I discuss the symbolism of Little Red Riding Hood and how it's to a feminine cycle.
I discuss the symbolism of the Holy Grail according to Rene Guenon and what it reveals about us today.
For some reason the story of Medusa really intrigues me and it’s connection with post-modern feminism. In the video below I talk about the symbolism of Medusa and how I think it’s connected with modern day feminism.
Jason Eaton and Patrick discuss the philosophy of storytelling and mythology.
Emily Jeffries and Patrick discuss storytelling, how fantasy can help you navigate the spiritual life, and Emily’s book Fyrian’s Fire.
“...And the angel said to her: Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found grace with God. Behold thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and shalt bring forth a son; and thou shalt call his name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the most High; and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of David his father; and he shall reign in the house of Jacob forever. And of his kingdom there shall be no end. And Mary said to the angel: How shall this be done, because I know not man? And the angel answering, said to her: The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the most High shall overshadow thee. And therefore also the Holy which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. And behold thy cousin Elizabeth, she also hath conceived a son in her old age; and this is the sixth month with her that is called barren: Because no word shall be impossible with God. because no word shall be impossible with God. And Mary said: Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to me according to thy word. And the angel departed from her.”
And the Word became Flesh and dwelt among us, the Incarnation is one of the most important and central Christian doctrines. The Logos Himself came down to earth and became a human being, in other words, the Narrative itself entered into the story to live among His creation. It is Meaning itself embodied, an Identity that holds all other identities, and so by looking at Him, it is like looking into a mirror allowing us to see a reflection of ourselves most clearly. Being that Christ holds everything within his embodiment it also means that Christ holds two opposites at the same time at all times. Space and time, masculine and feminine, king and servant, the offering and the scapegoat, heaven and earth. And whosoever allows the manifestation of Christ, by the example of the Virgin Mother, will experience an Assumption. The reflection of the Incarnation, an embodiment up in heaven.
The Incarnation of Christ holds two opposites in perfect communion and that is reflected in the relationship between Christ Himself and His Virgin Mother Mary. But the embodiment of meaning in Christ is not solely limited within the boundaries of His Body. Christ’s Incarnation shows how reality works and how opposites can perfectly participate with each other. Here is an example: In Genesis God creates opposites: heaven and earth, heaven being actuality, an identity, or seed, and earth being potentiality, a question, or dust. God creates the fullness of human intellect or consciousness by uniting the two opposites, He breathes into dust which brings about man. Another way to think about this is the masculine (heaven) giving seed and the feminine (earth) accepting it and giving it body. The joining of opposites in accordance with their purpose causes unity or forms body. In the same story we can see that when opposites do not participate in obedience with God it causes a scattering into multiplicity, evident when Adam and Eve listen to the snake and eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
The same pattern exists in the story of the Annunciation at various levels of understanding. First, an angel (heaven) appears to Mary (earth) and announces to her an identity (heaven). Mary responds with a question (earth) giving purpose to the angel's announced identity (heaven) through her revealing herself as the potentiality. By passing the angels (heaven) test, Mary (earth) is rewarded the Seed (the Logos/ heaven); resulting in the Incarnation of Christ. Mary accepting to give God body to become Christ also reveals the highest form of this pattern because the Seed was the manifestation of all meaning, in other words, all meaning comes from Christ so all humans, man or woman, are feminine in relation to Christ. This opens the door for us, as humans, to reflect the image of Christ to the world and achieve higher meaning by accepting that invitation from heaven to embody Christ through our being.
This is the pattern on how we participate with any identities or groups and how we give them body. Being a Christian,Muslim, liberal, nerd, punk, Star Wars fan, etc all follow the incarnational pattern first created in Genesis and then revealed in the Annunciation. An identity is revealed to us, like the angel to Mary, and when we decide to engage with that identity, we participate with its rituals, giving it body. We see the embodiment of the identities through the ways people dress, how they engage with society, and how they celebrate. Some identities can even lead to an assumption meaning that you will be so closely related to that identity that you will become inseparable from the identity itself. This may look like the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, the band that most identified with being an image of rock and roll became one with the identity. To look at this at an even more individual level, It is almost impossible to think of Ozzy Osbourne without associating him with rock or metal.The Incarnation of Christ is the highest form of that teleological structure because he is meaning itself; Mary’s full participation with the incarnated God from birth to His sacrifice on the cross lead her to her Assumption into heaven (or the dormition of Mary in the eastern churches).
The Assumption of Mary is an early Christian tradition that the Virgin Mary was raised up into heaven body and soul whether she was raised before or after death was not dogmatized. In the eastern rites it is called the Dormition of the Virgin Mary where she “falls asleep” and is taken up to heaven by Christ. The pattern of the Assumption is a mirror reflection of the Incarnation, where instead of heaven coming down to earth and becoming embodied, heaven raises earth up to itself with body. So as with the Virgin Mother’s yes to accepting all of the meaning and categories of the Logos to be represented in a single point, in Christ. Christ then takes Mary from the many fractured categories of the world and unites her to Himself in the Assumption. This reflective fractal pattern is important because it shows how we are able to participate with opposites in their intended way which leads us to our own intended purpose.
The relationship between the Incarnation and the Assumption is important to understand because it shows us that participating with meaning is necessary for the world to function. It reveals that God is not a disconnected intellect that acts as a mere observer but actively engages with us all the time. Not only is it necessary but it's the only way to fully engage and understand anything in the world, without our participation with Him we actually fall apart. You can see this with the decline in marriage rates, the decline of birth rates, increase in obesity and health risks, many environmental problems and hazards, and even a disconnect with our souls and bodies expressed in the transgender movement. In Genesis we also see the pattern of breakdown play out with Adam and Eve by not participating with God but with themselves, which causes them to get cast out of the garden. The pattern continues throughout Genesis with Cain and Abel, Noah's Ark, and the Tower of Babel. We do not have an example of how it looks like to fully participate with Christ until we get to his mother Mary.
The only way to find our “true selves” as the modern culture likes to say is by looking into the mirror of Christ and following what is reflected back to us, as the Virgin Mother did, and when she did, she was able to participate in the reflection of the Incarnation by becoming embodied in heaven. That is the goal, that is how we are filled with utmost joy, that is the purpose of life.
St Teresa of Avila, mystic, doctor of the church, and a sister of the Carmelites, her many writings and experiences led to a reform in her convent and provided a spiritual roadmap in her book, The Interior Castle. To give a brief overview, St Teresa had visions from God about the soul of human beings. Within each of us there is a castle made from crystal with 7 mansions. As you journey to the innermost mansion, you achieve theosis.
The seven mansions of the crystal castle are the seven days we will need to go through to be created and fulfill our most essential cosmic duty. St Teresa’s instruction in ascending through the seven mansion runs parallel to God’s method of creating the anatomy of human consciousness in Genesis. First St Teresa states that before you enter the castle you need to pray, to breathe, like God breathed life into man for him to move. So let us go to the very beginning:
“In the beginning God created heaven and earth”
For such a short sentence there is a lot going on here; it holds the meaning of what it means to be human. Heaven is meaning, something which is invisible, like spirit, wind, and breath. Earth is potentiality, like water and silence.
“And the Lord God formed man of the slime of the earth and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul.”
Let us connect the two passages: here we see God takes earth and breathes into it, making man. He takes potentiality and puts heaven (meaning) into it to bring life into man. It is revealed to us the man is the mediator of heaven and earth, meaning and potential. This cosmic pattern can help us understand prayer and how it lets us participate in the world, by always aiming for what is above: climbing the corporate ladder, lifting our hands up in celebration, etc. Breath is also associated with the intellect (once again think of breath as meaning) because if you hold your breath for too long you will lose consciousness. Another way to think about it is when you teach (speaking/breathing) you give new information to your students.
One more caveat I would like to make here is the difference of breath by our relationship with God. When meaning comes down from heaven to earth we breathe in (inhale) and when we reach out to heaven (exhale), being joined by heaven and earth; full participation is required in order for us to fully engage with life. Another way to think about this is through the relationship of questions and answers. Without the potential of an answer there is no question and with no search for meaning there is no purpose for an answer.
“God created the human in his image; in the image of God, he created him.
To explain the above I am going to take out an excerpt from The Language of Creation by Mattieu Pageau :
“The notion that Adam is “in the image of God” means humanity is a symbol of the Creator within creation. Thus, Adam is an embodiment of divine knowledge in the world.”
This essentially describes a cosmological pattern of the human experience in the world. We participate in the world by taking invisible principles and giving it being while also taking being and giving it meaning through the invisible principles.
Let us go back to St Teresa's Interior Castle and see why we need to pray before starting the journey through the castle. In order to journey anywhere you need a destination or a goal to move towards. This is the inhale breath, the breath that takes a potential of yourself and gives it a purpose, a meaning that you incorporate into your own identity. Scripture also notes that we are to make thankful offerings or sacrifices to God, this is the exhale. In the exhale we raise up that purpose we have obtained as gratitude, for giving us meaning and life. But an interesting fact about the Logos is that, in the exhale, He takes some of your burden as His own. Not to get too deep into another topic, but this is evident in the pattern of oxygen and carbon dioxide between animal and plant organisms. In the same manner there is an exchange between humankind and the Logos.
The pattern of breathing is a necessity to ascend many aspects of our lives. From the most basic pattern of breathing for survival, to finding a role in society to participate with our communities, to the way we worship the highest Good. Earlier I mentioned this being evident in the relationship between plants and animals, but we can also see this pattern in the Catholic Mass. Our offerings are represented in the smoke from incense ascending to the top of the church towards heaven, and in turn we receive the Eucharist. Obviously, the Mass/Divine Liturgy is the highest level of that participation but the pattern lives in different levels of reality’s hierarchy.
In short, prayer is a pattern where we find meaning in potential and want to give it body, but the only way to do that is to ask for it, to speak to truth, to declare our intention. In order to participate with ourselves in the world we need consciousness and to keep our consciousness we need to breathe; without it we cannot exist. St Teresa is saying in order to strive for higher meaning, in the center of the castle, we must first be conscious, and with it declare our participation with meaning itself in order to move closer to the Creator. This is the very basic experience of being human. But we have a calling not to pray just for survival, but to ascend and become one with God Himself.