The Big Book of Mysteries. Lionel and Patricia Fanthorpe

the psychotic, whom the Farmingdon researchers described as an “emotional moral cripple.” According to them, such people were cognitively aware of good and evil, but could distinguish them only in the way that normal people distinguish colour, size, weight, or shape. The psychotic would know that attacking elderly victims with an iron bar and stealing from them was “wrong” or “bad.” He or she would know that housing the homeless or feeding the hungry was “right” and “good.” The psychotic’s problem is that “right” and “wrong” — “good” and “bad” — have no more emotional meaning for him or her than “left” and “right” or “up” or “down.” Such distinctions as the psychotic makes are totally devoid of emotional context.

      The second Farmingdon category was the authoritarian moralist, the man or woman of the sacred book, the unquestioning followers of the guru, of the official rules and regulations, or of the party manifesto. This attitude goes back to — or even far beyond — the days of the ancient Medes and Persians “whose law altereth not.” Authoritarian moralists, despite all their inflexible faults and bureaucratic problems are still morally far ahead of the psychotics. Authoritarians are often deeply emotionally involved with their ethics. Good and evil matter to them. Their central weakness and their main focal problem is their inability to understand that what they regard as the ultimate and infallible source of moral authority can often be wrong — sometimes so hopelessly wrong that it disguises good as evil and evil as good. The famous Ten Commandments and the ancillary religious laws of the Old Testament — written on their literal and metaphorical Tablets of Stone — are the classical example of what typical authoritarians would recognize as an infallible and immutable ethical source. Tragically, in the name of such laws, authoritarians will resolutely and implacably imprison, torture, stone, or burn those who dare to disagree with them — and will then self-righteously convince themselves that the horrendous and inhuman evil which they are perpetrating is good. Matthew Hopkins, the Cromwellian Witchfinder General, was just such a man: as were the witch-finders of Salem.

      The third Farmingdon type was referred to as the autonomous moral thinker. This is the man or woman who judges every moral situation on its merits, who refuses to jump on any particular ethical bandwagon — however popular or traditionally revered — without reserving the inalienable right to jump off again, if, in his opinion, the wagon appears to be rolling the wrong way. The autonomous moral thinker takes a general attitude of Is this loving? Is this kind? Is this helpful? Will this give pleasure to someone while hurting no one else? Would I want this for myself? The autonomous moral thinker takes all that he regards as best from every guru and from every rule book, while reserving the intellectual right to disagree. For the autonomous moral thinker, the ultimate source of ethical authority is his own judgment about whether a word or an action is acceptable to a God of love and mercy, whether a thought, word, or deed is kind, supportive, and benign. The autonomous moral thinker has the courage to go it alone, to accept full personal responsibility for his decisions. There is no rule book to hide behind. There is no guru to ask. You decide for yourself whether a thing is right or wrong — and then you speak or act accordingly.

      So how does the Farmingdon analysis relate to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden? What moral and ethical approach does that Tree represent? What does it symbolize? Did the literal or metaphorical eating of the fruit of that tree take Adam and Eve, as the literal or metaphorical parents of the human race, into a different moral dimension, something beyond a state of young, amoral innocence? Did it mean that after a certain point of development was reached they had to take on the moral responsibility of thinking for themselves — becoming autonomous moral thinkers instead of obeying unquestioningly, conforming unquestioningly?

      That raises the great philosophical, theological, moral, and metaphysical question about whether simple obedience and unquestioning loyalty are “better” — more moral, more likely to produce inner peace and happiness — than wanting to think for yourself and make your own independent decisions. If an all-powerful God had wanted obedient robots, androids, or beings incapable of thinking for themselves, it would have been a very simple task to produce them. But if God chose to create free and autonomous beings who could genuinely accept or reject Him because they wanted to, who could genuinely choose between good or evil because they understood them, then the Tree and its fruit have profoundly deep meanings. Was that first choice the prototype of all truly autonomous choice? Was it the choice of whether to accept the terrible responsibility of having free will and the power to choose?

      Who or what was the literal or metaphorical serpent and its fateful role in the Eden drama? In early Hebrew thought of the kind that must have been familiar to the author of Genesis, the serpent was a subtle, cunning, wily creature — like the fox in medieval western folklore. To what extent was the serpent seen as Satan himself, and to what extent was it thought of as being merely one of his agents or messengers of evil? The Talmudic authorities give the evil spirit, or demon, which tempted Eve a name: they call it Sammâel.

      The Phoenicians, however, held the serpent in the highest esteem, and the ancient Chinese regarded it as a symbol of superior wisdom and power. Their early artwork depicted the kings of heaven (tien-hoangs) as having the bodies of serpents.

      The Egyptians represented the eternal spirit Kneph, whom they regarded as the source of all good, in the form of a serpent. Paradoxically, Tithrambo, their god of revenge and punishment, was also represented in serpent form, as was Typhon, the terrible god of evil and immorality, who also appears in early Greek mythology as the son of Hera.

      The serpent was frequently tamed and mummified in ancient Egypt, where it also has a role in the alphabet as a symbol of subtlety, cunning, and sensual pleasure.

      The Greeks associated it with Aesculapius and healing, with Ceres, the good provider, and with the swift and benign Hermes or Mercury. On the opposite tack, they also linked it with the evil Furies, and in its Python form as a terrifying monster that only the arrows of the gods could bring down.

      It is particularly interesting to note a parallel between the Eden account and the doctrine of Zoroaster, which relates how the evil god Ahriman appeared in the form of a serpent and taught humanity to sin.

      In the writings of those researchers who wonder whether the ancient sacred texts like Genesis were partial recollections of extraterrestrial interference in human history, considerable emphasis is placed on the idea of possible rivalry or conflict between two distinct groups of technologically advanced aliens visiting Earth simultaneously. If one such rival group were physically serpentine in form, or, more probably, used a winged serpent as an emblem, information and instructions given to human beings by the other group would condemn the serpent as evil. The argument goes on to suggest that genetic engineering by the alien visitors — rather than a natural, Darwinian, evolutionary process — was responsible for the quantum leap in the development of the human mind and brain. Is it also possible that the record of Eve being created from one of Adam’s ribs is a dim memory of a very advanced rapid cloning process?

      If the Eden narrative is rewritten in terms of a genetic engineering laboratory, and the “forbidden fruit” is seen as exposure to some form of genetic contamination, then the expulsion of the contaminated breeding pair from their original, idyllic, garden laboratory into the dangerous world outside becomes a logical consequence of the contamination.

      If one of their offspring, Cain, then demonstrates part of this hypothetical, genetic foul-up by murdering his brother, Abel, that would also seem to harmonize.

      The idea that Eden was some sort of isolated, experimental bioengineering reservation run by extraterrestrial technologists gets around the problem of where the other people came from among whom Cain went on his wanderings. It also goes some way toward offering one possible explanation of the mysterious identity of the “sons of God” who were said to have mated with mortal women in Genesis 6, verse 2, and whose offspring grew up to be “mighty men which were of old men of renown.”

      Eden is a garden of mystery in every sense. Some recent