Annick de Souzenelle
Annick de Souzenelle has dedicated her life translating and penetrating the Hebraic texts of the Bible to unveil their hidden meaning. She is the author of The Body and its Symbolism (described by Academy award winning actress Juliette Binoche as “one of the most important books in my life”).
Now 97 years old, she has just published The Big Turnaround exploring the Chapter 5 of Genesis and the genealogy of Adam, and therefore the Patriarchs, from Cain and Abel to Noah. She discovers how each of those important ancestors symbolizes a moment in the development of the human being since Adam.
Here is the translation of her conversation with the French magazine Sources and Laurence de Germiny, published in July 2020.
The suffering humanity is now confronted with is an invitation for people to open themselves to deeper considerations rather than reactionary ones and accept to see and listen to the important meaning of the sacred texts of humanity. We are called to go back to our celestial roots. Today is a time of “unveiling”. A big reversal.
What is the link between the sacred texts and coronavirus? I believe that several occurrences have led to this moment of History where humanity is going towards a big turnaround (the subject of my new book). This has been said very clearly in the Bible. This reversal goes hand in hand with a double unveiling: the one that affects the feminine on the societal level and the one that relates to the subconsciousness from the anthropological science perspective. This unveiling helps clarify those two pillars despite the fact that the translations of our sacred texts are still being enslaved by them. I have been blessed to be able to read the work of differentiation Lord God made between Adam (mankind, men and women) and his other side, which has never been a rib (rather, the feminine, the subtle compared to the tangible masculine). Confusing the two is one of the reasons for our exile. I think as we are now exiting our exile and facing this big turnaround, this other side will densify more and more. It is on this side that Lord God seals the flesh (“bassar” in hebrew), which means the founding kernel that contains all the information of the becoming of Adam. “Basser” is the verb “to inform”, “Bassorah” is “the Gospels”.
What has inspired you in this reading of the Genesis? Inspiration, when it’s right, is always the work of the Holy Spirit. And I hope this inspiration is right. It is the Holy Spirit that has led me to meet orthodox priest Father Eugraph Kovalevsky; it is also the Holy Spirit that brought me to the kabbalist Emmanuel Levyne. I was able to receive both of their respective messages continuously for 3 years, like a stereophony. This “force of the sound” was playing the role of a knife cutting the foreskin of the heart. What I was hearing then compared to what I was hearing before this cut was different, it was making me feel alive, and it still makes me feel the intimate relationship that unites the sky and the earth, the divine and the human. I was already starting to walk with wonder on the path leading from the small letters of the below to the big letters of the above. That’s how the Hebrew people speak of the alphabet of their language: each letter represents a “thing” and is linked to a “verb” that creates it. They both belong to the same word “dabar”. When the thing from below is not linked anymore because of what we’ve made out of it or in the understanding that we have of it, the divine verb then becomes a thing, an idol and then the word becomes “deber”, it’s the plague!
We’re now in front of the fifth plague of Egypt, which refers to the hardship shaking the Egyptians and the Hebrews, their slaves. Their slaves are the ones who, understanding before them what is happening, name the demon of their soul and then grab it (Ex 9, 1-7). Prisoners of our subconsciousness that today makes a thing out of everything, we don’t understand the sense of what is happening and we create a plague as a result. The Egyptians that we are, are suffering from this hardship without finding its subtle message, without naming one guilty scapegoat to be destroyed. I’m showing here how this way of reading the Bible considerably changes its meaning.
Does the hebraic text really contain no vowel? How can one go from one vocalisation of the word to another, “dabar” to “deber” for example? Vowels are the breath of God. They are inseparable from the Verb, but from their essence itself they don’t enclose it. Each vowel, the poet knows it well, is a color! But it is also a music, a savor… The holy spirit danses, runs, according to the kabbalists, like in a an espalier garden, inviting us to pick the fruits of the verb, the fruits of the orchard that the classical tradition had us taste below, to the ultimate orchard, the one above, that will make us taste the fruit of the tree of knowledge because we will have ultimately become that tree, but only after having been nourished by the fruits of the verticalized orchard that the mystical tradition invites us to visit.
Today’s times correspond to the “unveiling”, what does this mean? “God hides his speech, that’s the job of the king to discover it” , says the book of proverbs (25,2). We can translate this verse by “God covers his speech” and today comes the time of the unveiling. As if the guardians of the Tradition had let themselves be umprisononed by the values of the world and their mental constructions, which is what is symbolized by the slavery of the Hebrews in Egypt according to the Bible. Man has grown from his earth roots so far. Time has come for him to do a 180 degrees reverse and draw from his sky roots.
Can the Plagues of Egypt bring light to what we’re experiencing today? They are indeed far from being removed from what the world is experiencing today, first because the life of the hebraic people is the prototype of the life of humanity and of each human being, according to the bible, and secondly because the slavery of the people in Egypt is the symbol of humanity and of each human being, in its own exile from God. Any exilee from God is a slave of his own subconsciousness, the Hebrews are the slaves of Egypt, we are now the slaves of the values of today’s world, pure products of our collective subconsciousness. In depth, what happens in one case or the other refers to the same thing. What happened in Egypt impacts us now. The actual word “Egypt”, “Mitsraim” in hebrew, is one of the keys of the reading. I can see a harpoon emerging (originel ideogram of the letter “tsade”) and going into the heart of the waters, “maim”. The letter “tsade” is made from the union of two letters “yod” (Lord) and “noun” (fish). This word “Egypt” strongly implies that only when we will be fishing the energies of our depths to become our own masters and accomplish ourselves, we, fishes of the divine depths, will be hooked by the Lord of our being to become this Lord of our secret name. In the quality of created beings, totally free, we are fished to be rescued from drowning. As we have been the game of animal energies for a long time, we are being rescued only with a significant rise of awareness that removes us from the confusion of the world of the fishes and passionately makes us long for a sense…. That’s when we are taken away from the waters by the divine masters, that’s what’s playing for the Hebrews before their Easter; the plagues that they’re hit by are the objectivisation of the works that are generated by their subconsciousness.
Would the coronavirus harpoon us to help us exit from the subconsciousness we are living in? As painful as it is, I believe so. And this for 2 reasons that are well within reach of reading:
The first one is that time has come for man who has so far successfully built himself from his earth roots to proceed to a 180 degrees reversal and draw from his sky roots. The biblical Adam is like a tree planted at the break of the waters, says the first psalm, reminding of the water from above, the divine place, and the waters from below, that creates him. The Adams we are today have depleted the gifts of the Earth that is now cracking from everywhere, but a Spring is on its way.
The second reason is that we have been going through the absolute biblical transgression: we have been taking the fruit of the tree of the knowledge only from the outside path, without having become that fruit ourselves at the same time and having learnt how to deal with it, from the inside. It is clear that we are stopped today as we are touching “the tree of life”. That’s how the cerebellum is called by traditional sciences who are also calling the optical layers behind the skull “nuptial layers”, reminding of the profound mystery of the baptism of the skull (Luc 12,50). Yet, we are touching at the tree of life, in the extension of its name to the entire brain, by working on artificial intelligence, on the augmented man, the tampered man, almost free from death, which means free from his twin, life, since those 2 are just one. That’s what confirms the text of the genesis: the Adam who has just consumed the fruit of the tree of the knowledge, God said: “ Here, man has become capable of the one (the divine) that came from the knowledge of the complete and incomplete and now, let’s prevent him from bringing his hand forward and also take of the tree of life he would eat and he would then live continuously (in the times of exile). Genesis 3,22. No wonder why this virus that is now stopping us is called corona: it is the objectivisation of the glory that we get from our scientific successes that are without any measure, without any limit, and killers of the soul. We have to urgently go outside our subconsciousness. That’s how this coronavirus’s trial plays the role of the “harpoon”. And I’m afraid this will not be the only thing that will help us recognize the animals in our collective subconsciousness that play for us.
What are the animals that play for us? One of them is the frog, or the frogs rather, they are the object of the second plague. In Hebrew, frogs (“tsephardim”) can be read as “tsaphor”, the rise, “daim”, of insights. They are, in the most intimate part of our life and towards the cosmic infinite, the irruption of all the insights we have acquired from the outside only. Frogs are our “smartphones” that go up to the “room of the king”, says the text, all our electronic games that enable wonders of possibilities of communication as long as we remain their masters, but that can very quickly enslave us. They are enslaving us even more so badly that they are the holders of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge that we just talked about, intimately linked to the fruit of the tree of life and are included in the infinity of insights brought by the electronic data management, kind of fruit of the tree of the mind’s genius and deadly. The “room of the king” that the frogs are invading, that is to say the data, is not a random image, the king symbolizing the one in comparison to the people, the multiple. And this one joins the biblical speech talked about earlier: “here is Adam able of the one”. We are therefore harpooned.
Has confinement helped people become more aware? The confinement may have acted as a remedy for our current state of subconsciousness: the 9th plague of Egypt- darkness- meant that nobody could leave their chair, anyone being asked to go towards themselves, that is to say to obey to the divine invitation given to Abraham to “go inside yourself”. The fact that this divine saying “Lek Leka” (pronounce “ler lera”) in hebrew has been translated until today by a redundancy “go, leave your country” (Gen 12-1) inviting the future patriarch to go on an outside journey is really significant! You can see in this new translation that we’re giving to this text, an aspect of this reversal we are experiencing today. The confinement is a very clear invitation to this reversal towards ourselves- I mean the jungian self, translated in hebrew by “divine seeding” at the essence of any human being: but this one has yet to sprout as it has been smothered by this animal world that populates our subconsciousness.
Are we going to experience the exit of Egypt? I’m not sure if the order in which the plagues are exposed corresponds to a temporality; the plagues refer to an internal quality. Are we going to experience other hardships before our Easter? I can’t give any answer to that question other that each one of the plagues refer to a transgression of the ontological order whose reading is offered to us, like the leprosy of the 6th plague; a play on word between its name “shehyne” and “shehets”, referring to the will of power, hubris, wildest cruelty indeed, invites us to listen to this leprosy like the objectivisation of one of these flesh eating monsters. Has this plague yet to come, is it present and revealed in the word “covid 19” that means as I said in a previous talk “divine power” in Hebrew, or has it yet to come? I have no idea. But what I believe is meant by the “covid 19” is what the two plagues that surround the sixth say, the sixth one being the hinge between the two aspects of the first three and the last 3 plagues. I just talked about the 5th plague “dabar”, meaning anything that is “reified” and cut from the founding Verb “Dabar” creates leprosy “deber”. Facing that, the 7th plague is the hailstorm “barad”, a word written of the same 3 letters of “dabar”, therefore gifted of the same energies. The power of the founding Verb attaining the matter expresses itself in the Speech, for one, and in the sexuality also. That’s what shows the prophet Isaie when chanting the noble nature of the voice of the Lord,makes it “a devouring fire like the storm and the hail stone” (Isaie 30,30). But with that same force, the hail stone, meaning the Speech, can kill, the same way as the storm of sexuality. And we are experiencing it tragically today especially in those that were supposed to spread the divine Speech. Yet, those two plagues, five and seven and those only are qualified by the biblical text of “coved meod” which means as a first level “very severe and powerful plagues”. Yes, if you are summarizing all these 10 plagues of Egypt, it is unfortunately not difficult to count them in our world today.
But now let’s go back to the second part of your question: are we ready to experience our exit from Egypt? During each trial that Egypt experiences, slaves and masters are alike during the first 3 plagues, then distinguished from each other. With a dawn of consciousness rising from the Hebrews, Pharaon in his powerful reactionary drive lets go his slaves… But there is such an economical imbalance following… that the “Lord toughens up the heart of the Pharaon”! That’s only until the 10th plague that Easter happens. On one side, Pharaon is infuriated, his economy is destroyed anyways, but on the other side, the one that makes sense, the Hebrews have distinguished the meaning behind the trials and are finally ready to leave the slavering but securing Egypt. They had to gain lots of strength to do that. Today, do we have the strength to go back to other values? Other securities? Other sources of life? Intellectually, we are beginning to consciously position ourselves between abysses, the one of a wonderful galloping technology, at the same time fractionning and threatening everyone to be at the image of their idol, dehumanizing; the other abysse being the disintegration of everything! For now, it’s not the woman that veils herself, but the humanity as a whole, lost in its subconsciousness and masked. We are in the game of our infantile interpretation of the biblical texts and specifically the one that had us mistaken the woman, that should be called Eve, with the feminine inside, the subconsciousness of all human beings, man or woman, that alone should be called Ishah. We are still far from the exit of the mess!
Would approaching like you do the current events in light of the plagues of Egypt as an opportunity to become more aware, give indications of the best sanitary politics to put in place? That’s to me the heart of the issue and it would require to go outside our binary logic that still chairs our collective life, slave of its animal quality, where the adversary is felt like the foe to kill, and to give place to a ternary logic where the foe, seen as a foreign force until now, would position itself as an element of integration. This requires the verticalization of the being and the adoption of a new paradigm. The exemple is given to us in the Bible with the fight of Jacob with the angel. Jacob doesn’t fight with a foe, rather an adversary holding a message to integrate.
Could reading the events from a philosophical and spiritual perspective only invite scepticism? How useful could this be for people who are sick and for their loved ones? This reading is more concrete than you think. Man of those past centuries has cut the matter from the spirit and made it two foreign entities! That’s the drama. Mystics have always seen (I’m thinking of Ibn Arabi in particular) a breakthrough of the matter into the spirit in the crossing of the angelical worlds; and the incarnation of Christ is a descent of the Spirit into the matter and into a body that would shurk to the matter when Christ found it necessary. There is no discontinuity from the matter to the spirit, what the quantum physicists have just confirmed today. Each cell of the body is full of the information of the body as a whole. You can see the proof of it in the sheep Dolly, but she can only reproduce the animal. Padre Pio at the end of his life was hidden in his animal body but would visit other saints in his spiritualized body. And Saint Seraphim of Sarov has transfigured himself in front of a witness, Motovilob, who told everyone about it in the last century. I knew a friend of Motovilov. But our body itself, any animal whatsoever, obeys to this law. Our immunitary system in charge of the defense of the organism, it is not a killer of enemies, microbes, virus or other. It mobilizes its small army that on his order surrounds the adversary, phagocytes him, integrates him and makes him its own, so that this foreign body recognized as itself comes to enrich the organism and help the person grow because the integrated energy is information. I can’t detail here what I try to highlight in the 4th chapter of my book “the lord and the satan”. The only thing I can say, along with the mystics and the quantum physicians is that the spiritual reality of the matter is as tangible as our body. There is another kind of touch that is the order of the sensation and the experience. It’s very tangible, it has nothing to do with an intellectual or spiritual elucubration. Our material body is spiritual.
Do you agree with people who pretend that nothing will be like before? For sure. The tree that puts on its Spring dress and goes to give its fruit doesn’t look like the skeleton it was before during winter time. While it was drawing all its substance from the earth, while still being attached to it, when Spring finally arrives, it then receives all of its food from the air and the light.
How can man now draw into his sky roots? If he’s not in the acquired faith and in union with his Lord, he will have a very hard time going through the desecurisations resulting from a mother that abandons him, indeed the earth lets him go so he can leave his childhood and become an adult. I can hear your question as being linked to your concern of becoming this Lord. This Lord has a specific name for each of us and is at the same time the same for everyone in the present of the verb “be”, in hebrew YHWH, I am, eternal present, because participant of the non- temporal, the eternity. And remember (genesis 2, 19), God asks Abraham to name all the animals that live within him, his subconsciousness so he can build his own name. Here is the way that leads to “being” considering this work asks for a totally different quality of love. If I name and capture for some time my jealousy for example, my will only will not be enough, my duty of loving the one that is the object of my jealousy will not be enough either; i will need to deliver a quality of love such that only that love will make me incline to the freedom of my adversary and to love him to that extend. I also find those animals again in the Book of Job, in which Job, after having been defeated by all the struggles (that he will eventually find out were objectivisations of his unexpected demons), is led by his Lord to name them so that from their sacrifice on the altar of fire, the eagle can be born. Our ancestors who expressed themselves through roman art still remembered those demons that they were making wince at the top of those tents of the wonderful basilicas they were building. Those who followed them in the gothic seems to only have reproduced from those animals’ images their aesthetic beauty, but also forgetting their symbolism. You see, to answer your question “how to draw from our sky roots” I answer you by inviting you to go down to your depths. The sky is not transcendent to us as I’ve said earlier, the spirit and the matter being inseparable, but the sky is in us in an essentially potential quality. At the same time, what we call “sky”, that is to say the divine world, is already there because it’s eternal, the eternity being different from the infinite prolongation of times we know, rather a “non time” that we can’t conceptualize but that is. That’s why this Lord that we have to become is already there, because it’s eternal. The Lord of Job doesn’t reveal it to him but he tells him”: “ where were you when I was creating the earth? You know it because you were born then and the number of your days is more than the multiple.” Master Eckhart doesn’t say anything else when he throws half joking “ God made the chicken before the egg that she is coming from” (“the noble man”). The sky is not transcendent to us, yes it is, yet at the same time immanent. The experience alone- and master Eckhart probably had it- can be an answer to your question; we are touching here to something that refers to the person, that’s unique. This goes with the teaching God gave to the samaritan woman: “But time arrived, and has already arrived, when the true adorers will adore the Father in Spirit and in Truth because those are the adorators that the Father is asking for.”
To read:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meister_Eckhart
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Arabi