The destiny of every human being is written in The Book of Life.

Is there such a book somewhere? How is this possible even as a concept?

The 4th of January 2018 we explored “The book of Life”.

– Our way of exploration or methodology is explained here (it opens in a new banner). In short it is based on knowledge gained through the group dynamics or a bigger whole a higher holon. This we call holonistic knowledge or knowledge gained by increased holonity.

I this article you will learn how to benefit from The book of Life. We will explore the concepts of destiny in similar mythologies (Greek, Roman, Norse and Egyptian) to find the origin and then look at science and a few additional perspectives touching upon Chladny and the influence of sounds as well as the sub-divisions of the zodiac. Finally we will sum up and explain why The book of life really is real and an existing phenomenon.

The Concept; Book of Life

The book of life ( Hebrew; ספר החיים or Sefer Ha Chaim, Greek; βιβλίον τῆς ζωῆς or Biblíon tēs Zōēs ) is said to be a book or a collection of records with the destiny of every human being. The book is mentioned in both the Bible and Talmud.

It is a record of every person that has gained eternal life and hence will go to heaven after the last Judgment. If the person is not recorded in The book of life but in The book of death he/she will be thrown into the lake of fire. This idea is sometimes differentiated into additional books of good and bad or a book of intermediate.

According to the Talmud these books are opened on Rosh HaShanah and mentioned under the recitation during the Days of Awe, the ten days from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur the Jewish new year. This is between the ending of a cycle and the beginning of a new.

The Akashic record and The book of Life

According to Theosophy and Anthroposophy the Akashic record or The Akasha chronicles contain every though, feeling or deed of all human beings. Your deeds influence your karma, in other words your future. People that can read the Akasha can look into the long past history as if looking back on the tracks created by everything that exists; as looking back along the timeline of history.

Imagine yourself radiating out waves or rings in the “universal water” or energetic fields with every action, feeling or thought; like a field around you in space-time representing your manifestations through your path in life, from life to life (See illustration).

Imagine that every being has such a field with them and that they are all interrelated and create the universal web or sea. A sea where you can track back every wave to its source, in your case; you. Your timeline would show every little wave coming from you and its influence on the whole.

It would be like tracking ripples on the water back to a boy fishing or a girl that trew a stone in the water or a fish jumping.

Destiny and faith in mythologies
In Norse mythology the World Tree Yggdrasil has three roots each going into different wells or sources. The first root goes to Urðrbrunner or The well of Urðr. Urðr is one of three norns together with Verðandi and Skuld. They belong to the giants and all three are maidens.

Their names can be translated as past, present and future or more precisely debt/karma, happening/becoming and fate/karma. The two first derive from verða (being, existence – that which is manifesting). Urðr is the the past tense (what has happened, what you have done, your actions and deeds generating karma, or your fate derived from your past). Verðandi is the present tense and represent becoming here and now, what is happening. This is the active manifestation as well as the point of change where you can influence the future. Skuld is from the verb skulle/skole and is what has to be, ought to or shall and represents the same as karma too.

The second well is Mímisbrunnr, The well of Mimir. Mimir is wise and his well is the source of wisdom and located close to the gaping abyss Ginnungagap.

The third source is not a well but a spring called Hvergelmir (bubbling, boiling spring) “whence all waters rise” and is close to Niflheim. There is a well there too called Kvergjelme full of snakes lead by the dragon Níðhöggr. They gnaw on the root of Yggdrassil and threatens the existence of the tree!

Yggdrassil and the Tree of Life in Kabbalah have many striking analogies. The three supernal or highest spheres (Sephirot) are all above the abyss. Which signify that they belong to a different place, world or plane of existence. The abyss of Kabbalah and Ginnungagap probably refer to the same. These three supernals form the triangle of fire, representing the fire world. (More about this follows further down)

The three roots of Yggdrasil have a similarity in distribution of qualities to the three supernal sephiroth. The polarity between Kether and Hochmah as the primal polarity is the same as the polarity between Niflheim and Mispelheim.

Niflheim or “mist home”, “mist world” or “mist abode” has the source Hvergelmir. It is the source of all rivers and reminds of Kether as the source of all the sephirot. Kether is associated with Neptun which is related to water and mist. Neptun creates a fogginess or rather dissolves everything back to its original connection with a higher or bigger wholeness or holon. This is as treatening to the existence of the Tree of Life as the snakes lead by the dragon Níðhöggr gnawing on the root of Yggdrassil.

The second well Mímisbrunnr is like Hochmah the source of wisdom and the first Urðrbrunner is like Binah the place where the lords of karma is seated with Saturn. Saturn is the planet of karma.

Additionally this area of Yggdrassil is also connected with the enthroned figures of Just-As-High, High and Third. Also the sephirot Binah is connected with the throne of God.
It is possible that ideas of cosmology has been exchanged between cultures but also that different people have achieved the same level of elevated perception and described the same aspects of reality.
We will leave the comparison at this point.

[To the reader: remember: 3 maidens, 3 roots of the tree, nourished by water and world of fire]

In Roman and Greek mythology we also see 3 woman of faith present at birth and spinning the tread of destiny. The Romans are also maidens while the Greek are old and severe.

The Greek Moirai

The Greek called the Fates Moirai. The three of them were Clotho spinning the thread of life, Lachesis drawing the lots and determine the length of life and Atropos cutting the tread of life and deciding when you die. Atropos was the inevitable. In Greek mythology they were described as severe, stern and ugly. Even all the Gods, except Zeus were under their control. They have been regarded as daughters of Zeus and the goddess Themis (connected to divine order) or Ananke (connected to necessity).

Both these qualities reminds us of Kabbalah and the same sephirot; Binah. Binah ruled by Saturn the planet of karma is also connected to order and necessity.

Picture: Relief, grave of Alexander von der Mark by Johann Gottfried Schadow. Old National Gallery, Berlin

[To the reader: remember three old ladies, transcending the Gods, connected to order and necessity, spinning, measuring or cutting threads of life and their presence at birth]

The Roman Parcae

These three women were Nona spinning the thread of life, Decima measuring it and Morta cutting it and deciding when and in which way a person will die.

The similarity with the Greek and Roman is very close and not very surprising if you think about geographical and historical proximity.

Picture: The Three Parcae (1540-1550), by Marco Bigio, in Villa Barberini, Rome

[To the reader: remember three young woman, spinning, measuring and cutting threads of life and present at birth]

Neith – the origin?
One of the oldest Egyptian deities was Neith. She was “born the first, in the time when as yet there had been no birth“. Together with Selket she is supporting the heavens. In the battle between Set and Horus the Gods ask her to decide who will rule the throne and she sais she will “cause the sky to crash to the earth” if Horus is not selected.

Neith does not only have this position above the Gods but is also wearing the symbol of a shuttle for weaving. She is a goddess of creation and weaving but is also connected to fate and destiny. She is said to reweave the world and bring it forth from the primeval waters daily. She is also regarded as the source of the River Nile

I am the things that are, that will be, and that have been. No one has ever laid open the garment by which I am concealed. The fruit which I brought forth was the sun.

During mummification the viscera or internal organs were stored in four different jars, the Canopic jars. They represented the sons of Hours and each was protected by a deity, one of these were Neith. In this sense she is connected with the dead and their destiny in the after life too. 

Neith had no husband and was a”Virgin Mother Goddess”. Unique Goddess, mysterious and great who came to be in the beginning and caused everything to come to be ….

Is it possible that Neith has influenced the understanding of the faiths and also the concept of the virgin as well as being oldest of all Gods? This source goes further back in history as Neith was very central in the early dynastis in Egypt. The story of Neith is much older and go long beyond the Nordic, Roman or Greek mythologies. It is also possible that the source is from a deeper perception of the mechanisms of life.

The meaning of Neith
The old languages used letters as symbols carrying meaning and every thing or concept was given a name using the letters that represented the qualities of the thing or concept.

Neith in Egyptian hieroglyphs is written in a few different ways (see illustration), but the repeating theme is of the letter N and T. The N in Egyptian is like moving waters, or waves, a triple latin M or one N following the next as a wave of six connected N´s, the T is like a half circle or little cake ( see illustration).

The N in Egyptian as well as in Hebrew signifies something coming forth from nothing or from the un-manifested into the manifested in continuous perpetuations of offspring.

I Egyptian N signifies because, since, on account of or belonging too. Hence it represents the root or origin of a thing, its cause or what the external manifestation relates to on a deeper level.

Similarly in Hebrew it symbolises created or produced existence. To use Carlo Suares abstract but precise description of the Hebrew letters; “Noun (50) in opposition to the unlimited ‘seed’ of Life in Hay (5) is a life of cycles, repeating itself in time, every type according to its seed.”

The letter T is a bread bun or bread roll in Egyptian and a coiled serpent in Hebrew. It has also been represented as a basket or a house signifying the idea of containing or surrounding, as well as completed or good in the sense of functional and accomplished.

Combined as N-T, additionally to representing Neith it also signifies water streaming, pouring out, gushing as well as secretions and emission. So Neith has a quality of streaming forth or emitting the creative power. This reminds us of the Nordic mythology as the sources and wells of water close to the roots of Yggdrasil.

The Hebrew letter Teth is both a shelter, protection and shield representing resistance and protection. Having what is needed to resist and keep your own structure.

The protection and resistance can be seen also in the crossing arrows and the shield so often in representations as in the writing of Neith ( See illustration of the name).

The little egg is also frequent in Neiths name ( see illustration) and signifies: woman, goddess, cities or son. Woman in the sense of being abel to give birth, son in the sense of the egg of the mother. The egg holding the potential of birth and manifestation.

Neith is probably androgyn, she represents the unity before the split, or the process of unity becoming polarised and hence manifested. She represents both the White and the Red Crown of upper and lower Egypt, both male and female, both spirit and matter, both the motherly protector and the fatherly warrior, she is chase but gives birth to the Sun-god Ra.

It is possible that Neith and Egyptian mythology is the origin of the other mythologies, or has influenced their myths and concepts. Let us not forget that Egyptians according to scholars and researches such as Schwaller de Lubicz and others used the Neter (Gods) to represent properties, qualities, processes and forces in nature.

We will now look at such a process in nature and see how it relates to the scientific approach to destiny.

[To the reader – remember the streaming water, weaving and crossing of arrows, the polarities unified, virgin and oldest God, above the other Gods, manifesting inkarnated life from the un-manifest, abel to let heaven fall to earth = take back the manifested]

Genetics and destiny
The idea of something being present early in life that determines your life as we see in all these traditions, is not so far from the modern scientific perspective. We would say conception is the determining point and that at birth a lot of qualities and potentials are set. Looking closer at it we could even say it is all about treads (of DNA and RNA) that are interwoven connected or cut. It is about the un-manifested potential becoming manifested and individualised. It is about keeping the house, shelter, basket of what makes you the individual you are and resist all the forces that could change you into “not you”.  The DNA inside the nucleus of the cell is copied by RNA (See illustration). Strings are cut and copied and weaving is done and undone as the building blocks of the body are created or manifested from the original code. The code is a sequence of codons.

The codons that make up the genetic “letters” consist of the combination of four nitrogenous bases that build up every step of the DNA (See illustration).

The sequence of three bases makes up each codon. Each codon is like a letter or code that the body uses. Each codon being built by 3 bases that each can be one out of four gives us 64 combinations.

[To the reader – Remember genetics is also a question of threads that are cut and interwoven and set at the beginning of your life, by 64 letters]

I Ching
One of the oldest books in China is the I Ching or book of changes. It is regarded as a divination book and used by people when they encounter a difficult problem, have a need to understand, choose or decide what to do.

They either use modern technology with some random choice generator, throw coins or the old technic with 50 yarrow stalks to generate a hexagram. Each hexagram consist of 6 lines. Each line is either yin or yang and are either stable or changing. Since each line is either yin or yang you get 2 possibilities 6 times. Two multiplied by itself six times also gives 64. According to the I Ching we have 64 hexagrams, each representing a state we can be in.

The changing lines create the transitions between two hexagrams indicating you are in a situation between two different states. The first is the state you are coming from and with the changing lines you can calculate the state you are going towards.

[To the reader – Remember your destiny is defined by 64 different situations/states with different advices as how to act in each.]

Kabbalah and the 32 paths of initiation
It is also common to divide the Tree of Life into 32 paths (22+10). To be more precise we have 10 sephirot which you could say you can enter or leave and 22 paths that you can move through either way. That also creates 64 states (10+10+22+22). The whole issue of the number of paths is subject to discussions and opinions. The initiatic rituals of the secret orders follow these paths.

So far
So far we have seen that the set of possible genetic configurations is the same as the set of described states in the I Ching and in the most common versions of the Tree of Life.

We have seen that different related and possibly unrelated traditions describe fate, destiny and karma in similar ways as to the spinning, measuring, cutting or weaving of treads and the connection with the beginning of life be it conception or birth.

Astrology
The natal horoscope or your birth-chart is also said to inform about your faith and destiny. It can predict the likelihood of events or states of mind at different points in your life. Your birth-chart is set from the moment of birth in the same way as we have seen in different mythologies above.

Some astrologers say that you have to adjust the chart with life events; what they call a Kundig correction. The results might be that your chart could be adjusted back or forward from a few minutes to a few hours. The idea is that it represent the actual moment the soul did enter your body.

This rises questions about caesareans and modern hospitals increasing practice of scheduling your delivery time to be induced chemically.

Genetics, your birth-chart and the situation you are born into like country, parents, family background etc., represents major factors influencing your life.

Personal name
There is one other important factor that makes up who you are and that is your given name. I am not only thinking about the name as a means for identification but as a factor influencing you.

A name consists of sounds, and sounds shape and form. Chladny figures show how different notes create different shapes.

A sound that you receive again and again or that you associate with yourself might influence you in ways we do not understand yet.

The melody of a language also seems to reflect traits or qualities of the culture. Which again brings us back to genetics and common features amongst related people. (Here you can read more)

We will leave this issue just pointing out that there is a set of possible letters or sounds making up a name.

[Remember: A set of possible names depending on sounds and letters]

Connections
We can conclude that the phenomenon of destiny is described in different religions, mythologies, astrology as well as science. Also that they all have some similar ways of describing factors that influence the outcome of your life.

Something seems set from the very beginning, be it conception or birth. The beginning of a cycle or process represent the end of what preceided it. Beginning and ending of cycles is reflected in maidens and old women. Even Neith is such an old women that she was present before the beginning.

Beginnings or endings be it of the year or the final judgment as well as the very start of time, space and creation is mentioned.

With Neith we are back at the state before the Gods were created to a time and space where primordial generative energy comes into manifestation. Which we recognice in the other myths as something transcending even the Gods since the Gods are under the influence of this factor that is at the roots of the universe, at the root of time. We see the same in connection with the upper triad of the Tree of life which is the source in the same way as the roots of Yggdrasil also being its source.

Neith, Yggdrasils roots or the upper triad in the Tree of Life are all connected with the streaming forward of creative energy.

Neith is also said to create the sun. For the reader aware of the huge cycles of the earth, the globes, this reminds of the time between Saturn and Sun. If you are aware of this process and what is typical about it with “fire” becoming “air+light” you can recognize it in this process that we only will mention here.

According to Kabbalah when the flowing creative energy of creation itself is manifesting its transforms into distinct patterns, differentiation and fragmentation. All these are interconnected like an on-going weaving of the carpet of life or the akashic record.

There is an issue of threads that weave your life, they are spun, measured and eventually cut. This is strikingly similar to the DNA-RNA process. Here the source, the genetic code, stream out from the nucleus of the cell and build up the blocks that weaves the tissues of your body and make you into who you are physically.

You could also say the maidens or virgin woman and old and severe women represent inexperienced or the pure potential of gestation in contrast to experienced, wise and completed female energy. This is also a story of the potential to manifest or manifested potensial.

This is a phenomenon that goes beyond genetics, or when your name is chosen, or your horoscope set at birth it also is present at the early steps in the creative sequence of the universe. It is a phenomenon that happens in every cell of every living being as well as in many other procesess in nature. Let us explore and start to weave the carpet.

Cosmology and creation
According to the Kabbalah the universe or existence has four levels or worlds represented by the four elements.

Creation streams forth from the highest fire world, to the worlds of air then water to become the earth level or that which we regard as the material universe. Here we perceive our material and lower elements of fire, air, water and earth that are all material analogies. These higher worlds are on more subtle planes of existence than the elements we are familiar with.

This higher fire could also be viewed as Big Bang or a very high energetic source that maintains creation and its existence. If it should disappear or stop pouring out, all will be extinct according to Kabbalah. In the illustration the greenish bottom represents Big Bang and the streaming forth of creative water of stars and galaxies is like the creation of space-time. The illustration is like a well, or event horizon. Is that what the Nordic mystics perceived?

This is a process where pure energy turned into space-time as it expanded. If you view the galaxies they can easily be perceived as a tree. In this illustration of Laniakea every dot of light represents a galaxy and the red spot is our closest neighbourhood.

That tree would appear to be nourished from the well of the event horizon in time-space.

Very early we have a phase called the dark ages. It is the black stage below the greenish just before stars and light were created, the bright area of the first stars.

I like to view the dark ages as the abyss and the next phase where stars or suns appear as the state where Neith created the sun.

This state before stars were created, the universe was very hot filled with a uniform white hot glowing fog of interacting plasma of subatomic particles according to physics. A state very similar to how the old globe of Saturn is described in antrophosophy or the fire world are described in Kabbalah.

The cooling made electrons combine with protons creating hydrogen the first and simplest of all the atoms. These electrically neutral atoms did not interact with photons which then could travel freely through space.
There was a splitt of matter and radiation. Here we see a strong analogy to the step described in the birth of the sun by Neith or the transition from the Saturn to the Sun globe in anthroposophy and theosopy. A state where a “airy” space allowing radiation or light due to a separation.

In Kabbalah this state were pure energy splits into air and light is called the air world and represents a state where raw creative energy started to condense into light, principals, patterns and pure archetypes.

In the next step moving into the water world, these patterns and principles from the air level condense into energetic fields of form and shape forming everything that exists in the water level.

As it condenses further you could say the water world, behind the shaping of our material or physical plane,  materializes or matter-realises.

God creates by separation
High up in the Tree of Life in the realms of fire above the abyss that splits the worlds of fire and air, you find the gates where time and space come into being on the way down into the manifested or unfolded (“explicate”) worlds or disappears into enfolded (“implicate”) potential on the way up. On the way down the Tree at this point were you enter time and space you could say you go from the universe of unity or oneness to the universe of separation, splitting and manifestations.

According to Kabbalah God creates by splitting the unity, the un-manifested nothingness. When all is united it is the same as nothing. When it splits it starts to manifest. By splitting unity into polarities God creates a multitude of manifestations.

We see this in the creation in the Bible called “Bereshit” where God separates heaven and earth, light from dark, the waters above from the waters below, the waters from land the sun and the moon etc. Creation is separation by creating a polarity (LINK soon).

Also in the letters in the words of creation we see this. The word creation is Bara. Bara spelled Beith, Resh, Aleph has letters with numerical qualities; 2, 200, 1. The Beith Resh or 2 – 200 can be read as the house of all the cosmic containers but also as the main splitt containing all the spiritual or universal splits. The letter Aleph = 1 represents the United All. So Bara means more than just creating it means creating by splitting, but the splitting is also a nested activity creating a container that contains all the principal splits , on a spiritual level, creating all the spiritual containers of every being that comes from the One. In short it means that one by the principal of polarization becomes many.

Like the Daoist saying in the beginning was Dao and Dao became yin and yang and yin and yang became the many.

To be continued soon