ch. XXX - 6. Ildabaoth, who as the first of the seven expressions of the lower septenary, is considered their father, boasts that he is "Father and God and there is no one above me". Whereupon his Mother, Sophia Achamoth, daughter of Sophia, rebukes his presumption by saying, "Do not lie, Ildabaoth, for the Father of all, the first man (Anthropos) is above thee, and so is Anthropos, the son of Anthropos". (Anthropos is the Greek word for "man".) Realizing that if man, the thinking light from Mind above, took the plunge into flesh and achieved his conscious actualization thereby, he would rise far superior to any nature powers, the latter warn him of the dangerous ordeal he will have to undergo. "For in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die" is their cry. Man’s descent into physical life would be his "death". Here lurks one of those occult keys to scriptural meaning, without a knowledge of which it has been impossible to follow the allegory with understanding. As we have decisively shown in the fourth lecture in this series, The Lost Meaning of Death, the arcane philosophical meaning of the terms "death" and "to die" was (for the soul) to incarnate. To leave heaven and come to live in the prison of a physical body on earth was "to die". So we hear the inferior powers warning man off from his adventure in matter by saying to him: This will mean a veritable death to you; exile from heaven, captivity in the prison of a sluggish physical body of inert matter, bondage in "Egypt", feeding on the husks that the swine do eat, earning your bread by the sweat of your brow, bearing children in pain. We advise you not to eat of the Tree. St. Paul echoes this same refrain when he writes: "The command that meant life proved death to me." Knowledge of Good and Evil can not be had without descending into that incarnate death where spirit and matter form the cross. And so once more lucid meaning of vast significance to the race comes to precise delineation under the application of the lost keys to religious truth. The path to cosmic reality lies through the domain of the relative, where the contrast between the "pairs of opposites", spirit and matter, opens the eyes to know Good and Evil.
Then comes the Serpent’s (Life’s) answer to the lower forces: Do not believe Jehovah. He (she) has spoken falsely. Heed me rather. I tell you that if you eat of the fruit of this Tree of Life and Knowledge, you shall not surely die. On the contrary, you shall become as gods, knowing Good and Evil. Evolution intends you to become gods.
And the Serpent, like Sophia Achamoth, accuses Jehovah of lying, for he says bluntly: "For God (Jehovah) doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." And then follows a statement in the text that should long ago have removed from the Serpent the imputation of
wicked guile, and from the Woman the stigma of being weakly caught in a baited trap. We are assured that she made her choice deliberately, for the text reads: "And when the woman saw the tree was good for food, and that is was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat . . . ." She was not beguiled but acted in reference to what she saw.
In most of the religious myths of creation the gods themselves freely offer to man the cup of juice drained from the Tree. In the Egyptian representation the goddess Hathor, equivalent to Eve, is shown holding out the cup to the man. It is of decided interest to know that the tree whose sap was considered most potent to open the eyes of man was the sycamore-fig. Now the tree, as symbol, stands as a type of woman, the feminine, or physical life, the primary form-building forces. So then, until this Woman, physical Nature, has produced the Sons of Mind, she is regarded or typed as barren! And in this light Jesus’ curse upon the barren fig tree. The "curse" is of course a mere dramatization of Mind’s rebuke to Nature for not yet having given birth to its superior genius.New Lectures on the Ancient Wisdom--No 7.
Then comes the Serpent’s (Life’s) answer to the lower forces: Do not believe Jehovah. He (she) has spoken falsely. Heed me rather. I tell you that if you eat of the fruit of this Tree of Life and Knowledge, you shall not surely die. On the contrary, you shall become as gods, knowing Good and Evil. Evolution intends you to become gods.
And the Serpent, like Sophia Achamoth, accuses Jehovah of lying, for he says bluntly: "For God (Jehovah) doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." And then follows a statement in the text that should long ago have removed from the Serpent the imputation of
24
In most of the religious myths of creation the gods themselves freely offer to man the cup of juice drained from the Tree. In the Egyptian representation the goddess Hathor, equivalent to Eve, is shown holding out the cup to the man. It is of decided interest to know that the tree whose sap was considered most potent to open the eyes of man was the sycamore-fig. Now the tree, as symbol, stands as a type of woman, the feminine, or physical life, the primary form-building forces. So then, until this Woman, physical Nature, has produced the Sons of Mind, she is regarded or typed as barren! And in this light Jesus’ curse upon the barren fig tree. The "curse" is of course a mere dramatization of Mind’s rebuke to Nature for not yet having given birth to its superior genius.New Lectures on the Ancient Wisdom--No 7.
