(continued from above)
But, as one can only expect, theology will admit nothing of
this kind, since it is the product of a mentality still very much
under the spell of illusion. Yet, as a result, whole areas of
Christian dogma do not make sense, or, at least, sense only of a
very tortuous kind. If it is maintained, for example, that the
Fall of Adam involves the whole human race, this is only
because Adam Man is inclusive of each particular man.
Contrariwise, there can only be Redemption for the human
race if Christ, the Second Adam, is likewise inclusive of each
particular man if the Incarnation of God in the man Jesus is
representative of God in every man, as Adam represents
Lucifer in every man. Yet, with rare exceptions, the theologians
insist that the Godhead is incarnate in one man only the
historical Jesus. This confinement of the Incarnation to a
unique event in the historical past thus renders the myth "dead"
and ineffective for the present. For when myth is confused with
history, it ceases to apply to man's inner life. Myth is only
"revelation" so long as it is a message from heaven that is,
from the timeless and non^historical world expressing not what
was true once, but what is true always. Thus the Incarnation is
without effect or significance for human beings living today if it
is mere history; it is a "salvific truth** only if it is perennial, a
revelation of a timeless event going on within man always. 3
Still more repugnant to the theologians is the perception of
the divine in Lucifer, the realization that the two serpents are
one: Lucifer in descent and Christ in ascent. The nearest
which the Church approaches to anything of this kind is the
embarrassing passage which is sung on Holy Saturday at the
blessing of the Paschal Candle:
"O truly necessary (certe necessariutn) sin of Adam,
which the death of Christ has blotted out. O happy
fault (Ofelix culpa), which merited such and so great
a Redeemer."
With this, one might compare the words of Isaiah 45: 7,
"I am the Lord and there is none else. I form the light and create the
darkness; I make peace and create evil. I, the Lord, do all these
things."
The tragedy of Christian history is that it is a consistent
failure to draw the life from the Christian myth and unlock
its wisdom. This whole failure is epitomized in the problem
of Lucifer, who should have remained the symbol, not of
"deliberate malice", but of the necessary "dark side" of life, of
shadow revealing light by contrast, of darkness as the Light
(luci'*) Bearer (fer). He would correspond to what the Chinese
call yin as distinct from yang, the dark, negative, and feminine
aspect of life, in complementary opposition to the light,
positive, and masculine the two represented together as the
interlocked commas or fish, one black and one white, one
ascending and one descending. In the West, this same symbol
is found as the zodiacal sign of Pisces, and the two opposed
fishes are a common motif of early Christian gems Christ
himself being the ascending fish. 4
A truly problematic evil arises in human life when the
necessary dark side of existence is not accepted and "loved"
along with the light that is, when the human mind sets itself
such goals as the total retention of pleasure and the total
elimination of pain. Paradoxically, devilish behaviour is the
necessary consequence of not coming to terms with Lucifer,
of refusing to admit that life is willy-nilly a coincidence of
opposites. Thus, in the complex picture of Christian mytho-
logy, Lucifer has a double role. He is the necessary negative or
dark aspect of life, personifying the "wrath" of God the dark
angel Samma-el. He is also the Liar, the illusion of self-
consciousness and self-love, personifying the mistake, the
missing of the mark, which the human mind has made in
confusing its identity with a "self" abstracted from memory.
In both roles he is a "disguise" of God. In manifesting a
universe of relativity, the metaphysical "absolute", the unde-
fined, appears as the defined, and positive is defined in relation
to negative, life in relation to death, light in relation to darkness
God appearing as two-faced like Janus. In becoming
"enchanted" or identified with the abstract and illusory self,
that which suffers the enchantment is the ever-unknown
"ground" of the human mind the ruascb or pneuma which is
always divine in principle, and which never "really" becomes
the individual save in seeming, in dream. Thus Lucifer is God
seeming to be self-conscious, to be an ego, an individualized thing.
Both these senses of the myth have been missed by Christian
theology, so that what is now personified or symbolized by the
theological Satan is not one of the aspects of God but the very
illusion of "self", in which orthodox Christianity most
fervently believes. After all, it is not so surprising that that
which it professes to hate most enthusiastically turns out to be
identical with the ideal which it tries to love, the monstrously
righteous God. Such predicaments are the inevitable penalty
for the pursuit of a mirage, or for running after a shadow. For
the zeal with which you follow measures the speed with which
it eludes your grasp.
In sum, then, the tragedy of Christianity is the confusion
of its myth with history and fact. For this is the realm of the
abstract and the dead af the seeming self. Degraded to this
realm, Christ and Lucifer alike became images of the ego, of
the past and dead man who does not liberate but only binds.
For this predicament the myth goes on to offer its own un-"
heeded solution.
*****
footnotes:
1 The identification of Christ with the nehushfan'Serpent is based on
John 3: 14, "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the
Son of Man be lifted up." Thus Christian art often employs the motif of the
serpent on the cross as an emblem of Christ. See the engraved stone from Gori's
Thes. Diptych., vol. iii, p. 160, reproduced also in Lowrie's An in the Early
Church, pi. ssa (New York, T947). Cf. Tertullian, De tiolatria, iii; also St.
Ambrose, De Spiritu Sancto, iii. 9, "Imago enim crucis aereus serpens est: qui
proprius erat typus corporis Christi: ut quicunque in cum aspiceret, non periret."
2 See British Museum, Guide to the Early Christian and Byzantine Antiquities
(London, 1903), p. 87. Possibly the crook'shapcd pastoraUtaff of the Western
Church has a similar origin, for it closely resembles the serpentine titous, or
divining-rod, shown in an Etruscan sculpture reproduced in Murray's
Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, vol. ii, p. 1566 an object which, again,
resembles the official "sceptre" or nyoi carried by Buddhist abbots in the Far
East. One must recollect the story that, as a sign of the power of God, Moses*
staff was changed into a serpent to confound the Egyptian magicians*
3 This problem will be discussed more fully when we come to the proper
part of the story. The orthodox theological explanation of how the race is saved
by the Incarnation of God in Christ is peculiarly confused, because the myth
was rationalized according to the inadequate categories of Greek philosophy.
Thus when God became man, he was held to have united himself with human
nature, but not with any human person, since Christ was human in nature, but
divine as to his person. Consequently, God has united himself with the nature
of each man, but not with the person of each man. This would make sense if
theology would go on to state that the person (ntfesb, psyche, soul) is not the real
man, but only the abstract and illusory man. But it takes the very opposite
standpoint, and insists that it is the psyche precisely which has to be saved, and
since this is that part of man's being which Christ did not assume, the salvation
of the soul remains an impossibility. Yet the Gospels do not actually propose
the salvation of the psyche. Cf.Jobn 8: 21, " Whither I go, ye cannot come'*, and
thus to ascend to heaven man must "deny hinvself" (Mark 8: 34) because "no
nun hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even
the Son of Man which is in heaven". (John 3:13.) Similarly, in Matthew 16: 25,
"Whosoever would save his psyche shall lose if; and in Luke 14: 26, "If any man
come to me, and hate not ... his own psyche also, he cannot be my disciple."
4 Serpent and fish are often mythological equivalents, being alike legless.
The Greek ixevc, by a play on the letters, suggested Christ, since each letter
would be the initial letters of the phrase IHCOYC (Jesus) XPICTOC (Christ)
YIOC (Son) eEOY (of God) CCOTHP (Saviour). But, as Austin Farrer remarks
in his Rebirth of Images, "The name ixeYC for Christ was also a play on letters,
but it would not have been made unless the result had appeared to mean
something." p. 64 n.
the serpent, deceive Eve, then body jump out of 
