1. Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?
We assume that the word subtil here means morally evil, cunning, crafty, etc., but is not the word for this subtle? Our dictionary defines the latter word as evil, cunning, deceptive, but it defines subtil as “that which is fine drawn, ethereal, rarefied,” and subtilize, to make less gross or coarse; in other words, to refine. Subtil is from the Latin subtilus—sub, beneath, and tela, web; and from tela we get texo, to weave, and textile, fabric. This is the real meaning of Satan’s “subtil” nature. In Evolution he refines the coarse, material earth and weaves it into etheric, astral and mental matter; he also makes forms less gross than earth. Today these words are used interchangeably, but we should have a distinction here. Subtil should convey no evil qualities; the word for that is subtle.
There is plenty of the latter in the Bible. It tells this story, for instance, as though it were the first and only version, yet the legend existed long before the Hebrews. At Gawra, Assyria, a prehistoric seal was found bearing the figure of a man, a woman, a tree and a serpent, and this city had ceased to exist by 2000 B.C. In Greece, as stated, the serpent was Ladon, and in Scandinavia Nidhogg. In the Pelasgian myth of Creation, the goddess Eurynome created a wind by dancing over the waters of Chaos. The more she danced, the greater and stronger grew the wind, until it became the serpent Ophion, who, coiling himself about her, coupled with her. Thus impregnated she took the form of a dove and laid the cosmic egg. From this all things developed. And, according to Robert Graves, later becoming angry at Ophion, “she bruised his head, kicked out his teeth and banished him to the dark caves below the earth.” And from this we get the story of Eve bruising the head of the serpent. As stated elsewhere the Jews of Bible times had at their disposal a vast store of creation myths wholly unknown to us.
2. And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:
3. But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.
We have interpreted all things in terms of ourselves so long it is difficult for us to realize these are not human beings. They are personifications of planetary principles. The garden is the earth itself; the midst of the garden is the middle point between its involutionary creation and its evolutionary expression. It is at this point that Evolution starts, and “the tree of knowledge” is evolutionary experience. While the Life Principle was on the involutionary side it was spiritual in the sense of substance. When in Evolution it emerged as biologic life, it became subject to all “the ills that flesh is heir to,” and “Death and Hell followed after” it, as per Revelation. In this Eden story it is still in Involution, and so this death is not physical but metaphysical. This is the death about which God allegorically warned Adam. He must not become material lest he die spiritually, as essence. But allegorically, Satan knew that Adam must die this death that he might become biological and morally spiritual. He therefore urged the more susceptible half of Being, matter, to eat, that is, act. And do you see the scientific aspect here? Actually we are reading nuclear physics—fission and radiation. The susceptible part, however, is not the scientifically negative electron, but the “unstable” proton, which by disintegrating sets the life-force free. This is matter and woman is its symbol.
At this point we have a complete about-face, an evolutionary power taking over the work of the involutionary Creator. It is not new in mythology, however, for in the Babylonian account of the same thing the lesser god Zu takes from “the father of the gods” the umsimi, or creative power, so in Greek henotheism. This is the difference, in personification, between the first two chapters of Genesis and the third. In the first two, God is the only actor; now we have another, Satan, as the acting force with God the restraining influence—Life asleep in matter, with “Don’t disturb” on the door. This is the Great God Inertia whose motto is Laissez faire, let be, let be, and whose command is “Thou shalt not.” He is thus a sort of mythological Dieu faineant, or do-nothing God. It is this that Satan, the evolutionary impulse, must from here on urge and push and struggle with throughout all Evolution. Today, its followers, the pious and the reactionary, have gone a bit too far, and so seeing no other way, Satan has called on his good friend Mars for help. In this war-filled century these two symbionts are but trying to destroy the spiritual inertia of Piscean man. But not even these can do it unless they first destroy the spiritual error he has lived by.
4. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die (that is, literally):
5. For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
Now which was right, God or Satan? Satan, apparently, since they ate and did not die, but only received the curse of sentient life. Here we see what the good and evil of the Bible really is—creative only, for the gods do not know moral good and evil.
6. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.
This is not the “fall”; that was involutionary. This is the evolutionary impulse urging energy to free itself from matter, hence a rise. This is wholly energic and its symbol, woman, being the more susceptible, partook of the fruit and passed it on to the reluctant Adam, genetic consciousness asleep in matter. And this is the awful “sin” from which we have been trying to save our souls for two thousand years. Again, “What fools we mortals be!” It’s time we too had our eyes opened. The “original sin” was the sin of creation—what could be more original? However, the word is wrong; it should be crime. But as sin is the biggest thing priests can think about, they called it sin, and made it human to incriminate man and absolve the Creator. Yet if this world, with all its pain and suffering, is the work of a self-conscious Being, then Creation is a crime and its Creator a criminal. From this there is only one escape—unconscious Causation.
While our eyes were still closed we interpreted this “sin” as sex and so made for ourselves a “guilt complex.” Perhaps now we can shift that guilt where it belongs. Perhaps we can even get rid of the complex, for the truth will set us free.
7. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.
“The woman clothed with the sun,” namely, the sun, now finds herself “naked earth,” and Ishtar and Inanna were also naked at this point. Adam and Eve are the two principles with which we began, consciousness and energy; on the seventh plane they united and became “naked earth.” As soon as the Life force freed itself from this, it clothed itself in organic matter— the literal grass, herbs, trees, etc., of the first chapter.
8. And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden.
“The cool of the day” is the cooling-off period between Involution and Evolution. It is at this point that the genetic principle is hidden most completely in matter.
9. And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?
Yes, even the Lord God might have difficulty seeing life in a stone, or even a virus.
10. And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.
“And Br’er Rabbit said, ‘Whatever you do, don’t throw me in the briar patch.’” This is allegory, and so is Genesis.
11. And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?
What naivete! As if God didn’t know he would eat of it. The fruit of this tree is biologic existence, and this God labored six long eons that this might be. Why then should partaking of it be disobedience? This was not an act but part of the creative process, yet upon it our whole salvation nonsense is based. Had we possessed the slightest knowledge of the process we would not have been deceived. The story implies the first man had a sense of modesty and a conscience like ourselves. We should have known that such qualities are evolutionary constructs and imply millions of years. Therefore we have only ourselves to blame for the time we’ve wasted saving our souls from the “sin” of Adam.
Those who would save our souls don’t know what the soul is; they don’t even know the difference between soul and spirit, nor yet between spirit and spirituality. Apparently they think soul is spirit and that spirit is spiritual. Not so. Spirit is but the creative energy developed on the third plane in Involution—dynamic, not moral. It thus manifests in man as vitality only, physical and mental. Soul is the sum total of epigenetic qualities added to the genetic’s construct, hence soul and body. Our task is to create soul, not just save it. Spirituality is the higher of these qualities dominating the lower, and this is the only salvation we need. From this we see that spirit and spirituality are at opposite ends of the creative process.
12. And the man said, The woman (matter) whom thou gavest to be with me (consciousness), she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.
Cherchez la femme! Not very gallant of the divine man Adam, but pardonable in an atom.
13. And the Lord God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.
But la femme was not better, and so she put the blame on Satan—and the priest passed it on to man. And there it serves a double purpose: a help meet for the priest and an alibi for God. This serpent is God on the lower plane, and yet we read:
14. And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life.
“Upon thy belly shalt thou go.” Oh, no. Upon everybody’s belly—”armed forward with a piercer and propelled by the violent lashing of a formidable length of tail.” In the cosmological sense, “belly” represents the under and lowest part of the planetary entity, the seventh or material plane. The serpentine part of it is the genetic principle, in other words, the Creator; and if confirmation is needed for our contention that the genetic never becomes anything else, here it is. Its curse is that it must remain apart, forever denied the food of man, the epigenetic qualities, and even the Heaven that man creates. Exodus also confirms it.
All this is allegory, yet in our gullible literalness we have put its stigma upon even the serpent of the fields. It is not, of course, the cause of our dislike for this creature, but it lends support. The real cause is its ugly, venomous nature, but even this was put upon it by its Creator, but biologically, not mythologically. If otherwise, why do we not see its literal falsity? This lowly creature does not eat dust any more than we do, and it does not crawl on its belly because of our first parents. It crawled and wiggled thus for millions of years before an ancient allegorist perceived its symbolic usefulness.
But if the serpent is the genetic or Creative force, who is this cursing God? He is but an allegorical convenience, wholly redundant and unnecessary except to religion. There is nothing in all the universe save consciousness and energy, and these two deities are but their personifications. Collectively, they are one, the cursing God of the higher planes and the accursed Satan of the lower—and neither of them possesses moral qualities. Why then should moral man debase himself before them? There is nothing higher morally and spiritually than well developed man. As Eliphas Levi said: “The Angels aspire to become men; for the perfect Man, the Man-God, is above even angels.” Above even gods also, for the gods died that they might become men.
15. And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel (as in the case of Eurynome).
This enmity is purely symbolic and planetary, the woman and the serpent representing matter and the life-force. Such symbolism runs throughout all mythologies but having no understanding of them, we have inverted its hidden meaning and missed its subtil truth. To us woman is the ennobling and uplifting force and the serpent our moral opponent. The scriptures are telling us the opposite. Biologically, it is genetic consciousness that is trying to rise and matter is holding it down—and woman represents matter. And this applies all too aptly to epigenetic consciousness as well. Woman is the enemy of its progress. She opposes every new idea creative man proposes; she fears and resents change lest she lose security; she hates the truth and loves illusion; she does not want to know the truth about Reality; she prefers the escapism of religion. The reason is implied in the next verse, propagation and security.
16. Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.
And because of these words it has taken woman three thousand years to escape them. If she would be free and help man to be free she must learn to think; she must become enlightened. Thus intelligized and rationalized she would not believe mythology to be “the word of God,” or oppose the truth when she heard it.
She has in this verse an excellent case could she but see it. Were her maternal lot the result of this curse, she should rise up in protest; she should charge the Creator with cruelty and injustice, for the command not to eat of the tree was not given to the woman; it was given to man before woman was created, as per the Jhwhist. Furthermore, Eve, poor girl, had no mother to tell her about the birds and the bees. And, of course, her father was too busy. But since we know this was not biologic woman, we withdraw the charge and also the sympathy. But not the original responsibility, for woman’s biologic lot is the Creator’s decree, and it is both cruel and unjust. How any woman who has borne the pangs of childbirth can believe in a God of love and mercy is difficult to see. Such a God would not have made her all-important part painful; such a God would not have made disease germs to kill her children; such a God would not have devised the jungle, or decreed that life must live on life. Only something devoid of all the finer qualities can be responsible. We have a name for it; we call it Nature. This understood, we see that these decrees are not punishment for “sin” but simply the nature of Nature. And blind and cruel as that nature is, it is not the result of an act half way in the process, but the inherent nature of the Life Principle itself. This is the Creator, therefore we should see clearly the distinction between God and Creator. The Creator created man and ruthless Nature, then man in his turn created God, a human ideal necessary to spiritually aspiring man, a goal he, himself, will someday become. So let us see clearly the difference between this man-made ideality and the ruthless Reality.
17. And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast harkened unto the voice of thy wife (matter), and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life.
Well, is not sorrow also inherent in life? Death is, and it causes sorrow. So does love. Our preachers have always told us this world is a vale of tears, but their only explanation of it is the literal word of a myth, and not original either. It was copied from the older Babylonian account. George Smith, speaking of this, writes thus: “Our fragment refers to the creation of mankind, called Adam as in the Bible; he is made perfect . . . but afterwards he joins with the dragon of the deep, the animal Tiamat the spirit of Chaos, and offends against the god who curses him and calls down on his head all the evils and troubles of humanity.” In the Greek it was due to disobedience in opening Pandora’s box. Of the Babylonian account we have only one comment: Tiamat was not “the spirit of Chaos,” but the violent material substance in Involution out of which Sosiosh made the world. As such she is one with the troublemaking Eve.
By misinterpreting this scriptural myth we have missed the key to the very nature of Nature and our own estate. Because of it we believe all Nature cursed because of one man’s “sin.” So if men go to war, kill and enslave their fellow men, it is because of their subsequent fallen estate. Yet certain ant species invade other ant colonies, capture their workers and enslave them, and ants were here millions of years before man. Therefore man got his villainy from nature, not vice versa.
Were it otherwise Adam must have had amazing genes, that his sin be transmitted through millions of evolving generations. The absurdity of this lies in the fact that neither moral nor amoral qualities enter the genes; such qualities are strictly epigenetic. Only in our theory is this problem solved: Adam’s genes were not human genes; they were our “planetary genes.” Through them came all that is, including villainous Nature. It was this that came down, or rather up, to us, not Edenic “sin.”
Another name for this “sin” is disobedience, but since we’re dealing with Creation, not man, there must be some more cosmological meaning here that we have missed. We think there is.
Throughout Involution and part of Evolution the creative genetic directed all life. Now anything that refused this direction would be disobeying God’s command. And something did. When man developed epigenetic intelligence he began to think for himself, and act accordingly. This is that “free will” we’re told God gave man. But as he did not give primitive man the mind and morals to control it, he made mistakes and paid the price. Thus the disobedience was that of the epigenetic to the genetic’s will. And that disobedience is still with us. Today the priest, subbing for God, tells man the genetic should be used only for procreation, and the epigenetic is still disobeying. The consequence is symbolized in the next verse of dual meaning.
18. Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field.
Thorns and thistles are not punishment for sin, but consequence of physical existence. They have also another meaning: they represent the infinite number of ways the Creator has of torturing man. This is the only way it has of sensitizing and civilizing its savage creation. In speaking of this Plato likened the growth of the soul in man to that of the pearl in the oyster, the cause of both being irritation. We learn only by experience and painful experience at that. The scholastic name for this is resipiscent—”made wise by experience.” And it applies to the Creator as well as man. All Involution was devoted to it; those prephysical archetypes were but trial and error “mock-ups” for the real thing, evolutionary forms. And this may be going on in worlds without end. To some this may be shocking, so contrary to all Bible teaching, but no, the Bible asserts it. It tells us plainly that the Creator learned by experience, but you will never find it unless you know it. The Greeks also knew it. They said Prometheus created man, and the name implies this: Pro, before, and metheus, learn. But before what? Before he brought solar fire down from heaven to make a world, and man from its dust just like Jehovah.
19. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.
And how else would physical man live save by working? This God does not feed anyone, save as nature feeds him. If you think otherwise, sit down and wait for His ravens; devote your life to something great and this God will let you starve. This verse has no moral meaning whatever; the toil and sweat, the pain and sorrow are natural conditions, not punishment for sin. It’s industrous nature whose law is work or starve. The ants, the bees and the beavers are slaves because of it. It was this that Man was warned against. While in Eden he did not have to work for food; he lived on ambrosia, the food of the gods. This is “the bread that cometh down from heaven,” exclusively for gods, but the gods died as such, and became evolutionary beings requiring physical sustenance. They also became subject to physical death, which leads us to the next point.
Save at funerals, our preachers never take this verse for their text. They dare not, because it denies immortality. They could, however, if they understood it. This Adam is not a human being; he is the earth, and the earth is mundane dust, and to primordial dust it shall return. More definitely, he is genetic consciousness, and it is condemned to that dust called matter. This never enters the epigenetic’s “heaven.” The Bible tells us this too but again, you have to know it to see it.
20. And Adam called his wife’s name Eve; because she was the mother of all living.
“Of all living.” This includes plants and animals as well as humans. This ends her role as a woman. On the contrary, she is Mother Nature. As a symbol of matter, she is the Earth Mother—mother, mater, matter. Then there is mere, the sea. If then she sinned whose sin was it? The word Eve is but the latter part of the word Yahveh (heve), the Creative Principle. As with all the rest we have nothing new here. In the Hindu Book of Prophecies the first woman is called Heva, and the Babylonian name is similar. To the Tahitians it is Ivi. Thus, like Adam, Eve is not a personal name but a planetary symbol.
21. Unto Adam also and to his wife did the Lord God make coats of skins, and clothed them.
Together Adam and Eve are the naked earth, which must be covered with vegetation and an aura. And here we will quote from a book many thousands of years older than the Bible, the Book of Dzyan, stanza I. “Cease thy complaints. Thy seven skins are yet on thee. Thou art not ready.” This is the earth entity complaining about its involutionary garments, aura. “After great throes she cast off her old three (mental, astral, and etheric) and put on her seven skins (evolutionary) and stood in her first one (physical matter).” These are Adam’s and Eve’s “coats of skin,” seven theoretically, but at that time physical only. Later we will come to a misunderstanding of them as absurd as that of the rib.
22. And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, iest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:
23. Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the Garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.
“As one of us.” Modern Jews and Christians should ponder well this reference to other gods. Here we repeat, by learning of them, the mental darkness of monotheism might be dispelled, The earth now dressed in its evolutionary garments has become as it was in Involution. But it does not know moral good and evil. The good and evil of scriptural mythology is that between spirit and matter. This the Life Principle now has learned; it has eaten of “the tree of knowledge,” matter, the source of knowledge. The meaning of the fear that Adam would also lay hold of “the tree of life and live forever” is the very opposite of our common belief. The “tree of life” is the Life Principle asleep in matter, and the fear is that its Adam would remain there and refuse to go out and eat of “the tree of Knowledge,” biologic experience. This Life Principle is the genetic, neither moral nor self-conscious, and had Adam eaten of this (remained like it) epigenetic man would never have been. It was because of this, not sin, the Lord God drove Adam from the Garden. The plan was that Adam should go out, and once out the Law God saw to it that he did not return. There is a lesson here for all of us, but particularly for our religionists, our fundamentalists and reactionaries, those timid souls who cling to their God and refuse to go out. Their God has given them the privilege of eating of “the tree of knowledge,” but not having eaten enough of it they are afraid. They should follow Abraham’s example: he went out “not knowing whither he went.”
24. So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.
The cherubim are the forces that determine life’s exit and entrance from plane to plane, identical with the seven angels who open the seven seals in Revelation. The scriptures make them divine beings; that the other races considered them but natural forces is obvious from the source of the word cherub, which is kirub, and means an ox, symbol of energy and power. On the third plane, as we made it, this was Taurus, the bull, but ox will do on the seventh. Here, we said, the creative force was slowed down, arrested. Be this as it may, ox and bull are a far cry from the saintly heads between two wings with which Christian artists adorned their Madonnas and Conceptions; indeed, it well illustrates our Christian ignorance of Causation and Creation.
Now perhaps we can see that this account “revealed” only to the Jews is but one of innumerable Creation myths and follows the usual formula. Its characters are identical with those of the Greek. The Lord God is Jupiter, Satan is Prometheus, Adam is Epimetheus, and Eve is Pandora. That the woman caused all the trouble is also part of the formula. In Egypt, Noom, the heavenly artist, creates a beautiful girl and sends her to Batoo, the first man, after which all peace for Batoo is ended. According to the Chinese Book of Chi-King, “All things were at first subject to man, but a woman threw us into slavery, by an ambitious desire for things. Our misery came not from heaven but from woman. She lost the human race. Ah, poor Poo See! Thou kindled the fire that consumes us, and which is every day increasing.” And so again poor Look See gets blamed, and all the while she is only matter and material desire, which did come from heaven, desidero, of the stars.
Every race of antiquity had this story and in practically all of them some kind of fruit served as the temptation symbol. In Greece it was an apple; in India it was figs. The Hindus tell us that the God Siva sent woman a fig tree and prompted her to tempt her husband with the fruit. This she did, assuring the man it would confer on him immortality. The man ate and Siva cursed him. Such is the honor of the gods. According to the Greeks, Zeus gave the Hesperides a tree that bore golden apples. As they could not resist the temptation to eat of them, Zeus placed Ladon, a serpent, in the garden to watch the trees. Finally, Hercules, a personification of evolutionary life, slew the serpent, matter, and gave the apples freely to the Hesperides. Thus the Greeks did not put the blame on the serpent; they merely made Evolution reverse the law of Involution.
Such is the Bible’s “revealed truth”—other races’ mythology, the basis of which is cosmology. Its literal interpretation that this fruit is sex has branded women with the scarlet letter for nearly three thousand years. Here again, a little knowledge erases that stigma also. It should also erase our belief in this entire book. Its account of the world’s creation and man’s estate is false. Man is not evil because he “fell” from perfection but because he has not risen to it. But never having been taught the nature and purpose of Evolution he does not know where he is or why he is what he is. Knowledge of Evolution would enlighten him: he is what he is because he is where he is—only the middle point of the first human plane, with billions of years to follow. Since it was the Creator that determined this process, man is not to blame for where he is but only for what he does. But since what he does is due to where he is, he is not, basically, to blame at all. He is, however, responsible for his own human world, another fact he has never been taught, and so acts regardless of it.
He has never been taught the “law of cycles” either, and so he does not know he is at the nadir of a materialistic cycle or how to counteract its influence. Here too he acts regardless of the whole—blindly carrying his material achievements to the danger point. With no vision of the future, he proudly calls this “civilization.” It is not civilization at all but only mechanized barbarism, his purely material wonders but ant and spider technology carried to the human plane. If this be civilization we’ll have to coin another name for the real thing.
Would you call a humanity civilized that has a hundred wars in as many years? that spends a trillion dollars on murder weapons while its schools and hospitals close for want of funds? that lets half its people starve while the other half sickens from overeating? Would you call a humanity enlightened that poisons the air, the water and the soil? that doesn’t know mythology from history, or even what it exists for? This is the animal estate.
Today it may be doing something even worse than poisoning its physical environment. It may be destroying the biologic aspect of the ether. Science calls this element “the nervous ether,” the Hindus call it prana, or the source of it. This is the vitalizing element of the body cells and should not be changed or tampered with, yet throughout this century we have been torturing it with our radio and television waves. This surely changes its nature and biologic efficiency. This changed and corrupted element in our cells may be the cause of our present nervousness and, who knows, our insane century. It’s odd they are coincidental. In our sudden and unnatural release of atomic energy we may also be bringing upon ourselves diseases with which we cannot cope. The first manifestation of life from matter is the viruses, predatory and deadly. Released, en masse, they could destroy us. And who considers the global effect of removing billions of tons (oil and coal) from the earth’s content? This lightens its weight and lessens the sun’s hold upon it. Thus we may be bringing upon ourselves a premature ice age.