1170. It is said of the "serpent" that it "beguiled Eve" and thereby became the provoking cause of the so-called "evil" in the world. What is concealed under the concept of the "serpent"? Indeed, we have already here in "Livets Bog" in several sections given an insight into the "Bible's" story of paradise with the "Fall", the "serpent" and "world redemption", but this insight shows in the main only the connection of this story of paradise with the terrestrial human state, which in reality is merely a locality in the actual "mystery of the fall". Through this insight we have already seen that the "serpent" here was a previous "world redeemer", was a being in flesh and blood, a being that was far ahead of his fellow human beings, "Adam" and "Eve", and could therefore "guide" them forward towards a form of existence that for the first, primitive human-like beings absolutely had to be or to signify "light". Through the above-mentioned insight we have thus seen why this "light" has later been called the "darkness", and its "world redeemers" have been called the "devil", the "evil one", "Satan" and so on. But, the "mystery of the Fall" is not something that exists merely in relation to the terrestrial human being. It is in itself an eternal principle that repeats itself in every one of the six kingdoms or zones of the spiral. If the opposite were the case it would be impossible for any of the cycles to exist as they do, and the experience of life would thereby be a total impossibility. Every cycle and every kingdom in the spiral has thus its particular "fall", its own particular "serpent", its own particular "Adam" and "Eve".