Carlo Suares: Ten Principle Themes of Genesis from The Cipher of Genesis
Beginning his discussion of the allegory of Noahh in The Cipher of Genesis,
Suares pauses to recapitulate and provide a compact summary of the primary psycho-evolutionary themes of Genesis. These are the
underlying dynamics of the Myth that is personified by the individual
psychological archetypes of Genesis.
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Likewise, we will not go at length into the story of the Deluge, although the origins of this legend reveal certain elements
of the conflict between the different symbols which we have been examining. The incoherence in the behaviour of a divinity
who decides to suppress all life because his creation has gone sour,
and who in this drastic operation carefully preserves a sample of each of his created species so that he can keep alive what he intends to destroy,
is a stepping-down to the folklore level of some of the contradictions with which are are now familiar. And the picturesque Odyssey of Noahh and his
Ark furnishes amusing decorations for nurseries.
The Deluge, no doubt, was really a cataclysm that was apparently the end of a world and, for those to whom it happened, it was the end of
the world. Then came the surprising discovery that everything was beginning again. The Semitic genius grafted some
interesting symbols onto these archaic memories, such as the Ark itself, the raven, the dove, and of course, all the numbers involved ...
each episode merits careful study, but we shall keep to its broad lines.
After the Deluge, we leave the archetypes and enter into another domain. Here the archetypes, the framework on which the psyche builds itself,
engender categories of symbols. One can follow these until the fiftieth chapter of Genesis which concludes with Joseph's death at the symbolic
age of a hundred and ten years. Then one can trace the development of these symbols right through into the Gospels of Matthew and John.
We have already shown the keys to the understanding of these stories. The general tenor of them is as follows:
the principle themes are the allegories of
- (a) Aleph in the blood and Aleph's inevitable resurrection;
- (b) the earth (soil) as Adamah -- the female of Adam -- and
Adam as being mankind;
- (c) Elohim seen as the life-process of Aleph and Aleph as pulsating discontinuity life-death, Elohim being its
movement and its projection
into the continuity of existence;
- (d) the story of Esha and Eesh, being archetypes of "fiery" womanhood and manhood;
- (e) the nature of YHWH as being the double life (inner and outer) of all lives which can only come into being in mankind where the two
lives fertilize each other;
- (f) the interplay between life and existence (life as life-death--life-death operating upon the existence of all that exists;
- (g) the perpetual delaying of the birth of the human germ,
always prevented from settling down into any fixed or permanent conditioning
as is the case for the germs of life in the animal kingdom;
- (h) the wrestling between Elohim and YHWH;
- (i) the conflict between YHWH and Adamah, hence the conflict
of their so-called "sons" -- in other words, between the offspring of
YHWH through Adam and the offspring of the Mothers (Adamah);
- (j) finally, and most important to full understanding, the process
of womanhood's
sublimation.
Suares, Cipher of Genesis, p.139
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