A Star Called Wormwood

The normally feminine noun αψινθος (apsinthos) is a variant of the more common nouns αψινθιον (apsinthion) and αψινθια (apsinthia), which all describe a kind of bitter tasting plant, a.k.a. Artemisia Absinthium, a.k.a. Wormwood, which is mentioned twice in Revelation 8:11 only. The link with Artemis (a.k.a. Diana) is explained by her being the goddess of young sucklings and this plant being used medicinally for expecting mothers. Another reason, less often cited, may be that Artemis/Diana was the goddess of the hunt, and wormwood too hunts.

Wormwood is strongly aromatic and repels insects and rodents, which is why farmers kept it on the borders of their land. But it also drives other plants away, so farmers kept an eye out for any wormwood trying to invade the field and usurp the crops. It seems that wormwood may have been to the farmer what the dog (κυων, kuon) was to the shepherd (ποιμην, poimen).

The term Wormwood has nothing to do with worms or wood but rather with Vermouth, which, like Absinthe, was named after this plant, which is one of its ingredients. The specific beverages called Vermouth and Absinthe were first brewed in the 18th century, but wormwood has been added to alcoholic concoctions since deep antiquity, specifically for medicines that were said to repel intestinal parasites. Below we'll discuss how the word for wormwood resembles that for spider, the quintessential catcher of flies (the name Beelzebub means Lord Of The Flies, which helps to explain the name Wormwood in The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis). Both terms "wormwood" and "vermouth" in turn derive from the same obscure Germanic phrase "warjamoda" or entirely unclear pedigree and meaning (here at Abarim Publications we would go with "wer", man, as in "werewolf", and "mod", mind, mood or moed/Mut, which is "courage" in Dutch/German; but these are mere wild guesses).

But none of this explains how John the Revelator came to witness a star called αψινθος (apsinthos, masculine) crash into the sea and turn a third of the waters into αψινθος (apsinthos, feminine), upon the sounding of the third of seven trumpets. But the fourth trumpet rather obviously corresponds to the fourth day of creation, so perhaps the third one has to do with the third day. That's the day on which all the waters below the firmament collect into a place of oneness, so that from that gathered oneness the dry land appears (and not because the waters recede: they collect into oneness and so produce dry land). The "great light" of day four links to the "great light" mentioned by Isaiah (Isaiah 9:2), which suggests that the gathering of the waters (and see Revelation 17:15) corresponds to the outpour of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:1-4, and see Ephesians 4:3-6).

Great light, small light

Where our word αψινθος (apsinthos) comes from isn't clear, although the element -ινθ- (-inth-) is familiar from words like terebinth, hyacinth and mint, which all have to do with plants. But then there are words like labyrinth and πλινθος (plinthos), which means brick, which have little to do with plants, providing we don't count the brick-baking scene of Exodus 5:7. Elsewhere we have suggested that the Greek word for mint, namely μινθη (minthe) may actually be Semitic (and derive from מנת, menat, portion, part), and was imported into Greek along with the alphabet and a handy slew of terms to kickstart popular literacy. That makes us here at Abarim Publications turn our heads to the cluster of roots אפס פסס (apes, pasas), to terminate or come to nought, or spread and spread so far as to reach some boundary or spread so thin as to vanish into nothingness. Obviously, if wormwood makes water bitter, then adding fresh water to it dilutes it to the point where it can be barely tasted. Note that although we transliterate the verb אפס ('apes) with a "p", it's pronounced with an "f": 'afes.

That said, the Hebrew language has qualities that can barely be imagined by non-speakers, and authors have been doing the most extraordinarily agile things with it — tricks and wordplays that go worlds beyond the simple rhymes and meters of Greek or English poetry. One such thing to do with Hebrew is metathesis, which involves the swapping of two letters (in English this usually happens by accident: perscription for prescription, ax for ask, wrought for work, and so on). The idea behind metathesis is that some word ABC should have something to do with some other word ACB. Metathesis in Hebrew has been widely studied but remains poorly understood, also because it appears to be art rather than science, and, relatively free from rules, up to the beholder how to interpret it. Another familiar trick is the so-called Athbash cipher, which replaces any letter for a corresponding one counting backwards through the alphabet (every א for a ת and every ב for a ש and so on). This is how the name Sheshach (ששך) was constructed from Babel (בבל), although the why of this remains unanswered. Other tricks are Temurah (that's Athbash but based on different substitution rules), Gematria (numerology based on the numerical values of letters) and Notarikon (treating words as acronyms).

Now then, the entire Hebrew cosmos is essentially a dialogue between the masculine and the feminine. In Biblical Hebrew, the masculine is whatever rules and whatever contains the data to rule: that which keeps, represents, embodies or personifies the static law. Masculine players are: the Creator, any husband, any king, an atomic nucleus, a cellular nucleus, the conscious mind and the fleshly body of anybody with a conscious mind. The feminine is whatever is ruled or whatever dynamic chaos the static masculine tries to subdue and tame and domesticate (usually to no avail). Feminine players are: creation, any wife (plus young children), any society, an atomic cloud of electrons, a cellular body, the emotional belly, and the whole sphere of everything that a mind is conscious of and which the physical body sits in the center of and tries to make sense of.

The further idea is that between the masculine and the feminine there exists a transitional area that is neither, or both, depending how you look at it. For kings there are ministers, for presidents senators, for fathers adolescent sons, for God angels, for atomic nuclei virtual photons. In Hebrew lore, this region of transition is depicted as the porch around a house, a swampy patch of reed around a dry island, the hood around a cobra's head, the web around a spider. The drumroll point of all this is that these transitions are invariably known by words that come from the gigantic root ספף (sapap), which is the inverse of the root פסס (pasas) we mentioned earlier. How? Why? Who knows? But even in Greek, the whole wormwood enigma is signified by an unusual amount of metathesis and similar weird inversions.

Snakes, spiders and mice

From the gigantic root ספף (sapap) comes one of a few Hebrew words for snake, namely שפיפן (shepipon), which is a word that occurs only in Genesis 49:17, which reads: "Dan shall be a serpent in the way, a שפיפן (shepipon) in the path." In our article on the Greek word for serpent, namely δρακων (drakon), we point out that this word δρακων (drakon) is suspiciously similar to the Hebrew word for "way", namely דרך (derek), whereas the word for "path", namely ארח (arach) is suspiciously similar to the Greek word for spider (or tarantula), namely αραχνη (arachne). The Hebrew word for spider is עכביש ('akabish) and when we metathesize the middle and last letters (and swap the י for a ו), we get עכשוב ('akshub), which is another word for snake, namely an asp or cobra (with a hood).

That latter word עכשוב ('akshub), asp, occurs only in Psalm 104:3, which Paul combines with Psalm 5:9, to form what he writes in Romans 3:13, namely: "Their throat is an open grave. With their tongues they have used deceit. The poison of asps is under their lips". The Greek word for asp is ασπις (aspis), which looks like our word αψινθος (apsinthos) but with the PS and SP reversed. We discuss this word ασπις (aspis), asp, at greater length in our aforementioned article on δρακων (drakon), serpent, where we also point out that this word is identical to ασπις (aspis), meaning shield. It's generally assumed that these two words have different etymological pedigrees, but here at Abarim Publications we suspect that they may be the same, and that the head of the hooded cobra reminded people of an assault weapon like a sword or dagger held covertly behind a shield. This same image may even have helped the formation of the letters Φ (Phi) and Ψ (Psi), whose pronunciation may imitate a snake's hiss.

In our article on the Hebrew word for wormwood, namely לענה (l'ana), we explain how this Hebrew word may be derived from the noun לע (lo'a), meaning throat (Proverbs 23:2 only), from the verb לעע (la'a), to swallow down or to talk wildly or rashly. This implies that Paul imagined people's throats to be an open grave because from it shoot deadly words of insult and discouragement that settle in the recipient mind and slowly fester and poison things there.

A third word that matches the pattern of עכשוב ('akshub), asp, and עכביש ('akabish), spider, is עכבר ('akbor), meaning mouse. These three animals have in common that they hide in burrows just below the surface and suddenly strike out to bite their prey and drag it down to their lair with them. The Greek word for mouse is μυς (mus), which is closely related to the noun μυστηριον (musterion), mystery, as both stem from the verb μυω (muo), to shut or cover or be hidden just below the surface.

All this reminds of what Paul writes in Ephesians 6:16, "Take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one" or even Peter's descent into the watery depths on account of his doubt (Matthew 14:30). Anyone sensitive to the art of metathesis will note the playful similarity between our word αψινθος (apsinthos), wormwood, and the adjective απιστος (apistos), doubtful, which occurs 23 times in the New Testament.

The mud between water and dry land

What the "star" named αψινθος (apsinthos) is all about remains a mystery, but it appears to have to do with doubt and widespread derision. It reminds of what Jesus says in Matthew 24:10, "At that time many will fall away and will betray one another and hate one another" and what Paul writes to Timothy in 1 Timothy 4:1-5 and 2 Timothy 3:1-9. Here at Abarim Publications we strongly suspect that the Enlightenment (17th century) may not have been such a good idea — and we're obviously not talking about the science part, which remains a very good idea (compare Romans 1:20 to Matthew 11:4-5, John 14:26, 1 Thessalonians 5:21, 1 Kings 4:33 and Genesis 15:5) but rather the philosophy part.

Without diving too deep into the swamp that is philosophy, let's just say that the modern idea of creeds and statements of faith is not Biblical. This is why there are no creeds or statements of faith in the Bible. The Bible, namely, invites us to learn the language of God and join the conversation and thus partake in the nature of God (2 Peter 1:4), which is unity (Deuteronomy 6:4, Ephesians 4:3-6, John 17:20-26). It's not a simple thing to wrap one's mind around, but when unity is perfect, then there is only God (Isaiah 45:6-7). But when things break and separate, then within the separation (within the darkness that separates the shards of light), there is evil (read our article on satan for a longer look at this).

Human minds are integrals: huge writhing bundles of intertwined thought processes that rarely make cohesive sense or settle upon perpetual certainties. Said otherwise, our beliefs change all the time, depending on the situation we're in and who we're in it with. The "you" of you is not one you but a whole wardrobe of identities, and when you chose one, you deny the others — identities that wither in the background and wait for the chosen you to have a weak moment so that they can jump out and steal the show. You are not one fixed and discrete self but a self-integral, and although discipline is certainly a key to a healthy mental life, as long as you deny certain versions of you, those versions will emerge when you least need them, when you are at your weakest.

Take God's name: יהוה (yhwh), which consists of four letters. Actually, it consists of three letters (the final ה is a suffix), and these three letters are super special because each of them can be a vowel or a consonant. The details don't matter now (see our article on YHWH for the specifics), but the Hebrew invention of vowel notation allowed the entire world to become literate, and that was all because of those three letters that make up the name of the God of the Vowel People. Now then, because each of these three letters can be either a vowel or a consonant, there are eight different ways to pronounce YHW(H). But when we chose any particular one (Yahweh, Jehovah, Yahoo, whatever), we deny the seven others (Revelation 1:4, 3:1, 4:5, 5:6). And that is why we don't do that. God is mind, which is an integral, and when we collapse the integral by choosing one, then we turn God into an idol. And that violates the First Commandment.

When Paul says: "I don't judge, not even myself" (1 Corinthians 4:3) he not only says that he doesn't condemn anyone for anything, but also that he doesn't make anyone into a graven image. We are made in God's image (Genesis 1:26), which means that we are mental integrals, just like God is. And when we collapse someone's integral — by assigning a mental state to that person, when we decide that person "wants" something or "believes" something — we deny that the person's beliefs and desires are rather a bowl of slithering strands of spaghetti that can always go in all directions. In Christ there is neither Greek nor Jew (i.e. in Christ there is neither Christianity nor Judaism: Galatians 3:28, Colossians 3:11), but when we don't belong to Christ and rather demand adherence to some creed, we force people to collapse their integral. People who instead rather chose life, are then deemed subversive and disobedient infidels. A very small step later, we are burning their books and herding them onto trains.

A holocaust like the one we saw in the 1940s can only happen when people live by creed, and divide the world into "normal" people and "abnormal" ones. The first ones to be "euthanized" were Vienna's autistic children, and very quickly Aktion T4 was extended to the Jews. Our point is that nowhere in the Bible are we commanded to exclaim some creed, or to judge our neighbors according to their degree of adherence to some creed. Instead, we are invited to be free from such evils (Galatians 5:1).

When waters gather

Alfred North Whitehead once famously remarked that all western philosophy is a series of footnotes to Plato, and Plato is considered by many the father of rationality. Plato competed with the traditional mythological traditions of Homer and Moses — and both these two names embody vast traditions in which torrents of countless voices somehow collected into the literary works that bear their names: both the Torah and the Homeric epics are certainly the works of an untold number of poets, scribes and editors and are the classical world's equivalent of the semi-open-source Wikipedia page on the human definition. This human definition, this narrative self-portrait of the whole of mankind, was originally captured in the widest range of oral traditions, which the scribes cherished like shepherds their flocks.

Both Homer and the Bible are to humanity what quantum impact patterns are to quanta or an anthill to any individual ant. Their business is not to convince or instruct but to demonstrate the language and to reveal what's in the heart of hearts of all of mankind. They offer not one determined spot where an individual is commanded to be but rather the entire range in which any one individual can possible find themselves. Plato, to the contrary, was not the voice of many but the voice of one. That is a crucial difference. The ideal society that Plato envisioned was not a kingless Republic with a popular senate — a husbandless Virgin with Child — but a monstrous tyranny designed after Plato's own image. Plato's world was a death camp where success depended on one's similarity to Plato, and disaster and death awaited those who were in any way different, whether by choice or by nature.

Jesus famously warned about the broad road that leads to destruction (Matthew 7:13). Above we learned that roads were known to house snakes, and this is why people rode donkeys (not because that was so comfortable). The word that Jesus uses for "broad" is πλατυς (platus), from which derives the name Plato, which essentially means Populism but which really emphasizes what happens when an uninformed majority gets the right to vote. A proper Republic is an organizational structure in which experts in whatever subject exchange information among each other so as to design protocols that are ideal for everybody. A Platonic Republic is an organizational structure in which one man speculates about how things are and decrees how they ought to be and demands that everybody conforms to his designs.

Rationality is a wonderful virtue when we're building a house or a bridge across a river, but not when we're trying to relate to our fellow man. Mankind's celebrated social mind is based on uncertainty and indeterminacy, on exploration and reconciliation, and the highs and lows of interference patterns that are partly predictable and partly absolutely not. See for more on societal patterns our article on Gog and Magog.

Here at Abarim Publications, we surmise that the mental equivalent of the substance called wormwood is anything from light satire (which is designed to emphasize norms and keep out misbehaving riff-raff) to the violent derision of xenophobia, racism and bigotry. We further guess that the star called Wormwood that John foresaw equals the philosophical disaster that was the Enlightenment, that atrophied the hearts of men and resulted directly in the holocaust.