the ultimate power of the negative in existence!

Cain is the archetype of the self, the fallen intellect which is constantly searching for the negative and exploiting it to advantage, and to the disadvantage of others, in order to justify itself in existence. When he is called to account for his brother’s blood, Cain refuses to accept the responsibility of his guilt. He has surrendered to the temptation of power, the ultimate power of the negative in existence, which is death. Yet rather than repent and carry the burden of guilt he chooses to willfully leave the immanent presence of absolute being in existence, his own spiritual being, with a fallen countenance. So is revealed the second movement of the fall, a fall into an intellectual consciousness that does not recognize the spiritual categories of being or acknowledge the actuality of sin. Fallen man thus becomes a creature who must construct his own world. This refusal to recognize objective intellectual existence as the actuality of sin is precisely the mark of Cain and is the defining mark of pagan life.