Spiral staircase (Lul), Vatican Museum, Rome, design Guiseppe Momo, 1932
This looping staircase could be representative of being in time, the spiral of time; minutes to hours, hours to days, days to months, months to years, years to eons. A spiral can go on and on in endless loops. Does the staircase bring you down or does it take you up? Actually, both equally, right? What if you didn't know which direction was up? With gravity that's not a problem. Being here on earth incarnated in flesh our mortal bodies give us sufficient weight. We feel the pull downwards toward the grave and eternal darkness. We long to be lighter and more free.
In Aramaic lela, biblical Hebrew layil / lel / leyelah ל׳ל is "night," from the same root as lul לול "winding stairs." These are things that "turn, twist," "fold back," or lulay / lulaah "loop." Night has this connotation of turning (from the light or day) and looping, twisting which can be negative. Things that twist are twisted, and can also be ensnaring, or encircling, and coiled like Leviathan, from livyah "wreath, garland." Laviathan is the mighty and unstoppable serpent of the abyss.
Apep / Apophis the wreathing, twisted, garland serpent- Egyptian Middle Kingdom, World Encircler, Enemy of Ra, Earth-shaker, Evil Lizard, Serpent of Rebirth, The Great Rebel, Eater-up of Souls
Behold, the hope of man is disappointed; he is laid low even at the sight of him [Leviathan]. No one is so fierce that he dares to stir him up. Who then is he that can stand before me [the Creator]? Who has given to me, that I should repay him? Whatever is under the whole heaven is mine. Job 41:9-11
When God was creating the day, it was day, then things took a turn, looped, the day went to night, but then turned back to morning. That whole process was one complete day. And this did not happen just once but 7 times, the number of perfection and completeness. The night is part of the day, because of this bending back / looping. And it was good.
So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind, And God saw that it was good. Genesis 1:21
If the night was bad then how could it be part of the day? Or why would it be?
How would anything have endured if you had not willed it? Or how would anything not called forth by you have been preserved? Wisdom of Solomon 11:25
In the context of the day, i.e., the loop, the night is not evil, it allows for the experience of life. Ánka in Lithuanian is "loop, ring." And the ancient Egyptian ankh is a tau (Τ τ) with a loop on top, and it means "life, living" (and also "mirror" an image bent back / reflected).
However, in another sense the turning / looping (ankh), "life" is also the cause of death. That is, being fixed on the cross (stauros in Greek) of matter, or being born into matter through a mater, "mother" (in Latin), is what then causes the experience of change and death and the experience of night and darkness as evil. Like all descendants of the primordial woman Eve, the mother of the living, who's name was given as Chavvah, meaning "life." A similar symbol to the loop on a cross, is a circle on a cross. It is the symbol used to represent "woman" and the planet Venus, the planet named after the goddess of love and desire. This gives new meaning to the idea of embracing one's cross. Then he said to them all: "Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. Luke 9:23 [NIV]
Female / Woman / Ankh / Venus
This loop or cycle is life, but it is also true that life is the leading cause of death. There is always the danger of creation falling into night and staying there, when spirit incarnates in matter. If the loop is not completed, when day turns to night then there is eternal darkness, but if day turns to night, then back to morning there is one complete cycle or day (yom in Hebrew).
When the light came into being it was then that darkness became darkness or evil in opposition to the light. This might make sense of why this sound / word "ankh", which is the name of a symbol in the shape of a thing curved or bent back, and has the meaning life in ancient Egypt, came to mean death in other cultures. The curving / bending back is not only the pattern of life, but also the reason for the experience of death. In Welsh angau (from angheu --> *ankow --> *ankus) and Breton (Celtic) ankou is "death," and is personified as the figure Ankou, a cloaked skeletal figure with scythe. Proto Indo-European root *ang / *ank is said to have the meaning "to bend," and things bent can be, well . . . bent or crooked, ankylos ("bent, crooked") in Greek, or evil.
Is night evil? When the light was created it was called good, however, the birth of the light automatically set up its source for vilification. The light is the cause of the darkness being viewed as evil. However, the day or the light, embraced the darkness, and, in Wisdom, redeemed it with this cycle or turning / looping, day by day. The mother, the infinite sea of potential, rather than being condemned for not being the light, is redeemed by the light. Just as the Christ, was born from a woman and is the savior of all creation. In the beginning the light emerged from the dark waters of infinite potential.
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. Genesis 1:1-3
And then the light was separated from the darkness, but the darkness was not called evil. God's Wisdom is revealed by this reflecting or turning from the dark to light.
For she is a reflection of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of God, and an image of his goodness. Though she is but one, she can do all things, and while remaining in herself, she renews all things … For she is more beautiful than the sun, and excels every constellation of the stars. Compared with the light she is found to be superior, for it is succeeded by the night, but against wisdom evil does not prevail. Wisdom of Solomon 7:26-30
When the light loops it turns to night, so it is a fall, but when the dark loops it turns to day. The fall of the night brings the glory of morning. And because of this happy little trick, the night is not evil.
The fall was not an eternal fall or night, rather it was a loop into matter. The spiritual falls into to the flesh, and is raised again to the spiritual. The mother provides the flesh of man (adam) as matter-earth (adamah), and the mother grows the child in her womb, but the mother is the mother of the living (Chavvah / Eve), those with the spirit / breath of life (ankh). It was this living spirit that in innocence ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge, knowing that only good comes from God, so all was good, and the fruit was good, so they ate it. And a good did come from it, a greater good than would have been, . . . however, first it brought the night, then the new day.
Michelangelo, Downfall of Adam and Eve and their Expulsion from the Garden of Eden, Sistine Chapel, 1508-1512
The words for night, naked and dead actually are more closely related in English than they appear to be. Night is from Old English niht "dark part of the day; night; darkness," from Proto-Germanic *nahts- "night, darkness"(source also of Dutch nacht, German Nacht, Old Norse natt), from PIE *nekwt- "night"(shared by Greek nyx / nux νύξ and Latin nox, noctis "night.")
So, night is from *nekwt- which is like the word "naked." Naked is from Old English nacod "nude, bare, empty," also "not fully clothed," from a root shared by Old High German nackot, German nackt, which is a lot like nacht "night." Night is "dark" *neg-, in the sense of the part of the day which is a turning away from the light, and figuratively this turning from the light can mean "going toward wickedness or evil." Nakedness is generally given a negative connotation and thought to be naughty which sounds like noctis. And the naughty night and darkness is said to be evil like death.
Nekus / nekys νέκυς in Ancient Greek is "dead body, corpse, what lacks life." The dead body is nekus, or might we say naked? Nekros (from nekys) is "dead, lifeless, dead body"(as in necropolis, necromancy), from PIE *nek- "death, natural death". *Nek- is that which has gone to *neg- "darkness, night" and… become naked / neked (deathed)?
Doves are innocent and "naked" like babies, but serpents are wise "naked" as in, smooth and shrewd (Matthew 10:16). In Latin nex, genitive necis is "violent death, murder," nocere is "to harm, hurt." The serpent (s-nek) in the garden was called crafty / naked (arom) and was said to be a murderer (necis) who intended to harm (nocere).
The snake in the garden was arum, very crafty and smooth. Adam and Eve were arom, naked smooth. They were naked and not ashamed in paradise, like children spiritually. They were innocent (from not + nocere). They had not yet experienced the fall or decent into the spiral (lul) of time which they would have to climb in oder to reach the day again. Looping can lull us to sleep like a lullaby in the endless circles of time.
"Awake, O sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light." Ephesians 5:14
ḫ', "sunrise", "rejoice" Hieroglyph
We have hope in the perfect day, i.e, eternal recreation (recreation because the completing work of creation is finished and what is left is to enjoy it).
This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it. Psalms 118:24
Adam and Eve were naked children, they had not experienced the night or death. It was day, and was good like paradise, but day does not consist only of day. Day always goes to night. If going to the night is evil or fearful one is still a child and not an adult. If Adam and Eve were already spiritual adults they would not have feared darkness. They needed a new day in which they would be perfected and become spiritual adults. But how do you leave one day to reach the new day without first going into night? Becoming an adult involves experiencing the pain involved with gaining the knowledge of adversity, and experiencing the "death" of the child-you. Sad . . . but joyful too.
O felix culpa quae talem et tantum meruit habere redemptorem.
Oh happy / lucky / blessed fault / fall that merited such and so great a redeemer. - Exultet of the Easter Vigil
It is interesting, funny even, that the bringer of the life of the new day is also the bringer of death / change, and that death is actually a victory. Like how Jesus stuck it to the devil by dying. The devil thought he had him. How can suffering and death and being nailed to a cross be good?
"Cursed be everyone who hangs on a tree." Galatians 3:13
Christ on the Cross with Mary Magdalene[Good Friday], Luca Signorelli, c. 1490
But then, Christ razed hell, rose from the dead, and opened the gates of heaven to everyone. True freedom made possible because of the fall. Lol. You are so dumb, Satan, you are really dumb!
The bringer of new life is also the bringer of death. . . that is, death to the old life. Like a child who becomes an adult, we might say there is a violent end (necis) to the child, it is transformed into the mature body and completely changed. Who gets asked if they want to go through puberty and become an adult? Is it a good thing for the child to die and the adult to be born? It is debatable. Yet it is happening in any case. It happens by force of nature. It is the world we live in, the world of sin and death.
Metamorphosis of the Monarch Butterfly(partial), Anthony Mercieca/Photo Reserchers, Inc.
If one is not yet a Christ, he / she is not truly an adult. If you are in sin and death, then you are in the night, not yet the morning. Physically Adam and Eve may have been adults in the garden of Eden, but they were children spiritually. Physically we may be adults now, but we are not innocent children spiritually. We may be children, but children with sin, not innocent.
For although by this time you ought to be teachers, you need some one to teach you again the first principles of God's word. You need milk, not solid food; for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their faculties trained by practice to distinguish good from evil. Hebrews 5:12-14
And neither are we spiritually adults until we know good from evil and are able to practice love rather than jealousy and strife.
But I, brethren, could not address you as spiritual men, but as men of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food; for you were not ready for it; and even yet you are not ready, for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving like ordinary men? For when one says, "I belong to Paul," and another, "I belong to Apollos," are you not merely men? 1 Corinthians 3:1-4
We have fallen very far. We have fallen so far that we don't trust our hearts. We have been lulled to sleep and don't know which way is up or down, we confuse black with white, day with night, we say we are clothed when we are naked, we say we are salty when we are tasteless, and the light of the world when we are darkness. How can one climb out of a pit of that magnitude? It is so deep we need a ladder or staicase out of it. How is a staircase of such magnitude made so as not to be too steep, difficult, or treacherous? How can it be done?
It is curved in a spiral. It's a lul (winding staircase) in the creation of the day. It loops. A crazy loopy solution to a problem. It's kind of miraculous, and can be funny.
The Well of Initiation, Inverted Tower, Quinta da Regaleria, Portugal, c. 1904-1910
What will happen to us? Doesn't everyone want to know this? Here is a secret... you already know the story. The answer is one Word; Day, night, day - one day… and it was good.
