These were initially tweets inspired by Adam Louis-Klein’s “The Holographic Sky”. You should probably read the article, and take Edward Butler's advice to read it in terms of what the symbolic words there mean in your own tradition. I promise that even if you don’t understand everything, it’s a worthy trip. I took that advice and wrote a short series of tweets on the thoughts it inspired. I think they are worthy enough for a short blog post. Enjoy!
The tree of life was the light of Genesis that marked the first day and separated the firmament from the sea on the Second day. The tree of knowledge was born when the heavenly bodies divided the light of day One. This means, as many have noted, that the tree of knowledge itself is not evil, but sundering it from the tree of life makes it so.
The "humans" created on day six refer to individual souls and intellects, who belong to no species, and all species. The "human" is the intellectual. The "animals" they are to subdue are their bodies, and this opens a perspectival understanding that animals are also "human".
Day One is Day Seven viewed protologically. Day Seven is Day One viewed Eschatologically.
The Serpent is himself the light of the tree of knowledge, of the stars, moon, and Sun, as the ambiguous aspect of the light of Day One, present to complete the Goodness of the world by revealing its parts qua parts.
The Sea is good not with respect to the land, compared to which it is a kind of privation, but with respect to the firmament. The sea reflects the unboundedness of the Firmament as a boundary.
The breathing of spirit into Adam, the speaking into existence of entities in each of the seven days, Elohim's "rest" on the seventh day, are all the same event, the event that is Genesis 1:1. Because it is the same event, and this event, Gen 1:1, is the Emanation from the One — which is Plural here, a multitude of Gods — the creation myth can be seen as theology and a theophany; and the latter not of one God, but of many Gods. The "speaking", the "breathing" into existence of the temple Cosmos, is the manifestation of the different Gods and perhaps their train i.e. "humans".
Eden is the immediate presence of a God or Gods, "planted" (rooted) in the "east", in proximity to the rising Sun, another God. Insofar as a heavenly body (a God Manifest) is a "part" of the first daylight, it is a tree of life.
The "fall" to the west is the soul moving towards the world of death, the other side of the fragmentation and bending of light (the serpent is himself a bent ray of light) away from its source. He is us, and we are him.
To return to Eden we have to stop letting animals be merely our substitutes and let them be our actual guides. Let us follow them to the sword and fire of the Cherubim at the gate. Once the flesh is dead, it lives again in the fire that ascends inward, to the east.
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You can get the piece by Jonathan Pageau here.