Environmentalism is not really new. It’s been with us all along—ever since human beings first recognized they had an environment they had to help maintain. What is new to our modern western senses is our ability to see and hear and read the coded ecological messages from the past, once again. The there are many ancient spiritual traditions which speak to this.
From classical mythology within the Abrahamic tradition (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), there is from within Genesis the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Among the other messages encoded here, an ecological message is not hard to discern. We start at Genesis 2:4:
4Here is a summary of the events in creation of the heavens and earth when the Lord God made them.
5There were no plants or grain sprouting up across the earth at first, for the Lord God hadn’t sent any rain; nor was there anyone to farm the soil.
6(However, water welled up from the ground at certain places and flowed across the land.)
7The time came when the Lord God formed a man’s body from the dust of the ground and breathed into it the breath of life. And man became a living person.
We should also note here that the sequencing of events in the opening sections of Genesis follows a clear "evolutionary" sequence—starting with the Big Bang. Genesis merely collapses and encodes that sequential process into the metaphorical language of myth. This mythical motif enables the compression and packaging of information which can then be shipped across great distances of time and space, while still keeping its essential messages (Eliade, 1954). Such packets of information are often referred to as memes. Sadly, much of the current debate on “evolution” versus “intelligent design” (a.k.a. “creationism”) misses this point entirely.
Each side in that debate has locked on to one side of a false dichotomy, based upon a literal interpretation of the Bible, instead of a far more sublime metaphorical and mythological interpretation. By using an Eco-centric process of seeking out common thematic denominators, based upon humans’ relationship with the Earth, we are able to broaden the hermeneutic horizon, and therefore deepen the subsequent discourse. This enables us to contextualize any discourse on ecology from a framework of what we might now call big history (Christian, 2004).
Genesis then goes on to describe, in the language of metaphor, the creation of the Garden of Eden. There are two especially important features in the Garden: the Tree of Knowledge, and the Tree of Life. By the time we get to Genesis 2:15, we are informed of the position of human beings in relation to the Garden, and to one of those two special trees.
15The Lord God placed man in the Garden as its gardener, to tend and care for it. [emphasis added]
16,17But the Lord God gave man this warning: “You may eat any fruit in the garden except fruit from the Tree of Conscience [a.k.a. “Tree of Knowledge”]—for its fruit will open your eyes to make you aware of right and wrong, good and bad. If you eat this fruit, you will be doomed to die.
Clearly, within the context of staying within the Garden, eating this forbidden fruit would not be a good thing. It is interesting to note, however, that there is no admonition from the Lord God against eating the fruit of the Tree of Life. Why not?
Edinger (1973), in analyzing the same myth in detail from a deep Jewish theological perspective (as well as from a Jungian depth psychology perspective), pointed out that the tree of Conscience/Knowledge is actually hedge which is formed around the Tree of Life. Furthermore, in order to get to the tree of life, one must first work one’s way through the tree of knowledge. Unfortunately, Adam and Eve were expelled from the east gate of Garden, and forced to toil and suffer for the rest of their days, based upon their prior dietary transgression.
If you look at the picture of Adam and Eve’s banishment, as depicted on ceiling of the Capella Sistina (www.wga.hu/html/m/michelan/3sistina/1genesis/4sin/04_3ce4), the action is framed by the tree of knowledge. In the first frame to the left of the tree, the couple is shown yielding to temptation. In the second frame, to the right of the tree, they are shown being banished from the garden.
The metaphorical use of human proximity to vegetation—trees, forests, gardens, hedges—seems to be directed at the same basic message of knowledge of (epistemology) and existence in (ontology) a primeval place and time. Human distance from vegetation implies human separation from that same place and time. It represents a kind of separation from Nature, and therefore movement toward a type of suffering, and a type of (symbolic?) death. Some degree of additional toil, challenge, or hardship (if not outright destruction) is consistently associated with such separation from Nature—based on each the mythical examples presented here.
Humans partook of the tree of knowledge; however, in retrospect, they did so without actually finding their way to the tree of life. When interpreting this myth with an ecological orientation, we might say humans had learned potent knowledge, without learning the life-sustaining responsibilities that go with such knowledge. They ate from the Tree of Knowledge but did not eat from the Tree of Life; hence their banishment from the garden.
According to Rev. Jeff Hutchison (2006), who builds his thesis upon earlier work of Walter Brueggemann (1982) , there are three basic elements in the covenant between human beings and God: a) vocation, in terms of the human calling to tend the Garden; b) permission, in terms of humans existing in the garden by God’s grace; and c) boundaries and limits, in terms God’s grace being bounded by terms of the vocation. These three things constitute the three different facets of the ontological whole that comprises living in the Garden. Life in the Garden can therefore be seen as a metaphor for living in harmony with Nature.
Viewed in developmental and ecological terms, there are inherent dangers in pursuing any form of knowledge that is not also rooted in life-affirming principles; hence the danger, hence the banishment of humans from the Garden. This is the particular danger in partaking of the fruits from Tree of Knowledge minus the fruits of the Tree of Life: This relates to the larger issue of the appropriate social contract in the context of the overall human relationship with the Earth, Nature, and God. At this level of hermeneutic analysis, Earth, Nature, and God may be seen as a kind of Earth-based Holy Trinity, from which the essence of human experience can be derived.
This is but one of many, many examples of coded ecological messaging from ancient mythology. We may also find such messages among other living traditions, including Hindu, Yoruba/Ifa, Native American, Japanese Shinto, and Australian Aboriginal. We should not restrict our understanding of ecology and the environment to the present tense, only. There is a rich tradition of advice-giving on the environment, from our ancestors to ourselves. We have but to learn how to open our ears and our hearts, once again.
Dr. Blaine ©
13 years ago
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