Originally posted on Thursday, March 07, 2013
“In the water there emerged a golden egg. … For one whole year, Brahma lived inside the egg. He then split the egg into two and created heaven and the earth from the two parts of the egg.”
The Helix Nebula courtesy of NASA
The great religious culture of India, Hinduism, recognizes many holy scriptures. Among these are the Vedas and the Puranas.
From the Brahma Purana, courtesy of the Gita Society:
In the beginning, there was water everywhere and the Brahman slept on this water in the form of Vishnu. … In the water there emerged a golden egg. Brahma was born inside this egg. Since he created himself, he is called Svayambhu, born (bhu) by himself (svayam). For one whole year, Brahma lived inside the egg. He then split the egg into two and created heaven and the earth from the two parts of the egg. Skies, directions, time, language and senses were created in both heaven and earth. From the powers of his mind, Brahma gave birth to seven great sages.
The golden egg is called Hiranyagarbha. In an article by Kenneth Shouler, Ph.D. and Susan Anthony,
“Referred to as the “world soul,” Hiranyagarbha is the Golden Embryo, Golden Egg, or Golden Womb identified in the Rig Veda (X.121) as the cause of the universe.”
Neither of the previous allusions to gold from Hebrew and Christian scripture in earlier blogs, nor this one, mean to imply a sacred quality to gold. Its elevation in scripture, however, does provide powerful evidence of the enduring appeal held by gold within world culture over many thousands of years.
Thus, when skeptics cavil and ask, “Why gold? Why not silver or platinum or rhodium?” it is not inappropriate to respond, “Why not gold?’
Gold is the metal that was commended, at least implicitly, by such scientific icons as Copernicus and Newton. Gold has been proven useful by long and beneficial mercantile practice. Gold is a modern, and even postmodern, not merely a pre-modern, element.
There, of course, are technical reasons why gold has proven itself the optimal money in what Lewis E. Lehrman, founder and chairman of the Lehrman Institute, often references as “the laboratory of history.” The fact that gold is woven into Scriptures that inform the lives of many billions of people dignifies, rather than contaminates, gold as, again to quote Lehrman, the “least imperfect” monetary system ever undertaken.
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