From Eden to Eros.pdf

This book is dedicated to the women of the world, past present and future.

Special thanks to Joseph Campbell, Doctor Dean Edell, Peg and Jerry Kranz, Nancy Parsifal,

Jane and Rob Butts, Colin Wilson, George Sayre, Ken Quigley, Lisa Spann, Gloria Taylor,

Raymond Reed, Denny Zeitlin, Mel Bowman, Darryle Isaac, Nick Raggio, Nina and Mark Bredt.

INTRODUCTION

The majority of this book was written in 1973 for inclusion in Tarot Revelations , my collaboration

with Joseph Campbell. While writing that book, a friend who had converted to Judaism was

undergoing a psychological crisis that involved a search for authority in his otherwise

rudderless life. His crisis manifested in part with extreme guilt feelings whenever he

commenced a sexual experience with a woman. One night is particularly memorable. He had

dined with a beautiful fellow law student from his college and had retired to his bedroom when

from above I heard him cry, ʺEvil, evil! The Bible has branded fornication sinful!ʺ Shortly

thereafter the young lady came running down the stairs and out the door.

It was then that the full impact of the negativity of the Judeo‐Christian tradition hit me, for here

was an otherwise intelligent young man behaving like a candidate for a rubber room in a

mental hospital. In the succeeding weeks, he would debate me during the dinner hour about

the validity of the Bible as the Word of God. When I would return to my room to proceed with

the writing of Tarot Revelations , my mind would be full of his arguments to the extent that I

would be responding to the negativity that he had presented in his harrangue.

When Mr. Campbell came for one of his visits, reviewing what I had written he said, ʺDick,

none of this has anything to do with Tarot.ʺ In his creative wisdom he told me he thought the

material might make another book, but that it did not belong in our collaboration. Therefore,

most of what now appears in this book as chapters two, three and four, ʺPatriarchyʺ,

ʺMatriarchyʺ and ʺWitchesʺ, was created during this time.

During his visits Mr. Campbell did his best to enlighten our distressed friend, explaining to him

that he was misreading myth as history, that mythology — the Bibleʹs and all the worldʹs —

represented psychic ʺeventsʺ, larger than life and mere history, for the patterns or archetypes of

these events are eternally true, recurring as they do in the psyches of every member of the

human race. But lacking any inner, psychic authority, our friend had to hold on to some

external authoritarian power and could not be dissuaded.

My subsequent realization that the witchcraft craze was a male hysteria, explained by Jungʹs

concept of the anima, the feminine archetype in the male unconscious, led to my personal

recognition that the war between the sexes, from ancient history up to now, would be resolved

only through recognition of the role of the archetypes in our individual lives. The marriage of

the warring opposites, or the processes whereby they can be married, constitutes the material of

chapter six, written for the most part in the late 1970s.

Chapter five, ʺNature, Body, and Sexʺ was written somewhat earlier, and bears the insight that

oneʹs attitude towards personal nature, body and sex, is conditioned by oneʹs attitude towards

the goddess, or Great Mother, in the form of nature and planet (Gaia).

In the 1980s, when I discovered the astronomical basis for the tree, serpent, and woman of Eden,

it became abundantly clear how patriarchy had fabricated the Eden tale in the very first book of

the Bible in order to bring about the fall from heaven of the figures of devotion of the original

religion of Goddess worship enshrined in the sky. That is to say, the heavenly Tree of Life, its

guardian serpent, and the Goddess herself were disparaged in order to lay the dogmatic

groundwork for patriarchyʹs rape of her religion. This has become patriarchyʹs basis for the put

down of women which has followed us to this very day, with devastating effects on both

women and men in all areas of society. The author hopes the reader may come away

enlightened from the reading of this book.

CHAPTER I

EDEN

WHERE DID THE PUT DOWN BEGIN?

In the Garden of Eden, of course. To put the whole Genesis story into a nutshell (or an apple

core), death came into the world with sex, Eveʹs specifically. Ever since then guilt has

accompanied sex, and blame has followed woman down through the centuries. Beneath

patriarchyʹs antipathy to Eve and the fertility goddesses that preceded her, lies a fear of sex and

a fear of death. Unless one takes the Genesis account as the literal word of God, we are reading

a highly prejudiced account designed specifically to denigrate women, to limit their religious

and social roles in the community, and to keep them in domestic subservience. The result of

this put down in the past two millenia has been a stunting of feminine growth in respect to

social, psychological, creative, and spiritual development. I state emphatically that the Eden

account is intentionally prejudiced because I have evidence, which we shall explore in this

chapter, that serpent, tree, and woman were elements of an astronomical configuration revered

by the pre‐patriarchal cultures that worshipped a feminine deity, The Great Mother.

Let us examine the scenario of the Garden with particular regard for the serpentʹs role, since in

Genesis he is the evil antagonist that devised manʹs Fall with womanʹs complicity, whereas in

similar scenes in religions contemporary or precedent to Judeo‐Christianity, the serpentʹs role

was benign and evolutive rather than evil, and immortality results from following this ancient

godʹs instruction. We have a hint of this in the Genesis story, because eating of the tree does not

bring the death promised by God (ʺye shall surely dieʺ). God lied, and ironically the forked

tongue of the serpent spoke the truth.

A fascinating but quite different account of the Garden drama is offered by the Gnostics,

sometimes called early Christians. We have evidence of their presence in the Near East and

Egypt from about the Second Century B.C. onward. Knowledge of the Gnostics was sparse

indeed until 1945, when the fifty‐two papyri texts were discovered at Nag Hammadi on the Nile

in Egypt.

GOD IS A WOMAN—HALLELUJAH!

The Bibical Creation myth holds that it is the Breath or Word (Logos) of God that causes

inanimate matter to take life. In the Gospel of John, we recall:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. He was in the

beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not

anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men.

In this respect, the Judeo‐Christian tradition accords with earlier versions of Creation, but in

Gnosticism the Diety is Pistis Sophia, Pistis , the feminine Greek for ʺfaith,ʺ and Sophia , feminine

Greek for ʺwisdom.ʺ When she breathes on the Abyss, a shadow comes into being beneath the

Ogdoad, the starry realm where she reigns. The shadow becomes matter, and the form it

takes—the text tells us—is like an abortion. Ultimately this shadow/abortion assumes the shape

of a great beast, lion‐like and androgynous, without knowledge of its creation by Sophia. The

next step involves the creation of the world, which seems to have been the reason for Sophiaʹs

creation of this monster, variously named Saklas (Aramaic for fool), Samael (ʺblind godʺ in

Aramaic), and laldabaoth , ʺchild of chaos,ʺ since he was created from the watery Abyss.

It is at this point in the myth of creation that Judeo‐Chrisian mythology commences with

Genesis and the worldʹs creation. After the worldʹs creation, Saklas really does behave like a

fool, falling victim to a bad case of chauvinism by declaring himself the supreme god. His traits

match those of Yahweh, or Jehovah, the angry god of the Old Testament, wherein he is

described as warlike, jealous, and malicious, characteristics which the Hebrews exalted in order

to bring down their enemies. Originally two Adams are created, one a spiritual essence or

Light/Adam (Sophiaʹs creation), the other of dust— that is, of a merely physical body. The

ʺdirtyʺ Adam is Yahwehʹs creation. Eve now enters the Eden scene in the Gnostic text, On The

Origin of the World :

Sophia sent Zoe, her daughter, who is called ʺEve (of Life),ʺ as an instructor in

order that she might raise up Adam, in whom there was no soul so that those

whom he would beget might become vessels of the light. [When] Eve saw her co‐

likeness cast down she pitied him, and she said, ʺAdam, live! Rise up on the

earth!ʺ

Immediately her word became a deed. For when Adam rose up, immediately he

opened his eyes. When he saw her, he said, ʺYou will be called ʹthe mother of the

livingʹ because you are the one who gave me life.ʺ 1

From the above two versions of the creation of the world and the creation of man, it may be

seen that our religious heritage took a turn for the worse in opting for patriarchy and Yahweh

over the Goddess Sophia and matriarchy.

Adam displays gratitude and homage to Eve as the one who gave him life. If we examine Eveʹs

epithet ʺmother of the living,ʺ her full import in the tradition of the Great Mother comes to the

surface. This homage was in the historical mainstream of the B.C. Mother Goddess religions,

whereas the Genesis version would be adjudicated slanderous were it to be written today. The

Judeo‐Christian mainstream has hung its case on a rib. Why? It seems to be manʹs attempt to

gain the upper hand in society—perhaps as a reaction against earlier matriarchial dominance.

Saklas and his flunkies, the Archons, rulers of the seven planets, conspire to give Adam a good

ribbing; according to On the Origin of the World : ʺ... let us teach him in his sleep as though she

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