Elsewhere the “Tree of Knowledge” becomes a symbol of humanity’s tragic, fallen status – talking apes hypnotized by language and alienated from their own divinity:
“There are two trees growing in Paradise. One bears animals, the other bears men. Adam ate from the tree which bore animals. He became an animal and he brought forth animals. For this reason the children of Adam worship animals. The tree whose fruit Adam ate is the Tree of Knowledge. That is why sins increased.”
If he ate the fruit of the other tree, that is to say, the fruit of the Tree of Life, the one which bears men, then the gods would worship man. For in the beginning God created man. But now men create God. That is the way it is in the world – men make gods and worship their creation. It would be fitting for the gods to worship men!” [1]
NOTES
“As monads of the imaginal realm, each Archon seeks to maintain itself, and will conceivably say or do whatever is necessary to gain our attention and worship. This is the origin of the “gods,” entities demanding worship which they need in the same way we need food in order to exist. Without worship, a god starves and is absorbed (eaten) by some other entity…
This cruel and arrogant (from our point of view) attitude of the Archons is only natural from their point of view if we compare their behavior with the way that we treat the animals and plants we use for food in our own dimension… from a human point of view, the entelechy of a potato is to be eaten, digested and ultimately transformed by humans. What was potato last week is me today…” [2]
- ”The Gospel of Philip.” The Other Bible. Ed. Willis Barnstone. Harper San Francisco, 1984. 95. [↩]
- DeKorne, Jim. Psychedelic Shamanism: The Cultivation, Preparation, and Shamanic Use of Psychotropic Plants. Breakout Productions, 1994. 98. [↩]
