre-existence of the World Abyss (the Mother), distinct elements (reflections of the Father) are born. The Father, the principle of differentiation, the principle of individuality and expansion, reflecting himself in the Mother, the principle of unity and attraction, distinguishes within Her reflections of his Potentials.

Since the ideal Dyad always fully mirrors its poles, the Great Mother in turn bestows her properties upon the Father.

As a result, within the primordial ocean of the maternal womb separate self-aware elements are born (energies, dharmas, “emanations of the Eagle”), from which the fabric of worlds is woven.

It is unsurprising that, to signify the coming into being of life, mythologies usually employed the image of the spinner (the Norns, Mokosh, Frigg), spinning the Threads of the World and weaving its fabric.

In reality the Father and the Mother exist rather as principles. Even the First Father bears within him traits of the Great Mother, and the First Mother bears traits of the Great Father; it is only their children that acquire concrete existence, each mixing the principles of Unity and Multiplicity.

The violation of the original Unity and its restoration by the efforts of differentiated self-aware beings constitute the meaning of the involution–evolution flow of the world process. Actual being (which, as we have seen, is the fruit of the potential Being and Mind) appears as the breaking apart of the original homogeneous, immeasurable and indistinguishable unity, the birth within it of duality, the manifestation of aspects and elements. In the essentially ineffable One, as one of its possibilities, multiplicity is born, and thus the triad arises: Unity — Multiplicity — unity within multiplicity.

From the foregoing it is clear that the world, in reality, is a collection of elementary, very small elements, between which lie “interspaces” of Potentiality; yet any perceiving Mind ignores these interspaces, and the world is perceived as continuous.

Even at the crude physical level this general principle manifests itself: atoms consist largely of void; the nucleus and electrons are vastly smaller than the size of the atom itself. The same holds true at all other levels.

It is clear that such a duality of actual discontinuity perceived as continuity is a necessary consequence of the very Principle of Creation; however, this does not exclude its finitude, since full mutual mirroring of Mother and Father must be accompanied by a number of elements tending toward infinity, and of the size of the gaps between them toward zero — and this is precisely the content of the world process: the awakening of the maximum number of potentials into actual existence.

What does this mean in practice? Apart from the obvious and often-discussed corollary that the world is a product of description — an arbitrary composition WITHIN the mind of separate elements and the establishment between them (again WITHIN the mind) of relations — this view not only makes intelligible the possibility of regrouping the elements, i.e., of changing the world-picture to increase the efficiency of existence, but also opens direct ways for such regrouping.

Being aware that objects are only sets of qualities, descriptions, names, we can, by manipulating those qualities, “change” objects, processes, and, finally, ourselves, since both objects and we exist only as names and descriptions within the perceiving mind.

It is precisely this notion (not always clearly articulated) that underlies any Magic — the idea that the world can be changed as one wishes without changing its nature and without violating the will of God or the gods.

The ancient Egyptians already understood that to “manage” the gods and to “wage war” on them are two entirely different approaches. The former (theurgic) was considered sacred and pure; the latter — theopolemical — unworthy and sinful. They understood that Theurgy does not set man in opposition to God, does not set man in the place of God; it allows a new view of the actions of the gods, and, through such a new perspective, alters the manifestations of those actions.

Also, the often vague but commonly made distinction between “white” and “black” Magic becomes clearer: “white” magic rearranges blocks of energy and qualities, finding new stable combinations, while “black” seeks to impose on existing blocks qualities that are originally alien to them. It is obvious that such imposition can only result from a misunderstanding of what is happening, although, of course, it is not necessarily ineffectual, nor always disharmonious.