Some Remarks on the Name Adam

Quelques remarques sur le nom d'Adam, December 1931.

In our article on “The Place of the Atlantean Tradition in the Manvan-tara" (August-September special issue), we said that the literal meaning of Adam's name is ‘red,' and that we can see here a hint of the connection between the Hebrew tradition and the Atlantean tradition, which was that of the red race. Furthermore, our colleague Argos, in his fascinating chronicle on 'blood and some of its Mysteries' (October issue), considers for the same meaning of Adam a derivation that may seem different: after having recalled the usual interpretation that it would mean 'drawn from the earth' (adamah), he wonders if it would rather come from the word dam 'blood;' but the difference is only apparent, all these words actually having one and the same root.

Firstly, it should be noted that from the linguistic point of view, the vulgar etymology, which amounts to deriving Adam from adamah, trans-lated as 'earth,' is impossible; reverse derivation would be more plausi-ble; but, in fact, both substantives come from one and the same verbal root adam, which means 'to be red.' Adamah is not, originally at least, the earth in general (erets), nor the element of earth (yabashah, a word whose primitive meaning indicates 'drought' as the characteristic quality of this element); it is properly the red clay, which, by its plastic proper-ties, 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 sym-bol of the production of beings manifested from undifferentiated primor-dial substance. It is for this reason that the 'red earth' seems to have a special importance in Hermetic symbolism, where it can be mistaken for one of the figures of the 'raw material,' although, if we understood it literally it can only play a role in a very relative way since it already has definite properties. Let us add that the relationship between a designa-tion of the earth and the name of Adam, taken as a type of humanity, is found in another form in the Latin language, where the word humus, 'earth,' is also singularly close to homo and humanus. Moreover, if one relates more specifically the same name Adam to the tradition of the red race, this becomes in accordance with the earth among the elements, as with the West among the cardinal points, and this final concordance still comes to justify what we said previously.

As for the word dam, 'blood' (which is common to both Hebrew and Arabic), it is also derived from the same root adam;^[223] blood is properly the red liquid, which is, indeed, its most immediately apparent character. The kinship between this designation of blood and the name Adam is therefore incontestable and can be explained by the derivation of a com- mon root; but this derivation appears as direct for both, and it is not pos- sible, from the verbal root edam, to pass through dam to arrive at Adam's name. It is true, one could consider things in another way, which is less strictly linguistic, and say that it is because of his blood that man is called 'red;' but such an explanation is unsatisfactory, because the fact of hav- ing blood is not peculiar to man, but is common between him and animal species, so that he cannot serve to be characterized by this. In fact, the color red is, in Hermetic symbolism, that of the animal kingdom, as the color green is that of the vegetable kingdom, and the color white of the mineral kingdom;^[224] and this, with regards to the color red, can be related precisely to blood being considered as the seat, or more properly, the support of the proper animal vitality. On the other hand, if we return to the more particular relation of the name Adam to the red race, this does not seem, in spite of its color, to be put in relation with a predominance of blood in the organic constitution, because the blood temperament cor- responds to fire among the elements, and not to the earth; and it is the black race that is in correspondence with the fire element, as it is with the South among the cardinal points. Note also, among the derivatives of the root adam, the word edom, which means 'red,' and which differs from the name of Adam by the di- acritics; in the Bible, Edom is a nickname of Esau, hence the name Edom- ites given to his descendants, and that of Idumea to the country that they inhabited (and which, in Hebrew, is also Edom, but feminine). This re- minds us of the 'seven kings of Edom' mentioned in the Zohar, and Edom's close resemblance to Adam may be one of the reasons this name is taken here to refer to the lost humanities, which is to say those of the previous Manvantaras.^[225] We also see the relation that this last point pre- sents with the question of what we have called the 'pre-Adamites:' if we take Adam as the origin of the red race and 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 of all present humanity, it will be these earlier humanities to which the ‘seven kings of Edom' precisely allude to. In any case, the discussions to which this question gave rise appears quite use- less, for there should be no difficulty there; in fact, there is none, at least for the Islamic tradition, in which there is a hadith (word of the Prophet) saying that "before the Adam we know, God created one hundred thou- sand Adams" (which is to say an indeterminable number), which is an affirmation as clear as possible of the multiplicity of cyclic periods and corresponding humanities. Since we have alluded to blood as the pillar of vitality, we will recall that, as we have already had occasion to explain in one of our works,^[226] blood is indeed one of the bonds of the corporeal organism with the sub- tle state of the living being, which is properly the 'soul' (nephesh haiah of Genesis), which is, the etymological meaning (anima), the animator principle or vivification of the being. The subtle state is called Taijasa by the Hindu tradition, by analogy with tejas or the igneous element; and, as fire is, for its own qualities, polarized between light and heat, the sub- tle state is related to the bodily state in two different and complementary ways, by the blood as to the caloric quality, and by the nervous system to the luminous quality. In fact, blood is, even from a physiological point of view, the vehicle of the animating heat; and this explains the corre- spondence, which we have indicated above, of the blood temperament with the element fire. Furthermore, it can be said that in fire, light repre- sents the higher aspect, and heat the inferior aspect: Islamic tradition teaches that angels were created from 'divine fire' (or 'divine light'), and that those who revolted after Iblis lost the brightness of their nature keeping only a dark heat.^[227] As a result, it can be said that the blood is in direct relation with the inferior side of the subtle state; and from this comes the prohibition of blood as food, its absorption entailing that of what is most gross in animal vitality, and which, assimilating and inti- mately mingling with the physical elements of man, can actually bring about very serious consequences. Hence the frequent use of blood in the practices of magic or even sorcery (as attracting the 'infernal' entities by conformity of nature); but, on the other hand, this is also likely under certains conditions to be transposed into a higher order, hence the rites, whether religious or even initiatic (such as the Mithraic ‘taurobolium'), involving animal sacrifices; as it has been said that the sacrifice of Abel is opposed to Cain's bloodless sacrifice, we may return to this point on a future occasion.