Garden of Eden

73:2.3From their high­land head­quar­ters and from sixty-one far-scat­tered set­tle­ments, Van and Amadon re­cruited a corps of over three thou­sand will­ing and en­thu­si­as­tic work­ers who, in solemn as­sem­bly, ded­i­cated them­selves to this mis­sion of prepar­ing for the prom­ised—at least ex­pected—Son.

51:6.1On most of the in­hab­ited worlds the Gar­dens of Eden re­main as su­perb cul­tural cen­ters and con­tinue to func­tion as the so­cial pat­terns of plan­e­tary con­duct and us­age age af­ter age. Even in early times when the vi­o­let peo­ples are rel­a­tively seg­re­gated, their schools re­ceive suit­able can­di­dates from among the world races, while the in­dus­trial de­vel­op­ments of the gar­den open up new chan­nels of com­mer­cial in­ter­course. Thus do the Adams and Eves and their progeny con­tribute to the sud­den ex­pan­sion of cul­ture and to the rapid im­prove­ment of the evo­lu­tion­ary races of their worlds. And all of these re­la­tion­ships are aug­mented and sealed by the amal­ga­ma­tion of the evo­lu­tion­ary races and the sons of Adam, re­sult­ing in the im­me­di­ate up­step­ping of bi­o­logic sta­tus, the quick­en­ing of in­tel­lec­tual po­ten­tial, and the en­hance­ment of spir­i­tual re­cep­tiv­ity.

51:6.2On nor­mal worlds the gar­den head­quar­ters of the vi­o­let race be­comes the sec­ond cen­ter of world cul­ture and, jointly with the head­quar­ters city of the Plan­e­tary Prince, sets the pace for the de­vel­op­ment of civ­i­liza­tion. For cen­turies the city head­quar­ters schools of the Plan­e­tary Prince and the gar­den schools of Adam and Eve are con­tem­po­rary. They are usu­ally not very far apart, and they work to­gether in har­mo­nious co-op­er­a­tion.

51:6.3Think what it would mean on your world if some­where in the Lev­ant there were a world cen­ter of civ­i­liza­tion, a great plan­e­tary uni­ver­sity of cul­ture, which had func­tioned un­in­ter­rupt­edly for 37,000 years. And again, pause to con­sider how the moral au­thor­ity of even such an an­cient cen­ter would be re­in­forced were there sit­u­ated not far-dis­tant still an­other and older head­quar­ters of ce­les­tial min­istry whose tra­di­tions would ex­ert a cu­mu­la­tive force of 500,000 years of in­te­grated evo­lu­tion­ary in­flu­ence. It is cus­tom which even­tu­ally spreads the ide­als of Eden to a whole world.

51:6.4The schools of the Plan­e­tary Prince are pri­mar­ily con­cerned with phi­los­o­phy, re­li­gion, morals, and the higher in­tel­lec­tual and artis­tic achieve­ments. The gar­den schools of Adam and Eve are usu­ally de­voted to prac­ti­cal arts, fun­da­men­tal in­tel­lec­tual train­ing, so­cial cul­ture, eco­nomic de­vel­op­ment, trade re­la­tions, phys­i­cal ef­fi­ciency, and civil gov­ern­ment. Even­tu­ally these world cen­ters amal­ga­mate, but this ac­tual af­fil­i­a­tion some­times does not oc­cur un­til the times of the first Mag­is­te­rial Son.

51:6.5The con­tin­u­ing ex­is­tence of the Plan­e­tary Adam and Eve, to­gether with the pure-line nu­cleus of the vi­o­let race, im­parts that sta­bil­ity of growth to Edenic cul­ture by virtue of which it comes to act upon the civ­i­liza­tion of a world with the com­pelling force of tra­di­tion. In these im­mor­tal Ma­te­rial Sons and Daugh­ters we en­counter the last and the in­dis­pens­able link con­nect­ing God with man, bridg­ing the al­most in­fi­nite gulf be­tween the eter­nal Cre­ator and the low­est fi­nite per­son­al­i­ties of time. Here is a be­ing of high ori­gin who is phys­i­cal, ma­te­rial, even a sex crea­ture like Uran­tia mor­tals, one who can see and com­pre­hend the in­vis­i­ble Plan­e­tary Prince and in­ter­pret him to the mor­tal crea­tures of the realm, for the Ma­te­rial Sons and Daugh­ters are able to see all of the lower or­ders of spirit be­ings; they vi­su­al­ize the Plan­e­tary Prince and his en­tire staff, vis­i­ble and in­vis­i­ble.

51:6.6With the pass­ing of cen­turies, through the amal­ga­ma­tion of their progeny with the races of men, this same Ma­te­rial Son and Daugh­ter be­come ac­cepted as the com­mon an­ces­tors of man­kind, the com­mon par­ents of the now blended de­scen­dants of the evo­lu­tion­ary races. It is in­tended that mor­tals who start out from an in­hab­ited world have the ex­pe­ri­ence of rec­og­niz­ing seven fa­thers:

51:6.71. The bi­o­logic fa­ther—the fa­ther in the flesh.

51:6.82. The fa­ther of the realm—the Plan­e­tary Adam.

51:6.93. The fa­ther of the spheres—the Sys­tem Sov­er­eign.

51:6.104. The Most High Fa­ther—the Con­stel­la­tion Fa­ther.

51:6.115. The uni­verse Fa­ther—the Cre­ator Son and su­preme ruler of the lo­cal cre­ations.

51:6.126. The su­per-Fa­thers—the An­cients of Days who gov­ern the super­uni­verse.

51:6.137. The spirit or Ha­vona Fa­ther—the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, who dwells on Par­a­dise and be­stows his spirit to live and work in the minds of the lowly crea­tures who in­habit the uni­verse of uni­verses.

76:2.3In the days of the first Eden, Adam had in­deed sought to dis­cour­age the of­fer­ing of an­i­mal sac­ri­fice so that Cain had a jus­ti­fi­able prece­dent for his con­tentions. It was, how­ever, dif­fi­cult to or­ga­nize the re­li­gious life of the sec­ond Eden. Adam was bur­dened with a thou­sand and one de­tails as­so­ci­ated with the work of build­ing, de­fense, and agri­cul­ture. Be­ing much de­pressed spir­i­tu­ally, he in­trusted the or­ga­ni­za­tion of wor­ship and ed­u­ca­tion to those of Nod­ite ex­trac­tion who had served in these ca­pac­i­ties in the first gar­den; and in even so short a time the of­fi­ci­at­ing Nod­ite priests were re­vert­ing to the stan­dards and rul­ings of pre-Adamic times.

75:6.1When Adam learned that the Nod­ites were on the march, he sought the coun­sel of the Mel­chiz­e­deks, but they re­fused to ad­vise him, only telling him to do as he thought best and promis­ing their friendly co-op­er­a­tion, as far as pos­si­ble, in any course he might de­cide upon. The Mel­chiz­e­deks had been for­bid­den to in­ter­fere with the per­sonal plans of Adam and Eve.

75:6.2Adam knew that he and Eve had failed; the pres­ence of the Mel­chiz­e­dek re­ceivers told him that, though he still knew noth­ing of their per­sonal sta­tus or fu­ture fate. He held an all-night con­fer­ence with some twelve hun­dred loyal fol­low­ers who pledged them­selves to fol­low their leader, and the next day at noon these pil­grims went forth from Eden in quest of new homes. Adam had no lik­ing for war and ac­cord­ingly elected to leave the first gar­den to the Nod­ites un­op­posed.

75:6.3The Edenic car­a­van was halted on the third day out from the Gar­den by the ar­rival of the se­raphic trans­ports from Je­ru­sem. And for the first time Adam and Eve were in­formed of what was to be­come of their chil­dren. While the trans­ports stood by, those chil­dren who had ar­rived at the age of choice (twenty years) were given the op­tion of re­main­ing on Uran­tia with their par­ents or of be­com­ing wards of the Most Highs of Nor­la­ti­adek. Two thirds chose to go to Eden­tia; about one third elected to re­main with their par­ents. All chil­dren of pre­choice age were taken to Eden­tia. No one could have be­held the sor­row­ful part­ing of this Ma­te­rial Son and Daugh­ter and their chil­dren with­out re­al­iz­ing that the way of the trans­gres­sor is hard. These off­spring of Adam and Eve are now on Eden­tia; we do not know what dis­po­si­tion is to be made of them.

75:6.4It was a sad, sad car­a­van that pre­pared to jour­ney on. Could any­thing have been more tragic! To have come to a world in such high hopes, to have been so aus­pi­ciously re­ceived, and then to go forth in dis­grace from Eden, only to lose more than three fourths of their chil­dren even be­fore find­ing a new abid­ing place!

76:0.1When Adam elected to leave the first gar­den to the Nod­ites un­op­posed, he and his fol­low­ers could not go west, for the Eden­ites had no boats suit­able for such a ma­rine ad­ven­ture. They could not go north; the north­ern Nod­ites were al­ready on the march to­ward Eden. They feared to go south; the hills of that re­gion were in­fested with hos­tile tribes. The only way open was to the east, and so they jour­neyed east­ward to­ward the then pleas­ant re­gions be­tween the Tigris and Eu­phrates rivers. And many of those who were left be­hind later jour­neyed east­ward to join the Adamites in their new val­ley home.

• practiced scrupulous burial of all waste

73:5.4Be­fore the later es­tab­lish­ment of a sew­age-dis­posal sys­tem the Eden­ites prac­ticed the scrupu­lous burial of all waste or de­com­pos­ing ma­te­rial. Amadon’s in­spec­tors made their rounds each day in search for pos­si­ble causes of sick­ness. Uran­tians did not again awaken to the im­por­tance of the pre­ven­tion of hu­man dis­eases un­til the later times of the nine­teenth and twen­ti­eth cen­turies. Be­fore the dis­rup­tion of the Adamic regime a cov­ered brick-con­duit dis­posal sys­tem had been con­structed which ran be­neath the walls and emp­tied into the river of Eden al­most a mile be­yond the outer or lesser wall of the Gar­den.

• language was Andonic dialect

74:2.2The tongue of Eden was an An­donic di­alect as spo­ken by Amadon. Van and Amadon had markedly im­proved this lan­guage by cre­at­ing a new al­pha­bet of twenty-four let­ters, and they had hoped to see it be­come the tongue of Uran­tia as the Edenic cul­ture would spread through­out the world. Adam and Eve had fully mas­tered this hu­man di­alect be­fore they de­parted from Je­ru­sem so that this son of An­don heard the ex­alted ruler of his world ad­dress him in his own tongue.

• primitive manufacturing

74:5.3All went fairly well for a time on Uran­tia, and it ap­peared that Adam would, even­tu­ally, be able to de­velop some plan for pro­mot­ing the grad­ual ex­ten­sion of the Edenic civ­i­liza­tion. Pur­suant to the ad­vice of the Mel­chiz­e­deks, he be­gan to fos­ter the arts of man­u­fac­ture with the idea of de­vel­op­ing trade re­la­tions with the out­side world. When Eden was dis­rupted, there were over one hun­dred prim­i­tive man­u­fac­tur­ing plants in op­er­a­tion, and ex­ten­sive trade re­la­tions with the near-by tribes had been es­tab­lished.

74:7.1The chil­dren of Adam, ex­cept for four years’ at­ten­dance at the west­ern schools, lived and worked in the “east of Eden.” They were trained in­tel­lec­tu­ally un­til they were six­teen in ac­cor­dance with the meth­ods of the Je­ru­sem schools. From six­teen to twenty they were taught in the Uran­tia schools at the other end of the Gar­den, serv­ing there also as teach­ers in the lower grades.

74:7.2The en­tire pur­pose of the west­ern school sys­tem of the Gar­den was so­cial­iza­tion. The forenoon pe­ri­ods of re­cess were de­voted to prac­ti­cal hor­ti­cul­ture and agri­cul­ture, the af­ter­noon pe­ri­ods to com­pet­i­tive play. The evenings were em­ployed in so­cial in­ter­course and the cul­ti­va­tion of per­sonal friend­ships. Re­li­gious and sex­ual train­ing were re­garded as the prov­ince of the home, the duty of par­ents.

74:7.3The teach­ing in these schools in­cluded in­struc­tion re­gard­ing:

74:7.41. Health and the care of the body.

74:7.52. The golden rule, the stan­dard of so­cial in­ter­course.

74:7.63. The re­la­tion of in­di­vid­ual rights to group rights and com­mu­nity obli­ga­tions.

74:7.74. His­tory and cul­ture of the var­i­ous earth races.

74:7.85. Meth­ods of ad­vanc­ing and im­prov­ing world trade.

74:7.96. Co-or­di­na­tion of con­flict­ing du­ties and emo­tions.

74:7.107. The cul­ti­va­tion of play, hu­mor, and com­pet­i­tive sub­sti­tutes for phys­i­cal fight­ing.

74:7.11The schools, in fact ev­ery ac­tiv­ity of the Gar­den, were al­ways open to vis­i­tors. Un­armed ob­servers were freely ad­mit­ted to Eden for short vis­its. To so­journ in the Gar­den a Uran­tian had to be “adopted.” He re­ceived in­struc­tions in the plan and pur­pose of the Adamic be­stowal, sig­ni­fied his in­ten­tion to ad­here to this mis­sion, and then made dec­la­ra­tion of loy­alty to the so­cial rule of Adam and the spir­i­tual sov­er­eignty of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther.

74:7.12The laws of the Gar­den were based on the older codes of Dala­ma­tia and were pro­mul­gated un­der seven heads:

74:7.131. The laws of health and san­i­ta­tion.

74:7.142. The so­cial reg­u­la­tions of the Gar­den.

74:7.153. The code of trade and com­merce.

74:7.164. The laws of fair play and com­pe­ti­tion.

74:7.175. The laws of home life.

74:7.186. The civil codes of the golden rule.

74:7.197. The seven com­mands of su­preme moral rule.

74:7.20The moral law of Eden was lit­tle dif­fer­ent from the seven com­mand­ments of Dala­ma­tia. But the Adamites taught many ad­di­tional rea­sons for these com­mands; for in­stance, re­gard­ing the in­junc­tion against mur­der, the in­dwelling of the Thought Ad­juster was pre­sented as an ad­di­tional rea­son for not de­stroy­ing hu­man life. They taught that “whoso sheds man’s blood by man shall his blood be shed, for in the im­age of God made he man.”

74:7.21The pub­lic wor­ship hour of Eden was noon; sun­set was the hour of fam­ily wor­ship. Adam did his best to dis­cour­age the use of set prayers, teach­ing that ef­fec­tive prayer must be wholly in­di­vid­ual, that it must be the “de­sire of the soul”; but the Eden­ites con­tin­ued to use the prayers and forms handed down from the times of Dala­ma­tia. Adam also en­deav­ored to sub­sti­tute the of­fer­ings of the fruit of the land for the blood sac­ri­fices in the re­li­gious cer­e­monies but had made lit­tle prog­ress be­fore the dis­rup­tion of the Gar­den.

74:7.22Adam en­deav­ored to teach the races sex equal­ity. The way Eve worked by the side of her hus­band made a pro­found im­pres­sion upon all dwellers in the Gar­den. Adam def­i­nitely taught them that the woman, equally with the man, con­tributes those life fac­tors which unite to form a new be­ing. Thereto­fore, man­kind had pre­sumed that all pro­cre­ation resided in the “loins of the fa­ther.” They had looked upon the mother as be­ing merely a pro­vi­sion for nur­tur­ing the un­born and nurs­ing the new­born.

74:7.23Adam taught his con­tem­po­raries all they could com­pre­hend, but that was not very much, com­par­a­tively speak­ing. Nev­er­the­less, the more in­tel­li­gent of the races of earth looked for­ward ea­gerly to the time when they would be per­mit­ted to in­ter­marry with the su­pe­rior chil­dren of the vi­o­let race. And what a dif­fer­ent world Uran­tia would have be­come if this great plan of up­lift­ing the races had been car­ried out! Even as it was, tremen­dous gains re­sulted from the small amount of the blood of this im­ported race which the evo­lu­tion­ary peo­ples in­ci­den­tally se­cured.

74:7.24And thus did Adam work for the wel­fare and up­lift of the world of his so­journ. But it was a dif­fi­cult task to lead these mixed and mon­grel peo­ples in the bet­ter way.

• co-operation from Nodites

75:2.5The Gar­den dwellers had been in con­tact with the Nod­ites since the early days of Eden. From these mixed de­scen­dants of the de­fault­ing mem­bers of Cali­gas­tia’s staff they had re­ceived much valu­able help and co-op­er­a­tion, and through them the Edenic regime was now to meet its com­plete un­do­ing and fi­nal over­throw.

• co-operation from Nodites

75:3.5He held many con­fer­ences with Adam and Eve—es­pe­cially with Eve—and they talked over many plans for im­prov­ing their meth­ods. One day, dur­ing a talk with Eve, it oc­curred to Ser­a­p­ata­tia that it would be very help­ful if, while await­ing the re­cruit­ing of large num­bers of the vi­o­let race, some­thing could be done in the mean­time im­me­di­ately to ad­vance the needy wait­ing tribes. Ser­a­p­ata­tia con­tended that, if the Nod­ites, as the most pro­gres­sive and co-op­er­a­tive race, could have a leader born to them of part ori­gin in the vi­o­let stock, it would con­sti­tute a pow­er­ful tie bind­ing these peo­ples more closely to the Gar­den. And all of this was soberly and hon­estly con­sid­ered to be for the good of the world since this child, to be reared and ed­u­cated in the Gar­den, would ex­ert a great in­flu­ence for good over his fa­ther’s peo­ple.

• massacred near-by Nodites upon learning of Eve’s folly with Cano

75:5.3When they learned what had hap­pened to Eve, the in­fu­ri­ated in­hab­i­tants of the Gar­den be­came un­man­age­able; they de­clared war on the near-by Nod­ite set­tle­ment. They swept out through the gates of Eden and down upon these un­pre­pared peo­ple, ut­terly de­stroy­ing them—not a man, woman, or child was spared. And Cano, the fa­ther of Cain yet un­born, also per­ished.

76:1.1It re­quired al­most a full year for the car­a­van of Adam to reach the Eu­phrates River. Find­ing it in flood tide, they re­mained camped on the plains west of the stream al­most six weeks be­fore they made their way across to the land be­tween the rivers which was to be­come the sec­ond gar­den.

76:1.2When word had reached the dwellers in the land of the sec­ond gar­den that the king and high priest of the Gar­den of Eden was march­ing on them, they had fled in haste to the east­ern moun­tains. Adam found all of the de­sired ter­ri­tory va­cated when he ar­rived. And here in this new lo­ca­tion Adam and his helpers set them­selves to work to build new homes and es­tab­lish a new cen­ter of cul­ture and re­li­gion.

76:1.3This site was known to Adam as one of the three orig­i­nal se­lec­tions of the com­mit­tee as­signed to choose pos­si­ble lo­ca­tions for the Gar­den pro­posed by Van and Amadon. The two rivers them­selves were a good nat­u­ral de­fense in those days, and a short way north of the sec­ond gar­den the Eu­phrates and Tigris came close to­gether so that a de­fense wall ex­tend­ing fifty-six miles could be built for the pro­tec­tion of the ter­ri­tory to the south and be­tween the rivers.

76:1.4Af­ter get­ting set­tled in the new Eden, it be­came nec­es­sary to adopt crude meth­ods of liv­ing; it seemed en­tirely true that the ground had been cursed. Na­ture was once again tak­ing its course. Now were the Adamites com­pelled to wrest a liv­ing from un­pre­pared soil and to cope with the re­al­i­ties of life in the face of the nat­u­ral hos­til­i­ties and in­com­pat­i­bil­i­ties of mor­tal ex­is­tence. They found the first gar­den par­tially pre­pared for them, but the sec­ond had to be cre­ated by the la­bor of their own hands and in the “sweat of their faces.”

• co-operation from Nodites

77:4.1The dis­per­sion of the Nod­ites was an im­me­di­ate re­sult of the in­ternecine con­flict over the tower of Ba­bel. This in­ter­nal war greatly re­duced the num­bers of the purer Nod­ites and was in many ways re­spon­si­ble for their fail­ure to es­tab­lish a great pre-Adamic civ­i­liza­tion. From this time on Nod­ite cul­ture de­clined for over one hun­dred and twenty thou­sand years un­til it was up­stepped by Adamic in­fu­sion. But even in the times of Adam the Nod­ites were still an able peo­ple. Many of their mixed de­scen­dants were num­bered among the Gar­den builders, and sev­eral of Van’s group cap­tains were Nod­ites. Some of the most ca­pa­ble minds serv­ing on Adam’s staff were of this race.

• ideal of whole family as gardeners

84:7.8But the home as an in­sti­tu­tion, a part­ner­ship be­tween one man and one woman, dates more specif­i­cally from the days of Dala­ma­tia, about one-half mil­lion years ago, the monog­a­mous prac­tices of An­don and his im­me­di­ate de­scen­dants hav­ing been aban­doned long be­fore. Fam­ily life, how­ever, was not much to boast of be­fore the days of the Nod­ites and the later Adamites. Adam and Eve ex­erted a last­ing in­flu­ence on all man­kind; for the first time in the his­tory of the world men and women were ob­served work­ing side by side in the Gar­den. The Edenic ideal, the whole fam­ily as gar­den­ers, was a new idea on Uran­tia.

73:3.2The com­mit­tee al­most unan­i­mously fa­vored the third se­lec­tion. This site was cho­sen, and two years were oc­cu­pied in trans­fer­ring the world’s cul­tural head­quar­ters, in­clud­ing the tree of life, to this Med­i­ter­ra­nean penin­sula. All but a sin­gle group of the penin­sula dwellers peace­ably va­cated when Van and his com­pany ar­rived.

73:4.1When Ma­te­rial Sons, the bi­o­logic up­lifters, be­gin their so­journ on an evo­lu­tion­ary world, their place of abode is of­ten called the Gar­den of Eden be­cause it is char­ac­ter­ized by the flo­ral beauty and the botanic grandeur of Eden­tia, the con­stel­la­tion cap­i­tal. Van well knew of these cus­toms and ac­cord­ingly pro­vided that the en­tire penin­sula be given over to the Gar­den. Pas­turage and an­i­mal hus­bandry were pro­jected for the ad­join­ing main­land. Of an­i­mal life, only the birds and the var­i­ous do­mes­ti­cated species were to be found in the park. Van’s in­struc­tions were that Eden was to be a gar­den, and only a gar­den. No an­i­mals were ever slaugh­tered within its precincts. All flesh eaten by the Gar­den work­ers through­out all the years of con­struc­tion was brought in from the herds main­tained un­der guard on the main­land.

73:4.2The first task was the build­ing of the brick wall across the neck of the penin­sula. This once com­pleted, the real work of land­scape beau­ti­fi­ca­tion and home build­ing could pro­ceed un­hin­dered.

73:4.3A zo­o­log­i­cal gar­den was cre­ated by build­ing a smaller wall just out­side the main wall; the in­ter­ven­ing space, oc­cu­pied by all man­ner of wild beasts, served as an ad­di­tional de­fense against hos­tile at­tacks. This menagerie was or­ga­nized in twelve grand di­vi­sions, and walled paths led be­tween these groups to the twelve gates of the Gar­den, the river and its ad­ja­cent pas­tures oc­cu­py­ing the cen­tral area.

73:4.4In the prepa­ra­tion of the Gar­den only vol­un­teer la­bor­ers were em­ployed; no hire­lings were ever used. They cul­ti­vated the Gar­den and tended their herds for sup­port; con­tri­bu­tions of food were also re­ceived from near-by be­liev­ers. And this great en­ter­prise was car­ried through to com­ple­tion in spite of the dif­fi­cul­ties at­ten­dant upon the con­fused sta­tus of the world dur­ing these trou­blous times.

73:4.5But it was a cause for great dis­ap­point­ment when Van, not know­ing how soon the ex­pected Son and Daugh­ter might come, sug­gested that the younger gen­er­a­tion also be trained in the work of car­ry­ing on the en­ter­prise in case their ar­rival should be de­layed. This seemed like an ad­mis­sion of lack of faith on Van’s part and made con­sid­er­able trou­ble, caused many de­ser­tions; but Van went for­ward with his plan of pre­pared­ness, mean­time fill­ing the places of the de­sert­ers with younger vol­un­teers.

68:1.7The mod­ern phrase, “back to na­ture,” is a delu­sion of ig­no­rance, a be­lief in the re­al­ity of the one­time fic­ti­tious “golden age.” The only ba­sis for the leg­end of the golden age is the his­toric fact of Dala­ma­tia and Eden. But these im­proved so­ci­eties were far from the re­al­iza­tion of utopian dreams.

39:5.31. The Voices of the Gar­den. When the plan­e­tary course of hu­man evo­lu­tion is at­tain­ing its high­est bi­o­logic level, there al­ways ap­pear the Ma­te­rial Sons and Daugh­ters, the Adams and Eves, to aug­ment the fur­ther evo­lu­tion of the races by an ac­tual con­tri­bu­tion of their su­pe­rior life plasm. The plan­e­tary head­quar­ters of such an Adam and Eve is usu­ally de­nom­i­nated the Gar­den of Eden, and their per­sonal ser­a­phim are of­ten known as the “voices of the Gar­den.” These ser­a­phim are of in­valu­able ser­vice to the Plan­e­tary Adams in all their projects for the phys­i­cal and in­tel­lec­tual up­step­ping of the evo­lu­tion­ary races. Af­ter the Adamic de­fault on Uran­tia, some of these ser­a­phim were left on the planet and were as­signed to Adam’s suc­ces­sors in au­thor­ity.

73:7.1Af­ter the first gar­den was va­cated by Adam, it was oc­cu­pied var­i­ously by the Nod­ites, Cu­tites, and the Sun­tites. It later be­came the dwell­ing place of the north­ern Nod­ites who op­posed co-op­er­a­tion with the Adamites. The penin­sula had been over­run by these lower-grade Nod­ites for al­most four thou­sand years af­ter Adam left the Gar­den when, in con­nec­tion with the vi­o­lent ac­tiv­ity of the sur­round­ing vol­ca­noes and the sub­mer­gence of the Si­cil­ian land bridge to Africa, the east­ern floor of the Med­i­ter­ra­nean Sea sank, car­ry­ing down be­neath the wa­ters the whole of the Edenic penin­sula. Con­comi­tant with this vast sub­mer­gence the coast line of the east­ern Med­i­ter­ra­nean was greatly el­e­vated. And this was the end of the most beau­ti­ful nat­u­ral cre­ation that Uran­tia has ever har­bored. The sink­ing was not sud­den, sev­eral hun­dred years be­ing re­quired com­pletely to sub­merge the en­tire penin­sula.

• elevated Mediterranean peninsula; salubrious climate

73:3.3This Med­i­ter­ra­nean penin­sula had a salu­bri­ous cli­mate and an equable tem­per­a­ture; this sta­bi­lized weather was due to the en­cir­cling moun­tains and to the fact that this area was vir­tu­ally an is­land in an in­land sea. While it rained co­pi­ously on the sur­round­ing high­lands, it sel­dom rained in Eden proper. But each night, from the ex­ten­sive net­work of ar­ti­fi­cial ir­ri­ga­tion chan­nels, a “mist would go up” to re­fresh the veg­e­ta­tion of the Gar­den.

• 27 mile wide neck connected to mainland

73:3.4The coast line of this land mass was con­sid­er­ably el­e­vated, and the neck con­nect­ing with the main­land was only twenty-seven miles wide at the nar­row­est point. The great river that wa­tered the Gar­den came down from the higher lands of the penin­sula and flowed east through the penin­su­lar neck to the main­land and thence across the low­lands of Mes­o­po­ta­mia to the sea be­yond. It was fed by four trib­u­taries which took ori­gin in the coastal hills of the Edenic penin­sula, and these are the “four heads” of the river which “went out of Eden,” and which later be­came con­fused with the branches of the rivers sur­round­ing the sec­ond gar­den.

• hills abounded in precious stones and metals

73:3.5The moun­tains sur­round­ing the Gar­den abounded in pre­cious stones and met­als, though these re­ceived very lit­tle at­ten­tion. The dom­i­nant idea was to be the glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of hor­ti­cul­ture and the ex­al­ta­tion of agri­cul­ture.

• most beautiful spot on earth

73:3.6The site cho­sen for the Gar­den was prob­a­bly the most beau­ti­ful spot of its kind in all the world, and the cli­mate was then ideal. Nowhere else was there a lo­ca­tion which could have lent it­self so per­fectly to be­com­ing such a par­a­dise of botanic ex­pres­sion. In this ren­dezvous the cream of the civ­i­liza­tion of Uran­tia was for­gath­er­ing. With­out and be­yond, the world lay in dark­ness, ig­no­rance, and sav­agery. Eden was the one bright spot on Uran­tia; it was nat­u­rally a dream of love­li­ness, and it soon be­came a poem of ex­qui­site and per­fected land­scape glory.

73:5.1At the cen­ter of the Edenic penin­sula was the ex­qui­site stone tem­ple of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, the sa­cred shrine of the Gar­den. To the north the ad­min­is­tra­tive head­quar­ters was es­tab­lished; to the south were built the homes for the work­ers and their fam­i­lies; to the west was pro­vided the al­lot­ment of ground for the pro­posed schools of the ed­u­ca­tional sys­tem of the ex­pected Son, while in the “east of Eden” were built the domi­ciles in­tended for the prom­ised Son and his im­me­di­ate off­spring. The ar­chi­tec­tural plans for Eden pro­vided homes and abun­dant land for one mil­lion hu­man be­ings.

• 12,000 miles of paved roads

73:5.2At the time of Adam’s ar­rival, though the Gar­den was only one-fourth fin­ished, it had thou­sands of miles of ir­ri­ga­tion ditches and more than twelve thou­sand miles of paved paths and roads. There were a tri­fle over five thou­sand brick build­ings in the var­i­ous sec­tors, and the trees and plants were al­most be­yond num­ber. Seven was the largest num­ber of houses com­pos­ing any one clus­ter in the park. And though the struc­tures of the Gar­den were sim­ple, they were most artis­tic. The roads and paths were well built, and the land­scap­ing was ex­qui­site.

• sanitary practices

73:5.3The san­i­tary ar­range­ments of the Gar­den were far in ad­vance of any­thing that had been at­tempted thereto­fore on Uran­tia. The drink­ing wa­ter of Eden was kept whole­some by the strict ob­ser­vance of the san­i­tary reg­u­la­tions de­signed to con­serve its pu­rity. Dur­ing these early times much trou­ble came about from ne­glect of these rules, but Van grad­u­ally im­pressed upon his as­so­ciates the im­por­tance of al­low­ing noth­ing to fall into the wa­ter sup­ply of the Gar­den.

73:5.5By the time of Adam’s ar­rival most of the plants of that sec­tion of the world were grow­ing in Eden. Al­ready had many of the fruits, ce­re­als, and nuts been greatly im­proved. Many mod­ern veg­eta­bles and ce­re­als were first cul­ti­vated here, but scores of va­ri­eties of food plants were sub­se­quently lost to the world.

73:5.6About five per cent of the Gar­den was un­der high ar­ti­fi­cial cul­ti­va­tion, fif­teen per cent par­tially cul­ti­vated, the re­main­der be­ing left in a more or less nat­u­ral state pend­ing the ar­rival of Adam, it be­ing thought best to fin­ish the park in ac­cor­dance with his ideas.

73:5.7And so was the Gar­den of Eden made ready for the re­cep­tion of the prom­ised Adam and his con­sort. And this Gar­den would have done honor to a world un­der per­fected ad­min­is­tra­tion and nor­mal con­trol. Adam and Eve were well pleased with the gen­eral plan of Eden, though they made many changes in the fur­nish­ings of their own per­sonal dwell­ing.

• most beautiful spot on earth

73:5.8Al­though the work of em­bel­lish­ment was hardly fin­ished at the time of Adam’s ar­rival, the place was al­ready a gem of botanic beauty; and dur­ing the early days of his so­journ in Eden the whole Gar­den took on new form and as­sumed new pro­por­tions of beauty and grandeur. Never be­fore this time nor af­ter has Uran­tia har­bored such a beau­ti­ful and re­plete ex­hi­bi­tion of hor­ti­cul­ture and agri­cul­ture.

73:7.2We can­not re­gard this dis­ap­pear­ance of the Gar­den as be­ing in any way a re­sult of the mis­car­riage of the di­vine plans or as a re­sult of the mis­takes of Adam and Eve. We do not re­gard the sub­mer­gence of Eden as any­thing but a nat­u­ral oc­cur­rence, but it does seem to us that the sink­ing of the Gar­den was timed to oc­cur at just about the date of the ac­cu­mu­la­tion of the re­serves of the vi­o­let race for un­der­tak­ing the work of re­ha­bil­i­tat­ing the world peo­ples.

• inaugural mount

74:2.5Soon af­ter their awak­en­ing, Adam and Eve were es­corted to the for­mal re­cep­tion on the great mound to the north of the tem­ple. This nat­u­ral hill had been en­larged and made ready for the in­stal­la­tion of the world’s new rulers. Here, at noon, the Uran­tia re­cep­tion com­mit­tee wel­comed this Son and Daugh­ter of the sys­tem of Sa­ta­nia. Amadon was chair­man of this com­mit­tee, which con­sisted of twelve mem­bers em­brac­ing a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of each of the six San­gik races; the act­ing chief of the mid­way­ers; An­nan, a loyal daugh­ter and spokesman for the Nod­ites; Noah, the son of the ar­chi­tect and builder of the Gar­den and ex­ec­u­tive of his de­ceased fa­ther’s plans; and the two res­i­dent Life Car­ri­ers.

• most beautiful spot on earth

74:3.4The third day was de­voted to an in­spec­tion of the Gar­den. From the large pas­sen­ger birds—the fan­dors—Adam and Eve looked down upon the vast stretches of the Gar­den while be­ing car­ried through the air over this, the most beau­ti­ful spot on earth. This day of in­spec­tion ended with an enor­mous ban­quet in honor of all who had la­bored to cre­ate this gar­den of Edenic beauty and grandeur. And again, late into the night of their third day, the Son and his mate walked in the Gar­den and talked about the im­men­sity of their prob­lems.

• inaugural mount

74:3.5On the fourth day Adam and Eve ad­dressed the Gar­den as­sem­bly. From the in­au­gu­ral mount they spoke to the peo­ple con­cern­ing their plans for the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of the world and out­lined the meth­ods whereby they would seek to re­deem the so­cial cul­ture of Uran­tia from the low lev­els to which it had fallen as a re­sult of sin and re­bel­lion. This was a great day, and it closed with a feast for the coun­cil of men and women who had been se­lected to as­sume re­spon­si­bil­i­ties in the new ad­min­is­tra­tion of world af­fairs. Take note! women as well as men were in this group, and that was the first time such a thing had oc­curred on earth since the days of Dala­ma­tia. It was an as­tound­ing in­no­va­tion to be­hold Eve, a woman, shar­ing the hon­ors and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of world af­fairs with a man. And thus ended the fourth day on earth.

• inaugural mount

74:4.4It was near the dawn of their sev­enth day on earth that Adam and Eve heard the startling news of the pro­posal of these well-mean­ing but mis­guided mor­tals; and then, even while the pas­sen­ger birds were swiftly wing­ing to bring them to the tem­ple, the mid­way­ers, be­ing able to do such things, trans­ported Adam and Eve to the Fa­ther’s tem­ple. It was early on the morn­ing of this sev­enth day and from the mount of their so re­cent re­cep­tion that Adam held forth in ex­pla­na­tion of the or­ders of di­vine son­ship and made clear to these earth minds that only the Fa­ther and those whom he des­ig­nates may be wor­shiped. Adam made it plain that he would ac­cept any honor and re­ceive all re­spect, but wor­ship never!

• submerged under eastern Mediterranean

78:7.7The rem­nants of this, one of the old­est civ­i­liza­tions, are to be found in these re­gions of Mes­o­po­ta­mia and to the north­east and north­west. But still older ves­tiges of the days of Dala­ma­tia ex­ist un­der the wa­ters of the Per­sian Gulf, and the first Eden lies sub­merged un­der the east­ern end of the Med­i­ter­ra­nean Sea.

73:2.1For al­most one hun­dred years prior to Taba­man­tia’s in­spec­tion, Van and his as­so­ciates, from their high­land head­quar­ters of world ethics and cul­ture, had been preach­ing the ad­vent of a prom­ised Son of God, a racial up­lifter, a teacher of truth, and the wor­thy suc­ces­sor of the traitorous Cali­gas­tia. Though the ma­jor­ity of the world’s in­hab­i­tants of those days ex­hib­ited lit­tle or no in­ter­est in such a pre­dic­tion, those who were in im­me­di­ate con­tact with Van and Amadon took such teach­ing se­ri­ously and be­gan to plan for the ac­tual re­cep­tion of the prom­ised Son.

73:2.2Van told his near­est as­so­ciates the story of the Ma­te­rial Sons on Je­ru­sem; what he had known of them be­fore ever he came to Uran­tia. He well knew that these Adamic Sons al­ways lived in sim­ple but charm­ing gar­den homes and pro­posed, eighty-three years be­fore the ar­rival of Adam and Eve, that they de­vote them­selves to the procla­ma­tion of their ad­vent and to the prepa­ra­tion of a gar­den home for their re­cep­tion.

73:2.4Van di­vided his vol­un­teers into one hun­dred com­pa­nies with a cap­tain over each and an as­so­ciate who served on his per­sonal staff as a li­ai­son of­fi­cer, keep­ing Amadon as his own as­so­ciate. These com­mis­sions all be­gan in earnest their pre­lim­i­nary work, and the com­mit­tee on lo­ca­tion for the Gar­den sal­lied forth in search of the ideal spot.

73:2.5Al­though Cali­gas­tia and Dali­gas­tia had been de­prived of much of their power for evil, they did ev­ery­thing pos­si­ble to frus­trate and ham­per the work of prepar­ing the Gar­den. But their evil machi­na­tions were largely off­set by the faith­ful ac­tiv­i­ties of the al­most ten thou­sand loyal mid­way crea­tures who so tire­lessly la­bored to ad­vance the en­ter­prise.

73:3.1The com­mit­tee on lo­ca­tion was ab­sent for al­most three years. It re­ported fa­vor­ably con­cern­ing three pos­si­ble lo­ca­tions: The first was an is­land in the Per­sian Gulf; the sec­ond, the river lo­ca­tion sub­se­quently oc­cu­pied as the sec­ond gar­den; the third, a long nar­row penin­sula—al­most an is­land—pro­ject­ing west­ward from the east­ern shores of the Med­i­ter­ra­nean Sea.

• 7 commandments of Eden were taboos

89:1.4The seven com­mand­ments of Dala­ma­tia and Eden, as well as the ten in­junc­tions of the He­brews, were def­i­nite taboos, all ex­pressed in the same neg­a­tive form as were the most an­cient pro­hi­bi­tions. But these newer codes were truly eman­ci­pat­ing in that they took the place of thou­sands of pre-ex­is­tent taboos. And more than this, these later com­mand­ments def­i­nitely prom­ised some­thing in re­turn for obe­di­ence.

• 2nd epochal revelation
• carried on by Sethite priests

92:4.62. The Edenic teach­ings. Adam and Eve again por­trayed the con­cept of the Fa­ther of all to the evo­lu­tion­ary peo­ples. The dis­rup­tion of the first Eden halted the course of the Adamic rev­e­la­tion be­fore it had ever fully started. But the aborted teach­ings of Adam were car­ried on by the Sethite priests, and some of these truths have never been en­tirely lost to the world. The en­tire trend of Lev­an­tine re­li­gious evo­lu­tion was mod­i­fied by the teach­ings of the Sethites. But by 2500 B.C. man­kind had largely lost sight of the rev­e­la­tion spon­sored in the days of Eden.