"Thy speech shall whisper out of the dust"
Isa. 29:4
Dust, the smallest particles of all physical manifestations, has been used as a symbol to represent man's frailty as well as man's enduring essence of sustaining manifested physical existence. The word, image and substance of dust has many figurative and symbolic meanings, it has been used to denote death, the grave and the afterlife as well as the initial matter that life is formed and built upon.
To cast dust on the head has been used as a sign of mourning, to sit or lay in the dust is an expression of extreme affliction, while the idiom to 'lick the dust' is a sign of degrading submission. Hence, such expressions as "He raises up the poor out of the dust," i.e. out of their state of lowliness. To throw dust at another is the expression of loathing or abhorrence, it was also used as a form of cursing the individual. Throwing dust in the air and on a person was a cry and demand for justice and retribution. In ancestral worship it was a symbol of calling on and reawakening the ancestors and Elders to gain their aid and help. To shake off the dust from one's feet against another is to renounce all future associations with them.
As the prima materia or first matter which is referred to in Hermetic and Alchemical lore, it is the initial "building block" from which all matter is formed. Dust is the first and most subtle form of matter our Spirit clothes itself with when entering the material realm and the last form of matter our Spirit divests itself of when leaving the material realm, it is the final physical border which our Spirit must cross in its ascent into the Spiritual dimension.
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