A new Adam and Eve Story. .

by Jani Farrell Roberts. c2000

An extract from her book "Seven Days: Tales of Magic, Sex and Gender."

We can make our own myths. Sometimes we do this by building on deep true instincts. But othertimes myths have been framed purely to help achieve a political end. A created myth with terrible consequences was that of Adam and Eve. It changed for Augustine and for many our inherited and instinctive delight in nature by teaching that this world is a vale of tears given to us as a punishment for our first parents' sins.

But looking at it more closely, it turns out to be a very muddled myth, bearing all the hall marks of being cobbled together out of different ancient stories. Surely a Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was created to impart this knowledge? Why were women and snakes so singled out for punishment? Were they being punished because they had sacred knowledge learnt of trees, a knowledge considered dangerous by the priestly author of this version of Genesis? (Biblical scholars say that the biblical stories went through a priestly rewriting about 300-400 years before Christ.) Why were snakes particularly evil? Was it because they were the emblem of rival religions such as the Egyptian?

I have spent decades of my life helping people to deal with such evils as corporate greed, bad medicine, human rights violations, pollution - but all that I could achieve by doing this was to prevent a few evils. I often felt I was simply plugging a few holes in a fragile dyke.

I now realise that there are other ways of tackling these problems that can be more effective. The myths that underlay and justify corporate or personal irresponsibility need to be changed. The myth that humanity was given this world by God so we can "conquer" it serves as an justification for carving up of our common heritage for private profit - and serves to make those who do so feel more comfortable at night. The myth that women were created to serve men justifies male chauvinism. The myth that we are weak sinful creatures helps to justify a milliard guilt complexes and our need for a priestly caste.

So, perhaps one of the most important things to us to do is to re-dream the myth of our Creation to make it reflect our deepest, most personal and sacred instincts. If we love the World, then our myths about our creation will reflect that love and will be beautiful. But if we fear nature, if we fear women, if we want to deny to others the knowledge of good and evil, then we will again find ourselves with a creation account like to the one in Genesis.

Let me start. Afterwards we all should embellish it, alter it, improve it, and make it more personal.

The Genesis Story, the Birthing Story

In a cave under the world lives the Mother who could make children by herself for she contained both male and female magic. She is in love with creating and is always refashioning herself, making children of every kind out of her own body. In four days she had made a galaxy out of one of her legs, a nova out of a breast and a spider out of the other breast. Her nose she had used to shape a cow, her eyes the planet Venus and the Sun. She is a kaleidoscope of constantly shifting colours, lights and shapes.

And everything she creates is so full of her energy that it dreams and creates as well. She is so alive, so much enjoying the detail of creation, that she is present everywhere, watching, seeing how it is going. For her everything she has created is her family. She lives in them, sustaining them with an endless sparkling stream of love and energy. She creates and supports a never ending cycle of birth and death to allow creation to continue to evolve in a balanced elegant way. She heals the wounds, cares for the dying. Nothing in her world is static. She is in the caves with the bats. For them she is a bat Goddess. She is on the moors with the wild ponies. For them she is a Horse Goddess. She is in the heavens -and for the stars she is the Goddess Mother of Galaxies. She is down the holes with the worms and they too know her as their Mother Goddess. All sing to her, all love her in their own way.

Creation matured and became more and more conscious. On the fifth day of creation the trees, the rocks, the earth dreamt of themselves and learnt that they were beautiful. The Goddess was delighted that they were becoming more aware. Every mother likes it when her children resemble her more. The dreams of the trees, of the rocks, of the earth, became full of her divine energy, and they too created out of their bodies other species that expressed other aspects of divinity. On the 6th day they dreamt a species that could express self awareness and so out of the earth, out of the plants, out of the animals and the snakes, out of their dreams, came the first humans.

The Goddess clapped her hands with delight. Her worlds were producing creatures like her that could express themselves creatively. So she decided to give them a gift. Their instincts she would more deeply bury so they did not dominate their lives. She will also give them the power of creating their own myths and of re-shaping the earth. She thus gave them the ability to wreck creation - but she had to trust they would grow up true.

Among the species that had helped make humans were the trees and herbs. These also promised to help, teach, house, feed and heal humans when needed. But She also gave the humans the special gift of most sacred tree that would teach them of the dangers of creating false myths. This magical tree was the Tree that knew both Good and Evil. She told them eat of this tree and live wisely.

And so that humans would not get the illusion that they were a species apart from the rest of her creation, she reminded them of the great cycle of life, of death and life, by giving them also a special guardian, the snake, to remind them of this cycle everytime it shed its skin. The serpent also promised her it would teach them the magic of life, for, living close to the earth it was full of earth energy.

The first humans were to be the parents of young gods and goddesses in whom the power of the Goddess would be incarnate. They would be both divine and born of the earth although like all creatures they would live on earth as part of the wheel of life. They would have awesome power to do good or evil to their family, the family of the Goddess - yet she knew that if they succeeded in fulfilling the dreams she shared with them, then they would be her Lovers and she would not be alone. It as a risk she took - for she knew in her instincts and her knowledge of the future that this was the way it had to be.

And she made them male and female so they would mix their genes, have fun in doing this and form between themselves a union that shared the love that she had for all. She created also gays and bisexuals so there would be many ways of making love and marrying. Then she said the time had come to rest and make love for her Garden of Eden was complete. It was now the day of love, the seventh day that is unending. This is the story of the Original Blessing and of how all things came about.