Taiowa is the breath, humankind is the mouthpiece to carry the sounds of creation to the far reaches of eternity.
-- Hopi Creation Myth
Do you remember the thrill of a swing when you were young, the wind rushing past your ears as your legs reached for the endless sky? Or perhaps you recall the whispering voices of trees in the heart of a summer night?
Of the four elements, air is the aspect of summer, of sweeping expansion and rising, of thought, of breath, of potential. It occupies the space between heaven and earth and thus carries dreams, inspiration and the thoughts of the gods.
Pneuma is the Greek word for wind, breath or spirit. Air, as pneuma, represents the animating life force, the creative moment that has not yet become manifest. Logos, Greek for "word," is the expression, the inherent order and separation in nature of one thing from another -- of differentiation. One meaning of the word "inspire" means literally to "breathe life into." From pneuma to logos, from inspiration to manifestation -- our world arises.
To the Hopi people of the American Southwest, Taiowa is the Creator God. In the before time, according to a Hopi creation myth, "there was no beginning or end, no time, no shape no life. There was only an immeasurable void that had its beginning and end, its time, its shape and its life in the mind of Taoiwa. Then the infinite Taiowa conceived the finite. He created Sotuknang [a helper deity] to make it manifest." Thus Taiowa, the vast breath of the universe, created the means to bring his inspiration, the world of different things, into existence.
The divine reality of Hinduism is Brahman, the limitless world of the transcendent. From the universal sound "Aum," the world came into being, made real by the breath of the universal resonating in matter, in voice.
The beliefs of these diverse world cultures support the existence of a single substrate, a creative breath that precedes all -- whether it is thought before word, void before creation, infinite before finite, or the moment before the Big Bang.
If it is thought of at all in our culture, air is considered for its level of pollution, as the space between things, the wind perhaps, and the medium we breathe to stay alive. To the Celts and their forebears, the world was immanent, meaning the divine force of the universe dwelled within all things. From the air came birds, messengers of the Otherworld. From the holy wells came the oracular messages of the Earth Goddess. The voices of the wells and the sky carried through the air, the breath and song of the numinous Unseen.
We live our lives tied to the visible, material world, who we know, what we own, what we want. We consider air as dead or empty space, as distance. However, within air, the non-material world, is the potential to create. Our thoughts construct the life that we make manifest with our words and our actions.
The realm of air is anything but dead, it is the connective tissue of the universe. It unites the energy of all things, it balances, it changes, and it destroys. Never empty, air is charged and viscous, an element we live with and through daily. It is through all the elements, air, water, earth and fire that the Other can communicate with us, through a thought, a reflection, a moment of connection or through the burning light of understanding.
Do you remember those restless trees of summer? If you listen you can hear them still, secrets on the breeze, here and gone again.