Out of all the ‘Creation’ myths of the ancient Egyptians, the ‘Heliopolitan’ version (named after the city of Heliopolis) is the most popular. It is said that in the beginning, the universe was a “formless, watery void” named Nu or Nun. The English word ‘None’ – meaning “nothing” or “zero” may be a derivative of this ancient name.
Out of the waters of Nun emerged a phallic-shaped hill – the ‘primeval mound’. This hill or mound is a metaphor for a vortex or energy – a circular matrix created from its own centre. This creation myth is the origin of the ancient Egyptian Sun symbol – a simple circle with a dot.
Some traditions hold to the idea that the waters of Nun surround this ‘hill’ or ‘mound’ – being the first ‘world mountain.’ However, it would be more correct to say that the “waters” (the potential energy) of ‘Nun’ is at the very centre of the mound – like the lava at the centre of a volcano – being the centre of all creation.
Here, the confusing concept of the ‘World Mountain’ can be further explained in that an analogy was made with the “liquid-fire” (lava) that rises up from the depths or centre of the earth and through a mountain volcano so as to explode in all directions from the truncated summit. We would also note that the Great Pyramid is truncated.
The sexual imagery was not lost on those who noticed the correspondence between the lava rising upward through the axis of the volcano, the Kundalini prana energy – the mix of ‘fire’ and ‘water’ – rising up through the sushumna of the spine, and the semen, which rises up through the phallus at the climactic moment of sexual intercourse between male and female subjects – again the opposites.
In Hindu cosmology, this ancient Egyptian imagery of the energy rising up through the phallus of Atum-Ra and surrounded by the “waters” – the matrix of space – would be interpreted as the male Lingam (erect penis) surrounded by the female Yoni (vagina). It is said that from this union of Lingam and Yoni, the whole universe comes into being. And this would be correct as the sexual act reflects the fusion of opposites; the same mechanistic process that goes on within one’s consciousness and also at the microcosmic levels of reality; the “seeds” from which all things are being continually created and recreated.
In the Egyptian creation myth, it was from this phallic hill, that Atum-Ra, by enfolding his hand around his penis (again demonstrating the union of opposites) masturbated himself to an explosive orgasm – his seed igniting the birth of the Universe and creating all life within it. From this fusion point, the Universe expanded in all complexity – unfolding like a flower through many levels. In the minds of the ancients, this was how the material world became manifest.
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