Adam the Golem
Adam (the first man) was a misbegotten android, spawned when Yaldabaoth tried to duplicate and enslave a reflected vision of Immortal Man which startled the Rulers when it appeared in the waters of paradise.
“Now the Rulers took some soil from the earth and modeled their Man, after their body and after the Image of God that had appeared to them in the waters.” [1]
“For Adam was a laughingstock, since he was made a counterfeit type of man by the Rulers.” [3]
Adam’s orgins are spectacularly undignified: in one version of the story, the Archons created him by masturbating into a mud puddle [4]:
“the First Father gave those who were with him a false intention concerning the man. Then each one of them cast his seed on the midst of the navel of the earth. Since that day, the seven Rulers have formed the man: his body is like their body, his likeness is like the man who appeared to them. His molded body came into being according to a portion of each one of them. Their chief created his head and the marrow.”
Another describes him as a pathetic, spineless creature who crawled on his stomach:
“The (first) human being was a creation of angels [but was] unable to stand erect because of the angels’ impotence, and rather writhed on the ground like a worm….” [5]
Not only was Adam’s body freakishly flawed, but Yaldabaoth wasn’t even confident enough in his power to risk bringing his experimental golem to life - instead he left him comatose and inert, like a lobotomized chimp in a cage:
“Because of this deed… [the Chief Ruler] was afraid lest perhaps the man come into his molded body and rule over it. Because of this, he left his molded body forty days without soul. And he withdrew and left him.” [6]
POINTS TO PONDER
The Mandaeans of Northern Iraq (still active today) teach that Adam walked on all fours, made noises “like a sheep” and had the face of an “ape” when God first created him. The first man remained in this pitiable state until Eve (his soul) agreed to descend to the earth and vivfy him, on the condition that her new home be supplied with all the things she had grown accustomed to in the world of light: flowers, streams, birds and trees. This quadraped cave-Adam thus recalls the “ascent of man” as depicted in the “tree of evolution” and the locomotion of the human infant - we evolved from simpler forms of life, and we crawled before we could walk.
A gnostic Christian group called the Ophites taught that God created Adam as a giant, “immeasurable in breadth and length.” The problem with this Adam was that he couldn’t stand up; instead, he simply writhed on the ground “like a worm” until the Holy Spirit descended and gave him the breath of life. This too recalls the theory of evolution as presented in introductory biology - the ocean floor was populated with all manner of squirming, wriggling fauna millions and millions of years before animal life even ventured forth from the prehistoric seas.
“The first vertebrates, the ancestral line of animals that led to the human race, appeared on earth at least 40 million years earlier than previously believed, according to British scientists studying fossils of enigmatic, worm-like creatures called conodonts.
Their conclusion is based on new evidence that the gripping teeth of ancient conodonts were made of bone cells of the type that occur only in animals with backbones. The development of bone in primitive, soft-bodied animals was one of the great landmarks of evolution, opening the way for higher animals, starting with bony fishes and leading to the human race.”
MALCOLM W. BROWNE, Evidence of Bone Shows Vertebrates To Be Far Older Than Once Believed, NY Times, : May 29, 1992
FOOTNOTES
1. Hypostasis of the Archons, from Willis Barnstone’s The Other Bible, p. 76, pub. A.D. 1984
2. The Creation of Man, from E.S.Drower’s The Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran, Clarendon Press, Oxford,1937
3. The Second Treatise of the Great Seth, from James M. Robinson’s The Nag Hammadi Library, pp.363-71, pub. A.D. 1978
4. On the Origin of the World, ibid, p.69
5. The Sethian-Ophites, Barnstone, ibid, p.662
6. On the Origin of the World, ibid, p.69
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Each and every individual has an almost comical desire to see himself destroyed. Few individuals can bear the mental chaos which surrounds them. There’s always some little something or another that’s not quite right, a tad bit off. Without the need to change diapers, most mothers would strangle their infants.
Always remember that those who don’t frantically accept this world of in-voluntarism will be labeled misfits or worse. So, brothers and sisters, be prepared - for enemies are needed to blame for everything that goes ‘wrong.’
The accepted notion that destruction does, actually, lead to death is purely happenstantial. There are sentient beings who are able to destroy themselves and still live.