Our story of the Fall in the Garden sees nature as corrupt; and that myth corrupts the whole world for us. Because nature is thought of as corrupt, every spontaneous act is sinful and must not be yielded to. You get a totally different civilization and a totally different way of living according to whether your myth presents nature as fallen or whether nature is in itself a manifestation of divinity, and the spirit is the revelation of the divinity that is inherent in nature.
Joseph Campbell: The Power of Myth p. 99
Culture is the set of stories we tell ourselves. But how did we come to tell it this way, especially in the Judaeo/Christian world? And does it serve us to continue to do so? Are we approaching a whole new paradigm with a whole new set of assumptions about the nature of our reality & a new story, where Eve & her descendants might at last be restored to their original divinity & invited back to the Garden once again?
Huge questions clearly - yet in times of great change, isn't it incumbent upon us all to look back over our history - to uncover the reasons why we might find ourselves where we are today? While the world briefly pauses we have time to do just that. But how far back do we have to go to start unravelling the collective mind-set that has somehow got us here? Much further than poor Eve it seems.
Many years ago, during the 1980's, two Jungian analysts, Anne Baring & Jules Cashford asked themselves these same questions & joined forces to research & write the much acclaimed & classic book, Myth of the Goddess. I remember a friend lending me her copy when it came out in 1991 - & my eyes were literally on stalks!
They wanted to trace the history of the Feminine Archetype historically & mythologically to see how such a fall from grace had come about. How had we come to pour such scorn on Eve & her descendants and how had we become so separated & estranged from Nature? They found a wealth of material to show it had not always been so.
Many years ago, during the 1980's, two Jungian analysts, Anne Baring & Jules Cashford asked themselves these same questions & joined forces to research & write the much acclaimed & classic book, Myth of the Goddess. I remember a friend lending me her copy when it came out in 1991 - & my eyes were literally on stalks!
They wanted to trace the history of the Feminine Archetype historically & mythologically to see how such a fall from grace had come about. How had we come to pour such scorn on Eve & her descendants and how had we become so separated & estranged from Nature? They found a wealth of material to show it had not always been so.
THE LUNAR ERA (prior to 2000 BC)
From as long ago as 40,000 BC, the Great Mother was an image that connected the tiny human self to the greater dimension in which it was embedded. The self was, so to speak, contained within the matrix of the cosmic and Earth Mother, like a child in the womb. The consciousness of this time was largely unconscious and instinctive - what the philosopher Owen Barfield called Original Participation.It was a totally different way of perceiving and relating to life than the one we have now. We lived within the life of the Great Mother who was the Earth and the Cosmos. There was no clear differentiation between ourselves and the ensouled life that surrounded us. Everything had meaning; everything was numinous and alive.
Anne Baring - The Lunar Era - Chatres Presention - www.annebaring.com
People then believed we entered space/time through a portal in the stars - through the great gateway of the Milky Way - and by that way too did we return to the unseen realms at the end of our days. Our lives were envisioned as a great circle - or cycle of life - death & regeneration. The archetype most associated with this era was the Moon whose celestial body and eternal procession through the night sky, from dark, to light, to dark, gave orientation and meaning to life.
In the field of archaeology the Lithuanian Marija Gimbutas showed that up until the Bronze Age these early societies, which stretched across vast swathes of Old Europe were peaceful, matrilineal & revered a Great Mother Deity.
In the field of archaeology the Lithuanian Marija Gimbutas showed that up until the Bronze Age these early societies, which stretched across vast swathes of Old Europe were peaceful, matrilineal & revered a Great Mother Deity.
Cucuteniene goddess council
The primordial deity for our Paleolithic and Neolithic ancestors was female, reflecting the sovereignty of motherhood. In fact, there are no images that have been found of a Father God throughout the prehistoric record. Paleolithic and Neolithic symbols and images cluster around a self-generating Goddess and her basic functions as Giver-of-Life, Wielder-of-Death, and as Regeneratrix.
The multiple categories, functions, and symbols used by prehistoric peoples to express the Great Mystery are all aspects of the unbroken unity of one deity, a Goddess who is ultimately Nature herself.
Marija Gimbutas:The Civilization of the Goddess (1991),
Goddess with a Thousand Faces
THE SOLAR ERA & THE SEPARATION FROM NATURE
(2000 BC to 2000 AD)
(2000 BC to 2000 AD)
The Myth of the Goddess records the gradual diminishment of this way of life - of the transformation of deity from Goddess to God and of a great split between mind & spirit on the one hand - which came to be associated with the God - and nature & matter on the other, which became the sole signature of the goddess.
Mythologically the great turning point came at the start of the Babylonian Empire. A new creation myth emerged that enshrined the new attitude. It tells of Marduk, the young Solar God, who kills Tiamat, the once beloved Mother Goddess. He shoots an arrow into her mouth which tears through her body, splitting open her belly and her heart. He then throws her to the ground and triumphantly cuts her in half – creating the sky from one half of her and the earth from the other.
Hence forth the earth was divested of spirit - no longer divine – no longer sacred - just matter - bereft of sentience. It effectively separated humanity from nature, from instinct and led the way for the development of an individuated phase of maturation, rather like an adolescent moves toward independence, away from the mother and her domain.
Mythologically the great turning point came at the start of the Babylonian Empire. A new creation myth emerged that enshrined the new attitude. It tells of Marduk, the young Solar God, who kills Tiamat, the once beloved Mother Goddess. He shoots an arrow into her mouth which tears through her body, splitting open her belly and her heart. He then throws her to the ground and triumphantly cuts her in half – creating the sky from one half of her and the earth from the other.
Hence forth the earth was divested of spirit - no longer divine – no longer sacred - just matter - bereft of sentience. It effectively separated humanity from nature, from instinct and led the way for the development of an individuated phase of maturation, rather like an adolescent moves toward independence, away from the mother and her domain.
With this myth the cyclical time of the goddess culture ends; linear time begins; death becomes final and terrifying. With this myth creation has a beginning and will have an end. The conflict between light and darkness, good and evil is constellated and this imagery pervades the Old Testament and other mythologies, in India (The Mahabharata) as well as the Near East. The myth sets the paradigm of duality and opposition between spirit and nature, light and darkness for the next 4000 years. This paradigm still controls our own modern culture with its emphasis on the conquest of nature, of space, of our enemies.
www.annebaring.com
The repression & substitution of the Lunar mythology here is the earliest example of what might be called priestly politics, whereby the mythology of an earlier age and culture is gradually inverted, so that the divinities of the previous era become demons and the divinities of the new are exulted to positions of supremacy.
The expulsion of Eve from the Garden reflects this trend - deeply established by the time the biblical story was set down. As in the Babylonian myth, Eve is divested of her original divinity. Everything switches around. Whilst she is still given the title, Mother of all Living which directly connects her to the Canaanite goddess Asherah - God now becomes the sole creator. Eve is brought into being by him - created from Adam's Rib.
The serpent, also associated with her name & venerated for thousands of years in the ancient world as a symbol of renewal, now becomes the source of temptation, a transgressor of God's law. As punishment it will forfeit its traditional upright posture and thereafter crawl on its belly and eat only dust.
Eve will bring forth her children in sorrow whereas before goddesses gave birth painlessly. God becomes the sole proprietor of the Garden, overturning many centuries of Goddess veneration in Sacred Groves.
By the fourth century AD the western world had lost all its goddesses.
Early Christianity too, which at its inception embraced women as healers, teachers and even Apostles of Christ was streamlined by the same priestly politics as above, most notably reflected by the Emperor Constantine at the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, under whose auspices entire books were removed from the gospels, the Holy Spirit of the Trinity was deemed male instead of female as it had first been conceived; potentially empowering wisdoms were cut from the remaining texts and the key women who surrounded Jesus were diminished morally or edited into insignificance.
Deviance from the new creed was punishable by death but thankfully many of the early gospels were hidden and have since come to light, revealing a very different Christianity than the one we know.
The expulsion of Eve from the Garden reflects this trend - deeply established by the time the biblical story was set down. As in the Babylonian myth, Eve is divested of her original divinity. Everything switches around. Whilst she is still given the title, Mother of all Living which directly connects her to the Canaanite goddess Asherah - God now becomes the sole creator. Eve is brought into being by him - created from Adam's Rib.
The serpent, also associated with her name & venerated for thousands of years in the ancient world as a symbol of renewal, now becomes the source of temptation, a transgressor of God's law. As punishment it will forfeit its traditional upright posture and thereafter crawl on its belly and eat only dust.
Eve will bring forth her children in sorrow whereas before goddesses gave birth painlessly. God becomes the sole proprietor of the Garden, overturning many centuries of Goddess veneration in Sacred Groves.
By the fourth century AD the western world had lost all its goddesses.
Early Christianity too, which at its inception embraced women as healers, teachers and even Apostles of Christ was streamlined by the same priestly politics as above, most notably reflected by the Emperor Constantine at the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, under whose auspices entire books were removed from the gospels, the Holy Spirit of the Trinity was deemed male instead of female as it had first been conceived; potentially empowering wisdoms were cut from the remaining texts and the key women who surrounded Jesus were diminished morally or edited into insignificance.
Deviance from the new creed was punishable by death but thankfully many of the early gospels were hidden and have since come to light, revealing a very different Christianity than the one we know.
Council of Nicaea in 325 AD
There is little doubt however, that over these last 4000 years of Solar Consciousness - we have made incredible strides forward, particularly during the Classical period, in the Islamic Golden Age - the European Renaissance and from the Scientific Revolution & Enlightenment of the 16th & 17th centuries onwards. We have freed ourselves from the 'variable' of spirit in matters of science. We have taken the eloquent ideas of Descartes, Newton and Darwin and appropriated them to our purposes to create a mechanistic, dualistic, world view in which scientific inquiry can proceed unhindered. We have developed huge capacity for reflection, for objectivity, for standing back from our reality - to review and to understand the nature of our universe. We have lifted ourselves up and freed ourselves from the confines Lunar Era. In so many ways this has been a tremendous, heroic achievement - we have gained much - but we have done so at great cost - and in a way that is ultimately limited & flawed.
.... the evolution of the Western mind has been founded on the repression of the feminine - on the repression of undifferentiated unitary consciousness, of the participation mystique with nature: a progressive denial of the anima mundi, of the soul of the world, of the community of being, of the all-pervading, of mystery and ambiguity, of imagination, emotion, instinct, body, nature, woman - of all that which the masculine has projectively identified as "other."
But this separation necessarily calls forth a longing for a reunion with that which has been lost -
from the Epilogue, The Passion of the Western Mind, by Richard Tarnas
It is a longing expressed by artists for many hundreds of years. These beautiful pre- renaissance paintings depicting the Coronation of the Virgin anticipate such a moment of reunification, although not then, nor now enshrined in creed. Though the Virgin Mother, distant granddaughter of Eve was finally 'admitted' to Heaven, so to speak, as decreed by Papal Edict in 1954 - she is still of course not regarded as Divine. Although she is clearly so in the hearts & minds of these 14th & 15th century artists, as well as in those of the millions today who readily entertain the notion. Though it is still a kind of heresy to admit it.
Coronation of the Virgin - Fra Angelico
Date between 1440 and 1442
Date between 1440 and 1442
Our world today sits on the edge of a precipice. There are those who hold fast to the assumptions of the past - to the dominant paradigm - and those who long for the change Richard Tarnas speaks of. It is hard to imagine how such a change might come to pass - how this marriage of the Lunar & Solar aspects of the soul will manifest in terms of shifts in human consciousness.
Virgin Crown Agnolo Gaddi c.1370
In the ancient world of the Bronze Age, all the goddesses had a lover, a divine masculine counterpart with whom a Sacred Marriage was seasonally enacted and through which the land and all its people were seasonally renewed. There was Ishtar & Tammuz, Inanna & Dumuzi, Isis & Osiris, Aphrodite & Adonis, Cybele & Attis. In essence their marriage was a union of opposites, of man and woman, spirit and nature, heaven and earth, golden sun and silver moon, yin and yang, head and heart, a ritualistic re-enactment of the reconciliation of polarity, a symbolic representation of the sacred whole.
The new gods of the Solar Era, went it alone, so to speak, divorcing their previous lovers & bringing the world into being through their word. It couldn't have been more different!
The new gods of the Solar Era, went it alone, so to speak, divorcing their previous lovers & bringing the world into being through their word. It couldn't have been more different!
The Alchemical Wedding
Jung tells us that where the values of an ancient culture are overlaid by those of another, the despised values do not, as we used to think, vanish and cease to be. They fall rather into the unconscious of the race where they continue to influence the conscious psyche. Unable to find expression within the dominant culture the archetypes run underground so to speak, carried in disguise, as they were in the secret, esoteric Gnostic and Nicene texts of early Christianity; into the mystery schools of medieval Europe, into Alchemy, and into our deepest dreams & stories like the Quest for the Holy Grail that tell of a terrible Wasteland, where nothing can grow & no one can live, and into stories like the Sleeping beauty who slumbers at the heart of a forgotten kingdom waiting, waiting, waiting to be re-awakened - and brought to consciousness once more.
The themes are universal. Something precious is lost, searched for, and finally found. Only then can the kingdom thrive. It is no coincidence that our heroes are so frequently called to discover a lost, female figure. The tales alert us the missing dimension in both the personal and collective life - and show us what needs to be done to restore a healthy balance.
Jung’s hypothesis of the collective unconscious – a realm of the psyche shared by us all – suggests that ‘nothing is ever lost’ and moreover, that which seems lost must be found if we are to function at our highest capacity.
The themes are universal. Something precious is lost, searched for, and finally found. Only then can the kingdom thrive. It is no coincidence that our heroes are so frequently called to discover a lost, female figure. The tales alert us the missing dimension in both the personal and collective life - and show us what needs to be done to restore a healthy balance.
Jung’s hypothesis of the collective unconscious – a realm of the psyche shared by us all – suggests that ‘nothing is ever lost’ and moreover, that which seems lost must be found if we are to function at our highest capacity.
STELLA AGE - RE-UNIFICAION OF THE SACRED WHOLE
Looking at our culture today, we seem a million miles away from such a mystical re-union - and yet the truth is - science itself - the bastion of the rational mind - of Newtonian Assumptions - has itself undergone a profound transformation in the last hundred years.
There has been a quiet revolution in Quantum Theory that brings the entire paradigm into question. Consciousness now is understood as the prime causal reality not matter. Atoms are waves of possibility before every they achieve form. It is no longer possible to separate observer and observed - as quantum theory shows how each affect one another. The long-established certainties of the Solar Era now look shaky.
There has been a quiet revolution in Quantum Theory that brings the entire paradigm into question. Consciousness now is understood as the prime causal reality not matter. Atoms are waves of possibility before every they achieve form. It is no longer possible to separate observer and observed - as quantum theory shows how each affect one another. The long-established certainties of the Solar Era now look shaky.
Consciousness comes first; it is the ground of all being. Everything else, including matter, is a possibility of consciousness.
Amit Goswami - The Self Aware Universe
The implications are vast, leading to the notion - long held by the ancients and never abandoned by indigenous peoples or in aspects of Eastern Philosophy - that we all inhabit a unified cosmic field - that we are all connected in the deepest, deepest sense and that there is no such thing as inanimate matter.
There is the most beautiful myth, Indra’s Net, often times quoted by the Dalia Lama, and referred to by Anne Baring in many of her inspiring talks. It tells of a holographic cosmos - the interconnectedness of all things & of the non-local consciousness reflected in the new scientific paradigm of non - duality. What a different world it would be if we could bare to accept it.
There is the most beautiful myth, Indra’s Net, often times quoted by the Dalia Lama, and referred to by Anne Baring in many of her inspiring talks. It tells of a holographic cosmos - the interconnectedness of all things & of the non-local consciousness reflected in the new scientific paradigm of non - duality. What a different world it would be if we could bare to accept it.
Indra’s Net:
All is One, One is All,
'In Lak’ech - I am you: you are me'
All is One, One is All,
'In Lak’ech - I am you: you are me'
“Far away in the heavenly abode of the great god Indra, there is a wonderful net which has been hung by some cunning artificer in such a manner that it stretches out indefinitely in all directions. In accordance with the extravagant tastes of deities, the artificer has hung a single glittering jewel at the net’s every node, and since the net itself is infinite in dimension, the jewels are infinite in number. There hang the jewels, glittering like stars of the first magnitude, a wonderful sight to behold. If we now arbitrarily select one of these jewels for inspection and look closely at it, we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number. Not only that, but each of the jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels, so that the process of reflection is infinite.
The Hua’yen school [of Buddhism] has been fond of this image, mentioned many times in its literature, because it symbolizes a cosmos in which there is an infinitely repeated interrelationship among all the members of the cosmos. This relationship is said to be one of simultaneous mutual identity and mututal intercausality.”
~ Francis H. Cook, Hua-yen Buddhism: The Jewel Net of Indra
What t a long story this has been - of epochs and eras - of different core assumptions, beliefs and values - from the realm of the feminine, the Lunar Era, the Moon, her Goddess’s and the veneration of nature, to the masculine consciousness of the Solar Era, the Sun God, the separation from nature, the rise of rationality, science and the individuated self - and onward toward a Stella Age, as the alchemists might say - & the reunification of these long estranged opposites revealed to us in the image of the Sacred Marriage - & reflected in the discoveries of Quantum Physics over the last hundred years.
It is easy to see where Eve fits in to this long tale and why in a sense she ate the fateful apple.
The great tragedy has been that the myth was and still is taken literally. Viewed symbolically its meaning is quite different. Then the eating of the apple can be seen as an initiation into a new consciousness - a solar consciousness as it were - & awareness of our separation from the Divine and original unity. Without Eve there could have been no onward story, no journey into the realms of free will, of choice. The achievement of this consciousness inevitably involves loss of the original paradisiacal, Golden Age state - a tragedy in the senses discussed, especially when told from the patriarchal perspective come down to us - and yet - from what we now understand from people returning from Near Death Experiences - souls are incredibly keen to come to earth for these very experiences, for the opportunity to evolve. Yes, it is a fall - in a sense - but one that is chosen. It is not a sin - and this is the crucial difference - in doctrine - in storytelling - in perspective.
Trailing clouds of glory, sang the mystic poet Wordsworth, from some far-off heavenly abode.
It is easy to see where Eve fits in to this long tale and why in a sense she ate the fateful apple.
The great tragedy has been that the myth was and still is taken literally. Viewed symbolically its meaning is quite different. Then the eating of the apple can be seen as an initiation into a new consciousness - a solar consciousness as it were - & awareness of our separation from the Divine and original unity. Without Eve there could have been no onward story, no journey into the realms of free will, of choice. The achievement of this consciousness inevitably involves loss of the original paradisiacal, Golden Age state - a tragedy in the senses discussed, especially when told from the patriarchal perspective come down to us - and yet - from what we now understand from people returning from Near Death Experiences - souls are incredibly keen to come to earth for these very experiences, for the opportunity to evolve. Yes, it is a fall - in a sense - but one that is chosen. It is not a sin - and this is the crucial difference - in doctrine - in storytelling - in perspective.
Trailing clouds of glory, sang the mystic poet Wordsworth, from some far-off heavenly abode.
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come.
William Wordsworth
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin suggests that our journey to the Earth is an honour not a punishment - and one that is greatly prized.
"We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience."
- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J.
Many highly evolved souls, we hear - are now choosing to come to the planet at this particular time to assist in the collective evolution. There have always been such souls of course, the mystics, luminaries & enlightened ones like the Buddha & Jesus, come to help us raise our planetary vibration so to speak. Over the centuries Christian religious practice has become almost exclusively devotional and yet at the start it was much more initiatory. Christ was showing us a way, like Buddha - a way to achieve Christ consciousness - a way to rise up & return to the Garden, to Paradise, where our stories began.
Looked at from these perspectives, Eve can be re-framed in her ancient role - as a great facilitator of human experience - as Mother of All Living in it's original, pre-Biblical sense. Then we might see the story - as Eric Fromm has suggested, not as a 'fall', but as an awakening and the beginning of our rise.
Looked at from these perspectives, Eve can be re-framed in her ancient role - as a great facilitator of human experience - as Mother of All Living in it's original, pre-Biblical sense. Then we might see the story - as Eric Fromm has suggested, not as a 'fall', but as an awakening and the beginning of our rise.
Transfiguration, by Fra Angelico
1395–1455
1395–1455
Yet however the myth is understood, the fact remains that it has most commonly been taken literally and as such has brought immense suffering to woman throughout the entire Solar Era - suffering that continues to this day. It is impossible to justify a single moment of it. It is the harsh truth, a terrifying price to pay & still to continue to pay.
But at last the time has come to return to greater awareness, to gather up the parts of ourselves lost & devalued along the way - and to arrive home changed and humbled by long experience.
Joseph Campbell famously tells us that our myths are public dreams, dreams are public myths. And of course the basic pattern of mythology is cyclical - it tells the story, without exception in its true form, of Paradise Lost, searched for and finally regained.
This is the promise & the hope.
Maybe these are the times in which we might finally remember, as Anne Baring suggests,
But at last the time has come to return to greater awareness, to gather up the parts of ourselves lost & devalued along the way - and to arrive home changed and humbled by long experience.
Joseph Campbell famously tells us that our myths are public dreams, dreams are public myths. And of course the basic pattern of mythology is cyclical - it tells the story, without exception in its true form, of Paradise Lost, searched for and finally regained.
This is the promise & the hope.
Maybe these are the times in which we might finally remember, as Anne Baring suggests,
... that we are not fallen, sinful creatures, banished from the Garden of Eden to this planet. On the contrary, we are cosmic beings, carrying divinity – the pearl of great price – at the core of our being.
Anne Baring talk at Brahma Kumaris Retreat Centre June 2017
Anne Maria
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