Consider the serpent; aegis of fear and wonder amongst human cultures the world over1. If it should but travel, the world is divided in its wake. By turns accursed and holy, this polarizing symbol of death and healing is profoundly charged with real and metaphoric significance.
It seems to represent the superficial or mechanical aspects of pure agency; but also a primordial kind of memory. Why is a Serpent challenging God in tales as diverse as those from Ur, Israel, and many indigenous tribes?
Few creatures have garnered the enmity and adulation accorded to the creature that looks like a stick with a head at one end and a point at the other2. Its capacities for stealth and mimicry are legendary; clearly its incredible simplicity of form belies its timeless power.
,, . ~ o ~ . [$
S lithe R
The previous pole-star was Kochab (the star), but prior to that it was Thuban. This Arabic term means ‘the snake’. It is the star we call Alpha Draconis, located in the asterism of Draco.
Father Carlos Crespi Croci was a Salesian Priest located in Ecuador who received copious quantities of anomalous carvings, metal plates, and bas-reliefs which are purported to originate in tunnels beneath the forests of Ecuador. They were given to him as tokens of appreciation by locals and indians from the area. Archaeologists claim that they are hoaxes, but few if any have been rigorously examined. Amongst these amazing artifacts are examples which show Egyptian gods and hieroglyphs, proto-hebraic letterforms, and a wide variety of images which closely resemble those from Ur and Babylonia. In a peculiar twist on our certainties about the ancient world, traces of cocaine were found in the hair of Egyptian mummies examined by German teams in the 1990s. Whether or not the German research was flawed, the chances that thousands of fraudulent artifacts, many of them in gold, were produced as a hoax are practically nil. This image illustrates a common and almost iconic role for the serpent as Kingmaker/Mentor/Patron of Scribes.
As a preliminary measure, I want to take care to discriminate between the reptiles we call snakes and the Serpent of the biblical story, as well as many similar creatures in other stories. These ur-creatures are not precisely the snakes we are familiar with. Although snakes comprise diverse physical expressions of the principles embodied as the Serpents in these stories — (with rare exception) they are not the same.
o : • : o
The Bible isn’t the only holy book to ascribe an unusual position to the Serpent; cultures vastly pre-existing those we are familiar with held the Serpent in similar regard: a creature from which knowledge was to be gained, and one which, if mastered, could prove so powerful an ally as to catalyze a process resulting in the transformation of an ordinary person into something like a monarch or ruler.
In South American cultures the Serpent motif is ubiquitous — the most well-known instance being that of the Quetzalcoatl / Xolotl polarity. These unlike twins are linked to the morning \ evening star — the two faces of Venus — a fascinating motif often linked to the Serpent in religious traditions the world over.
Yet, the story presented in Genesis 3 is a riddle whose historical and cultural significance has compelled countless visionaries and authors in the quest to resolve it. The ‘Tree Incident’ appears to comprise at once a riddle and a solution to those intrepid enough to unfold it.
The idea that it contains its own solution may seem novel, but I have good reason to suspect that the author was deeply concerned with both recursion and medicine in the sense that such concerns might be applied to reformulating human relation and intelligence. These purposes, coupled with the near certainty that this work was intended for the author’s own progeny leads me to suspect that the key was placed right next to the cage described by the fall, and then ingeniously obscured from any but the intended audience: children of the author’s own lineage (and language).
The story is so striking and exotic — and so fraught with extreme consequence — that even as a young atheist I was unable to set it aside. It is the moment of mankind’s seemingly permanent separation from both paradise and God. And then there’s the Serpent. And the Trees. This story must be the pivot of a magnificent revelation.
But in order to discover ‘what happened at the Tree’, we must bring uncommon curiosity, imagination, fervor and vision to the questions that emerge from this epic tail; for the locks will remain sealed to all but those blessed with such capacity — thus, in order to pass the ancient barriers we must become the blessing itself…
@* . ~ o ~ . m}
The word snake appears to come from various terms evoking the idea of low travel, crawling, creeping, or stealthy movement. Snakes are thought to have evolved from lizards, as some retain pelvic girdles and vestigial claws near the cloaca. Most of their paired organs are arranged linearly (rather than side by side as in most mammals) and many have a single lung.
There are a variety of reasons why our ancestors might consider the snake primordial, not the least of which is its resemblance to the idea (and often the symbol for) a single discrete element: ‘one’. What could be more fundamental? Yet when curved back upon itself the snake can also easily comprise the symbol for zero as well as representing recursion — reflexivity; self reference and/or self-penetration. Is there any other creature that can accomplish all of this as easily or as strikingly as a snake?
Another obvious comparison involves masculine sexuality, where the snake appears as the male member having left the body (and the ‘memory of the mothers’ comprised by the testicles) in pursuit of its own agendas. Again I find an image of pure agency, having seemingly discarded all linkage to its lineage and sources. One could envision this as a broken version or ‘shell’ of male sexuality where penetration is accomplished via injury and the transmission of organismal substance results in painful intoxication or death rather than ecstasy, fertilization, pregnancy, and birth. It seems almost certain that indigenous women occasionally sought snakebite as an abortifactant — and it is common knowledge that a wide variety of snake venoms can induce spontaneous abortion.
The snake’s versatility as a source of metaphor is nearly inexhaustible. The fact that it can mimic the branch of a tree or a stick makes it an excellent candidate for the experiential source of metaphor in ancient ancestors. It’s capacity to envenom prey or enemies implies metaphoric linkages to messengers and medicine — and it is surely one of the sources of the idea that we would later translate into the hypodermic syringe.
With the kind of self-advancing intelligence that existed before science took over our minds, we might envision the snake to be a strange sort of ‘living branch’ that has become separated from its tree, and now wanders the world under its own power. Or perhaps a subterranean root which has come to life and traded the world of darkness and moisture for the world of light and atmosphere… both provide a basis for the idea of the snake as a prodigal — the one who leaves ‘the great unity’ in order to prosecute existence upon its own terms.
Like the fingerlet of water which runs over unabsorbent ground, sparkling and glistening in sunlight — the snake’s incredible charisma is renowned the world over as hypnotic, commanding, and preternaturally charged. It glistens, it flows, it folds itself into spirals and knots, and it is an expert at navigating both kinds of tunnels: those comprising evacuations... and their inversion: branches.
And it is here, with its relationship to the Tree, that this riddle finds its real beginning. It is here that our ancestors commonly found themselves face-to-face with a creature as deadly and terrifying as it is compelling — particularly to small arboreal primates capable not only of observation but of internalizing the observed world.
TreeForm
And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
To call the role of trees central to primate evolution would be an irredeemable understatement. The depth of our symbiosis is highlighted by the fact that we breathe each other’s exhalations. For vast epochs of evolutionary history trees comprised shelter, protection from predators (as well as environmental threats), food sources — and and a system of transport not entirely dissimilar to our modern ideas of roads and networks. As we evolved more elaborate manufacturing capacities their bodies became media for our inventions. Ships, books, war-machines of many kinds, and homes were but a few of the endless catalog of results.
Our own languages fold themselves into complex trees based on simple roots extended by branching methods. All of our methods of organizing and storing information are tree-based, and without the metaphors provided by this relationship nearly every aspect of human knowledge and every way of knowing would simply cease to ever have been. Are trees related to knowledge? No, all human knowledge is an instance of the metaphor ‘Tree’ — period. The phrase ‘tree of knowledge’ is overtly recursive — a fact nearly every single author it has studiously overlooked.
It seems that our distant ancestors used trees as transports of movement and relation, and the rhythms and physical sensations of this form of travel remain so deeply imbedded in our collective unconscious that they are constantly re-emerging as patterns in our language, our arts, and uncommon experiences of motion in our dreams. The rhythms of our languages are not merely taken from walking, dancing, and running — but also from swinging, dangling, and on-the-fly branch (and gap) length estimations — and corrections — all of which were crucial aspects of daily existence to our arboreal progenitors.
Although they were not quite capable of free flight, our ancestors’ capacities to negotiate complex branch-networks while moving at speed had a profound effect on their early cognitive development. These observations lead me to suppose that those experiences were deeply involved in forming the basic foundations upon which we would later erect our representational intelligence and probably inspired the schemas we would elaborate into the various symmetries that comprise ‘the roots and branches’ of our modern relationships with language and knowledge.
And here’s where things get a bit more interesting. In our rapid negotiations of branchings, high above the forest floor, occasionally there was a shocking tragedy: a branch unexpectedly morphed into a monster capable of killing and eating the one reaching for it. And it was here that our experiences of the capacity of the snake to mimic a transport of liberty while instead delivering death found their source. Believe me when I tell you, this was a shock that wrote itself deep into the nascent psyches of our distant ancestors — who rather regularly witnessed their friends, leaders, mates and children — killed and consumed by ‘a transport (branch) that came suddenly to life’.
Modern human beings have almost no understanding at all of ‘what’ trees are, as they are nothing like the nearly dead shavings our sciences leave us with. But our ancestors were not scientists — they knew trees directly, in life, in death, and in dreaming. They understood that trees comprised a living network, not entirely unlike our models of the inner structure of our own brains.
Vast connected networks of towering supraneurons, the forests of Earth exist as a living metaposition of the idea ‘brain’ and comprise a key connective and regenerative element of a transentient network too magnificent for moderns to allow even as an idea. But our ancestors had no such barriers to their embodied understanding of these matters, and, occasionally, while playing ‘amongst the dendrites of Earth’ — they came across something that mimicked the expected transport of physical and relational connectivity — but delivered neither transport nor relation.
It ate them alive.
Often while their family and peers looked on helplessly.
This phenomenon was not limited to the trees; back down on the earth, what appeared at first glance to be nothing more than a stick often rose up against them — penetrating them, poisoning them, killing, and, in some cases, consuming them.
A digital image of the rainbow-tunnel most moderns are not even aware exists around them almost every day. Your own eyes are far better vehicles of participation than glass lenses and CCDs. Go see it in person, as soon as possible.
TreeLux
Ordinary light begins — where the rainbow ends...
Although the senses of smell and taste (which were vastly more compelling to our animalian ancestors than they are to us) predate the development of visual senses, the sense of sight is experientially charismatic enough to overwhelm these comparatively subtle transports of sensing. Seeing is, as we say in the modern vernacular, believing. On the other hand, belief is a matter of degree as well…
Our ancestors were profoundly affected by a wide variety of common and exotic visual phenomenon, but, like us, they were especially sensitive to phenomenon taking place in the sky or ‘above’. Trees led them up above the ground, introducing us to a new universe of relational possibilities — and dangers — but above the trees themselves were the heavens.
And the single most compelling feature of the daily sky is the Sun.
During certain times of day, the sun passing behind almost any sort of tree produces an astonishing display so commonly overlooked that most moderns are not even aware it exists. The interplay of sunlight, tree, and living eyes results in a scintillating disc of rainbow rays3 which is superbly animated — and although relatively small and ubiquitous in comparison, this phenomenon is at least as striking as the more broadly celebrated rainbows with which we are all familiar.
I suggest that when our ancestors gathered near familiar trees during preening, play, meals, and other socially crucial communal activity, this phenomenon elicited wonder, granted comfort, and served as a direct ‘celestial acknowledgement’ of unity with all beings. This sense was transferred only later to the rainbow itself, which, in biblical terms, symbolizes something rather shocking: the repentance of the Deity. It seems likely that this idea predated the assembly of the judeo-christian cannon since a similar idea appears in the Epic of Gilgamesh.
The constantly modulating rainbow tunnel created by ‘nothing more’ than sunlight bursting through branches was a crucial and common feature of the daily experience of all of our ancestors — human and non. Isn’t it surprising that most moderns are completely oblivious to it?
One important connection here is subtle: these ‘rays’ of light scintillate along their length, and this is at once like the physical movement of the snake and the activity of the male sexual organ during orgasm.
Suppose that one of them got away from the Sun and was running loose on Earth?
Ophiuchus
Not to mention Draco, there is a 13th constellation, Ophiuchus, which means ‘serpent-wielder’. There is also a 13th sephira in the diagram from Kabbalistic tradition known as the Tree of Life (often depicted with a snake traversing a winding path through the symmetry of sephira). It is often called Daath, or Knowledge.
Morelia viridis (Green tree python) — Many imagine a python when they imagine the Serpent in Genesis.
Stranger than (mere) Danger
The story in Genesis is not merely a religious parable about obedience and rebellion; it intentionally orbits a deadly problem involving the roots of our cognitive nature as human animals. Like the Serpent of the story, the ‘tree in the midst of the Garden’ is the chosen vehicle for a variety of peculiar connotations specific to our relationships to language and knowledge — and their impact on the methods we employ as we weave the experience of identity from the threads of our sensing and thought.
With this in mind, I wish to first examine the more orthodox aspects of this riddle somewhat formally. Afterwards, we shall explore another perspective which has more in common with a child’s wisdom than an adult’s evaluations. Both perspectives involve merits and dangers peculiar to their purposes and means.
::0 . ~ o ~ . ;
The riddle is prefigured by God’s admonition to man and woman to avoid the fruit of a peculiar tree about which we are told three things, it exists ‘in the midst’ of the Garden (of Eden), it is ‘The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil’ (bipolarity), and eating its fruit results in (certain) death.
The first record of human speech (near the end of Genesis 2) in which Adam4 calls his new companion woman is immediately succeeded by a nonhuman speech challenging the rationale of God’s previous warning to the couple. The initial description of the Serpent reminds us that it is a being created by God.
Surely the Serpent is aware that God is its source, and will soon return to local proximity. What sort of being would dare to so directly contradict God?5 The Serpent’s character seems dangerously self-interested; a feature we might interpret as evidence of ‘pure agency’ — that is, agency bereft of worthy cause or guidance. The result is a monster, a overly sophisticated shell which has become self-fascinated to the degree that any being who has not yet ejected its own inner guidance represents a confusing threat, as well as comprising an insult to its otherwise obvious supremacy.
From this perspective, since it preserves nothing but self-interest, it need recognize neither the necessity of mutuality nor any extrinsic authority — including the supreme authority of God. The goal becomes to acquire all possible authority, and to destroy what cannot be acquired.
Since God can neither be acquired nor destroyed by the Serpent, God represents a standing threat as well as a aggravating puzzle: why does such authority exist?6
^^ . ~ o ~ . /\
An important theoretical caveat deserves mention here. According to our understanding of organismal history on Earth, giant reptiles once ‘ruled the Earth as gods’. From this perspective another possible interpretation of the Serpent’s hubris emerges, one in which it challenges (or even acknowledges) the ‘changing of the favored intelligence’ from the simple, warlike, extremely self-interested (noncommunal) form we might naively associate with the reptilian cogniscium, to the highly social and intimately cooperative forms inventively developed and traded amongst the hominids.
It is worthy of note that the primordial Earth was more suited to the reptilian paradigm than the mammalian. In fact, the two can be understood to comprise an approximate sketch of the genders: the reptilian representing the masculine, and the mammalian — even in its name — representing the feminine. The ancient reptiles are competitive, penetrative, armored, gigantic and, to some degree, warlike — a good match for a dangerous world in early development. The next is soft, receptive, contemplative (reflective) — a good match for a world previously ‘tamed’ by the soldier-like reptiles.
As evidence of this idea we can take note that the male aspect is the first-created in Genesis. And in case it seems absurd that a woman could be generated from ‘the rib of a man’ — there is nothing more familiar to us than such a couple; the Sun and the Earth. Our modern theories suppose that the Earth was formed by the slow compression of an accretion-ring of gas and dust — literally, one of the Sun’s ‘ribs’. Clearly these two are ‘madly in love’ the ongoing luminous consummation of their marriage results in endless forms and instances of children, one of whom is writing to you now. Consider Earth in this light: an ever-virginal mother (the Sun’s penetrations are energetic rather than physical) who gives birth constantly in the wake of divine fertilization. What seems at first a shallow chauvinistic parable can now be understood as something far more amazing: the original modes of insight available to our distant ancestors, and which they expertly encoded in stories that would be useless and misleading to those who failed to bring the necessary insight to their interpretation.
With these ideas in mind, the rest of the story, including the Serpent’s offer of a ‘new way of seeing / knowing (which is like that of gods), takes on the appearance of an attempt by this form of intelligence to remain, if not in power, at least in existence — and perhaps, to find a new home within the minds of the next generation to ascend to primacy: the hominids.
This perspective functions to transform the story into a parable outlining the peculiar circumstances of how humanity became the vehicle of conservation for this strange ancestor \ precursor, one whose function and character will thereafter exist within us as an aspect of the foundations of our own minds and perhaps even the physical structure of our brains.
;o . ~ o ~ . ::
The Hebrew adjective used to characterize the Serpent (read R to L).
Note the visual puns: forked tongue, angle, unity, ouroboros. Accident? Coincidence?
876 = 21 = 3
It is rather absurd to believe one can translate Hebrew (or Arabic) into simple English; an approximate analogy would be the belief that a living being can be translated into a photograph. The differences between the languages are simply too significant to overcome in translation. Each letter in Hebrew means something by itself, and the meaning may modulate when its enclosed by or linked with other letters. Tri-consonantal roots are rich with metaphoric linkage beyond the wildest imaginings of those caged within English. The depth which is made possible by the foundations of their linguistic system cannot be emulated by ours. It is as if the language was purposefully engineered to support deep metaphoric compression — a form that requires a living being to ‘expand’ it. English, on the other hand, is not only flat, but largely non-expandable and practically made for machines. Our teachers tell us specifically that letters have no meaning and puns are just arbitrary nonsense. The result is a slave-language that attacks human intelligence while pretending expertise. However, it is a highly utilitarian language, and is a good choice for some uses.
In any case, there are features of the story in Hebrew which are utterly inaccessible in English translation. For this reason we must (at least) take some initial care to explore certain key terms more deeply.
The Serpent is introduced as the most [ cunning / sly / subtle / shrewd / (prudent) / crafty ] of the creatures of the field. Though variously translated, the word in question (ayin raysh vahv mame) — enjoys a pun-like linkage to the word meaning to make naked or uncover (ayin raysh mame) — the ‘root’ from which this word is derived which can also be taken to mean impudent or spiteful.
The Serpent is not merely crafty or sly, but is perhaps more clearly understood as cunning /.\ naked. Taking this idea further, we can see that this is perhaps the most physically naked of all the creatures — having no evidence of the limbs enjoyed by other creatures. We might translate this into an expression of ‘perfect physical unity’ — a paradigm refuted by its singular peculiar deviation: the forked tongue — the organ of speech in humans.
The understanding that nakedness plays in a wide range of associated senses in this story calls to attention crucial aspects of meaning we would otherwise miss; for example we can observe that the ‘cunning’ here demonstrated is also a kind of ‘disrobing’ whose reductive intentions find purchase in language’s capacity to strip away real dimensions of meaning and experience by imposing schemas of comparison and evaluation whose outcomes are less complete but more literal. This is a well-recognized rhetorical gambit familiar to lawyers the world over, and purposefully denies the breadth of scope and relational concerns which might otherwise curb such shameless sophistry.
In suggesting that the woman should discriminate between the real and putative effects of tasting the fruit of this tree, the Serpent engages in a kind of predatory ‘strip tease’ involving expert manipulation of the more superficial features of language. Clearly the goal is to gently peel away the shield of the threat in the hopes of revealing something desirable hidden beneath7 — in this case, knowledge or ways of seeing — new perspectives which the Serpent will claim ‘are like those of gods’.
Often referred to as ‘the father of lies’, it appears that our sinuous interlocutor is also the father of advertising.
Q> . ~ o ~ . <G
Encounter in the Midst
At the meeting of woman and Serpent there is no introduction or expression of surprise on the her part, only the rather abrupt interjection of the Serpent and her immediate response. I suspect that what we have received only a brief sketch of what once comprised a far more detailed narrative, however it is possible that I am mistaken — the brevity may instead indicate skillful compression.
Robert Alter, in his translation The Five Books of Moses, notes (p. 24) that the initial dialogue may be more properly interpreted as the woman interrupting the Serpent’s impetuous advance — prefiguring the universal feminine prerogative of ‘blocking a suitor’.
From Alter’s translation:
Serpent: “Though God said you shall not eat from any tree of the garden—”
Woman: “From the fruit of the trees in the garden we may eat, but from the fruit of the tree in the midst of the garden God has said ‘You shall not eat from it and you shall not touch it, lest you die.’”
She apparently adds ‘and you shall not touch it’ to God’s original admonition, a fact often interpreted as an erroneous expansion or even a lie — but I think she is expressing her understanding of the intention of God’s commandment, rather than the verbatim repetition. This seems justified; the Serpent’s immediate attempt to belittle the warning nearly demands just such an expansion. From this perspective we see that as the Serpent begins shedding layers of meaning, the woman is already at pains to replace them. Moreover, whether or not explicitly stated, it seems obvious that the warning implied that even proximity was dangerous — as indeed it is about to prove — and that the woman is highlighting these concerns in an attempt to more forcefully repudiate the Serpent’s initial advance.
In correcting the Serpent, the woman’s intentions to preserve the spirit and scope of God’s warning are made clear; but alas, she has been drawn into a game she is not prepared for. Language is sticky stuff, and like a predator’s web its power and strength remain invisible until activated — by contact. The first rule of this peculiar mode of contact is agreement. By merely acknowledging the serpent’s words, the woman inadvertently admits them. Although she may be unaware of it, she has already received the serpent’s penetrations, and the venom — which is not physical but relational — goes immediately to work.
g< . ~ o ~ . >q
What is the Serpent’s aim? Is it sexual? Dominance? Ownership? If we take the more orthodox perspective on this story, I suggest that it is at once more subtle and sophisticated any single term can convey. The Serpent lives up to his reputation for cunning; the real treasure here not physical but relational.
The story implies that establishing congress with the woman has little to do with bodies (mere disposable coverings) and everything to do with minds — which will soon comprise the cultures into which all human bodies are born. This is supported by the fact that the fruit changes the function of the mind as well as the eyes that bring it vision.
The Serpent’s goal may be to replace the position of God within the human mind with an active simulacrum of himself — one he may directly enter and activate at will, but which will function to prefigure (if not maintain) his local sovereignty even in his absence. If he can replace the Father’s place with one more suited to his character and function, he will acquire a vehicle in which he can be endlessly and virulently instanced — within and amongst the transports of the human cogniscium. If his gambit succeeds, every human child will be his — in fact, he’ll gain a whole new dimension of expression, within which he can take endless forms. The humans will become ‘little more’ than his personal vehicle, and better still, he will master God’s most profound and delicate creation — proving at last that his unique power is superior in its own right — through direct competition. Creation trumps creator — son kills father.
But there is a much simpler explanation, which carries weight due to its obviousness: as they are, the humans are seeing with eyes God has made and invested with purpose and meaning appropriate to the station of the humans. The snake could be saying something very simple: disconnect from God, distinguish yourselves as distinct beings in your own right, and you will see as those who are self-distinguished see. This interpretation is powerful in part because it partakes of the entire set of metaphors we have previously explored which offer the Serpent as an example of pure agency: the ‘hood’ of self.
Another explanation that is far deeper and more sophisticated is that the Human and the Woman are preexisting as archetypes as yet unborn into matter. In this case, Eden is a kind of celestial egg in perfect unity with its source, and the Serpent is the transport of fertilization which, in penetrating the egg (and here the apple consumed by Woman symbolizes the eggs which Woman will thenceforth produce and fertilize or eject), sets in motion the processes that will result in the physical instancing of the Human and the Woman in the universe of timeSpace — a universe linked to, but unique from the Garden. I find this model compelling, and it implies that something is missing between this chapter and the next, in which we are immediately introduced to sexuality, fertilization, and birth.
#` . ~ o ~ . *,
The Serpent: “You shall not be doomed to die. God knows that on the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will become as (those who are divine in seeing)8 knowing good and evil.”
The masculine prerogative of introducing novelty to the feminine, often as a prelude to mating, is strongly in evidence here. From the dance-displays of the male ‘bird of paradise’ to the food offerings of male predators an astonishing array of examples of this exist throughout animalian and human culture. But what is most surprising is that the first instance of this phenomenon in the Bible is not between man and woman, but Serpent and woman. And then, as if to highlight this inversion, the woman introduces it to the man!
As regards the Serpent’s advertisement, something more sophisticated than the superficial story is at play. What is on offer is a compellingly desirable way of seeing, but one which will permanently alter the configuration of the human mind. This is most likely a complex intervention; for example, inducing the flow of consciousness to self-penetrate (like the ouroboros) — generating feedback, coupled with the introduction of formal representational capacities. In this case the humans would proceed from their immediate awe at the wonder of knowing themselves ‘reflectively’ directly into the strangely uninhabitable and desperately self-aggrandizing terrains of formal representation (shells and tokens). The first aspect, self-penetration, to know the self, would divest them of innocence, but the second would, over time, create a prison of death which would fund itself with the momentum supplied by their own relationship to consciousness. The result would be a prison that grows itself explosively at their expense. It is comprised of self-spawning ‘dead representations’ with which the humans would have to compete, and against which they cannot prevail. This is, indeed, ‘certain death’ but it is also a ‘living death’ which is precisely the loophole the Serpent utilizes in forming his attack.
The woman is as vulnerable to the Serpent’s gambit as our own children are when we repeat it with them. Unlike the Serpent, she is still ‘clothed’ in innocence, and thus is ‘unashamed’ of (or untroubled by) her physical nakedness because she cannot detect it. Of course, it is not ‘bad or evil’ in itself, and must first be compared to something in order to be evaluated at all. So the offer appears to be the introduction of the capacities of comparison and evaluation. But she is also entirely unaware of her representational nakedness (naivete) because she has no mirror that might reveal it.
And here is where the Serpent’s subtlety rises into power as an active catalyst, for what he has communicated to her is the basis for precisely this sort of mirror, a mirror in which the warning of God is divided in twain — with one side representing the literal truth, and the other the figurative — and the woman is as incapable of this distinction as she is of understanding it.
The figurative is the necessary additional component to empower comparison — the missing component which will be added unto her if she will partake. But I am left to wonder if the Serpent itself is not the mirror: it is (almost) as if he is saying ‘oh daughter of God, look into me and behold your own divided nature, which God hath withheld from your purview, but has hidden within his very warning to you.’
.. . ~ o ~ . ]%
The woman succumbs, and also gives the fruit to the man. It is not clear whether she apprises him of its source, only that “the eyes of the two were opened, and they knew they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves and made themselves loincloths.”
The choice of the leaves of the fig tree is significant: a fig’s flowers are microscopic — thus, the selection directly refers to the a problem with sudden ‘distinct awareness’ of genitalia and fertility. Perhaps the plant ‘whose flower cannot be seen’ is the correct ‘medicine’ to resolve this strange illness of seeing that clings to the mind like a spider’s web.
This is the first evidence in the Bible of ethnobotanical awareness — and its first demonstration is brought on by exposure to the Serpent’s guile. The source of human medicinal knowledge is the being who introduced the illness that made it necessary. This shocking irony finds expression all around us in the incredible hubris and harm too often resulting from allopathic intervention in human and environmental health.
The couple hear the sound of God walking in the Garden in the evening breeze, and hide themselves. An awkward question / answer session ensues:
(•) “Where are you?”
The man: “I heard your sound in the Garden and was afraid, for I was naked, and I hid.”
“Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree from which I commanded you to abstain?”
The man: “The woman whom you gave me, gave me of that tree, and I ate.”
(Addressing the woman) “What have you done?”
The woman: “The Serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.”
The woman’s statement seems to involve the concept of forgetting; the term translated into beguile may actually relate to the idea ‘causing something to be forgotten’, or ‘showing something so compelling as to blind the memory’ — for example, a mirror — which can be understood as the dynamic physical instancing of memory itself.
There is no question from God to the Serpent. Instead, God proceeds to distribute ‘curses’ in the opposite order of the reports: Serpent, Woman, Man.
To the Serpent: A curse, to go always on its belly, eating of the dust. The enmity of woman and her seed. Her seed will kick and crush his head. His teeth will bite the heel of them.
To the Woman: Sharp pangs of birth, travail and longing for the man who shall rule over her.
To the man he makes an explanation: “Because you listened to the woman and ate…”
To the Man: A curse upon the soil9 for the sake of his transgression. Hunger amongst Thorn and Thistle. Sweat and work until death returns him to the Earth and the dusts from which he was formed.
This is all very confusing — something is amiss. It seems inconceivable that God would be handing out this kind of hardship right on the tail of his favored children having been beguiled into severely injuring themselves. Something far beyond the superficial appearance is at play. But if we explore the more orthodox position, the outcome for all is hunger, enmity and toil. The Serpent, upon the ground, hated by the children of humans and plaguing them with death, the Woman in birth and love, and the man in work and death.
But what is perhaps more strange is a world in which none of these ‘punishments’ exist. Where does the Serpent not go along the ground? Since woman has never given birth, how are her pangs and travail increased? What meaning could this have for a woman who has never mated or adored her mate? Did she rule over man previously? And of the man, had he never known hunger or sweat? Or death? If not, how could he even understand the punishment? No, something is very strange here, and it is not a minor strangeness.
Allow me to suggest that these are the relatively ordinary outcomes of physical incarnation. It sounds as if our story was taking place in a nonphysical ‘paradise’, and now its players have won, not so much a set of punishments and curses, but palpable existence, where each of these features is little more than the natural outcome of embodiment as real creatures. It is as if ‘Eden’ is something like the masculine womb of God, in which a vast mystery was taking place. This womb was penetrated by the Serpent, who fertilized the man through the agency of the woman, and now all three of them will be ejected — into actual birth. This idea is almost too provocative to pursue in mere text, but the intrepid reader should find themselves in a position to do so. In this case, the Serpent represents the divine agent of fertilization — but there may be different species of such agents, whose activities result in many different kinds of birth — and this kind, the physical variety, is at once profound and problematical.
tS . ~ o ~ . rE
Of course, this is nothing like the orthodox interpretation, which, briefly stated, is that woman caused the fall of our species from grace due to her fascination with beauty or superficial aspects of it, a fascination capitalized upon by the Serpent, who, in convincing her to partake of the knowledge of good and evil, becomes a symbol of duplicity and death. The man, for his part, is full of excuses, and fails to even take responsibility for his own actions, laying the blame not only on woman, but on God: “The woman you gave me, gave me of the tree…”
In the end, Adam gives his companion the name Chavah (life, living), “for she was the mother of all that lives” — a crucial declaration. It seems she is mother not only of humans, but of life itself.
God then crafts clothes for the couple from skins, and issues a cryptic proclamation:
“Now that the human has become like one of us, knowing good and evil, he may reach out and take as well from the tree of life and live forever.” Strangely, his words seem to recognize only the male…
So God sends the couple from the Garden, and sets up a Cherubim (a terrifying hybrid-mount) ‘to the East’ as a guardian against re-entry. The Cherubim wields a whirling sword of flame — creating an impassable barrier.
But the barrier is made of something more than fire and steel; it is made of a primordial force whose nature and character lie far outside the purview of science.
tS . ~ o ~ . rE
Detail from Antonin Idrac’s Mercury Inventing the Caduceus.
Snakes in coitus often coil about one another… is Mercury introducing the third force?
Grab the Ball by the Tail…
“And the Lord said unto him, What is that in thine hand? And he said, A rod. And he said, Cast it on the ground. And he cast it on the ground, and it became a serpent; and Moses fled from before it. And the Lord said unto Moses, Put forth thine hand, and take it by the tail. And he put forth his hand and caught it and it became a rod in his hand.” (Exodus 4:2-4)
For every being or thing there exists a feature of its being, real and figurative, energetic and physical, which is very challenging to frame in ordinary language, but which I will call a tail. If you draw a circle it’s the place where it begins. Eggs have them. Animals are all aware of this matter (though few are representationally aware of it), and some of them have a physical tail. More than a limb, it comprises a peculiar sense. For ‘the place where you are separated from the great unity’ is the place which is always nearest it. Both sides of the separation act a bit like antennae, transmitting something more than mere information back and forth, constantly, at impossible speed.
It is also a tale, and it has something to do with ‘being late’ (in that a story is a record of time and imagination past) and even with ions — as in the English verbal formulations: i so lat(e) ion and re lat(e) ion. We separate beings, it seems, are always just a bit behind the Great Unity. If anyone paused to compare, we’d be found to be ‘somewhat late’. In fact, the t-ion or ‘shun’ suffix is deeply related to this cycle of riddles spun into language, and can be imagined to mean something like ‘tree-ion’ — a vehicle for the transmission of tree-like linkages resulting in unity.
I once visited an art studio where marbles are made. The process is amazing, dangerous and difficult — but the two most significant challenges are forming a perfect sphere and hiding the tail. Molten glass (dust, actually) is heated to melting, and a sort of bar of this substance is grabbed up onto the end of a rod. This is rapidly turned against a semispherical mold, forming a sphere, but then it must be ‘snipped off’ from the remnants which cling to the rod, and where it is snipped off, a tail forms. This must be smoothed away or hidden very rapidly, for the glass hardens quickly, and a mistake in this part of the process ruins the product.
When I was a child, my grandmother transmitted a strange warning: do not play with your belly-button. When I asked why, she said ‘It will make you sick’. Of course, I immediately went off to verify this advice, and was successful. For me at least, playing with my belly-button resulted in an almost instantaneous nausea which did not resolve as quickly as I would have liked. Was it mere suggestion? Perhaps — but I doubt that this is the sole cause for a variety of reasons which I will not here detail. While I am sure this tradition is anything but universal, it reminds me significantly of God’s admonition to Man and Woman in Genesis 2. Perhaps he was telling them to be careful of the ‘belly button’ of Creation itself.
I imagine that the Heaven and the Earth are newly minted, so to speak, and that the Earth, in being separated from the heavens, has acquired a tail, a tale, and a teller. But I imagine more, that there was a being directly involved in the procedure, and rather than a mere tool, this creature was an agent of God’s will, and also his servant — a Serpent. A very special angel, dangerous and charismatic — a transentient blade who lives and even lusts. His nature is to cut, to slice, to separate. And here is where things get tricky, because he is so good at this single task that he is constantly confusing himself with the Creator — after all, what thing can be made that is not first separated?
In the Early days of Earth, this ‘child of heaven’ (who may even be the first child of heaven) was ‘hanging around’ his handiwork — in ‘the midst’ of the Garden. And there’s a clue in the language here, because the Hebrew term tavek (tait vahv kaph-sophit), commonly translated as midst, can mean a variety of things, many of which do indeed approximate the idea of ‘amongst’, but the unused root from which the word is hewn means ‘to sever’. Suppose, however, it means both ‘in your midst’ and ‘where the severance occurred’? I am led to speculate that God may have been commanding the humans to avoid the place where Earth has recently been severed from heaven. One of the children of heaven is there, and this child is excited and fascinating — as well as deeply interested in these new children who are formed not from the divine flow but from dusts and soils. Should they meet, the children of Earth will suffer disaster. They will acquire the cognitive analogue of the angelic talent: severance. In short: to sever an aspect of the mind such that individuality is represented in precedence to unity. This transformation is precisely the loss of innocence.
And when children get together, it is quite natural for them to desire to share their toys. Problematically, the toys of the Serpent are angelic, and overpowering to the children formed of dusts — so much so that they will not be able to help themselves. But great danger lies here, for these toys are ways of directing flow, and the children of Earth are not angels. Exposure to them will not have the same effect upon them as upon angels. Their innocence and perhaps even their nature will be overpowered, and the methods will become their masters, almost as if the methods were gods — or worse — demons. Once ensconced in the human cogniscium, they will endlessly magnify themselves, producing reflection after reflection, feeding on the divine flow of awareness which is the human birthright, and everywhere erecting their image in the place of of living places and beings. A catastrophe to be sure.
It is interesting that God did not warn them against eating of the tree of life; only the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Only after they had eaten of the latter was there any apparent concern regarding it. He then sets ‘Cherubim’ (plural) to guard the Tree of Life ‘with a sword spinning in every way’. This creates an interesting polarity: The Tree of Knowledge is like a sword (masculine), and the Tree of Life like a shield(feminine).
These humble sketches barely introduce the depth and breadth of the topics at hand. Many mysteries await the intrepid child who will reenter the firstplace in person. These stories are not merely records — they are something quite different indeed — and to any who understand they represent an invitation of a peculiar kind which will admit the playful inquiries of children, and reflect those of adults almost as if they were thrown off by striking a spinning shield whose momentum increases geometrically with each attempted approach.
“Devil take the hindmost” — Allen Holdsworth.
The ouroboros is incomplete until you extend the snake’s tongue. Only then will you notice that the tongue is formed so as to receive the point of the snake’s tail. Mark you well this omission, for here lives Mystery.
The reason it is missing from nearly every illustration is that no one went in person to understand — they simply copied copies of copies.
A likely source of the concept is african lizard known as Cordylus Cataphractus, a small, dragon-like creature who clasps its tail in its mouth in order to escape or intimidate predators.
