the timboucher experience

Since I’m already knee-deep in Gnostic research this afternoon, I may as well continue with it. I’ve also been thinking on and off about alternate interpretations of the story of Genesis, of which there are many. It’s more than likely that I’m paraphrasing this from unremembered sources, but I wanted to offer the one I’ve been considering.

Basically, it has to do with the idea that the Choice that Adam & Eve made in the Garden of Eden was whether or not to incarnate into physical bodies. The Serpent represents the biological genetic impulse. Eve succumbs to this impulse first, since women are the producers of life. So the original impulse is towards biological/physical existence, which is then “ratified” when they taste the fruit. Their consciousness then becomes sealed in some sense to physical bodies. They are said to feel shame because they become immediately aware of their biological impulses towards survival and genetic continuation. Fundamentally, they become incapable of remaining the Gardne of Eden. It’s not that God throws them out so much as that, since they have bodies, they necessarily must give into the world of toil and death which having a body entails.

Philip K. Dick, Alan Watts, and others talk about how “Original Sin” is not actually some sin of morality against God, but that it consists of our forgetting. We forget that we chose to descend into the physical time-space bound reality that we know. Certain strains of Gnosticism deal with a process called “anamnesis” which means “a loss of forgetfulness,” whereby we become aware of our true nature.

The belief that we are pluriforms of God voluntarily descended to this prison world, voluntarily losing our memory, identity and supernatural powers (faculties), all of which can be regained through anamnesis (or, sometimes, the mystical conjunction), is one of the most radical religious views known in the West. But it is known. It is regarded as the Great Blasphemy: replication of the original sin mentioned in the First Book of Adam and Eve and in Genesis. For this pride and aspiration (we are told by orthodoxy) our original fall and exile and punishment, our being taken from our home the gardenland and put into the prison, was inflicted on us. “They wish to be equal to - like - us,” the Elohim say, and toss us down. Yet I have reason to believe that this, “the Great Satanic Blasphemy,” is true.

First, we are here voluntarily. We did not sin and we were not punished; we elected to descend. Why? To infuse the divine into the lowest strata of creation in order to halt its decomposing - the sinking of its lower realm.

There’s a book I want to read, which Alan Moore mentions in an interview, called Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge. The book is an analysis of shamanic traditions which purport to be able to communicate with a serpent-entity. This is interpreted as DNA or as Kundalini, which is ultimately the same bio-genetic impulse towards survival and reproduction as I described above operating in the Garden of Eden, tempting Adam & Eve towards their “Fall” into fleshly bodies. Also, its interesting to note, that as Kundalini rises in the mystic practitioner, the serpent energy pushes you back towards a cosmic consciousness.

One other slant on this whole thing is that some Gnostic sects believed the Serpent not to be a temptor, but to be a Redeemer, in the style of the Christ-Logos. They believe that the Serpent gave Adam & Eve secret teachings (gnosis) which the demiurging Yahweh wanted to keep hidden from them. The most famous of these groups were the Ophites, who worshipped this snake-god. I started researching to see if there is any connection between the Ophites and the Snake-Handler churches in rural America. They seem to not be directly connected, but the similarity is still interesting.

A few additional resources:

1. Serpent-Handling as Sacrament
2. The Caduceus vs the Staff of Asclepius
3. The Cosmic Serpent, by Jeremy Narby
4. Caduceus - Rod of Hermes - DNA
5. Kundalini Energies
6. Serpents in amateur fantasy art
7. What is the reptilian brain?
8. David Icke and the Reptilian Brain
9. Flying Serpents and Dragons : The Story of Mankind’s Reptilian Past
10. Dragons, DNA & the I Ching
11. Serpent archetypes in religion and mythology
12. The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence by Carl Sagan

And a tattoo design I made for a friend, which seems especially relevant, although I wasn’t thinking about this exactly when I made it.

• Gnostic Sex Practices
• Pagan origins of Easter & Eggs
• The Crucified Serpent
• Ophiuchus
• Aleph meets resistance