RECLAIMING THE SACRED WORD

Through our speaking and writing we become known, to others and to self.  

Language does this in two major ways: through communication, and through expression emerging from an awareness of being. The first is a function of all living creatures. The second has become highly developed in humans, although we now recognize it is found in unique ways in other species.

The extraordinary human voice sounds through breath vibrating our vocal cords, two mucous membranes stretched across our larynx (voice box). We have this in common with reptiles and mammals, but not birds. They mostly communicate through a unique vocal organ called the syrinx. Humans’ distinctive vocal facility comes from intricate dances connecting our throats, tongues, lips and teeth amplified by the resonating chambers of our chest, mouth and skull. Our languages developed as complex outcomes of this activity.

In human language we have a magnificent repertoire of expressive sounds – the vowels, consonants and diphthongs that make up the alphabet and generate a vast vocabulary. The many different human languages evolved along with the development of folk souls as humanity spread into the earth’s diverse regions.

The words that make up all these languages have their origin in the divine Word, the Logos, source of all creativity  (I look at this in my post  How  Art Forms Come from Spirit, Sept. 7, 2023). This universal source is a place of meaning and order, what Pythagoras in the 6^th century BCE called ‘cosmos’. And human languages reflect the ordered structure of the divine cosmos. Otherwise they could not be understood.

This brings to humanity a unique responsibility. By being open to inspiration from the higher world, our word making will be imbued with Wisdom and the potential to express truth and goodness.

A child learns this structure naturally by absorbing and copying. And this would have been the dominant means throughout life in pre-history – until the coming of writing. Accompanying writing, there was a desire to know how words worked together and what structures were involved. That is we began to study ‘grammar’ as the tool for expressing beauty as a reflection of the spiritual realms. It meant we could also give our words expression as art. 

Despite grammar’s unfortunate reputation (too many teachers drumming it in so it felt like punishment) this is the original purpose of our clauses, phrases and words, and of words functioning as names (nouns), their determinators (articles) and substitutes (pronouns), activity indicators (verbs), qualifiers (adjectives and adverbs) and small linking words (prepositions and conjunctions).

A million-year+ history

Human language as we know it is a result of more than a million years of evolution. Before our primal ancestors began to reshape the world, when they were intimately and automatically connected with their environment, the changes in nature around them affected their mood and they would have been moved to respond. Even now we can respond to different environments. I feel more open by the ocean. I feel impelled to spread my arms wide to take in its magnitude, accompanied by a sound, a long automatic breathing out – an ‘aaah’. Finding an injured creature on the seashore evokes a narrower vowel sound like ‘oh’.   

Imagine these kinds of sounds producing the first consensus about meaning: the open vowels conveying how we felt about the world or for one another; the adding of consonants producing quick and effective communication. They are percussive, more outwardly directed. Like ‘Hoi’ – here’s food! Or a warning, ‘Kai, kai!’, because we were the prey in those far off times when giant megafauna roamed the earth. Language was much simpler,  probably with little regional variety, perhaps at first none, as the book of Genesis says, ‘Now the whole earth had one language and few words.’(Genesis 11:1) 

The birth of poetry

The art of poetry came about because of a need. Our speech continued to evolve along with a greater consciousness of the material world. Innate connection with the cosmic realms was replaced by a certain sense of separateness. There were some who could still experience the Logos within their minds and hearts. These seers were revered as the messengers of the gods with the task of connecting people with the cosmic spirit and its inner echoes. 

In the ages of the powerful mother goddess I imagine the very earliest ‘poets’ would have been females, less involved in bravura hunting and fighting, who had this important spiritual role. Originally poetry was not separate from song and dance (an ancient tradition that continues today). Always an oral art, the poet-singers gave voice to what flowed through them, and when others heard, they were able to experience connectedness again. The invention of percussive and melodic musical instruments enhanced the experience.

Because of this direct link, not filtered through carvings or pigment, poetry would initially have been an ideal means of reconnecting people directly with the non-physical dimension. Arts using substances taken from the earth would have brought a different relationship between spirit and the world.

Story, love songs and philosophy   

Poetry evolved further in the age of mythological consciousness There is a unifying thread in the enormous variety of world mythologies. The Greek mythos means ‘story’ and myths are humanity’s way of depicting our relationship with our most profound story, of our place within the universal.

These storytellers, the poets, bards and aoidoi were set apart and received training so they could tell the story with power and authority. In time their words were set down in writing. Flourishing in the third millennium BCE, Sumerian is believed to be the first written language, using cuneiform script (although older undeciphered symbols could be part of language systems). History’s first recorded poet – on cuneiform tablets –  is Enheduanna, high priestess in the city state of Ur, c. 2300 BCE. Her poems tell of the deeds of the goddess Innana.   

Eventually, two main streams of poetry emerged. The oldest is the epic, which speaks of the gods, with thoughts streaming from the Logos and expressed through human agents telling of high human deeds and aspirations, and the struggle to stay true to divine purpose. You find this in the Gilgamesh epic, the Bible story of the Israelites in the wilderness, the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer, the Norse sagas, the Arthurian and Grail legends and so on. It resounds even now in some of our contemporary epics – the Star Wars films, Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings. Story is still powerful but maybe not when it is debased into kill or be killed.

Then there is the lyric – from the lyre as accompaniment – the love song to the divine in creation. This is an outcome of humans becoming more self-aware. Poets expressed this more personal relationship with earthly things and with a beloved. Very little remains of ancient Greek poet Sappho’s art, yet she was the first to call the path of love ‘bitter-sweet’.  Medieval troubadours turned such love poems into a popular art form. Nineteenth century Romantics poured out their hearts in odes. Nature’s wondrous places and moods still feature in poetry and almost everyone has a favourite love song.

Philosophy is a product of the intellect, the thinking that probes and dissects. Here the word has moved away from artistic expression to a search for meaning. We are looking now primarily at the written word. Philosophy at its most meaningful is about the soul even if this isn’t made overt.

On losing it

Over the millennia our speech gradually lost much of its poetic import. As the plethora of articulated words for communication exploded with technological advances – from the printing press to computers and mobile phones – our human language became both too sophisticated and too limited. Sophistication entered with the avalanche of new words that increasingly place us in isolating areas of speciality; limitation grew from the diminution of colour and nuance which refutes our potential.

We have so many sounds and combinations, and a rich vocabulary of words from the vast storehouse of human experience. Words have potency because they are symbolic pictures that describe and express a reality.

But artistic expression through the word has been removed to a kind of ivory tower while much of everyday language has become pedestrian. Words are robbed of their essence until everyday speaking or writing is too often empty of life. Yet words are living entities. That’s why I have to text spelling out my words. I feel sorry for ‘are you’ when ru rips off its lovely leaves, for ‘by the way’ when it’s cut down to btw, for ‘thanks’ becoming thnx, ‘please’ becoming pls, ‘see you’ reduced to cu. We are in such a hurry to get on to the next thing.

Meanwhile English, my language, is amazingly flexible, helped by the ubiquitous apostrophe. Verbs have become nouns (the sleep, reply and build) and nouns become verbs (we highlight, google and friend). New and composite words are constantly being adopted and dictionaries can’t keep up. Perhaps that’s why there’s a retreat to child-level words, or to ‘the language of the schoolyard’.

I remember a saying from my schooldays, “Sticks and stones can break my bones, but names will never hurt me.’ Not true. Words can kill. They can destroy psychically, on a soul level. Names can label, belittle, insult, distort, hurt. Words can manipulate, threaten, breed fear, they can disguise and distort what is true and real. Especially today in the age of world-wide communication.

And regaining it

In Prodigal Daughters my chapter ‘The Art of the Word – when the Logos speaks through us’, explores much more about the ways we undermine language. But also about the beauty of words, their evolution and their intriguing origins, about the poetic Muse who inspires the language of love and truth, of the power of stories to change us, and how we can still imbue our words with their source in the divine realm of Logos.

We can reclaim the kind of language that returns us to its source, one that raises our consciousness and restores our relationship with our full humanity. Thankfully poets have always been around; even today you can find them, and they don’t actually have to be making poetry or be called poets. They are simply those who experience and portray spirit in the evocative grace and power of their words. This applies to all of us whether we are involved in ordinary conversation, counselling, teaching, to the words we sing, to what we write and also the thoughts that come to us. It certainly applies to our listening – and even when we read to ourselves silently we still hear the sound inwardly.

The inner attitudes we need to become everyday poets turn out be the very attitudes that make us more creative, holistic individuals. This isn’t surprising given that language is so much part of us.

I think the starting place is our intention, the intention to elevate the finest in ourselves and to value it in others, never to diminish or belittle them; the intention to open a space, to dispel ignorance and fear of the unknown, never to disguise, inflame or compel. This is how we can begin to speak truly, discerningly and with empathy. Speech that heals is the speech that frees, that enables movement, possibilities, new thoughts and intuitions. When this occurs we are attuned indeed to the divine Word.

All the arts can help us on the journey to our real self, our I AM. That’s why I wrote Prodigal Daughters. Reclaiming the art of the sacred word in our language honoursthe precious gift given to us from the very beginning.