Symbolism in "The Fall"

The following list is a brief survey of the symbolic images in the myth of "The Fall," largely drawn from Inner Christianity by Richard Smoley, plus some of my own thoughts:

Adam: Not necessarily a literal ancestor of humanity. He represents "a prototype or collectivity - one enormous being in whom each individual man and woman is but a single cell." As in A Course in Miracles, Adam is like a part of God that has forgotten his true identity, fragmenting into many pieces. Every single thing in the universe, whether living or not, is some piece of that original "Adam." As it says in Corinthians 12:27, "You are Christ's body, and individually parts of it." And in Romans 12:4, "For as in one body we have many parts, and all the parts do not have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ and individually parts of one another." Adam represents our "fall" into a world of materiality, separation, and ego. Christ represents our spiritual evolution, our potential for what we can become, and our return to Oneness with the Father. Christ "redeems" the fallen nature of Adam, restoring the fragmentation and separation to a state of wholeness. In a sense we are both Adam and Christ. Adam represents our fallen, earthly nature, and Christ the divinization of our humanity.

The Tree of Life: A tree is a powerful visual representation of unity. "It has a single trunk yet ramifies outward in countless branches and twigs and leaves: it is the living representation of the world, which for all its multiplicity has its one life in God." For Adam and Eve before the fall, eating from the Tree of Life gave them their experience of oneness with God and a perception of static timelessness. Without duality there was no death, decay, loneliness or separation. Yet there was also no experience of different emotions, whether happiness or sadness.

The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil: As opposed to the Tree of Life, eating of this tree's fruit "means being aware of the multiplicity while remaining oblivious to the one source from which it all arises." [...] "It represents a sense of separation and polarity: we know good only by comparing it to evil." In a way, eating of this "forbidden" fruit allowed Adam and Eve a full experience of being-ness and self-awareness, which they could not experience in the static Garden of Eden. By experiencing a world of duality it gave them the opportunity to acquire wisdom, grow and evolve. Their perception switched from unity consciousness to an ego-centered identity. It was as if the focus was no longer awareness of being one with the complete "tree of life" but more of an identity as a single, separate branch of that tree. To see only the fruit rather than comprehending the reality of the whole tree.

Loincloths of Fig Leaves: Once they had eaten fruit from the forbidden tree, Adam and Eve became conscious of their nakedness and separateness. To hide themselves they made loincloths of fig leaves. The use of plants symbolizes "that there is a part of human nature that has much in common with plants: we are born, grow, reproduce, and die. A verse in Isaiah alludes to this fact: 'All flesh is grass, and all the goodness thereof is as the flower of the field' (Isaiah 40:6)." Perhaps there is also a connection with the idea that God created man from clay, and says later on in Genesis, "For you are dirt, and to dirt you shall return" (Genesis 3:19). Taken a step further, the garden and vegetation metaphors could imply that man and woman are themselves like gardens. An individual may start out in life as raw "clay" but if one cultivates oneself, as in a fine garden, one can bear good fruit. "For a tree is known by its fruit" (Matthew 12:33).

Leather Garments: Once God expelled Adam and Eve from the garden, he made them leather garments to wear. The change from an original state of nakedness (innocence, purity, egolessness and lack of self-awareness), to the loincloths of fig leaves (affinity to the plant world), and finally to animal skins, represents, in another way, the descent into materiality. The wearing of animal skins indicates that humans "also have an animal nature: the aspect of ourselves that is concerned with dominance, status, and power." [...] "Thus the tradition is suggesting that the two 'coverings' imposed upon the consciousness of the true 'I' as it fell are the vegetable and animal levels of our own minds." Like animals, our minds and behavior include an element that is reactionary rather than rational. To behave "like an animal" implies a tendency to act on instinct, an aspect of earthly behavior, of the "passions," as opposed to a higher level of consciousness that desires to rise upwards towards a unity consciousness with God.

The Serpent & Time: Traditionally, the serpent has been equated with the Devil. Yet from an esoteric standpoint, the serpent has much greater symbolism. Even before Christianity, the serpent has been associated with the ouroboros, "which means 'tail-eater' and which depicts a circular snake swallowing its own tail." As a symbol of time, it refers to the idea "that time - or at any rate our experience of time - is a self-perpetuating ring that traps us in the realm of the Fall." Sometimes you may have experienced occasions when you've lost track of time; being absorbed in some activity or getting lost in daydreaming, ("Time flies when you're having fun"), etc. Such seemingly rare occasions of timelessness are examples of stepping out of the bounds of the ouroboros, out of the duality and dimension of time, into an experience of the present moment. In Genesis, God gives a rather long tirade against the serpent, cursing it and saying, "On your belly shall you crawl, and dirt shall you eat all the days of your life" (Genesis 3:14). According to Smoley, "This suggests that, in the fallen state, the circular serpent known as time has a horizontal dimension - and this is exactly how we experience it, as a linear sequence of moments. We do not usually think of time as the ouroboros, a self-perpetuating cycle out of which we can step if we know how."

Finally, there is a reference in Genesis to humanity's capability of stepping out of the perpetual cycle of time (as in those occasions when one loses track of time). God tells the serpent, "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will strike at your head, while you strike at his heel." There is obviously more to these words than the mere surface literal interpretation. Smoley suggests that to "strike at your head" (the head of the serpent) means "to step outside time," as in those brief moments when we truly experience the present moment. And "while you strike at his heel" refers to the serpent's (time's) power to pull humanity back into the horizontal, linear dimension of time, back to our "fallen" condition.

In a future post I will explore some of the symbolism of Christ.