The Tree of Life
A chlorotype alternative photography method using natural sunshine and black-out tape cut-outs. A good few sunny days in the making.
For some years I’ve pondered over the various versions of the moment of Adam & Eve’s awakening to the world of duality in the garden of Eden.
I came across Joseph Campbell on the ‘flix a few years ago. Joseph was an expert on mythology, and the various religions of the world. He finds connections. His work has broadened my mind.
So here’s his take of of that scene with Adam & Eve in the garden of Eden, around the moment of the naughty feast, the original sin, the coming of age, whatever your particular perspective calls it.
These excerpts are from ‘Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth with Bill Moyers’. The book’s a transcript of the two in conversation (edited by Betty Sue Flowers). The series of conversations comes up on the ‘flix from time to time, well worth a look - or get the book if you’re inspired.
Moyers asks Campbell, ‘what’s the myth of Adam & Eve trying to tell us about the pairs of opposites?’
Campbell replies: ‘It started with the sin…moving out of the dreamtime zone of the Garden of Paradise…where there is no time, and where men and women don’t even know that they are different from each other. The two are just creatures…and then they eat the apple, the knowledge of the opposites. And when they discover they are different, the man and woman cover their shame.’
Handy, those big fig leaves.
‘They had not thought of themselves as opposites. Male and female are one opposition. Another, the human and God. Good and evil, a third.’
On the idea of good and evil in the world, Joseph says ‘so Adam and Eve have thrown themselves out of the Garden of Timeless Unity, you might say, just by that act of recognising duality. To move out into the world, you have to act in terms of pairs of opposites.
Moyers asks: ‘is the story trying to tell us that, prior to what happened in the Garden to destroy us, there was a unity of life?’
Campbell: ‘it’s a matter of planes of consciousness…There is the plane of consciousness where you can identify yourself with that which transcends pairs of opposites.’
So that’s how this piece came about. A week or so in the making, a few days in existence. I’ve been looking at this unity beyond the pairs of opposites. There’s more to come. The more I look into the yin yang symbol the more I see, the more I real-eyes.
My own thumb prints bear this double-loop or ying yang pattern. It manifests in general hand reading terms as an ability to see all sides of a story, to be impartial and philosophical in the characters of those who carry these prints with them through their lifetime of love .
These apples grew on the apple tree in the garden during summer, 2020. Food for thought in an era marking great change, they were.
