The Mystery of Eden, A Benefit Auction

Meridian Magazine and I are auctioning 6 Paintings that celebrate the Temple and the Garden of God. 100% of the proceeds from the paintings will support the "Celebration of Marriage."

You can place a bid by emailing me (queenmary.summerhays@gmail.com) your full name, contact info, name of the piece and the bid amount. Bid increments must increase at least $25. I’ll notify you by email each time you’re outbid. The auction will end at 9pm MST on Friday, April 18th.

Below the pictures you can read a description of the meaning behind the images.

#1 Apple Blossams, Original watercolor
 (5 x 10 inches) 16 x 20 inches framed
High bid: $500
High Bidder: LL

#2 Fox Gloves, Original watercolor
 ( 10 x 10 inches) 18 x18 inches framed
High bid: $100
High bidder: AC

#3 Circle and Square, Original watercolor
(9 x 6 inches) 18x22 inches framed
High bid: $275
High bidder: JS

#4 Sacred Memory, Giclee Print with deckled edge
 (14 x 14 inches) 20 x 22 inches framed
High bid: $200
High Bidder: VA

#5 As the Dews Descending, Geclee Print
 (15 x 15 inches) 26 x 26 inches framed
High bid: $100
High bidder: SB

#6 Almond Blossoms Limited Edition 187/500 Giclee Print,
 ( 5 x 16 inches) 14 x 26 inches framed
High bid: $100
Highest bidder: MS

The Mystery of Eden

From the Egyptian Isle of Embracing, to the Asian Kunlun Mountain, every culture in every age has told the story of the garden; the paradise where men and women unite to create life and love.  No matter what our origins, this foundational story, upon which cultures rise and fall, reminds each of us, of the interplay between life, and love, and the promise of Eternal Life in the “Garden of God.”

Each of these diverse garden stories have defining significance for the cultures that they inspire.  As Latter-day Saints we turn to the temple to see the Judeo Christian paradigm story in it’s purest clarity.  As one LDS temple sealer explained the Eden story, “That there might be no question as to its nature and purpose God himself performed earth’s first marriage uniting the man Adam and the woman Eve as ‘one flesh’  in a union that was to be as Eternal as God himself. It was in that sacred ceremony that the command was given that they multiply and replenish the earth.”

In attempting to understand that sacred ceremony, we can find no better setting than a garden, since God describes the glory of the New and Everlasting Covenant as “a continuation of the seeds forever and ever.” (D&C 132:19)  God had earlier described his intent and purpose in creating this first man and woman by saying, “We will cause them to be fruitful and multiply” (Abraham 4:28)  It was only woman that could give Adam that “fruit.”    Only that beguiling gift,  both fatal and fruitful, would fulfill the New and Everlasting Covenant, achieving the ideal that their seeds “continue.”

Because of Eve’s power to create life, Adam’s posterity would live on the earth long after his death, making Adam eternal.  Eve created a fruitful line of Fathers and Mothers that would literally “continue” throughout “all generations of time.”

Yet the covenantal promise was to achieve eternity in two different spheres: “both in the world and out of the world should they continue as innumerable as the stars.”

Only Sealing power would give their children Eternal Life, or life after death.  Just as Eve gave Adam eternal life through childbearing,  Adam, using the priesthood, gave Eve and her children Eternal Life through the ordinances of the gospel.  Only together, acting as one flesh, could they achieve all that was intended by the Eternal Father.  

In uniting the “Father of Many,” and the “Mother of All Living,” God defined the need for relationships,  the sealing ordinances, the function of the priesthood, and our divine inheritance as sons and daughters of God.

Our temples recreate this divine setting where we may gather to Eden, following the pattern established by the Eternal Father; to be sealed in family units, every child tied to his mother and

father, preserving the garden of humanity, beneath the boughs of the Tree of Life.

Adam and Eve’s  lives were defined by their origin and gender in Eden and the promise to pass cherubim and a flaming sword in order to again commune with their Father. This setting illustrated the sealing power and it’s significance in the lives of the human family,  as  we “weld” families together, sealing each of us to a birthright that is both divine and biological-  A married mother and a father,  bound in a new and everlasting covenant.

Adam’s desire to return to the place where he walked and talked with God in the cool of the evening could not be restrained from his children—grandchildren of paradise.  The scriptures describe our first parents making “all things known unto their sons and their daughters” (Moses 5:12). Of course, the first high priest taught them to return to the temple to be sealed. Would Adam invent an alternative to the pattern God established in the garden?

This paradigm story reveals our divine relationships not only between man and wife, but also what it means to be parent and child.  It reveals what we inherit as children of God, and what part of that birthright that we pass on to our children. It is a powerful identity we can only discover in the garden of God—as we embrace those we love in the pattern that was established in Eden; A pattern that creates both Eternal life, and eternal lives, two different gifts that combine to create the fruitful continuance designed in Eden,  the garden of God.

 

Thetis and Peleus

I've been watching Joseph Campbell lately. This story of Thetis and Peleus was so interesting I had to transcribe it. The plate he used was prettier, but I couldn't find it on the web so, oh well. I also included a wood cutting of the image. But here comes the cool part- Joseph Campbell:

This beautiful thing is from Athens 5th century red figured ceramic piece. And it shows, a woman initiating a man. Actually in marriage the woman is the initiator. She’s the one closer to nature, and what it’s all about. He’s just coming in for , ah, um, illumination. This becomes especially interesting when we read who these two are. This is Thetus and Peleos. This is the mother and this is the father of Achilles. So it is a marriage. Where one becomes one member of a twofold being. Thetus is the beautiful nymph with whom Zeus fell in love. Then he learned that her son would be greater than his father, so he thought better of the relation ship and withdrew. And saw to it that she should marry a human husband. And so Peleos is her human husband and she is a godess.

The text tells us that when he went to take her in marriage, she transformed herself into a lion, into fire, into water, but he conquered her. Well, that’s not what you see here at all.

She has power that is symbolized here in serpent, and in lion. Now let me repeat, the basic story of the sense of these two symbols.
the serpent sheds its skin to be born again, As the moon sheds it’s shadow to be born again and the serpent therefore like the moon is a symbol of lunar consciousness. That is to say life and consciousness, life energy and consciousness, incorporated in a temporal body....

"Let us see now what is happening to the youth. One serpent is biting him here between the eye, opening the eye of inner vision, that sees past the display of the field of time and space,

The second serpent biting under the ear opening the ear to the song, of the music of the spheres; the music, the voice of the universe. The third serpent is biting the heal, the bite of the Achilles tendon, the bite of death. dying to ones little ego and becoming a vehicle of the knowledge of the transcendent-- becoming transparent to transcendence. That was the sense of the initiations that we were reading about. The woman becomes a vehicle at the time of her menstruation. And the man in his ceremonial is a vehicle as well. And so the world of art.
The two hands, now this is important- good and evil together. yin yang cycle. The Chinese. The mystical dimension is beyond good and evil. The ethical? dimension is in the field of good and evil."

One more tiny note. For this I am going to turn to the Venus of Laussel.
And Joseph Campbell's commentary:“This is from a shelf in France called Laussel. And It’s a very important and suggestive figure. This little Venus of laussel is holding in her hand, in her right hand, elevated, a bison horn, with 13 vertical strokes, that’s the number of nights between the first crescent and the full moon. The other hand is on the belly. What is suggested, we don’t have any words of writing from this period, What is suggested is a recognition of the equivalence of the lunar and menstrual cycles.
This would be the first inkling we have of recognition of counterparts between the celestial and earthly rhythms of life.
Alexandar Marshak published a formidable volume called “Roots of civilization” where he deals with a number of staves or staffs of this kind, which are notched and he has studied a number of these with a microscope and finds that the notches were not made by the same instrument at the same time on any one piece.
He says these are probably time factored counts, counts many of them suggesting very strongly counts of the lunar cycle. So may be out of women's concern for this rhythm that they will have recognised in their own bodies, that we come to mathematical and even astronomical reckoning."
So, I can't help wondering here, if the snake is associated with the lunar 28day cycle, is it possible that the association or symbol of the serpent beguiling Eve, is really the physical purpose of the female body, "over course of time" suggesting or "beguiling" the woman. For heaven's sake people, there are somethings daddy doesn't explain to his daughter, but he trusts that her body will explain it to her. You are beguiled because your body starts growing up from the innocence and naivety of childhood to the functionality of adulthood. You are beguiled when you realise there is more to do all day then sit in a garden living pablum cause everything is taken care of by mommy and daddy; At some point you want to grow up and try to do the amazing things mommy and daddy did. And to do any less is childish and selfish.

And so what we see illustrated in this story is the union of our physical nature complete with impulse and desire that the catholics so hated, bridled with our eternal purpose, our destiny, our spiritual force. We see this concept of "tangible as man's" revealed by Joseph, refuting and crushing the catholic dogmas of celibacy, original sin, carnal nature etc, a concept that brought him continual persecution ultimately expressed in King Follet, the testimony of which would have him killed by thousands; best expressed to us through a metaphor about leaving home, best expressed as a myth, bringing together a physical scientific event and imbuing it with eternal purpose and context, best expressed in a story that could not die in Carthage jail, albeit mangled and battered by misinterpretations of men. Those pathetic interpretations would continue to fall short of purpose, and fail, leading to an atheistic society. The story would continue to rise above it all, offering eternal purpose for our physical strivings. We need an Adam and Eve constellation! I love this story!