The First Word

Source Code of the Gods

There’s a whole lot of irony in this image.

I’ve been thinking about language lately.

Not in the sense of grammar or syntax or style, or even in the way writers usually mean think about language—obsessively worrying a phrase to get it just right, choosing the word that tells a story all its own, to make a sentence sing a little better. So, nothing like that.

I’ve been thinking about language as a thing in itself. A tool. A mystery. Maybe even a relic.

There’s this old, recurring idea that somewhere in the distant past—before cities, or agriculture, or maybe even before fire—there was a single, perfect language. A proto-language. One that named everything exactly as it is. A language spoken not just by people, but by creation itself.

The Word, before the world

In the Bible, it’s “Let there be light.” In the Vedas, it’s Vak, the divine utterance that calls reality into being. In Egypt, Thoth speaks the names of the gods and causes them to exist. In the Qur’an, the Word of God descends not as a concept, but as literal language.

Ideas like this keep coming up across cultures. The belief that language is more than just sound and symbol. It’s a kind of power. And maybe, originally, it was the power.

The story of Babel hints at this. Humanity once spoke a single tongue, and with it we started building something that could reach the heavens. God sees this and—well, He doesn’t smite anyone. He just confuses the language. Breaks it. Splinters it. And suddenly we’re strangers to one another, speaking past each other in a hundred fractured dialects. Yelling at each other on Twitter and Reddit.

But despite all the division, it’s not a punishment. It’s containment.

This is something that shows up in a lot of old stories. The idea that the “original language” wasn’t just communication—it was command. It wasn’t that Adam gave names to the animals. It was that, in naming them, he gave them identity. Purpose. Form.

God, according to Biblical texts, spoke everything, including humans, into existence. And when we came along, the triune God said, “We will make them in our image.”

You have to think—if we’re made in the image of God, we probably share at least that ability to speak things into being. It’s not actually all that far-fetched. Even now, if you say just the right thing to just the right person, if you shape your words, the conversation, just right, you can bring something into being, where it did not exist before.

The influence of words. Magic, right under our nose.

But we’re talking about history and mythology, and something a bit more esoteric than a really good TED Talk.

To speak the language of the gods was to hold the source code of reality.

Which makes you wonder: if that kind of power ever existed, could it be found again?

What Was Lost

In the 16th century, an English occultist named John Dee and his colleague Edward Kelley claimed they had been given fragments of a heavenly language. They called it Enochian—the tongue of angels, supposedly spoken by the Biblical prophet Enoch, who “walked with God” and was taken directly into heaven.

You can still find entire dictionaries of Enochian online. It’s funky stuff, as language goes. Angular, poetic, oddly resonant. Like someone tried to transcribe the sound of lightning, and got zapped doing it.

Of course, most scholars will tell you it’s nonsense. Just a clever hoax. A constructed language built for effect.

Maybe. But why does this story sound so familiar?

Even Sumerian, the world’s oldest known written language, has a strange quality to it. It doesn’t descend from anything we know. It just appears, almost fully formed, sometime around 3100 BC. No known linguistic ancestors. No clear evolution. It just... is. Like someone remembered it, rather than invented it.

The Names That Shape Us

There’s something in us that still believes words matter. That naming something gives us a kind of power over it.

Writers live and die by this. So do theologians. And branding experts. Words shape the world, whether we realize it or not.

Think of all the sacred names we’re told not to speak aloud. Think of how many cultures treat the “true name” of a god or a demon as something powerful and forbidden. Kept under lock and key. Only to be used with purpose.

That’s the heart of the idea: That words create. That words reveal. That words do something, beyond just informing.

Maybe that’s why every culture seems to have a version of Thoth, or Hermes, or Odin. A figure who brings language to humanity. Who serves as the scribe of the gods. Who connects the divine and the mortal by way of communication. Word as a bridge.

It keeps happening. Like an old song we can’t quite remember, but still hum the tune to.

A Voice in the Dust

I’ve been working on a new book—one I’m not ready to name just yet—but I can say that it plays around with this idea. Language as technology. Symbols as more than just scribbles on stone.

What if writing itself is an artifact?

What if we’ve spent centuries translating glyphs and carvings, only to realize we’re missing something deeper? Something baked into the form itself, not just the content?

What if the Word was never lost at all—just hidden? Fragmented. Waiting for someone to notice the pattern.

These are the ideas that make their way into my fiction whether I plan for it or not. And lately, I’ve been following them down some fascinating rabbit holes.

I’m not sure where this thread leads. But it feels important. Feels familiar.

Maybe this is why we write stories at all. Maybe we’re just trying to remember how to speak the first word again.

I mean... think about what it means, that right this second you’re reading this, and wondering.

Just a few words on a screen.

Click Me and Find Out

A NOTE AT THE END

“Magic words” are another recurring theme in mythology. And I’m not sure about you, but for me, when something gets repeated again and again, and particularly by disparate and unconnected sources—well, I start thinking it has to mean something.

Why does the concept of “power words” keep showing up in myths and legends and histories all over the world? And what part of these words actually matters? Is it the words themselves? Their meaning? The sound of them? The intention and context?

Maybe it’s a bit of all of that.

It’s fascinating, right?

And equally fascinating is how even mundane and everyday words can have power. Essays and speeches and books and novels and even short stories—the world has been shaped by these. Movements have been started. Revolutions. The evolution of culture.

Words matter.

Thank God I’m good with words.

More of this? I’ve got you covered.

I write novels that explore topics like this, and you can find all of them at kevintumlinson.com/books.

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