The curse on Adam and Eve: broken relationships

By Anne on 1 November 2021

Adam and Eve, Hildesheim Cathedral, Bernward's Doors

CONTRIBUTION UNDER REVISION

The curse - died love and disturbed relationships

Man and woman have listened to the serpent and consumed the forbidden fruit. Now they fall under the spell of the curse that leads to the death of love and loss of unity. It is symbolized by the expulsion from paradise and sensibly includes the aspects of negative couple dynamics.

[Basis for this post: The Bible's account of the fall of man and the serpent.]

The curse: dying (of love!)

Of the fruit of the tree in the midst of the garden God said, Eat not of it, neither touch it, lest ye die!
[See Genesis 3:3 in the Bible Server].

Man, where are you?! - God is looking for man.

The ego and shame

Now that "it" has happened, the hangover is there. When the problematic comes to light, it can develop for the good. But man prefers to hide in the shadows and hide from the truth. The reason is that he is ashamed. Behind this is the proud ego that does not want to admit any faults and instead is immediately on the spot with an accusation. It is also responsible for the disruption of relationships ... So in the Bible:

God seeks man (Genesis 3:9-11)

And the LORD God called unto the man, and said unto him, Where art thou? And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself. And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat of it?

Man blames the other person and also God (verses 12 and 13). [1]:

And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest me to be by my side, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. And the LORD God said unto the woman, What hast thou done? And the woman said, The serpent deceived me, and I did eat.

Separation as a consequence

The problem thus begins when the person withdraws from personal responsibility and instead blames the other person(projection instead of integration of the shadow). Thus the negative consequences strike with full force, hitting each of the three protagonists as a curse at the core of their being. (For full text see Bible server, Genesis, chapter 3, 14-24.)

1. the curse over the snake

(Genesis 3:14 and 15)

And the LORD God said to the serpentBecause thou hast done this thing, thou shalt be accursed among all cattle and among all beasts of the field.
On your belly you shall crawl, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head, and you, you shall bruise his heel.

Crawling on the belly and eating dust: the drive and "spiritually dead" people

The egoistic desire instinct "sticks" to the body (libido)

The image is self-evident, but can also be expanded: the egoist, like the snake, has no feet to carry him to other people and no hands with which to do good and be tender.

Eating dust: Only spiritually dead people without love and trust

People without an inner life of their own, without a soul, are susceptible to lies and negativity and thus to the poison of the serpent and are thus its "food". They go through life like dead people or as "zombies" (see vampires, werewolves and zombies).

Enmity between the serpent and the woman: power versus love

The Seed of the Serpent and the Seed of the Woman: "Christ" and the "Anti-Christ

In the world there is enmity between the children of love and the children of lies. The "seed" of the (loving) woman is Christ / Messiah, the anointed one. The seed of the serpent, on the other hand, is the man of power: the egoist or "anti-Christ." [See also The dragon and the persecution of the woman.]

The head of the snake crushed: Overcoming death

The ultimate lie, however, is death itself, more precisely: the idea that there is only matter (and no spirit) and that with the end of matter everything ends. It is not true, for love does not die, rather it gives resurrection (on the path of purification, cf. Trial by fire and Bread and wine).

The heel crushes: the dying of the true lover

In traditions, the heel is a symbol of the hero's strength and potency (just as the foot is an image of the male side of sexuality in traditions). Thus, the heel is also his weak point, where the hero is vulnerable (his "Achilles' heel"). The price for overcoming the ego is the inner dying (of one's own potency) in the face of failure (cf. The Trial by Fire and The sacred wound).
In the collective sense, this means the suffering and dying of the Saviour. But it is only the heel, the God-hero can rise again because love overcomes death.

The work of the serpent: limited to space and time

The curse on the snake is that its poison only works in material reality.

Body: People fall into "temptation" of the drive in earthly reality. "temptation" of the drive: "all the days of their life".
Soul: Only spiritually "dead" people serve as food for the snake - without soul and without love: "dust".
Spirit: There is also a temporal limit. It lasts at most until the coming of a Saviour, then it is: "He will crush your head" (in that the resurrection nullifies the fear of death).

Negative Couple Dynamics 2 (Hilma af Klint, Evolution No. 13)

Hilma af Klint (Evolution No. 13, 1908) to the curse over the woman: the picture shows how he dominates her (female-passive, the blue spiral) and how she actively (yellow spiral) creates in the unconscious.

2. the curse over the woman: pain in body and soul

(Genesis 3:16)

To the woman he said: I will greatly increase the travail of your pregnancy; with pain you shall bear children! Your desire shall be for your husband, but he shall rule over you!

Pain, emotional deficit and exploitation of love

Pain in the body

The woman experiences pain during menstruation, pain during sexual intercourse (at least the first) and pain during childbirth. At the moment when the woman feels she has to die, the new life makes its way.

Pain in the soul: emotional deficit

The woman also experiences pain in relationships, especially when she gives love and vitality and nothing is returned in return. This includes sex without love. When she falls into negativity, she is tempted to take what she lacks by the power of her magic (through seduction and subtlety, see e.g. The poisoned apple in Snow White). Then she is called a "witch" in fairy tales.

Spiritual pain: exploitation of love, oppression and subjugation

Because of her need for emotional closeness, the woman is vulnerable and can fall into the negative.

Thus, on the one hand, the man can dominate her by the fact that he is less dependent on emotional relatedness. On the other hand, he can also weaken her by wearing her down, devaluing her or doing violence to her. In addition, there is this problem: If she has already given him everything (through sexual intercourse), she is attached to him. Because unconsciously they both now "know" that she has to kill their love in order to be able to leave him. This fact also plays into his power over her.

[S. The woman, 3-in-1.]

Side note: The Man Without Love

Love as the feminine side of the spirit

The man wins love (only) by integrating the feminine side of the spirit (Anima). In other words, from the beginning he does not yet have love (as the woman has it, namely unconditional and miracle-working, see. The virgin - miracle working love and potential). But he longs for love and needs love. He can of course learn to perceive his own feelings (soul) and to live love through good deeds. But the feminine is associated with weakness and therefore not attractive to the man for a long time. Instead, the temptation is great to use a bit of cunning (seduction) or pressure (violence) to seize love (the woman) and instrumentalise it for one's own interests (see Aladdin and the Magic Lamp and Black Magic).

Unconsciousness from physical and mental pain

The curse, namely the negative consequence for the woman is: Her ability to give life is connected with pain: Pain in the body (sexual intercourse, birth) and pain in the soul. Life is especially painful for her when there is a lack of love.
[S. (s The Pain Body of Woman; Woman - Body/Soul/Spirit; The Heroic Way of Woman - Preserving Love and The Way of Woman.]

Negativity from devaluation

In the Babylonian Gilgamesh epic, woman is "officially" devalued for the first time, with the king calling the goddess of love a whore (see Introduction to the Babylonian Gilgamesh epic).
Devaluation and oppression drive the woman into negativity. At first powerless like Sleeping Beauty and Snow White, in a next step she draws her power from the unconscious instead of from love and uses it as a tool of her "magic" (through seduction or delusion).

The path through the underworld and the resurrection of love

The woman who seeks power is called a "witch" or "evil fairy," depicted as a dark fairy like Maleficent or as the ruler of the underworld (see The Great Feminine in the Underworld).
The Sumerian goddess of love sets out of her own accord to descend into the underworld. This path through the under world leads to the integration of weakness and the resurrection of love that has died.

3. the curse over the man: work, sweat and thorns

(Genesis 3:17 to 19)

And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee: Thou shalt not eat thereof. - let the ground be cursed because of you: With travail shalt thou eat thereof all the days of thy life; And thorns and thistles shall it bring forth for thee, and thou shalt eat the herb of the field.In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat thy bread, until thou return unto the ground: for from it thou art taken. For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return!

"Because you listened to your wife's voice ..." - Inertia and consumerism

The mother's son and negative couple dynamics

The man is by nature somewhat lazy in spiritual matters and likes to avoid taking on responsibility. For him it means "work". However, he tends to remain in a consumer attitude in the couple relationship. In this way he hands over the role of mother to his partner (see also Partnership and the human equation) and gets into a negative couple dynamic. Often he only becomes a man through an experience of hardship and deprivation (cf. The liberation from the mother).

The cursed earth: the earth and the female body

Thistles and thorns: drought or storms, rejection and resistance

The earth is also a symbol for the female body. The feminine in negativity, proves time and again to be defiant, proud and dismissive. There is no trace of love or even a receptive willingness to serve. And so, figuratively speaking, no good fruit grows on this soil, but brittle herbage, thistles and thorns, as in the fairy tale. Sleeping Beauty vividly expressed.

Toil: physical and mental labour

So now the man is confronted with prickly defences and, instead of being able to eat "meat", he has to keep chewing and digesting the brittle herb of relationship work. Despite his efforts, the "earth" does not yield much, and his hope of winning the woman over often remains unsuccessful, it seems to him.

Dust is you! - The curse of materialism

The curse over the ego

This is the message for the ego as the identity of power and materialism: "You have nothing and are nothing! And the life that was given to you will also be taken away from you and what will be left of you?"

Nothing if there is no love ...

For matter passes away, love endures eternally.

The Expulsion from Paradise by Oswald Huber

Inertia instead of responsibility

The man likes to be pampered and wants to consume, even if this means that she dictates. To this end, this quote from C.G. Jung:

He wants to touch the real, embrace the earth and fertilise the field of the world. But he only makes impatient attempts, because the secret reminder that the world and happiness can also be given to us as a gift - namely by our mother - paralyses both his impetus and his perseverance.. [2]

The earth as the body of woman - cursed by man

Man himself has repeatedly cursed the female body on which he is so dependent. This was first recorded "officially", i.e. in writing, in the Babylonian Gilgamesh epic, according to which the faithless king insults the goddess of love as a whore (see Introduction to the Babylonian Gilgamesh epic ). As a reward for this, she meets him brittle and prickly or even literally chases him to the devil (see The Negative Animus as Devil or Body of Pain).

Bread by the sweat of one's brow

Bread is a symbol of purification. It is created when seeds mature, are dried, threshed, crushed, ground and finally baked in a fire oven. On the hero's path, male strength and potency will become edible life-giving food (bread) for others. Richard Rohr[3]:

It seems that the biological experience of menstruation and childbearing imparts enough wisdom to women, but men must inevitably be tested, limited, challenged, punished, harassed and circumcised, exposed to hunger, thirst and nakedness, and thus brought to maturity.

[S. Bread and Wine for Purification and The Way of the Man.]

The expulsion from paradise

Loss of security in the greater

The consequence of the curse is that man in the grip of the ego (the 13 or the "evil fairy") has lost the paradisiacal unity and wholeness (of the twelve).

[S. The Twelve and the Thirteen at a glance; The inner family for twelve trees in paradise and The two trees in the middle of the garden and the forbidden fruit].

The new "God": the ego, the identity of separation

Thus the ego is now the new lord or "god" of the human being. As a negative identity, it leads to separation from the greater whole, from the other and also to divisions in man himself. It is both the curse and the expulsion from paradise.

(Genesis 3:22 to 24)

And the LORD God said, Behold, man is become as one of us, knowing good and evil. Now shall he not also stretch forth his hand, and take of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever. The LORD God sent him out of the Garden of Eden to till the ground from which he had been taken. And he [...] set the cherubim east of the garden of Eden, and the flame of the twitching sword to guard the way to the tree of life.

The Tree of Life: The Identity of Love (Christ/Messiah)

The Animus as the Tree of Life

Christ/Messiah, the Anointed One is identical with the Tree of life as a drive of love, because in the system of the 12 of the paradisiacal creation as well as in the system of the 10 of the redeemed creation he has the place of the Animus (number 9, the 10 Sephiroth; s. The two trees in paradise).

[S. From 13 to 10 - The way back to the tree of life.]

The Cherubim and the Flame of the Twitching Sword: The Hero's Path and the Trial by Fire

Five Trees of Life: Christ and the Cherubim

The disciple Thomas writes of five trees of life (cf. The Gospel of ThomasLogion 19). They correspond to the Hero's journey with Awareness (Christ) and the further phases symbolised by the "four cherubim". As "angels" the phases of the hero's path are connected with the four spiritual elements (Initiation (water); Desert (earth); Success (air); Trial by fire (fire). The latter includes the "flame of the twitching sword". There is no getting past it, only through it. This is the way back to wholeness and oneness: through the dying of the ego to Eternal Life (from ego to self).

[S. TheFour Elements; The Resolution of Negative Dynamics and The Cherubim and the Chariot of God].

The curse and negativecouple dynamics

Need, lack and suffering of existence

The effects of the curse correspond to the negative couple dynamics. It means concretely that the man has to suffer from the physical, material reality and the woman from the soul and spirit (lack of love) in the area of their relationships. While he can only harvest and "eat" by investing hard work, for her the fulfillment of her destiny to give life is always connected with pain and lack.

Power to escape the curse?

Both try to escape this curse through power and magic.
She plays on her charms in the unconscious hope that this will make him love her or at least have power over him. He strives for money and power so that he can buy her and not have to do relationship work. She manipulates him through seduction (white magic, see The Snow Queen), he dominates and subjugates her in order to be able to consume her body(black magic, see Aladdin and the Magic Lamp). Thus the two engage in a power struggle to the death, in the form of silent dominance or bitter confrontations.

The curse as original sin

The man without a heart and the woman without a body

When parents are caught up in a negative couple dynamic, they tend to draw life force and also sexual energy from their children. In this way, the children also become deprived at an early age (because they have to give instead of being allowed to receive). And as adults they also live power instead of love in their relationships because they know nothing else.

[S. Abuse, The Stolen Life and The Great Original Sin.]

Duration of the curse: 100 years!

Continuing to have an effect over generations

It takes 100 years, like in the fairy tale Sleeping Beauty or in other words a very long time that man cannot/will not survive ...
On the one hand, this corresponds to the biblical statement that the bad deeds of the parents continue into the third or fourth generation. have a negative effect (see e.g. Deuteronomy 5:9 in the Bible Server and Dark secrets as a curse).

Way out: Dying inside

On the other hand, however, the 100 years can also be interpreted in such a way that the human being is not spared dying on the way back to the lost wholeness. In other words, the ego has to die so that the inner hero and saviour, the prince can stand up for the identity of love.nn (s. From Ego to Self).

By giving instead of taking, lack will be overcome.
Then roses will bloom where thorns once grew.

The path to freedom: surrender and free space!

Abstinence with regard to power

The path of love means giving oneself freely to the other person and allowing him/her space out of trust (see The Hero's Path).

In the couple relationship, this means that the man does not put pressure on the woman, but instead gives her his heart freely. The woman on the other hand gives her body out of love and forgives her partner again and again for his lack of love. (For she is herself a source of love, see The Woman as Goddess and the Man as Her Hero King. And she accepts that he must first integrate his feminine parts before he can love like a woman. This happens through an existential experience of weakness, see The Sacred Wound).

Control over the drive

Both control their urges and take responsibility for themselves and their behaviour (see bread and wine for purification).

Then the masculine soul will radiate friendly warm-heartedness and femininity full of beauty will radiate love and vitality.

We continue with:

The Expulsion from Paradise as a Collective Drama
The second creation in the Bible: the male

Quoted posts:

Remark:

[1] Genesis 3:12 and 13 - note the verse masses: from 12 (for paradise) to 13 (for the ego).

[2] C.G. Jung, Collected Works, Vol. 9/II, "Aion", p. 21 f, § 22.

[3] Rohr, Richard (2009). From the Wild to the Wise Man. 2nd edition. Claudius Verlag, Munich, p. 43