The Tanah–Beginnings, Chapter One

[The following is the second of many posts–here is the first–about a fictitious discovery of ancient manuscripts of a religious text of narratives and magic spells. Its purpose for my readers and me is to provide a cosmology and mythography on which I am basing much, if not most, of my fiction–short stories and novels. If anyone is interested in reading this fiction, he or she can use these blog posts as references to explain the nature of the magic and universe in my fiction.]

1. Waves everywhere, that from the lowest, rise to the highest, then fall to the lowest, rise high, and fall low, everywhere, always, these are Cao–a never-ending ocean.
2. Cao is one; the Pluries are many. The one breaks up into the many, all of which then drop into the ocean.
3. How does the one become the many, and how do the many become one?
4. The Crims make Cao the Pluries, and they make the Pluries Cao.
5. One Crim, Nevil, is fire, heating another Crim, Priff, water, into a third Crim, Weleb, air. Nevil leaves, thickening Weleb back into Priff, then freezing Priff into the last Crim, Drofurb, which is earth, or stone, or ice.
6. The fire of Nevil also brings the light of day, Dis, and the heat of desire, Hador. When Nevil leaves, what remains is the cool or cold of calm, Calt, and the darkness of night, Noct.
7. These eternal flows that move everywhere–up high and down low and back up, from one to many and back, from cool to hot and back to cold, from water to hot air and back to cold and ice and stone, from the dark of night to the light of day and back to black, from calm to desire and back to calm–all of these are Cao, all are the Pluries.
8. The waves of Cao flow from Drofurb to Priff, and from Priff to Weleb by the brightness and heat of Nevil’s fire of desire, then Nevil fades away, bringing Weleb back to Priff, then Priff to Drofurb, darkening, cooling, and calming. The waves move Noct to Dis, and back to Noct. The waves flow from Calt to Hador and back to Calt.
9. These ups and downs, highs and lows, heating and cooling, desire and calm, light and dark, night and day, ice to water to vapour to water to ice,…these are what is all of the world.

[The text breaks off here.]

Commentary

The above verses express not so much a beginning of the universe as the beginning of an understanding of its basic building blocks. The poetry in the original language has a rhythm that evokes the rushing waves of the universal ocean in a way that English cannot effectively render, unfortunately. We can get only a basic sense of the pendulum swings of the primordial opposites: up and down, light and dark, night and day, solid to liquid to gas, passion and calm.

As explained in the translator’s introduction, the imagery of the verses give off that sense of the dialectical thesis, negation, and sublation as given in the undulating movements of t, s, n, s, t…etc. The purpose of this emphasis on the wavelike movements of all opposites is to give the reader a sense that these undulations are the foundation of everything–the secrets of the universe.