A FEW REMARKS ON THE NAME ADAM
In the last chapter we said that the literal meaning of the name Adam is 'red', and that one can see in it one indication of the link of the Hebraic tradition to the Atlantean tradition, which was that of the red race. On the other hand, in his interesting article on 'blood and some of its mysteries', our colleague Argos envisages for this same name Adam a derivation that may seem different. After recalling the usual interpretation that it means 'drawn from the earth' (adamah), he asks whether it could not rather come from the word dam, 'blood'; but the difference is only apparent, since all these words really have one and the same root.
It is worth remarking first of all that from the linguistic point of view the usual etymology, which derives Adam from adamah, translated as 'earth', is impossible; the inverse derivation would be more plausible, but in fact the two substantives both come from the same verbal root adam, which means 'to be red'. Adamah is not, originally at least, the earth in general (eretz) or the element earth (yabashah, a word whose original meaning indicates 'dryness' as a quality characteristic of this element). It is properly red clay, which by its plastic properties is particularly apt to represent a certain potentiality, a capacity to receive forms; and the work of the potter has often been taken as a symbol of the production of manifested beings from the undifferentiated primordial substance. It is for the same reason that 'red earth' seems to have special importance in Hermetic symbolism, where it can be taken for one of the symbols of 'prime matter', although when understood in its literal sense it can only play that role in a very relative way since it is already endowed with definite
qualities. Let us add that the relationship between a designation of the earth and the name of Adam, taken as a type of humanity, is found in another form in Latin, where the word humus, 'earth', is also singularly close to homo and humanus. On the other hand, if we relate this same name Adam more particularly to the tradition of the red race, the latter corresponds, among the elements, to earth, as it does to the West among the cardinal points, and this last concordance further justifies what we said previously.
As for the word dam, 'blood' (which is common to Hebrew and Arabic), it is also derived from the same root adam: [1] blood is properly the red fluid, which is in fact its most immediately apparent characteristic. The kinship between this designation of blood and the name of Adam is therefore incontestable and is self-evident through derivation from a common root; but this derivation appears to be direct for both, and it is not possible, starting from the verbal root adam, to pass by way of the intermediary of dam to the name of Adam. One could, it is true, envisage things in another way, less strictly linguistic, and say that it is because of his blood that man is called 'red'. Such an explanation is not very satisfying because the fact of having blood is not confined to man but is common with the animal species, so that it cannot really serve to characterize him. In fact in Hermetic symbolism the color red is that of the animal kingdom, as the color green is that of the vegetable kingdom and the color white that of the mineral kingdom; [2] and this, as regards the color red, can be related precisely to blood considered as the seat, or rather the support, of animal vitality properly speaking. From another point of view, if one comes back to the more specific relation of the name of Adam with the red race, the latter does not seem [in spite of its color] susceptible of being related to a predominance of blood in its organic constitution, for the sanguine temperament corresponds to fire among the elements, and not to earth;
and it is the black race which corresponds to the element of fire, as it does to the South among the cardinal points.
Let us further point out that among the derivatives of the root Adam is the word edom, which means 'reddish-brown' and which in any case differs from the name of Adam only by vowel points. In the Bible, Edom is a surname of Esau, whence the name 'Edomites' given to his descendants, and that of Idumaea to the country they inhabited (and which in Hebrew is also Edom, but in the feminine). This recalls the 'seven kings of Edom' mentioned in the Zohar, and the close resemblance of Edom to Adam may be one of the reasons why this name is taken here to designate the vanished peoples, that is, those of the previous Manvantaras. [3] We also see the relationship that this last point presents with the question of what has been called the 'pre-adamites': if one takes Adam as being the origin of the red race and of its particular tradition, it can simply be a matter of the other races that have preceded the former in the course of the present human cycle. If we take it in a more extended sense as the prototype for the whole of present humanity, it will be a case of these earlier humanities to which precisely the 'seven kings of Edom' refers. In all cases, the discussions to which this question has given rise appear to be quite vain, for there should not be any difficulty about it, and in fact there is none, at least for the Islamic tradition, in which there exists an hādith (saying of the Prophet) that 'before the Adam whom we know, God created a hundred thousand Adams' (that is, an undetermined number), which is as clear an affirmation as can be of the multiplicity of the cyclical periods and of the corresponding humanities.
Since we alluded to blood as the support of vitality, we will recall that, as we have already had occasion to explain in one of our works, [4] the blood effectively constitutes one of the links of the corporeal organism with the subtle state of the living being, which is properly the 'soul' (the nephesh chayah ['living soul'] of Genesis), that is, in the etymological sense (anima), the principal animator or
vivifying force of the being. The subtle state is called Taijasa in the Hindu tradition, by analogy with tejas or the igneous element; and as fire is qualitatively polarized into light and heat, the subtle state is linked to the corporeal state in two different and complementary ways: through the blood as to the caloric quality and through the nervous system as to the luminous quality. In fact, even simply from the physiological point of view, blood is the vehicle of animating heat; and this explains the correspondence we indicated above of the sanguine temperament with the element fire. On the other hand, one can say that, in fire, light represents the superior aspect and heat the inferior aspect: Islamic tradition teaches that angels were created from the 'divine fire' (or from the 'divine light'), and that those who rebelled as followers of Iblis lost their natural luminosity, retaining only a lowly heat. [5] Consequently, one can say that the blood is directly related to the inferior aspect of the subtle state; and from this comes the interdiction of blood as nourishment, since its absorption conveys that which is grossest in animal vitality, and which, being assimilated and mingling intimately with the psychic elements of man, can actually have very serious consequences. From this also derives the frequent use of blood in the practices of magic and even of sorcery (as attracting the 'infernal' entities by similarity of nature). But on the other hand, this is also susceptible under certain conditions of a transposition to a superior order, whence derive rites, either religious or even initiatic (like the Mithraic 'taurobolus' [bull sacrifice]), involving animal sacrifices; and since in this respect it is said that the sacrifice of Abel is opposed to the unbloody sacrifice of Cain, we will perhaps return to this point on some future occasion.