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THE ATLAS OF THE INMOST SELF
The Nāsadīya Sūkta (Ṛg Veda 10.129)
the creation hymn
nature
Seven verses on what there was before there was anything: neither being nor non-being, no air, no sky beyond, no death and no immortality, no sign of night or day. Something breathed windlessly by its own impulse. And then the hymn does what no other creation account does — it stops and asks whether anyone can possibly know, and wonders aloud whether even the highest overseer knows, or perhaps does not.
The most disarming text on this entire bench. Every other tradition here opens its cosmology by asserting. This one opens by asking, in its own scripture, and leaves the question standing. Set it beside Genesis 1 and the difference is not doctrinal but temperamental — and set it beside Ein Sof, of which nothing may be said, and it turns out the tradition had already said the nothing out loud.
Who really knows? Who here will proclaim it? Whence was it produced? Whence is this creation?… Perhaps it formed itself, or perhaps it did not — the one who looks down on it, in the highest heaven, only he knows; or perhaps he does not know.
rhymes with
sephirahketer
whyThe crown, and a hymn honest enough to say that the crown may not know either.
tags
nasadiya · rig veda 10.129 · creation · doubt · ein sof
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