Formed from Dust: The Serpent and the Potter's Clay

The early chapters of Genesis read like myth, but they move with the rhythm of personal experience. These aren’t primitive tales — they are revelations about consciousness. The symbols of dust, the serpent, and the potter’s clay aren’t historical curiosities. They describe your inner world and how imagination became buried, bound, and eventually awakened in the human condition.

Formed from Dust: The Burial of Power

Genesis 2:7 tells us:

“Then the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”

Dust, in this context, isn’t just the stuff of the earth. It represents the lowest form of substance — consciousness without awareness of its origin. But into this dust is breathed the divine spark — the breath of God, the hidden presence of imagination.

According to Neville Goddard, imagination is God in action — the creative force itself. So to be made from dust and then filled with breath is to say: the power that creates worlds has been buried in man’s most limited form. It is hidden in the ordinary, even the base. Imagination is in the dust — not exalted yet, not recognised, but waiting.

The Serpent: Imagination Crawling

In Genesis 3:14, the serpent is cursed:

“On your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life.”

The serpent is not evil — it is symbolic of imagination fallen. It is thought operating without vision, instinct without awareness. The crawling belly suggests a divine faculty brought low, reduced to reaction, no longer upright or creative.

When imagination identifies with the dust alone — the facts, the fears, the surface-level story — it becomes the serpent, eating dust, going in circles. This is imagination used against itself, creating a life in the image of worry, doubt, and limitation. It whispers, “This is just how things are,” dragging divine possibility into the realm of the fixed.

But even this is part of the journey. Imagination must descend before it can rise. The serpent is the symbol of power asleep, coiled in the subconscious, awaiting its own awakening.

The Potter and the Clay: Shaping from Within

Later in Jeremiah 18, we see a complementary symbol:

“As the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are you in My hand.”

Clay is wet dust — dust that’s been softened, made pliable. And who is the potter? Not a distant deity, but the imaginative act. Neville says, “Man is all imagination, and God is man.” That means you — the imaginer — are the potter shaping the clay of your reality.

But notice: the clay is already within the hand. This isn’t about building something new from the outside. It’s about reshaping what already exists within — the self, the belief, the feeling. Even when the clay is spoiled, the potter doesn’t abandon it. He reshapes it. This is grace — not in a religious sense, but as a built-in function of imagination: the power to revise, to redeem, to resurrect.

The Revelation Hidden in the Dust

The descent into dust — into form, into limitation — was not a mistake. It was the beginning of a greater return. Imagination hid itself in the dust to learn, to experience, to remember. The serpent’s curse is not permanent; it is simply the lowest mode of operation. Once recognised, imagination can stand upright again.

That’s why even in the wilderness, Moses lifts the bronze serpent (Numbers 21:9) — a raised version of what had fallen. This lifting symbolises the resurrection of imagination, now understood, honoured, mastered and directed.

And ultimately, Christ — the true awakened imagination — is described not as crawling, but as walking, teaching, declaring, and finally being fixed in place: crucified, not in death, but in purpose. As Neville says, the crucifixion represents the moment imagination is fixed in assumption — no longer wandering or reacting, but consciously creating.

Conclusion: The Dust Is Not the End

The story is not that we were made from dust and must return to it. The story is that imagination chose dust, entered it, and awakens within it.

You are the potter. You are the serpent lifted up. You are the breath hidden in dust — the divine imagination remembering itself. The dust was not your prison; it was your disguise.

And now, imagination rises.