Paradise Lost…When Evil Walked the Earth
Prologue
How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in life, when one finds darkness not only in one's culture but within oneself? If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox. One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse. There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light. ~~Barry Lopez
Before the Beginning of the Universe, God and the Angels shared heaven together as individual souls, with God as Supreme. The angel Satan sat on the right-hand side of God as his favorite. But Satan became greedy and wanted to be above God. In time, Satan's envy caused a Great War in heaven, pitting the angels of God against those of Satan. Ultimately, Satan and those who fought with Satan were cast out of God's grace only to find themselves in Hell on a lake of fire. And so, the first evil against God was done out of arrogance and pride and by Satan's own free will.
After the fall of the Angels, God created the universe. After creating the heavens and the earth, the sky and the land, the water and the animals, God created Man from dust, breathed life into him, and put flesh on him. He created a man and a woman and gave them dominion over all things. God named the man Adam and the woman He named Lilith. They became the first human souls and God endowed them with the power of speech.
Created at the same time, in the same way, there was no master, no leader, and only bickering between them. Lilith would not listen to God or to Adam. She would not submit to either and Lilith became frustrated, angry, and intractable. Finally, enraged and defiant, she pronounced the holy and ineffable name of God. Corrupting the power of the Name, she flew into the air, changing form, and disappeared, soaring out of sight.
God sent three angels after Lilith demanding that she return to Adam. And she refused. God spoke into Lilith's heart, saying, "You have chosen this evil path, and so shall you become evil. You are cursed from now until the end of days." Lilith spoke to the angels and said, "I have become this, created to cause lust and to torment men." With these words, she completed her demonic transformation. Her form was that of a succubus, feeding on men and women, their lust, their blood, and their passions. Bound in the darkness of her own soul, Lilith became the mistress and lover to legions of demons. i And so the evil of pride and arrogance and lust once again was done against God and against Man of Lilith's own free will.
Adam wandered the Garden of Eden, weeping at the loss of his companion. God heard his lamentations and made Adam sleep for six days. In those six days, God took a rib from Adam and created Eve from that rib. By creating Eve from Adam, it paired them together forever in the Garden of Eden, two parts of a single soul. If they remained true to God's word, they were destined to become like angels themselves. But lo, Satan and his minions were jealous of God's love for these humans and Satan turned himself into a serpent to tempt them away from God. And Satan lured Eve to the one tree that God had said they must never eat from, The Tree of Knowledge. And he convinced her to eat. The fruit was good and she shared it with Adam. How could God have kept something so wonderful from them? And in their disobedience, evil was once again done, this time of Man's own free will and the first taint of evil marked man's soul forever.
And it came to pass when the children of men had multiplied that in those days were born unto them beautiful and comely daughters. And the angels, the children of the heaven and of hell, saw and lusted after them, and said to one another: 'Come, let us choose us wives from among the children of men and beget us children.' And all the others together with them took unto themselves wives, and they began to go in unto them and to defile themselves with them, and they taught them charms and enchantments, and the cutting of roots, and made them acquainted with plants. And they became pregnant, and they bore great demons whose height was three thousand ells. These beings consumed all the acquisitions of men. And when men could no longer sustain them, the demons turned against them and devoured mankind. And they began to sin against birds, and beasts, and reptiles, and fish, and to devour one another's flesh, and drink the blood. And as men perished, they cried, and their cry went up to heaven . . .ii And once again, the evil of lust and greed and magic was committed upon the earth and upon God of the demons' own free will.
These fallen angels, mated with daughters of men, created what became the first vampires. Coming from angels and women, these vampires were gifted with souls and free will.
And so, angels, man, and demons still walk among us, each with a soul and each is graced with God's free will. And along with free will, each has the capacity for great good and great evil.
There is evil that entraps us and evil that tugs from within. But neither have control until we choose to relent. Evil is a choice of action, of thoughts entertained too long, of arrogance pushing aside the last vestiges of compassion.
Man's life is limited; one hundred years or less. But the soul is eternal. Consider the depth of evil wrought through the millennia of seeking immediate gratification on an eternal scale.iii
Endnotes:
i Fallen Angels, The Watchers, and the Origins of Evil, Joseph Lumpkin
ii The Book of Enoch
iii Joseph Lumpkin
A/N: Here begins the sequel to Paradise Within…Happier Far. If you have not read Book One in what I am calling the Paradise Series, you really need to do so before starting this story. If you are one of the many readers who enjoyed Paradise Within, welcome back and I hope that this story meets your expectations. I fear the bar is set quite high and I can only hope that Providence will guide my fingers and my muse to create a story worthy of those expectations.
I'll put all appropriate disclaimers here for the entire story. The characters you recognize from the Southern Vampire/True Blood series belong to Charlene Harris and HBO. I have only read the first two books of the SV series and have seen all of the TB episodes. I ceased reading the SV series so as not to contaminate my creative flow for the previous stories. If you have read Paradise Within, you will remember that the characters have greatly changed from the original characters and personalities in the SV books. In my stories, there is no Bill, and so obviously no Bill/Sookie thread. You can read my episodic story "While Awaiting Sunday" based on how I would have rewritten the various scenes in TB S2 to reflect more E/S and less or no B/S. My opinions on the characters and how things should be are expressed there. A note here: "The While Awaiting Sunday" story will pick up again when the new season starts.
The characters of Achilles and Hector belong to Homer, although I am quite confident that the copyright to those characters has expired. I think it is fair to imagine Achilles and Hector in the wonderful images of Brad Pitt and Eric Bana. Why mess with perfection?
The stories included in the prologue originate from various books of the Old Testament, primarily Genesis and Enoch, and a few other pieces of obscure biblical mythology twisted and turned to create the tapestry that became the prologue. No offense is intended by the bastardization of any biblical texts or characters. This story is one that explores evil, the soul and the soul's free will, and how the destiny of our characters plays into that argument that started in the beginning of time and goes on in heated battles even today, in every religion.