"Myth of Creation", chapter excerpt from "Return to Meaning"

Author's Note:

Chapter 8 of

Love, Wisdom and God: T

he Longing of the Western Soul

which is excerpted below, describes

the fall of the soul from a

state of Divinity to our

familiar state of Materiality, as it is described allegorically in

Greek Mythology and the

Book

of Genesis.

The soul falls through Seven Levels (also called Triads in the book), each of which is named with a note of the

musical

scale. Later chapters describe the soul's

return

, up the scale, back to communion with Divinity. When

read

symbolically, the Bible is a

Rite of Initiation.

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CHAPTER EIGHT

The Myth of Creation

Plato described the creation and unfolding of the world in terms of Triads. We can now deepen and

complete

this description by weaving into Plato’s account the eloquent symbols and stories of

mythology, scripture, and

sacred music.

High ‘Do’ – The “One”

Prior to the ‘Beginning’, there was only the One, just as Parmenides had described it: perfect, timeless,

complete, and uniform throughout. The One correlates with the first musical note, high ‘Do’.

‘Si’ – The ‘Father’ of Creation

In the first act of creation, the One reflects upon itself, and in so doing the property of Duality (the first

inkling of

Multiplicity) enters into existence.

This level, the very beginning of creation, can be thought of as the androgynous ‘Father’ of creation. The

Father reflects upon Itself, so that deep within the divine contemplation, something ‘looks’ and

something is

‘looked upon’. This act of reflection initiates the primary duality between the divine idea of

‘mind’ (that which

looks) and the divine idea of ‘matter’ (that which is looked upon). In the first lines of

Genesis, these symbolic

concepts of ‘mind’ and ‘matter’ are called ‘heaven’ and ‘earth’.

The active creative force in this duality, the infinite thoughts in ‘the mind of God’ that will now begin to

unfold, is

the Father’s Male aspect. The receptive means toward manifestation, the potential ‘materiality’

through which

these thoughts will be brought into birth, is the Father’s Female aspect. There is also a

third force hovering

within the Father, the power which binds all together: the “Will” or “Spirit” of God, the

Logos

The Triad correlates with the musical note ‘Si’.

The consequence of this internal reflective act between ‘male’ and ‘female’ is the birth of ‘something

new’,

within which the possibility of Multiplicity exists. All of ‘the All’ is still blended into Oneness, but it is

now

transformed into a new state of swirling, amorphous multiplicity, which the Greeks called ‘Chaos’ or

Darkness,

and Genesis called ‘the Void’ or Night. Everything that will manifest, everything that will

eventually come forth

from the ‘One’ and be differentiated into the ‘Many’, already exists

in potentia

within this newly ‘begotten’

Chaos.

‘Si’ is the incomprehensible level of the entire infinite universe, with all the unfathomably endless swirling

galaxies.

In the words of Genesis:

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and

darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

(Gen. 1.1-

‘La’ – The ‘Son’ of Creation

In the next Triad, the mind of the Father sends forth the power of Reason (which Genesis calls ‘Light’

and

Plato calls the Demiurge) to make Order out of Chaos. The Greeks represented Chaos as the first

goddess,

Gaia: that is, Gaia is the spiritual essence of the world, the transcendent mother-principle of

the Nature that

will come. Her husband (and, in some tales, her son as well as her husband), was the

first god, Uranus, who

symbolizes and embodies the Light of Reason that will turn the Darkness of

Chaos into Order, through a

spiritual ‘fertilization’ that brings forth a second generation of ‘gods’, the

Titans – including Cronus (heaven),

Oceanus (water), Rhea (earth), and many others, who will represent

an organized diverse Multiplicity.

Uranus is the Archetypal Man, corresponding to what the Kabbalists call ‘the First Adam’, (the Idea or

Principle of Man), and Gaia is the Archetypal Woman, corresponding to ‘the First Eve’ (the Idea or

Principle of

Woman.)

This second Triad, which is produced from the first Triad, can be thought of as the Father’s ‘child’ – in

Christian symbolism, the ‘Son’. This is the level of the stars, the level represented by our galaxy, the

Milky

Way. In a manner of speaking, it still is the first Triad, ‘Si’, but it is a condensed image of ‘Si’. Its

corresponding note is ‘La’.

Genesis describes the ordering of Chaos this way:

And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God

divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night.

And

the evening and the morning were the first day. And God said, Let there be a firmament in the

midst of the

waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters

which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven.

And the evening and the morning were the second day.(Gen. 1.3-8)

The Upper Threshold

The first Triad (the ‘Father’) is on the Pythagorean level of the number One, and the second Triad (the

‘Son’) is

then on the Pythagorean level of the number Two. Both of these levels, which are represented

by the non-

corporeal geometric ‘point’ and ‘line’, are unmanifest, perfect, changeless, and Divine. These

are the levels of

Eternal Being.

The Ordered World which results from Uranus’ fertilization of Gaia, however, is this world of Becoming.

But

prior to this tangible, manifest world, which is represented by the Pythagorean number Four, there

has to be

that all-important ‘Threshold’ between worlds, symbolized by the Pythagorean number Three

(and Plato’s two-

dimensional Triangles that underlie matter and ‘blink’ in and out of material existence).

This Threshold, or gap between worlds, must be ‘crossed’ by a ‘Messenger’. There are several

Messengers

in Greek mythology – though they are really just different aspects of one and the same

divine power. We have

already met two of them:

Eros

, the power of Love, the passionate desire for all

that is truly good and

meaningful, that binds us to each other and leads up upwards; and

Logos

, the

binding and coalescing power

between Divine Intelligence and Life, the revelation of Truth that

descends into Life and guides our spiritual

vision. (Later, we will meet a third messenger,

Thanatos,

‘Death’).

It is the

Logos

aspect of this power that brings the Creation down to its next level: material

manifestation. It is

the

Logos

– which

the ‘Spirit of God’ that was hovering over the ‘waters’ and

contemplating the Creation,

which

the Holy Spirit, and therefore is in complete at-One-ness with the

first two Triads – that traverses the

Threshold between worlds and brings the divine into manifestation. It

is in this sense that the

Logos

– the

divine Will, the ‘Word’, which according to John’s gospel was with

God and is God – creates the world.

In the mythology of the Greeks, the

Logos

is represented by the god Hermes, the “Messenger of the

gods”.

Hermes is the brother of Aphrodite (the Celestial Aphrodite, that is), and often does her bidding:

just as his

analogue,

Eros

, accompanies the Earthly Aphrodite and often does her bidding. Hermes is

the medium of

communication between higher and lower worlds, ‘Being’ and ‘Becoming’. In Christianity,

he will later appear

as the Angel of the Annunciation, the bearer of God’s seed to Mary. In Islam, he will

appear in the person of

the Prophet Muhammad, God’s Messenger.

‘Sol’ – The ‘Mother’ of Creation

And so we arrive at the next Triad, the foundation of our manifest material world, the level of the

Pythagorean

number Four. This is the Triad of the Mother, that is, ‘Matter’ (but still a high spiritual sort of

Matter). In

Christianity, this is the level of Mary. In Judaism, it is the

Shechinah

– the entire material

creation described

as the ‘Bride of God’, or the ‘Presence’ of God. In Plato’s terms, we have crossed

the Threshold from ‘Being’

to ‘Becoming’.

The musical note that correlates with this Triad of the Mother is ‘Sol’, the Sun, the ever-sustaining source

Life. ‘Sol’ is the source of infinite abundance.

The Greeks symbolized the continuing process of unified Divinity transforming itself into diverse entities

and

qualities – the ‘One’ becoming ‘Many’ – as the appearance of the Titans: the elder gods who

descended (by

the power of the Logos) from the stars to the level of our sun. These were the children of

Uranus and Gaia.

They included Cronus and his wife Rhea, the ruling Titan deities, who represented

heaven (sky) and earth

(land) on the one hand, and also embodied the necessary qualities of Time and

Space respectively. There

were a great many others as well, such as Oceanus, Tethys, Hyperion, and

Themis. And many of these had

children and grandchildren, among whom were Prometheus and Atlas.

According to legend, Uranus hated his children and forced them to be held captive within Gaia. They

conspired against him with their mother’s aid, but when the time came to rebel they all recoiled in fear,

with the

exception of the brave Cronus. When Uranus approached his wife, Cronus fell upon him and

castrated him

with a sickle.

The story represents the separation of the Eternal world from the Material world. Uranus (divine ‘Being’)

has

by now impregnated matter (‘Becoming’) with all the seeds and forms and qualities that it requires.

He had

kept his progeny hidden and latent, but now it is time for them to live. His castration means that

he will no

longer fertilize Gaia, and thus a door (the Threshold) between ‘the Above’ and ‘the Below’ has

been closed by

the advent of Time (Cronus), and the creative process in this world thenceforward must

continue to unfold

automatically, abundantly, and mechanically on its own.

Cronus and Rhea soon gave birth to the next generation of gods, the ‘Planetary’ gods – symbols of the

highest ideals, who will take over from the Titans in the next Triad.

Like the story of the many Greek Titans, Genesis also describes the creation of a vast multitude of

entities

and qualities that appeared in the world as the One became Many in ‘Sol’:

And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit

after his

kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. …

And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that

may fly

above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth

abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind…

And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and

beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so….

[A]nd God saw that it was good. (Gen. 1.11-25)

‘Fa’ – ‘Heaven’

From the universal Mother comes the third generation of gods, the Planetary gods, the children of

Cronus and

Rhea – Zeus, Hera, Demeter, Hades, Poseidon, Hestia, Apollo, and all their many children.

The corresponding note of their Triad is ‘Fa’.

According to the mythological legend, Cronus swallowed his children immediately after Rhea gave birth,

for

‘Pride’ had come into existence in the realm of Becoming, and Cronus was determined that no child

should

ever usurp his power: he had heard a prophecy from his parents, Uranus and Gaia, that a son

would overthrow

him just as he had overthrown his father. Therefore, he stayed awake waiting for the

birth of his children, and

swallowed them one by one. His wife, Rhea, bitterly angry, sought help from her

parents (the same Uranus and

Gaia), hoping to save her son Zeus who was about to be born. They

came up with a plan to protect the child

and get revenge on Cronus at the same time. They sent Rhea

into hiding, and when the baby was born she

gave him to Gaia, who hid him deep within herself, kept

him alive, and raised him. In the meantime, Rhea

wrapped a great stone in baby-clothes and brought it

to Cronus, who believed it was his new son and

swallowed it.

Zeus grew great and strong, and when he reached adulthood he and Gaia together forced Cronus to

disgorge

the great stone as well as all the brothers and sisters.

There followed a long and terrible War of Heaven in which Zeus and his generation of gods finally

defeated

Cronus and his generation of Titans. Zeus punished his defeated enemies terribly. One of

them, Atlas, was

forced to bear the entire weight of the world on his back forever. The rest were chained

and imprisoned deep

within the earth.

Before giving birth to the Titans, Uranus and Gaia had given birth to various bizarre monsters including

three

many-headed Hydras (sea serpents) and three Cyclops. Cronus had later imprisoned the

detestable Hydras.

Part of the reason that Zeus was able to finally win his war against the Titans was

that he freed the Hydras and

they fought for Zeus with their terrible weapons of thunder and lightning.

Two of the Titans, Prometheus and his

brother Epimetheus, sons of the Titan Iapetus (whose name may

relate him to Japhet, one of Noah’s sons in

Genesis

), also sided with Zeus. After the war, the Hydras, in

gratitude, gave Zeus the thunder and lightning

which became his trademark.

These gods were the children of Time (Cronus) and Space (Rhea). Their leader, Zeus, was called the

‘father

of the gods’, and represented both Heaven (within the cosmos) and the human Spirit (within the

individual).

One meaning of the above story is that Time (Cronus) encompasses (that is, ‘swallows’),

and ultimately

destroys, everything that comes into being on the manifest physical plane, but Time

cannot destroy the Spirit

(Zeus). Zeus was hidden deep within the Earth (Gaia), just as the Spirit is

hidden deep within the body. But it

is eternal and strong, and if it comes of age and enters the contest

with Time, the myth assures us, it can be

victorious – though it will require powerful help from the

‘thunder and lightning’ of inner ‘monsters’.

One of Zeus’ sisters was Demeter. Demeter was the goddess of the earth, grain, bread, and the

harvest. She

nurtured and brought forth the seed, and divided the wheat from the chaff. On the level of

physical life,

Demeter was worshipped as the protectress of agriculture, the embodiment of that force of

nature that

nourishes the body with bread. On the spiritual level, she was the goddess who nourished the

soul with

spiritual bread. The story of Demeter, and her daughter Persephone, is the foundation story of

the Eleusinian

Mysteries. We will take up this story soon.

Since bread and wine are traditionally bound together as symbols of life-giving nourishment from the

gods, it

is not surprising that Demeter was often worshipped together with Bacchus, the god of wine.

Bacchus was the

child of Zeus and a human mother. He is best known to us as the personification of

wine and ecstasy. The

worship of Bacchus was characterized by wild dancing, music, and madcap

abandon.

Like other gods of vegetation Bacchus was believed to have died a violent death, but to have been

brought

back to life again. Zeus’ wife, the goddess Hera, hated this child born of a human mother and

plotted his

destruction. Knowing how she felt, Zeus entrusted young Bacchus to the care of guards that

he thought he

could trust. Hera, however, bribed the guards, and by amusing the boy with a mirror –

which he stared into,

becoming fascinated with his image – she lured him underground into a trap. The

Titans, whom Zeus had

imprisoned in the earth, were now co-conspirators with Hera, and they

ambushed the boy, tore him to pieces,

boiled his flesh, and ate it. But Athena, the goddess of Wisdom,

who had shared in Hera’s treachery, now

repented and saved the boy’s Heart. She brought it to Zeus,

and confessed the whole sordid story. Enraged,

Zeus blasted the Titans with a mighty thunderbolt,

reducing them to ashes. He was then able to nurture the

heart of Bacchus, and from the heart the boy

was reborn.

Out of the ashes of the Titans, Zeus had Prometheus craft the Human Race. A composite creature, our

lower

nature is made of the remains of the Titans themselves (stardust), who had become wicked and

distorted

because of their long and bitter involvement in the depths of the material world to which Zeus

had banished

them. Our higher nature, however, comes from the burned remains of the god Bacchus,

pieces of whom the

Titans had devoured. It is for this reason that the Mysteries taught that suicide is a

horrific crime, since every

human being contains a portion of the god, and thus our body is his property

and his temple and must always

be treated reverentially.

Zeus, a god at the level of Heaven (‘Fa’), had mated with a woman of Earth (‘Mi’), and from this union

came

the god of ecstasy, Bacchus, who represents the higher nature of humankind, i.e., the Soul. Our

Soul is thus

akin to the Number Three: that is, like Eros, the Soul is of both worlds and traverses the gap,

the lower

Threshold, between Heaven and Earth.

But Bacchus became spellbound by his image in the mirror, hypnotized by the illusory reflection of

reality, and

thus he was ensnared by the Titans who cut him up into fragments and scattered the pieces

amongst

themselves (which means, symbolically, that they scattered them everywhere). In just this way

the human soul

is hypnotized and ensnared by the fascinating world of matter, and is fragmented and

devoured by life, toward

which it disperses its scattered attention. But all is not lost! When Zeus saw that

the Titans, in a degraded

caricature of their original generative purpose, were now scattering pieces of

the divine idea throughout the

lower world, he immediately destroyed them so that the divine idea would

not be completely lost. From the

ashes (dust) he created human beings, whose purpose is to preserve

and nurture the Soul, their little piece of

Bacchus, and eventually release it from the lower world of Matter

back into the Heavens.

This intermediate creation, the human soul, is correspondingly represented in

Genesis

by the ‘Heavenly

Adam’, whom God creates on Day Six. In

Genesis

, the creation of Adam is described twice. The first

account

refers to the creation of Adam’s soul. The human soul is created “in God’s image”. But God is

not made of

dust, and like each of the higher Triads we have been discussing, God is always a plural

being composed of

both male and female. So like God, the soul is composed of the intangible stuff of

Mind, it is androgynous, and

it is the ruler of its ‘kingdom’:

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over

the fish

of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over

every creeping

thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the

image of God created he

him; male and female created he them. (Gen. 1.26-27)

In the next Triad, in the second account of

Genesis

, God will create Adam’s body out of clay – the

‘Earthly

Adam’. God will then breathe the soul into the body, creating a plural composite creature: soul

and body, male

and female.

‘Mi’ – ‘Earth’

From the planetary gods comes the next triad, the triad of the Earth, the home of humanity. The

corresponding

note on the scale is ‘Mi’.

Prometheus and his brother Epimetheus had sided with Zeus in the war of the planetary gods against

the

Titans, and were spared by Zeus (with several other loyal Titans) when the rest of the Titans were

defeated

and banished to the netherworld. The name ‘Prometheus’ means ‘forethought’ and

‘Epimetheus’ means

‘afterthought’: thus, the myths portray Prometheus as very intelligent (able to think

things through clearly and

carefully, and plan for the future), and Epimetheus as a bit slow (only able to

react, after events have already

occurred). The two brothers are really symbolic of two parts of one soul:

Prometheus symbolizes our higher

spiritual consciousness, and Epimetheus symbolizes our lower

material consciousness.

From the ashes of the Titans and the remains of Bacchus, Zeus asked Prometheus to craft the human

race.

Zeus also commissioned the brothers to endow all of the animals and humans with appropriate

characteristics.

Epimetheus persuaded Prometheus to let him make the distribution, and afterwards Prometheus could

inspect his work. After considering how best to equip the animals for survival, Epimetheus gave some of

them

great speed, some great strength, some great cunning. Some could dig, and live within the earth.

Others

could fly, and live in the trees. Some received hooves, others received talons. Some had fur,

others had

scales. To those species most at risk, he gave great fertility, and to those who were safest

he gave less.

When he was done with all his labors he called Prometheus to inspect his work. Prometheus was in

anguish,

for his careless brother had used everything up and there was nothing left to give to humans.

Prometheus loved the humans, for two obvious reasons: one, because they were created from the

remains of

his family, the Titans (and were therefore made of stardust, just as he was); and two,

because they were his

creation, his ‘children’. Determined that they should receive something special,

and worried that without

something powerful at their disposal they would be at the mercy of the wild

beasts, Prometheus quietly

entered Olympus, stole some Fire from the altar of Zeus, and brought it

down to earth where he presented it to

his human creatures.

Soon thereafter, Zeus was gazing down at the earth and noticed the burning hearths and forges. He saw

the

humans cooking and warming themselves, making tools, ruling over the other animals, and

becoming

powerful (and potentially dangerous). All of this was because Prometheus had given them

Fire. Zeus did not

like this at all.

Prometheus was soon to make matters even worse. The humans were smart enough and reverent

enough to

make sacrifices to the gods, and the gods greatly enjoyed this. But Prometheus wanted his

humans to receive

the best part of the animal offerings. So he decided to trick Zeus into accepting the

less valuable part of each

sacrifice. He wrapped some empty bones in a thick covering of fat (which

Zeus liked), and then wrapped the

good meat in unappealing intestines. Zeus chose the first package,

recognized immediately that he had been

tricked, but was stuck with his choice thereafter.

And there was yet a third reason why Zeus was enraged at his old friend. Zeus had learned of a certain

prophecy that one day a human child whom he himself had fathered would overthrow him, and

Prometheus

apparently knew the name of the future child’s mother. To protect himself and prevent this

from recurring yet a

third time (as his father and grandfather had been overthrown), Zeus asked

Prometheus for the woman’s

name. Prometheus refused to betray it.

This was more than Zeus could bear. He ordered Prometheus to be chained to a mountain, where a

great

eagle would rip his flesh and feed on his liver each day. The wound would heal overnight, and the

torment

would begin again each morning. (In the distant future, Hercules would kill the eagle and free

Prometheus.)

Just before he was caught and taken away, Prometheus gave his brother, Epimetheus, a warning: Do

not

accept any gifts from Zeus, for they may be dangerous to the humans.

His foresight proved correct, for Zeus was determined to punish the humans for accepting fire, just as he

had

punished Prometheus for giving it to them. First, he commissioned Hephaestus, the god of

blacksmithing, to

create a new human creature, a woman – prior to this, women had not been on earth.

This new creature was

to be as magnificent and desirable as an Olympian goddess. Zeus then

assembled all the gods and

goddesses and had them each bestow a gift upon the woman, whose name

was Pandora (which means “all

gifts”): Aphrodite gave her beauty, Apollo gave her musical ability,

Athena gave her cleverness, Zeus gave her

curiosity. When all was complete, Zeus told Hermes to bring

Pandora to earth and present her to Epimetheus

to become his wife.

Epimetheus, dazzled by Pandora and heedless of his elder brother’s warning, gratefully accepted the

gift. At

first, their life together was blissful, but a terrible fate soon intervened. Inside the house of

Epimetheus there

was a closed vase, or, box. Epimetheus was aware that it was forbidden to open it.

But Pandora, full of the

curiosity that Zeus had deliberately bestowed upon her, opened it despite his

warnings.

Out flew all manner of ills and pestilences, sorrows and miseries, monsters and demons and evil spirits.

Pandora quickly shut the box, but too late: only one thing remained, and that was Hope.

The first mortals had lived on earth in complete contentment, knowing neither disease nor age nor pain

nor

unhappiness nor death. All that was over now.

The fire which Prometheus stole from Zeus was the spark of Divine Intelligence. Zeus represents the

Spirit,

and Prometheus has now endowed humanity with Spirit, ‘fire’, the light of consciousness. In so

doing, he has

given humanity a potential defense against ‘wild beasts’ (the internal ones – ugly, violent,

negative passions).

But this has evidently made us a bit too much ‘like’ the gods, so an angry Zeus

responds by punishing

everyone involved.

But what is ‘punishment’? The symbolism of ‘punishment’ simply refers to the necessary balancing of

opposing forces. In the east, it is said that the world is governed by karma, a law of perfect justice that

requires the universe to reply to every action with the appropriate response. There is no negative value

judgment here, it is simply a matter of logic that every act brings about the only possible result. When we

speak scientifically of every action having an equal and opposite reaction, this is the same universal law.

Thus, when humanity received the fire of the Spirit, a necessary reaction was obligatory, and this sort of

logical and unavoidable consequence is often symbolized in mythical and scriptural language as

‘punishment’.

Thus, as ‘punishment’, Prometheus (the human Soul) now becomes bound and fettered to the earth,

where

Time decrees that there is pain, destruction and death, as well as healing, regeneration and

rebirth.

Eventually, after enduring much suffering, and refusing to betray what he loves, he is released by

the grace of

Hercules and ultimately is accepted back into Olympus. With stunning economy, this story

recounts the entire

path of spiritual evolution.

Our Mind and our Body do not communicate or understand each other very well. (The story indicates this

twice: first, when Epimetheus squanders all that is valuable, failing to reserve appropriate gifts for the

humans

his brother loves; and again when he fails to heed his brother’s warning about the dangerous

gifts of Zeus.)

The arrival of Pandora represents the intermediate emotional nature which must conciliate

between them.

Once the Spirit, the heavenly fire, had been brought down into earthly life, it was

necessary (and only now

possible) for the emotions to arise and to bind all together.

The emotions bring pain into the life of humanity, but they are not evil, they are not literally a

‘punishment’. Prior

to the arrival of Pandora and the opening of the box, the sexless mortals had lived in

a state of innocence and

comfort – that is, a state of useless, irresponsible, passivity. If anything could

be described as evil, this was

surely it. But as soon as the Intellect was ignited by the Spirit and aroused

from its passive slumber, it was

time for the emotions to arise, for there to be obstacles and suffering

and temptation, and therefore the

possibility of choice – that is, Free Will. Knowing right from wrong,

able to distinguish the ‘higher’ from the

‘lower’, and involved in the struggle between good and evil,

mortal beings became moral beings with the

possibility of raising divine potential qualities into actuality.

The ‘monsters’ that were freed by Pandora recall the ‘monsters’ that were freed by Zeus. Without the

help of

the Hydras, Zeus could not have won his battles and the planetary gods would have been

unsuccessful and

would have disappeared from the Creation. It was precisely from these monsters that

Zeus acquired his great

force and power, epitomized as thunder and lightning. Without the help of the

monsters released by Pandora,

without the inner force and power that can only be derived from a proper

relationship with our dark side, the

human spirit could not win its battles, could not achieve its destiny,

and we would likewise disappear from the

Creation. ‘Irresponsible passivity’ is powerless and has no

useful place in the universe, particularly in a

humanity whose purpose is to nurture and evolve the Soul

(that little bit of Bacchus) and then release it back

up into the heavens. This task requires an active

struggle for spiritual self-perfection, and can only be

achieved through freely-chosen conscious efforts to

overcome great difficulties. Without these efforts,

however, the soul simply falls by inertia into Hades.

Genesis

uses similar images and symbolism in the story of Adam and Eve.

In the second account of the creation of ‘Adam’ (a Hebrew word that means ‘creature of the earth’, and

gender-neutral), God made the ‘Earthly’ Adam out of clay. God then breathed the Soul (that is, the

previously

made ‘Heavenly’ Adam) into this earth creature, creating a plural composite human being

which He placed in

the Garden of Eden.

Adam was given only one restriction: “You may eat freely of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of

knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.”

Adam lived a quiet, comfortable, and all but purposeless life in the Garden. He (really, ‘It’) tended the

flora a bit

and distributed names to all the animals, much as Epimetheus had distributed their

characteristics (‘naming’

being a symbol of differentiating qualities).

But God saw that Adam was alone with no emotional life, no struggle, no tension, no

Eros

. So God

decided to

put Adam to sleep and then separate it into Male and Female, not unlike the legend related

by Aristophanes

at the Banquet, in which Zeus split the dual human creatures in half in order to prevent

them from challenging

the gods. Here, God separates the creature in order to provide a ‘help-meet’: that

is, to provide an emotionally

meaningful life for humanity. (And there is no rationale for assuming that the

word ‘helper’ indicates some sort

of lesser being who is subservient to the more important one. There is

nothing negative or second-rate about

‘help’, or ‘service’, which throughout the scriptures is a high and

sacred concept. The Bible is very clear that

help “cometh from the Lord”).

The Hebrew word

tsela

appears many times in the Bible. With one exception it is translated as ‘side’,

typically

referring to the side walls of important structures. On one occasion only, here in Genesis,

tsela

is translated as

‘rib’.

This unique translation has had devastating repercussions.

But if we give the word the same meaning that it has on every other occasion, the story makes more

sense.

God took one side of the composite creature and out of this he made Eve, the woman, and the

other side

became Adam, the man – where neither had existed before. Once again, the ‘one’ has

become ‘two’, and

there is nothing in this description to indicate anything but perfect equality.

The isolation of one human creature can now be replaced with a new form of wholeness that is

attainable

through erotic longing and love between two individuals.

Even if we retain the word ‘rib’, we see that this rib did not come from a previously created male, thereby

suggesting some sort of primacy for the ‘man’. On the contrary, the rib came from a previously created

earth-

creature of no gender.

One possible reason for the early translator’s choice of the word ‘rib’ in this one place is that by taking a

rib

God revealed the Heart of the creature, analogous to opening Pandora’s box, thus bringing emotions

(which

are universally symbolized by the Feminine) into the realm of human life. Again, this is where pain

and difficulty

enter the world, but also joy and meaning, and only then do moral beings have the ability to

make choices and

mistakes, and thus to grow and evolve.

A simultaneous symbolic meaning of the rib is that bones signify our deepest, densest, materiality. In

‘Mi’, the

soul’s attention is beginning to turn away from heaven and toward the realm of earth. So Adam

says of Eve,

“This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh”. In other words, we turn away from

God, we fall asleep,

and we become ‘wedded’ the world of flesh and bone and matter.

Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall

cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh.(Gen.2.24)

‘Re’ – The Fall

In Greek Mythology, the kingdom of the dead is often called by the name of its ruler, Zeus’ brother (and

ally),

Hades. The musical note of Hades’ Triad is ‘Re’.

After death, souls descend down a cavernous path where the River Acheron, the river of woe, flows into

the

River Styx, the river of lamentation.

The souls are ferried across the Styx by a somber boatman, Charon. But Charon must be paid, and he

will

only ferry souls whose bodies have been properly buried: the others must wander aimlessly on the

shore for a

hundred years.

When the souls reach the opposite shore there is a great gate, guarded by a three-headed dog,

Cerberus,

who permits all to enter but none to leave. Within the gate, the souls are judged. The blessed

are sent to

reside blissfully in the Elysian Fields. The wicked are sent for punishment to Tartarus, a

shadowy place full of

ghosts and shades, like a nightmarish dream.

But Tartarus is not the afterworld. Like Plato’s ‘cave’, Tartarus is a symbol of this world, the level of life

called Eikasia, where we accept things uncritically at face value, and react passively and

automatically to the

stream of changing images that the world presents to us. Tartarus is at the bottom of

the scale of

consciousness that exists within the soul, and it is where we spend most of our lives. Plato’s

Pistis, the level of

consciousness in which we experience actual material objects, and our minds form

opinions and beliefs that

are based upon experience in the tangible, sensible world, is the Triad above

– the Triad of Earth. The

Garden of Eden is there, and Adam and Eve were originally placed there. But

we have left that realm and

fallen into a dream life here in Hades.

The River Styx separates that higher consciousness from this lower one, and Charon (a symbol of

‘Death’ or

Thanatos

) is the ‘Messenger’ who crosses the gap.

Charon represents the nethermost aspect of God’s Will (i.e., the Spiritual/Emotional/Sexual energy that

permeates the Creation, the force which acts in the Creation through the

Logos, Eros

, and

Thanatos

–

the

threefold ‘messenger’ of God who enacts His Will). He hovers here over the waters in this final Triad

(as

Charon), just as he hovers “upon the face of the waters” (as the

Logos

, the Holy Spirit) in the first

Triad.

Charon will not transport a soul to Hades until the body is buried: that is, until any remaining desire for

actual

physical reality (or anything higher) has been completely abandoned, and only the wish for

superficiality and

illusion remains. Giving up these residual desires is his ‘payment’. Once the payment

is made our request is

granted. Both Virgil and Dante will later describe souls on this shore as frantically

pushing and shoving,

desperate and eager to get onto the boat. This depicts the great horror of our

existence: our overwhelming

desire to be spiritually asleep and dead.

Over time, the Greeks believed, these shades of the once-living (that is, you and I) fade away into

nothingness, vanishing into the abyss, the end of creation, low ‘Do’. Here again is the Absolute: the

Beginning

and End of all things.

Low ‘Do’ is the ‘afterlife’.

In Eden, the next scene begins and ends in ‘nakedness’, which is a symbol of the ignorance of Truth that

occurs when consciousness contracts, we leave our real home, and the soul descends unprotected into

matter. At first, Adam and Eve are unaware of their state of ignorance. In the end, when their ‘eyes have

been

opened’, they are aware and ashamed of their ignorance, recognizing the need for evolution.

And they were both naked, the man and his wife,

and were not ashamed.

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?

And the woman said unto the serpent,

We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:

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.

And the serpent said to the woman,

Ye shall not surely die:

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.

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.

And the eyes of them both were opened,

and they knew that they were naked.(Gen.2.25-3.7)

Notice that Adam’s behavior in this story is completely passive. Throughout the scene, he is “with her”

(that is,

with Eve) but silent. The Serpent and Eve have their discussion, she decides to eat the fruit, she

gives some

to Adam, and he eats it too. The story does not say that Eve tempted him, and nothing in the

narration or in his

silence suggests that she did. There is no indication that he is reluctant to eat the fruit,

that he vacillates or

frets about what he is doing, that his better judgment is overwhelmed by treachery,

or even that he thinks about

it at all. He says nothing and takes no initiative. It is merely a passive act of

acquiescence.

We have seen that Socrates described the human soul as composed of three parts, and he

demonstrated

that these parts are most often in a state of chaos and disorder. To perfect one’s soul

means that each of

these parts needs to perform its own proper function in a well-ordered harmony with

the others. In the story of

the Garden of Eden, which is a parable of our inner life and the need to evolve

and perfect the soul, Adam

represents the human mind, Eve represents the heart and the emotions, and

the Serpent represents the

appetites and the material body. In their proper harmonious alignment, the

Mind is the Active principle which

governs the soul. The Body is the Passive principle which supports

and is governed by the Mind. The Heart is

the Reconciling principle that guides, integrates, and unifies

the complete internal triad. But what happened in

the Garden of Eden is that this ‘order’ became

inverted. The serpent (the Body) interfered, took the active

lead, and persuaded the Heart to go along

with its wishes. The Mind, unnaturally passive, silently acquiesced

and joined in.

This was the real ‘sin’ that occurred in the Garden of Eden, and that recurs within the soul of each one of

us.

This is the

fundamental

(i.e., “

original

”) sin –

the sin of an inverted soul

. We are all committing this

sin right

now (it is high time we stopped blaming ‘Eve’), and this is what keeps us at the Level of Being

of ‘Re’.

The ‘beasts’ that were mentioned in the above passage about nakedness represent our many and

various

appetites – all the different aspects of the material body. Of these, we are told, the Serpent was

the most

‘subtle’: i.e., the cleverest, the most ingenious. This is not surprising. ‘The Serpent’ has been

given many

meanings in the world’s mythology. It has been the symbol of wisdom and the symbol of evil,

the symbol of

God and the symbol of sin. In its ability to shed its skin and be ‘reborn’, it has been a

symbol of resurrection

and, hence, a symbol of Christ. Corresponding to this association with birth and

rebirth, it has been the

symbol of sexuality and the symbol of healing. It has referred to the world of the

senses and the world of the

spirit. It rises to the heavens as a phallic symbol, an emblem of power,

potency and enlightenment. It encircles

reality and swallows itself, indicating wholeness and

completeness and Oneness. It dives into the earth, eating

dust and signifying death. In all of this, as it

extends its infinite meaning from the ‘Above’ to the ‘Below’, from

the highest to the lowest, from God to

the Devil, it represents the totality of

Logos/Eros/Thanatos

– the Will

and Spirit of the Creation, hovering

everywhere, encompassing everything, crossing all thresholds and

communicating with every Level.

All of this must be recognized as the background of this serpent who speaks to Eve. And what is the

nature of

the advice that he gives her? If you eat the fruit of this tree, he tells her, “then your eyes shall be

opened, and

ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” This advice has been roundly condemned.

But is it ‘evil’ to try to

‘be like God’? Later on, in Exodus, God insists, “You shall be holy, because I, the

Lord your God, am holy.” So

evidently we can be ‘like God’, at least in some respects: in fact, it is

evidently our moral and spiritual

obligation to try. Then is it ‘evil’ to ‘open one’s eyes’, to know the

difference between Good and Evil? This can

hardly be so. Confronting reality, understanding what is

Good and Right, opening the ‘eye of the soul’ and

perceiving the Truth – these are precisely the goals of

spiritual development. It appears that the serpent’s

advice, in and of itself, was sound.

So what is the story telling us? The usual interpretation says that what is ‘evil’ here is not the advice

per

, but

the fact that the advice was contrary to God’s direct command. Thus, disobedience appears as

the key issue.

But what a peculiar command this was! Do not open your eyes to the truth, do not

understand the difference

between right and wrong. What sort of God would ever demand such a thing?

Could it be, as some have

suggested, that this knowledge was forbidden on pain of death because God

feared that human beings,

acquiring the knowledge of good and evil, might become too like Him, too

powerful, and endanger His

supremacy? Is God paranoid?

When God next appears in the Garden, Adam and Eve are hiding. Easily discovered, Adam says he

was

hiding because he was naked (i.e., ignorant) and ashamed. It takes God no time at all to figure out

how Adam

managed to acquire this new level of self-awareness.

Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?

And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.

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.(Gen.3.11-13)

So the story is out, and God has all the information He needs. Our Mind, which is supposed to be in

charge,

has passively done what the Emotions told it to do. Our Heart, rather than being guided by

Wisdom (hardly her

fault in this case), has been ‘beguiled’ – that is, ‘pleasantly misled’ or hypnotized –

by the world of the senses.

The sense-level Body, God discovers, has been completely in charge. And

everybody blames everybody else!

Once again, as in the story of Zeus and Prometheus, an angry God responds by ‘punishing’ everyone

involved. But again, the symbolic language of curses and punishments is merely referring poetically to

the

logical obligations of Karma, Justice, and Harmony. To right this wrong, God must now tell the Body,

Mind,

and Heart, exactly what they must do.

He begins with the Body. “Because you have done this,” He tells the serpent, “…upon thy belly shalt thou

go,

and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life.” God is merely granting the serpent what it actually

wants. The

sense-nature is told that it will henceforth concern itself solely with the things of the senses. It

will focus its

attention on the earth.

Next, God turns to the Heart. “Unto the woman He said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy

conception: in

sorrow thou shalt bring forth children.” The heart conceives emotions: These are the

‘children’ of the heart. And

now, as humanity is about to embark upon material life, the heart will

conceive many emotions and many

sorrows. We have already seen that the emotions bring pain and

difficulty into the world (along with joy and

meaning), and that without them there could be no choice, no

struggle, and no possibility of spiritual evolution.

The greatest struggle will be to learn to control all the

riotous emotions, to not permit them to lead the soul into

chaos.

To accomplish this, the Mind will have to act. This is a beautiful recapitulation of the earlier Triad, where

Uranus (now Adam) was the Light of Reason (now the Human Mind), and Gaia (now Eve) was the

Darkness

of Chaos (now the multitude of Emotions). Uranus acted upon Gaia to bring order to the

cosmic Chaos, just

as the Mind must now act on the Emotions to bring order to the human soul:

Socrates’ ‘Captain’ must retake

control of the ship. This is the psychological meaning of God’s final

words to Eve, “and thy desire shall be for

thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.”* Rather than

remaining ‘wedded’ to the mundane material world of

the serpent, God instructs the Heart to turn toward

the Mind as its proper ‘husband’.

Lastly, God turns to the Mind, the ‘husband’. “Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife,”

Adam

is told (in other words, because he sat there silently and allowed this whole predicament to

occur), the

following change must take place: “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.” The ‘face’,

that is, the head,

represents the Mind. The ‘sweat of thy face’ indicates the required active efforts of the

Mind. ‘Bread’ refers to

physical bread, but more importantly it also refers to the spiritual bread that

nourishes the Soul, bread which

Adam must now earn.

So the ‘sin’ in the Garden of Eden, here at the end of our tale, was that the Soul had been turned upside

down,

hypnotized by the illusions of the Sensible realm of Becoming. In this condition the Soul cannot

receive, nor

can it understand, real Truth. This is why God forbade them to eat of the Tree of Knowledge

– not because the

knowledge itself was evil or forbidden, but because they were not prepared to digest

it.

Adam and Eve (representing all of us) must return to their natural balanced state first, before they can

begin

the return path of evolution, up the Triads, back to God. God has just given them precisely the

instructions they

need to do this. He ensures that notwithstanding the ‘Fall’ from the world of Spirit into

the world of Matter, men

and women can (if we so choose) exchange the hypnotic state of passive

irresponsibility for a state of active

responsibility, in which morality is possible, struggle is required, and

spiritual evolution can begin.