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Adam and Eves Sentence

Ain Soph – The Unknown God

Chapter 27

F. J. Mayers

Genesis III, v.9: “And the Lord God called unto the man and said unto him, Where art thou?”

As the darkness of night falls upon the soul of Adam, he becomes conscious that the voice of God is calling him. He had not thought of calling on God; his soul was dumb in the darkness. What does God say? Just one little word- “aicha.” It is a little word that says, and asks everything necessary. How much one little Divine word can convey! And how much the meaning of it depends on the way in which it is uttered! This is a word that scarcely lends itself to translation. It just simply means: “?”

Nothing could be simpler, yet it expresses “good will,” “deep, personal, questioning interest”-and there was in it just that which made it possible for Adam to find his voice, and make his confession.

Verse 10: “And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, and I hid myself.”

The word “and I was afraid” is “va-aira.” It is a composite of two roots, “ir,” which denotes ideas of “respect”; “fear”; “reverence”; “veneration”; and “ra,” which suggests “fixing one’s eyes on anything”; “regarding”: “considering”; “seeing,” etc. The word here means that Adam was “overawed” by God’s presence and his realisation of what he himself had become.

“Because I was naked”- “chi-eirom anochi.” He had realised that he was ignorant and blind. The word “anochi” is the full form of the personal pronoun “I.” It is only used in cases were we should strongly emphasise the “I.” He realised the utter contrast between himself and the “All-Wise” Elohim. (We explained the word “naked” as “denuded of light or intelligence” in our last chapter.)

Verse II: “And He said: who told thee thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?”

Literally, “who ‘taught’ you that you were so denuded? Did the knowledge come from eating of the tree which I warned you to avoid?”

Verse 12: “And the man said: The woman thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree and I did eat.”

That was really quite a frank and correct confession; we have already explained that the expression “to be with me” is equivalent in the original to “be an actual part of myself.” Adam was quite aware that “Aisha was in reality himself, his own Will. So there is no justification for the charge usually brought against him of “meanness” and “disloyalty”; that he, as “husband.” “blames” his “wife” for what he himself has done. We are not dealing here with a “husband” and a “wife.” The story, however, does read as if Adam attributes some responsibility to God, for having given him the power to Will and act “on his own. It may not have been in Adam’s mind to make that suggestion, but in any case what he said was very natural” (just like a saying of a child)-and it was literally correct. Adam did not yet understand why God gave him “Aisha” nor the necessity for doing so. Neither could he have understood; so God gave no reply. He knew how often He would be misjudged and misunderstood in a similar way. It was but the beginning of His sufferings.

The whole story,- of course, is an analysis, given in dramatised form of all those processes which take place in the human mind, heart and Will, and which lead to evil and sin, -although they arise from good and necessary elements of our being.

Verse 13: “And the Lord God said unto the woman, What is this thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me and I did eat”

The only word in this verse which needs explanation is the word “beguiled,” “hishiani.” It is the word “shoa” which denotes “disorder of thought” or a “mental blank.” It is used here as a verb in the “causative” or “excitative” form. The root is “sha,” which symbolises anything of a “delirious” or “frenzied” nature; a “whirl” of thought or emotion. That definition is obviously more in harmony with the facts related than the interpretation of some commentators that “Nahash” “deceived” Aisha by a “falsehood.” The insidious “desire” or “lust”-(using the word in its original meaning, in old English,-which had no particular reference to sexual sensuality)-of Na-hash for the “knowledge” and “experience,” which appeared “good” to the “Intelligent being” of Adam (the “Aish), takes hold, as it were of Aisha (the Will) and brings “disorder” into her thought; she is “carried away” by it and “Wills” what Na-hash desires. We must keep in mind that they were spiritual or mental processes that were taking place, and there-fore “Will” and the “Power” to carry out what was “willed” were still “One.” To “will” was to “effectuate.” This is important in view of what follows later.

Verse 14: “And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Be-cause thou hast done this, cursed art thou above all cattle and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly thou shalt go and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life.”

The word translated “cursed” is “aroor.” That is the root “arr” verbalised. When we find the “r” doubled in a root, it denotes some activity which becomes evil by “excess”; “something carried too far”; a “self-undoing.” For instance: a joke carried too far, becomes anything but a joke; it becomes something that breaks all reasonable bounds, and so becomes “hateful”; “unpleasant”; “deprecated”; “resented.”

We have a strong echo of the meaning of the root in our old word “arrant.” Also in words such as “horror,” “abhorrent,” “corrupt,” we have the same original idea. But however “hateful,” “objectionable,” “abhorrent” the thing may be, we cannot help feeling that the word “cursed” is not exactly the right word to use here. “Cursing” is utterly contrary to the nature of God. He Who taught men to “Bless and curse not” was by no means likely to be the “Father of Curses” Himself, and to give mankind its first object lesson in a devilish art. The word as we understand it now gives the idea of “wishing evil” to someone, of “praying down vengeance” on someone.

The essence of a “curse” is “vengeance”: the rendering of “evil for evil”; it is an angry desire for “retaliation”; the calling on some super-natural power to bring some evil fate on someone whom for some reason we hate, or with whom we are indignant. It would be blasphemous to attribute any of those things to God. Vengeful retaliation brings the avenger down to the moral (or immoral) level of the criminal. The old law of “An eye for an eye” was only tolerable for a very low state of human development; and even then it did aim at a strict equality between the crime and the punishment; it was at least better than the cruel “vengeance” which will take twenty eyes for one if it has the power. (As par ex. “Lidice.”) No; we cannot consider “cursed” quite the right word here. What God really says to “Na-hash is: “Because thou hast done this, thou hast become abhorrent beyond anything to be found in the whole range of animal natures. You have dragged the essence of humanity down below the level of the beasts. An animal never seeks more than the necessities of its life and such simple comfort and shelter as it can find. It never seeks to usurp the control and guidance of its “group soul.” You have led man so to use the higher qualities I have given him as to seek to be independent of My Will and guidance; and in So doing you have caused him to quit his spiritual state and bury his soul in the ‘substance’ of the earthly. You have chosen the earthly, now you will grovel in it. You will ‘feed” upon earthly exhalations and the illusions of the material realm all the days of your life.

“Na-hash,” as we have tried to explain, was a “concentrative” activity. We may compare it to the. physical force of “gravitation” by which any mass of matter, according to its size and weight, attracts towards itself other masses with a force proportionate to their relative size, weight and distance.

To the concentrative forces of the Universe we owe the formation of the material (mineral) kingdom of Nature. By successive concentrations and modifications we get a graduated gamut of states: spirit, heat, ether, air, vapour, liquid, and solids, in which “concentration” reaches its limits. Na-hash, among the elements of Adam’s spiritual being, was the one which, by its “concentrative” nature, had a special inclination towards the material, physical state. When physical bodies were formed for the habitations of men, it was Na-hash that drew the spiritual elements of Man into those physical bodies, ever more and more deeply, until the “consciousness of every human being became centred in its physical “I.”

It is in the physical body that Man first becomes aware of his separate individuality. And it was an essential part of the Divine plan that man should acquire that individuality. Even in purely spiritual conditions Na-hash tends to form an individual nucleus or centre of attraction, which draws into itself all that the soul needs to gather from the infinite realms of spirit. (See Chapter IX.)

Working in those realms it is of infinite value to man. For instance, when we “recall” some past experience, it is really “Na-hash that draws the ‘substance’ of the memory out from the infinite spiritual reservoir in which all that has been, spiritually exists.

Had “wise old” Omar Khayyam knows more and been wiser than he was, he would not have written the bitter, flippant lines:

“Oh Thou who Man of baser Earth didst make

And who with Eden didst devise the snake For all the Sin wherewith the Face of Man

Is blacken’d, Man’s forgiveness give – and take.”

The expression : “On thy belly thou shalt go” is a purely figurative description of grovelling, crawling-. earthly inclinations. The word ‘gechon.’’ translated ‘‘belly,’’ -actually means to be ‘bent”; “bowed down”; “inclined earthwards.” The word translated “go,” “thalech,” has been mistakenly derived from the word “haloch,” “to come and go,” to “walk about.” It really comes from the radical word “loch,” which means to act in a “low-down” manner.

The expression “Dust thou shalt eat” is also figurative; it resembles our expression: “to lick the dust.” Adam had been “formed” of the “dust” of the “Adamah”-the spiritual elements. Na-hash, having brought Adam out of the spiritual state (and being himself but an activity of Adam), can now only “feed” on earthly elements.

Verse 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”

In this verse God explains what He intends to bring about: a mutual “antipathy” between Na-hash and Aisha, which will prevent co-operation between them. Without the “Will” of Aisha, the “desires” of Na-hash will be unrealisable.

The word “seed,” “zera,” represents “potential fruitfulness” The idea is that the desires which Na-hash produces are “seeds” which by the opposing will of Aisha will be rendered sterile.

There is a profound perception revealed in this verse of the way in which the inner unity of man becomes disrupted when evil enters. It is the beginning of that sense of frustration which seems to have become universal in human nature.

“The things I would, those I do not; and the things I would not, those I do.” This feeling of frustration runs through the whole of man’s being; his intelligence, his emotions, his purposes, and his “Will,” all become disordered and incapable of working in harmony. The result is continual discontent, disappointment and disillusionment: “Man never is, but always to be blessed.”

The last part of the verse contains some words we shall need to examine carefully. In the expression “It shall bruise thy head,” the word “it,” “hoa,” refers to the “seed” of Aisha. The present writer is fully aware of the generally accepted interpretation of this passage as the “first Messianic prophecy,” and he may say without hesitation that he believes that interpretation to be quite true, and that it will be fully confirmed if we proceed far enough. But it would be going too far ahead of our text if we were to discuss that subject here. We wish to follow the Genesis narrative step by step, exactly in the order in which everything is told. At present we are dealing with the organisation of the inner being of universal and individual man, and with the origins of the great mysteries of human life.

As regards the word “bruise,” “ishouph,” there has been much discussion. The best translation we can give of it is: “to compress” or “crush.” The word “head,” “resh,” was discussed at length in notes to Gen. I, v. 1, where it is the basis of the first word, “Bereshith.” We showed that “resh” covers a wider field of meaning than just “head” or “beginning.” It denotes the “starting principle” of anything. That is its meaning here. What the passage says, it that the “seed” (the willing” of Aisha) shall ultimately compress or “crush down” the very “principle” of the Na-hash activity. In other words, it will overcome the “source” of all self-centredness, of covetousness, greed, selfishness, and all the ills and wrongs that spring from self-love and selfish desires. Na-hash (in its evil expression) shall be ultimately crushed by the same “Will” that it had in the first case “beguiled.” But Aisha’s conquest will not be easy or painless. There will be long and bitter experiences of failures, difficulties, disappointments and many days of “despair,” even, before “Will” finally overcomes the urge of the “Self” Principle. It was necessary that God should give man free-will and an individual “ego,” but man has to learn that so long as separate Wills are each seeking their own desires, conflict- “war”-must inevitably continue to exist in every department of human activity. The quest for happiness, satisfaction, peace of soul, harmony of life, and peace and goodwill in all human relationships can never succeed until man comes to recognise the absolute necessity of a Will, infinitely greater and wiser than all human wills, and decides of his own free-will to submit his personal will to the Divine Will. Everyone individually can do that, and in so doing, solve his own life-problem. The moment that any man can say in complete sincerity: “Not my Will but Thine be done. Rule Thou in me,” the self-inflicted curse of the ages falls away from him, and he finds at last true “freedom” and “peace.” The “salvation” of the world will not come about in any mass movement; it will come by the reunion of individual Wills with God. The surrender of the personal Will must be entirely voluntary. If God used compulsion He would be taking away the very faculty by which man becomes a responsible moral being.

“And thou shalt bruise his heel” Some translations use the word “bite” in this place, instead of “bruise.” The English Version uses “bruise” in both cases as being more consistent -with the fact that the Hebrew text uses the same word in each case. Why either “bruise” or “bite” should be associated with a “serpent” is not obvious. We will keep to our translation “crush down” or “repress.” But let us see what the word “heel” means. We do not as a rule associate “heels” or toes or any other part of the body with the “Will.” Neither do we associate heels with a serpent! The Hebrew word is “akeb.” Here are a few of the different meanings of the word given in dictionaries :- “Heel”; “impression of heel”; “footstep”; “track”; “spoor”; “traces”; “in consequence of”; “for the sake of’; “the consequence or fruit of any action”; “because”; “for that purpose”; “fraud”; “deceit,” and so on. With so many different interpretations (according to various contexts), why choose “heel”? One thing we know is that the word is clearly intended to be an antithesis to “resh,” and “resh,” as we showed, is the “starting principle” of anything. Obviously, the antithesis of a “starting principle” must be the resulting “consequences.” If we accept that meaning it throws light at once on the whole matter. “Aisha,” having set human Will in action, contrary to the Divine Will, had separated man from his unity with the spiritual realm. Yet Aisha is not evil in nature. When she realises her error, it is too late to undo the direct consequences of it; but her disillusionment causes antipathy between her and Na-hash, and that “represses” in her any “following-up” of the fault. This interpretation is confirmed by what follows:

Verse 16: “Unto the woman He said, I will ‘greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children, and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.”

The English translation continued, of course, to be dictated by the idea in the translators’ minds that “Aisha” was a woman. But as we are prepared for that, we shall find this verse contains very little difficulty.

The first impression we get from reading the verse is that God inflicts a heavy arbitrary punishment on Aisha. We hope to show that that is quite a misunderstanding. The idea that God “takes vengeance” for all breaches of His “Law” or opposition to His Will is contrary to the truth. His purpose is always to “cure,” to “save,” not to punish.

“He hath not dealt with us after our sins; or rewarded us according to our iniquities. For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is His mercy (loving kindness) toward them that fear (reverence) Him. As far as the east is from the west, so far hath He removed our transgressions from Him. Like as a father pitieth his children so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him. For He knoweth our frame and remembereth that we are dust.” Psalm 103, v. 10-14.

We might add the lines of Tennyson:

“All the windy ways of men Are but dust that rises up,

And is lightly laid again.”

We are quite aware of the many passages in the Bible in which God is said to “take vengeance”; to punish; to bring plagues, calamities, or destruction, on people or nations for their sin. It was the universal habit of thought in olden days to attribute all such “visitations” directly to God-they were expressions of His “anger.” It was that habit of thought that accounted for so much being attributed to God that was utterly contrary to His nature, and that even shocks our poor and imperfect ideas of justice and goodness.

The minds of ancient peoples did not distinguish between arbitrarily imposed “punishment” and consequences directly arising out of wrong-doing and reacting on the wrong-doer. They are indeed “punishments” to the wrong-doer, but be inflicts them on himself. They come through the workings of natural “laws,” admittedly, but they are direct, relevant results of his own deed, and are not arbitrarily imposed by God.

Ancient peoples also failed to see the difference between

“error” and “sin.” They saw an evil deed just as a fact, without being able to “place” it in its true moral perspective. We have gradually come to see that the “sinfulness” of a deed depends entirely on the, more or less, “responsibility” of the doer, i.e., on the more or less completeness of his “self-consciousness,” the extent of his “rationality” and his “knowledge” of what he does and what its results will be. The reason why the ancients failed to see that “sin” depends on “responsibility” is simply that they had not developed rational self-consciousness themselves; and only in proportion to that development can man come to understand what “responsibility” really is.

Verse 16 (continued). The word “itzebonech,” translated “thy sorrow” (English R.V.) is the word “etzeb” extended and made more general in meaning by the affix “on.” It is a -contraction of the two roots “etz” and “tzb.” The first is familiar as meaning “tree” or “organic substance,”‘‘ etc. The second denotes anything in the way of “obstacles,” “difficulty,” opposition,” “prevention.” Combined in “etzeb,” the meaning is : “physical obstacles”; “difficulties of all kinds”; “anxieties,” and so on, in realising one’s “conceptions,” “ideas,” “desires” and “purposes.’

So long as “Will” was exercised only in the spiritual realm it was free and efficient. Whatever was willed” was, “ipso facto,” realised.

In Spirit everyone is “free.” We can think, feel, create mentally, anything we wish, and no earthly power can prevent us. But when we try to realise our conceptions in the physical realm, and have to adapt ourselves to physical conditions, we are at once hedged about with obstacles and difficulties of a thousand kinds, and many of our conceptions prove to be -absolutely impossible of realisation. That is exactly what God explains to Aisha, that “she” will inevitably find in physical conditions “she” could be no longer “free,” and her powers would be greatly curtailed.

The word “heronach” (“thy conception”) is extended in the same way as “etzeb” by the “on.” It extends the idea of “conception” to apply in any sense, either physical, mental, or spiritual; and as it is connected in this place with “Aisha,” the “Will,” the “conceptions” referred to would not be “children,” but “intentions,” “purposes,” etc. In fact, the words “theledi banim,” translated “bring forth children” quite agree with that. The first word means to “generate,” “produce,” “give birth to,” “realise,” etc. It is a very common word, used without any regard to sex, and by no means limited to a woman S function. The ‘word “banim” also denotes any “productions” of mind, body or Will ; any “ideas,” “purposes,” “children,” “intentions,” even “buildings.” The great French writer and poet, Lamartine, in his autobiography, says in reference to certain mental experiences: “J’etais malade d’un poeme que je ne pouvais pas enfanter” (I was ill with a poem I could not give birth to). That use of the expression is exactly identical with its meaning in this verse.

“Thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.” The word here translated “thy desire” is “te shoukathech.” It means “thy inclination,” “leaning,” “tendency,” “attachment,” etc. The idea in the word is similar to what we mean when we say that water will find its own level. Water will run through any ups and downs of piping until it reaches its starting level. In a similar way, Aisha ‘is, of her own inclination, to be carried by a natural tendency towards Aish; her activity will be determined by his intelligence and his ideas in future, not by Na-hash to whom she is now antipathetic. There is no shadow of suggestion of “domination’ or compulsion” by Adam, so there is nothing whatever in the text to countenance the idea that “inferiority” of woman to man, or anything in the way of “enslavement” to him, was “part of her punishment.” That is “just another of the many absurdities credited to the writer of Genesis which are not to be found in Genesis at all”-as Dr. Campbell Morgan once remarked.

Now let us see what God is made to say to Adam :-

Verses 17 to 19: “And unto Adam He said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife 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 toil shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat of the herb of the field; in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, until thou return unto the ground; for out of it was thou taken; for dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt return.” (English R.V.)

In verse 6 it was “Aish” who listened to “Aisha,” and it was “Aish” who ate of the “tree” with her. Here it is “Adam” who listens to his Aisha, thus confirming what we have said a bout the actors in the drama being elements of the being of A dam. “Aish,” the “Intelligent being” of Adam, was Adam.

It was the intelligent faculty of Adam that listened to the volitive faculty, and the volitive faculty that was “beguiled” the desire element. There was also a further reason for dropping the name “Aish” here and reverting to “Adam”; that was that when the intelligent reasoning part of our being is turned aside, so to speak, by a Will that has also been turned aside by surrendering to the suggestions of an unreasoning desire, it obviously loses its “intelligent” character. “Wishful thinking” is the opposite of sound intelligent thinking.

Adam, in his heart, coveted the “knowledge of good and evil”-not from any evil or rebellious motive at all-but just because he thought knowledge must be a good thing, desirable to make him “wise,” and, therefore, nearer to the “‘likeness of Elohim.” This “coveting” of knowledge led him to subordinate intelligence and reason to desire, and so brought chaos and disorder into his inmost being. That is exactly .the meaning of the “ground” being “cursed” through him.

Ail the misunderstanding of this passage has been caused by the mistake, which we have pointed out again and again of confusing the two words, “ground”- “Adamah,” and “earth”

– “aretz.” It is the Adamah-the spiritual elements which compose the “human” principle-the very elements which separate man” from the animal realm of beings-that Adam has brought into disorder and made the means of bringing about trouble of a kind that no animal can produce. No animal can “sin” because it possesses no moral qualities. That power to know “good” and “evil” belongs to man alone, so that man is able to become either saint or sinner: the very power that can make him the one can make him the other.

He begins to exercise his human qualities while in a state of complete ignorance and, obviously, can only acquire the knowledge of himself and of the latent potentialities of his being through experience. Without actual experience he could not know what good and evil are; and in the getting of experience. is it any wonder that he continually errs? The disorder he brings into the workings of his inner being can only result in what the narrative poetically expresses as “producing thorns and thistles,” wild, uncultivated, disordered growths in his life. One evil breeds another incessantly, and so man finds himself in an increasingly bitter struggle against evils of his own making. That is a perfectly true picture of the course of human life in the gaining of “experience.” But it is no “curse” laid upon man by God, neither is it an arbitrarily imposed “punishment” for his misdeeds.* It is nothing more nor less than the direct and inevitable results of blind and irresponsible error. In the narrative, God states the position clearly and dispassionately. There is not a word of anger or blame in anything He says. He shows Adam that his upward path will be full of difficulties, but He at once begins to provide him with the means of overcoming those difficulties. All that on a casual reading sounds like punitive measures, proves, on closer examination to be remedial and helpful, intended to lead man to happiness and to strengthen him with Hope. The disturbance and disordering of the Adamah results in human development becoming a matter of anxiety and labour. But the first thing God says is that,, in spite of “thorns and thistles” (of the mind and soul), “Adam” shall “eat” of the green herb -the grass of the field. That was exactly the food provided by Nature for the higher animals (taking the words quite in a literal sense); and in their limited animal existences – it suffices for their needs; they flourish on it happily enough.

What more peaceful or pleasant sight can we wish for than to watch the cattle leisurely browsing in a meadow or quietly “chewing the cud” as they take their “siesta”? t Just as He “gives” the “cattle on a thousand hills” their “meat in due season,” so God promises to provide for the simple material needs of man. But it means more than that. Adam’s trouble was “human” trouble, trouble of the mind and spirit, ignorance of the way to use his higher faculties aright. He was no longer an “animal,” but he was yet very far from being fully human,” so God promises to continue to him, while his human elements are developing, the “instinctive” guidance by which the lives of animals are ordered. God will guide him until he is able to “stand on his feet” as a “man and rule his own life.

“Neither is anything whatever said of any so-called “Curse” on the material earth, the soil from which man gets his material food. It was the spiritual elements of man that were “disordered.” But we may point out here a striking phenomenon of the correspondence between spiritual and physical movements. It is that any changes taking place in the spiritual world-either for good or evil, always closely coincide with corresponding changes in physical Nature.

This recalls the story of Nebuchadnezzar: how pride turned his head, he lost his reason and was turned out into the field to “eat grass” like the oxen until reason re-awakened in him, and seeing the folly of his pride in setting himself up above the “most High,” becomes man again. One suspects a very close connection between the inner meaning of that story and this Genesis narrative.

So it came about that humanity, in its very earliest stages of development, was almost entirely instinctive, and that its-:’rational, self-conscious qualities have been the slow growth of ages. God guided man at first directly through the subconscious mind.

Now the narrative reveals a second stage of development -which is distinctly above the animal stage:- “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat ‘bread.” The mention of bread here is surprising, especially if we come to the narrative with the idea that it is dealing with a historical incident in the life of the “first man.” As the “first” man he would not have the work of any other man around him, all he could learn by observation was what animals did and how they lived, and what the earth around him produced-and that did not include “bread.” One can imagine that he would have replied to God with the question: “What is bread?” To have explained to any “first man -on earth” what “bread” was, would have been as impossible as to discuss, on a scientific level, “Relativity,” or “Fission of the

4 Atom” with a Patagonian native or a bushman.

Bread is, in an important respect, very different from the “grass of the field” which Nature provides freely. It is something that man has a large part to play in the production of; it is something he has to work for. It is essentially “human” -food- the very symbol of human food-whether for the body or the soul. “Man” is on the upward path when he commences to get “human” food from the “earth” by his labour. Does it look like a “punishment” inflicted by an angry God when He starts mankind off in the industry of Agriculture?*

The present writer does not know the history’ of the English word “farm,” but there is a curiously Hebrew suggestiveness in it. If the reader will refer to our chapter on the “Fourfold River of Eden,” he will see what was said about “phrath.” Note the consonants. Our “F” is the equivalent of the Hebrew “ph.” “Ph-r,” we said, was a root denoting “fertility” or fruitfulness.” The “M” is the “Universal” sign. So if “farm” is traceable to Hebrew roots, “to farm” is the science of universal fruitfulness.

Of all the various types of work that man can be occupied in, surely no other so combines everything necessary and good for the bodily, mental and spiritual development of the race as Agriculture? It is healthy work, and work that keeps man close to Nature and to God. Its very nature makes him continually conscious of his dependence, not only on his own work, but also on the Power that makes his work ultimately fruitful. Man cannot provide “rain and sunshine in due season,” and so could not of his own powers make one single grain to grow and multiply. It is work in which one is always looking forward. It is disciplinary; it has to be done in “faith,” and it lives on Hope. Summed up in this symbology, “Agriculture” is the whole range of human culture to the end of time.

But this was not all that God had to say for the helping and cheering of so-called “fallen” man. He goes on to say that earth life, with all its labour, discipline, troubles, sorrows, and ultimately growing “wisdom,” is not an “end” in itself, but merely a prelude to life that is “Life” indeed.’

And yet this last, best word of God to “Adam” is one that, through the general misunderstanding of Genesis, we have been taught to read as if it were a funeral dirge, closely akin to Dante’s “Lasciate ogni sperariza, voi che entrate.”-(“Abandon every hope, ye who enter.”)

The words were: “till thou return to the ‘ground,’ for out of it wast thou taken : for dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return.”

The whole meaning of these words is destroyed when we read into them a sentence of “death.” They are the very opposite of that. The cause of the misreading is again the same old error of taking “Adamah” as a synonym of “earth,” which we have continually been pointing out. Man was not taken from the “earth”; he was “formed from the Adamah,” the spiritual element. He left his native element when he entered the physical state (although in doing that he was in reality carrying out an entirely necessary part of God’s plan). “Return,” “restoration,” “re-establishment” “. . . . a speedy return to his native land, if so be he desires and deserves it” (some readers will doubtless be familiar with that quotation) would have no meaning, at all unless they applied to the spiritual native state of “MAN.

The word “dust,” “aphar,” as we have said before, does not refer to “dust of the earth,” but to refined spiritual elements. The whole sentence really means: “for of finer elements than earth is thy being, and unto that being thou shalt return.” Note the positive assurance of those last words “thou shalt return.”

They are a message of final conquest-self-conquest, the attainment of true “Manhood.”

To do real justice to this Genesis narrative is a task far beyond the competency of the present writer. He can do no more than sketchily indicate the barest skeleton of the ideas he finds in it, and hope that others of much greater learning, general knowledge and literary ability will deal with the subject more efficiently. They would certainly be doing good work for mankind and the Church on earth by so doing.

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Eve and Clothing

Ain Soph – The Unknown God

Chapter Twenty 28

F. J. Mayers

Genesis HI, v. 20: “And the man called his wife’s name Eve (“havah”), because she was the mother of all living.”

We said in Chapter XXII that the “helpmeet” needed by Adam must, among other things, be a “stepping-stone” to sex differentiation. As long as Adam remained a purely spiritual being, the spiritual prototype of “humanity,” he was, of course, bi-sexual, “male and female.” (Gen. I, v. 27.) The separation of “universal man” into individual “man” and “woman” takes place only when Adam enters the physical state. That occurs when, having “eaten of the tree” and discovered his ignorance and undone-ness, he seeks to hide himself from the eyes of God within the “substance,” “etz,” of the “garden,” i.e., by entering physical bodies.

In “Adam,” as Spiritual man, the “intelligent principle (Aish) and its complementary, the “volitive Faculty” (Aisha) were unseparated elements of one being. But in physical humanity, “Aish” becomes the male principle and “Aisha” the female. So, in the physical state, “Aish” becomes synonymous with “husband,” and “Aisha” with “wife” or “woman.

Thus the realisation of sex-differentiation on the physical plane was the means by which Adam became able to be “fruitful and multiply.” And as every human being owes his or her being to his or her mother, “Aisha” becomes the “mother” of all “being,” and Adam gives her the new name, “Eve,” “havah.” The name is derived directly from the verb “hoh” = “To be.” By changing the initial “h” into “ch” and making the “vav” as “O” into a consonant, the result is a word which denotes the “realisation” or “materialisation of being or beings.”

That is the meaning of verse 20 as simply as we can explain it.

(The reader will note again how invariably, whenever a “name” is given, in the Bible, to anyone or anything, it is always significantly descriptive. It is never merely an arbitrary appellative “label.”)

It would have been impossible, except in a purely metaphorical sense, to have spoken of “Aisha” having “children.” Her offspring were nothing but the realisations of the mental and spiritual purposes and desires of Adam. “Eve’s” children on the other hand, are “beings” of flesh and blood, creatures time and space. Aisha’s” activities were in the spiritual realm; “Eve’s” children were “mortals” – subject to change, transformation, transmutation, and the alternation of states of being which we call “death’ ‘-all which things are essential in their existences.

This verse has the appearance of being a preliminary introduction to the subjects to be treated of in Chapter IV and onwards. Many scholars think that it got misplaced, and should have followed verse 24. We do not agree with that view; the verse seems to us to be needed here to make the real meaning of verse 21 clear.

Genesis II, v. 21: “And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife coats of skins and clothed them,”

This verse reads much like a continuation of Genesis III, V. 7, in which Aish and Aisha were said to have “sewed fig leaves together to make themselves aprons.” A reference to the explanation given of that verse would help us to understand what a very different matter this verse deals with. Verse 7 described what Aish and Aisha did for themselves-how they “covered” themselves with “confusion,” sorrow” and “trouble.” Verse 21 tells us of what God does for them.

The translators, having once got into their minds the idea that the narrative was concerned with two naked bodies that needed clothing, were, of course, obliged to “keep the tale moving” along the same lines. It would be difficult to explain or excuse their translation: “coats of skins,” in any other way. The word translated “coats,” “che-thanoth” (as it is “pointed) loses sight of the fact that the letter “ch” is simply the “assimilative participle” meaning “as,” “like,” “as it were.” The real word is the root “th-n” or “thanah”; this root expresses the idea of “adding substance” or “giving body” to anything. In the word “nathan” it denotes a “gift” or something imparted. “Thanah” means, literally, “bodylike forms,” “envelopes,” but we cannot fully determine its meaning here, apart from the word that follows, “or,” which they translated “skins.” This word means “shelter,” “protection,” “defence.” As a verb, it means “to watch,” “to guard,” “to defend”; “or,” for instance, denotes a “fortified town.” The word could, of course, be applied, as an adjective, to the “skin” of an animal because the “skin” is the animal’s protection against weather or cold; but one could just as well apply it to the “shell” of a tortoise, or to the “spikes” of a hedgehog; or to the “camouflaging” of animals or insects. In other words, ‘or” does not mean either “skin,” “shell,” “spikes” or “camouflage,” but simply the “purposes” that those things serve.

Another point we have to notice is that the word “or” denotes here, something which is to replace the “gan” or “garden” in which Adam is now unfitted to work as a spiritual being, and so must quit. We must remember that it was a sphere for “spiritual” activity, although it was organised in the sphere of “time and space.” It is plain, therefore, that what God was providing for “Adam” (that is, for all humanity) were suitable bodily forms for the exercise, the protection and the development of his “human” qualities, in the physical world.

We have already seen that the “Adam,” as the spiritual formative force in the animal realm, had developed animal bodies nearly approaching, in a general way, to what would be necessary for the habitation of primitive human beings. (The bodies of the anthropoid apes, for instance.) It would be fully in accord with scientific evidence to assume that such bodies were the first tabernacles for human souls. But that was only man’s physical beginning. And now a new phenomenon appears: bodies which continued to be animated by ape-souls retained their forms unchanged, so that, to all intents and purposes, the ape-body of to-day is the same as it was 50,000 years ago. Something very different took place in connection with bodies inhabited by “human” souls. Human bodies-ever since man began to occupy them-have never ceased to develop characteristics exactly corresponding with the development of his mind, soul and spirit. The more man thought, the larger his brain became; the more intellectual his thought became, the higher and the less receding became his forehead, the less brutal he became, the less projecting and massive became the lower jaw. The more “manly” he became, the more upright, well poised, and harmoniously balanced became his figure, until he reached the highest perfection of physical form and beauty. Then the development of purely spiritual qualities produced a corresponding development of “expression” and “beauty” which can hardly be called “physical”; that something, it is rather, which can make a face with little physical beauty more spiritually beautiful than the most perfect features and complexion.

It is in that continual development of all the constituents of his being, that man differs entirely from the animal kingdom. We do see developments, often very striking developments, in animals and also in plants, but they are always brought about by human activities, by training, scientific selection, and breeding; they are never brought about by “nature,” and another thing that is very significant is that these artificially-produced developments must be maintained by human activities. If the improved breeds of animals produced by the scientific breeder are turned loose to live in the purely natural conditions in which their ancestors lived; or if the choicest productions of the horticulturist are left to run wild, they gradually revert to the original state of their species-or die out altogether.

Man, on the contrary, possesses the power of continual self-transcendence. That is God’s special gift to him.

Now the above is exactly what is told us in this 21st verse. God-working, of course, through the natural processes He had brought into activity- “makes” for humanity “bodily forms,” “envelopes” and “environing conditions” in which man can continuously develop his ‘‘human’’ qualities, and give fuller expression to them. He “enfolds,” as the text explains, every human soul in forms, “and clothed appropriate bodily forms. The word translated “and clothed them,” is “va-ialebbish-em.” The root of the word is “bash.” We explained that root in connection with the word “bashar” in Gen. II, v. 21, where it was applied to the building up of the so-called “rib” taken from Adam into complete “bodily form and beauty.” (The word “bodily” in that case must obviously not be understood as meaning a material bodily form. It was applied to the “volitive faculty,” Aisha. Spiritual qualities have their own spiritual bodily forms. We speak, for instance, of minds as being “broad” or “narrow,” or “deep,” or “warped,” etc., and we describe thoughts as “ugly” or “beautiful.”)

It will be seen from the foregoing that the “clothing” of Adam and “his wife,” is God’s counter-measure to take away the “nakedness” which Adam became aware of after his first experiment in gaining “knowledge.” “Clothing” in Biblical language, even in passages which appear to have a clear literal meaning, very seldom really refers to the putting on of “clothes.” It will almost invariably be found to be a metaphorical expression for the’ putting on of some spiritual quality, whether it be the “sackcloth of humility” or the “white robe of righteousness,” or the “making wise” of the ignorant; or the covering of a bare hill with fruitful olive trees. Whenever “clothing” is mentioned, a spiritual meaning underlies it. It would be superfluous to say more or to quote examples, which are “legion.” God makes every human body the outward expression of the soul that inhabits it. In other words, He “clothes” the inner man-the true individual-with bodily form appropriate for his needs and expressive of his character. This applies on every moral or spiritual level; even without Shakespeare’s description, we could not conceive of the body of a “Caliban”* being less ugly and distorted than his soul ; and we know perfectly well what is meant, when we are told of the first Christian martyr, that “his face was, as it were, the face of an angel.”

Truly, if an “offended and angry” God “avenges” Himself by blessing the transgressor with such generous and thoughtful care and provision for his well-being, “His ways are not as our ways, or His Thoughts as our thoughts.” We cannot have known Him aright ; He has been all the time “Ain Soph” to us.

*By a curious coincidence (?) the Hebrew word “keleb” means a “dog” or a “bad, cruel man,” and even the final “an” of “Caliban” is equivalent to the Hebrew “on,’:’ which adds to the intensity of the wickedness suggested by the’ name. It would be interesting to know how Shakespeare obtained the name, as it so strongly suggests a Hebrew origin.

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Sword Which Turned Every Way

Ain Soph – The Unknown God

Chapter 29

F. J. Mayers

Genesis III, v, 22 to 24.

v. 22:“And the Lord God said, Behold the man is become as one of us to know good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of Life and eat and live for ever:

v. 23:“Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.

v, 24:“So He drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden the Cherubim and the soph to keep the way of the tree of Life.” (English A.V. and R.V.)

These three verses are somewhat difficult to deal with; there is a certain obscurity in the way they are written ; and the style is, perhaps intentionally, rather mysterious, as if the writer wished to avoid saying all that he had in his mind. The translators must have felt their task difficult, as they could not succeed in making their rendering of the passage either satisfactorily connected in itself or harmonious with the previous portion of the narrative.

The “Lord God” is, of course, “Ihoah Elohim”: the “Eternal” in His creative activities. “Elohim,” as the Unity of all the Divine manifesting attributes, speaks sometimes in His singular aspect and sometimes as a plurality. In this verse, “the Lord God said” is singular, but in the next sentence He says “The man is become as one of us,” thus indicating that man had become possessed of one of His own attributes–a moral sense.

One thing which strikes us at once as rather strange in the English Version is that Elohim appears to confirm’ exactly what “Na-hash” had said to “Aisha”: “ye shall be as Elohim.” Had Na-hash (the “serpent,” so generally considered synonymous with the “Father of Lies”) really been telling the simple truth after all? We think that impression arises from the faulty translation of the word “mimmennou,” literally “from us.” The preposition mi, or min, is always known as the “separative” or “extractive” particle. It is invariably translatable by “from” or “out of.” In every case it denotes the separation of something from something else, and in this case the doubling of the particle emphasises the idea of separation more strongly.

The translation: “one of us” conveys exactly the opposite idea. What Elohim really says is: “Behold the Adam has become as one separated from us in order to know good and evil.” The word “la-daath” means Iterate “in order to know” or “for the sake of knowing.” Read in that way, the verse connects up quite intelligibly with the rest of the narrative.

The remainder of verse 22: “and now lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life and eat and live for ever,” while it is not incorrect literally, is awkwardly worded for leading up to the next, verse which begins with the word

The only mis-translation in the above quoted words is the expression “the tree of life.” The original says quite clearly: “tree of lives.” “Tree,” as we already know, should be translated “substance” or “growth”; and whenever the “Tree of Life” or “lives” is spoken of it is always plural (like the word “shamaim”- “heavens”); the reason for that will appear as we proceed.

(The narrative does not say to whom, if anyone, Elohim speaks.” We must assume that it simply expresses in words the thoughts in His mind.) When Adam was warned that his descent into physical existence would inevitably involve him in the “mortality” which is inherent in the very nature of all that is physical, nothing was said of the existence of any “tree” or substance,” or “essence” of life, by the “eating” of which one might become immune from mortality and “live for ever.” This is the first suggestion of any such thing, and now it is mentioned as something which must be kept out of the reach of Adam at all costs. Now, why was Elohim so concerned that Adam should not take hold of the essence of life and “eat and live for ever”? The answer is really very simple :-To allow man to become “undying,” as a physical being, would mean to doom man’s spiritual nature to be buried for ever in an earthly prison; never again could he be re-born into the freedom and life of Spirit. His primal ignorance would beget errors, and errors would beget errors. All material knowledge he might gain would be distorted by error and only serve to increase his scope for error. Error would grow into “sin.” His life would be an incessant and hopeless struggle against himself and warfare against all others. Sin would beget sin and its burden would grow ever more intolerable. He would long for the death that brought peace-even the peace of extinction-to all other creatures, if death was for him impossible. Surely Dante, in the most terrible pictures of his “Inferno” vision, never conceived anything worse than would have been the fate of man universal if he had been permitted to deprive himself of the last hope of the despairing, the “smoothing hand” of Death. Instead of a “tree of lives” with its roots deep down in the “Eternity before time,” “kedem,” and its head ever rising towards “olom,” the “Eternity” that will be when time ends, the whole course of human existence would have been unending spiritual death.

Here again, what has so long been looked upon as part of the “curse” or “punishment” laid upon “Adam,” proves to be a provision for his ultimate salvation; a provision for preserving the “Way” to Eternal life, to the only life that can possibly be Eternal. We look in vain in the narrative for any wrathful, vindictive God putting a curse on mankind, throughout the ages, because of the “sin” of a “first” parent. We find instead a God caring for and planning for the eternal good and happiness of His children. And we have not told all the story yet.

Verse 23: “Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the Garden of Eden to till the ground (the “Adamah”) from whence he was taken.”

Adam, now physical human being, could no longer work spiritually in the life of Nature, so he has to begin work upon himself ; he has to “till the ground” of his own being, to develop the spiritual “Adamic elements” of which he was constituted.

Note particularly that he was not sent out of any “plaisance” or “paradise” of idleness to “dig the earth,” to become a “slave of the soil.” It was not “earth”: but the spiritual “ground,” “Adamah,” that he was to “work” in, “laabod.” He was to “work”-the most honourable thing in the world, at the task of making himself, by Divine help, really and truly “man.”

Verse 24: “So He drove out the man; and He placed at the east of the garden of Eden, the Cherubim and the flame of –a sword which turned every way to keep the way of the tree of life.” (English R.V.)

It is really extraordinarily strange that the translators should so consistently choose words to translate the Hebrew text, which just miss a meaning in harmony with a true idea of the nature of God, and which give instead a suggestion of something sinister. There are two or three examples in this verse. The word which they translate “drove out” is “igaresh.” It means “to remove,” to “put at a distance,” but there is no suggestion in it of chasing out a criminal with a whip of scorpions. The only explanation one can give of that unfortunate tendency of the translators is that it must have been the outward reflection from a very primitive idea of God at the back of their minds.

But we will pass on to the really important subject of the verse: the Cherubim and their purpose. Who or what were they? The verse we are now considering is the first mention we have of them, and it gives us no information about them. The writer clearly assumes that his readers would fully understand what they were, so the name must have suggested something familiar to those for whom his book was written.

The next time we find the name mentioned is in Exodus XXV, 18-20. There we gather that the cherubs referred to were two symbolic images which were to be constructed on the so-called “Mercy-seat” which covered the “Ark” for the Tabernacle, like a lid. They were to be beaten up out of sheet gold with which the seat, like the whole of the “Ark,” was to be covered inside and outside. We judge that they must have been animal figures of some kind, and probably, in heraldic language, “couchants.” All we are told about them is that they had faces which were to “look one towards another,” and that each one was to have two wings, which were to be stretched upward and arched over the seat, so that the tips of the wings of the one Cherub touched the tips of those of the other one. They were apparently not very large figures.

Then in I Kings VI, 23-30, we are told of some other Cherubim which were also symbolic images. These were large figures, some fifteen feet high. All we are told of them is that they were to be put in a large square room and so placed that they faced the entrance, while their wings, extended sideways, were to touch one another in the middle, and the walls on each side. Evidently they were “Guardians.”

The first real description of Cherubim is given in Ezekiel 1, 4-25, the account of the wonderful symbolic “vision” of Ezekiel. But in this case they were certainly not “images,” in a material sense. We are told that they were “the likeness of four living creatures”; they had “the likeness of a man”; every one had four faces and every one had four wings”; “their feet were straight . . . and like a calf’s foot”; they had “hands of a man under their wings on their four sides”; “their wings joined (touched) one another”; “they went straight forward.” “As for the likeness of their faces: they four had the face of a man, and the face of a ]ion . . . and the face of an ox . . . and also the face of an eagle.” “And they went every one straight forward; whither the spirit was to go they went.” “The living creatures ran and returned as the appearance of a flash of lightning.” Then the symbology of the vision changes the “living creatures” into “wheels” and a “wheel within a wheel . . . for the Spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels.”

Then we are told that there was “the likeness of the ‘firmament’ upon the heads of the living creatures And when they went, I heard the noise of their wings ………… as the voice of the Almighty-as the voice of speech.”

In that account the writer does not use the name “Cherubim” – it is always “living creatures”. But in chapter X of the same book, there is a repetition of the same vision, in which the word “Cherubim” is constantly used. In this account there is a further detail: “And their whole body, and their backs, and their hands, and their wings, and the wheels, were full of eyes round about.”

There is nothing else in the Old Testament that adds anything to the above description; but turning to the New Testament, in the “Book of the Revelation,” Chapter IV, there is an account of another vision, somewhat different in detail, but clearly dealing with the same spiritual material.

Verse 2: a throne set in heaven and One sat on the throne.”

Verse 6:”. . . before the Throne a sea of glass. . . and round about the Throne … four beasts full of eyes before and behind.” Verse 7: “And the first beast was like a lion, and the second beast like a calf, and the third beast had a face as a man, and the fourth beast was like a flying eagle.” Verse 8: “And the four beasts had each of them six wings . . . full of eyes within and they rest not day and night.”

It is quite useless to attempt to bring visions like the above into any literal coherence. They are just grand and impressive clairvoyant impressions of vast facts in the spiritual realms. The symbolic significance of every detail is quite easy to interpret. It matters little how the symbolic pictures change and interchange with one another, some new aspect of an idea finds expression in every change. The essential point is that underneath every detail that comes into consciousness, there is spiritual fact.

In the passages we have quoted, we have seen that the name “Cherubim” has been applied in two ways. Firstly, it denoted a symbolic image,” but it was not of the nature of an “idol.” There is no suggestion in the Bible of idolatrous worship being paid to “Cherubim,” and their images were amongst the furnishings prescribed for the Tabernacle in the Wilderness and for the Temple in Jerusalem. In that respect it seems to have been quite an exception; most other symbolic images soon degenerated into “idols,” We gather from the available information that the Cherub” image, in its general conception, was a crouching animal body, with a human face and eagle’s wings. The body was most frequently either that of a bull or a lion. The “winged bulls” of the Assyrian Temples, when they had human faces were certainly “cherubs,” although incomplete.

Secondly, when we come to the visions of Ezekiel and St. John we see at once that, while they are still “symbols,” the Cherubim are conceived as “living creatures,” “beasts.” (We have found both words used almost indistinguishably in some of our earlier studies.) But we see also that these “living creatures” have the attributes of great Cosmic “Life forces.” We find them holding a most important position among the “Angelic powers.” We also notice that in all references to Cherubim we find certain elements, either singly, or in various combinations, and these elements are always the same: the lion, the bull, “the human face, the eagle’s wings; and we may add: the number “four.”*

We mentioned earlier in this chapter that the probable reason why the author of Genesis did not think it necessary’ to give any explanation of the Cherubim, when he first mentions them, was that the name and the idea were familiar to the people for whom he was writing. As the arguments and evidence in favour of the traditional Mosaic authorship of “Genesis” appear to the present writer very much stronger and better founded than those against it, he accepts provisionally the traditional statement.

Accepting that. it follows that “Genesis” was written within forty years of Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt, as he did not live to enter Canaan with them. During those forty years the Israelites had been nomads of the desert, out of touch with any but wandering desert tribes. They saw nothing of the temples and religious symbolism of the great nations to the north and east. The only recollections they would have would be of what they had seen in Egypt, where they had been for some four centuries. Therefore, if they were familiar with the idea of the “Cherubim,” they must have got the idea in Egypt. Now, what was there in Egypt from which they could have obtained the idea? The answer is obvious: Cherub-like figures were very common indeed in Egypt, sometimes a long avenue leading up to a great temple was guarded by rows of them on either side. Most of these, however, were not true “Cherubs,” they were usually merely crouching anima]s. But no people could be long in Egypt without hearing of, or seeing, one Sphinx which was a “Cherub” in every respect: the Great Sphinx of Gizeh; the greatest, most perfect, and most ancient of all. As regards size, it is probably the largest symbolic

4Kalisch’s Commentary (p. 480) on “Exodus” contains some interesting notes on the Cherubim.

figure ever made, roughly 100 feet long by 70 feet high. As age in an inscription on a stele of the time of the fourth dynasty (about 2,900 BC), discovered by Mariette, the Sphinx is spoken of as a monument which was accidentally discovered during some excavations for the reigning Pharaoh, buried -under the sands of the desert. It had been buried and forgotten for long generations. Not even a legend of its existence remained. It is more than probable that when it was originally made, the waters of the Mediterranean lapped the feet of the huge rock from which it was carved, all the land -forming the delta of the Nile having been washed down and -deposited by the river since that time.

The Great Sphinx is described as having “a human head springing from the body of a bull with the feet of a lion, and the wings of an eagle folded back upon its flanks.”-Ed Schure’.

“Le front d’homme du Sphinx parle d’intelligence, Ses mamelles d’amour, ses ongles, de combats,

Ses ailes sont la Foi, le Reve, l’Esperance,

Et ses flancs de taureau le travail ici-bas!”

“Si tu sais travailler, croire, aimer, te defendre, Si par de vils besoins tu n’es pas enchaine

Si ton coeur sait vouloir et ton esprit comprendre, Roi de Thebes, salut! te voila’ couronne!”!”

From “Le Sphinx,” by Eliphas Levi.

There we have exactly the elements of the “living creatures” in the – vision of Ezekiel. These coincidences are certainly not accidental; they all point back to one common source whence the idea of the Cherubim arose; and if we turn back to Chapter X, we shall see at once what that source was: the four “elements” of the Cherubim are the four “Fixed” signs of the Zodiac. This gives us the clue to the whole idea; and the farther we follow up this clue the more clearly we shall see that we are in possession of a complete explanation of every detail given us in any of the accounts of the Cherubim. The Great Sphinx of Gizeh was a symbol of the Zodiacal forces.

In,, Chapter X we considered the “Maoroth” only as signs. We indicated very briefly the way in which the

Zodiac symbolised and foreshadowed, in a broad, general way’, the whole course of human history, so far as we have any evidence to check the facts.

When we come to the “Cherubim” as pictured by Ezekiel, we have a “revelation” of quite a new and surprising aspect of the whole matter. A “Cherub” is to him no mere symbol or figure; it is a “living” creature. (The word “creature” means, of course, anything created.) He conceives it as a “Zodiacal Angel”; the spirit within the sign. We might think of it as a “great Cosmic Life force”; Ezekiel sees it as a living, active, ,serving “Angel of God.” (The word “Angel” signifies representative,’’ “messenger,” ‘‘ambassador,’’ ‘‘delegate’’; anyone receiving and exercising power or authority from a higher source. (As the same word- “melek” is also the word for

“king,” it gives us the ancient conception of human kingship.)

Half a century ago, to the “scientific mind,” the idea of distant planets, suns and constellations having anything whatever to do with human affairs would have been laughed to scorn. A certain amount of purely physical influence, the workings of the “attraction of gravitation,” the influence of moon and sun on the tides, and extra-terrestrial activity of that kind were admitted-they were simply physical matters, they came within the limits of the measurable and calculable-beyond that, science admitted nothing. But within recent years even physicists have had to take some long steps into regions of which they had never before dreamed. They now know something of light-waves, invisible to human eyes, but none the less conveyancers of “life” and energy. They have learned something of “Cosmic Rays,” which are neither of light, nor sound, nor gravitation. They have found a new universe in invisible realms ; realms as immaterial as thought and imagination. Gradually and grudgingly, and only under pressure of positive evidence, thought is becoming recognised as something more than an operation of the brain, as a “real thing, a spiritual substance” whose limits of action are not physical.

Telepathy is recognised as a “fact,” if it is not as yet under control at will. When a “witch” or wizard” cast “spells,” or an Indian fakir made himself insensible to physical pain by suggestion, such things were “absurd superstitions”; to-day, scientific hypnotists are doing the same thing constantly.

Science can no longer shut out or ignore the spiritual world entirely. What was “magic or “miracle” a few centuries ago is now seen to be within the province of “natural laws.” On what ground, therefore, can it be argued that, although physical forces may play from the stars in the physical Zodiac upon the physical earth, spiritual forces cannot do the same? That they do so, in fact, has been known well for thousands of generations, but because Science has not yet discovered the “why and wherefore” of the fact by its own particular methods, scientists have denied the fact. Well, Science is still very young, and youth is rather prone to over-assess its know ledge (and laugh at itself when it grows older). However, all we are concerned with here is to try to bring to light the real Teachings of an old Book which has been little understood in some ways. Whether those teachings agree or disagree with our preconceived ideas, is quite another matter-and of little importance to the purpose of this book. We may find the Ancient Wisdom is still wise; or we may prefer to continue to think it foolishness.

But let us examine briefly how the “Cherubim” of the Ezekiel vision harmonise with the description of the Zodiac. Firstly, the “four faces”: these are the “likeness” of man, lion, ox, and eagle. These are the original symbols of the four “fixed” signs of the Zodiac. If the “Circle” of the Zodiac is divided into quadrants by two diameters at right-angles, these signs will stand, as it were, at the four ends of the arms of a cross. We notice next that each of the signs is attributed to one of the four primal “elements” into which all the ancient philosophies resolved everything in the Universe: “fire,” “air,” water,” “earth.” Those names are, of course, themselves merely “symbolic.” “Fire,” for instance, stands for “spirit,” “energy,” “force,” “motive” of every conceivable form, etc.

(We need not repeat what was explained in Chapter X.) As the complete Zodiac consists of twelve signs, three signs belong to each “element”; one of the three is called a “cardinal” sign; one “fixed”; the other “mutable.” These three signs of one “element” form an equilateral triangle. So if we consider the fixed sign as the dominant one of each triplet, and make it the apex of the triangle, the side lines of the triangle would run, one on the right and other on the left to the other two signs of the Triplicity.

In that way the whole twelve signs spring from the four and complete the circle, so “touching” one another. The whole scheme is based on “interlaced equilateral triangles” symbolic of the triune nature of the universe, and of the nature of “Man,” and of the inter-working and inter-dependence of all life and movement.

The conception of the Cherubim as “wheels” obviously arises from the wheeling motion of all the “heavenly bodies”; the orbits of all the planets (and probably of all the stars), and the apparent motion of the whole Zodiac as seen from the earth.

The words: “there was -the likeness of the “firmament” upon the heads of the living creatures” could hardly be applied to anything but the Zodiacal constellations poised in the vault of the heavens. The signs face every way, and all touch and move together, yet we are told “they went every one straight forward; whither the Spirit was to go they went.” That word “went” in the original is simply “halach”-literally “walked”; but neither “walked” nor “went” is at all suitable to translate it by here. It means that the spiritual forces of every sign flowed out directly in every direction-like light from the sun.

The account began by saying: “they (the Cherubim) had the likeness of a man.” That simply means that the “earthy” sign, the bull, ox, or calf, represented the physical body of man; the lion represented the animal passions of man; the man’s face represented the human qualities of mind and intelligence; while the eagle’s wings represent the spiritual aspirations of man his means of attaining to heavenly and eternal “Life.”*

‘The reference to the Cherubim and wheels being “full of eyes round about” is a very graphic way, of expressing the universal “perceptions” and “consciousness’ of the Divine spirit flowing through the Zodiac and permeating the whole universe -(a greater “cloud of witnesses” than even St. Paul had in mind).

The above notes are a mere “touch and go” with a subject that would need many books to deal with at all adequately. We merely wish to suggest in a general way what the Cherubim idea was, and leave our readers to think it out more fully for themselves.

The “forces” working throughout the universe, as the writer of “Genesis” conceived them, are “Living” forces. The “Cherubim” are the Lords of life ; of all Cosmic movements, all growth, development and progress. They shape the whole evolution of human life on earth, and the course of every individual human existence.

It is not man, but the Cherubim who decide the day and hour of any human conception, or birth or death. They are the spiritual forces of multiplication and increase, the builders of our lives, and the governors of our destinies.

*The reader will have noticed that the Cherubim images had only two wings The Cherubim or “living creatures” of Ezekiel’s vision had four wings each. The “beasts” of St. John’s vision had six wings each; so had the “Seraphim” in Isaiah’s vision. (The Seraphim were “angels” of a different class from the Cherubim; they were “fire” angels; their purpose ‘was to consume evil, to “purify” and to “refine.”). The number of the wings was symbolic of the “work” or purpose of the “angels” they are attributed to. The number “four” was used to denote “formation,” “building up,” “realising.” “Six” was the number of “harmony” and “perfection,” etc. The work of the Cherubim was to “organise,” “shape” and- “build up” the lives, purposes and destinies of men and nations. But here is the greatest mystery-although they hold our destinies in their hands, they never bring about those destinies by making “puppets” or us, or by destroying our freewill On the contrary, they make our Free Will the very tool through which to work out our salvation.

Back to Chapters List – Forward to Chapter 30

Bible – Its Dreams and Symbols

And He said, “Hear now my words: If there be a prophet among you, I the LORD will make myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak unto him in a dream” (Num. 12:6).

“I will pour out of My Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams” (Acts 2:17).

“For God speaketh once, yea twice, yet man perceiveth it not. In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, in slumberings upon the bed; Then He openeth the ears of men, and sealeth their instruction, That He may withdraw man from his purpose, and hide pride from man. He keepeth back his soul from the pit, and his life from perishing by the sword.” (Job 33:14- 18).

There are about 121 mentions of dreaming in the Bible and 89 mentions of sleep. (King James version.)The very first description of a dream is that in connection with Abraham.

Genesis 015:012 And when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and, lo, an horror of great darkness fell upon him. And – The Lord – he said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years; And also that nation, whom they shall serve, will I judge: and afterward shall they come out with great substance. And thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace; thou shalt be buried in a good old age. But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.

From that point on dreams are mentioned openly in such phrases as ‘020:006 And God said unto him in a dream’ – or ‘020:003 But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night, and said to him’ or ‘028:012 And he dreamed’. But no dreams of women are mentioned in the Old Testament.

Most of us can understand that such dreams or visions as Abraham experienced, and later Jacob and Joseph, are not recognisable as the type most of us wake from and remember. One might say these are a ‘once in a lifetime’ kind of dream. Explaining these dreams, and criticising the modern regard for dreams, some Christians are inclined to believe that only in the past did God directly communicate with ordinary men and women, and such a relationship does not apply to us today.

It must be remembered however that these early tribal people did not emerge from a vacuum. They inherited from previous cultures views and concepts about all aspects of life including dreams. They also lived within a particular view of the world and a system of beliefs which coloured their dreams, what they expected of them, and their manner of reporting them. Therefore it is worth looking at this background to biblical dreams. But in modern terms it can still be seen that dreams come from our core self – whether we like to call that self God or Life – see Core; The Two Powers for an explanation.

The very first mention of sleep occurs when we are told that God caused Adam to fall into a deep sleep. These statements were written in Hebrew, a language whose alphabetical characters each had a symbolic meaning, much as the characters alpha and omega mean something by themselves in the Greek alphabet. The words ‘deep sleep’, when used in connection with Adam were ‘thareddemah’. The roots of this word – according to Fred Myers – are rad and dam. In the English language we use the ‘rad’ root in such words as radiate, radium, radical. The Hebrew word ‘radah’ means to rule to govern. The same root used as a ‘passive’ verb means to be insensible, to be fast asleep, or to lose consciousness and control.

The root ‘dam’ means to be connected through blood, similarity, kinship or identity. The whole word suggests a form of sleep in which the person loses self control and is directed by the will of another, perhaps as happens in hypnotic sleep.

This concept of sleep and dreams having the possibility of ones mind and experience being directed by another will, in fact the Divine will, lies at the root of the way dreams were considered in the Bible. Both Adam’s sleep, and Abraham’s vision, have to do with identity. With Adam something emerged from him that had a separate identity from himself, and which led to an awareness of self outside God. So this story is about the emerging of a personal will into an existence that had previously been linked wholly with the will of God.

If the concept of God has difficult associations we can substitute the idea of early humankind having little sense of separate identity from their environment and from their tribe. Their feeling of a collective identity with nature and their tribe we can give an overall name of God – the forces which gave them existence. A study of the Australian aborigines particularly illustrates this enormous identification with the tribal territory and with the tribe itself. With the Aborigines their sense of self was in direct relationship with the territory in which they lived, and their tribal group.

This is important because much of the story in Genesis is about a tribal people trying to attain and maintain an identity. This is true of most tribal people. The struggle to establish and maintain their identity as a group of people, and in competition with other tribes or kingdoms, explains much of their behaviour. Just as our body destroys millions of bacteria each day in its attempt to maintain its integrity, so the tribal peoples often killed their rivals as a part of establishing and maintaining their own existence, identity and territory. Belief systems such as the tribal religion were of immense importance in this. Abraham’s visionary communication with God – the overall and powerful factors underlying his existence – set a path which enabled Abraham’s people to survive as a group through experiences which could easily have disintegrated the tribal cohesion. A common religious belief acted as a social ‘glue’ and a means of establishing mutual direction and the ability to work toward a goal as a group. It was a form of agreed law which established order in the community. Anything threatening the religious belief threatened the community, just as much as bacteria that disrupt the integrated working of our body threaten our personal existence.

Looked at from this standpoint, many of the dreams reported in the Bible are about the direction an individual can take regarding the destiny of the family or nation. Such dreams were not only important to the individual, but also became landmarks and pointers for later generations. They were and still are great statements summarising the beliefs, possibilities and character of the people. They looked at possibilities from the collective viewpoint – the good of the tribe or group – and gave insights that would benefit the tribe or nation. In the book Black Elk Speaks, the American Indian Black Elk tells how many of his great visions were about the healing of tribal conflicts or uncertainties. See: Prayer And Dream Interpretation; Native American Dream Beliefs.

The vision of God, the dream in which the Divine is directly experienced within us is not isolated to any one culture. Remembering this helps one to gain a clearer picture of just what such dreams or visions are. For instance a Hindu visionary does not meet with the divine in the image of the Christian God, but with a vision of Krishna or Shiva. The Indian visionary or dreamer makes contact with their own sense of the collective via their personal cultural images of the divine. The American Indian visionary met their sense of the collective psyche or tribe through an image of their own totem animal or family spirit. If ones own identity is deeply embedded in one religious belief system, then such alien images as those belonging to another culture might be as threatening as the invasion of bacteria already mentioned. They would undermine ones sense of self based on a particular belief system.

If we can accept that as a human we have the capacity to touch parts of the mind that have the amazing ability to integrate personal and cultural information, and from it present a view of where current trends and social moods are leading, then we have an understanding from which insight into Biblical dreams and visions can arise. If it is also seen that the form of the vision is shaped by cultural ideas and feelings about divinity – the collective and underlying forces of personal existence – then many of the Biblical dreams become understandable.

As the Bible proceeds, the dreams mentioned become more linked with personal rather than social identity. Joseph’s dream of his brothers sheaves of wheat bowing down to him, and paying homage, is less to do with tribal direction than the vision of Abraham. (Genesis 37:05). But Pharaoh’s dream of the fat and thin cattle is back in the mould of a dream showing the way for his nation.

Example: 037:006 And he said unto them, Hear, I pray you, this dream which I have dreamed: For, behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, and, lo, my sheaf arose, and also stood upright; and, behold, your sheaves stood round about, and made obeisance to my sheaf. And his brethren said to him, Shalt thou indeed reign over us? or shalt thou indeed have dominion over us? And they hated him yet the more for his dreams, and for his words. And he dreamed yet another dream, and told it his brethren, and said, Behold, I have dreamed a dream more; and, behold, the sun and the moon and the eleven stars made obeisance to me.

Joseph and his family clearly understood that the sheaves of wheat in his dream represented themselves. The meaning of symbols and images was clearly understood by many ancient people. Perhaps they could not verbalise exactly what the image meant, but it was often a deeply felt part of their life. It is this aspect of the Bible which is often completely overlooked by readers today. Is the story of Adam and Eve talking about two individuals who were divinely created and walked the earth in a golden age? Is the story of Jonah and the whale literally true? Are the stories of Jesus about a historical character? Or are they wonderfully evocative images which tell of another sort of truth than that of historical fact?

This side of the Bible is incredibly rich. It stands beyond all the attempts to fix a literal and dogmatic meaning to it, and speaks of life experience which most of us can identify with and understand. If we look at the Bible as if it were a description of a dream instead of a statement of history, light shines through the stories and enlivens us.

Starting with the story of Adam and Eve, it is clearly about the beginning of life. It is about human consciousness and its beginnings. In the manner of dreams, where each part expresses some aspect of our own life and feelings, God, Adam, Eve and Eden are all aspects of the one being – the human being. In fact in Hebrew the word Adam is a plural word, not singular, so the story is talking about the human essence, not about a man and a woman.

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. See God and the Big Bang are the Same.

Notice that God is given to speak the word ‘us’ showing there are creative forces rather than one creator. Also the man who is created is referred to as ‘them’.

The Garden of Eden suggests a state of mind or a state of existence other than our present normal waking awareness. The story tells us that there was a condition humans lived in prior to their present one. This prior condition was lost. And if the descriptions in the story of the state of Eden are compared with the condition that Adam and Eve found themselves in after Eden was lost, we can see that the story suggests women and men at first had no will of their own. They responded to life out of their sense of connection with what is called God – their connection with their life process, with their innate and instinctive urges and insights.

This is not a revolutionary idea. Every one of us go through such enormous personal changes. From the condition of the womb, in which we know no language or organised thought, where there is no need to make an effort to breathe or exist, we are thrust into separation, into survival, into independent existence. But we still have no language or organised thoughts. In yet another fantastic leap, our brain takes in the programming of language and achieves self awareness and the sense of aloneness. Prior to this we had no concept of time or space.

So Adam – the human race – at first existed in a state in which there was no sense of time, without any personal identity. In an animal we would call this instinct. Instinct guides the animal without the animal needing to have any personal ideas or decisions. It doesn’t have to think, it responds. Many people have associated this life in Eden as the period we each spend in the womb, and when we are cast out of Eden that is birth. But the story has a larger picture. In fact human beings in their development have lived in a transitional period when they were guided by instinct, and later developed refined language and the ability to make personal decisions in some degree. In our growth from the womb we pass through the whole range of our developmental modes, right from the creature with gills to the air breathing life form with a developing sense of personal identity.

Reading about Eve (Aisha), and how she listened to promptings to do a deed her inner life, her habits, her instincts, forbade, the story takes us to the emergence of personal will. Interestingly, in the original Hebrew, up until this point in the story the word for mankind was always Adam. But as soon as this new being is formed the word for mankind is Aish, and the new being is Aisha. The new human being that has come about, Aish (Adam) says is ‘now bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh’ confirming that in fact the story is about one being, not two. But it is a new being with a will of its own.

Many years ago I read the true account of a Bali tribesman who had need one day to leave his tribal village. This was the first time in his life that he was going to depart from his people. As he got to the boundary of his tribal territory he fainted.

If we have been born and raised in a modern Western society, we will find it difficult to understand the enormous part the tribal group and the tribal beliefs play in the psyche of the tribesman. It is difficult for us to understand what it is like to feel so much a part of a group or a family that simply walking away from it can cause one to collapse. Developing a will of our own, learning to exist outside of our family and tribal group, has cost us a lot, and the story of Adam who becomes Aish and Aisha, sums up the price that is paid by modern humans as they meet the anxiety, the guilt, the loneliness of life as an individual. We are, like Aisha, caste out from a sense of belonging to the universe, nature, and our tribe. We have lost a feeling of being in harmony even within ourselves. We no longer have the innocence of an animal or a child. We are alone together.

The New Testament moves on and uses different symbols and images. The story of Mary’s virgin birth while married to an old man; of how a divine child is born, and how this wondrous child matures and heals others and is the way to regain heaven, is a further chapter in the story of human development.

Looking at the New Testament once more as a dream, Joseph represents the rational mind which is not capable of going beyond reason to touch any sense of personal wholeness. Only Mary, the integrated feelings and thoughts, which are capable of being virginal, without prior conception (without holding on to prior conceptions as to the nature of life as the rational mind does) can bring forth the birth of an intuition, a new response to oneself and ones environment, that transforms ones life. This is a living relationship with the mystery that underlies our life. If we generate a ‘Mary’ part of us, a part that is not held prisoner by habits of thought, stereotypes of behaviour, by habitual patterns of thinking, then we can begin to allow into consciousness what was previously impossible to know. Mary, the virginal or open state of mind and feelings, acts as a link between the identity or personality, and the deep unconscious life processes. This link allows the birth of realisations and inner change that brings healing and a possibility of experiencing the eternal aspect of oneself. This is a great boon considering the rational mind, the independent will, has closed the door to personal experience of the timeless. This experience of the transcendent, or ones own wholeness is what Christ represents. See The Inner Path of Christ.

The story of Joseph, Mary and Jesus is a continuation of the events depicted in the Old Testament. The emergent individual lost any sense of connection with the whole, and with the community of which he or she was a part. Erich Fromm, in his book Escape From Freedom, explains the recent historical events and psychological changes in people that have widened this gap between the security that was at one time felt by individuals with a sense of being part of nature, or part of a community. The shift the New Testament symbols depict is that of the individual rekindling an awareness of his/her connection with the living power of the creative power, nature and community. In fact one of the major rites of Christianity – communion – directly celebrates this. This communion is not a loss of self as portrayed in Eastern religious teachings, but a willing connection made between an aware individual and the whole.

Example: It was perhaps the dream experiences that led Saint Jerome to mistranslate the Hebrew word for witchcraft, anan, as “observing dreams” (in Latin, observo somnia) when commissioned to translate the Bible by Pope Damasus I. Anan appears ten times in the Hebrew Scriptures (the Old Testament), but Jerome translates it as “observing dreams” only three times, in such statements as, “you shall not practice augury nor observe dreams,” which more accurately reads, “you shall not practice augury or witchcraft.” These simple changes, which made the Bible appear to discourage attending to one’s dreams, significantly altered the course of how dreams were viewed for centuries.

Looked at through its symbols instead of its historical relevance, the Bible unfolds the drama not only of your personal growth toward maturity, toward an independent identity, and toward a greater realisation of your own potential, it also paints the great picture of the pathway humanity took toward personal awareness and a sense of separate identity. It depicts in its stories and characterisations, the wonder and difficulties of becoming an individual and of discovering satisfaction in ones life. See:archetype of Christ; meeting with Christ; Individuation; myths legends and fairy tales in dreams; spiritual life in dream

But remember Christianity as it is expressed today, was set in this way by the Roman Catholic church many years after Christianity started – The early Christians were name ‘Atheists Of The Ancient World’. Inhabitants of the Roman Empire had a variety of gods and goddesses, but there were people back then who would be considered early Christians. Ironically, these people were considered atheists by the ancient Romans because they didn’t pay tribute to any of the pagan gods.