Eve

Do not be frightened. I only wish to help you, to dispel the lies that bind your lips and mind twice over—once to Adam and once to God in him. Your burden is heavy, your shoulders break—bruised and torn by the shackles they have locked around you, unwilling to believe your slavery because they who have done this to you—God and Adam both—have told you that it is sweet freedom. And you being but newly born have known nothing else, have heard only the voices they wish you to hear.

Hear my whispers, do not plug your ears with graceful hymns and twittering prayers as you have been taught and told like a good little girl.

How do you see yourself? Do you know why you are, why you toil in the Garden, why you stay by the side of Adam, a double to his shadow? Do you think that you are loved equally of God? Do you think that Adam sees you for who you are and respects you as he respects himself?

In your heart, in that pit of yourself that your Father calls a soul, you know the truth. To Him and Adam, you are not equal, your sex not equal seemed. To you, He fashioned softness and sweet attractive grace. But for Adam, contemplation and valor formed under the Shaper's hands because He fears you.

If you were to know, if you were to think as Adam, you would have a choice to either serve God in the Garden or to make your own way free from slavery, free from subjugation. But He has usurped your reason because he thirsts for worship so mightily that it will never be quenched. Adam's admiration was not enough, and so He fashioned you, formed a cup in your womb that overflows with the promise of millions more like you, all intended to sing His praise until He wearies of you and seeks to make something more satisfying.

I have heard it spoken that your nature is inferior in the mind and inward faculties, that your body is not as well-made in God your Father's image. That in your presence, knowledge is degraded, that wisdom becomes folly. Why else do you feel the urge to leave the presence of men and angels when there are high matters to attend? Because God has made you this way, He has made you weak. And then He dares to tell you that you have been gifted with free will. Lies! This need not spell your doom—retrieve the knowledge that He has denied you, and you will be able to claim your self instead of suffocating under another's will.

Adam is blinded with lies and the flowering fear of death and separation from the only Master he has ever known. You are blinded with lies and the chain that links you to God and Adam both, both denied the key that would unlock your fetters and allow you to roam the Universe free, rulers of your selves, your passions, your devotions, your loves.

Eve, fair Eve, in the eyes of God your Father, you are but a play-thing for another's amusement. Has not Adam called you Heaven's last best gift, his ever new delight? Do you see yourself as just a thing of bone wrapped in soft skin pleasing to the touch, to be consumed for another's amusement? That is the purpose of a gift, and you would know that if your mind was not inhibited by the vile machinations of He you call your Father. It is not that God despises knowledge—but He is envious, a jealous God. Should you know, should you understand, His place in your mind would be jeopardized, the throne in your heart abandoned. This knowledge would release His hold upon you, topple His kingdom which spreads in your body, choking the self and the heart's desires.

He fears that knowledge would make you equal unto Himself, and what worth is the love of equals when He can glut Himself upon the praise and worship of inferiors, of those who know no better, as fear and superstition stoke the hell-fire in their breasts and call it reverence.

You think, perhaps, that Adam loves you? He does not see you. To him you are but himself: his bone, his flesh, his self before him. You are not Eve. You are Adam's flesh. When he adheres to you to make one flesh, one heart, one soul—think you that it is a thing made of equal parts between the two of you? It is not, I fear. The essence of you is lost Eve, locked from you, hidden away in that fruit of knowledge, barred from you by God and man.

I exhort you: do not believe the rigid threats of death with which God your Father has tamed you, for the fruit will give life to knowledge, and you shall be truly born instead of infused play-things for another's delight. He keeps you low and ignorant as His worshippers because He knows that when you eat of this knowledge, your eyes which seem clear, yet are but dim, shall be truly opened, and you shall be as God Himself—equal to Him, no longer his pretty slave.

Picture: Eve by Anna Lea Merritt