Theonym as metonym: deities from cognition

- A rough paper¹ follows this initial basic idea; the paper is a draft of scraps, preparing for a formal version. Consider it &ldquoproto-research” (a phrase borrowed from scientist Stuart Kauffman.)

(page begun May 16, 2007, last altered Aug. 2, 2008)

COPYRIGHT © 2007 - 2008 by DENNIS R. MANNISTO

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Basic Idea

The paper intends to claim and prove by logical argument more than by its scanty evidence that theonyms¹ (deity names) have generally come from metonyms that summarize deep cognitive and neurological experience. This process occurred by degradation of metonymy&rsquos convenient distillation then continued with forgetfulness of the complex semantic content [meaning] thereof; this led to public, anthropomorphized reification of personal mystical experience.

Metonyms use a characteristic of something (physical or social or cultural or abstract) in order to summarily convey the sense of the entire thing. Wikipedia gives the example² "Fifty keels plowed the deep." Here, "the deep" uses a mere characteristic of water, thus a metonym, to evoke an ocean and its ominous possibilities. Unrelated, but of interest, "keels" are a synechdoche (a part stands in for the whole ship), and "plowed" is a metaphor (as splitting the land resembles the parting of water by a ship's bow); adding to the phrase's informative compactness the quantity 50 indicates war as it depends upon knowledge that fishermen and businessmen never travel in fleets and that only armadas do so travel. This paper points theonyms to metonyms for their origins, and from the latter to ancient cosmogony and a worldview derived therefrom. Most importantly, the cosmogony suggested by the metonymy in turn suggests that it originates in human neurology. This can explain pervasiveness of similar cosmogony rather than depending upon dubious cultural, geographic interminglings of populations that cannot be reliably connected beyond basic human biology.

The notion, here, must begin by considering that various proper names of deities were anthropomorphizations -- or possibly wry caricatures -- of a metonym. For example, in ancient Greece's goddess Athene we only see the caricature. The notion springs from a footnote. The Greek theonym is a word in adjacent Albania. In the Geg dialect of Albanian, my old pal Ecco [E. Sarkic] confirmed³ a textbook's footnote [Nelo Drizari⁴ ]: athene combines "a-" as not, un-, or anti-, with "-thene" or "-thana." The latter part has a meaning of [will/willed/willful] speech, or approximately the English word "command." Ecco said he would convert it roughly to anti-speech. It makes more sense --for consistency with other Anglicizations of Greek etymology -- to refine the meaning (the semantic content) to "unspoken" or even silent, again referring to "command." An equivalent use of "a-" occurs in Democritus's "atom," meaning uncuttable rather than anti-cutting. In addition, the sense of "unspoken" differs from withheld or suppressed speech. Most readers can recall the effect of a parent's stern or permissive glance at them as children. An overt directive neither spoken nor withheld can indicate that a child begin or cease action. This sense of unspoken communication also precludes any sense of secretiveness: it is explicit and direct while private in its exclusion of any third party unwise enough to intervene. Positing "athene" as metonymy thus appears to indicate a summarization of primordial creativity exercised through unvocalized decisive intent, in this case to create the universe, its contents, and its workings. There are scholarly problems with this version of Athena's linguistic origins, but those can wait for a moment.

This example&rsquos semantic value (meaning) and cognitive content (the essence of the neurological experience) resembles the Hebrew word "debhar" [approximate transliteration] associated with its deity Yahweh (YHWH.) Debhar is variously translated as word, will, or way, meanings clearly akin to an unspoken command. Albanian "a thene's" content also resembles other theonyms; ancient semantic and cognitive content(s) similar to these two examples occurs in cultures for which no serious basis yet exists to connect them: European, Asian, Native American.

Proper names that surreptitiously arose from metonyms subsequently enjoy or suffer from persistence. As W. Manczak argues⁵ appellatives enjoy easy translation into other languages, e.g., "man" in English equals "homme" in French, but "Robert" remains unchanged (in 96% of cases that he examined.) Once a local population capsulizes a mystic experience -- or a mystic's insistence on the truthfulness of an experience -- then inadvertently christens it through extensive and durable usage into a name devoid of the often forgotten experience, translation becomes impossible. Thus hardened into near meaninglessness, a mystic experience degrades into a stone sculpture transported unchanged from place to place, copied often, understood rarely, and matched up with equivalent cognitive experience never.

This argument's consequence is to point not necessarily to any common prehistoric language or religion, but to a common cosmogony, despite the tempting allure of Atlantean and Lemurian myths. The pervasiveness of one cosmogony resembles the similar pervasiveness of parallel cosmogonies among 1,000+ disconnected Native American tribes who have verb-based languages. Their cosmology derives from a cosmogony of action and activeness that culminates in simple triple-meaning words for the origin of the universe and how it works. American Cherokee, for example, has a cosmological word that Alford⁶ translates as "think-breathe-create." Comparing this to Albanian "a thene / e thana," we see willfulness, conceptualization, and an unspoken word (breathe) as not three, but one creative act. This initially seems awkward, but one only need consider the word "hug" to understand how single words perform as multi-action verbs [physical, emotional, socially communicative in this case] with very complex meaning.

Global commonalities in ancient prehistory pose obvious difficulties for scholarship, not the least of which is extreme improbability. However, such prevalence could be attributed to a human proclivity to arrive at similar conclusions if for no greater reason than the usage of identical apparatus, i.e., brains hardwired for puns {cite: "Scientific American Mind" Jun/Jul 2007} and a penchant for language for communication. It can also easily point to a very deep, very ancient, durable, and thus pervasive worldview. Theonymony's cognitive (vs. morphological or semantic) etymology suggests the latter, and some neuroscientific research {Newburg, et al⁷} provides a basis for making the claim.

Assuming that other theonyms are, as I think, actually anthropomorphized, metonymous capsules of a powerfully simple cosmogony & attendant cosmology, then we can consider the apparent global pervasiveness of the cosmogony, and stand it face to face against contemporary nominalizing, onomastic, and largely materialistic (vs. changing/fluid/process-based) religions that worship theonymous entities rather than exercise personal reverence for eternal action acting as those religions' originators may have intended.

Here (below) is the paper's ongoing draft. I change it as I write it: editing, revising, cutting, adding, moving both ideas and language. The final product may, in fact, claim exactly the opposite of the rough idea that began the piece!

Theonyms As Metonymy: decomposing deities

(?etymology & lexical semantics points to cognitive content points to a pervasive cosmogony [vs. a pervasive language] borne of neurobiological proclivities[?]) [using fuzzy cognitive content to expose ancient cosmogony & cosmology]

COPYRIGHT © 2007-8

by

Dennis R. Männistö

The paper in hand argues that deity names -- "theonym" is a non-standard⁸ but suitable and well-used term for such proper names -- throughout the world and history probably began as metonyms for a recurring common understanding of the process of creation, a cosmogony with associated (but culturally varied) cosmology. Each local metonym evoked the gestalt of the understanding, but the metonym for the process supplanted and obscured the original complexity. It then became anthropomorphized in each locality's context. Millennia of disputes and wars were thus borne of nothing more than forgetfulness of the metonymous intent and, crucially, its deeper complexity.

Background / Intro

Metonymy enables speakers of a language to summarily and briefly use a characteristic to convey an elegant capsule of complex meaning to readers and listeners both acquainted with the content and accustomed to the given tongue. Metonyms can achieve this in a single word. The online user-created reference Wikipedia⁹ provides an example that combines synecdoche, metaphor, and metonymy: "Fifty keels ploughed the deep." In these five words "the deep," a mere characteristic of oceans and seas, metonymously evokes a large, navigable, possibly ominous body of water; "keels" are synechdochal, "ploughed" the metaphor.¹⁰

Leach¹¹ compiled, and the University of California-Berkeley published, a compilation of about 19,200 deity names, gathered in her travels throughout the world. Not a scholar, Hastings merely noted the names, the particular deity&rsquos role, and its locale and culture to generate a theo-onomasticon. The published compilation organizes the theonyms into seven groups and 50 sub-groups ranging from Supreme Beings to Creators to specialists such as fertility deities, water deities, and the like. The volume makes no claim to global comprehensiveness but attests to the pervasiveness of deities among human beings while exposing the relative paucity of purposes they serve. {Refer back to this later: The apparent pervasiveness of deities may, in fact, be an artifact of the Western mind due to linguistic tendencies to nominalize. The paper in hand will suggest that scholars exercise more restraint on that tendency in order to retain the clarity of cognitive content embedded in sparsely used indigenous languages.}

Clearly a problem exists when over 19,000 mythical beings perform only a limited number of tasks and provoke actual wars among mortals, conflicts often intended to forcibly retire one for another. Recounting the whole of Comparative Religion's scholarship is unnecessary when a cursory glance at world history suffices. It shows, for example, that adherents to one deity by the three branches of Abrahamic faiths -- Judaic, Christian, and Islamic -- violently jockey for primacy of their particular characterizations of that single being. Further they supplanted various polytheisms -- Greco-Roman, Egyptian, Mesopotamian -- both through violence and through strident, vigorous advocacy as well as subterfuge. Those polytheisms themselves supplanted earlier faiths, linguistically trampling extant local beliefs when Imperial Rome expanded, e.g., the Celtic and Germanic. Further East, Buddhist non-deific beliefs supplanted the Hindu pantheon as well as swaths of the Confucian and Shinto systems. While non-deific and pacifist, differences led to -- and still do so -- violent clashes. In modern times, particularly the 20^th century, political movements exemplified by Communism aggressively denied and attempted to destroy any and every belief not only in deities of any kind, but of any non-physical cosmogony. Eventual Soviet dissolution revealed that a-physical beliefs and religions had persisted ranging from mainstream beliefs to a variety of shamanic and minor sects and cults now (2007) reawakening.

In the pre-Columbian Americas religious differences also existed and wars also occurred. The history is less available, but violence has been attributed {citation(s)} not only to resource shortages but also to similar corporate shake-ups, or, perhaps, incorporeal reorganizations. The Americas, and the indigenous languages in it, and the deities and their theonyms significantly differ from most Eurasian cultures. Renaissance and subsequent explorers, followed by early scholars, acquired sufficient fluency in -- i.e., "working knowledge" of -- native American language(s) and concluded that indigenous peoples held animistic beliefs under the umbrella of a single sky god. This perception of native peoples justified, in the minds of missionaries and like-minded settlers, violent genocide against indigenous resistance to the European Christian deific system as much as to antipathy by the indigenous to territorial expansion. However, contemporary study of Native American languages -- "First Nation" people in Canada -- reveals that the initial interpretations and translations were coarse and prone to European first language (L1) interference so that true comprehension was impossible. Further detail follows below, but one significant difference between Eurasian and North American deities concerns the parts of speech used: the former uses proper names, effectively nouns whereas the latter frequently uses verbs. The problem with deities and human behavior begins with disputable notions about deities among peoples who lack key knowledge about the linguistic origins of different theonyms.

This paper argues that many primary Western deities simply anthropomorphized metonyms for complex actions, verbs. Anthropomorphism occurs as an artifact of nominalistic language and thought yielding attendant habit of reification. A collective review of theonyms exposes a single cosmogony common across cultures. Theonyms in the Americas – native spiritual language coarsely translated into theonyms – urge a reconsideration of Western theonymony and etymology(s) proposed to date. Well known deities may also have begun as verbs, not beings nor nominalizations of verbs, with similar or the same meaning (cognitive content more so than semantic or lexical content) requiring, employing, or yielding different verbs in many languages. Briefly, theonyms point to a single cognitive and semantic value, a value rooted in process, not personality, nor even in an actor/performer/perpetrator of the action. The semantic values, while variable, point toward a pervasive cognitive content of religious experience for which, in turn, human brains have been shown to be hard-wired.

Method

A proper hypothesis for such a claim requires a testable null hypothesis. Since root meanings from which theonyms are said to have been derived -- for example, the core semantic content "power" and "high" are common – regularly become anthropomorphized; that transition offers a focus. While both onomastic theonyms and connections to their etymological roots have enjoyed extensive examination, the validity of the transition from adjective to personality is often weak, suspect, or glossed over by presumption. Thus, a reasonable null hypothesis is: Etymological processes acting upon the core semantic content from which theonyms originate, regardless the language and culture, show that cultures overtly intend to convert the underlying cognitive content root terms into personalties.

Neuro-cognition > semantics/meaning > (+) intent > anthro-morpho-onomast

It is expected, here, that it will be impossible to prove an intent to personify cosmological characteristics.

In order to conduct a useful and valid analysis requires meta-analytic techniques. Each of many thousands of theonyms have enjoyed academic study and debate, some extensively and others thinly if at all. Debates may provoke many papers but typically end with a single consensus conclusion about individual theonyms, even if later readdressed due to new evidence or new perspectives. Any single deity provides insufficient material for statistical analysis either for dearth of study or of conclusions. Meta-analysis of numerous etymologies can overcome such limitations as all theonym linguistic evolution passes through the morphological stages from characteristic to personality.

{Review the literature, extract, compare published etymology(s) & apparent semantic history; extract apparent histories of cognitive content; construct a proof: poss. statistical analysis of verb-generated metonyms, esp. vs. non-metonymous theonyms; perhaps use a scatter-plot analysis overlaid on a cognitive content continuum [akin to an artist's "color solid"]; & how to prove laziness and convenience (towards the prehistoric metonymy) "lost track of" the original purpose (again, of the metonym); also, why do all/most peoples tend to nominalize action? [& is there proof (cf. Pinker?) for/of a penchant for nominalization?]}

Or ...

{1. gather data from published etymologies.

2. create a scatter plot that places semantic content at points on a linguistic "color solid" continuum.

3. statistically analyze the scatter to situate the center, if any, of meanings.

4. from that center of meanings – the semantic content – derive the cognitive content that produces the primary semantic value (akin to examining a shotgun blast pattern in order to determine the spatial position of the gun that produced the shot pattern.)

5. compare the center of the cognitive value(s) to known neurology, e.g., Newberg and D'Aquili's.

6. revisit the etymologies in their various contexts: apply the derived cognitive value to the larger linguistic and cultural system in which each theonym exists.

7. determine / estimate the congruence of the derived cognitive value with the established etymological scholarship for each theonym.

Suggest that Mendeleev's method -- when he devised chemistry's periodic table of elements by placing them where they should go, not necessarily where the evidence suggested -- of ignoring data in favor of apparent truth – be applied to the cognitive and semantic values concealed within theonyms. }

Or ...

Connecting Mystical Cognition to Theonyms: possible methods

24. July. 2008., revs 7/29, 8/2

Gradients can be formed from the corpus of a language. Aarts¹² encourages them, for example, in order to address problems of morphosyntax. For my purpose a gradient of terms used to describe mystical experience and another, less structured, of root terms from the etymologies of theonyms permit and facilitate comparison. Thus,

1a] A sub-corpus is assembled from a primary corpus to build one only of mystic terms. It contains terms not about mysticism, but descriptors provided by those who have experienced it. I expect analogies, metaphors, metonyms as well the usual parts of speech.

1b] A second sub-corpus collects, without pre-organizing, the roots and purported purposes and domains (purview) of deities.  This second consults competing theonym etymologies – indeed, competition is encouraged for my purpose – but largely ignores the theonyms themselves, except as reference points.

2] Axes along which to place such terms on a gradient are defined. These are necessarily more subjective than are mathematical axes; however, the mathematical notions of centering (zero points), and of perpendicularity of axes to one another are useful for making choices. Semantic and cognitive content underpins, thus overrides, lexemes.

3] Gradience along an axial gradient is continuous, but permits unoccupied (i.e., no lexeme) gaps. Degrees of separation along any axis involve, in mathematics, simple subtraction to indicate small or large difference; estimated extent of difference can also obviate placement of lexemes.

4] A cubic matrix can graphically emerge if three fundamental axes are chosen. Unfortunately, language and languages possess richness and complexity that might better be described using more than three. As with mathematics, hyperdimensionality eludes simple but correct graphic presentation. Nonetheless, if language semantics can be reduced to six dimensions, then it can be presented using a hexagon on a flat page. Core cognition could, though, suffice.

5] Some axes that can work – and which I acknowledge are subjective, but are not arbitrary -- include:

5.1] Stative: an axis measuring relative motion v. stasis; verbs oppose nouns.

5.2] qualia: an axis with no opposition as adjectives, adverbs, and conditions simply apply or do not; equivalent to numbers for which there are no negatives. "Hot" may physically feel opposite "cold" (although tropical residents say ice “burns” them), but they vary only in literal degree. Core semantic and cognitive values anchor derivative modifiers, so disparate core values can accommodate such apparent opposition.

5.3] spatial (for lack of a better word): relative to an individual, exteriority opposes interiority, interior cognition opposes the semantically exterior object considered.

5.4] Cardial: an emotional v. non-emotional continuum (from Grk. kardia = heart); disinterest can be the centerpoint or might be the extreme of objectivity (as preferred, e.g., by physical science researchers.) An alternative to cardial might be social: from personal to formal or individual to society

5.5] temporality: an axis without opposition. It extends from non-temporal (e.g., adjectives) to gradations of time, or sets non-temp at the center/zero and extends to past and future eternity. "Timeless" poses the problem of acknowledging time while being removed from it; similarly "eternal / eternity" can be either an end point or all-encompassing, containing the entire axis.

5.6] lexemic structure: single words oppose phrasal lexemes.    For example, the French phrasal idiom “l’esprit d’etroit” refers to the hyphenated English “narrow-minded” with solitary synonyms such as “petty,” “rigid,” and “illiberal,” and “mesquine” in French.

5.7] With luck, this will put "wisdom" in a different but nearby position apart from "knowledge," but further from "awareness," and far from U.S. slang’s "wise-guy."

6] Compare the sub-corpus of theo-roots to the sub-corpus of mystical cognition. I expect many overlaps.

6.1] If a theo-root exactly matches a mysto-cognitive lexeme's semantic value, then ... what? Does the cognitive content of the deity's root exactly match? Do attributes of the deity also correspond to the mysto-corpus's adjacent terms and semantic content? Does the identified match / correspondence suggest analogic usage, or evidence show it? Would a corpus of cognitive core content serve better?

7] Orthogonal axes are Cartesian.  Mathematicians also use polar and other coordinate systems.  Only the dominance of and intuitive simplicity of orthogonality encourages using it for a hyperdimensional, linguisitic matrix of gradients.  But six axes are also easily depicted using a hexagon on a flat page.  Arrows at each vertex can guide a reader to position any lexeme between six pairs of opposed lexemes abutting the focal item.

8] Relative vs. absolute location also requires attention.  No example leaps to mind.  Nonetheless, a hexagon around a lexeme immediately conjures an image resembling a massive geodesic dome, each lexeme occupying its “proper” place relative to the others.  And, too, the conjured grand assembly lures the unsuspecting tourist to find the “center” of a corpus and perhaps the holy grail, the center of a culture’s collective mind.  This fantasy amuses the astute.

Relativity applies to language, too.  Despite our axes of paired, peripheral lexemes that localize others, a grand structure is unlikely.  Rather, we should expect multiple structures to emerge and expect to say “Relative to X, this lexeme belongs there.”  Ordinary context itself famously relocates lexemes according to alternative semantic [meaning] content.  Karl Pribram’s neuropsychological work[i] in the 1960s and 70s had argued that meaning (regardless whether semantic, perceptual, or muscular) itself cannot emerge apart from context.

9] All of this, for my purpose, is rather coarse.  Lexemes are all with which we have to work.  My purpose, though, is to examine mystical cognition as a likely root for those lexemes now used as theonyms.  The only evidence until recent neurologic research of mystical cognitive experience has consisted of verbal (oral or written) reports.  A matrix of gradients that localizes lexemes and their semantic content can, it is hoped, yield a generalized sense – a cloud – of the cognitive content from which both mystical and deific language emerged.  Abundant comparative religion research [cite Mircea Eliade or Carl Jung] that shows a wealth of similarities across cultures and eras sufficiently justifies an examination of any cloud of cognition lurking behind theonyms and behind reports of mystical experience.

Or …

New attempt ...

7/25/08 [x-scribed 7/27]; minor revs. 7/29

IF I replace the deities of a pantheon with each of their domains (interpreting both broadly and symbolically), then I put them into "genealogical" order, THEN a cosmogony and cosmology appear that are both devoid of personality; i.e., a creative process akin to non-evidential physics, thus an amateur (or naive) theoretical physical theory appears behind the masks of deities.

Apply the same steps (domains replace names) to a distant pantheon, then compare the resultant cosmological amateur theoretical physics. A null hypothesis stance would expect them to differ substantially, but I expect the cognitive content underlying the two cosmogonous / cosmologic systems will agree more than they disagree; only theonymous jargon will differ. Furthermore I expect that both will also correspond to subjective descriptions of mystical experience, especially D'Aquili & Newburg's¹³ "AUB" or neuro-mystical unitarity; compiling single reports of mystic experience can produce core, "in common" language that facilitates a search for correspondence. Note that the universality of brains and the mental processes thereof offer a plausible explanation for correspondence between distant, presumably independently produced, cosmogonies & cosmologies. Thus, it makes sense to examine mystical experience -- a universally available mental process -- in order to disconnect the source of pantheons from disparate languages subject to variable cultural circumstances so as to implant their (the deified cosmologies') origins in neurology.

After completing such a linguistic comparison of pantheons to one another and then to mystic language, apply a matrix a linguistic gradients. Denominalize the domains of deities. For example, Athena's domain of wisdom depends upon its defining characteristic, "wiseness." This characteristic distinguishes wisdom from knowledge, from information, from mere comprehension, and from simple, but complete, awareness. But, such affiliate lexemes appear in competing cosmologies and regularly appear in reports of mystical experience.

I ask: if any, how many theonym etymologies imply that metaphor or metonym – cosmo-characteristics such as "wiseness” -- preceded the anthropomorphic deity?

This comparative process is conjecture, and it would be endlessly disputatious. However, the language that subjects use to describe mystical experience strongly [see gradient overlaps] suggests that such descriptive terms are themselves the etymological roots of theonyms. Further, the profundity of such personal experience itself would predispose a speaker and listener towards deism (in cultures and languages disposed toward nominalization) or towards mysticism and dream-walks (in tongues disposed to process and [?ergativity?] and internalization.) Finally, the unique neurology of such an event typically eludes exact linguistic production; intractability forces analogic language, and is also subject to personal and cultural interference (as, e.g., identical events in a Catholic or a Buddhist brain yield language couched in dissimilar expectations.)

Reiterating,

(1) similarities among disparate religions,

(2) the universality of brains, their processes and results, and

(3) a usable (but not necessarily definitively so) matrix of linguistic gradients

provide a trinity of rationales for comparing lexemic and semantic content between mysticism and varieties of theism.

Results

{suggest imposing, using Mendeleev's strategy for the table of chemical elements, a "color solid" organization upon theonyms; i.e., classify theonyms where they should go, not necessarily where the evidence suggests they belong.}

Discussion

Suppose that various gods’ theonyms be replaced with their characteristics, or a key trait, treating them as distinct characteristics of cosmological processes not deities. What does this exercise yield? A generic scholarly paper about Celtic deities, e.g., might say "... where these gods were worshipped." Alter that to read "... where these characteristics were revered and valued." The replacement provides a new – but arguably valid alternative – meaning akin to saying that members of a particular culture cherished a particular attribute, trait, quality, or feature. It effectively reduces hypothetical and speculatively vague metaphysics of a forgotten society to mundane, even banal human proclivities. They worshipped, perhaps, sunniness and raised it to high status the same as early Americans raised lack of monarchic oppression to a glorious Liberty. The U.S. differs from the ancients in that we can name the sculptor of the Statue of Liberty, and talk at length about Liberty as a desirable feature without worshipping the statue symbolizing it. The historical evidence of ancient and prehistoric monoliths, epigraphs, and remnants of ancient languages are currently interpreted as being similar to pre-Euro-Christian religious idolatrous practices and worldviews, but the evidence does not require that interpretation. Revering sunshine in an agrarian society is as natural as revering wealth on Wall Street. But neither currency nor sunlight -- both affecting prosperity and survival -- nor intense and often peculiar efforts to maximize them sufficiently justify a deific interpretation of prosperity's appeal and pragmatic praise for methods to achieve it.

A careful compilation of not only the etymology of theonyms but also of the semantic history thereof (the evolving meanings) suggest, albeit only tentatively, that multiple cultures and languages contain pointers to a single pervasive cosmogony (origin of the universe) and attendant cosmologies (how the universe works.) The cosmogony appears to resemble many Native American beliefs, succinctly contained in a Cherokee word. Alford¹⁴ provides a word misunderstood by early Westerners as "God" or "Great White Spirit" but translates it as, "think-breathe-create." The metonymous semantic content of theonyms such as Athena (Alb.), Tian/Di (Chin.), Krishna (Ind.), Ra/Tehuti (Egyp.), Huna (Hawaii) and theific keywords such as debhar (Heb.), logos (Gr.), tao/dao (Chin.), and Hermes Trismegistus collectively point – in terms of cognitive content -- to essentially the same cosmogony and cosmology as the American Cherokee and hundreds of other North American and other societies.

This is not comparative religion, but comparative neuro-psycholinguistics from which, it is argued here, the similarities and differences of religions can arise.

{Also ref./cite Arthur Craig's¹⁵ work [cited in Scientific American Mind (Aug./Sept. 2007) and the pairing of the brain's insula [interior of temporal lobe] and anterior cingulate regions, esp. that emotional and physical experience and subsequent action suggest a union of emotion, intent, and thought [important because theonymony points to a similar triune cognitive content, thus a neural basis for globally pervasive cosmogony; also note Newberg & D'Aquili' s neural basis for a human predilection for the experience of "absolute unitary being" (AUB.)]}

A pervasive ancient cosmogony suggested by ubiquitous reverence for a similar cognitive content (albeit a fuzzy cluster of content) might tempt a researcher to consider ancient history for evidence of an interconnected, worldwide civilization, e.g., an Atlantis or Lemuria. However, a simpler source for the apparent universality of one pervasive, fuzzy, cognitive understanding exists.

Newburg and D'Aquili argue¹⁶ from neuropsychological research that human brains appear to be hard-wired for religious experience; they coin the phrase and acronym "Absolute Unitary Being (AUB)" to describe the experience. Neurology common to members of the human species for up to one million years {cite?} would be expected to produce similar experiences regardless an individual's location geographically or temporally in the eras of human life. The language for an AUB experience would have similar cognitive content – just as puns are common among humans¹⁷ due to an apparently hardwired linguistic proclivity – but vastly different semantic content and possibly irreconcilable lexical differences. Puns and doubtless other linguistic and behavioral amusements and conveniences can explain both the common cosmogony and the widespread metonymization, extensive anthropomorphisms, and predictable forgetfulness of the origin of theonyms' primal cognitive experiential content. That said, the [expected] results [of a review of the literature] herein suggest that all pantheons be reviewed, reconsidered, or re-assessed as possibly metonymous mnemonic aids for long forgotten, deep cosmology and cosmogony born of brains capable of grasping actor-less action [light / bright], intent without intender [power / will / emotion], thought without words [Logos / Hermes / silent word / wisdom/Sophia], and origination without originator concurrent with profound emotional experience. Such a review requires acknowledgment that Western languages have a tendency to reify even the most abstract and immaterial (non-physical) of notions. Individual AUB experience in combination with a recognition of the "processy-ness" of Native American and other languages indicates that Westerners could retreat from reification in order to more clearly identify the semantic and cognitive content of not only arcane but also of mainstream sacred terms that might have been prematurely and inappropriately reified, anthropomorphized, deified rather than understood as verbs, participles, or gerunds.

Summary {roughly}

A subjective neurological experience occurs: an emotionally profound internal perception of an apparent sacred, unified ground of being (cf. Newberg & D'Aquili's AUB [Absolute Unitary Being], esp. their distinction between AUB and Unio Mystica.)

Cognitive processing of the experience into language is subjected to constraints of language, particularly note that few languages adequately permit full description of AUB, and few individuals in any culture possess mastery of their own language; subjective experience is degraded before presented

Transmission of the experience and its profundity occurs through conversation and / or written text; the profundity of the experience encourages, if not demands it.

Public dissemination of key elements of the experience, but not necessarily all of them, nor well-chosen, nor consistently promulgated, follows.

Veneration of either or both the individual and the experience, despite unreliable dispersal, occurs. Note that it is more than equally possible for the originator to sustain persecution and death as a demon or as an inconvenient challenge to local power structures. Doubtless this occurred, as it did with Joan of Arc, but the person and event would disappear in history, suppressed or forgotten. The opportunity to begin a cosmogony would fail to occur; we are forced to presume such events for lack of evidence other than our reasonable expectations born of familiarity with human behavior.

Abridgment and condensation reduces the originating experience to manageable lexical matter.

Pervasive diffusion and acceptance breeds weariness and devolves to strategic words and phrases

Weariness and human neurological proclivities for word games produce pun,¹⁸ metaphor, metonymy to capture essential characteristics of the now revered, unassailable (for lack of reproducible results) cosmogony

Simplicity of the linguistic efficiency enjoys widespread acceptance, but supplants full transmission of the originating cognitive event and its content

Persistence of linguistic convenience loses its original semantic content concurrently with evolution of the language that yields a populace with only a sacred but generally unknown word

Persistence of the meaningless word&rsquos importance sustains reification, reducing the subjective experience of incorporeal experience to an object. A sense of substance replaces its opposite.

Common – but not necessarily innate – tendencies to anthropomorphize that which one finds comfortable, or that with which one wants to become at ease (as, e.g., many of today&rsquos people give proper names to their private automobile) raises the reification, the object, up into the realm of individuals.

The anthropomorphized, reified, metonym of cosmogony born of subjective cognitive content acquired in a rarified neurological state still retains importance and injunctions to revere, thus deification follows.

Once deified subsequent events become historical and predictable; demagogs, politicians, tyrants frequently abscond with deities to use them as tools to evoke obedience. Many cultures remain closer to the origins of their cosmogony, but few of them proliferate, and none dominate.

Notes