The Greater Trumps: (12) The Family

A man and a woman, with two children; a traditional family to the casual eye. But look at the background: that forest foliage is a single great tree - a twining entanglement of darkness and light, and the knowledge thereof. A huge serpent awaits in the shade of the tree. And this traditional family has two very dissimilar sons, one handling a lamb, the other holding wheatsheaves.

The imagery is ancient; in ancient Egypt, the father and mother might have been Shu and Tefnut - the twin powers of dry hot radiance and moist cool darkness. More likely, they would have been Geb and Nut - the heavens and the earth - whose children Osiris and Set would war against each other, the bright king of fertile crops and the evil prince of animals, and lay waste to the land of Egypt. The serpent would have been Apophis, the monster that chases the sun on its path through the underworld.

But those familiar with the Biblical account of Adam and Eve would see a different symbolism: this is the family outside Eden, an allusion to the fallen nature of man. It is not a happy family - soon, the two sons will grow older and Cain the elder (whose sacrifice of grain is rejected) will kill Abel the younger (whose sacrifice of a lamb is accepted). The tree in the background is that of the knowledge of Good and Evil, whose fruit it was death to consume; the serpent is the agent of Satan, or Satan himself.

The Family is the symbol of Nature, animal and vegetable, dark and light, good and evil, male and female. Like Nature, it always appears to be in balance. But this balance is an illusion; Nature is as inexorable in change and progress as anything else. Like the Chariot, it moves; like the Lovers, it has duality and complementarity; but Nature moves towards its own inscrutable and imbalanced end. It is an end which is buried in Entropy and the end of all songs; there is no 'happily ever after'.

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To my mind, this image really exposes the false dichotomy between Nature and Nurture. It is natural for humans to do things to their world, to impose their strength upon the world and remake it in their own image. We are Nature's unnatural offspring, but we are part of Nature nevertheless - and the other face of Nature is Entropy.

The last two verses of Auden's intriguing poem, After Reading a Child's Guide to Modern Physics, describe that odd dilemma we face: are we of Nature or not? Is it Sin to want to know?

This passion of our kind
For the process of finding out
Is a fact one can hardly doubt,
But I would rejoice in it more
If I knew more clearly what
We wanted the knowledge for,
Felt certain still that the mind
Is free to know or not.

It has chosen once, it seems,
And whether our concern
For magnitude's extremes
Really become a creature
Who comes in a median size,
Or politicizing Nature
Be altogether wise,
Is something we shall learn.

And so, we work our own uncertain way within the Family of Man, trying to control Nature (of which we are a part), accusing one another of perverting Nature and perverting ourselves. Perhaps the only neutral arbiter is He who made Nature, and often, He does not comply with our incessant and importunate requests.