Tanah Tujuh

ORANG ASLI call the Earth Tanah Tujuh - literally, the Seventh Land.
    Seri Pagi and his younger brother Utat have tried many times to explain exactly what this means by showing me a stack of plates: "There are seven worlds one on top of the other, you see, and we are here, right in the middle."
    Were they talking about Dimensions? There was no way I could find out. The word "dimension" translates into Malay as dimensa or dimensi - generally defined as ukuran or spatial measurements.
    I can't help visualizing the Jewish menorah - the holy candelabrum with seven candlesticks which Kabbalists say is a symbol for the different levels of consciousness - mineral, vegetable, animal, human, angelic/demonic, archangelic, and deific. These seven levels are interrelated with the seven notes of our musical octave, the seven colours of the rainbow, and with the seven major chakras (pranic or etheric energy spirals) that define and regulate our body-mind-soul equilibrium.
    But there's yet another explanation that makes perfect sense. Zecharia Sitchin, author of The Earth Chronicles and an authority on ancient languages and artifacts, puts it succinctly:

    "The Sumerians counted the planets not as we do, from the Sun outward, but from the outside in. Thus, Pluto was the first planet, Neptune the second, Uranus the third, Saturn the fourth, Jupiter the fifth. Mars accordingly was the sixth, Earth the seventh, and Venus the eighth." [Italics added.]

    Their precise cosmological knowledge, the Sumerians asserted, was given them by the Anunnaki ("The Ones Who From Heaven To Earth Came") - known to the Hebrews as the Nefilim or Nephilim, who first arrived on Earth from their planet, Nibiru, about 440,000 years ago. Anu, God-King of Nibiru, had sent his eldest son Ea to establish a base on Earth - the Seventh Planet - from which to mine gold. The Nibiruans, according to esoteric lore, needed vast quantities of gold dust to create an artificial radiation shield around their planet, because their industrial activities were destroying Nibiru's atmosphere. Ea established his first "Earth Station" in southern Mesopotamia and called it Eridu ("House Remotely Constructed"). The erudite Mr Sitchin writes in The 12th Planet:

"To this very day, the Persian term ordu means 'encampment.' It is a word whose meaning has taken root in all languages: The settled Earth is called Erde in German. Erda in Old High German, Jördh in Icelandic, Jord in Danish, Airtha in Gothic, Erthe in Middle English; and, going back geographically and in time, 'Earth' was Aratha or Ereds in Aramaic, Erd or Ertz in Kurdish, and Eretz in Hebrew."

    But the task of digging and tunnelling for gold proved so arduous that the Anunnaki miners went on strike after 144,000 years. To meet the serious labour shortage, Ea, who was now called Enki (“Lord of the Firm Ground”), decided to create an experimental hominid slave species called the Adama with the help of Ninti - the Sumerian goddess of birth (whose name means "Lady of Life" or "Lady of the Rib") - and an unlimited supply of DNA. Does this sound familiar? At least it explains why humans continue to be obsessed with gold - the metal of the gods!

THE SUMERIAN CUNEIFORM TABLETS record that their skygods called this planet Ki (“firm ground”) and found it to be an ideal genetic laboratory because the elements of fire, air, water, and earth were in perfect dynamic balance. That it was the seventh planet was especially significant, for in all metaphysical traditions the number 7 embodies the mystery - and hence the sacredness - of life.
    Over millenia, the name Ki evolved into Ge, and then Gaia (worshipped by the Romans as the Great Mother Goddess). Even hardnosed scientists today are beginning to call the Earth “Gaia” again, in recognition of and respect for her astonishing and unique fecundity as a matrix of morphogenetic fields.
    Alas, the same reverence is rarely expressed by land speculators and realtors. A case in point: if you travel from Batang Kali to Serendah, you’re bound to pass a scene of ghastly devastation on your left, where an entire range of hills has been scraped raw and then left to erode like a festering wound before yet another concrete scab passing for a deluxe housing project is erected. The spot is marked by an unassuming signboard that says: EARTH FOR SALE.