El Shaddai

As quantum physics envisions it, the universe is made of energy, energy consists of fluctuations in the vacuum, and these frequencies of vibration, which are verily sound-waves, become matter. Cosmos is logos. A Vedic verse declare, "Adau Bhagavan shabda rasahi: in the beginning the Lord created the universe through a stream of sound."

Yet whence did the stream emanate? From the silence of the vacuum. Yes, cosmos is logos. Yet logos is the Word of silence.

Myriad names of God swirl from the womb of holy silence. Just so, stars spiral from a black hole at the center of the galaxy. Yet all the black holes in the cosmos are one and the same fertile void. This star-birthing singularity, the infinite hush of the maternal dark, is not far away. It is the core of your being, the bindhu at the center of your heart.

In Jewish Kabbala, the Great Seal of Protection is a mandala containing the 72 divine names. We can find similar mantra-mandalas made of Tibetan and Sanskrit letters. In the untranslated letters of St. Pachomias, "father of Christian monasticism," I have seen such mandalas of syllables written in Old Latin. They were possibly derived from the Demotic, the language of Egypt, home to the wisdom schools of Christian Gnosticism. In all these mystical traditions - Indian, Tibetan, Hebrew, Christian - the names are bija mantras, healing sound-vibrations used in meditation.

In the Hebrew Great Seal, we can see the divine names emanating from the Star of David, with the letters of the Tetragramaton -Yod, Heh, Vau, Heh - in four corners of the star. This unutterable Name is usually interpreted as a form of the word breathed to Moses on Mt. Sinai: I Am. Yet at a deeper center of the mandala, in the space within the Star, is another mystical name, Shaddai.

In Genesis chapter 17, the Lord tells Abraham that, "my name is El Shaddai," usually translated as God Almighty. But the etymology is uncertain. As with many sacred Hebrew words, there are alternate roots, each with its own significance, resulting in parallel commentaries. These multiple roots are complimentary, not contradictory.

One root of Shaddai means "fertile field, uncultivated wilderness." This would suggest that the other divine names, which are the very energies of creation, spring from a wild impregnable field to which the intellect of man may lay no claim - or what the Christian mystic Ruysbroeck called, "the wayless wilderness of the Godhead."

Another root means "destroyer," which seems like the opposite of the former. But in this center, opposites converge. As in a black hole, what destroys also creates. New star stuff spins out of the same virgin void that consumed the old creation. A line from Bhagavad Gita 11 comes to mind, where the Lord of Love declares, "Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds." We may also recall a Biblical verse, "the Lord your God is a destroying fire." (Deut 4:24)

Yet in the most popular etymology of the Hebrew word, Shaddai means "mother's breasts." El Shaddai is the "God who is like a mother's breasts," the feminine power. So countless worlds, innumerable energies, and all the names of God are born of one Mother, who is divine Silence. This Silence we may experience, but never know. For this is the Silence of the Beloved, who annihilates the knower, with all his efforts to be certain, and all his attempts to name the ineffable.