Psychology

The Jungian Mythos of

Lilith: The Last Temptation of Adam

‘Depth psychology’ or the psychology of the unconscious, is a modern discipline whose roots recede far back into history. Long before ‘rational’ science had reduced the human condition to mere ‘behaviour modification’ or ‘cognitive schemas’ the healing powers of narrative, and of myth, were the natural means of treating the suffering soul. Just Like the body, the psyche has evolved, and within it echoes of our remote ancestral past still play out through the narrative of myth.

Human self awareness, our much prized, bright light of consciousness, has indeed been hard won: but at the cost of a separation between not only ourselves and others, but also an inner separation between that narrow focused light of ego, and the unknowable depths, of the soul.

To work in depth psychology is to be a labourer in the vineyard of the soul. There, ‘paranormal’ phenomena arise quite spontaneously - things happen that can only be given name to by religion, and by myth: as the language of science loses all of its explanatory power.

It is at this level that the eternal truths of human nature are to be encountered – and it is here – if we but only look, that we find her...

In The Beginning: the creation myth

The story of Lilith: The Last Temptation of Adam is an original work of Mythic Fiction starting with the creation of the material world, The Garden of Eden (Paradise) and, the First Man – Adam.

The unfolding drama is played out between the two eternal opposites in the human psyche – the masculine and the feminine, with the patriarchal ‘Demiurge’ or Rex Mundi and Lord Creator, fashioning the physical world and placing at its heart – Paradise in the form of the Garden of Eden, and within that – the First Man ‘Adam’ made from the Earth itself in the Creator’s own image.

The beauty of the created world beguiles an immortal Goddess who exists in the Pleroma – the highest realms of the eternal uncreated void – she is Lilith and as she enters creation, not only does she form a deity counterpoint to The Demiurge as feminine to masculine (thereby completing the original divine pair with him) but by becoming flesh as the First Woman – she mirrors that divine dyad, with Adam, The First Man.

Adam is unaware of his own divine nature – his soul as being a spark of the highest God who rules over the uppermost realm of the Pleroma, and which has become entrapped in matter by The Demiurge. Lilith however is more than aware of her status, not as a divine ‘spark’ but as a Goddess of the Pleroma in her own right. Yet she believes that she has instantiated herself into the material world by an act of her own will – whereas in reality, she has been captured as surely as Adam’s soul has – albeit that it was the beauty of creation in material form that had caught her as a moth to a flame...

Adam’s awareness of himself – his consciousness, is limited, which is the state that The Lord Creator – The Demiurge, wishes him to remain within. But he does react to his ‘opposite’ the First Woman, Lilith whom he mistakenly believes, is like him, created by The Lord. The

spark of the divine within him, now polarised as a ‘man’, seeks completion by union with its opposite: a ‘woman’.

The Lord had promised Adam a woman to be his companion, but Lilith had arrived before her. The mutual attraction between them as spirit entrapped in flesh was overpowering for Adam. Lilith feels this too, but, she will not submit to Adam’s ‘primitive’ instincts for masculine dominance – although she does also feel his devotion – which is the first ‘love’ to arise in a human being. Lilith recognises this in his beating heart – it is his signature – the rhythm of his soul, and this will echo and resonate, with her, as her ‘heart song’ down the coming ages.

Lilith demands that Adam submit to her will – she is a Goddess, and only exists in flesh as an act of her own will (she still believes). Adam is tempted, but he feels fear, as he doesn’t appreciate Lilith’s divine status any more than he realises his own. In his fear, he chooses to run back to the heart of the Garden to call upon his father-creator, and there begs him to create the promised (submissive) and now, ‘second’ woman, for him. In so doing he chooses another aspect of the feminine over Goddess Lilith – in effect another woman over her. This choice, the resolution of his first temptation, is a preference for a woman with a lower level of consciousness and development than his own. In making this choice, he gives up on the potential he would have had for increasing his self-awareness, and his development - of his true nature, by union with Lilith. This, seems to satisfy the Lord Creator – The Demiurge – who of course does not want humanity to be conscious of itself – hence the proscription concerning the Forbidden Fruit from the Tree of Knowledge.

Lilith as flesh, or at least as the material part of her total being – which is as a Goddess’s spirit ‘within’ flesh- is vulnerable to The Demiurge’s power over this, his own created – material realm: and so she is banished beyond Eden and into The Wasteland.

But even he cannot ‘destroy’ her, and so she makes her home there and issues her curse against Adam’s choice of Eve over her, and

against all who descend thus from Eve’s womb: the whole of forthcoming humanity. They, she will destroy with pestilence – until none remain except one, one single man – who must carry Adam’s spark – the heartbeat and rhythm of his soul, recognised by her as her ‘heart-song’ – and so he will be chosen as her New Adam with whom she will repopulate the world from her own, new, Garden of Eden.

In spite, Lilith returns by guile into Eden and shape shifts into a half-woman half-serpent, and successfully tempts Eve to take the Forbidden Fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. She also, places herself deeply within Eve’s psyche as an imago a living image of beguiling feminine eroticism, love, and Sapphic lust for womankind, so as to torment the male descendents of Adam with frustration. Meanwhile, she ensures that he too has the imago of Lilith placed deeply within him – as image and far collective memory of a lost first love, but also as the ultimate in temptation of lust, and irresistible desire.

With these seeds so planted, Lilith is able to feast upon human libido as incubus and succubus and thereby maintain her physical form (necessary after The Demiurge casts her out into the Wasteland).

Thus we have two immortal Gods: The Demiurge, and Lilith as male and female deities: and two divine sparks entrapped within flesh as male and female human souls: The First Man Adam, and the Second Woman; Eve.

The archetypal drama is thus staged.

Animus: the masculine spirit

Animus is the Latin term for ‘spirit’ and in the psychology of Carl Gustav Jung, the term represents the imago of the masculine as it’s experienced by women both personally in an individual woman’s own life: and also collectively, through the universal experience women have, and always have had, down the ages; of men. At the core of this

imago is what Jung calls an ‘archetype’ an inherited original imprint or form, that lies latent in a woman’s psyche and helps prepare her for experience of her ‘opposite’ – that is of men.

The Animus is experienced regularly in relationships, dreams and fantasies, and also through storytelling – in all of its forms – including literature, music, art, television and the cinema. The oldest representations of the Animus come from religion and myth – and as a work of Mythic Fiction, Lilith: The Last Temptation of Adam is therefore a kind of psychodrama of the Animus.

The first encounter in the novel is between Lilith in her transcendent Goddess form and a material paradise created by a little known masculine deity: The Demiurge – who has placed a ‘First Man’ – made in his own image – within that garden paradise (Eden). Lilith despite her power and independence, is first beguiled and then entrapped by the beauty of Creation – including that of the rather fawning, but still attractive, primordial man – Adam.

Lilith’s own wish to be loved and appreciated above all others is her first revealed weakness, but her stand-offish treatment of this simple, First Man, Adam, leads to his rejection of her in favour of another, and this time ‘created’ woman, Eve.

Jealousy, including a reproductive jealousy, now drives Lilith’s spite as she curses Eve and all who will descend from her. Lilith will become a death demon, the bringer of pestilence, a child killer, and a libido vampire: and all of this in service to her intense feelings of being scorned.

And yet, she is not liberated by her plans for retribution, rather they entrap her still further by her emotional attachment to the imago of a ‘New Adam’ with whom she will repopulate the Earth: after her fatal, global pandemic pestilence has cleansed it of all others.

The next significant masculine figure we meet is ‘The Bavarian’ Maximilian Von Hesse, formerly: Guy de Montpellier. Von Hesse is well reliefed as the archetypal, tall dark, handsome man. Mysterious,

powerful, highly dangerous, essentially unknowable. He is effortlessly seductive: but steely cold in his soul. A man whom any woman may want or fantasise about as her protector, but never wish as her enemy.

Such an archetype is popular in myth and legend – with aspects of him to be found in such diverse characters as Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights, Sir Mordred (and all ‘dark Knights’ in medieval romance) as well as in contemporary ‘Gothic’ vampire and werewolf stories.

For a woman: to have such a man utterly devoted to her, and to be her protector, servant and lover, has been a common fantasy for millennia.

But although Von Hesse is a somewhat one sided figure: implacable and relentless; his devotion to Lilith may in the end be conditional – which makes him potentially treacherous – even to her. This is the attraction – the dangerous attraction of such men: vast intelligence and experience, a warrior and a scientist - devastatingly handsome – but, also an unconscionable killer. Does he still carry within his dark heart that spark of light from The First Adam?

The next significant figure is of course ‘Adam Teal’ the fawning young man of 17th century old Liverpool town – whose love for Lilith is immediate and unconditional. At first she merely teases him, waiting for her powers to reach their climax, but, her own wilfulness betrays her to the townsfolk as a witch and she is condemned to be cast in chains into a liver-brown tidal pool – there to drown. It that final moment, she sees deeply into young Adam Teal’s heart and there finds the spark that had evaded her all along. Recognising him, for who he really is, she prophesizes that they will be together again, in future lifetimes, when he will remember his love for her – with his every single heartbeat...

Adam Teal represents the common experience for many young women and girls, of devoted – but unwanted love from a youth, whom they aren’t at first interested in, but despite his perhaps lack of good looks, in the end, he proves not only to be genuine in his love: but has

that certain something deeper within him, that resonates with her soul: and so finally, removes all of her doubts.

With Lilith’s re-animation in the early 21st century, we meet a contemporary Adam Teal – in the form of Adam Mitchell. This third ‘Adam’ is much better looking than Adam Teal was: slightly older, and certainly better educated (he’s a Ph.D student) – but like his earlier namesakes, he’s immediately smitten with Lilith.

Scatty, likeable, accident prone... and the kind of young man many women spontaneously want to mother, his infatuation with Lilith knows no bounds. For her part, however, she recognises ‘him’ immediately, as the reincarnation of the earlier Adam Teal – and the both of them, as one continuous personality right back to that ‘First Adam’ in Eden – for the signature rhythm of their beating heart is the same. They are therefore, rather like a holographic image: merely the separate facets of the same soul. The Adam of Eden, is Adam Teal, and now, Adam Mitchell...

And yet, she cannot make her final choice too quickly: for there are other candidates – principal amongst whom is Von Hesse whose centuries long life has been utterly devoted to becoming her consort, and father of the coming new race of humankind. Whom will she choose, the ‘boy bander’ Adam Mitchell, or the mature, tall, darkly handsome and dangerous Von Hesse?

It’s a common enough scenario – how does any woman choose with whom to start a family with – but of course for Lilith, the stakes are incalculably higher...

Then there is yet another choice: Sean O’Riley, a little younger than Adam Mitchell and the grandson of the only man alive who could conceivably stop her. To choose him would amuse Lilith as she is vulnerable to irony. Sean, in looks is more of a ruggedly handsome type – but his nature is similar to Adam Mitchell’s: a likeable dreamer, gaff prone, and... just as adoring and unconditionally devoted.

As Lilith prepares for what she believes will be her final retribution – her nemesis against the children of Eve– she encounters a number of other men, all of them representing different aspects of the Animus archetype.

Sean’s grandfather, Kevin O’Riley senior, is the one human male that she fears. Patriarch of his family, he stands at the end of a long line of ‘Keepers’ of an ancient secret of the land. In outward appearance, he is an older but still youthful and very well groomed ‘wise’ man – in looks much like a matured Pierce Brosnan. Had Lilith returned when O’Riley was young, then he would without doubt have been a serious contender to be chosen as her consort – due both to his good looks but also that ‘spark’ of spirit that he carries within him. As an Animus figure – he represents an older father figure – security, honesty, life experience – emotionally protective – and wise. Yet in the novel, when Claire Lattimer really needs him, he falters, as Lilith’s penetrating spirit uncovers every last shadowed recess of his soul and brings him into conflict with his final, and as yet unresolved, fears.

Dr John Sutton, Claire Lattimer’s deputy and best friend, is a mature good looking ‘action man’ type. Practical, no nonsense, loyal, and always first into the fray when needed. The women around him, rely on him to be the ‘man’s man’ when needed, and the sounding board for the ‘collective’ man beyond their network of relationships. He acts as a middle-aged understudy to the older O’Riley. Lilith toys with him easily as John’s innate honesty cannot hide anything from her penetrating gaze.

The two most important women in the story are of course Lilith herself, but also it transpires: Claire Lattimer. Claire is in early middle age, but in looks can easily pass for ten years younger. Attractive, and experienced in life and in relationships, she is happily married with two teenage children – but the story soon brings her to question herself in the most fundamental of ways – her identity as a woman, and, her relationship to the men around her.

For Claire – the Animus archetype operates through a network of secure and enduring roles and relationships: her loving husband (Kevin O’Riley junior), her colleague and best friend; Dr John Sutton, her own ‘father figure’ Kevin O’Riley senior, her teenage son: Sean... and... her at first, platonic and protective relationship to the affable, gaff prone but flirtatious Adam Mitchell.

However, the rapid pace of events soon overturns Claire’s hard-won world, as she discovers first an unbidden but deeply erotic and emotional attachment to Adam Mitchell – which he reciprocates – and then having uncovered just who and what Lilith is, she learns that the primordial Goddess and death demon is penetrating her own family – having attacked her husband Kevin Junior in her astral form as a Succubus and then in guise of the beautiful teenage girl ‘Lillian Hopgood’ she enthrals her son Sean.

The Animus drama now spirals out of control for Claire as she discovers through a séance and a past-life regression hypnosis that she is the reincarnation of Adam Mitchell’s wife: Sarah Tennyson, from 17th Century Liverpool – when he was Adam Teal, and that she is the biological descendent of The Witchfinder: Nathaniel Lattimer – who ‘sacrificed’ Lilith to his version of Christianity, by throwing her in shackles into the old Liverpool, pool, cursed as a witch. Claire’s emotions run riot with her as she is torn between her duty of care to Adam, and her almost irresistible feelings of love and attraction to him. Her marriage is put under enormous strain, and her son Sean is drawn ever deeper into Lilith’s trap – with him being a potential consort for the demon Goddess as her ‘New Adam’. Desperate and falling to pieces both physically and emotionally, she finds that O’Riley senior is overwhelmed by his own unresolved fears, and that her ever dependable colleague: Dr John Sutton is all but powerless to help her.

Her love, and her identity, are challenged: literally to the very brink of the abyss – and it is only at the very last moment that the Animus, in his transcendent form of loving self-sacrifice, finally comes to her aid...

The third significant woman, in the second part of the book, is the marmishly glamorous Dr Claudia Moore. Claudia, the head of department and chief field archaeologist at Liverpool Museum, is married and has one child by her husband – an archaeologist from Liverpool John Moores University. Despite her brusque persona, she is as a repressed cauldron of erotic fantasy and desire: and struggles to control her attraction to Adam Mitchell – her Ph.D student at the museum. This, she tries in vain to cover up, firstly by bullying and then alternately, by mothering him.

But her repressions and unresolved neuroses make her very vulnerable to suggestion and to hypnotic control – and this is exploited fully by the menacing, mesmerising, and darkly handsome Von Hesse. The final scene of the story, is pivotal and involves a defining confrontation between her and the dark pole of The Animus in the form of ‘The Bavarian’.

The Animus then exists both as a positive and a negative polarity within a woman’s psyche – he can be her father, teacher, guide, soul-mate and redeemer, but in his negative form: her inner critic, abuser, shadowy seducer – her accuser, even her ultimate destroyer.

Both ‘projected’ out into the world, and onto real men she may meet: and also ‘introjected’ by a process of assimilation from the outer world into her very heart, – a woman’s realtionship to her personal masculine spirit is the journeywork of a lifetime.

The author, with l’Orchidée (who is also a psychodynamic psychotherapist) together with Herr Franz Jung, only son of Carl Gustav Jung – in his father’s study at Kustnacht on Lake Zurich

Switzerland: May 2nd 1992.

Anima: the feminine spirit

Anima is the Latin term for ‘soul’ and in the psychology of Carl Gustav Jung, it represents the imago of the feminine as it’s experienced by men both personally in an individual man’s own life: and also collectively, through the universal experience men have, and always have had, down the ages, of women. It is therefore the counterpoint to the Animus in woman.

As with the Animus: the core of this imago is what Jung calls an ‘archetype’ an inherited original imprint or form, that lies latent in a man’s psyche and helps prepare him for experience of his ‘opposite’ – that is of women. As Jung put it: a man’s psyche is attuned to expect, or to anticipate, ‘woman’.

The Anima is experienced regularly in relationships, dreams and fantasies, and also through storytelling – in all of its forms – including literature, music, art, television and the cinema. The oldest representations of the Anima come from religion and myth – and as a work of Mythic Fiction, Lilith: The Last Temptation of Adam is therefore a kind of psychodrama of the Anima.

The central Anima imago in the novel, is of course Lilith herself. She is ‘imprinted’ into Adam’s psyche the moment he sets eyes on her, and as such she becomes the prototype (‘archetype’) for the feminine principle in nature, as ‘she’ will be experienced subsequently by all men in descent from the creation in Eden.

Key elements of her ‘psychic image’ are a Goddess perfection in beauty, endlessly long hair, an unrequited or lost ‘first love’, the original-woman and prospective ‘mother of the world’, a soul yearning attachment to a lover and redeemer yes, but also irresistible seduction, sexual predation and vampirism, betrayal, witchcraft, child-killing, fatal scorn, retribution and pandemic death. Thus does she sum up in one imago the entire spectrum of the feminine: both positive and negative. Therein lies her power...

As a Goddess, she has the characteristics of the ‘Perfect Form’ as described by the Greek philosopher Plato. This ‘form’ is the highest, and therefore transcendent, representation of the feminine. But, under ordinary conditions, the human mind is incapable of directly experiencing this – it is simply too complete – so it ‘sees’ what it can cope with.

Hence Lilith’s outer appearance is mutable – it can, and does change, according to who witnesses it, even though she has a core image, based in the novel on the host body she occupies. But the combination of her essential spirit, and the beauty of her host body, acts to draw out the projection of her original image: that which was first placed by her in Adam’s psyche in the Garden of Eden.

This image, is irresistible and carries with it the echo of each and every encounter every generation of humankind has ever had with Lilith down the ages. Once smitten by this projected imago, then there is no hope for her victim – unless and until, by her own dispensation, Lilith allows the image to fade, or to fall away.

Therefore, Lilith in this story, represents the summation of the Anima Archetype – with that great paradox of polarity that all true archetypes carry: is she good, or is she evil? This is a central thread in the moral weave of the tale – does her desire to wipe the slate clean of humankind and start again constitute an act of extreme and ultimate evil, or just an opportunity to set right all that has gone wrong with the world and with the human species since the Creation? Isn’t she just that ‘other Eve’ the Mother Goddess who should have given birth to the world?

Lilith’s final temptation, the last temptation of Adam: is the ultimate confrontation between a young man and the seduction of the Anima: can he refuse her? Can he step away from the temptation of becoming the immortal consort of a beautiful Goddess, and the father of a whole new world?

The lesson of myth is that having to choose between ‘Goddess’s i.e. between different aspects of the archetypal feminine is nearly always fatal for a man.

The Judgement of Paris in Homer’s Iliad is just such an example. The shepherd-prince of Troy, Paris, is asked to choose between Goddess Hera: Queen of Olympus; Athena: Goddess of wisdom, and Aphrodite: Goddess of love – his enforced selection being over who between them is the most beautiful. He has an apple, and may choose only one of the three Goddess’s – to whom he must then give the apple.

Each offers (tempts him) with something to influence his choice: but being young he makes the perhaps obvious choice in that the Goddess of love had tempted him with the most beautiful mortal woman in all of the world: Helen. In making this choice – for the possession of love and beauty, he immediately, and inevitably, makes an enemy out of power (Hera) and wisdom (Athena).

Thus is his destruction, and that of his people, assured, in the coming Trojan war.

Had Paris chosen power over wisdom and beauty, then he would never have known Helen – and he would not have had the wisdom to know how to use his power – so leading once again to his destruction. Had he chosen wisdom, then he would have led an otherwise powerless existence (something unthinkable to a prince whose life was shaped by power) and he’d never have known the love of the most beautiful woman in the world.

Truly is the judgement of Paris an allegory of the Anima and how a man can never truly master it.

In Lilith The Last Temptation of Adam – the choice is between Goddess Lilith and the ‘second’ woman: Eve. The consequences of Adam’s choice are far more critical and long lasting than that of Paris, for it determines the future fate of the entire world. But unlike Paris, Adam, gets a second chance...

The Anima appears in many other of ‘her’ aspects within the novel: ‘her’ because as with the Animus, ‘she’ is most commonly experienced in relationship to real outer people, albeit that that relationship may be distorted either by what is projected into it from within the man’s psyche: or by what is assimilated from it – that is taken into the subconscious imago of the Anima, from the man’s outer ‘real’ relationship to a woman.

Male creative artists of all kinds, have always used the Anima as the image of their muse or femme inspiratice (for example the pre-Raphaelite artists with their favourite models – or even this current author with his own creative muse: ‘l'Orchidée’).

Ranging from the elderly 17th century midwife: Mistress Penny, through the young sixteen year old beauty Lizzie O’Riley, then: the mothering, yet bullying and ‘marmishly’ glamorous Dr Claudia Moore, to the still stunningly attractive ‘older woman’ Claire Lattimer – the collective male experience of ‘woman’ is summed up in the story of Lilith as the various men in the novel adjust themselves to the ‘many faces of Eve’.

This becomes quite literal in the final showdown between Lilith and the ‘daughter of Eve’ and this leads us into the last essential thread of Jungian psychology in the story – The Hero Cycle...

Heroes and heroines: personal transformation through the myth of Lilith: The Last Temptation of Adam

The most common form of myth in all cultures, is that which Carl Gustav Jung and the mythologist Joseph Campbell referred to as: The Hero Cycle’. Intended as an exemplary story – the classic structure of the hero cycle involves: a miraculous birth, the rapid rise to prominence, hubris (inflation), betrayal, downfall and death – and then finally, re-birth.

The hero cycle is particularly well adapted as a form of cultural transmission to prepare adolescents for their psychological journey to maturity – and – to help them to survive... A sense of ‘specialness’ (egoism) and self-importance, often characterises youth, and this can lead to a dangerous hubris, and then just as frequently, to a self-betrayal and downfall.

The ‘death’ is meant in a healing way to be symbolic – not literal – as in the death of the immature youthful personality: and a ‘rebirth’ into a wiser adulthood. It is a rite of passage from self-centeredness to the psychological realities of the wider world.

In the novel: Lilith The Last Temptation of Adam, we meet with one such psychological reality – the simple truth that the hero myth is not in fact something characteristic only of adolescent life-transition, it is instead a universal cycle that repeats aspects of itself, for as long as we as individuals continue to develop: and paradoxically, most of all, when we stop developing... For with each new, and profound life-challenge we encounter, we are confronted afresh with the spectre of our personal limitations and have to find from within ourselves the strength of character and maturity to overcome them.

The three principal young men in the story: Adam Teal, Sean O’Riley and Adam Mitchell are all in the proper age range for a classic hero-cycle story and their travails are worked through accordingly: (see below about the ‘three Adams’).

The older men are challenged too: Kevin O’Riley (junior) – the police superintendent husband of Claire Lattimer, and Dr John Sutton: each having to face aspects of their remaining ‘unfinished business’. Yet this is most clearly seen in the case of the oldest of the men: Dr Kevin O’Riley – who for decades, had undergone a personal odyssey of self-development – and to all outward appearances is a ‘finished product’ an individuated human being – and an exemplar in his character.

However, the encounter with Lilith exposes that last shadowed recess in his soul, and it’s only when in the depths of his ultimate despair – when he cries out for death to release him from his failure to live up to

himself – that he at last takes the final step – the one that had yet to be taken. The fact that he did suffer an unendurable angst and sense of inadequacy in the face of the ultimate challenge: and yet he did face up to himself and do what had to be done – satisfies the ‘little death and rebirth’ required in the hero cycle.

But the hero cycle is not the exclusive opus of men: Claire Lattimer’s soul is thrown open to the wind, and like O’Riley senior, she faces the destruction of her previous sense of self – her identity, and her own imminent death: and through this, is exposed to her every unresolved personal flaw. As surely then as Adam Mitchell stretches back in the continuity of his soul, through Adam Teal – to that first Adam in Eden, then so too does Claire Lattimer pass back through Sarah Tennyson to that first mother of the world... Eve.

Claire – in early middle age, and O’Riley as he is approaching old-age – both go through the hero cycle as surely as any youth on the cusp of adulthood.

With Lilith herself, we find that even Goddesses must go through the hero cycle: for in her final scene with Adam, she at last becomes human – and in so doing accepts the self-transcending responsibilities of true love, and of non-possessive attachment. She could have destroyed him – but instead chose oblivion with him. Was it perhaps that in that defining human moment, she was entrapped for a second time?

Or maybe, it really was her liberation – her final escape from the beguilement of the world: through the medium not of blood-red physical soil, but of love...

Yet for Lilith the personal transformation she at least seems to achieve is, in the end, forestalled... For The Animus, in the shape of the implacable Maximilian Von Hesse – ensures her ‘re-birth’ away from eternal peace with her Adam. So, for Lilith the cycle must start again: until perhaps she is finally reconciled with her dark servant...

But what then, finally, of ‘The Three Adams’ ? We encounter ‘him’ in Eden, as the ‘First Man’. Fully formed as an adult – he nevertheless has the consciousness of a child. He’s aware of his specialness (he is the original human being) and of his special relationship to his ‘father’ (The Lord Creator). He is aware too of his incompleteness, his loneliness, and his ‘instinctive’ desire for a companion (woman). But his development is insufficient to even consider this as an equal relationship – woman – must be subservient to him (he is after all made in the creator’s own image).

Adam’s hubris (his inflation) is therefore already in place. His true fall comes with Lilith’s temptation – because he is given the opportunity to increase his level of development through a relationship with her, but instead opts for an ‘inferior’ copy of the divine feminine – in the form of the all too human Eve.

The subsequent temptation – that of the Forbidden Fruit is but a consequence of this, his true first fall. His death, is his human mortality, and his karmic re-birth, is in the form of Adam Teal, and then, Adam Mitchell – with both sharing some of the naivety of that original Adam in Eden.

When as Adam Mitchell – he is presented with the Last Temptation of Adam – he is given the opportunity to redeem both himself – his former selves, and indeed all of humankind – at least from the perspective of his temptress in Eden: Goddess Lilith.

His response is the true culmination of the hero cycle, as out of a selfless love (for two women, and for the world) he makes the ultimate sacrifice: firstly to consciously let go of all earthly temptations of power and beauty: and of the promise of eternal life as the consort of a Goddess; then to willingly end his own life, and thereby oblige his first, and truest love, to sacrifice herself – for his love of humankind.

By Lilith’s acceptance of her own self-sacrifice – he had in effect assimilated her within himself – the completeness so yearned for by Adam in Eden was achieved – through the final alchemy of Animus and Anima.

Thus his rebirth is paradoxically contained in his self-sacrifice and death: as for howsoever brief a moment, he had completed himself – there was nothing further left for him to do, or to achieve: his life had accomplished its ultimate purpose and meaning: Adam and Lilith were reconciled.

Adam’s redemption was then on behalf of us all – including the mythic shepherd Prince too: for of the three choices given to Paris – wisdom was in the end the best option: but he was still only a youth, and he had yet to learn the lesson of The Last Temptation of Adam...