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I come not to bring peace, but a steel chair.
Thoughts on a magical understanding of the deity Jesus Christ.
Taking the lead from Alan Moore's depiction in Promethea, Christ can be understood as an aspect of Tiphareth. He's the sacrificed Sun King, the "gold of the world, pinned to a cross". He is representative of all mankind's virtues such as love, compassion, understanding, peace; but the point of his narrative is that we as a species compulsively reject this. We mock it, laugh at it, ridicule it, humiliate it, beat the shit out of it, crown it with thorns and nail it to a cross. We see something that is a reflection of the best in us, and want to drag it through the shit. But still, despite everything, Christ loves and forgives.
I think that many Christians, in accepting the literal truth of the new testament, seem to completely overlook the mythic narrative that underpins it. Which is slightly daft, given the fact that many of Jesus's attributed teachings are themselves in the form of parables.
Jesus is sacrificed so that we can realise the error of our ways. Christ on the cross is the naked lunch moment, he has to die so that we can see what's on the end of our fork. Sometimes you have to lose something before you realise its value. It's the wake up call. The moment when the neoconservative fundamentalist enforcer realises the immoral faithless protestor he has just crushed beneath his jackboot is his own precious daughter.
To my mind, that's what the metaphor of Christ dying for our sins is about, and it's certainly worth engaging with in magical terms. The Christ narrative is not about some divine emmisary of an abstract beardy middle eastern God trying to run a guilt trip on us because, thousands of years ago, he allegedly did us a big favour and kept us from getting our asses burned in a speculative hell dimension. Christ can, and perhaps should, be approached as a personification of the mythic themes contained in his story. Just like any other deity.
In these terms, when you "turn to Christ", you turn away from behavior that is driven by fear, insecurity, jealousy, envy, greed, towards simple honest open hearted compassion. You find the centre within you that is Tiphareth, stop acting in accordance with what you think you want, and start acting in accordance with what might be considered your True Will. Every man and woman is a star. To my mind, that's what Christianity should really be about. Full stop. Meditation on Christ as a diety who can guide us towards compassion and understanding. Much of this would likely make Crowley spin in his grave, but y'know, let him spin.
In Brazilian Candomble, and I think to a lesser extent, Cuban Santeria, Jesus Christ is syncretised with Oxala/Obatala. The King of the White Cloth. Oxala represents similar themes of peace, purity of heart, compassion. He is not God, Oludumare, but is thought of as an expression of God with a closer connection to and involvement with humanity. His role is quite similar to that of Christ, in that respect.
Unlike in Haitian Vodou, where the Saints are considered to be masks of the Lwa. The Brazilian and Cuban forms of African diaspora religion tend to consider the Saints and the iconography of Catholicism as being largely synomous with the Orixa. The same essential powers manifesting through another cultures symbol system. After all, we all share the same universe, the same reality, so if the Gods are real, how can there be more than one set of them?
In this sense, when we work with Christ, we work with the universal principle of peace, compassion and understanding. I'm all for playing fundamentalists at their own game, because I don't believe these people actually have a relationship with this essential personified principle. How could they be in communion with the Prince of Peace, the King of the White Cloth, and preach hatred, intolerance, homophobia, greed and war mongering? It's bullshit. It's religion as a control mechanism, a conveniant justification for something you were going to do anyway, a political tool for persuading large numbers of people to support you in actions that have absolutely nothing to do with the mysteries of that religion. The term "religion" to my mind, should mean the process of direct communication with "the divine" however you choose to frame it. Magicians do this. Not oil millionaires and crooked politicians.
It is problematic to consider George W Bush as some kind of idiot, a grinning imbecile, monkey boy figure. This popular conception certainly hasnt prevented him from getting a second term. Perhaps "Anti-Christ" is a closer fit... I think the magic needs to be put back into Christianity. Jesus needs to step in and sort out his house. I reckon it's high time the Prince of Peace stepped into the ring with a metaphoric steel chair and laid the spiritual smackdown on the candy asses of the intolerant compassionless crooks that are committing crimes in his name on a global scale.
Or something like that, anyway. |
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