The Greek poet Hesiod (c 700 BCE) reasoned the world evolved out of a shapeless Chaos (a yawning void). It was the primal source of creation producing the five original elements, Gaia – Earth, Tartarus – the Underworld, Erebus – the gloom of Tartarus, Eros – the force of Love and Nyx (Night) – the power of Darkness.

The Goddess Nyx was feared and revered in equal measures. She gave birth to other elementals including Aethyr, the pure upper atmosphere and Day, Doom, Death, Misery, Resentment, Deceit, Sleep, Pain, Retribution and Strife. Strife gave birth to Murder, Carnage, Battle and Lawlessness.

According to most ancient myths, it was the Gods that gave us fire, in particular, the son of a Greek Titan, Prometheus. For stealing fire from the Gods and giving away their knowledge, Zeus punished Prometheus with eternal torment, chaining him to the side of a mountain and an eagle pecking out his liver each day. Prometheus was finally released, many generations later when he had some useful information concerning Zeus that he would only divulge once he had been released.[i]

So, what did the Gods have against educating humans?

The earth-spirits were the children of the Earth herself. The Earth was the Mother and the Sky the Father, dualities of opposing spirits residing between ‘Heaven’ and ‘Hell’. The guiding spirits are the offspring of Mother Earth that today we call demons and much more archaic than the controlling spirits created from Father Sky we understand as angels.

Before the Gods could manipulate the human mind, the demons had to be made ‘evil’.

The demons took the form of the serpent, a symbol of knowledge and wisdom and the angels took the form of people to enchant and deceive the human race. It became a war by heaven on Earth between the pure light and the holy Gods of the sky and the dark impure evil demons of the Earth. It was a battle for the control of the human mind, a war between domestication and education; between man and the serpent.

The idea that the serpent is evil is so ingrained in the human psyche that criminals and rogues today are compared to snakes, an injustice made in heaven. One of the earliest ‘evil’ serpents, the Hindu Vritra was in constants battle with his half-brother, the Sky God Indra. Their father was the mortal sage Kashyapa, Vritra’s mother was the Earth Goddess Diti, the ‘Dark Serpent of Hell’ and Indra’s mother was the ‘Sacred Cow of Heaven’ Aditi , the boundless unlimited light of God. The children of Diti were the Asuras (Devils), dark elemental earth forces that drove earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis etc. and the children of Aditi, the Devas (Gods), regulated the motions of the moon, planets and the stars.

The Greek equivalent of Vritra and Indra is Typhon and Zeus. The Titan Typhon is the son of the Earth Goddess Gaia and the Lord of the underworld, Tartarus. Typhon loved and was faithful to his wife Echidna, female from the waist up and serpent from the waist down. Their children are the earth spirits that reside in nature, in the rivers and lakes, the forests and plains, on mountains and in valleys. These are the fairies and elves, sprites, the ‘demons’ we call on for guidance on earth matters and knowledge of the supernatural that drives human existence. This is who the Gods fear so they hate them and wish to destroy them, enchanting us to hate and fear them too. The Gods do not wish us to gain ‘earthly’ knowledge, refusing us the powers to defend ourselves against the illusion of their suppression, division and deception.

Remember, it was the Mother who appeared first, giving birth to life and taught us what we should know of the world, yet this the feminine power has been practically eliminated from the world today.

The serpent is the Light bearer, the Lucifer, the symbol of the Earth Goddess and her earth spirit, the demons.

Before the ‘Gods’ arrived, the living Earth was in balance, spiritually, biologically and mentally. Humanity lived at peace with nature, working with the earth spirits. The Earth Goddess communicated with us through her children, the demons that maintained the world’s forests and jungles at the spirit level and educated our ancestors on the physical elemental level. The demons were the first self-aware consciousness on this planet and interacted with the life spirit that all of nature contained. They found the human-spirit capable of great intelligence and taught us how to shape stone for tools and weapons to protect ourselves, turning us from prey to hunters and gatherers. It was the second step of our evolution after mastering fire. Then the ‘Gods’ arrived at the beginning of what we call the Stone Age, around 400,000 years ago. They were described as physical beings with very advanced technology. They squabbled with each other and cut deep into Mother Earth for wealth and power. The Earth creatures were a source of cheap labour, easy to herd and put to work. The Gods introduced pride and rivalry, distrust, division, fear, hatred and war to contain and control the human race.

We have lost touch with our true being and have lost contact with the Earth Goddess and her children the ‘serpent’, spirits, the demons in the darkness.

Scott Irvine has followed the path of the goddess since exploring the many goddess temples on the small islands of Malta and Gozo off the Sicilian coast in the Mediterranean Sea, igniting her spark within him in the spring of 2010. He has contributed to a number of anthologies, including Paganism 101, Naming the Goddess, and Seven Ages of the Goddess, as well as publishing articles on the Moon Books blog.

For more details: https://www.collectiveinkbooks.com/moon-books/authors/scott-irvine

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[i] Zeus is warned that if he fathers a child with the water nymph Thetis, he will be overthrown.