6. Shining Nakedness in Paradise

 Painters of all epochs dipped their brushes in their lively imagination in order to convey to us their interpretation of what the first parents looked like in their paradisical attire. But is that Genesis story about their nakedness, of which they were apparently not ashamed until they ate the mango fruit*, yet another fantasy of the translators? In Ch.2:25 we are told that “And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed” Adam is presented here as a married man who, hand in hand with his wife, is running about the garden stark naked, not caring whether Jehovah Elohim or another nudist called Nachash are peeking at them from behind the bushes. The meaning of the Hebrew word “naked” (ORVM) does, by no means cover the the narrow meaning of what we regard as being starkers. For example, the noun “nakedness” may refer to a land deprived of fortresses and other defences (Gen.42:9) or to female pudenda (Gen.9:22) and to some fault spotted in a woman. We have no means of deciphering today such metaphors which were used by peeople who lived 5,000 years ago. Their minds are a closed book and we have no key that can open it. All they have left are words and we have to try and we have to try and unearth those ancient symbloc meanings nad metaphors rather than translate words into our modern meanings. The adjective “naked” may mean someone who is wearing only a light tunic without outer coverings or even a small girdle. Or it could mean a very poor man, dressed in rags, which in turn could suggest a person who is regarded as an outcast. Each of these terms could be applied to Ruddy(adam) and his mate, but the most intriguing meaning of the same word (ORVM) can be found in  Ch.3:1 where the serpent Nachash is said to be arum but the word is translated as crafty, cunning but in another context it may appear as meaning “prudent, careful”. The word ‘nahash itself has its own curious story, because it early meaning was “the Shining One” and who can say today that the swift movements of the serpents were not once compared to or derived from the zigzaging lightning? I will return to that paradise inhabitant again, because he/she/it is one of the most intriguing and interesting actors on the biblical scene. It seems to me that the androgyne adam-eve deconstructed by Jahovah Elohim was still an etheric being, not covered by any material casings of fig leaves or coat of skins (Gen3:21) Adam was shining reddish, Eve was twinkling in all rainbow colours and they had no reason to feel ashamed of their shining bodies. Shame began only when they ate the fruit from the logical tree of Wikipedia and their delicate, vulnerable etheric bodies disappeared inside the leather rags created for them by JE.

5.Paradise Fruit for Androgynes

Nobody knows where exactly did Jehovah Elohim plant that Garden of Eden, but one of  many suggested  places was in the north-eastern India. It was there that archeologists found fossils of the mango tree. The estimated age of that ancestor of all mangos was 30-50 million years. My guess is that mango with its delicious fruit which was enjoyed by Hindu deities, rajas and even Buddha himself, has all the required qualifications to be that fatal tree of Paradise with its forbidden fruit. In truth, the Garden of Eden was most likely on another, no longer existing planet, shattered by a comet into a stream of asteroids. But the memory of that wonderful Garden lingers on, so we turn it into symbolic stories of gardens and trees. The Bible tells us that Eve “saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes”, so she had to taste it and gave a bit to Adam. If mango was that eye-opener that had lead to our nudity, sex and exile, then at least its fruit seem to have followed us to all the warm countries and from there on to the shelves of the colder supermarkets. Mangos have some strange erotic associations. In Egypt they are called ‘bulls balls’, which they remind with their shape. The mango seed is encased in a large oval shell which looks like vesica piscis, a symbol of the female vagina. In a way mango fruit could be considered a symbol of the Edenish androgyne, male and female in one body, a being who had  knowledge of propagating species bisexually. In Hindu religious rituals mango leaves represent the throbbing energy of life. According to local legends god Shiva appeared under a mango tree as a phallus, so it can be assumed that mango represented love and fertility. I have found the taste of mangos in fruit salad exotic and, intrigued by that stone which is as large as the fruit, I took it out, opened it with some difficulty and planted the seed, keeping the pot covered with a transparent plastic bag to keep the soil moist. After two weeks it produced the first two  leaves and the sapling is now growing to produce an illusion of mini-wikipedia tree on a London balcony.  Its magic must be strong, because, after a chilly June and much of July,  the temperatures have suddenly started to rise. But it aint no Paradise weather, no way.

4.A Pushover, A Virago or A dame?

Let a woman learn in silence with all submissiveness. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.

St Paul: 1 Tim.2:11-14

There is no certainty today whether it was St Paul himself or some of his editors who were reponsible for such extreme male chauvinism. The fact is that such views were eagerly propagated ever since by the embittered and sexually frustrated old batchelors translating the Bible into other languages. When Jehovah Elohim decided that Adam needed “a helper fit for him”, the translators did not give much thought as to what kind of a “helper” was intended by the Creator. Hebrew word “ezer”(OZR) is used in other parts of the Bible to mean “defence, armed intervention, support, ally”. It seems that Adam was, perhaps, a bit disorientated or, as some interpreters suggest, a daydreaming bard, a poet whose main hobby was inventing new names for every living being and inanimate things in the garden of Eden. His female half was still hidden inside his androgyne body and had to be released. The transplant operation wasn’t without risks, because the female part was much stronger and without her, Adam could have become even less capable of coping with his gardening duties. When he saw at last his “helper”, he apparently called her “the bone of my bones and the flesh of my flesh” – or so the translators want us to believe. The word “ozem” can mean either a bone or “strong, robust, a tie”; and “flesh” was also a euphemism for male genitals ((Gen.17:11). In my humble opinion the correct translation of Adam’s exclamation would be “she is the strength  of my strength and the genitals of my genitals” or, in a less florid language “ she is my own strength doubled and a somewhat modified replica of my sexual organs.” But no translator would dare to defy the instructions regarding women in St Paul’s letters. The last sentence in that verse was a Hebrew pun on the word “Ish-man” and “Isha-woman”  and on that hurdle most translators fell flat on their faces. It does make some sense in English “She will be called Wo-man, for she was taken out of Man”, but in other languages it is much more difficult, except in Latin (vir – virago) where Virago fits better my edited translation. The only way out for others is to say “She will be called a Dame for she was taken out of A-Dam(e).

3. Alter Ego – The Shadow of Eve

My previous heretical entry closed on Jehovah Elohim’s  creation of  Eden, a wonderful Garden in which he placed The Red Clay Creature also called Adam, who was supposed to look after it. In the centre of that big allotment was the Tree of Wikipedia whose fruits contained sacred knowledge as well as some pretty nasty information. JE told Adam not to touch that tree if he valued his life, because it would kill him. Knowledge was like that in those days – deadly. Dusty Adam was obviouly bored stupid in that rather lonely place, so JE decided to provide some distractions for him and created birds, animals, cows and such and told him to become a linguist by inventing names for all those creatures. Dictionaries were still to be written and the sweet melodies of nightingales were often drowned in the dreadful roars of the dinosaurs. Adam’s life was anything but amusing and he must have grumbled a bit, because JE suddenly remembered that inside his clay robot was that wondrous androgynous being created previously by the Elohim. In order to separate “gyne” from “andro”, JE had to make Adam unconscious and then extract his “shadow” (tzelem) or “image” and not, as the translators would fantasize his “rib” (tzelo), even though they must have known that the Elohim created the first man-woman (“in their own image and likeness”- Gen.1:26-27) Tzelo is translated as “rib” only in those two verses of Genesis; elsewhere in the Bible it means “side, corner, chamber”,while tzelem is related to other words such as tzalal which means a shadow or something quivering – most likely a metaphor for the etheric body. Eve was, perhaps, a quivering shadow of Adam and only after her extraction from his physical “clay” became a “shadow clad in matter”, his alter Ego, helper and companion for life. The patriarchs and the translatots couldn’t accept that interpretation, so they made her his “wife” even though Issha means simply a Woman. That pseudo-rib is still haunting the ignorants who believe that man has one rib less. Translators’ fibs have a very long shelf-life.

2.Where Is the Androgyne Gone?

Biblical translators have never managed to get over the initial hurdle in the whole first chapter of Genesis which is the name of the Creator of the universe – Elohim. This is a plural form of a feminine noun Eloah (final H is a feminine article) with a masculine ending –im. In other biblical texts Eloah means “any god, an overblown Ego (Hab.1:11), God and as Elohim it can be read as “any gods or deities, kings, angels, judges, princes, attendants of the Allmight El etc” To translate it as God under the pretence that it is pluralis majestatis doesn’t make much sense, because Elohim talk about themselves as “us” as in Gen.1:26,27:”Then Elohim said: Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…So Elohim created man in his own image, in the image of  Elohim he created him; male and female he created them.” The confusion of personal pronouns by the translators is pretty obvious. In my translation these two sentences should read “ Elohim created man as an exact copy of their own androgynous nature;male-female they created him.”

These Creators of man withdraw from creation on the seventh day and their androgyne also vanishes without trace. In chapter two we are suddenly faced with a new creation, but this time there are no plants and no animals that Elohim created in the first chapter, because they apparently forgot to create rain. Their oversight is now being corrected by Jehovah Elohim, who becomes the translators’ mysterious Lord God. That Lord creates mist instead of rain and, once the “dust of the earth “ was wet enough, he forms a new man, gives him a kiss of life, then plants a garden in Eden and tells the new Adam who is either male or disguised androgyne to do the gardening.

Something is still missing, he thinks, so he creates birds and animals (for the second time?) and tells the man to name them. In the middle of his estate Eden he plants a mysterious Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil whose fruits must be poisonous, because JE warns him off eating them “lest he dies”. Then JE decides again that Adam needs a suitable help and this is yet another embarassing example of mistranslation called Adam’s Rib.

1.Eve’s Chatline to Nachash

Knowing two languages well or even being bilingual does not necessarily make me a good translator, but I can play with what is really a textual interpretation, unravelling all those hidden meanings and ancient roots which translators tend to miss. It is hardly surprising that an Italian proverb which says “translators are traitors” (traduttori tradittori) has proven itself very true, especially where the translators have a “vested interest” in what they wish to tell their readers. I have some sympathy for those monks from the early centuries of Christianity who had to struggle with Hebrew and Greek texts, translating them into Latin from which other monks would render those ancient texts into other languages in order to spread the message of the new religion. The Old Testament was practically unknown in pagan societies, so there was an additional problem of making those strange stories acceptable to the new converts. As I have some knowledge of Latin, Greek and Hebrew – far from being fluent in any of those languages – I have been often amazed at the unintended or deliberate mistranslations of so many biblical texts which persists to this day. Some would be slightly brought up to date, but there seems to be a reluctance to rewrite the original mistakes, probably because they could cause a lot of confusion among millions of believers. I have no such constraints, so I am going to interpret in my own way what I can see in those texts as wrong, suspect or unclear translations.

Let’s take as the first example that little short chat which Mother Eve had with a lurking serpent. No doubt, boredom-bred curiosity could have induced her in the first place to roam in the Garden of Eden and come to that intriguing centre where Jehovah Elohim (to give adam’s second Creator his correct name) planted two unknown trees: one the Tree of Lives and the other one the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. It is not clear where exactly the chat took place, but as the subject was that Wikipedia Tree it must have been somewhere in its vicinity. We are not told whether Eve could hiss or Nachash knew human words or, with his/her/its forked tongue was bilingual. A decisive factor in deciphering the meaning of any Hebrew word are the vowel signs (diacritic signs) and these were not added  until the seventh century AD. This means that non-Jewish translators could give free reins to their imagination or use those meanings which would be understandable to the new converts. The word Adam was neither the first name of some individual and when used with a definite article The Adam (HADM) it could have meant The Red Race of Beings or The Earthmen, because the word adam had various meanings like red, ruddy, sparkling and the word adamah was “red earth”.

Eve is a corruption of chevah (ChVH) which quite simply means Life, but could also mean “to gather together” and even

 “to roll oneself in a circle”which can  tell us more about the inner geometry of a being called Woman than we could expect. The serpent, Nachash, has so many hidden meanings that it will take more than one short entry to discuss all of them. Serpent can  a symbol of prudence (Matt.10:16) as well as of a spiral.You can take your pick, but I will develop these fascinating alternatives in the future entries.

Metamorphoses of Digital Life Forms

Cyberspace is a powerfully complex, versatile environment that is creating previously unimagined forms of digital “life” – social entities that did not exist just a few years ago. How can we study these new human expressions? How can we fully understand and maximize the well-being of these digital life forms?

Dr J.R.Suler The Psychology of Cyberspace

This interesting hypertext was linked to my blog as relevant to my story about Ötzi the Iceman. I have been aware of various virtual “life-forms” in the shape of apparent human beings I know only by their nicknames and which are often so amorphous that I can never be sure of their gender, age, occupation or place where they exists outside the cyberspace. There are also “group entities” known as forum, chats, discussion lists, email correspondents, spammers, trolls and many others. Here, again, their true identity (if they themselves know it) is so elusive as to be almost non-existent. In the 14 years of leading a fairly active life as an internaut I have come across hundreds of those “digital life-forms”, but only with a few did I manage to make a personal contact. Many have just blazed a meteoric trail across my cybersky and vanished without trace, but some have been attracted by a specific kind of cyber-gravity and have remained in an orbital interaction with my own digital form for many years.

I am not sure to what category of  cyber beings belongs The Glacier Ötzi, who entered into my mental awareness through a dream and then acquired a definite identity in my cyberspace, including an artistic reconstruction of what he might have looked like, based on a scientific analysis of his corpse. In a peculiar way he is actually more real to me than many of my virtual friends, acquaintances and casual commentators. He has a nickname, like most cyberspace inhabitants and yet  I know more about him – through scientific reconstructions of his life preserved in ice for 52 centuries- than I do about dozens of  human beings who, for all I know, could be fallen angels, visitors from other planets or even that fox who visits my back garden at night or an old poplar whose life I am tending with reiki treatment. Life IS a cyber mystery and no mistake. &J& 

Tattoo-Ancient Graffiti of Acupuncture

Fifty-two centuries ago a Neolithic shaman in the Alpine valleys

treated his patient with acupuncture. We don’t know whether he was using a Copper Age needle, a sharp stone, a hard thorn or,perhaps, a bird’s claw, because the only trace of his work was 15 tattoo signs left on the body of the oldest mummified remains of aEuropean  hunter/shepherd known today by his nickname – Ötzi the Iceman. The small tattoos match the acupuncture  points (nadis) associated with his ailments, also retrieved by the latest scientific methods. He had arthritis, back pain, stomach disoorders (worms) and possibly some other illnesses, which were precisely diagnosed and treated with acupuncture- a medical practice,which would eventually reach ancient China 20 centuries later. Ötzi was only about 46 when he died on a glacier, presumed killed by hostile tribesmen or robbers. He was quite old ,for in those times people did not reach old age very often. Such discoveries have now put the practice and art of tattooing in an entirely new light. At some time, the knowledge about energetic points in human body must have disappeared from Europe, torn by many invasions, natural disasters and envious healers of different persuasions. What was preserved, however, was the habit of marking acupuncture points on the human body with various signs like X and lines. These gradually were turned into an art of adorning bodies for ritual or psychological reasons. A warrior painted with strange colours was meant to terrify his enemies or attract females in imitation of some colourful male birds.  Piercing ears (where many acupuncture points are also found) was also transformed into wearing earrings, which have today nothing to do with healing, but a lot with fashion More on this fascinating subject in this article. &ÖJ

Dreams in Cyberspace

Believe it or not, but dreams can be found and interpreted by surfing the mysterious Web of googol words, phrases and metaphors. Dreams are metaphors, which continuously search for and explain the unexplainable. To find their meanings- surf. This is how it goes. Last night I had a puzzling dream about an encounter with seven tall men and one who throughout the dream was lying in a bathtub filled with ice. When I asked one of them if the cold wouldn’t kill him, he said that he had to be in ice to keep alive. The men, whose faces left no impression on my memory, questioned me about someone who might have been responsible for their “ice man” condition. I was trying to be helpful and gave some tentative information, but they didn’t seem much interested in it, making their own search.

When I woke up, the dream  still seemed quite vivid, so I decided to surf on the web to see what information a phrase “man in ice” would bring to the surface. The very first website had the title “The Man in the Ice” and that put me on the trail of Ötzi the Iceman who, I believe, was for some reason the subject of my dream, even though this was my first encounter with his amazing story. More spooky was the probable interpretation of the seven men in my dream. Linked to this strange 5,200 years old Iceman of the Mountains was the supposed “Ötzi Curse”, which involved seven men linked in one way or another to the Tyrol glacier mummy discovery or research. They all died suddenly, including the German discoverer of the body. Ötzi himself was killed by an arrow in a fight with some hostile mountain men. Perhaps, there were seven of them and drawn by the Law of Karma they came back to expiate their murder by finding the body of Ötzi and then helping in bringing him to “life” again through a vivid reconstruction of his former existence. They certainly took their time, but the Iceman was buried deep inside a glacier which through slow sliding and melting finally revealed the remains of their victim. Having done their job they were allowed to return to Home for a reunion with the Iceman. One more significant clue in this strange story: 19.9.1991 was  the date when he was found and that looks to me like a numerological symbol of  the whole story. &J&

The Genetic Jingle Book

Wouldn’t it be lovely if children were taught to chant a slightly modified version of Mowgli’s mantra (We be of one blood, ye and I) starting every day at school by reciting: “we be of one genome pool, ye and I“  Even bees and flowers could be then drawn into our common genetic pool of brother/sisterhood. Or, perhaps, we should turn the mantra into an international greeting to replace  that meaningless “hi” – the bastard child of “hijack” and “hi-fi”. “Hi” is a buzzing semantic bluebottle that makes me nervous. We no longer ask ye gods for heavenly blessings, nor offer good wishes, peace or smiles and “top of the mornin’” in our daily  encounters with others. Just “hi, jack”, “hi, gene”, “hi ya whatta” because that twitch of our vocal strings, that snort of hot air is short, non-commital and meaningless, like those cryptic chatline openings”Hi r u ok? I m 2“. This is Hi-speak, the language of the Internauts, Chatterers,Spammers, Hackers and Trolls. Rudyard would probably call it the Bandarlog Tongue, – speech of the Monkey People, whose Road-song could become no 1 in the charts of  The Jingle Book.

…Then join our leaping lines that scumfish through the pines,
That rocket by where, light and high,the wild grape swings.
By the rubbish in our wake, and the noble noise we make…

Second thoughts: Genes are sentences and metaphors created from some 3 billion DNA letters, packed into every cell of living things. To be human means using some 70,000 of those letters in constructing me and thee. One misspelled genetic sentence and you can be born as a chimp (99% of homo sapiens genes) or, worse, a rat. More mistakes and end as a fruit fly or even yeast which people will put into sponge cakes. Living is a risky business of genetic semantics. But as long as you can spell and pronounce correctly the Mowgli’s Mantra all will be well. Trust me. I checked my genome with the spell-checker. AJC