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Thoth

February 15, 2024

Thoth was an ancient Egyptian God—a complex deity with many facets, including healing, mathematics, magic, and generation and keeper of time.

A particular form of his magic was his role as the scribe who used words to manifest reality in consciousness. He literally spoke reality into existence.

Under his power, language became a sacred extension of reality itself, capable of bringing into being concepts and ideas that otherwise would remain hidden within the darkness of the unconscious.

As a student of Zen, which constantly emphasizes experience over words, it seems ironic for me to emphasize the importance of words in bringing something into consciousness. But it occurred to me during an early morning unwinding session that the words we use to speak reality into existence have importance and power.

I found myself floating within a semi-conscious state, struck again and again that there were few words to describe the sensations and movements that accompanied this experience of unwinding.

Was it a cramp? Well, not really. It seemed more like a writhing within.

But these writhings had different qualities. Some felt like a big thick caterpillar moving ever so slowly over large portions of my body.

Some felt more like braided hair, or even tough pieces of beef jerky.

Then there were very small movements roaming around my spine like intricate neurosurgery.

Sometimes areas would freeze, unable to move without a sense there would be resulting anatomical damage to my body.

And there were accompanying emotions, as the sensations “took off.”

Even though we have more words available for emotions, the depth and breadth of feeling experienced in this unwinding rendered even the vocabulary of emotion inadequate.

And there was a quality within the experience where sensations, emotions, and feelings intertwined without linearity, as if feeding off one another in three-dimensional space, patterning themselves each into the other.

Pain, fear, and anxiety would slowly morph into joy and surprise, the whole experience transforming under the eye of intense observation.

My lack of ability to describe or relate these sensations, emotions, and feelings made me feel alone in it.

But I remembered how some cultures have so many words for things. It is said that the Scots have greater than 400 words for snow, and Icelanders more than 100 for wind, as if Thoth worked overtime in these cultures using his magic to uncover a capacity to detect subtle differences in environment, especially when survival depends on it.

Maybe as we rediscover our abilities to sense within, we can appreciate the magic of language. Perhaps we can find more words to empower and enhance our ability to self-unwind, making it a more natural and available aspect of our consciousness.

Over time, Thoth morphed and comingled into the Greek God Hermes, who carried the caduceus symbol of medicine. I'm not sure could be a better symbol to represent unwinding than those two snakes moving up his winged staff.

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