The Serpent's Wisdom
May. 2nd, 2004 12:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sophiaserpentiaThere are many reasons why I chose to take esoteric initiation under the name Sophia Serpentia. Here's one of them, to which I have alluded from time to time. (These comments taken in part from a reply just posted in ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
challenging_god.)
This will be a companion to the post I made in March titled "The Author of Our Religion".
In the Apocryphon of John, we find the following:
This twist on the Genesis myth has the creator as a deceiver of humankind, the crafter of a false paradise which is in reality a spiritual prison. This could be thought of as the illusions we weave around ourselves for numerous reasons. They may appear to be safe and inviting, but they are preventing us from being truly alive.
The hint here is that the serpent of Genesis is not Satan, but is instead Christ, or perhaps Sophia (if they are not in fact two facets of the same being), or at least an agent of theirs.
The Hypostasis of the Archons says of this incident,
This seems a radical re-reading of the Genesis myth, completely askew from what we are led to believe in the Revelation to John, where Satan is called "the ancient serpent." It is reasonable to assume that this phrase, which can be found twice in the Revelation to John, is a response to ophite (serpent-centric) Gnostic myth describing the serpent as Sophia or even Christ.
But when you exclude this allusion, we find that it is entirely possible that the Gnostic interpretation may be akin to the original meaning. In Genesis, the serpent makes two statements to Eve: "You will not surely die [when you eat of the fruit], for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil" (Gen. 3:4-5)
When Adam and Eve have eaten of the fruit, the Elohim say amongst themselves, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever" (Gen. 3:22).
This affirms the truth of the second statement the serpent made to Eve. But what about the first, "you will not surely die"? According to the statement of the Elohim, if Adam and Eve had managed to eat from the tree of life, they would not have faced death at all. So while Adam and Eve are in the end consigned to death, the statement of the Elohim makes it clear that this was not at first a certain thing. Until they were banished from the garden, there was the possibility that they could have attained immortality.
Therefore even in the original Genesis version, everything the serpent said was in fact true.
challenging_god.)This will be a companion to the post I made in March titled "The Author of Our Religion".
In the Apocryphon of John, we find the following:
The archons took [Adam] and placed him in paradise. And they said to him, 'Eat, that is at leisure,' for their luxury is bitter and their beauty is depraved. And their luxury is deception and their trees are godlessness and their fruit is deadly poison and their promise is death. And the tree of their life they had placed in the midst of paradise.
This twist on the Genesis myth has the creator as a deceiver of humankind, the crafter of a false paradise which is in reality a spiritual prison. This could be thought of as the illusions we weave around ourselves for numerous reasons. They may appear to be safe and inviting, but they are preventing us from being truly alive.
"But what they call the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which is the Epinoia of the light, they stayed in front of it in order that [Adam] might not look up to his fullness and recognize the nakedness of his shamefulness. But it was I who brought about that they ate."
And to I [John] said to the savior, "Lord, was it not the serpent that taught Adam to eat?"
The savior smiled and said, "The serpent taught them to eat from wickedness of begetting, lust, and destruction, that [Adam] might be useful to him. And [Adam] knew that he was disobedient to [the chief archon Yaldabaoth] due to light of the Epinoia which is in him, which made him more correct in his thinking than the chief archon. And (the latter) wanted to bring about the power which he himself had given him. And he brought a forgetfulness over Adam."
The hint here is that the serpent of Genesis is not Satan, but is instead Christ, or perhaps Sophia (if they are not in fact two facets of the same being), or at least an agent of theirs.
The Hypostasis of the Archons says of this incident,
Then the female spiritual principle came in the snake, the instructor; and it taught them, saying, "What did he say to you? Was it, 'From every tree in the garden shall you eat; yet - from the tree of recognizing good and evil do not eat'?"
The carnal woman said, "Not only did he say 'Do not eat', but even 'Do not touch it; for the day you eat from it, with death you are going to die.'"
And the snake, the instructor, said, "With death you shall not die; for it was out of jealousy that he said this to you. Rather your eyes shall open and you shall come to be like gods, recognizing evil and good." And the female instructing principle was taken away from the snake, and she left it behind, merely a thing of the earth.
This seems a radical re-reading of the Genesis myth, completely askew from what we are led to believe in the Revelation to John, where Satan is called "the ancient serpent." It is reasonable to assume that this phrase, which can be found twice in the Revelation to John, is a response to ophite (serpent-centric) Gnostic myth describing the serpent as Sophia or even Christ.
But when you exclude this allusion, we find that it is entirely possible that the Gnostic interpretation may be akin to the original meaning. In Genesis, the serpent makes two statements to Eve: "You will not surely die [when you eat of the fruit], for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil" (Gen. 3:4-5)
When Adam and Eve have eaten of the fruit, the Elohim say amongst themselves, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever" (Gen. 3:22).
This affirms the truth of the second statement the serpent made to Eve. But what about the first, "you will not surely die"? According to the statement of the Elohim, if Adam and Eve had managed to eat from the tree of life, they would not have faced death at all. So while Adam and Eve are in the end consigned to death, the statement of the Elohim makes it clear that this was not at first a certain thing. Until they were banished from the garden, there was the possibility that they could have attained immortality.
Therefore even in the original Genesis version, everything the serpent said was in fact true.
