coniunctio6

Stanza Three

The cold-blooded moon. The Captain waits above the celebration
sending his thoughts to a beloved maid whose ebony face
is beyond communication. The Captain is down
but still believing that his love will be repaid.

As yet, however, only Her scent, primordial, is beheld. To work.

the cold-blooded moon Mood is set by a voyeuristic moon, reptilian and impassive. In many ancient cosmologies, including Gnostic sects, the dark side of the moon delimited the gravitational, emotional, and sexual influence of the Earth. It still does.

We are also reminded of John Fogerty�s �Bad Moon Rising,� a prophecy of onrushing neo-matriarchal eye-for-an-eye talion, of America preparing to descend to madness and blood-justice.

the Captain waits above the celebration The scene is an officer's reception in wartime -- GenderWar -- with partying in Babylon below. Not an hour of celebration, but of earnest, for the figure isolated at the stair-head in anticipation of Her, only and always Her, none other will do.

Who is this "Captain"? His Sister's match, true male energy, awakened man, homo noeticus, Antinomial Man, Nietzsche's Superman, the new Adam. He's American manhood getting off its knees. He's the ecstatic Jokerman, seized by the nightingale's tune. He's the indomitable shamanbird circling above the last stanza of TUIB, over the ruins of the Sixties, ready to return again to whatever beginning is required to reunite with his Sisterlove: "So now I'm goin' back again/I got ta get ta her somehow."

Genuine male leadership is the Captain, his rank emblematic of status both in warfare and love. He's Bob Zimmerman, he's the narrator, he's William Blake, he�s Tyler Durden, he's that curious man two blocks over that the neighbors think strange but the animals seem to like. He's your Brother, your real one, the one who keeps coming back to drag you to your feet until you can run with him.

sending his thoughts to a beloved maid American culture stresses external beauty, celebrity, youth, and material accumulation. The Sister is unmoved by these. Any male that is trying to impress her has already failed. Pure emotion, purely offered feeds her heart. Her lover is the artist, madman, misanthrope, hermit, days spent in pain, nights in blissful communion, rejuvenating her, the world, themselves. In her arms the cynical child rests.

There's nothing tricky here. "Sending thoughts" means song, painting, invocation, carving, blessing, poem, prayer. Gratitude for the gift of clay fingers, breathed into life, plucking heart and guitar strings. Her unimaginable sufferings so our ridiculous souls might grow.

What are we told of this female? First and foremost, she is �beloved.� Why? That is an experiential matter, and translates to words no better than the passion you feel for your own beloveds. Still: imagine caring, deeply, for each quark of each molecule in each cell of your body, in a manner that demands the ongoing transmission of succor and affection. She embraces all Creation with a patient, abiding love that evokes awe and inadequacy in those who witness it. Unlike the Goddess/Great Mother of antiquity and neo-paganism, however, she is not omnipotent. She has the wisdom to recognize the necessity and benefit of liberated, potent masculinity. She understands that the worst thing that can befall any woman -- or feminine collectivity -- is a culture or world lacking limitation on the feminine will to power.

She is "maid" because as yet she is unmatched and unwed. Sacred marriage and conuinctio are still distant hopes. The lyric, of course, compresses remote events tremendously. Jung, for example, who studied the conuinctio as thoroughly as his method made possible, predicted that hieros gamos was yet centuries away. That would make for an awful long War. Let�s hope that he failed to account for the exponential evolution of current culture, for miracle, or both.

"Maid" also evokes images of innocence, youth and service, and attaches readily, for example, to attributes of the Blessed Virgin and, paradoxically, the Magdalene.

Confusion arises in the modern West over the moral status of the Magdalene, the Sacred Whore, consort of the Christos, and reputed bearer of his child. No amount of sexual experience alters the virginal status of this entity. She is virginal not through feminist auto-eroticism and repudiation of the masculine, but from purity of spiritual intent. She is "beloved maid," Bride of God, because she directs sacred and sexual energy toward pleasure, enlightenment, comfort, healing and creativity rather than toward the material profit and power endorsed and encouraged by patriarchal and matriarchal social organizations.

In the Western tradition, Mary Magdalene is an original Sister, kin to the Shulamite, prototype for authentic femininity. She is a Wise Woman in the best sense of the term. She shuns self-victimization, materialism, and privilege, wields unaffected good sense and self-muted power. When Simon Peter besets her with possessiveness and jealousy -- the beginnings of dogma, coercion, and false authority within the peripheral Church, the false Paternal, the Toxic King -- she sets him straight about the Church's authentic nature and role. Her presence affirms that coercion, not touch, destroy innocence and virginity. The Magdalene is sexuality freed, materialism relativized, human potential climbing exponents and not looking back.

The "seven devils" referred to in the Bible which are "cast out" of the Magdalene did not imply uncleanliness or demonic possession (schizophrenia), as was the orthodox view at the time, and the assumption of some later interpreters. Instead, Jesus performed an initiation ritual with her, in keeping with ancient occult traditions of the time. The "seven devils" actually refer to the seven planetary archons, rulers, or principles of the known planets. Jesus was affirming that the Magdalene had successfully incorporated these characteristics, and was no longer bound by "deficiency" to any planet or principle. She is thus eligible to travel to the Upper Worlds -- Eden, what Christ called the "Father's House," and Buddhism names Shambala.

Similarly, there is no evidence indicating that she was a "prostitute" in the modern commercialized sense. Rather, she was a primary apostle -- perhaps the leading companion and interpreter of Christ. She was his Sisterlove, his soror mystica, Maria Prophetissa.