"A Fruit Best Savored than Wasted": Wise Serpent Archetropy

Sivaan of Candlekeep

August 14, 2024

This piece was originally written on August 13, 2024 and published in the Archetroper Community on Dreamwidth. For the sake of preservation, I have decided to cross-post my first entry within the community to my personal neocities. All that is featured below is faithful to my original post. The only omission that I have made is an initial comment I had made at the end in which I invite fellow members of the community to share their thoughts on my post.

The original piece goes as follows:

I am going to preface this entry with a couple of content warnings, just in case if the subjects that I touch on are discomforting to any of the readers here. CW: discussions of religion (specifically Christianity), complications with religious guilt, implied internalized transphobia and existentialism.

I have come to terms with being a Wise Serpent archetroper. Although I am not a snake or fully serpentine in form, I have found that this archetrope of mine symbolizes what I stand for as a dragon. It is highly likely that this archetrope may be the most relevant to my lived experiences and beliefs. This is a rather damning realization compared to the few other archetropes I've long identified with. I'd argue that only my Cloistered Scholar or Storyteller archetropes come close in this regard. Yet, one must wonder: how do you know that it holds so much weight in your archetropy?

Open your mind and your heart, my fair reader(s), for I shall do as a wise serpent does. Tell all.

First and foremost, what is the wise serpent as a trope? In case you didn't already sate your curiosity by clicking the link, I will provide a brief summary. The Wise Serpent is one of many tropes focused on the personification of animals, particularly snakes. In this context, wise serpents are known for utilizing their guile to slip out of trouble and their secretive yet inviting charisma to get what they want out of others. Make no mistake, wise serpents are more than just sly, scaley charlatans. Their intelligence is not just limited to craftiness, but an immense knowledge on information that is often obscured or deliberately hidden. On the surface, the knowledge that a wise serpent offers looks promising. After all, who wouldn’t want to pursue enlightenment? Who wouldn't want to better their circumstances in this life? These are honest desires. There is no shame in that. Yet, the knowledge that one seeks from said serpents may lead to dire consequences.

From my perspective, I believe this trope is vastly misunderstood. Perhaps, I am speaking from a place of bias as a Wise Serpent archetroper. However, I hope that you all understand where I am coming from in my reasonings. Like with any reflection, I think it is best that I start from the beginning.

Having grown up in a household that was also a part of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), I was no stranger to biblical stories as a child. My mother distrusted churches, which turned out to be one of the few things we both agreed on. Thus, she never took me to one. I knew that she herself was baptized as she told me so before, but I can't recall for the life of me if she said I was as well. Either way, anything that I learned about Christianity came from my home. We had an old, withered Holy Bible that we still have with us to this day. I had a children's bible that I had picked from a Wal-Mart book section when I was around nine years old. I didn't get familiar with the less sanitized versions of these stories (as seen in my children's bible) until I was around twelve years old. It was no secret that I loved to read, and that I had began reading in grade levels higher than my own as time went on. On one summer day, I decided to challenge myself and read from my family's bible. I decided to go easy on myself by picking a simple, familiar story: the tale of how Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden.

When I read it in its truest form, I was confused. I read it again. I was confused even more. What did they do wrong?

Arguably, I could see why God had been enraged with their disobedience. However, that changed when I pieced together that God was deliberately hiding things from them. While the intentions of the snake often depends on which version one is reading from, it was to my understanding that the snake helped them. I personally love to learn. I did not see the harm in giving knowledge to Eve and eventually Adam. The punishments didn't make my confusion any better. Damned to suffer during birth, damned to struggle for food, damned to turn to dust upon death... for gaining knowledge? Regardless what his reasons were, why would I put all of my love and support into a higher being who damns anyone who dares to unshackle themselves from ignorance? Worst of all, why was Man learning the difference between good and evil such an affront to God?

As a child, I figured that God didn't want his people to willingly and knowingly commit acts of evil against one another if they gained said knowledge. As an adult, however, I have my own theory on account of being an ex-Baptist and now metaphysical agnostic. God was so incensed by this act because he knew that Man would realize God's faults. What kind of creator would deny their living creations this right? How God could make Man in his image yet deny Man the basics of understanding and awareness? It made no sense to me.

As one would figure, I was deeply upset with my faith. In addition to my faith upsetting me on other matters (such as queerness and my questioning of it), I contemplated on the possibility of going to Hell for even daring to question these acts done by "Our Heavenly Father". I would plague my parents with questions on what would happen when we die, what would become of us, what did dying feel like, etc, out of fear of what my fate would be for doubting God. For the next couple of years, I tried my best to "get right with God" by learning more from our bible at home and praying. I never forced what I thought was my faith on anyone else. I may have identified within the SBC, but I was no invasive heathen looking to indoctrinate complete strangers. That said, I knew that I wasn't happy. I was deeply uncomfortable and afraid. What would become of me for questioning God? What if I die, and I am found to be anything but the God-fearing, God-loving woman he made me to be? I came to loathe the God I knew, the God I discovered beyond my children's bible. Even worse, I saw how this same God was pushed throughout my surroundings. The Deep South has its problems for sure, but I saw hatred and damnation across all fronts in the U.S. I was closeted in more ways than one and questioning the validity of my faith. Most of all, I was uncertain of everything. I was scared.

So, how does this tie into my archetropy? Simple. As I got older, I decided to eat from the fruit.

I decided that my selfhood in this life mattered more than anything else, more than what a crumbling, old book had to say about what I could and could not do with the time I had here.

It began with embracing my attraction to "other" women, and all manners of people by extension. (I put other in quotes because I came to terms with my bisexuality before I did with my transness.) Then, it was embracing my transmasculinity and my place outside of the binary. After that, I had understood myself as someone on the ace spectrum. Last, but absolutely not the least, I awakened to my alterhumanity. I learned to let go. There were no rules in this life for me to have except my own. I had abandoned my faith as a Baptist and spent a few years searching to fill the void, but I ultimately found that the metaphysical aspects of my alterhumanity and my agnosticism were enough for me.

I am a Wise Serpent not for my dedication to scholarship (compared to my Cloistered Scholar archetrope), but for my equal balance of selfishness and generosity. I am selfish in the eyes of the faith I once knew. I take from those who do not share their access with those they consider as "beneath" them. If it is knowledge that God wants to hide and blind faith he wants to obtain, then he is no better than the worst of men whom he's created. I am generous in my own eyes for I believe knowledge is a right for all beings in this life. I deeply oppose censorship of literature that discusses the harmful structures of the society in which I live in, acknowledges the existence of the queer community and provides further representation of and education on the experiences of marginalized groups. At the same time, I regularly engage with my local library. I share resources with my peers through PDFs. I explore archives, both online and in real life, as a hobby. I feed my voracious appetite for knowledge regardless of what any being says or thinks, but I also make myself in clear support of distributing knowledge by any means. If I am damned for it, then damned I shall be.

My wisdom is not just for me. It is for my loved ones, my peers, my communities, and even strangers in my midst who allow me to help. I suppose that's also why I can be a bit of a controversial figure at Candlekeep at times, as I feel that its entry process is rather preposterous. Even so, I am not questioned for it beyond a passing debate amongst scholars. I stand by my beliefs in every conceivable way, and any being who dare deny the gift of knowledge to another being should best steer clear of me.

I abandoned my fears. I abandoned the God I came to loathe. I abandoned the Garden of Eden that hid me away from my truth.

Upon embracing this archetrope, I’ve found that knowledge is a fruit best savored than wasted. It is a philosophy that rings true for who I am and what I stand for, a philosophy that no one can deny me.

I will close out this entry with a quote from the being whose own sacrifice led me down this path:

"You will certainly not die... for God knows that when you eat from [the tree's fruit], your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil,"

The Wise Serpent (Genesis 3:4-5).

I've opened my eyes to who I am and what I can be, and I've never looked back since.