Note 276 — Chapter III

In Western mythology the dragon guarding the fruit-bearing tree of life is also identified with the Mother of Mankind (Campbell, "Celtic Dragon Myth," pp. xli and 18). Thus the tree and its defender are both surrogates of the Great Mother. When Eve ate the apple from the tree of Paradise she was committing an act of cannibalism, for the plant was only another form of herself. Her "sin" consisted in aspiring to attain the immortality which was the exclusive privilege of the gods. This incident is analogous to that found in the Indian tales where mortals steal the amrita. By Eve's sin "death came into the world" for the paradoxical reason that she had eaten the food of the gods which gives immortality. The punishment meted out to her by the Almighty seems to have been to inhibit the life-giving and birth-facilitating action of the fruit of immortality, so that she and all her progeny were doomed to be mortal and to suffer the pangs of child-bearing.

There was a widespread belief among the ancients that ceremonies in connexion with the gods must (to be efficacious) be done in the reverse of the usual human way (Hopkins, "Religions of India," p. 201). So also an act which gives immortality to the gods, brings death to man.

The full realization of the fact that man was mortal imposed upon the early theologians the necessity of explaining the immortality of the gods. The elixir of life was the food of the gods that conferred eternal life upon them. By one of those paradoxes so dear to the maker of myths this same elixir brought death to man.