Nearly, if not all religions have a sacred writing that their beliefs are based upon, or guided by. The canons, books, and written tradition that can seem to act like a rudder to the ship of the belief system. Written tradition is a fantastic way of bringing a group of people together as a close-knit community. But at the same time the rigid, inflexible books can act as chains, ways to keep people under control and undermine new ideas or ideaologies that do not fit with the predeccesor.
The problem is when people take an overly exoteric stance on the teachings, they become literalists and leave out any potential symbolism in the realms of fancy or worse yet, heresy.
When we examine religious holy books we'll notice that they tend to have much in common with the cultural mythologies that are usually thought of as stories used to entertain, and now seem to define cultures by their old mythological beliefs. The problem many religions have the stance that their holy books are somehow more correct, or true than the now called mythologies.
When we stop the literalist viewing of holy texts, it doesn't become shallow or filled with less meaning. It's actually the opposite, a whole plethora of meaning gushes forth, it is no longer a simple text of fanciful stories or amazing tales; it becomes a tapestry of symbols that explain the human organism in profound ways.
The reading of holy texts without the esoteric symbolism is very common, in fact, it has been the source of countless conflict, massive amounts of argument over verses, passages and the ilk, over their meaning and how we may use them in our lives, while the deeper meaning is blindly cast aside.
We shall shortly examine the symbolism behind the Garden of Eden. Even though the metaphors and symbolism can easily fill a small book:
From a literalist reading of it the pastor, priest, everyday Christian, or laymen may gather that long ago humans lived in perfecrt paradise, we had all we could ask for, God watched over us contently.
Until, that is, the fallen being Satan, in the form of a serpent came to the Garden and tempted Eve to partake of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good & evil. God has warned them explicitly that it was forbidden. Eve was so intrigued by the serpent's words of promise that said by eating it she would become like God in knowledge. She ate, and then offered it to Adam, and in turn, gained all knowledge God had of good & evil. They became aware of their nakedness and hid from God. God, upon discovering them, banished them from the Garden, shortened their life spans, made them prone to illness, and in Eve's case, made childbirth painful.
That is the Fall of Man, that has supposedly engendered the 'first sin' that every human in born with; the betrayal against God.
From this reading, we may gain (if the reader is a literalist) that there was an actual paradise on earth and we became banished from it and as a result we are inherent sinners in desperate need of salvation.
Now, if one were to use the language of symbolism in reading of the text, we may gain knowledge more or less like this:
(Let us think of Adam & Eve not as actual people, but as masculine and feminine energies present within everyone). Long ago humans lived in perfecrt paradise (pure oneness with God), we had all we could ask for, God watched over us contently.
Until, that is, the fallen being Satan, in the form of a serpent (liberation of ignorance, or even DNA), came to the Garden and tempted Eve to partake of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good & evil (duality). God has warned them explicitly that it was forbidden. Eve was so intrigued by the serpent's words of promise that said by eating it she would become like God in knowledge. She ate, and then offered it to Adam (this can be thought of asintuition freeing reason from the confines of the mind), and in turn, gained all knowledge God had of good & evil. They became aware of their nakedness and hid from God. God, upon discovering them, banished them from the Garden, shortened their life spans, made them prone to illness, and in Eve's case, made childbirth painful.
That is the Fall of Man, that has supposedly engendered the 'first sin' that every human in born with; the betrayal against God.
The symbolic reading of it may entail that we were once one with God, but we choose to separate ourselves from It and experience duality, that is, viewing everything not as one, but as opposing extremes struggling against each other. And contrary to the thoughts of the medieval church, and in some cases some churches nowadays, woman is the liberator of man. Not the reason for exile, but the freer, that used intuition, instead of blind obedience in order to do what she was meant to do.
Of course, there is much more symbolism to the story, and I have just lightly touched upon it. The use of symbolism can be applied to almost any, if not all holy scripture or mythology. I am not saying it is the only way to read them, in truth, I think one would miss certain things and take too much out of simple things. But central stories can be given some very interesting meanings; that can make more sense than the literal interpretations.
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