argued that the original Paradise had sunk beneath the waves as the waters of the Gulf had risen dramatically since the time described in Genesis. Zarin also suggested that the `Gihon' is now the River Karun, which rises in Iran, flowing south west into the Persian Gulf. This is an exquisite irony - today's Iraq is no one's Paradise!
However, it hardly matters where Eden may have been - always assuming that it is a valid exercise to read the Old Testament so literally - for, like the Holy Grail, its significance is so much more potent if seen by the eyes of the heart, not the eyes of the head. Eden may have had the geographical reality of, say, New York or Madrid (or the comparative unreality of Las Vegas or Blackpool), but its maps are really treasures of the mind, like Shangri-La or Atlantis. In any case, Eden represents the Golden Age, when nature was at peace with itself and mankind `walked with God'. Unfortunately, however, the loss of Paradise, even as a mythical concept, has proved far more traumatic to the human race than any bitter-sweet longing for the delights of Camelot.
`Eden' remains a synonym for the ultimate, unspoilt and ineffably beautiful location. When Charles Dickens wished to underscore the true vileness of an allegedly paradisical plot of American swamp in his Martin Chuzzlewit,9 he simply called it `Eden' with characteristic irony. Surely it is one of the few instantly recognized names of ancient myth that is as well known today as it was millennia ago.
The story of Man's10 abrupt expulsion from Eden - be it fiction, metaphor or literal fact - has become etched too deeply on the collective unconscious to ignore, for it has set in stone JudaeoChristian attitudes to men, women, original sin (and therefore children), the Creator and his opposition, Lucifer/Satan/the Devil. This all-powerful myth has imbued us all at some level of perception with a belief that life is a curse, that death is the end - a collapsing back of the body into its constituent dust, no more - that women are inherently on intimate terms with evil, that men have carte blanche to do as they please with not only all the animals in the world but also their womenfolk, and that God, above all, is to be feared. Snakes come out of it rather badly, too, as the embodiment of evil, the medium through which Satan tempts we pathetic humans. The Devil, on the other hand, is the only being in the tale to show some intelligence, perhaps even humour, in taking the form of a wriggling, presumably charming, phallic symbol through which to tempt a woman.
As both Judaism and Christianity depend so intimately on the basic premises of Genesis, this lost paradise of the soul is evoked several times throughout both Old and New Testaments. The crucified Jesus promised the thief hanging on the cross next to him `Today you will be with me in Paradise',' although it is unclear how those listening may have interpreted this term. Did they see it as synonymous with `heaven', a state of bliss that must remain unknowable to the living (and remain for ever unknown to the wicked)? Or did it somehow encompass the old idea of the luxuriant garden?
Images of the garden as Paradise recur throughout the Old Testament, assuming a highly sensuous form in its love poem, the Song of Songs - believed to be the erotic praise of the Queen of Sheba by her lover, King Solomon - in powerful phrases such as `Our bed is verdant';12 `You are a garden locked up, my sister, my bride,' and `You are a garden fountain/a well of flowing water streaming down from Lebanon' .14
(These blatantly sexual verses are still widely interpreted by modern churchgoers and theologians as `an allegory of the great Christian drama of sin and redemption, affirming the love of Christ for both the individual soul and his Church',15 which would be truly remarkable, for they were composed centuries before Jesus was born. Not only that, but the ripe lasciviousness which summons up sometimes disconcertingly vivid images of Solomon and Sheba's amorous activity in their tented boudoir seems a world away from the austere love of Ecclesia, the Christian Church. However, as we shall see, the Song of Songs does have some light to shed on a great Christian mystery, but hardly one that would feature in any sermon.)
As in all the best dramas, early harmony must be doomed - or there simply won't be much of a story - so the scenario described at the beginning of Genesis is not to last: after all, no state of earthly bliss can endure. It was to be all downhill after the creation.
As the original naturists Adam and Eve frolicked among amiable animals, one of which had already evolved a remarkable talent. This was a talking snake, whose ability seemed to take its creator by surprise, although this is by no means the last time his own creations will catch Yahweh unawares.
Having created Adam and Eve `in his own image' he then ordered them not to touch the fruit of `the tree of the knowledge of good and evil' in the middle of the garden, on pain of death - presumably a concept they had some difficulty understanding. But along slid the loquacious serpent, who swiftly took the opportunity to whisper with his flickering forked tongue to Eve: `Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden?'''
When Eve dutifully repeats God's proscription on `fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden', the serpent responds `You will not surely die ... For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil'' [My emphasis]. While the humans seem to be enticed primarily by the lusciousness of the forbidden fruit, the serpent concentrates on making explicit the appeal of becoming like God, with the implication of a potential challenge to his authority. If his intention were simply to make mankind fall from grace - evil for its own sake - there was no need to spell it out for them. `Look at the lovely fruit!' would have done just as well. Did the serpent actually care about Adam and Eve's intellectual development? In any case, there must be something special about the fruit because God put it out of bounds so specifically. So they eat.
When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened . . .l8
They may have had only the taste sensation in mind - the fruit being `also desirable for gaining wisdom' seems something of an afterthought - but in gobbling it down the damage is done. Their guilty snack is a moment of pure cataclysm, for far from being the equivalent of being caught with their hands in the cookie jar, it opened the portals for evil - although of course in order to tempt the woman Satan was already present, so presumably the Fall was only a matter of time, fruit or no fruit.
The sensuous indulgence changes everything. The man and his wife realize abruptly that they are not only naked but that their nudity is a shameful thing - the implication is that this is actually unnatural, some kind of perversion - so they hastily manufacture clothes out of leaves, revealing if nothing else that sewing is apparently instinctive human behaviour in an emergency.
But as they cower in the bushes covered in fig leaves, they realize that all is lost: God is walking in the garden `in the cool of the day' and calls out `Where are you?' Adam tells the Almighty that he is hiding because he `was afraid because I was naked'. God is outraged, demanding to know (without a flicker of irony) `Who told you you were naked?' Like an irate schoolmaster trying to elicit a confession from a mulish class, he adds: `Have you eaten from the tree from which I commanded you not to eat?'9
When God wrathfully demands to know how they knew they were naked, Adam pipes up disloyally: `The woman you put here with me - she gave me some fruit from the tree and I ate it.' After the world's first sneak has finished blaming his wife, and in doing so also even implies that he blames God for giving him Eve as his companion, she, too, is keen to pass the blame on to the serpent, which God declares:
Cursed are you above all the livestock and all the wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, And between your offspring and hers; He will crush your head And you will strike his heel.20
Yet the symbolism of the snake is open to very different interpretations. In ancient Egypt it was used as the uraeus, the cobra that decorated the head-dress of the royal family as `Lord of Life and Death',2! the ultimate symbol of earthly power. According to the medieval Jewish Cabbalists, the secret or esoteric number of the serpent in Eden is the same as that for the Messiah: as the infamous - but extremely well educated - ritual magician Aleister Crowley wrote: `[the snake] is the Redeemer', noting `the serpent is also ... the principal symbol of male energy'22 and `creator and destroyer, who operates all change'.23 (He also amused and shocked by proffering `the serpent's kiss' to women, especially those whom he had just met. Of course it was a more or less painful bite.) To the heretical Gnostic Christians, the serpent, coiled around the Tree of Life, was to be celebrated as the bringer of gnosis, of intense personal enlightenment of the spirit. And to the Tantrics, the eastern devotees of sacred sexuality, the snake represents the power of kundalini, the creative sexual force that is normally envisaged as being curled up at the base of the spine. When roused it produces intense heat and power - but woe betide the individual who has not prepared diligently for its awakening with rigorous magical and spiritual discipline, for it can become awesomely uncontrollable.
However, in the original Eden myth, as the serpent slithers off to a fate of humiliation24 God rounds on Eve,
