Wisdom: Uncreated creative creativity

Wisdom is uncreated  and her uncreated creativity is the creative energy that creates and recreates creation anew in every moment, making all things new.  Biblical and Patristic wisdom teaches that wisdom beholds the glory of uncreated grace, being herself, like glory, uncreated energy, endlessly creative in her uncreated creativity.  So it should be no surprise that when, in 1922, a wisdom figurine between 26,000 to 24,000 years old was discovered in the Cave of Rideaux, near Lespugue, at the foot of the Pyrenees, it was suggested that in the Old Stone Age, wisdom was already well known and loved for her generous uncreated creativity, her uncreated nurture and nourishment as well as for her uncreated glory and beauty.  What was a surprise was that the mathematical proportions of her figure corresponded to the ratios of the ancient Dorian Mode and Kafi, the Vedic Dorian Diatonic Mode.  Some scholars, such as Abraham and Thompson, argued that this reveals that Stone Age mathematics and the science of harmony are very much older than language or literacy.  It was discovered that the ratios of this Stone Age Wisdom figurine correspond to the Dorian Mode, the tonic being 144 Hz, the second 134 Hz, the third 119 Hz, the fourth 108 Hz, the fifth 96 Hz, the sixth 91Hz , the seventh 84 Hz and the octave 72 Hz.  The Dorian Mode is well-known for its balanced, harmonious consonance, equally bright and dark, because its basic thirteen note chord is made up only of perfect fifths, without tritones.  From C to C’ this Dorian completeness is made up of six perfect fifths, 1. C to G;  2. Eb to Bb;  3. G to D;  4. Bb to F;  5. D to A; and 6: F to C’.  These interlocking perfect fifths give to the Dorian Mode its characteristic harmonious consonance, the perfect musical expression of wisdom’s uncreated perfection and creative completeness.

The generous folds and curves of this Gravettian Stone Age wisdom figurine are all saying:  Perfect completeness, perfect consonance of light and dark, harmonious perfection liberating every dualistic fixation on major or minor scales, perfect co-incidence of opposites.  This wisdom figurine has ratios corresponding to old Vedic as well as Dorian diatonic harmony, ratios with which we now know Old Stone Age seers may have been intuitively familiar, a perfect fifth and a perfect fourth, a minor third and a minor seventh, together with a major second and a major sixth, where the upper tetrachord is the perfect mirror image of the lower tetrachord.   These harmonic ratios are mathematical and musical expressions of wisdom’s harmonious completeness that seems to have been intuitively known to Old Stone Age Gravettian cultures, long before language and literacy had developed.  It is perhaps no surprise to seers and sages that wisdom’s intuitive science of harmony may be much older than linguistic facility and literacy, but it has perhaps been something of a shock to the literalistic rationalism of modern advocates of literacy and rationality.  It has not, of course, been suggested that this wisdom was calculated rationally; rather, that it was intuitively known.  We now know the Dorian Mode from much loved melodies such as Greensleeves and Scarborough Fair, and of course from Gregorian Plainchant in the Dorian Mode, not to mention the Dorian dimensions of modern Jazz.  We cannot now know how Old Stone Age seers perceived Dorian harmony, but we do know that one of their figurines embodied the ratios of Dorian harmony in decisive, visible ways.  The incised ‘garment’ on the reverse of the wisdom figurine may be the earliest example of a woven textile or it may be a lyre whose strings are gathered to a nut or peg.  It could be wisdom’s ten stringed lyre, whose resonance manifests wisdom’s perfect, harmonious consonance, both dark and luminous.

The Lespugue wisdom figurine is made up of twelve harmonious segments: the head, the upper breast and arms, two generous breasts, two generous hips and buttocks, the belly and vulva, with two upper thighs and two diminutive legs below the knees.  The twos, threes and fours that reveal this twelvefold completeness were all very familiar to Pythagorian wisdom, but some modern scholars were somewhat surprised to discover that they appear to have been familiar to Stone Age seers about twenty-five thousand years before Pythagoras.  The world’s wisdom traditions have always known that wisdom was ever-present, participating in uncreated creativity from the very beginning of creation, unveiling a renewed creation in every present moment.   Wisdom’s generous profusion is indeed expansive, as wisdom figurines indicate, unless they are perversely read down to gross fertility fetishes, primitive erotica, or matriarchal idols.  It is interesting that they appear to manifest a first-person view of the female figure, not a third person perspective, which could have been visible in pools or puddles even in an age before metals and mirrors.  From a first-person perspective, wisdom’s uncreated creative creativity is still unveiled as wisdom’s generous nurture and nourishment, but love of wisdom has also always been bridal as well as maternal, which is why Solomon’s wisdom also included his Song of Songs.  Wisdom’s iconographical colours, vermillion and gold, the colours of wisdom’s wings, still bear witness that her creativity includes sanctifying recreation and deifying glorification, not physical fecundity alone.  Her completeness is, indeed, a mysterious coincidence of opposites, both dark and luminous, bright and poignant, enlightening and integrating.  As long ago as Gravettian Stone Age culture, wisdom has always been uncreated in her intuitive creativity, harmonious in her modal epiphanies, but also glorious in her hallowing beauty.