“Ooh, fruit, big deal,” muttered Samael with a roll of his slit-eyes.
Garden of Eden, May 29 – The creature tasked with testing humanity’s adherence to direct divine imperatives complained this morning that he has at his disposal only the produce of a tree, and not something genuinely compelling such as chocolate, cheesecake, or a juicy porterhouse, by means of which to entice his targets to sin.
Samael the Snake, the embodiment of selfish human desire in animal form, told reporters today that in his attempt to get humans to deviate from the manifest truth and rightness of the LORD’s expressed will, he will be armed only with a “tree of knowledge of good and evil,” as if that is supposed to attract anyone.
“Ooh, fruit, big deal,” muttered Samael with a roll of his slit-eyes. “Yeah, we wouldn’t want this to be TOO much of a challenge now, would we?”
The serpent confessed that given what he has to work with, he does not relish the prospect of having to convince one or both of the human archetypes – one masculine, one feminine – to assert their senses of self, independence, and volition by engaging in precisely what God has warned them against doing. “I haven’t exactly been given the most promising tools for the job,” he acknowledged. “This is going to demand all the salesmanship I can muster.”
Had the serpent had at his disposal a more appealing vehicle for temptation such as a box of Godiva chocolates or even a stacked corned-beef-on-rye deli sandwich, he insisted, the task would prove far less daunting. “I’d even settle for a well-prepared pan of lasagne or fettuccine alfredo, under the circumstances,” he mused. “But apparently that would be too much to ask.”
Instead, Samael realizes, he must find a way to spark humanity’s inherent need to self-assert and associate it with the fruit that is, by its very nature as not-chocolate and not-any-other-thing-far-superior-to-fruit-in-every-conceivable-way, meh. “That’s the real trick,” he acknowledged.
The serpent’s consequent plan involves impugning the LORD’s alleged motives for issuing a commandment in the first place, to spark jealousy, resentment, or hunger for power. “Those are big things,” he explained. “I’m going to have to go big if this is going to work: dominion; envy; ego; control; rebelliousness. That’s probably the only way to get a fruit to seem so tempting, so attractive, so riveting. I mean, it’s just a botanical reproductive mechanism. Who in their right mind would disobey the omnipotent Creator over a stupid fruit?”
Enjoy more original content at PreOccupied Territory. On Facebook at End The PreOccupation and Twitter at @POTerritory. Also, please support our work through Patreon or face accusations that you suppress freedom of expression. Fascist.
