At 1.48 am
At 1.48 am
I rub sleep off
Look at the psychedelic
Lights and colours
The truth isn't what you see
here on these walls
That I paint and adorn
The inside peels
Musty with the odours
Of a love that rose and fermented
Turning to vinegar
It is useful you know
One for pickling
And I have heard it helps
in losing weight
Ah! Who tempted I wonder
Eve? Yes. She the rebel it must be
Adam was always innocent
Obedient
Satan with that apple
Must have known
You could get cider
Or vinegar
Either way he wins
Naughty boy.
Is it?
Must be a mistake.
A female he must have been
For mistakes are hers alone
He's infallible
The serpent or snake played important roles in religious and cultural life in Egypt, Canaan, Mesopotamia, and Greece as a symbol of evil power and chaos from the underworld as well as a symbol of fertility, life, and healing. The Hebrew word "nachash" is also associated with divination, including the verb-form, which means to practice divination or fortune-telling. In Genesis 3:1 a nachash appears, with the ability to speak and to reason: "Now the serpent was more subtle (also translated as "cunning") than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made." God had placed Adam, the first man, in the Garden of Eden and warned him not to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, "for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." When the serpent tried to tempt Eve, the first woman, to eat of the Tree, she told it what God had said, but the serpent told her she would not surely die but, rather, that "your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil" (Genesis 3:5). Eve ate the fruit and gave it to Adam to eat as well. God, who was walking in the Garden, managed to prevent Adam and Eve from eating the fruit of the Tree of Life, and thus become immortal, banished them from Eden, and punished the snake is punished by making it crawl on its belly and eat dust. ). Several early Church Fathers, including Titus Flavius Clemens (Clement of Alexandria) of the 2nd century and Eusebios tes Kaisareias (Eusebius of Caesarea ) of the 3rd century, interpreted the Hebrew "Heva" as not only the name of Eve but, in its aspirated form, as "female serpent." Medieval Christian art also often depicted the Edenic serpent as a woman (often identified as Lilit, a sexually wanton demon who was first developed in the Babylonian Talmud of the 3rd to 5th centuries and was portrayed in the satirical "Alphabet of Sirach," which dates from ca. 700–1000, as Adam's first wife, who was created at the same time and from the same dirt as Adam; in the 13th century Isaac ben Jacob ha-Cohen claimed she refused to become servient to Adam and thus left him and the Garden). Some early fathers held Eve as responsible for the fall of man; Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus told his female listeners in the early 2nd century, "You are the devil's gateway" and went on to explain that they were responsible for the death of Christ: "On account of your desert [i.e., punishment for sin, that is, death], even the Son of God had to die." In the 5th century St Augustinus of Hippo developed the doctrine of the Fall of Man into the doctrine of original sin, the notion that, through descent from Adam and Eve, humankind is born into a condition of sinfulness and must await redemption. Later, baptism became understood as a washing away of the stain of hereditary sin, and the serpent that tempted Eve was interpreted to have been Satan, or that Satan was using a serpent as a mouthpiece, although there is no mention of this identification in the Torah. Though central to Western Christian theology, these doctrines are not shared by Eastern Orthodox churches, Judaism, or Islam. According to rabbinical tradition, the serpent represents sexual desire. According to the Qurʼan, both Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit in a heavenly rather than earthly Eden, and as a result Allah sent them to Earth as his representatives; since they were both forgiven, there is no concept of "original sin."
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