The cosmic flood

By Betty B. van Baaren - 1985

"So that after this cataclysm, they may rediscover their natural relationship with the earth."

In seeking a reason why the subject of the cosmic flood presented itself to me, I found, much to my surprise—because I had not thought of my own experience in the framework of the collective—that I had lived through cosmic floods all during my childhood, even before I could remember. So apparently, I did not seek this subject; the subject sought me.

I was born in Mobile, Alabama, on the southern coast bordering Mobile Bay, which opens into the Gulf of Mexico. This area is directly in the path of hurricanes that originate in the lower regions of the Gulf of Mexico and work their way north every September. These storms are of varying intensity and destructiveness, yet they are always capricious and unpredictable. 

They arouse an atavistic fear because one is at the mercy of their violence. Presently, there are more sophisticated means of charting their course, giving adequate warning of their coming, and allowing people to prepare as best they can for their appearance. All attempts to dissipate their force have failed. The only improvement over the years has been to refine prediction methods, but nothing has changed their potential destructiveness. 

I can well understand how the legends of floods report that the end of the world had come. Only last year, I read that the worst storm in over 100 years struck Mobile and the coast and caused millions of dollars in damage, devastating much of the area.

When I was a very small baby, my family, who came from Chicago, were living in a temporary frame dwelling until the big house could be built. Unaccustomed to the nature of these storms, they were unprepared for the violence. 

During the first day when the winds began to rise, my father decided that we must move from the frame dwelling to the unfinished house, since it was low-lying and anchored by strong foundations. 

Just as in Noah's flood story, my family gathered up a few possessions and marched single file, bending against the ferocity of the wind and the pelting of the rain, making their way to the still unfinished house. For years, this move was part of the private mythology of our family.

As the years went by, I had a more conscious relationship with these storms. They always followed the same pattern, though the wind might have a varying velocity, sometimes reaching 180 miles an hour, and the rain a different density. 

The storm is a gigantic whirlwind that moves forward, but within itself, it is circular. We always knew when the first winds began to blow that they would continue for three days. The roaring was unceasing, almost with a malevolent quality. The rain came down in sheets, soaking the ground so that the tree roots were loosened and were easily blown over.

Like Noah and his family, if we had had sufficient warning, we scurried peculiarly about, battening down roofs, securing outhouses, filling our 10,000-gallon tank with water, taking precautions that all of the animals were inside the big barns with enough food and water to last them three days. 

These were hectic times, for everybody had to work efficiently and quickly. In spite of the quantities of rain, our greatest problem was to be absolutely sure we had enough potable water, for there was the possibility that a tree whose roots were entwined about the water main leading to the house would be blown over and sever the pipe.

When the winds began to blow in their full force, the roar was continuous, day and night. Even as a child, when I could not understand the full danger, I felt threatened by this uproar. At the end of the three days, there was a lull. We knew that this respite was only temporary because we understood that we were now in the eye of the storm. Actually, in some ways, this was the most terrifying period of all, for suddenly all of the tumult had ceased, the quiet was oppressively absolute, there was a strange light, and the air pressure was almost unendurable.

Nevertheless, we had much to do. We had to survey the damage, let the animals out of the barns for a short period, clean the barns, supply fresh supplies of water and food, and see if there was any outhouse or roof that could be more securely anchored against the wind we knew was to come. 

In the evening of that day, around sunset time, the winds began to rise again, but this time they blew from the opposite direction, for because of the circular nature of the storm, they were striking us from the other rim of the circular path. 

Again, they blew with a ferocity that can only be thought of as demonic. What made the winds now seem so unreal to me was that whereas they had been striking the north side of the house, they were now attacking us from the south. It was almost as if, in their frustrated anger, they felt if they had not destroyed us from one angle, they would now try from another.

At the end of the three days, the wind gradually began to die down. We emerged from the security of our house-ark to survey the damage. Depending on the severity, we would gasp in dismay at the toll of trees that had been brutally laid low, the roofs that had been carried away, the outbuildings that had collapsed in a heap. 

But like Noah, we rejoiced that we were still alive, that we had, as if we were at sea, ridden out the storm. We always were happy to rejoin the animals and felt surges of joy when we let them out and watched the cows, in their sedate and customary manner, make their way to the pastures. That was the first real sign to us that our life, too, had returned to its normal rhythm.

So whenever I read the account of Noah's flood, I read into the text the sound of the wind and hear the sheets of rain bombarding the roof. Our plantation was on relatively high ground, so we were 3 miles out of reach of the thundering tides that inundated the coast.

After these storms, though we were exhausted by the fear and the tumult, we always had a feeling that the world had been created anew as if with the subsiding of the storm, we were safely anchored on our own Mt. Ararat.

There are some records of American Indian stories associated with the southeastern part of the United States. The Natchez Indians in lower Mississippi had their flood stories, as did the Cherokees, the nation that included Alabama. Doubtless, they, too, had lived through these same kinds of storms I have experienced.

When we move now to the questions surrounding the Hebrew flood story in Genesis, we encounter problems for many years discussed among anthropologists. Why, they ask, do these flood stories seem to have such similarities all over the world? Having experienced these catastrophes in my childhood, I find no difficulty in answering this, for our own particular flood had many similarities to the mythological flood stories that have been collected. Accepting Lévi-Strauss's theory of a universal mind, it surely must be that this mind responds similarly to similar stimuli of the environment. In addition, we cannot overlook the possibility of the diffusion of these myths with modification from peoples to peoples.

Just this seems to have happened in the Noah story, which seems to have been based on the Babylonian version, derived from their more ancient predecessors, the Sumerians. The Babylonian tradition of the Great Flood has been known to Western scholars since antiquity through the Greek fragments of Berosus.

In the Gilgamesh epic, partly pieced together by George Smith of the British Museum in 1872, there was found in the 11th canto a story of the flood, woven into the epic, with which, to all appearances, it originally had no connection. There have also been discovered tablets of the flood legend in Nippur, the holiest and perhaps the oldest religious center, written in Sumerian, which is a non-Semitic language. Though the cuneiform script dates the tablet to 2100 B.C., during the time of the famous Hammurabi, King of Babylon, the story must be older; for by the close of the 3rd millennium before our era, the Sumerians, as a separate race, had ceased to exist, their old tongue was already a dead language.

In the Gilgamesh epic, the hero, grieved by the death of his companion Enkidu and in fear of his own death and with a yearning for immortality, goes to his ancestor, Utnapishtim, who found eternal life far away at the mouth of the rivers, where the gods had put him after the flood. Utnapishtim says obliquely that he will reveal to Gilgamesh a hidden thing, a secret of the gods.

The secret is the story of the flood. The gods have decided that they will destroy the city of Shurippak by a flood. There is no reason for this drastic step. The text says, "Their heart prompted the gods to bring a deluge." The flood would have come as a complete surprise, except Ea, the god of wisdom, tells the reed hut and the wall so that indirectly Utnapishtim would be forewarned. Ea then gives detailed advice about the size of the ship, the length, width, and height.

After the cube-formed ship is completed, Shamash, the sun god, gives Utnapishtim final instructions about closing the door as soon as the storm begins. That Shamash, instead of Ea, now stands behind the flood hero, proves important in the Jungian context, for as the sun god, he is the principle of consciousness with whom the hero is connected in practically all of the flood myths. The pandemonium instigated by the gods, which breaks loose as soon as Utnapishtim closes the doors of his ship, reflects on the gods themselves. They were afraid, withdrew to heaven, and crouched like dogs; they cowered by the walls.

Apparently, the gods were unable to control what their hearts had prompted. They did not know how to control what they had conjured up. The gods disagree among themselves, and these conflicts will later be internalized in the Old Testament version in the divine personality of Yahweh. Utnapishtim's super-ship eventually lands at Mt. Nisir, and there he offers a sacrifice to the gods. It is not difficult to recognize the details of sending forth the birds, of offering the sacrifice as similar to the Biblical flood story.

Berosus, a Greek historian, records a much later version of the Babylonian flood myth but adds a new and perhaps important feature. Xisuthrus is warned by Cronus, the god, that all men would be destroyed by a flood. He enjoins Xisuthrus to write a history of the world and bury it safely in Sippar, the city of the Sun. There are the same elements of the boat, the birds, and finally the landing on a mountain. 

When Xisuthrus is taken like Utnapishtim to dwell with the gods. Though he can no longer be seen, a voice from the air commands the company to go to Babylon, take up the scriptures that have been buried, and distribute them among men. "So when they came to Babylon, they dug up the scriptures in Sippar, and built many cities, and restored the sanctuaries and re-peopled Babylon."

This new detail may mean that what underlies most of the flood legends is not only the fact of the destruction of nearly all of mankind but also the fact of the importance of cultural continuity. Symbolically this could mean that the scriptures buried in the City of the Sun have to be dug out, for without any remembrance of the past, there will be a loss of the development which up until now has been reached.

The Hebrew legend of the flood in Genesis seems to have been written by two different authors in two different styles. One seems to be derived from the Priestly Code and the other from the Jehovistic document. The latter is believed to have been written in Judea in the early times of the Hebrew monarchy, probably around the 9th or 8th centuries B.C., the Priestly code from the period after 586 B.C., when Jerusalem was taken by Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, and the Jews were carried away by him into captivity.

It also seems that the Hebrew account is not independent of the Babylonian, perhaps even that both are from a common source. The Jehovistic writer seems to be closer to the Babylonian source, say scholars. One piece of evidence they bring forth is the special emphasis given to the number 7 in both versions: Noah has seven days' warning, he takes seven of every sort of clean animal, he allows intervals of seven days to elapse between successive dispatches of the dove from the ark. The two writers also differ from each other in the causes of the flood.

Fraser draws careful distinctions between the writers and says the difference in their approaches indicates clearly the differences of the ages in which they lived. The Jehovistic writer is concerned about secular details. Even across the stretch of time between him and us, we feel his concern with the humanity of the people. There is a beautiful moment when the rain begins to slacken that Noah opens the window of the ark that he had made and sends forth the raven. The details are exact. Of course, the most dramatic moment is the dove's return with an olive leaf in her beak, for then Noah has concrete proof that the flood has abated.

The Priestly writer sees the event in terms of sacred history, he is concerned with ecclesiastical and not secular and civil events. The great age of Israel was over; its independence was gone and with it the hopes of worldly prosperity and glory. In compensation, the Israelites would now have to concentrate on the spiritual, so as to assuage the humiliations the nation had to experience in the secular realm. This is clear in the Priestly writer's concern with ritual, with chronology, with genealogy. With the problem of evil, he barely concerns himself as the Jehovistic writer does. Apparently, for him, the flood which had destroyed nearly all of mankind seemed to be the occasion for a repentant deity to establish a covenant with the miserable survivors. The rainbow glowing against the dark sky was no more than the divine seal appended to the covenant as a guarantee of its genuine and irrevocable nature.

The Priestly writer seems to be not only an ecclesiastic but also a lawyer for he went to great lengths to establish the relationship of God to man resting on a strictly legal basis. As Fraser says, it is only in these dry-as-dust legalities that the Priestly writer shows any animation. He is never so much in his element as when reciting the long series of Israel's title deeds.

Fraser claims that in the Jehovistic account, there is a light of touch, a warmth of coloring, unequaled in literature. There is simple silence when the Lord shuts the door behind Noah. The writer conveys the Lord's concern for the man who had found grace in his sight. After the flood, when Noah built an altar to the Lord and offered clean beasts and the clean fowls, the writer says, "And the Lord smelled the sweet savor."

In the stories, there is a divergence as to the direct cause of the flood. The Priestly writer speaks of water coming from below and above; whereas the Jehovistic only mentions rain. There is also a difference in the time span. The Jehovistic writer speaks of 40 days and 40 nights, and afterward, Noah remained 3 weeks on the ark while the waters were subsiding. The Priestly writer claims that instead of 61 days, the flood lasted 150 days and altogether twelve months and ten days. In the Priestly writer's narrative, there is no account of the building of the altar nor of the sacrifice since from his ecclesiastical viewpoint there could be no altar anywhere but in the temple of far-off Jerusalem.

Among Biblical scholars, there has been much speculation about the origins of the Hebrew version. Some say that the Hebrews may have brought the story with them when they migrated from Babylonia to Palestine about 2,000 years before Christ. Others say that they may have borrowed the story from the native Canaanites who, in their turn, may have learned of it through Babylonian literature, sometime in the second millennium before our era. But these can only be speculations in the absence of any concrete evidence.

When we look at the floods psychologically, it is interesting that in the Priestly version, the water comes from above and below, a return or a regression to the primeval chaos before the bond God separated the earth and sky. Also, the Priestly writer makes clear that the end of the flood is on the first month, the first day of the month, implying a death and rebirth with the coming of the New Year.

In the Gilgamesh epic, there is a dawning realization of what the catastrophe fully implies. The Lady of the Gods, Ishtar cries, "O ye gods here, as truly as I will not forget the jewels of Lapis Lazuli which are on my neck, so truly will I remember these days, never shall I forget them." Even in the Hebrew version, the Lord God also needed a sign, the rainbow, to help him to remember never again to cause a flood. What this may mean is that in the Gilgamesh epic, the lord of the story is the gods themselves, That they do not know is the secret of becoming conscious in their relationship to man.

In the Babylonian version, there seems to be no reason for the Flood except the caprice of the gods, for any ethical reason, any moral compulsion, even the element of justice is absent. Utnapishtim is saved, it is true, but not because he found grace, but because of a kind of trickery that was directly against the desires of the gods in council.

In the Biblical story, the flood is sent by an omnipotent God, who is just in all of his dealings with the children of men, who punishes the insistent sinner, even if he has to destroy the world to do it. There can be no mistake that in Genesis, the flood is a statement of a moral judgment against the creation of man. In the Babylonian epic, the gods show regret, but not in the Hebrew. Although God does promise not to send another flood, he shows no remorse that he had inflicted this one on his creation. The purpose of the story as told in Genesis is unabashedly didactic; it is written for our edification, to rouse the conscience of the world and to give hope and comfort to the God-fearing.

When we turn briefly to the flood story of Deucalion, we find again the element of the punishment of man because of the anger of the godhead. Zeus, in disgust, let loose a great flood on the earth, meaning to wipe out the whole race of man. But Deucalion, King of Phthia, warned by his father Prometheus, the Titan, whom he had visited in the Caucasus, built an ark, supplied it with food, and went aboard with his wife, Pyrrha, a daughter of Epimetheus. 

Then the South Wind blew, the rain fell, and the rivers roared down to the sea which, rising with astonishing speed, washed away every city of the coast and plain; until the entire world was flooded, but for a few mountain peaks. All mortal creatures seemed to have been lost, except Deucalion and Pyrrha. The ark floated about for nine days until, at last, the water subsided, and it came to rest on Mount Parnassus. It is said that Deucalion was reassured by a dove which he had sent forth.

Disembarking, they offered a sacrifice to Father Zeus. They pleaded that mankind should be renewed and Zeus, hearing their voices from afar, sent Hermes to assure them that whatever request they might make would be granted forthwith. Themis, in whose temple they were worshiping, appeared in person and said, "Shroud your heads, and throw the bones of your mother behind you." 

Since Deucalion and Pyrrha had different mothers, both now dead, they decided that the Titaness meant Mother Earth, whose bones were the rocks lying on the riverbank. Stooping with shrouded heads, they each picked up rocks and threw them over their shoulders; these became either men or women, according to whether Deucalion or Pyrrha had handled them. Thus, mankind was renewed.

The psychological explanation of the floods seems to be that in many of the stories, man has displeased the gods maybe from breaking a taboo or disregarding the vested rights and privileges of the gods. Sometimes the cause is as tiny as in the Gilgamesh epic, the unpredictability of the gods. But whatever the cause, there is surely a great gulf or division between god and man. The result is an overwhelming invasion from the unconscious.

For instance, if we see the hurricanes I knew as a child as if they were symbols in a dream, then we would be almost certain that the interpretation of the dream would be the threat of an enormous psychic upheaval. 

These storms are not individual but collective, just as the floods of legends are not local but are presented on a cosmic scale. All of mankind is involved. Wind and rain in reasonable amounts are needed for revivifying and cleansing, but when they are of such great proportions as to jeopardize the world as we know it, then one must make careful preparations as our family did for the hurricanes or as Noah did for the flood.

The legends indicate that there are only a few who are spiritually receptive, who hear and actually heed the warnings coming from the deeper levels of the psyche. For what is to take place is not only a devastation on the personal level but also on the collective. These psychological floods then arise not only from the personal unconscious but they have their source in the collective, they come as the Priestly Writer says from below and above.

Only the blindness prevalent during the period of the flood makes the archetypal character of the contents difficult to understand. It makes no difference whether an individual is engulfed alone or whether whole nations or even generations are engulfed, the cause is the same, the loss of the sense of individuality in an archetypal role. 

Though an individual may be involved in a collective disaster, surviving them, more or less intact, seems to be an individual affair. The reason for survival seems to be the need for renewal and the importance of transmitting to future generations how to deal with floods they might encounter.

In all of the stories, there is a need to build a boat before it is too late, a container with a given capacity and a definite shape. Utnapishtim was told:

"Tear down this house, build a ship!

Give up possessions, and seek thou life.

Despise property and keep the soul alive!

Aboard the ship take thou the seed of living things."

A boat could represent an attitude adapted to the personal requirements of the situation by helping to limit the vastness and the formlessness of the collective unconscious for the individual. Yet the boat is no more than a temporary expedient. 

Man is not saved until he comes to the ground. And this is the function of the mountain. For as the flood obliterates landmarks, so mountains restore the evidence of continuity. We could perhaps say that in these legends, the mountain represents the Self, for even if the waters rise, the ego, dwelling on the upper reaches of the mountain's surface, can easily be swamped or washed away—yet little harm is likely to come to the mountain. 

Its characteristic form in all of its solidity will almost surely remain intact for the ego to find again and return to after the waters subside; that is, of course, if the ego has managed to survive by building the boat. 

In all of the stories, ravens and doves are used to bring back messages of the extent of the spreading waters. These flood heroes then must rely upon their instinctual contact with their spiritual nature since it is that interrelationship that will inform them when the waters have begun to recede, so that after this cataclysm, they may rediscover their natural relationship with the earth.

Betty B. van Baaren Cosmic Flood: Bibliography

• Cottrell, Leonard, The Land of Shinar, Souvenir Press, London, 1965.

• Fraser, James, G. Folk-Lore in the Old Testament, Vol 1, Macmillan, London, 1919.

• Graves, Robert, The Greek Myths, Vol 1, Penguin, London, 1955.

• Heidel, Alexander, The Gilgamesh Epic and Old Testament Parallels, U. of Chicago Press, 1946.

• James, E.O. Myth and Ritual in the Ancient Near East, Thames and Hudson, London, 1958.

• Kramer, S.N. History Begins at Sumer, Thames and Hudson, London, 1961.

• Pratt, Jane A., Consciousness and Sacrifice, The Analytical Psychology Club of New York, 1956.

• Wheelwright, Joseph, Editor, The Reality of the Psyche, Proceedings of the Third International Congress for Analytical Psychology, "Flood Dreams," Rivkah S. Kluger, Putnam's Sons, New York, 1968.