Original Sinsuality

It means that no one is so horrible that they're unforgivable. Even Samael, angel of death / Fallen Angel, depending on who you ask.

Sophia the mother is calling them home. They're not alone, she's always been one step behind them, watching over all her children.

Tori Amos writes the only songs about religion I'd care to know about. If I were to put someone in charge of revising the bible, she'd be the one. Also, God needs a woman.

i agree :D 'god sometimes you just don't come through / do you need a woman to look after you?'

This song is just full of pretty gnosticism.

From the Wikipedia.org article on Demiurge:

many systems of Gnostic thought present the Demiurge as antagonistic to the will of the Supreme Creator: this sort of Demiurge focusses solely on material reality and on the "sensuous soul". In this system, the Demiurge acts as a solution to the problem of evil. In the Apocryphon of John (in the Nag Hammadi collection), the Demiurge has the name "Yaltabaoth", and proclaims himself as God:

"Now the archon who is weak has three names. The first name is Yaltabaoth, the second is Saklas, and the third is Samael. And he is impious in his arrogance which is in him. For he said, 'I am God and there is no other God beside me,' for he is ignorant of his strength, the place from which he had come."

Yaldabaoth literally means "Child, come hither" in a certain Semitic language. Gnostic myth recounts that Sophia (literally 'wisdom', the Demiurge's mother and aspect of the Father) desired to create something apart from the Father to which he did not consent.

i think she's implying the act of 'original sin' (when eve was tempted by the apple thus ending the paradise of eden) wasn't actually a sin, but a good thing, an almost sensual act: she's perhaps exploring the themes of 'paradise lost': where would we be if the world was perfect, anyway? and should a woman be blamed for being tempted? would the world be anywhere near as interesting if eve had not commited the act of 'sin'? or was it, indeed, more an act of 'sensuality'? interesting...

This song is truly beautiful :-)
To me it sounds like a reminder that even the lowest and darkest of us are still children of God, all we need do is remember that "you are not alone in your darkness"

There are some people who see the story of Eden and the fall as a symbolic story, in the garden we know nothing but unity with God, however we wanted to experience something “other” this other is what some would call incarnations, in order to do this we had to first leave Eden and unity with God. So in this sense the fall was a needed thing

I hope that makes sense?

I really love this song :-)

Once Sophia became aware of the cruelty of the material creator and the suffering that exists in the material universe because of the demiurge's ignorance she "would insist [we/Eve] must eat of" knowledge and gain gnosis. The creator, in his ignorance of the aeons and the true god attempted to explain the imperfections in his plan to those who still followed him that those who had eaten from the fruit of knowledge were tied to 'sin' and that there was an evil force contaminating his false utopian vision. Believing this the creator continues to punish his creation for it's transgression by flooding the world burning its cities and turning its people against eachother.

the end of this song is a message to the creator and to its creation that the creator is NOT the one and only true god and that in the spiritual world there is sympathy for the creator and our sufferings

I don't know enough about religion to interpret this properly, but when she begins to sing the last verse, I always tear up.

I imagine that if there were a god, the knowledge that there was someone watching over you from on high would evoke the same feeling of safety and reassurance that you get hearing someone say to you, "You are not alone, baby - in your darkness, you are not alone." Intentional or not, it's a lovely effect of the song.

Sophia is a representation of wisdom and actually means wisdom in Greek. Snakes are often meant to mean wisdom, so it makes sense that Sophia in this song is shown as giving Adam and Eve the apple instead of the serpent. The serpent was sometimes seen as good instead of evil by many gnostics, as it gave knowledge (e.g. gnosis) to Adam and Eve. I agree that in the song Sophia may be calling to the demiurge and saying that there is hope, even for him. However, I think it mainly refers to the fact that the demiurge originally thought that he was the only one true God, until Sophia told him that he was not alone (meaning that there was another higher God above him). At this point, there was only darkness and the world had not been created. So the darkness which the demiurge is in could refer to the physical darkness or to the metaphorically darkness that the demiurge is in. Great song, I love Tori so much!