Lisa Thorpe

Digging Deeper, Seeking, Sharing Eve

A few months back I shared with you a large fabric collage; Na’amah of the Ark (see that post here) and participated in a forum at the Episcopal Church of the Holy Communion (watch here). I was moved by the digging, researching, reading and creation of Na’amah as a visual midrash. The art has carved a path to deep discussion of expansive, inclusive imagery within the Judeo/Christian pantheon of female characters. The response to Na’amah has been wonderful and it challenged me to address my next subject; Eve.

I began my research by reading the Genesis text. Next, I turned to the ancient writings and interpretations within the Jewish midrash tradition. I found these unsatisfactory, they are men commenting on the bible passage which itself was a male interpretation of God in the human world. I then began to dig into the feminist midrash writings of the 2nd wave of feminism in the 70’s and 80’s. These writings too, left me troubled. They seemed to reject Eve as a feminist character embracing instead the idea of Lilith who is the unnamed woman created at the same time as unnamed man in the earlier Genesis 1:27 “God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them”. I understand that this first woman is easier to connect to as a feminist. She is created at once with man and both in the image of God. Eve is set aside as problematic having been written as subservient not created out of God but created out of Adam much of this confusion is literally lost in translation from Hebrew to Greek to Latin to English. But I really didn’t want to give up on Eve. I found a fascinating and entertaining description of the original text by Lizzie Berne Degear and Martha Mapes that helped me reexamine the text (see here). Don’t forget that each time the text was translated the agenda of the translator needs to be considered. Each time an image is created the agenda of the artist needs to be considered. I decided it was time to shake off the patriarchal text an do an imaginative visual midrash of my own on the topic of Eve.

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I too have an agenda of course. My agenda is to place Eve in the larger context of the sacred feminine through time and place. I wanted to represent Eve as part of an ongoing continuum of stories of Earth Mother/First Woman. We humans have been reaching out to the creative female force since the beginning of human creative expression here is my contribution to the imagery.

My Eve hasn’t just eaten the fruit from the tree of knowledge she IS the tree of knowledge. She is rooted, literally, in the sacred feminine deities know and unknown from all over the world. Her feet become roots reaching down into the rich, dark earth. The roots reach and are nourished by ancient feminine and fertility goddesses from traditions all over the world (see list below). The snake is not a tempter of evil but represented on the left as the ancient Egyptian and Greek Ouroboros. With tail in mouth to form a circle this snake is a symbol of death and rebirth in a perpetual cycle of destruction a re-creation. Eve’s hands offer us the pomegranate. A lush, multifaceted fruit that represents abundance, fertility, and mystery that is freely offered to us in two parts, two parts that when combined make a whole. When eaten Eve recognizes that we will know the world in all it’s good and evil. We will understand the multifaceted, complicated, juicy nature of human life. We will know love and loss; joy and sadness; success and failure and all the tiny increments of life in between those extremes. Without the knowledge of cold how do we understand warmth? Without the knowledge of emptiness how do we feel sated? It is a complicated gift Eve gives us, her slight smile and direct gaze lets us know she is with us, we can handle it. We can go ahead and live this complicated human life informed by the creative feminine spirit in balance and harmony, woven into a fuller understanding of who we are as humans that are made in the image of God.

Following is a list of the images of female deities and goddess from around the world that are shown within the roots at Eve’s feet. Some whose powers and stories are known and some whose story was lost to time but most surly informed the imagery and stories that followed.

1. Akua Ba (Akan Culture Africa)
2. Astarte (Assyrian)
3. Coatlicue (Aztec)
4. Goddess Lajja Gaui (India)
5. Hathor (Egypt)
6. Hongshan Culture (Ancient China)
7. Ishtar/Lilith (Sumerian Babylonia)
8. Minoan Snake Goddess (Ancient Crete)
9. Paccmama (Andean)
10. Pandora (Greek)
11. Spider grandmother – found on Fains Island mound Tennessee (North America)
12. Venus of Willendorf, (Ancient European)