This is a commentary on two verses from The Angelic Hymn to Dea from the Indian Devi Gita:

The angels created Speech which pervades all things, and whereby all creatures speak.

According to the modernist doctrine, speech “evolved” from animal squeaks and grunts. Yet a study of language teaches us that the earliest languages are the most complex and expressive, while the latest ones are the simplest. Language is continually simplified for the lesser minds of the Age of Iron (Kali Yuga). Even as this Age progresses, language is continually “scaled down”. So modern Italian is a much simpler language than Latin.

Where, then, does language come from? Tradition teaches us that it proceeds from the single Word, in which all speech and all being is immanently contained. In the sacred language of Sanskrit, this single Word is represented in our earthly speech by the sacred monosyllable OM, or by the seed-mantra sacred to Dea, HRIM.

Most comely is this Speech: a Heavenly Cow yielding food and all desires. Through Her do we praise You. May She dwell ever among us.

From the single Divine Word grows the first language, the Language of the Angels. Thus we are told that the angels created speech. But speech (Vac), in the earliest Vedic literatures, is Herself known as a Form of Dea. She is the all-pervading cosmogonic (world-creating) Deity. Vac is associated with the cow, which represents the nourishing Mother, the Source of all good things*. Thus Speech, in Her highest aspect, is a manifestation of Dea Herself.

The Language of the Angels passed to maids upon earth, and in the earliest days our human speech was very pure, very close to the Angelic Language. But as the Age of Gold gave place to the Age of Silver, and the Age of Silver to the Age of Bronze, so human speech became less perfect, less an instrument for expressing pure Truth. At last there came a time when the Primordial Language was broken into different tongues — at first only a few, representing the major divisions of humanity, and then each of these languages split into various increasingly simplified sub-dialects, until we have the multiplicity of languages that we find today. This is the meaning of the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel.

Thus it is said that the angels created Speech, but also that Speech, in Her purest essence, is an aspect of Dea that transcends even the angels. Ultimately, it is only through Dea (in Her form as Speech) that we praise Dea.

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*Curiously, some scholarly Western commentators have expressed surprise at this maternal, cow-related aspect of Vac in addition to Her grander “cosmic” nature, but the name is clearly related to Latin vacca, a cow (French vache) as well as to vox, voice etc.

The cosmogonic nature of Speech — the association of Speech with the world-creating Power — is clear in the light of the metaphysical link between the naming of things and their creation. The names of things are not mere arbitrary “signs”, ultimately evolved from animal noises, but contain, in the Primordial Language, the real Essences of those things. Thus in Sanskrit we have the distinction between nama and rupa: nama being the name of a thing — its Angelic or primordial Name, and hence its Archetype or real Essence — and rupa, or shape, being its outward or worldly manifestation. In a sacred language like Sanskrit, which still retains unbroken links to the Primordial Language, certain names or mantras contain the essence of that which they name. Hence, most obviously, the importance of the Primordial Words OM and HRIM, but also many other words and mantras.

The importance of words and of the Primordial Word (Logos) was understood by classical Greek philosophy and passed into Christian thought (note the opening of the Gospel according to St. John). However both Greek and Latin had already ceased to be true Sacred Languages, even though Latin functioned as an ecclesiastical language in the West.

In the Old Aristasian calendar, the name of the eighth month, Vois (pronounced Voish), means both speech and butter.

From The Angelic Hymn to Dea