Egyptian-Hebrew stream·The Book of Enoch (1 Enoch)·Book IV — Book of Dream Visions·Chapter LXXXV — The Second Dream: the White Bull
The Animal Apocalypse begins
Enoch begins the great Animal Apocalypse. He sees a white bull (Adam) coming forth from the earth; a female heifer (Eve) with him; two bulls — one black (Cain), one red (Abel). The black bull gores the red and the red disappears.
Source context
- Theme
- symbolic dream-vision of antediluvian patriarchs as animals — encoded genealogy of fall and spiritual descent
- Soul-faculty
- Sentient Soul
Steiner
not engaged in the GA corpus
Cross-tradition
- Jewish pseudepigrapha / Second Temple apocalypticismThe Animal Apocalypse tradition within Dream Visions encodes sacred history through theriomorphic symbolism, a technique structurally parallel to the celestial hierarchy visions found in Daniel and Ezekiel, where angelic and human figures are rendered in non-human form to signal transphysical ontological status.
- Zoroastrian / Iranian cosmological mythThe depiction of primordial humanity under animal imagery shows cross-tradition congruence with Iranian Bundahishn accounts of Gayōmart and the first human pair, where the souls of the righteous are symbolically figured in pre-fallen cosmic imagery prior to the entry of destructive forces.
- Kabbalistic tradition (Sefer ha-Bahir / Zohar)The encoding of Adam, Seth, and their descendants as luminous bulls and dark oxen shows cross-tradition congruence with Kabbalistic readings of the Adamic fall as a dimming of the primordial divine image (tzelem), where descent through generations maps onto diminishing spiritual luminosity.
Chapter LXXXV
LXXXV-XC. The Second Dream-Vision of Enoch: the History of the World to the Founding of the Messianic Kingdom.
CHAPTER LXXXV.
1And after this I saw another dream, and I will show the whole dream to thee, my son. 2. And Enoch lifted up (his voice) and spake to his son Methuselah: 'To thee, my son, will I speak: hear my words--incline thine ear to the dream-vision of thy father. 3. Before I took thy mother Edna, I saw in a vision on my bed, and behold a bull came forth from the earth, and that bull was white; and after it came forth a heifer, and along with this (latter) came forth two bulls, one of them black and the other red. 4. And that black bull gored the red one and pursued him over the earth, and thereupon I could no longer see that red bull. 5. But that black bull grew and that heifer went with him, and I saw that many oxen proceeded from him which resembled and followed him. 6. And that cow, that first one, went from the presence of that first bull in order to seek that red one, but found him not, and lamented with a great lamentation over him and sought him. 7. And I looked till that first bull came to her and quieted her, and from that time onward she cried no more. 8. And after that she bore another white bull, and after him she bore many bulls and black cows.
9And I saw in my sleep that white bull likewise grow and become a great white bull, and from Him proceeded many white bulls, and they resembled him. And they began to beget many white bulls, which resembled them, one following the other, (even) many.
JSON: /api/sources/book-of-enoch/enoch-dream-visions/76-chapter-lxxxv.json