The Secret Dowry of Eve: Woman's Role in the Development of Consciousness

Rating:
Summary: Shining a much-needed light on the Genesis story
Review: The archetypes of Adam and Eve represent the masculine and femine aspects of personality within each of us. Our masculine qualities are outward-looking, rational, direct, practical and assertive; whilst the feminine is introspective, intuitive, sensitive and more connected with the heart. The balance of male and female makes us whole. Glynda-Lee explains how the Garden of Eden story represents the inner life of the psyche. It is actually an instructive analogy that demonstrates how to transcend our sexual stereotype and truly know ourselves, to become fully human.

The church has represented this story in a way that implies Eve's subservience to Adam, and that she was responsibile for the Fall of Mankind. Women have suffered plenty because of this! But on the contrary, Adam needed Eve's aptitude for integration and intuitive wisdom to perceive the real meaning of his situation; the rationale and logic of the intellect would not be enough. Adam needs to have his eyes opened and it is the woman who provides him with this opportunity. Therefore it was permissible for Eve to eat the apple of knowledge that was forbidden to Adam - this was Eve's dowry. It wasn't a negative action to eat the apple, it was a gift to humankind of its inner awareness, its spirituality. Apparently even the symbols 'good' and 'evil' were interpreted in the Bible opposite to their original Hebraic meaning.

Hoffmann goes on to explain how each of the characters in Genesis represents an archetype of the human personality, so that the story is symbolic of the struggles and conflicts we face within ourselves daily, as people have all through history.

It is easy, as I did previously, to dismiss the Genesis material as manipulative, patriarchist propaganda. Taken at face value that is how it has been used. It took Hoffmann's profound knowledge of the Quabalah and its original Hebraic language to unlock the real meaning, and that is brilliantly laid bare in this book.

But it's not a heady, intellectual read - it's easy to follow and insight follows insight as Hoffmann shines the light of her scholarship on the original text and its wide implications. The book can open our minds in a way that perhaps the original authors of Genesis intended but which has gone unrecognized until now.