Yesterday I was sitting journalling, just writing down thoughts and ideas when I could feel in the back of my mind this word wanting to come forward. I am currently reading and researching Hermetism, and I was expecting it to be this word or a derivative of it, but it could sense it began with L and had a ‘th’ in it. So, I decided to write to see what came out. Leviathan. I know I have never heard of that word before, I wasn’t even sure it was a word, though every time this happens to me it does turn out to be something. Trans-configuration. Sympatico. These words were said to me over and again while I was trying to sleep to the point where I had to wake up and write them down. I wasn’t sure they were real words and to this day I still don’t understand what trans-configuration means, every time I research it, it just reads like a collection of scientific words that do not penetrate my mind and make sense to me. I still do not know why trans-configuration and sympatico were repeated over and again, they just were.
With Leviathan, I was intrigued especially by the fact that it is a giant sea serpent in mythology. It was mentioned in the Old Testament, in Psalms, the Book of Job, the Book of Isiah and the Book of Enoch (which is only in the Ethiopian Bible for some reason). This sea serpent is the depiction of pride, envy, greed, chaos, basically everything that is nasty in the material world. For the Jews, it is the depiction of Babylon and all that was wrong with it. The female sea monster to the male land monster, Behemoth. To the Christians, it is something that God destroyed. To the Gnostics, it is the thing that surrounds this material world and prevents certain souls from reaching the Highest God. But I didn’t know what it meant to me. Why this word popped out of me. So, I decided at first to just let it settle, to percolate and do what it needed to do within my mind and soul. The next morning, I was guided to meditate on it. And the results were very interesting.
Like Hermetism, the Leviathan goes way back before the writing even of the Old Testament. It’s in Ancient Egyptian writings and was included in the ancient Canaanite and Mesopotamian religions, killed by the god Hadad as detailed in the Bible. And, like Hermetism, it travels all the way forward to the 17th Century where Thomas Hobbes’ book, Leviathan, forms an important part of the early political philosophy.
In the book, Hobbes writes about the Leviathan being a metaphor for the omnipotence of the state, which maintains itself by educating children in its favour, generation after generation. Sound familiar? The central tenet of the book is that there should be an absolutist state otherwise human beings are likely to fall into chaos and war. That people, except the ruler, should sign a social contract that enables the ruler to rule but also for the people to live in harmony and where the church and religion are also subordinate to the absolutist ruler. In Hobbes’ work, the Leviathan is the state, the absolutist government that brings order to humanity and prevent chaos. Essentially, to channel humanity into a more pleasing society than the one Hobbes was perceiving in the England of Charles I and the Civil War when this book was written. If this hadn’t been written four hundred years ago, I would think it would be coming out of Peter Thiel’s mouth.
In fact, Thiel is heavily influenced by Hobbes. He believes that nature is a hostile, brutal force that humans must control through technology, creativity and hard work. That the ‘raw state of nature’ is a primitive condition where humans would eat raw flesh with their bare hands, viewing culture and cooking as hard-won triumphs over this chaos. While Hobbes talks about the natural world, Thiel goes further and expounds that it should be harnessed, dominated and controlled by technology, creativity and hard work. Read that again. That nature is a hostile and brutal force that should be subjugated. The thing that creates us, the thing that provides us with a planet on which we can survive, should be subjugated by technology.
If Thiel is egotistical enough to think that he and his band of merrymen (Musk, Trump, Bezos, Zuckerberg) are any match against Mother Nature, he needs to get a serious reality check. And he will but, unfortunately, so will we. Because Mother Nature will bitch slap him into the middle of next week, taking us along with him.
In my meditation, I was shown all these men. The billionaires. In it, the Leviathan was about their greed and corruption. Their focus on the material at all costs. The question that was posed to me was – why does anyone ever need more money than can be spent in several lifetimes? What does it mean? Why does someone need to be paid a pittance to make a handbag that is then sold for thousands to keep a very small umber of people in riches? Why can that person not be paid a decent, living wage? Why do people want to purchase a handbag that costs so much because they believe it says something about them? It does say something about them, but not what they think. I heard that there is nothing wrong with aspiration, with growth, with wealth even. But there is something terribly wrong with wealth at the cost of the dignity, health and lives of those working to provide these people with that wealth. There is a lot wrong with that wealth when you are seeking to destroy the world’s natural resources for your own ends. I heard that there is something very wrong with throwing away furniture made from once living trees, to replace it with more furniture that is again, made from once living trees on a whim. Sell it, donate it, but don’t just throw it out like rubbish. And…do you really need more stuff? Money is not evil, it is energy. It is the meaning people place on money that can be evil and wrong, the people who are wrong.
The writings of Hermes Trismegistus are written from the perspective of a polytheistic world. And within that, that there is a god who (in my interpretation) governs this solar system (there are more who govern the others). Maybe even this galaxy. She is Gaia. Mother Earth. Nature. And it is her job to keep the planet(s) in the habitable zone functioning. To keep nature alive and free. If she detects a problem with that, she eradicates that problem. Currently, we are the problem with that, and I have no doubt she will eradicate that problem. Volcanic eruptions? Earthquakes? Devastating landslides caused by melting glaciers? A Super Nino that is going off the scale? All happening at the same time and increasing? Out of control heatwaves and wildfires? Check, check, check, check, check and check. What does Thiel have in reply to that? AI and robotics? AI requires water and lots of it as well as electricity. Mother Nature will have no problem depriving it of that, and it will die a very quick death. Technology relies on that which Mother Nature provides us, even if they put it on the Moon.
Anarchy and chaos are not caused by nature; it’s not even a humanity that isn’t governed by an authoritarian dictator causing it. No, anarchy and chaos are caused by greed and corruption run rampant as we are seeing with the Thiels of this world and his friends. The very people who want to create this authoritarian state and subjugate nature. In our blindness we are allowing them. It’s very much time we woke up before it is too late.
Louisa Simpson 