coniunctio7

whose ebony face The Beloved's face is ebony. Our first face was female and black, according to evolutionary biology and anthropology. This is not the Muse, not Graves' White Goddess, that the narrator has encountered. This is the Queen of Hades elevated by merit, not unconscious romanticism. This is the Muse given four dimensions, not inspiration called up and glimpsed in art but art made manifest, on earth as in heaven.

Solomon�s Shulamite � also known as the Queen of the South, or of Sheba -- is, of course, likewise dark.

            Return, return, O Shulamite; return,
            return, that we may look
            upon Thee. What will ye see in the Shulamite? As it
            were the company of two armies...

This quotation from the "Song of Songs" hints that if we look into the "Shulamite," i.e., read the inner nature of the Shulamite Madonna, we would see "as it were, the company of two armies." This means that the Bride of humanity incorporates all warring dualities, and in this context especially, the poles of warring gender. The phrase "as it were" indicates metaphor; "company" suggests merging that involves not only unified intent but camaraderie, companionship, and complementarity -- the opposite of current gender relations.

Dylan�s "motorcycle black madonna" of "Gates of Eden" (1965), wheeling into paradise on her Harley, is our same Dark Presence of beautiful wrath. She "cause[s] the grey flannel dwarf to scream," an allusion to the death of commercial organization, the "gentlemen" and their �organization� rejected by masculinity in the penultimate stanza of COTG. Inside these Gates, where the Black Queen cruises with the cowboy angels, "there are no sins." Where genuine female and male energy play, false precepts, whether secular or religious, cannot live. Law and sin die with the Third Age; unhinged from power, what is currently illegal and unholy is easily embraced by the Four. Whip, iron cage, noose, raised stone, and damnation are charred beneath the Queen�s frozen torch.

Finally, blackness suggests a being who has passes through the nigredo � the blackening -- the depressive, dismembering, unconscious, hellish phase of personal and collective regression. The Greeks called the process nekyia, the descent, and it happens to all individuals and collectivities attempting conuinctio. All roads to transformation and renewal pass through hell. There are no alternate routes. Blackness indicates femininity enlightened by the dark rays of the sol niger, the inner sun at earth�s core. This is the alchemical �lesser coniunctio� of the underworld that precedes the full monte.

is beyond communication To state that her face is "beyond communication" indicates, first and foremost, the primacy of direct experience in comprehending her. Before her, even the Word is impotent, just a mewling babe. On surface the phrase functions as compliment, as in "she's too beautiful for words." But Dylan is also clueing us that even his verbal and visionary power fails in her presence. It is no coincidence that the Venus or "Earth Mother" figurines, dating to the beginnings of the upper Paleolithic (ca. 35,000 B.C.E.) always appear faceless, as they stand for female power beyond the personal, prior to the individuation of ego from root collective � that is, before �consciousness� as modern humans know it. In this sense the carvings are also "beyond communication."

Currently, the name and supposed attributes of this �beloved maid� are bandied about at slightest hint of ideological or monetary profit. It�s goddess this and goddess that. But those she harbors express hesitancy in fixing her description, much like the Stone Age artists. Even when she cloaks herself to spare our eyes, it's as if our senses -- five and a couple more if you're clearly desperate -- must reduce her so drastically to fit our parameters that she becomes physically indistinct. In a sense she is faceless, "beyond communication," in that her countenance, dress, and bearing can best be described, paradoxically, as nondescript. She looks like Everywoman, rolled into one extraordinary common entity. Her features are plain -- not homely, and not "beautiful." The only clarity to be found here is phenomenological. See for yourselves.

Encounters with her typically occur outside the Word. She communicates by direct emotion, not by phoneme and syntax. This is also difficult to translate. She "speaks" without sound -- but one understands her interest unambiguously, in the same way her might is sensed without exhibition. (Indeed, it is her very restraint at exhibiting power which distinguishes her so radically from the Goddess/Great Mother. In this way she deepens our love for her, teaching us restraint not by whip and cage, but by example.

On Abbey Road's closing track, "Her Majesty," the Beatles pun on her by mixing her identity, ludicrously, with the Queen of England. But it is the Lady they promise to wed in coniunctio ("Her Majesty's a pretty nice girl, someday I'm gonna make her mine.") They comment also on her non-verbal ways, and on her natural dynamism: "Her Majesty's a pretty nice girl, but she doesn't have a lot to say / Her Majesty's a pretty nice girl, but she changes from day to day."

For the stubborn and dense -- for your Fine Foozlers -- she sometimes employs gesture semi-comically. These methods recall our tack when communicating with "lower" animals, including domesticated varieties. Declaiming isn't helpful. Emotion, gesture, and mental imaging, with much patience stirred in, do the trick. She embodies the totality of planetary process and form and the blackness of infinite space. Thus, her language is the planet's real lingua franca, common to all entities -- emotion, with gesture as back-up. She is mistress of the art of shifting the soul sideways, the foundation of shamanic work.

Leonard Cohen relates encounter with her in "Our Lady of Solitude." Solitude is her bride-price, never demanded but always rewarded. "Her dress was blue and silver/And her words were few and small/She is the vessel of the whole wide world/Mistress, oh mistress, of us all." The reference to apparel accurately describes her aspect as Blessed Virgin -- one cultural pastiche -- under which dialogue is sometimes used.

the Captain is down
but still believing that his love will be repaid So long sundered from the Rightful Queen, the authentic masculine literally is "down," scapegoated and banished to the uttermost pit of hell. Not only that, he�s kinda depressed. Still, he is firm in gnosis that his love for her will one day bear fruit.