Another of September’s posts for the good folk over at PsychicsForetell.

I had a Christian upbringing.   As I grew older I started to realize there wasn’t much going on with the women in Christianity.   In fact, it felt a bit disempowering to read the stories.  Yet still I found Truth in the religion when I saw this faith practiced with great Love.  But I couldn’t reconcile it against what seemed so very out of balance when it came to the feminine side.

The women of the Bible seemed to either playing a supportive role to some guy or they were straight evil.  To listen to the story of our very creation, I have to believe that I have been cursed by my creator along with all other females because of Eve. I don’t buy that bit though.  I don’t think I’m made to be subservient to man either.  I believe something was lost in translation and it suited some people in power to keep it lost.

So I am going to offer an alternative interpretation of the Garden of Eden that makes more sense to me using the symbolism already present.  These were after all just stories that had to be colorful enough for people (who mostly could not read) to remember and pass along. So the stories of the time were rich with symbols and visual metaphors.  And here is how I read these symbols.

So the Heavens and the Earth came to be created by God, or the source of all the life, of all the energy, in the world.  From this Earth, the dust, life evolved into many things all the way up to a HUman, made in God’s image or conscious like God.  Life wanted to keep evolving and the human presented the Creator a way to experience his creation.  I think the first “man” was neither male nor female.  At this point, man is conscious and aware but not self-aware. Then the feminine, earthy aspect (the bone/rib)  was taken to separate humans into a feminine and masculine to further the experience and allow the creation to become the creator.

Along comes the serpent, which in most symbology represents the continuation of life.  He tells Eve to eat the apple from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, which will give all the knowledge that God possesses, or allow the creation to create.  She accepts and offers some to Adam and they become conscious and aware of themselves and all that is around them.

Here is where the Creator and Creation come together, in my opinion.  The snake (life) is offered to the feminine creation.  The female is the portal to this world, to this experience.  She is given the power to create a body in her womb for the next soul to enter into this world.  So of course it is she who then offers the fruit to Adam, offers him the experience of life in all its qualities, good, bad or indifferent.    Each soul is given a choice on whether or not to take the apple and come to experience this world as both creator and creation.  And each soul must be born through a woman.

Our souls are eternal, our souls are of God.  And the earthly experience offers us all the good and evil we can take.  We get a temporary life on this Earth, a temporary experience where we strive to find our own balance within the ever-flowing energies of this world.  When we get it right, we advance to a higher level.

As part of this adventure we have each accepted, we all must experience death.  Which is why, in my opinion, God told Adam if you eat of this fruit you will die.   If you choose to have an earthly experience, you will die.  That makes better sense to me than God just lying and trying to scare Adam into listening, though as a parent, I’ve been there…

And as for us being born with sin, I think that is just totally mistranslated.   The original word means to go in the wrong direction.  I believe we all chose to be here and that is our “sin” that separates us from God.  We chose to experience this world physically – moving us away from a subtle existence into a bodily one, moving from ether to earth, from the collective spirit we are all a part of to an individual experience.  Once in this physical existence, we will experience joy and pain and love and hate and everything in between.  These experiences, that offer all the knowledge of things good and bad, may pull us further from our source or closer.  It is up to each one of us alone to find our way back to our source by finding our way to live in harmony with Truth and Love.

That is my take.  Or I’m totally wrong and we should take the Bible literally.  Which means I have cramps every month as a reminder of Eve’s blatant disregard for God’s rules.  And since Adam (who totally sold his wife out once he was caught, by the way) ate the fruit, we have thorns and thistle on the Earth making it necessary to work the land to get food.  (side note: Ladies, if you are working the land, you are taking up Adam’s punishment so in the name of all that is righteous, stop.  Food is Adam’s territory! Until he takes our cramps, he can take care of the food!)  Oh and apparently snakes once had arms and legs until the apple incident put an end to that.  Does that makes more sense.

Nah, I can’t buy that.  So how can I know what the good book is trying to say?  Maybe I can’t ever be sure.  But I do know my God is a living God so I’ll get my answers directly from the Source.  My heart will discern the truth.  And your heart will discern yours.  Of that, I’m sure.

What are your thoughts about our creation?  How do you understand the stories of our beginning?