The Spiritual Nature of Animals. Karlene Stange
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Images of twin creator snakes appear in art from a Mesopotamian seal dated circa 2200 BCE. Aztec art from 400–600 BCE depicts DNA-like, double-helix serpents, and the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl translates as “serpent” and “twin.” Ancient Greek stories describe Zeus as a serpent; Scandinavian rock art depicts serpents with a cross; and in ancient Egypt, a serpent crown found on a mummified pharaoh depicts two conjoined serpents, and the serpent symbolized the beginning and end of time. Paintings from Peruvian shamans depict images that resemble snakes containing chromosomes. All appear synonymous to rock paintings of the Australian Aboriginal Rainbow Serpent from six to eight thousand years ago. Perhaps Narby, the Peruvian shamans, and Australian stories are true: The creator “God” vibrates in every living thing, actively creating through the physical wisdom embodied in DNA.
Chapter 7 discusses the Hebrew and Christian beliefs about the spiritual nature of animals in more detail. Here, I briefly discuss the biblical creation stories.
As in the Hopi and Aboriginal stories, creation begins with sound as the “word” of God. According to the Gospel of John, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
Two different versions of the creation story appear in the Book of Genesis, chapters 1 to 3. In Genesis 1:20–21, the animals are made first: “And God said, ‘Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the firmament of the heavens.’ So, God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, and with which the waters swarm.” Then God created a human male and female in his own image, and gave them dominion, or control, over the fish, the birds, and every living thing on earth.
In Genesis 2, man is made first from the dust of the earth and then the animals are made in the same way. The word comes in the form of naming. As Genesis 2:19 says: “So, out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to man to see what he would call them.”
Regarding food, in Genesis 1:30, God said, “And to every beast of the earth, and every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.”
Please note the description of living creatures having the “breath of life.” Biblical scholars consider this breath to refer to the eternal spirit of a being. Some people believe that animals have lower souls but not eternal spirits, because only Adam received the “breath of life” from God, according to the Bible. However, animals breathe and are alive, and as this verse indicates, every beast, bird, and creeping creature has the breath of life. The website Bible Hub provides twenty-one biblical translations of Genesis 1:30, and about half clearly support the notion that animals have the breath of life; three of them replace the phrase “breath of life” with “living soul.” Others use wording such as “wherein there is life.” Debate arises as to whether animals received the “breath of life,” the omnipresent, eternal, transcendent spirit of God, and I discuss this debate in chapter 7.
To continue the creation story, although the human male and female were both naked, like the animals, they were not ashamed. However, God warned, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die” (Genesis 2:16–17).
Later, the serpent appeared — a being more “subtle” than the other wild creatures — and he said to the woman, “You will not die, for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:4–5). So Eve ate the fruit and shared it with Adam. Then they realized that they were naked; they became ashamed and covered themselves.
This is a powerful description of the birth of duality, of the concept of right versus wrong, of good and evil, and of humanity’s first moral judgment and the pain of shame.
As Genesis 3:22 says: “Then God said, ‘Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil.’ ” Genesis 3:23: “therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the Garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken.”
Before they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, humans were innocent and one with nature. Humans left paradise when they gained moral judgment. Before that, Adam and Eve only knew life — they experienced monism, or a sense of oneness with existence. After eating the fruit of the tree of good and evil, they gained dualistic thinking — they distinguished right from wrong, and humans separated from nature, just as when the Talker in the Hopi story convinced people of the differences between themselves and the animals. The birth of duality created ego-centered shame, which leads to death. According to psychiatrist and teacher of enlightenment David Hawkins, shame “is perilously proximate to death.”18 With shame comes blame, guilt, and vindictive hate. It causes such agony that violence or neglect follow, either to self or others, including suicide and murder. Once humans gained dualistic thinking from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, humanity began to experience death.
The forbidden fruit is another common theme across cultural myths. Humans and animals know only life in the garden until the first death or the consumption of some forbidden food associated with the threat of death. The first Burmese man consumed a particular kind of rice and became so gross and heavy that he was unable to ascend to heaven. Fruit was the offending substance for the Kalmucks of central Asia, for Jews, Christians, and Muslims, as well as for the Masai of Tanzania. In Greek mythology, the forbidden fruit is comparable to Pandora’s box, which contained all the evils of the world.19
Richard Heinberg writes, “In nearly all languages, the word fruit is used metaphorically to refer to the result of a creative process.”20 People are meant to tend to creation, but they give up the stewardship of the garden with an obsessive desire for their own creations in manifested form — forbidden fruit. The physical world also traps people. In the case of Indo-Iranian mysticism, it says that the pure, untainted self — Adam — fell from perfection because of his attraction to earth, the physical.21
The first experience of violence also results in our eviction from paradise, as the following African myths show.
African Myths: Barotse, Bantu, and Yao
Here, I review two African paradise stories taken from Memories and Visions of Paradise by Richard Heinberg.22 The first myth comes from the Barotse floodplain of the upper Zambezi River in Zambia.
As the story goes, the creator, Nyambi, lived on earth with his wife, Nasilele. Nyambi created fishes, birds, and animals. But one of Nyambi’s creatures was different from all the rest, Kamonu, the first man. Heinberg writes, “Kamonu was special because he imitated everything Nyambi did. If Nyambi made something out of wood, Kamonu would do the same; if Nyambi created in iron, Kamonu would work in iron, too.”
Kamonu served as Nyambi’s apprentice, until one day Kamonu forged a spear and killed an antelope. Despite Nyambi’s protest, Kamonu continued killing. Nyambi realized that he had lost control of his creature and grew angry. “Man, you are acting badly,” said Nyambi to Kamonu. “These are your brothers. Do not kill them.”
And so, Heinberg says, “Nyambi drove Kamonu out of Litoma, his sacred realm, but Kamonu pleaded to be allowed to return. Nyambi gave the man a garden to tend, hoping thereby to keep him happy and out of mischief. But when a buffalo wandered into Kamonu’s garden at night, he speared it, and when other animals came close, he killed them, too.
“But after a while, Kamonu discovered that the things he loved were all leaving him: his child, his dog, and his pot (his only possession) all disappeared. He went to Nyambi’s