Voc the Cosmic Cow|OM and the tongue!
LET’S CONSIDER THE GODDESS QUEEN VAC A COSMIC COW and her link to the proto sound of OM. See VIDEO at bottom of page for the teachings of the meat of the cow and the tongue. Read More:
OM This whole world is nothing but OM!
All lies in Vac - speech and sound.
Lets consider the Goddess Queen Vac a sacred divine cosmic cow and her link to the onset of the eternal sound of OM as it eventually develops over millenniums of time through speech, Vedic ritual and mantra.
The Sanskrit mantra OM is an ancient syllable in the textual records it dates back some three millennia, and is thought of as the sound that embodies sound, inexhaustible and renewable, but could there be a proto sound to OM - that of the lowing of the mother cow which eventually becomes crucial to the declaration of ritualistic practices and sacred OM mantras as we know them today?
Historian of Indian Religions, Sound and Mantra, Finnian M. M. Gerety PH D, Harvard University, Sacred Music Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale University, and Visiting assistant Professor of Religious Studies, Brown University, proposes that the precursor sound to OM actually comes from the Divine Cosmic cow known as Queen Vac!
The word Vac is a Sanskrit term that is thought of as: word, speech, voice, the source of the universe, the sounds of of creation, and the affirmative term Yes - to accept.
When this cosmic cow Queen VAC vocalizes, she mummers a nourishing sound thought to encourage creation, growth (transformation) and wisdom. It is referenced in the early Vedas as hooking up to an animal, a metaphorical yoking or a yoking to the mind.
The sound a mother cow makes - mmmm moom omm om or actually himm truer to the cows utterance than Moo, is the pre-linguistic primordial soundtrack, a repetitive nourishing recitation eventually evolving over time into OM.
When a mama cow nurses, she calls her calf to come feed.
“Making the sound himm the mistress of gods, seeking her calf has come near through her thinking - she uses the power of thought to make this mantra, she makes the sound against his head so he can start drinking.” *
Metaphorically Cosmic Queen Vac invites us through sound to start drinking and nourishing the source of our universe.
Nomadic people came herding into the Indian sub-cotenant with a pastoral lifestyle for them cows mattered it was their source of milk/nourishment, livelihood, wealth and currency. These ritualistic societies passed on their affirmations of the higher source through sacred sacrifices using the properties of VAC.
Today scholars and practitioners hold that OM is beyond time, an eternal vibration from which every thing; matter, energy, and life itself springs forth, a primal utterance as elemental as breath, in fact the three bijaksaras (seed letters, A, U, and M) are considered as the three causes (creation, sustenance and destruction)*
To Hindu scholars OM is an eternal symbol and has no origin nor does it need an explanation for it is the syllable of the foundation of ALL.*
In the ancient systems of Yoga there are a dizzying array of doctrines and practices spanning centuries that are contextual and malleable, much of which was developed over millenniums through non verbal transmission, definitive ritualistic practices, and ever developing discourses of sound, breath, and the yogic body with OM as the yoking force.
The next time you apply the sacred syllable OM give a nod to the goddess of sound and creation of our universe Queen Vac!
Dr. Finnian Gerety (PhD, Harvard University), Visiting Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, the Contemplative Studies Program, and the Center for Contemporary South Asia at Brown University.
***Gerety, Finnian M.M 2017. “The Amplified Sacrifice: Sound, Technology, and Participation in Mondern Vedic Ritual.” Journal of South Asian Histoyr and Culture.
