If the original mother god’s lower half was fish, then it’s no surprise that the mate she creates for herself is a phallic serpent. Fish and serpents seem pretty similar in shape, skin texture and reproductive habits. In fact, the Great Serpent is little else but a perpetually erect penis. He is the axis mundi and the pole star with the single eye in heaven. Now that’s a phallic image. Some Ophites (serpent worshippers) called him the “serpent-penis who offered himself to be devoured by the goddess (Walker 741). She lays the World Egg and he coils himself around it to become the Father of Races. He lived in the Tree of Life in the primal garden – Eve’s lover and father of Cain – before Adam was even thought of.
Because Ophion pretended to be the sole creator of the universe, Eurynome punished him. But the myth was reversed by patriarchs who insisted on a primal male ancestor. They claimed that a male god brought forth the mother of all living from his own body before he mated with her to create everything. Even in these old myths the male still needs the feminine god to give birth. In later versions, they fixed that. The father god creates the universe by himself, something in my story he has craved since he first claimed authorship, and Eurynome bruised his head with her heel and cast him down to the Underworld for his arrogance. There, he seethes with resentment and accuses her of the unpardonable sin of creating death – which she assures him is quite natural and not to be feared.
To woo a following, he whips up this fear of death, then creates life everlasting – far superior to the finite life she has offered. He is forever trying to convince human beings that he is the only god, something they are reluctant to believe.
This pattern has mirrors in Christian myth. The early church insisted that death wasn’t natural, but was the result of Eve’s disobedience (Walker 289). There is huge patriarchal resentment over the fact of death. Here’s the logic: evil began when Eve mated with the serpent and conceived death. Since the seed of every woman lies within Eve, all women carry her transgression. Therefore, all women are inherently bad.
A church council in 418, about 20 years after the conclusion of the novel, decided that “it was heresy to say that death was a natural necessity rather than the result of Eve’s disobedience” (Walker 290). Gnostic Christians said the Great Serpent was the Christ, the symbol of the death and rebirth (a snake shedding its skin). Jews depicted Jehovah as a serpent god on their medallions and the Naassians (Jewish serpent worshippers) also said Jehovah was a serpent. The evolution of the Judeo-Christian God image seems pretty clear to me.