| Adam and Eve in the Garden Almost everyone in the world is familiar since childhood with the serpent in the Garden of Eden. This is probably the most popular connection between the serpent and the mushroom, either by knowledge or suspicion, among the majority of people who understand this symbolism already. One would suspect this to be quite out in the open, but is it? I found the serpent associated with the mushroom in art and ancient artifacts and coins going back to the beginning of both artifacts, art and coinage. The story of Adam and Eve, in the Old Testament, is believed to have been written between 562-560 BC. (77) The Arabic word hiya, also the name for Ea or Hea, means “life” and also “serpent.” Hea, Hoa, Berosus, Oannes. The name Eve, (Hawwah in Hebrew/Arabic) means “mother of all the living” or “source of life” and it is similar to the Aramaic word for “snake.” (78) According to Walter Mattfeld, in Eden’s Serpent, there are threads between the oracle tree in a Sumerian myth and the Adapa myth which weave together the story of the Tree of knowledge in the Garden: “In other words, the ‘bread of death’ (Adapa myth) was fused with Eridu's Kiskanu oracle-tree to become Eden's Tree of Knowledge. Inanna eats of a cedar-pine tree to acquire knowledge of how to have sex with her bridegroom Dumuzi of Uruk. If Inanna is a pre-Biblical prototype of Eve, who ate of a tree for knowledge then had sex with Adam, we have three Mesopotamian motifs fused into Eden's Tree of Knowledge: (1) The ‘Bread of Death’ for Adapa of Eridu, (2) the Kiskanu Oracle-tree of Eridu, and a (3) Cedar-pine tree that Inanna ate of at Uruk to obtain knowledge of how to have sex. The Tree of Life might be a fusion of the Mes-tree at Eridu, famed for its fruit, it was also called the “flesh of the gods.” (79) In the myth of Inanna and Enki, from Sumer, Inanna wants to learn how to have sex, and she ventures to Enki, in the Apzu, to teach her. Enki’s minister Isimud allows her entry and serves her butter cake and beer. Inanna and Enki get into a drinking match and Enki becomes drunk and gives Inanna a toolset of knowledge known as Tablets of Destiny. Enki woke from his drunkenness and Inanna had already boarded her “Boat of Heaven.” In this manner, Inanna obtained the forbidden knowledge. In this way, Inanna brought the gift of knowledge to mankind like Prometheus and Tantalus before him. The “Boat of Heaven” appears to be part of the Tablets or Mes that Inanna took and she presents it to the people in this extraction which follows from the story of Inanna and Enki: “Holy Inana replied to her: ‘Today I have brought the Boat of Heaven to the Gate of Joy, to Unug Kulaba. It shall pass along the street magnificently. The people shall stand in the street full of awe.’ … ‘… festival … the Boat of Heaven. He shall recite great prayers. The king shall slaughter bulls, shall sacrifice sheep. He shall pour beer from a bowl. He shall have the šem and ala drums sound, and have the sweet-sounding tigi instruments play. The foreign lands shall declare my greatness. My people shall utter my praise’.” (80) |
Mattfeld compares Enki, the great serpent of the deep, to Jehovah, both of them being deniers of knowledge to humanity. Mattfeld writes: “Inanna, nin edin ‘the lady of edin,’ did not obtain ‘wisdom’ illegally like Eve, another lady of Eden; Enki gave them to her while in a drunken stupor. So, Enki the ushumgal, the ‘great serpent’ or ‘dragon’ denied man knowledge and wisdom but Inanna the ‘lady of edin,’ who like Enki, bore the epithet ushumgal ‘great serpent,’ obtained forbidden knowledge and she in another myth ate of a tree to obtain forbidden knowledge (to know how to have sex).” (81) In Genesis we read about the Tree of Knowledge and Tree of Life: “(8) Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. (9) The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” (Genesis 2:8-9) Dan Merkur, in The Mystery of Manna, suggests this passage referring to the “pleasing to the eye” suggests the “seer vision” and not just general eyesight. (82) This makes sense because all mushrooms which are good for visions, are also a source of food. This is very poetic parallel meaning, and I would agree with Dan on this conclusion. Next, in Genesis we read about the serpent: (1) Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden?’ (2) The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, (3) but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die’.” (4) “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. (5) “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (6) When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. (7) Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so, they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. (77) Eden’s Serpent: Its Mesopotamian Origins, Walter R. Mattfeld, 2010 (Modern Reprint), p. VII (78) Serpent and the Goddess, p. 7; Cf. A.J. Williams, "The Relationship of Genesis 3:20 to the Serpent," (Zeitschrift fur Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft – (ZAW) 89, no. 3 (1977); 357-74 (79) Eden’s Serpents, p. 47 (80) Inanna and Enki: c.1.3.1., Lines 224-228 (81) Eden’s Serpent, p. 48 (82) Mystery of Manna, p. 31 |