(no subject)

[novapsyche]

Billy Graham is speaking in the background, live. It's my first time actually hearing him speak. I can see why he holds sway over large crowds. His rhetorical skills are just lulling enough and compelling enough.

He was describing the Garden of Eden (which he pointedly situated in Iraq), and it got me to thinking. The angels that guard the Tree of Life with a flaming sword? Maybe that symbolism is more than just a symbol--maybe it's a riddle.

I'm thinking of the pattern the ring of fire would make when the sword makes a full rotation. The circle would be perfect, of course, since angels are capable of circumscribing a circle.

I'm thinking that in the moment of death, the soul (consciousness?) is transformed (reduced?) to electricity/light. This light "walks the path" of the circle that the angels draw with their flaming swords. This I liken to walking the pattern in the Amber diceless roleplaying game (if I'm understanding the concept of walking a pattern--Loki or Blade, correct me if I'm wrong).

Walking that circuit returns us to the original, primordial pool of energy from which we all spawn.

It's an idea.

Comments

[entheo.livejournal.com]

What about the theory that it was a mushroom that is the fruit of the tree of life?

"And out of the ground made Jehovah God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight,
and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said,
Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman,
Ye shall not surely die: for God doth know that in the day that ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall
be opened, and ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil She took of the fruit, and him
They heard the voice of God"

A fruit which causes one to hear the voice of God would surely leave quite an impression. However, one must ask how the author of the Bible could possibly confuse a fruit with a large, red mushroom. Wasson theorizes that the "priestly redactor" who wrote Genesis was sophisticated enough to realize that A. muscaria is mychorhizzal, meaning that it is dependent upon a coniferous host. The Tree in the garden must have been a conifer, and the Fruit was then a mushroom.

Also here as the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil

[liquidgrey.livejournal.com]

the situation you describe is roughly analogous to the Bardo states, when, if successfully traversed by the aware post-death mind, is returned to the non-dual state of the godhead ("the clear light").
it's not walking a circle, but it is a bit like it since traversing the Bardo states would require complete presence, much in the way an angelic being might manifest a perfect circle.
Perhaps I presume, and I'm speaking across symbolic languages, so perhaps this concepts are less commensurable than I see them to be.