Aero
Superstar
- Joined
- Mar 13, 2017
- Messages
- 5,910
If that's how you want to look at it, I think that's fine as long as you don't minimize the power that symbols have. Conscience is one piece of the puzzle and is highly influenced by symbols and the Ego. Whether or not a thing exists is irrelevant. Especially for archetypes, and there's a virtually unlimited number of those. For the most common archetypes, such as the father archetype, it can be like they are on your shoulder.You need to see through the mythology. The story of Eden, magic trees and talking snakes are just a way of describing the Conscience. We all have one to a degree. Even my dog knows when he's been bad. Disney's myth of the conscience was the concept of Jiminy Cricket sitting on your shoulder and being your guide through life. Just don't forget there is no cricket, and there never was...
Lucifer, which I would translate as "light from God" or more accurately the spirit of wisdom, doesn't sit on my shoulder. I think it's part of some universal cycle. It's not like a father, nor is it even like a guide. I would call it a beacon or a fixed point in every dimension.
Since time is circular, the fixed point is only noticeable to the initiated at certain times. And it's never noticeable to the uninitiated. More importantly, if you are uninitiated, what good are you to spirituality?
That's pretty good. I mostly agree, especially the part about women.Anyway, what @Aero is saying is pretty spot on. I guess my own perspective isn't that of traditional Gnosticism, I think the idea of a Demiurge is pretty complex, could be seen in one way as evil and in another as neutral or good. But what this story is about, so far as I can tell, is embodiment. The experience of embodiment, with all of it's animalism, confusion, bewilderment, and temptation, is something we have to go through to reach a stage which one could call "experienced innocence". Before having a body, and yes many bodies, we were just absorbed in the supersoul, innocent but without any development or "human" consciousness. We had to "fall" into matter, to take on the "temptation" of the Serpent (because in matter we are inevitably going to fall into temptation). The woman is the material element, the Mother, which has "love" for the experience of the material world, with all of the dualism that involves.
Actually women are very heroic. They take a lot of suffering from men, suffer martyrdom in deeply unequal relationships of dominance and power, are more merciful than men. Eve represents that kind of heroism, of being seen as "sinful" for simply being human. All of the Abrahamic religions are seriously patriachal, and actually a lot of that comes down to the recieved interpretation of this story.
You see things well through a microscope. I favor a wider lens, though. Mainly because people get lost, that's my main takeaway from what you said about women. How could people not be described as lost when "Mother" gets overpowered by literal junk.
Religion is definitely a part of the lost factor. But Idk about the story of the garden of Eden contributing specifically. All I'm saying is I wouldn't give it that much credit. Modern interpretations certainly don't help, though.