Egyptian falcon god, the Egyptian eye of supreme, eternal attention itself, has
the courage to contend with Set’s true nature, meeting him in direct combat.
In the struggle with his dread uncle, however, his consciousness is damaged.
He loses an eye. This is despite his godly stature and his unparalleled
capacity for vision. What would a mere man lose, who attempted the same
thing? But perhaps he might gain in internal vision and understanding
something proportional to what he loses in perception of the outside world.
Satan embodies the refusal of sacrifice; he is arrogance, incarnate; spite,
deceit, and cruel, conscious malevolence. He is pure hatred of Man, God and
Being. He will not humble himself, even when he knows full well that he
should. Furthermore, he knows exactly what he is doing, obsessed with the
desire for destruction, and does it deliberately, thoughtfully and completely.
It has to be him, therefore—the very archetype of Evil—who confronts and
tempts Christ, the archetype of Good. It must be him who offers to the Savior
of Mankind, under the most trying of conditions, what all men most ardently
desire.
Satan first tempts the starving Christ to quell His hunger by transforming
the desert rocks into bread. Then he suggests that He throw Himself off a
cliff, calling on God and the angels to break His fall. Christ responds to the
first temptation by saying, “One does not live by bread alone, but by every
word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” What does this answer mean? It
means that even under conditions of extreme privation, there are more
important things than food. To put it another way: Bread is of little use to the
man who has betrayed his soul, even if he is currently starving.fn3 Christ
could clearly use his near-infinite power, as Satan indicates, to gain bread,
now—to break his fast—even, in the broader sense, to gain wealth, in the
world (which would theoretically solve the problem of bread, more
permanently). But at what cost? And to what gain? Gluttony, in the midst of
moral desolation? That’s the poorest and most miserable of feasts. Christ
aims, therefore, at something higher: at the description of a mode of Being
that would finally and forever solve the problem of hunger. If we all chose
instead of expedience to dine on the Word of God? That would require each
and every person to live, and produce, and sacrifice, and speak, and share in a
manner that would permanently render the privation of hunger a thing of the