Some Thoughts on Noah's Flood

[readoldthings]

We're going to return to Matthew's Gospel either tomorrow or next week. I've been trying to work through Matthew 11 in my mind this week, but something else keeps tearing my mind away and demanding I look at it.

One of the readers here, who is also a regular patron of my Etsy shop-- hi onesage -- asked my opinion of the story of Noah's flood. The truth is I hadn't given it much thought, at least not on the mythic level on which I prefer to keep the conversation here. (I've given it a fair bit of thought in the context of flood myths and lost civilizations at the end of the last Ice Age, but that's a different discussion.) So I sat down and re-read the story of the Flood in Chapters 6 and 7 of the Book of Genesis, and then I read them again. Let's read them together, and talk about what they might mean.

The Flood

The Book of Genesis, Chapter 6, Verses 11-21:

11 Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence. 12 And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth. 13 And God said to Noah, “I have determined to make an end of all flesh; for the earth is filled with violence through them; behold, I will destroy them with the earth. 14 Make yourself an ark of gopher wood; make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and out with pitch. 15 This is how you are to make it: the length of the ark three hundred cubits, its breadth fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits. 16 Make a roof[a] for the ark, and finish it to a cubit above; and set the door of the ark in its side; make it with lower, second, and third decks. 17 For behold, I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life from under heaven; everything that is on the earth shall die. 18 But I will establish my covenant with you; and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives with you. 19 And of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every sort into the ark, to keep them alive with you; they shall be male and female. 20 Of the birds according to their kinds, and of the animals according to their kinds, of every creeping thing of the ground according to its kind, two of every sort shall come in to you, to keep them alive. 21 Also take with you every sort of food that is eaten, and store it up; and it shall serve as food for you and for them.” 22 Noah did this; he did all that God commanded him.

The Book of Genesis, Chapter 7:

 

 

1 Then the Lord said to Noah, “Go into the ark, you and all your household, for I have seen that you are righteous before me in this generation. 2 Take with you seven pairs of all clean animals, the male and his mate; and a pair of the animals that are not clean, the male and his mate; 3 and seven pairs of the birds of the air also, male and female, to keep their kind alive upon the face of all the earth. 4 For in seven days I will send rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living thing that I have made I will blot out from the face of the ground.” 5 And Noah did all that the Lord had commanded him.

 

6 Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters came upon the earth. 7 And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives with him went into the ark, to escape the waters of the flood. 8 Of clean animals, and of animals that are not clean, and of birds, and of everything that creeps on the ground, 9 two and two, male and female, went into the ark with Noah, as God had commanded Noah. 10 And after seven days the waters of the flood came upon the earth.

 

11 In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened. 12 And rain fell upon the earth forty days and forty nights. 13 On the very same day Noah and his sons, Shem and Ham and Japheth, and Noah’s wife and the three wives of his sons with them entered the ark, 14 they and every beast according to its kind, and all the cattle according to their kinds, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth according to its kind, every bird according to its kind, every bird of every sort. 15 They went into the ark with Noah, two and two of all flesh in which there was the breath of life. 16 And they that entered, male and female of all flesh, went in as God had commanded him; and the Lord shut him in.

 

17 The flood continued forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bore up the ark, and it rose high above the earth. 18 The waters prevailed and increased greatly upon the earth; and the ark floated on the face of the waters. 19 And the waters prevailed so mightily upon the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered; 20 the waters prevailed above the mountains, covering them fifteen cubits deep. 21 And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, birds, cattle, beasts, all swarming creatures that swarm upon the earth, and every man; 22 everything on the dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life died. 23 He blotted out every living thing that was upon the face of the ground, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the air; they were blotted out from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those that were with him in the ark. 24 And the waters prevailed upon the earth a hundred and fifty days.

What's Going On Here?

The flood is a destruction of the world-- obviously. Did it happen? Who knows. As I hinted above, I'm of the view that the flood myths that are found all over the globe are, in part, records of the massive flooding that actually did take place at the end of the last Ice Age. But for our purposes, that's the least interesting question. When we're reading hte storeis of hte Bible, as always, we're reading a myth. And myths, as we know, are stories that never happened, but always are (even if they relate to something that actually did happen)! A myth is a narrative description of one of the eternal processes that shape the reality of our experience.

So what's happening here?

In order to understand that, we need to understand why the the world is destroyed, and how.

The Earth Was Filled With Violence

I'm afraid I cheated a bit by starting the story where I did. Genesis 6:11 doesn't make very much sense without the context provided by the beginning of Genesis 6. Here is Genesis 6:1-8:

 1 When men began to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were born to them, 2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were fair; and they took to wife such of them as they chose. 3 Then the Lord said, “My spirit shall not abide in man for ever, for he is flesh, but his days shall be a hundred and twenty years.” 4 The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men that were of old, the men of renown.

 

5 The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 6 And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. 7 So the Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the ground, man and beast and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.” 8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.
 

So we have two issues. First, the "sons of God" turned up, mated with the daughters of man, and produced giants. There is a long history of ignoring or glossing over this passage in the history of Christianity, starting with none other than St. Augustine himself, who insisted on reading "children of God" as descendants of Adam's son Seth. But that's not what it says. 

If you know anything about the paganism of the ancient world, this passage is not at all difficult to interpret. Gods in the ancient world regularly beget child by mortal women (and, occasionally, men); those children are beings intermediate between Gods and men, called demigods or heroes; it was a common belief in the ancient world that the children of gods were three times the  height of ordinary men-- hence, giants.

Now, notice that the appearance of the Nephilim on the Earth immediately precedes a situation where "the wickedness of man was great in the Earth" and "every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was of only evil continually."  

To put it in terms familiar to readers of this blog:

Contact with demons (Nephilim) leads to a situation in which the Astral Plane is polluted by negative thoughts and emotions (every imagination of his heart was of only evil continually). 

It's a basic teaching of Occultism that situations like this happen from time to time. Toxicity builds up in the Lower Astral in the form of anger, hatred, addictiveness, despair and bloodlust. Eventually, that toxicity has to be discharged; this happens in only one way, by grounding the negative energy out on the physical plane. What does that grounding look like? There are basically four options-- war, famine, plague, and  natural disaster.

Path Dependence 

There is another issue here as well, and the two are not separate.

Have you ever heard the term Path Dependence? This is a term found in the social sciences. The Wikipedia article is relatively useful, and gives a good, straightforward definition:

 

 

Path dependence is when the decisions presented to people are dependent on previous decisions or experiences made in the past.

 

Path dependence exists when a feature of the economy (institution, technical standard, pattern of economic development etc.) is not based on current conditions, but rather has been formed by a sequence of past actions each leading to a distinct outcome.

 

One example, which is probably relevant to you at this exact moment, is the QWERTY keyboard. This keyboard design is far from the most efficient, but at this point, virtually every keyboard in the world is laid out this way, and every typist in the world is trained to use them. While switching to a more efficient keyboard layout would ultimately save time and money, the cost of making the switch is too prohibitive. And so we don't.

The QWERTY issue is somewhat minor, but path dependence is found at every level of society and often has extreme consequences. It is often the case that armies and navies become locked into path dependence based on a particular military unit or military tactic. This happens due to a combination of past success; sunk cost-- these units tend to be very expensive; and entrenched interests, such as an older generation of officers who are attached to the old way of doing things. Examples are found throughout military history, from the chariot armies of the Late Bronze Age that fell to sudden attacks by ocean pirates; the French heavy cavalry which were defeated by English longbowmen at Crecy and Agincourt; the French Maginot Line, which would have repelled any advance the German army of 1914 could have made but was quickly encircled by the German army of 1940; and modern America's aircraft carrier strike groups, which are probably next on the chopping block. 

Let's talk about just one of those examples. The German Army of 1914 invaded France and immediately found itself bogged down in a stalemate that lasted for the next four years or so. In 1940 the Germans invaded again, and the French surrendered in six weeks' time. What happened in between the two wars? The German Army, in accordance with the treaty of Versailles, was completely dismantled. The result of this was that, when the Germans began to re-arm, they were able to start over from what was virtually a blank slate. All of the entrenched interests, expensive equipment, and hidebound officers that crippled France's ability to adapt to a new form of war in 1940 had been swept out of Germany as if by a divine flood.

The Return of Chaos

Genesis 1 tells us that, in the beginning, "The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters."

 

That God chooses water as his means for destroying the world tells us that he is returning to the beginning. As we've seen, there are two issues-- the Lower Astral has become toxic due to humanity's congress with demons, and the issue of Path Dependence-- which is a permanent feature of human life, as much 6,000 years ago, or in the Dreamtime of mythology, as today-- prevents any solution short of starting over. 

And so the Earth is destroyed, so that it can begin again. 

Because, of course, humanity isn't destroyed utterly. Noah and his family are saved, and are chosen to save a part of the animal creation. Noah is saved because he is righteous, and willing to obey God-- indeed, these two are two ways of saying the same thing.

I'd like to suggest that this is a mythic pattern which plays itself out regularly in human lives-- in the lives of individuals, organizations, communities, and, sometimes, entire civilizations. At the individual level, any story of drug or alcohol addiction that ends happily ends this way. The addict finds that their old life is no longer livable; they must turn themselves over to the care of God and allow the divine floodwaters to sweep away everything from their past, usually including the great majority of the people with whom they used to spend their time. At the level of communities and organizations, one regularly sees situations similar to that of the German army, in which a failed or defeated organization is able to reorganize itself for success precisely because of the earlier defeat.

And now, I think, we're seeing the same thing at the level of our civilization. It's no secret to anyone with the slightest bit of sensitivity that the Astral Plane is extremely toxic right now. Hatred, blind rage, and the sort of bloodlust that fuels tribal warfare float freely through the void, latching onto any human mind that will receive them and turning the owner of that mind into yet another transmitter of demoniac rage and hatred.

Seedbearers, Ark Builders

Myths never happen, but always are. Or, to say it another way, they don't happen once, but they keep happening, again, and again, and again.

Another version of the Flood Myth appeared in occult circles in the 19th century. Unlike the Biblical story of a worldwide flood, this myth is specifically the story of the fall of the island civilization of Atlantis. According to the story, in its late years, Atlantis grew corrupt and the Atlanteans turned to evil magic and human sacrifice. There were warnings that Atlantis was going to sink beneath the sea in punishment for its wickedness, but these were not heeded-- except by small groups who fled the island, taking with them some of the culture and the magic of Atlantean civilization and preserving them for the future. These groups were called "seedbearers"; John Michael Greer wrote at length about them some years ago. The seedbearers of Atlantis are the exact analogue to Noah and his family.

By paying attention to the story of Noah, we can know with some certainty the next act in the story that our own society is living out. The rains have started, and the floodwaters are rising. The institutions and cultural goods of the last century are being swept away. 

Our task, if we wish to make it through the next few years with our souls and our humanity intact, is not to join one partisan side or the other. It's not to hate people who get vaccinated, refuse to get vaccinated, wear masks, or refuse to wear masks. It's to build arks. We each need an ark for ourselves, and our own souls. And we need a larger ark for our family, and another ark for every community that we wish to see still existent when the floodwaters finally recede sometime between now and 2030. Ultimately, that's what I'm trying to do with this blog. It's been clear to me for a long time that the Catholic Church is one of the institutions that quite simply isn't going to make it. It's led by a faction of liberal modernists who are hell-bent on destroying the Church and its traditions and replacing them with a kind of bland liberal chaplaincy that will have the same attendance level as the Episcopal Church within a decade or so. Its opposition, meanwhile, is a collection of ultra-insular "Traditionalists" who spend most of their time shrieking about demons and freemasons and LARPing the 1940s. The rains have been falling for decades, and the floodwaters are rising. But I believe that, just as in the case of Atlantis, there is something vital there that can still be saved, and so I'm making it my mission to help save it. 

Where will you build your ark, and with what will you fill it?

Comments

[methylethyl]

It is funny how resonant Noah is, right now. I have been thinking about him a lot lately, but from a completely different angle: how much of a weirdo the guy must have been. Right now, the pressure to social conformity is so intense, one wonders how the oddball genes survive. The eccentrics and independent thinkers are being shoved out of employment, out of social life... it looks really bleak for nonconformists right now. Eerily like accounts I've read of the 30s in Germany, particularly in the medical and academic institutions (I'm reading Neurotribes right now, which contains a bleak account of what happened to the children's hospital unit run by Hans Asperger in Austria). No room for variation. Why do we still have weirdos? Not a joke. If history rolls through these mass conformity-drives periodically, why don't the contrarians get wiped out?

Noah tells us why. Because a lot of the time, that crankiness, that drive to swim against the current, pursue things not valued by peers, gets mercilessly stomped. Most of the time, the cooperative instinct is the one that gets you through the winter. But on very rare occasions, when cooperative gets co-opted into doing really, really maladaptive things, that weirdo Noah... is the only survivor *because* he wasn't the cooperative type. And then everybody is descended from him. And it's probably happened more than once. Most of the time, it's a liability. But every once in a while, it's so critical to survival that nobody would be here without it. Which is why it's so disturbing to watch my culture try to eradicate nonconformity: it's a societal deathwish.

I like your take on arks, and yes! Let's build some! Maybe even right out in the front yard with all the neighbors laughing. The times are evil, and survival depends on freaks.

In Orthodoxy, we have a thing about arks. An ark is a box. A container of God's grace, and a preserver of God's people. Noah's ark. The ark of the covenant. We sometimes say the Theotokos is an ark.

[readoldthings]

This is a great comment, thank you.

But on very rare occasions, when cooperative gets co-opted into doing really, really maladaptive things, that weirdo Noah... is the only survivor *because* he wasn't the cooperative type.

Yes! This helps clarify something I was thinking about earlier, which was how to describe the role of weirdos. I see societies as organic wholes, each organized around a particular telos and governed by its particular gods (angels, saints). Given that, what is the role of the outsider?

The times are evil, and survival depends on freaks.

And there's the answer. Of course another way of saying "the times" is "the spirit of the age," and when we say it we mean it literally... the governing deities of the age are evil.

[prayergardens]

Wow. I have that feeling where dots are starting to connect in ways I didn't anticipate. Since I'm only on Coffee #1 I'm going to have to reread this slowly a few times and am really looking forward to that. Thank you!

[readoldthings]

One coffee is never, ever enough. (It's called self-care, people!)

This post more or less wrote itself based on several things that I encountered completely at random-- onesage asking me about Noah, a random Twitter post about the Wehrmacht in WWII, a talk by Samo Burja... when that kind of thing happens, it suggests to me that the thought itself is simply out there in the Ether, looking for a vessel to express it.

[onesage]

Wow, sounds like the story of Noah has hit a chord with a few of your commenters, too. I almost forgot to book our next session (but I did remember) - gentle readers, our host provides spiritual counseling services where for a pittance he will listen to whatever hare-brained ideas you have rattling around upstairs for a WHOLE HOUR. highly recommend!

[readoldthings]

Yes indeed. But it makes sense, doesn't it? If what we're living through right now isn't the end of *the* world, it's definitely the end of *a* world.

[onesage]

Absolutely it does, and I feel that sense of resolution one gets when an idea that’s been bugging you trying to get expressed finally finds it’s way into the light, so thank you!