Eldred on the Gods and Grund of H

With regard to the divine pole of Heidegger's casting of world as fourfold, the divine messengers and the god must be seen as a cover-up for the mystery (Geheimnis) of the world, a cover-up that has been successively exposed over the past few centuries. The mystery is concealed and is also the lack of any ground, i.e. an Ab-Grund or abyss. A basic trait of mortals is that they are impacted (angegangen), affected by the abyss itself. Already the mutually estimating power play among mortals and things, as groundless, is affine to the abyss. The mysterious abyss has many names that name various uncanny, uplifting or downcasting, perhaps even calamitous, existential possibilities of mortals' dwelling that eventuate without ground, without reason, that remain hidden in mystery. These include your own death, my own nothingness, the overwhelming, inexplicable mystery that there is anything at all, your gift of freedom to grasp and shape your own singular identity (if you are brave enough to hazard it), my falling in love, our shared commitment to creating artistically out of nothing something hitherto unheard-of, your being sucked inexplicably into depression, the politician's blind hubris, the banker's boundless greed, and so on. The abyss is the mysterious central source for all mortal dwelling in the world that is free, creative, uncannily unsettling, deathly, exuberantly vital, etc. Death's worth living for. Moods that inexplicably envelop us are also abyssal. Mortals spare the world in this regard by holding in awe the mysterious abyss.