Circumcision Symbolism: A Cutting Away of the Outer Man

To interpret circumcision literally is to dwell in ritual and flesh. But Neville Goddard taught that the Bible is not concerned with external acts—it is a psychological drama unfolding within the individual.

When read literally, the Bible often appears as a series of troubling stories—moral failures, strange laws, and divine punishments. We are faced with incest, betrayal, genocide, and legalism. But beneath the surface lies something entirely different: a symbolic record of spiritual evolution, where every character and event mirrors the movement of consciousness within us.

Circumcision, then, symbolises the removal of everything that veils the imagination. It is the cutting away of egoic pride, false identity, and inherited patterns of thought that obstruct the path to fulfilment. The outer man must be stripped back in order for the inner man—the divine creative power—to take dominion.

God tells Abraham that circumcision is the sign of the covenant. But what is this covenant, if not the profound realisation that “I Am” is God? It is the inner agreement to live by the awareness of imagination as the only creative power.

To be circumcised in this symbolic sense is to separate oneself from public opinion—the ‘foreskin’ of conditioning and appearances—and return to the raw, consecrated power of assumption and belief. It is not repression, but refinement.

It is a quiet but bold act of inner consecration. A turning inward. A declaration that we will no longer serve the outer world of effects, but the inner world of causes. We do not look to circumstances to define us; we imagine and persist.

And so, through circumcision, the Bible once again reveals its deeper purpose—not to command the body, but to awaken the soul.