Eve and the Snake

On March 9, 2018March 9, 2018 By Roger B. BurtIn Cusp of Reality, MythologyLeave a comment

It’s Not So Simple

Monday’s post this week was about whether Eve did us a favor when she supposedly got humankind kicked out of Paradise. Of course there was another creature involved—the snake. The story I was thinking of was from the Bible. From interpretations I had heard, I thought the snake was somewhere between evil incarnate and the Devil. I thought it told us that we had lost the wonder of Paradise because we fell for what the snake was offering. Well, turns out it is all more complicated than that. In my post I indicated I thought it was not really so bad to be kicked out of Paradise. But then I got an interesting query from my friend Nathaniel.

“And where do you suppose the snake came from?” was his question. Crafty man Nathaniel. So I went online to get clarification. I was surprised.

Alternatives Offered

Here’s one thing I found:

“Fertility and rebirth. Historically, serpents and snakes represent fertility or a creative life force. As snakes shed their skin through sloughing, they are symbols of rebirth, transformation, immortality, and healing. The ouroboros is a symbol of eternity and continual renewal of life.”

Richness of Interpretation

Nathaniel had offered a interesting interpretation about mermaids which evidently symbolize a melding of earth and the sea and in the melding they also represent orgasm. Such wonderful complexity and it demonstrates what is offered to us in mythology and even in the world of fiction.

What I found particularly interesting is that when we rove into the world of symbolism and mythology there are often not simple answers. Certainly in my writing on the Gaia’s Majesty Trilogy I have found multiple meanings that I had to weave into the story.

And There’s More

Then Nathaniel, with his rich knowledge of the Bible and symbolism, clarified further. “Yes, there are many symbolic meanings for the snake. We tend to forget that in the Biblical story God created the snake. There is always a tension between bliss (the garden) and reality (post garden). God also lives in that dialectic and, as creatures made in God’s image, so do we humans.”

Things to contemplate.

Gaia’s Majesty-Mission Called: Women in Power by Roger B. Burt

Roger B. Burt’s Amazon home page

Creating Characters and Plots by Roger B. Burt

Stepfamilies: Professionals and Stepcouples in Partnership

Whatever Happened to Community Mental Health by Roger B. Burt

Did Eve Do Us a Favor?

On March 5, 2018March 5, 2018 By Roger B. BurtIn Cusp of Reality, Struggle, vision2 Comments

Challenge and Opportunity

Writing fiction is a challenging task. It is generally said to be a creative pursuit. Easy statement but not so simple in practice. How many of us have looked at the image of the writer sitting at his/her desk wondering how to begin. Of course the first question is probably not what to write but why write. Somehow we feel a challenge or a push but at base writing fiction is fundamental to human existence.

Oh please! (I don’t mean that.) Not everyone feels the urge to write but they often enough choose to read. It’s not just a matter of us having the capacity to do either. There is something fundamental because of our tendency to seize the moment of creation of all kinds.

Who We Are

I’ll try not to go too deeply into philosophical meanderings. One of the categories I chose for my WordPress blog is “struggle”. When I chose it, I thought it would fit some specific items but found I selected it over and over again because I came to realize that life on this planet has a fundamental element of struggle. Once that is stated I don’t think I need to exemplify it. Surely many forms of it leap into your awareness. And its not just a matter of survival. Its incredibly fundamental and the challenge is essential.

One Example

You may have been wondering when I would get to the title of this post. Did Eve Do Us a Favor? Actually that came to my mind clearly one day. It’s possible to take that biblical episode as an indication of how women have fouled our future. It can also be seen as how evil can trip happily into our lives as in the form of the snake. But certainly it has been taken in a variety of ways as indicative e of how women are naive and fail us.

A Very Different Take

I have another view and think we owe a huge debt of gratitude to Eve. Without her we would be sitting in Paradise desperate for something interesting to do. The view presented to us of paradise is shallow and wanting of challenge. Perhaps Eve saw that the snake was offering us a rich future of struggle and with it opportunity. But it required being cast our of Paradise and its inevitable boredom.

Not Stopping There

When we move beyond Paradise we immediately recognize a universe of opportunity. And I use the word universe pointedly. When we step back and look at our four plus billion year world we see amazing diversity and creation. We may be a moment time and have to wonder how we will evolve from here. Of course, each of us may well not see much of what is to come but the contemplation of possibilities is stunning.

Thanking Women – Again

And so I come back to the matter of struggle and seizing the opportunity. Our human past has been rich in struggle but also creation and opportunity. Women as the source of children and our future require recognition. So, again…Thank You Eve!-for your marvelous gift of opportunity.

Gaia’s Majesty-Mission Called: Women in Power by Roger B. Burt

Roger B. Burt’s Amazon home page

Creating Characters and Plots by Roger B. Burt

Stepfamilies: Professionals and Stepcouples in Partnership

Whatever Happened to Community Mental Health by Roger B. Burt

Waves in Human Existence

On October 12, 2016October 12, 2016 By Roger B. BurtIn Cusp of Reality, Struggle, TransformationLeave a comment

A Living Planet

The image of an ocean beach is always engaging. The movement and the sense of a living planet is essential and stirring. But, as we sense the attitudes of our life we can see that the waves exist everywhere and are compelling.

Sometimes there is talk of the march of history but a march does not describe the essence of the experience of life on our planet. Certainly there is nothing steady and, for that, I am grateful. It is the overlapping waves at so many levels which makes life interesting. Demarkations, twists and turns are essential as well as the swelling to a crescendo. In fact, I wish to publicly thank Eve and the snake for freeing us from the prison that was Paradise. It would have been terribly boring. Challenge is better.

Dynamic Explorations

Life need not be a passive experience or at least I would never wish it to be so. Life is to be an exploration of meaning and possibilities. And within all those things are waves. Our social groups experience waves, our cities, cultures, countries and, now, I believe humankind is confronting a wave of the largest magnitude of our history.

For most of my life I have been something of cynic and not prone to accept the common wisdom. And I have always been suspicious of claims of an impending fulfillment religious or otherwise. Perhaps it is the word fulfillment of which I am suspicious. But presently I am perceiving, rightly or wrongly, that we seem on the verge of a consolidation of our future. As grim as things seem in so many parts of human existence currently, there appears to be a process which holds promise. And such promise is most often born of challenge and conflict.

It is the theme of a wave of change or denouement which was central in driving my Gaia’s Majesty Trilogy. The first book, Gaia’s Majesty: Discovery: Mission Called – Women in Power sets the scene and develops the characters to travel with us as humankind faces a denouement with profound implications.

Of the Personal and the Species

Looking back I see repeated waves appearing in my life. I see them of various duration and in everything from the personal to the societal and now in the existence in humankind as a whole. Personally I saw it in the wonder of growing up in vibrant New York. Then in the 1970s the city teetered on the edge of bankruptcy and we saw a very different city for a time. In our economies we see it over hundreds of years as we move through feudalism, capitalism and now it seems, toward postcapitalism.

Repeatedly I turned to mythology and the meaning it coveys even as we experience the numinous or spiritual dimension. In our personal lives the mysterium, which is the mystery of woman, ensnares us bringing wonder and fulfillment. It may invoke fear among men but also fulfillment. And in turn it leads to the meaning of the empowerment of women and all facets of its meaning. And it is not a momentary phenomenon but is better characterized as a wave swelling and then breaking – toward what end?

Exploration and Enriched Reality

In the coming posts I’ll share some thoughts about the waves we experience as humans, about what may happen to countries and our country in particular and I will be paying special attention to the human climate. This is an unimaginably fascinating time. I chose the cuspofreality for the name of the blog because I think we need to be exploring not just ourselves but our world so we may move toward an understanding of what is happening. Nothing is fixed and everything open to interpretation—like reality.

Waves enrich us in all aspects of human existence and I could not resist sharing a mythologically cloaked adventure about the wave which I believe may be dominating our lives right now and leading us into our future.

Roger B. Burt’s Amazon home page