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From the July 2008 Newsletter

An excerpt from: THE LOCKED DOOR OF PARADISE: CLOSED VERSUS OPEN RELIGIOUS SYSTEMS
Thirteenth International Conference on the Study of Shamanism and Alternate Modes" of Healing 1996: San Rafael, California
Felicitas D. Goodman, Ph.D

The speakers we have heard until now have, by implication taken us to the beginning of life, even before one-cell beings appeared on earth in the oceans. I don't want to take you that far back. Instead, I do want to take you back about one million years, to a time, when, as our Native American stories say, humans and animals were still as one. This was the time of the hunters and the gatherers, when humans were part of the natural world. The women took care of the daily sustenance and the men hunted about three hours a week. A senator once remarked, "…..and then, we came along and wanted to improve on that system." However, something happened and we don't know why, and this is what I am going to talk about. Roughly ten thousand years ago humans abandoned this particular way of life and took up another one which we have to come to name in anthropology, "agriculture." Nobody really knows why "agriculture" came about.

When I was a graduate student, there were a number of calculations published about the food and its availability (Cohen 1977). There was no food crisis in pre-history. The hunting and gathering way of life had a regular track. People went around and exploited about ten per cent of the available food and then they moved on. By the time they came back to the same spot, nature had taken care of replenishing. Everything was plentifully present. It is foolish when people interpret hunting and gathering rituals as rituals asking for fertility. They did not need any rituals to increase fertility. Yet, ten thousand years ago, people, in many instances, abandoned this wonderful life of paradise and took up a different one. In this new way of life, eventually everything changed, women became chattel, the moral system of appropriateness was changed into a system of good and evil; the Lower World, the womb, the sheltering of humankind was turned into hell and heaven became an empty space. Everything changed. Why? There was no crisis. As researchers have found, there was no food crisis at that time.

As Ruth-Inge told us this morning, myth is a report of prehistoric events. In order to understand, why humans turned from a life in paradise to a life of toil and eventually destruction of the earth. we have to consult collections of myths. But, in doing so, I could not find out why agriculture came about What I found instead in the mythology of the tribes that still have the way of the hunters and gatherers and the horticulturalists was emptiness--no information at all about why this sudden earthquake came about which was the beginning of the end. In addition, there is no indication about what happened after this catastrophe.-myths are silent on that. There are, however, some myths that tell us about the results.

One of the stories about the results of this change is very familiar to Westerners. It is the story of Adam and Eve in Paradise. When you look at the story with the eye of the storyteller as I am, what happened? Eve made friends with the snake which was perfectly understandable. The snake is a very charming animal and the two were talking about, what women talk about. "Where do you get something to eat?" Eve asked.

And the snake said, "Here is this tree, it has wonderful apples." "You think they are good?"

And the snake said, "Yes, I am sure. I tried them and they tasted good. Why don't you?" And Eve tasted them. After all, she had taken care of that tree. She had brought it water.

So she ate an apple, Adam was some place away. The gossip, among the animals, was that Adam had another wife in the bushes, by the name of Lilith. He obviously spent more time with Lilith than with Eve which Eve did not take very kindly to. So eventually Adam came by and said, "Hey what are you doing there?" And Eve said, "The snake said this is a good tasting apple. Why don't you also try it?" And Adam tried it and he probably thought that he could take one of those apples to Lilith who apparently did not know about this tree.

Anyway all of the sudden, there came a very angry spirit and demanded that people call him "God." He said. "Didn't I tell you that you were not supposed to eat those apples?" Eve said, "She never heard of anything like that. And Adam was not around to defend her. He was probably off with Lilith.The snake slinked down into the bushes. And here was poor Eve with this angry spirit who was absolutely furious. He took Eve by her hair and threw her out of Paradise and then went after Adam and threw Adam out after her. The god put up a gate and on the gate he attached a rotating sword that spewed fire all over and he slammed the gate shut That was the story of slamming the gate to Paradise, and Adam and Eve just could not figure things out We cannot figure out either what made this spirit that called himself God so angry. That is the crux of the matter.

Reference:
Cohen, Mark Nathan. The Food Crisis in Prehistory: Overpopulation and the Origins of Agriculture. New Haven, NJ: Yale University Press, 1977.

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