ABSTRACT
There is an ancient and widespread tradition that Man was originally androgyne. The Adam, passing out of the Garden, enter into a ‘state of waiting’ which is neither ‘this world’ of our present experience nor the world of the utterly lost. It is emphasized in the story that the Adam must toil. It is only through the acquisition of knowledge that man is enabled to overcome the harshness of his ‘natural’ existence in continuous struggle with the elements. The story of the Adam may be read, of course, from many points of view. It has to be understood that the Myth is so rich that the people never come to the end of ‘interpreting’ it; and each new ‘interpretation’ will fit in consistently with the rest, provided the people remember that they are dealing not with a ‘logical’ allegory, but with a network of images corresponding to every level of a multidimensional truth.
