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Woman brings life into the world. Eve is the mother of this temporal world. Formerly you had a dreamtime paradise there in the Garden of Eden – to time, no birth, no death – no life. The serpent, who dies and is resurrected, shedding its skin and renewing its life, is the lord of the central tree, where time and eternity come together. He is the primary god, actually, in the Garden… The Garden is the serpent's place. It's an old, old story, we have Sumerian seals from as early as 3500 B.C. showing the serpent and the tree and the goddess, with the goddess giving the fruit of life to a visiting male. The old mythology of the goddess is right there. Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth Although not a goddess, Eve certainly belongs in this group of divine female symbols of wisdom. The myth of Eve and her consort Adam in the Garden is well-known, and in the most commonly accepted interpretation of that story, Eve caused mankind's exile from bliss by her act of reaching for the apple of knowledge. But as Joseph Campbell points out, this is a corruption of earlier myth. The Goddess's connection with serpents of wisdom and with trees of knowledge goes back long before this story, and the symbols are unmistakable. By choosing to understand, to reach beyond her limited knowledge and grasp for wisdom, Eve symbolizes not rash disobedience, but instinctive feminine wisdom. You are indeed the mother of invention,
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Verse from "Apple Sauce for Eve," by Marge Piercy, from The Art of Blessing the Day
