Perhaps, too, the myth also contains an element common in modern science fiction, the fear of the robots' rebellion. Just as medieval and Renaissance Jewish legends told of the horror of the golem, a magically animated man, in the story of the Fall God's robotic creatures seize the initiative, revealing an inherent - and potentially dangerous - intelligence that their creator did not want to acknowledge. The creation myth is famously parodied in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, although perhaps it may be less of a travesty and closer to the original than is usually thought.
However, although it might seem a pointless exercise to question or read such a modem interpretation into what is essentially a group of ancient myths, even today's most sharply sophisticated cultures are still heavily influenced by them and their potent ramifications. Even in the twenty-first century, much of the Judaeo-Christian legacy informs the way that even most materialist sceptic thinks and behaves. Whether we like it or not, that legacy has built the history that spawned us, and shaped the attitudes that linger, often unpleasantly, in the dark recesses of our minds.
Perhaps, though, God did have a psychological understanding of Eve, knowing she would inevitably fall prey to the serpent. Perhaps the whole episode of the Fall was set up to test the loyalty of the first man and woman. But, in that case, surely their banishment was somewhat harsh? Perhaps a stiff talking-to, literally to put the fear of God into them, and another chance to prove themselves, would have made more sense? It is only too easy to liken God's reaction to that of a spoilt child taking out his spite on his new toys, the rather mindless Adam and Eve, when they failed to work according to the instructions. Indeed, if he had never experienced any other being standing up to him, a spoilt child is pretty much what he would have become. But was he ever challenged - apart from Adam and Eve in what was to prove their critical act of rebellion?
According to the Old Testament, Yahweh was confronted by one of his own leading angels, Lucifer, in a sort of explosive palace coup - which, of course, failed spectacularly, ending with the rebel leader's banishment to Earth, and beyond, into the nightmarish realms of hell.
To the Jews, the infernal regions were ablaze with Gehenna, a river of fire, although the name was often applied to the whole area. The concept of Hell as a fiery pit, so beloved of medieval theologians and witch-hunters, actually originated in ancient Egyptian wall paintings of `the wicked' being consumed by fire, although in fact these tormented souls were not meant to represent human sinners, but elemental spirits, enemies of the sun god Atum.31 However, that religion never laid any emphasis on eternal punishment for sin, the afterlife being instead a sort of assault course of monsters and demons that could be overcome with the right spells.
Although Egyptians spent their entire lives, and often their fortunes, trying to escape death - which they called `an abomination' - an essential aspect of their belief was that the dying-andrising god Osiris had saved humanity from death through the process of rebirth.
But in the West, the concept of Hell has long proved useful to keep the vulnerable in terror of God. Although this subject will be discussed in detail later, the following extract from the nineteenth century Father Furniss' Sight of Hell, an improving tract for young people, will suffice to convey these sadistic fantasies:
Of two little maids of sixteen, one cared only for dress, and went to a dancing school, and dared to disport in the park on Sunday instead of going to mass: the little maid stands now, and forever will stand, with bare feet upon a red-hot floor. The other walked through the streets at nights and did very wicked things; now she utters shrieks of agony in a burning oven. A very severe torment - immersion up to the neck in a boiling kettle - agitates a boy who kept bad company, and was too idle to go to mass, and a drunkard; avenging flames now issue from his ears. For like indecencies, the blood of a girl, who went to the theatre, boils in her veins; you can hear it boil, and her marrow is seething in her bones and her brain bubbles in her head. `Think,' says the compassionate father, `what a headache that girl must have!'32
Surely no comment is necessary.
As we shall see in a later chapter, some of the worst excesses of hellish punishments were invented by patriarchal societies to terrorize women. Barbara Walker notes, for example, that in this male-dominated Hell:
Women who scolded would be forced to lick hot stoves with their tongues. Women who showed disloyalty to men would be hung up by one leg, while scorpions, snakes, ants and worms dug their way in and out of their bodies 33
`Disloyalty to men' is a conveniently loose term open to a wide variety of interpretations.
We are not told whether Hell existed before the war in Heaven, but it certainly existed afterwards, when Lucifer lost his heavenly status. Isaiah apparently describes this landmark event:
How art thou fallen from heaven O day-star, son of the morning! (Helel ben Shahar) How art thou cast down to the ground, That didst cast lots over the nations!
And saidst in thy heart: `I will ascend into heaven, Above the stars of God (El) Will I exalt my throne; And I will sit upon the mount of meeting, In the uttermost parts of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the Most High (Elyon).' Yet thou shalt be brought down to the nether-world, To the uttermost parts of the pit.3a
While the putative existence of this once-great, but apparently anonymous, hero of Heaven provides the opposing force to God's goodness - and to a cynic an excuse for the evils of the world - in fact the passage quoted above may well simply be an allusion to a Phoenician or Canaanite myth about Helel, son of the god Shaher, who, coveting the almighty god's throne, was cast down into the abyss. But while in northern Syria there is an ancient poem about Shaher (dawn) and Shalim (dusk) - two divine offspring of the god El - no mention is made in the Canaanite sources of a Lucifer figure or a revolt against God.
Lucifer was also associated with the Assyro-Babylonian lightning god, Zu the Storm Bird, sometimes known as `the fiery flying serpent'. He was condemned for seeking Zeus' Tablets of Destiny, given to him by his mother, the goddess Tiamat. Zu cried: `I will take the tablet of destiny of the gods, even I; and I will direct all the oracle of the gods; I will establish a throne and dispense commands, I will rule over all the spirits of Heaven!'35
However, the description of the fallen one in the passage quoted above is seen as a clue to his identity by many Apocalyptic writers and Christians, particularly evangelicals or fundamentalists. `How art thou fallen from heaven 0 day-star, son of the morning!' is taken as a reference to Lucifer, whose name means 'Light-bringer', and therefore by extension is associated with the radiant Morning Star, the perfect symbol of hope that comes with each bright new day. Lucifer is identified as the former hero of heaven who challenged God, lost, and, together with his faithful angelic hordes, was exiled to Hell. Milton writes of the agonies of the fallen being, once God's favourite, now the personification of evil as Satan: `Apostate Angel, though in pain/Vaunting aloud, but rack'd with deep despair' .36
The first book of the apocryphal book of Enoch refers to the falling angels as stars, listing them by name as `Semiazaz, Arakiba, Rameel, Kokabiel, Tamiel, Danel, Ezeqeel, Baraqijal, Asael, Armaros, Batarel, Ananel, Zaqiel, Samsapeel, Satarel, Turel, Jomjael and Sariel' 31 Perhaps this passage was the origin of the confusion between the story of the Watchers - the angels who were overcome with lust for human women and fathered a race of giants with them - and Isaiah's story. Later Christian writers such as Saint Jerome also associate the fallen being described in Ezekiel 28: 13-15 with Lucifer:
You were in Eden, the garden of God; Every precious stone was your adornment: Carnelian, chrysolite, and amethyst; Beryl, lapis lazuli, and jasper; Sapphire. Turquoise, and emerald; And gold beautifully wrought for you,
Mined for you, prepared in the day you were created. I created you as a cherub With outstretched shielding wings; And you resided in God's holy mountain; And walked among the stones of fire. You were blameless in your ways, From the day you were created Until wrongd
oing was found in you By your far-flung commerce You were filled with lawlessness And you sinned. So I have struck you down From the mountain of God, And I have destroyed you, 0 shielding cherub, From among the stones of fire.
Here a great anti-hero's dazzling radiance is emphasized: he is hung about with the world's greatest riches, resplendent with the most fabulous jewels and gold. But he transgressed through his `farflung commerce' apparently suggesting an unpopular trading deal - which is a little odd but meaning `social relations' or even `sexual intercourse', - and lost it all. Worse than bankruptcy by far, however, was the fact that he has been struck down `From among the stones of fire', brought to the lowest state imaginable, apparently both materially and spiritually. Superficially this story seems to reinforce that of the fallen angel in Genesis, stressing the terrible dynamics of Luciferan exile.
Once again, though, there are other interpretations: it has been argued that this passage actually refers to the proud king Nebuchadnezzar, who suffered a dramatic fall from grace.38 But the associations with Lucifer persist, although not always in the context of evil. The Morning Star god, the Canaanites' Shaher, is still commemorated in the Jewish Shaharit or Morning Service 39 His twin brother, the Evening Star Shalem, announces the daily death of the sun and utters the Word of Peace, shalom. The twin gods were openly worshipped in the `House of Shalem' - or Jerusalem.
Their female parent was the Great Mother goddess Asherah, or Helel, the pit. The Canaanites believed that Shaher sought to usurp the glorious sun god, but was defeated and cast down from heaven as a lightning bolt. A seventh-century pagan dirge to the fallen one reads:
How hast thou fallen from heaven, Helel's son Shaher! Thou didst say in thy heart, I will ascend to heaven, above the circumpolar stars I will raise my throne, and I will dwell on the Mount of Council in the back of the north; I will mount on the back of a cloud, I will be like unto Elyon 40
The prototype for the story of Lucifer's fall originated in the Persian myth of Ahriman, the Great Serpent or Lord of Darkness, who challenged his rival, the sun god, Ahura Mazda, the Heavenly Father. ('Ahura' was once a feminine name4' As Jean Markale notes: `Ahura-Mazda was originally a luminous being who materialized in the form of a female goddess.')42 Being cast out of Heaven, Ahriman tempted the first man and woman in his guise as the Serpent, and prophets declared he would be defeated for ever at the end of the world. But he was Ahura-Mazda's twin, from the womb of Infinite Time, the Primal Creatress, not his inferior. In fact, Ahriman is honoured for having created the physical world, and became a major influence on the cult of Mithras - another dying-and-rising god - as `Armanius', the secret god of magic. The Persian emphasis on opposite-but-equal gods of Light and Dark enjoyed a renaissance in the beliefs of the Christian Gnostics, as we shall see.
In some versions of Lucifer's fall, Lucifer fought and lost to the archangel Michael, who remains for ever his personal enemy. (Both angels had shared similar characteristics, being associated with light and fire.) However, some of the angelic host refused to take sides and - somehow - managed to remain neutral, and will resurface later as central characters in the myths surrounding the Holy Grail.
In the last book of the Bible, the New Testament Revelation, the story is told thus:
And there was a war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. The great dragon was hurled down - that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him a3
Revelation also tells us that `the dragon's tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to earth,' which is taken to mean that a third of Lucifer's angelic followers fell with him.
Later versions of the Fall describe Lucifer being angered because God created a brother for him, Jesual the Son, from whose head sprang Sin, who in turn gave birth to Death. It was only after suffering this extra humiliation that Lucifer was ejected from his heavenly home.
According to Milton, the heavenly hosts - presumably slightly ruffled by Lucifer's dramatic exit from their number but no doubt rather smug at having made the wiser choice to remain in Heaven - were divided up into the following hierarchical categories: Powers, Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, Dominiations, Virtues, Principalities, Archangels and finally, angels. Although much favoured in recent years, especially by the New Age, angels were originally merely God's messengers, and often took the form of ordinary men.
However, in the first century CE the account of the Fall in Genesis was not the only story of mankind's earliest days that circulated among both Christians and Jews. Certain apocryphal tales loosely based on Genesis 6 began to circulate.
When men began to multiply on earth, and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were fair 45
The `sons of God' being angels, their subsequent enthusiastic coupling with Eve's descendants was a blatant transgression of God's law, but in any case their offspring became the half-human, half-angel `giants' (or `heroes' in some versions) in the `earth ... the mighty men of renown', whom later writers had no compunction about categorizing as demons. (The early Christians believed they were constantly at the mercy of attack from demons of all sizes, often quite literally. Saint Paul ruled that women's heads should be covered in church `because of the angels',46 for there was a real fear that female hair attracted daemones (other-worldly entities), much as jam attracts ants. The veils were therefore seen as sensible precautions, a sort of holy mosquito net.)
Another, non-biblical, myth has God calling his angels together to admire his latest creation - Adam. The archangel Michael obediently enthused, but Lucifer was horrified, demanding to know `Why do you press me? I will not worship one who is younger than I am, and inferior. I am older than he is; he ought to worship me! [My emphasis]."'
Us and them
As Elaine Pagels points out in her excellent Origin of Satan (1995), all the stories of the Fall, both biblical and non-biblical, `agree on one thing: that this greatest and most dangerous enemy did not originate ... as an outsider, an alien, or a stranger. Satan is not the distant enemy but the intimate enemy - one's trusted colleague, close associate, brother.'48 Just like Judas, who was to bring about Jesus' torture and death according to a heavenly script, Satan brings about mankind's freedom of choice, although - as we have seen - he may have done so from almost altruistic motives.
Pagels notes that
Whichever version of his origin one chooses, and there are many, all depict Satan as an intimate enemy ... Those who asked, `How could God's own angel become his enemy?' were thus asking, in effect, `How could one of us become one of them?'49
But while an eagerness to divide the world into rigid categories of `Us' and `Them' is nothing new - the Greeks called foreigners `barbarians' and, tellingly, the Egyptians' word for themselves was simply `human' - the western Christian tradition degraded its enemies as primarily nonhuman: if they challenged Christianity they were God's enemies.
(Yet of course God himself had behaved reprehensibly in the story of the Fall. As Jean Markale writes:
... the Eternal God is bad-natured and horrendously jealous, and ... he behaves like a rich capitalist who has no intention of sharing his eternity with anyone else. For what pleasure would there be in it if everybody had it?)"
While sadly it seems to be a human failing to dismiss those outside the tribe or church as unworthy of the same rights and considerations, the Christians made this a moral and religious issue, which gave their later persecutions a fanatical edge as they used this attitude `to justify hatred, even mass slaughter'.51 As we shall see, this justification was used to extremes by the Inquisitors, largely against `heretics' - free thinkers, Christian dissenters, or women - but `revulsion at this doctrine is one of the main reasons for the decline of belief in the Devil since the eighteenth century' 52 However, while the Jews have tended to dismiss the i
mportance of the Fall as simply an allegory of evil, for many Christians the story of Lucifer remains potent.
Lucifer is also depicted as the immortal serpent Sata, ruler of lightning, who takes on the Hebrew name Satan in Jesus' words: `I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven'.53 However, `Satan' as a synonym for `Lucifer' became `official' among Christians in the late first and second centuries, with the theological writings of Church Fathers Origen (born 185 CE) and Saint Augustine (354-430) - indeed, some theologians argue that Origen was the first to make this connection 54
To the famous Greek philosopher Plato, the god associated with the Morning Star was Aster (which means simply `Star'); Plato realized that it had a strange, dual personality, for it also appeared in a different celestial position in the evening. Plato lauded Aster as the ultimate dying-and-ri sing god, exclaiming: `Aster, once, as Morning Star, light on the living you shed. Now, dying, as Evening Star, you shine among the dead.'S'
Adversary and obstructor
A major tendency of Judaeo-Christian thought is that God's opposite is a Satan, an `obstructor' of his will - which becomes, in New Testament Greek, diabolos, the Devil. But while the New Testament and the early Christians became increasingly concerned with building up Satan's role as they themselves fell prey to the barbarians and executioners, the Jews were, in the words of the American scholar Jeffrey Burton Russell `moving decisively in the other direction'. He explains: `[To the Jews] evil results from the imperfect state of the created world or from human misuse of free will, not from the machinations of a cosmic enemy of the Lord'."
In the older Jewish traditions Satan is known as Sammael, a
high angel who falls, uses the serpent to tempt Adam and Eve, and acts as tempter, accuser, destroyer and angel of death ... Satan has no existence independent of the Lord, who uses him as tester of hearts, an agent who reports our sins to the Lord, and an official in charge of punishing them 57
The Secret History of Lucifer: And the Meaning of the True Da Vinci Code Page 3
