The Love of Richard Nixon

“I leave you gentlemen now. And you will now write it. You will interpret it. 

That’s your right. But as I leave you, I want you to know: just think how much you’re going to be missing. 

You don’t have Osiris to kick around anymore. Because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.”

 “If I can never TRULY Understand You without Walking in Your Shoes and vice versa, WHAT'S THE POINT of Listening or Talking to ANYONE about Our experience? What’s The POINT of Writing Stories, or Protesting, or Making Art if experience cannot by its nature be communicated and understood by ANYONE who has not shared The Experience of The Artist, or The Writer?

I think we all know it doesn’t really work that way in The Real World. We don’t need to BE a thing to have some Understanding of How it Operates. 

People can be great Veterinarians without personally experiencing the day-to-day Inner Lives of Dogs and Cats. 

I can read Solzhenitsyn and shed empathic tears for The Inmates of the Gulag without having to REPRISE their EXACT experience.

To think otherwise might be, I suspect, a Symptom of Narcissism painted into its inevitable corner, its Private Echo Chamber – destructive, divided, atomized, individualistic to the point of self-abnegation – and indicative of Late stage Osiris pathology.

Q: Why the psychoanalytic emphasis on his strong Quaker mother and the deaths of his two brothers?

A: We will never know what made the man tick. When Nixon was alive people would say “Who IS Richard Nixon? What mask is he wearing today?” 

We do know that two of his brothers died young. And I’ve heard that those two brothers were very charismatic, like the Kennedys. 

My intuition tells me that as the least loved child he became an overachiever. I believe his mother loved him with conditions. He wrote a letter to her that he signed “Your faithful dog.” 

So I believe that his emotions were twisted by his childhood. His mother’s ideals were the complete opposite of his behavior, which was cynical. By the time you get to the deaths of the two Kennedy brothers, he feels guilt. If Bobby Kennedy had run in 1968, he would have been president and not Richard Nixon. His whole life he tried to overcompensate.

http://parisvoice.com/oliver-stone-discusses-his-film-qnixonq/

 

 

The world on your shoulders
The love of your mother
The fear of the future
The best years behind you
The world is getting older
The times they fall behind you
The need it still grows stronger
The best years never found you
The love of Richard Nixon, death without assassination
The love of Richard Nixon, yeah they all betrayed you
The love of Richard Nixon, death without assassination
Yeah they all betrayed you
Yeah and your country too
Love build around the sandy beaches
Love rains down like Vietnam's leeches
Richard the third in the White House
Cowering behind divided curtains
The world is getting older
The times they fall behind you
The need it still grows stronger
The best years never found you
Ah, the love of Richard Nixon, death without assassination
The love of Richard Nixon, yeah they all betrayed you
The love of Richard Nixon, death without assassination
Yeah they all betrayed you
Yeah and your country too
The love of Richard Nixon, death without assassination
The love of Richard Nixon, yeah they all betrayed you
People forget China and your war on cancer
Yeah they all betrayed you
Yeah and your country too
In all the decisions I have made in my public life,
I have always tried to do what was best for the nation.
I have never been a Quitter

It’s still a subcurrent at the moment, as the patriarchal Aeon of Osiris bows out kicking and screaming but I think it’s the only one that gives us any chance of survival right now. It’s not like this is the dawning of the age of Aquarius. For me these ideas are interesting metaphors; they’re filters, and I find that if I apply this particular filter suggested by Kenneth Grant and Crowley it allows me to see things in a different relationship, which is very creatively rewarding if nothing else.  Viewing the world through the filter of these Thelemic notions, what’s happening right now all around us suddenly becomes not only obvious but almost predictable.  

It’s important to emphasize that this is not something to ‘believe’ in. This is a metaphor and not a belief system. But new metaphors can change whole cultures as we know from our history.

Crowley said that the general tenor of the last six thousand years of human civilization could be summed up by the personalities of a family of Egyptian gods. And the first two thousand years up to the birth of Christ, this was the Age of Isis, the Mother Goddess, where people were hunter/gatherers or early agrarians living off the land, relying on ‘Mother Earth’, the seasons and the tides.

So, the next Aeon from Christ onward is the Aeon of Osiris, The Dying and Resurrected God. Osiris is also The Law Giver and He brings with Him The Written Word, so now Ideas can be enshrined in Books and Books can outlast Generations and they take on The Aura of Gods Themselves.

God Himself is present in the works of The Bible. God Himself is present in The Quran. So certainly, there’s this programming code language, the instructional Dad language, which can take people over just from reading a book and turn them into agents of The Dad God’s Expansionist, Controlling Agenda. This is when Nature goes from Provider to something that exists to be Tamed and Exploited. That’s The Aeon of Osiris.

Following Osiris, comes this fiery breakdown, the child Horus is the son of Osiris and he’s every jihadi, every warrior, every rock star reformer, every young man who sees as his sacred mission the tearing down of structures, the questioning of rules. It’s punk rock, “I gotta tear it all down.” But running in tandem with that, according to Kenneth Grant, is the shadow Aeon of Ma’at, Horus’ sister and she’s the goddess of truth and balance and harmony and all that Wonder Woman stuff.

Feral Cows

Dear Zoe,

Thank you for being such a courteous host.

It is, however, the tradition that the courteous host must speed the parting guest, and I'm sure you will accord with this.

Also, Thank You for your offer of food.

However, it is not my practice to eat cattle.

In the matter of blood, I'm a connoisseur.

Blood is Lives.

Blood is Testimony.

The Testimony of everyone I have ever destroyed flows in my veins.

I will choose with care who joins them now.

Ripeness is the first moment of Decay.

Sweetness is the promise of Corruption.

I shall look for The Perfect Food of This World.

And I will find it.

Never doubt that.

I will find it.

Blood is everything you needed to know, Zoe, if you understand how to read it.

Have you worked out how yet?

If you ever hope to match me, you'll have to.

Count Dracula

The “Wild” Cattle at Chillingham are The Stuff of Legend.

Around 700 years ago, one of The Lords of Chillingham Castle decided to let a herd of cattle on his land roam free, without Human Interference.

He reckoned that having wild cattle on his estate would provide him with an exciting hunt, and at the same time, deter cattle rustlers.

The herd have been there ever since.

“ It’s a bit of a mystery where the cattle came from —

About 800 years ago, The King granted the family, here A Right to Create a Castle, and to crenelate — and with that came The Right to create this Park.

And so they created The Park.

And the idea of The Park was really to hold Red Deer —

And the Red Deer were - well, they weren’t sacred, but they were definitely The Gift of The King -

and if you went and killed or hunted a Red Deer, without The Permission of The King...  Things were probably going to go very badly for you, and you would probably lose your life... and with, maybe, a few other things as well..

So, to suddenly have The Park, for the family here, was a BIG Deal...

 

So they created The Wall, and at some stage, they must've come and shut all the gates, or whatever they'd created -

and they caught all of the Red Deer, but they ALSO caught these cattle.

And The Mystery is  - What Were The Cattle DOING, Roaming around, here -- when we KNOW that cattle have been domesticated in this country for AT LEAST five thousand years, possibly six --

So, Why were The Cattle  in The Woods....?

No-one really knows.

The Cattle have been here for 800 years and more, and for the first couple of hundred years of their existence, they served no agricultural purpose at all, really - and What They Were Here For, was hunting, and to be hunted --

So they needed them WILD.

The last thing you want if you are going out hunting an animal to prove how tough and manly you were is something Tame, that's no good.

You needed to have something that was stroppy.

So they kept them stroppy, they didn't allow any sort of domesticated breeds to get in amongst them,

Special Agent Dale Cooper : 

Roger —

I know The Moves I'm supposed to make. 

And I know The Board.

FBI Agent Roger Hardy : 

So?

Special Agent Dale Cooper : 

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately. 

And I've started to focus out beyond The Edge of The Board. 

On A Bigger Game.

FBI Agent Roger Hardy : 

What Game?

Special Agent Dale Cooper : 

The sound The Wind makes through The Vines. 

The Sentience of Animals.

What we fear in The Dark and what lies beyond The Darkness.

FBI Agent Roger Hardy : 

What the hell are you talking about?

Special Agent Dale Cooper : 

I'm talking about seeing beyond Fear, Roger. 

About looking at The World with Love.

FBI Agent Roger Hardy : 

They're liable to extradite you for 

Murder and Drug Trafficking.

Special Agent Dale Cooper : 

These are Things I Cannot Control.

“ Wotan had toiled to create the free Siegfried; presented with the free Siegfried, he was enraged. 

This terrible need to be needed often finds its outlet in pampering an animal. To learn that someone is “fond of animals” tells us very little until we know in what way. 

For there are two ways.

On the one hand the higher and domesticated animal is, so to speak, a “bridge” between us and the rest of nature. 

We all at times feel somewhat painfully our human isolation from the sub-human world—the atrophy of instinct which our intelligence entails, our excessive self-consciousness, the innumerable complexities of our situation, our inability to live in the present. If only we could shuffle it all off! We must not—and incidentally we can’t—become beasts. 

But we can be with a beast. 

It is personal enough to give the word with a real meaning; yet it remains very largely an unconscious little bundle of biological impulses. It has three legs in nature’s world and one in ours. It is a link, an ambassador. 

Who would not wish, as Bosanquet put it, “to have a representative at the court of Pan?"

Man with dog closes a gap in the universe. But of course animals are often used in a worse fashion. 

If you need to be needed and if your family, very properly, decline to need you, a pet is the obvious substitute. You can keep it all its life in need of you. 

You can keep it permanently infantile, reduce it to permanent invalidism, cut it off from all genuine animal well-being, and compensate for this by creating needs for countless little indulgences which only you can grant. 

The unfortunate creature thus becomes very useful to the rest of the household; it acts as a sump or drain—you are too busy spoiling a dog’s life to spoil theirs. 

Dogs are better for this purpose than cats: a monkey, I am told, is best of all. 

Also it is more like the real thing. 

To be sure, it’s all very bad luck for the animal. But probably it cannot fully realise the wrong you have done it. 

Better still, you would never know if it did."

— CS Lewis : The Four Loves

Cows have just the right level of Fear -- They'll keep a wary distance, but if they're handled properly, they won't  scare.

Many animals, like antelope and most species of deer, can't be domesticated -- because the slightest surprise causes them to bolt.

If you try to fence-in a herd of gazelles, they'll batter themselves to death on The Fence, trying to escape in a panic.

In Indian mythology, the call of the inner world, the call of the unconscious, is often portrayed as a Deer that is tantalizingly close but eludes being  caught. 

 The King and his courtiers were galloping along when the King saw a deer just  out of bow-and-arrow range. 

He veered off and began following it, but the miraculous deer kept just outside his range. 

The King went plunging further and further  into The Forest, chasing The Deer all day, so intent was he, in his masculine vigor, to  catch this prized animal. 

By late afternoon, the King was irretrievably lost, and The Deer had vanished. 

What a Wonderful Deer. 

He gets you Where You Need to Go and  then Leaves You.  

The King was exhausted and rather frightened, as he was now separated from  his courtiers. 

Being a Wise Young Man, he got off his horse and sat down. 

If you  don’t know what to do, 

sit quietly until your wits come back. 

Van Helsing :

Count Dracula,

please attend my words with care.

CHAINS CLANG

This is St Mary's Convent of Budapest,

and you are not welcome here.

You are most specifically not invited in.

SNARLS AND HISSES

SNARLS

SNARLS

Van Helsing :

Oh!

So it's True, then.

That's interesting.

MOTHER SUPERIOR: 

What is?

Van Helsing :

"A Vampire may not enter any abode unless invited in."

I wasn't sure about that one.

MOTHER SUPERIOR :

A vampire?

Dracula :

You unlocked The Gate and you weren't sure?

Mother Superior :

A vampire?!

Van Helsing :

Oh, the iron wasn't keeping you out.

You could have torn it apart like matchwood.

Dracula :

I could tear you apart

Van Helsing :

Not from out there, you couldn't.

But what's stopping you?

A-a feeling?

A force?

Is it physical or mental?

Why do you need an invitation?

Dracula :

Do you expect me to tell you?

Van Helsing :

Oh, I don't even expect you to KNOW

A Beast can follow rules. 

I don't expect it to understand them.

NUNS GASP

Dracula :

I am More Than a Beast.

Van Helsing :

In what way?

By your own account, you've been on this Earth for hundreds of years, and you can't even walk into a nunnery?

An ox could do it.

How are you more than A Beast?

Dracula :

Do you want me to show you?

Van Helsing :

Of course.

I'm waiting.

Dracula :

WHISPERS: 

Come here. Come here.

Come here. Come here a moment.

Come closer.

Look at them.

Look at Your Sisters — 

Van Helsing :

Armed and Ready.

Dracula :

You're not looking.

Van Helsing :

I don't need to.

Dracula :

One of them - that's all I need.

If just one of your pretty little army beckons me in.... 

I will tear your world to pieces

and I will drink my fill.

Van Helsing :

Why would they invite you in?

What do you have to offer?

Dracula :

Eternal Life.

Van Helsing :

Well, they have that already.

Thanks.

Dracula :

Starting tonight, because the first one to invite me in stays at my side.

The Others I will tear apart, and, ladies...

I will take my time.

One should never rush a nun.

Van Helsing :

Your words are not welcome here.

Dracula :

Well, if you find you're not tempted by my offer, ask yourself this.

Who is?

Who's Weakest?

Who's the most afraid?

Who will break first?

And is there still time for it to be

you?

LAUGHS: 

What's that?

What are you doing?

Van Helsing :

You wanted to know Who's Weakest?

I'm SHOWING you.

SNARLS

ROARS

Van Helsing :

Oh, go on, help yourself!

There's a dog comes past here most days.

We often give it scraps.

SNARLS

Van Helsing :

Go on. You've come so far.

I'm sure you could do with a drink.

SNARLS

Van Helsing :

Hmm. You see, I'm not certain I see the appeal.

SNARLS

SNARLS

Van Helsing :

Each to his own, I suppose.

Dracula :

Do you think... 

provoking me is clever?

Van Helsing :

Yes. I Do.

I want to learn about you.

I want to see the limit of your capability.

That's The Point of This Experiment.

Dracula :

You have no conception.

Not the first idea.

Van Helsing :

Hmm...

Here, boy!

Mother Superior :

This is contemptible.

You are Without Shame.

Dracula :

Be careful.... what you Say to me.

Van Helsing :

Don't speak with your mouth full.

She's EARNED The Right to EXPRESS her contempt, you know. 

We ALL have.

Each of these women in front of you has Turned Her Back on Earthly Pleasures.

Resisting ALL forms of Temptation, 

We have freed Ourselves of Appetite, 

and therefore of Fear.

That is why you can't bear the sight of THIS.

It speaks of a holy virtue

you do not possess.

It is goodness incarnate.

Dracula :

LAUGHS SOFTLY

For a moment there, 

I thought you were Clever.

But no.

No, that's not why I fear The Cross.

Goodness has got nothing to do with it.

Van Helsing :

So you say, but how can a mere beast understand its own fear?

No-one will invite you in, Count Dracula.

They'll just pity you right where you are.

Dracula :

Who are you?

Van Helsing :

Finish your scraps. 

That's all you'll be getting tonight.

Be Thankful You are Living, and Trust to Luck

SPIKE :

Grrr. Bloody Hell, woman! 

You're cuttin' off my circulation. 

BUFFY :

You don't have any circulation.

SPIKE :

Well, it •pinches•. 

BUFFY :

Get used to it. 

I have more important things to worry about. 

SPIKE :

(genuinely indignant)

I came to you in friendship!

Well, all right, seething hatred, 

but I've got useful information, 

and I feel I'm being mistreated. 

BUFFY :

So tell me Everything You Know. 

SPIKE :

I'm too hungry to remember everything. 

BUFFY :

Then Sit.

(smack!)

Yeah, it’s Called Slut-Shaming

LUCY: 

Tonight.

You could bring someone.

JACK HARKER :

Who?

LUCY:

I don't know, just bring someone.

HE STAMMERS

You're not getting all sentimental on me, are you?

JACK HARKER :

Course not.

LUCY:

Sentimental is just stalking!

JACK HARKER :

See you later.

LUCY:

Bye.

HE CHUCKLES

PHONE DINGS

CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS

MEG, Lucy's Mum: 

Lucy!

What time did you get in last night?

It's not healthy.

LUCY:

Yeah, I'll sleep when I'm Dead.

CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS

PHONE DINGS

SIRENS WAIL

RAP MUSIC PLAYS

JACK HARKER :

Hey!

LUCY:

Quincey!

Everyone, this is Quincey.

He's an American, from Texas.

SOUTHERN ACCENT: 

Texas!

Evenin'.

 

LUCY:

Never known a cowboy before.

Are you a cowboy, Quincey?

Uh, no, no.

Not really, ma'am, no. Ma'am!

I mean, I ride quite a bit,

but I never really...

LUCY:

He rides?

SHE LAUGHS

Come on, cowboy, let's dance.

ELECTRONIC MUSIC PLAYS

LUCY:

I need to pee.

HE GROANS

So, I never asked you what you do.

Lucy didn't seem sure.

Like a nurse or something?

JACK HARKER :

I'm a junior doctor.

 

But I want to specialise 

in mental health.

 

You?

 

SHRUGS 

JACK HARKER :

Lucy says You've got Money.

Uh...

HE CHUCKLES

...I guess.

You've got to wonder if she'd 

be into me if I wasn't rich.

But then...

..would I like her if she was ugly?

HE LAUGHS

The Westerner is taking a piss in an alleyway

GAY FRIEND :

They do have actual loos here, you know.

LUCY:

There's a queue.

GAY FRIEND :

You're terrible.

LUCY:

Shut up, it's quicker out here.

 

GAY FRIEND :

No, I'm talking about Jack.

LUCY:

What about Jack?

GAY FRIEND :

Don't tell me you haven't seen the look on his face.

LUCY:

It's not like I've never shagged him. 

What's he complaining about?

GAY FRIEND :

I think he might be in love with you. 

LUCY:

Don't be daft.

It was like...three times?

Four, depending what you count.

GAY FRIEND :

Oh, you'll get a reputation!

LUCY:

What?!

Thank you, Queen Victoria.

GAY FRIEND :

You know what I mean.

LUCY:

I do. It's called “slut shaming”.

GAY FRIEND :

Yeah, it takes one to know one.

LUCY:

Why shouldn't I have fun?

Jesus, I'm only 22.

It's not like I'm going 

to marry anyone.

BOTH LAUGH

“Why do so many Dracula adaptations screw over Lucy Westena (Westerner)?”, ask The Feminists.

“Because she is a shameless slut.” reply The Artists.

She is Damned.

“She took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. And the eyes of both of them were opened—" implying that before that they were closed "—and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons." 

That’s so interesting. Their eyes are opened, which indicated that they weren’t to begin with. Whatever God created to begin with was kind of blind, but not—blind in some strange way. They weren’t wandering around in the garden and bumping into trees. It was some sort of metaphysical blindness that’s been removed by whatever has just happened. Whatever’s just happened also made them realize that they were naked. Ok, so what sort of eye-opening is that? What does it mean to realize that you’re naked? It means to realize that you’re vulnerable. That’s what people discovered. It’s like, uh oh. We Can Be Hurt. 

So you’re a zebra in a herd of zebras, and there’s a bunch of lions around there laying on the grass. 

You don't care. 

Those are laying-down lions. 

Laying-down lions are no problem. It’s standing-up, hunting lions that are the problem. 

You're not smart enough to figure out that laying-down lions turn into standing-up, hunting lions, so you’re not, like, building a fort to keep the lions out. You’re just mindlessly eating grass. You’re not very awake, but that's not what happens to human beings. Human beings wake up, and they think, we’re vulnerable—permanently. It’s never going away. It’s the recognition of that eternal vulnerability. 

What happens? The first thing they do is clothe themselves. Well, what happens when you're naked, and when you need protecting from the world? You're all wearing clothes. Why? Well, we’ve been doing that for a very, very long period of time. It’s tens of thousands of years, at minimum. In fact, you can track, more or less, when clothing developed by doing DNA testing on the kind of lice that cling to clothes rather than hair. We have a pretty good idea of when clothing emerged, and of different types, as well. But the point is that they’re naked, and they think that’s not so good; we’re vulnerable. Their eyes are opened enough so that they become self-conscious, and they recognize their own vulnerability. The first thing they do—the first step of culture—is to protect themselves with something from the world. You protect yourself from the world, and from the prying eyes of other people.

<img src="https://jordanbpeterson.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Biblical-4-21.jpeg" width="600" height="400">

This is a book by Lynne Isbell: Why We See So Well. "From the temptation of Eve to the venomous murder of the mighty Thor, the serpent appears throughout time and cultures as a figure of mischief and misery. The worldwide prominence of snakes in religion, myth, and folklore underscores our deep connection to the serpent-but why, when so few of us have firsthand experience? The surprising answer, this book suggests, lies in the singular impact of snakes on primate evolution. Predation pressure from snakes, Lynne Isbell tells us, is ultimately responsible for superior vision and large brains of primates-and for a critical aspect of human evolution." 

That was tested recently. Psychologists have known for a long time that people can learn to fear snakes, but they discovered in primates a set of neurons—Pulvinar neurons—which are specialized. "Pulvinar neurons reveal neurobiological evidence of past selection for rapid detection of snakes." That's from 2013. So the snake definitely woke us up.

Color vision as an adaptation to fruit eating in primates. It’s not by accident that women make themselves look like ripe fruit to be attractive to men, right? And that’s also not sociocultural in origin.

"And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden." 

That’s interesting. What's the implication? Prior to being woken up—prior to recognizing nakedness and vulnerability—there is no reason for man and woman to hide from God. Why are they hiding from God? They're naked and vulnerable. Ok, so think about this—think about this: Imagine that you have the capacity to live truthfully, courageously, and forthrightly. Just imagine that, and then imagine why you might not do that. How about fear and shame? How would that work? Well, let’s say that the idea of living forthrightly, truthfully, and courageously is analogous—given what we already know about these stories—to walking with God in the garden. What stops people from doing that? What stops people from hiding? Well, it’s their own recognition of their own inadequacies. They look at themselves, and they think, how in the world is a creature such as I, with everything that’s wrong with me, supposed to live properly in this world? 

What do you hide from? Well, you go home, and you sit on your bed for five minutes and ask yourself what you have hidden from in your life. Man, you’ll have books of knowledge reveal themselves to you in your imagination. Well, why are you hiding? It’s no bloody wonder you're hiding. It’s no wonder that people hide. That's the thing that's so terrifying about this story. We woke up and we thought, oh my God, look at this place. There is some serious trouble here, and we’re in some serious trouble, and we’re not what we could be. And so we hide, and that's what the story says: people woke up, became self-conscious, recognized their own vulnerability, and that made them hide from manifesting their divine destiny. It’s like, yea. That’s exactly right.

I love this part of the story. It’s so funny, and we could use a little humor at this point. "And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? And Adam said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked." So, in case there was any doubt about that, that's why. "And God said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Did you eat of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that you should not eat?" This is where Adam shows himself in all his post-fall, heroic glory: "And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat." 

So that's man. Again, there's a modern feminist interpretation of the story of Adam and Eve that makes the claim that Eve was portrayed as the universal bad guy of humanity for disobeying God and eating the apple. It’s like, fair enough. It looks like she slipped up, and then she tempted her husband, and that makes her even worse—although, he was foolish enough to immediately eat, so it just means that she was a little more courageous than him and got there first. 

It’s Adam who comes across as really one sad creature in this story, as far as I'm concerned. Look at what he manages in one sentence: First of all, it wasn’t him; it was the woman. Second, he even blames God! It wasn’t just the woman—and you gave her to me! "And she gave me of the tree, and I did eat." It’s like, hey, Adam’s all innocent—except now, not only is he naked, disobedient, cowardly, and ashamed, he’s also a snivelling, backbiting fink. He rats her out like the second he gets the opportunity, and then he blames God. That’s exactly right. You go online, and you read the commentary that men write about women when they're resentful and bitter about women. It’s so interesting. It’s like, it’s not me: it’s those bitches. It’s not me: it’s them—and not only that, but what a bloody world this is in which they exist. It’s exactly the same thing. It’s exactly the same thing, and it is absolutely pathetic. 

"And the Lord God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat." Well, at least she has a bloody excuse. First of all, it’s a snake. We already found out that they're subtle. Second, it turns out that the damn snake is Satan himself, and he’s rather treacherous. So the fact that she got tangled up in his mess is, well, problematic, but it’s a hell of a lot better excuse than Adam has.

"And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life"—and snakes, by the way, are lizards that lost their legs, just so you know—"And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel."

I love these pictures. They’re so smart. And again, strip the religious context from them and just look at them for a second. What do you see? You see the eternal mother holding her infant away from a snake. See it, down there? Crocodile, snake—everything predatory that's been after us for like 60 million years. The reason we’re here is because of that. That’s why it’s a sacred image. 

This one I like even better. Down there there's something like the moon, and then there's a reptile down there that Eve’s stepping on. This is really old, and I showed you this before, but I think it’s so cool. She’s coming out of this thing that’s like a hole in the sky. It indicates the eternal recurrence of this figure. It’s an archetype. The potential out of which she is emerging is all musical instruments, back here. And so what the artist is representing is the great, patterned complexity of being, and the emergence of the protective mother from that background, protecting the infant, eternally, against predation. It’s like, how can that not be a holy image? If you don't think it’s a holy image, then there isn’t something wrong with the image: there's something wrong with the perceiver.

"Unto the woman he said"—God’s just outlining the consequences of this, right now. It’s like, ok, well, now you’ve gone and done it: you’ve woken up. This is what's going to happen—"I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee." 

It doesn’t say he should. It says he will. And why "in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children?" Well, when you develop a brain that big, so that you can see, it’s not that easy to give birth anymore. And then you produce something that’s dependent beyond belief—that’s one of the things that you could say dooms you to precisely this. So that's Eve’s punishment for waking up. And Adam, "Because thou hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life." What's that? It’s the invention of work. 

"Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to three; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field." 

It’s the invention of work. What do people do that animals don't? Work. What does work mean? It means you sacrifice the present for the future. Why do you do that? Because you know that you're vulnerable, and you're awake. From here on in, from this point, there's no return to unconscious paradise. I don't care how many problems you solved so that today’s ok. You’ve got a lot problems coming up, and no bloody matter how much you work, you're never going to work enough to solve them. All you're going to do from here on in is be terrified of the future, and that's the price of waking up. That’s the end of paradise, and that’s the beginning of history, and that’s how that story goes.

"In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. And Adam called his wife’s name Eve; because she was the mother of all living."

"Unto Adam also and to his wife did the Lord God make coats of skins, and clothed them"—that's William Blake, by the way—"And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:"

"Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life."

One more thing, and then we’ll stop. Adam and Eve are tempted by the snake; they eat the fruit; they wake up; they realize they're naked; they realize that they’re vulnerable; they realize the future; they realize they're gonna die; they realize they’re gonna have to work; they realize the difficulty in conception, and the fall of humankind from unconscious paradise. Ok. That makes sense. What about the knowledge of good and evil? What in the world does that mean? 

The Mesopotamians believed that human beings were made out of the blood of Kingu, who was the worst monster that Tiamat, the Goddess of chaos, could imagine and then produce. So their idea was that there as something deeply, deeply, deeply, demonically flawed about humanity. That's their conception, and it’s out of that same milieu that these stories emerge. 

So what does opening your eyes and realizing your vulnerability have to do with the knowledge of good and evil? I thought about that. I really thought about that. I gotta tell you, I thought about that for like 20 years, because I knew there was something there that I could not put together. At the same time, I was reading things. I'm going to tell you something truly awful, and so if you need a trigger warning, you're getting one. Believe me, I do not give trigger warnings lightly. I'm going to tell you something you’ll never forget. 

This is what Unit 731 used to do in China. It’s a Japanese unit during the 2nd World War. As far as I can tell, they did the most horrific things that were done to anyone during World War II, and that's really something. So this is what they did: They took their prisoners and put them in a position so that their arms would freeze solid. Then they would take them outside and pour hot water over their arms. And then they would repeat that until the flesh came off the bones. They were doing that to investigate the treatment of frostbite for soldiers. You can look up Unit 731 if you want to have nightmares. So that's Unit 731. That’s human beings. Someone thought that up, and then people did it. What's knowledge of good and evil? Here’s the key, man: You know you’re vulnerable. No other animal knows that. You know what hurts you, and now that you know what hurts you, you can figure out what hurts someone else. And as soon as you know what hurts someone else, and you can use that, you have the knowledge of good and evil. 

Well, it’s a pretty good trick that the snake pulled, because it doesn't look like it’s exactly the sort of thing that we might have wanted if we had known the consequences. But as soon as a human being is self-conscious and aware of his own nakedness, then he has the capacity of evil, and that's introduced into the world right at that point. 

Here's the rest of the story: So there's the snake, right, and you’re some tree-dwelling primate. The snake eats primates, and that sucks, so let’s watch out for the damn snakes. Then your brain grows, and you think, wait a minute. There’s not just snakes—there's where snake live. Why don't we just get the hell out of the tree, hunt down the snakes, and get rid of them? Those are sort of like potential snakes, and so the snake becomes potential snake. It’s the same circuit that you're using to do this thinking. You get rid of the damn snakes. It’s like Saint Patrick chasing them out of Ireland. No more snakes. Everything is paradise. It’s like, no, no, no. That’s not how it works, at all. 

You’ve got human snakes. You’re a tribe, you’ve got tribal enemies, and you’ve got to defend yourself against the human snakes, right? Maybe your empire expands, and you get rid of all the human snakes. Then what happens? They start to grow and develop inside. You get rid of all the external enemies and make a big city, and all of a sudden there's enemies that pop up inside. 

The snake isn’t just the snake in the garden, and the snake isn’t just the possible snake, and the snake isn’t just the snake that's your enemy. The snake is your friend, because your friend can betray you. And then it’s even worse than that, because you can betray you. So even if you get rid of all the outside snakes, you’ve got an inside snake, and God only knows what it’s up to. 

That's why the bloody Christians associated the snake in the garden of Eden with Satan. It’s unbelievably brilliant, because you gotta think, what's the enemy? Well, it’s the snake, and fair enough. But, you know, that's good if you're a tree-dwelling primate. If you're a sophisticated human being with six million years of additional evolution, and you're really trying to solve the problem of what it is that's the great enemy of mankind…Well, it’s the human propensity for evil, right? That’s the figure of Satan. That’s what that figure means—just like there's a logos that’s the truth that speaks order out of chaos at the beginning of time, there’s an antithetical spirit—the hostile brother. That’s Cain to Abel, which we’ll talk about next week—that's doing exactly the opposite. It’s motivated by absolutely nothing but malevolence and the willingness to destroy, and it has every reason for doing so. That’s what’s revealed in the next story, in Cain and Abel: the first glimmerings of the antithetical spirit outside of this strange insistence by the Christian mystics, let’s say, on the identity between the snake in the garden of Eden and the author of all evil himself.