The following are samples and examples of Serpent seed of Satan theory in Sethians, Kabbalah, Islam and Moonies. This pertains to the theory about which I have been writing quite a bit, see Serpent Seed of Satan.
Sethian refers to a main Gnostic cult of the 2nd-3rd centuries AD. They claim to possess gnosis/knowledge preserved from Adam and Eve’s son Seth and from Noah’s wife whom they named Norea. Sethians are mentioned in the 2nd century AD works of Irenaeus and Pseudo-Tertullian.
They identified Seth with Christ; the Second Logos of the Great Seth. They reference an Unknown God who undergoes various emanations in the process of which its essence brings about male and female beings known as aeons, the first of which is Barbelo. Essentially, aeons represent God’s various attributes. This concept amounts to the Unknown God to be knowable by those with gnosis, this knowledge. Pleroma is a term denoting a spiritual realm/universe consisting of God and the aeons.
Within some Gnostic sects an aeon known as Sophia (wisdom, divine wisdom) sought to emulate God’s creative act and took it upon herself to create an emanation, a demiurge in her own image which resulted in Yaldabaoth; a “serpent with a lion’s head.” Sophia attempts to hide this being but it escaped and stole a portion of divine power.
Just as Sophia sought to emulate God so Yaldabaoth sought to emulate Sophia in creating the material realm/universe. Yaldabaoth also created the Archons; “petty rulers” that are typically envisaged with animal heads. Some texts correlate Archons with fallen angels and indeed, the term arche (Strong’s G746) appears in Ephesians 6:12 as follows:
For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities [arche], against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
What the Gnostics are doing is to turn the Bible upside down, inside out and backwards. Thus far, they have proposed the purely spiritual realm as being perfectly pure and the material realm as being corrupt.
Yaldabaoth proclaims himself to be the one and only god, creates Adam and accidentally instills into him some of Sophia’s power. He then removes Adam’s rib so as to create Eve and regain the power from Adam by rapping her. In some versions, he fails because the power infuses itself into the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Yaldabaoth then temps Adam and Eve so that he can regain the power.
Based on this radical re-writing of history, Sethians, et al., claim that by falling into that which the Bible calls sin, Adam and Eve were gaining freedom from the petty Archons which makes the Yaldabaoth serpent a liberator, a bringer of enlightenment.
One of the main texts of Jewish mysticism, Kabbalah, is the Zohar which states the following at Bereshith/Genesis 36b-37a:
For two beings had intercourse with Eve, and she conceived from both and bore two children. Each followed one of the male parents, and their spirits parted, one to this side and one to the other, and similarly their characters. On the side of Cain are all the haunts of the evil species from which come evil spirits and demons and necromancers. From the side of Abel comes a more merciful [Adam-like] class — yet not wholly beneficial — good wine mixed with bad. The right kind was not produced until Seth came, who is the first ancestor of all the generations of the righteous.
Islamic tradition found within Sahih Bukhari’s hadith vol. 6, book 60, number 196:
Allah’s Apostle said, “Tonight two (visitors) came to me (in my dream) and took me to a town built with gold bricks and silver bricks. There we met men who, half of their bodies, look like the most-handsome human beings you have ever seen, and the other half, the ugliest human beings you have ever seen. Those two visitors said to those men, Go and dip yourselves in that river.
So they dipped themselves therein and then came to us, their ugliness having disappeared and they were in the most-handsome shape.” The visitors said, “The first is the Garden of Eden and that is your dwelling place.” Then they added, “As for those people who were half ugly and half handsome, they were those who mixed good deeds and bad deeds, but Allah forgave them.”
Rev. Sun Myung Moon (The Unification Church aka the Moonies) Divine Principle I.2.2.2:
Lucifer dared to seduce Eve at the risk of his life…and [they] had sexual intercourse with each other…Eve joined with Adam after she had the illicit relationship with the archangel [Satan]…and [Satan’s and Adam’s] elements were then transmitted to their descendants…and mankind has multiplied sin to the present day, thus perpetuating the lineage of Satan.