jesusthespun2

The Christos is a classic cosmic emanation of spirit. He emerges from the heart of Sol, and descends to deepest matter, piercing the very heart of the Pit, where the dark feminine and dark masculine (umbra solis, sol niger) reside. The greatest heroes are enatiodromia incarnate, conoisseurs of reversal. They attempt to scale the highest heavens, and plumb the lowest depths. Then they scratch their heads and souls trying to translate their experiences to us.

We hate the truths they tell us. For their trouble, we mock, torture and murder them. Then the women in their churches, just as with the rites of Dionysus, wail and beg and pray for their return.

The hero is bounded only by the amount of agony he is willing, or able, to endure. In The Feminine in Fairy Tales, Marie-Louise von Franz speaks to this: �A Siberian shaman was asked by a traveler if, after the initiation, one could learn still more, and received the answer that one could go as far as one liked if ready to pay the price in suffering each time.� (Mato, Tataya, The Black Madonna Within, Open Court, 1994, frontispiece)

When Jesus died to his body and descended to hell to �preach to the captives� there, he was already hip to the scene. (The �captives� are both souls awaiting further incarnation, and the fallen Host imprisoned.) Jesus necesssarily visited hell previously, during his years of phenomenology and world travel, for the opposites cannot be integrated until the champions of light and consciousness penetrate the bottom of the chthonic lake, and then return to full consciousness, both individual and collective. In Tartarus -- in hell, the unconscious matrix -- the animality of human beings is given full expression. Lilith and Satan, so to speak, have their way. There is only one means of liberating the fallen Host, of freeing spirit from matter, and that is for spirit to become blackest matter, to carry the evil in matter on one�s back. Jesus, the light of the Father, and Azazel the detested scapegoat of the West are carried by one great mediator, a mercurius duplex named Jesu Christo. Quite a stud.

What did Christ tell the captives in hell? He told them that everlasting punishment was a lie of the Powers, and that each and every one of them, down to the rankest prisoner in the Pit, down to the most vile monstrosity, would eventually be cleansed and redeemed, to abide in joy and freedom. He told them to hang on, and not to fear their experiences in the universe, even in their agony. He told them that the Queen of Heaven loved them, cherished each and every one of them, and that the Great Father would never turn away from them.

Christ�s voice was cool water in the cauldron, and all who had ears drank deep.

The descent process is called the blackening, or nigredo, in alchemy � the crow upon the soul. The Hellenic philosophers referred to it as nekyia. It occurs on the Cross -- and in the crotch -- of the redemtrix, in the lap of the weird sisters. The initiate must dig sufficiently deep to get beneath the dragon in order to experience with maximum intensity the tranformative power of enatiodromia, the reversal. The depth of the fall � provided it can be maintained consciously � determines the quality and measure of the ascent, and the worth of the �treasure� brought back to serve larger purposes. This is the return leg of the journey, the ascent of spirit with re-enchanted matter carried aloft in the hero�s arms, and in many ways it is even more harrowing than the open-eyed walk through hell. The density of matter in the underworld, and the magnetic pull at the core of Earth, make the initial ascent excruciating, as every quark in every cell pulls the initiate back down to sweet, unconscious, black, sticky, comforting mater.

There is no objective difference between the experience of the psychotic and the experience of the artist or hero in the descent and journey through hell. The only difference is subjective. When Blake visited hell, he saw genius at labor. The psychotic descends with eyes closed, and without the conscious intent of offering the experience to god, that is, to greater, more inclusive purposes that will redeem the matter. The hero, however, harrows hell with toothpicks propping his eyelids open, and as he walks he prays � not for himself, but for the deliverance of all Creation. Without the protection and guidance of the Queen of Creation, the journey through black heat -- its madness and terror and physical pain � cannot be endured, nor survived. Every Odysseus needs his Athena, every Christos his Magdalene, every artifex his soror mystica. The feminine, especially in the form of the Nymph, is guide to the soul-journeying masculine. When Dante "fell in love" with his inspiration Beatrice, she was eight years old.

And around and around we go. Consider the cultural status of Jesus Christ. He was a homeless, unmarried male wandering the Road, speaking out against the falsities of human hearts and institutions, against the brutalities of the Powers of this world.

How ridiculous � and insidious � has been the Spinning of Jesus. This impoverished, feared, and hated male stands for every marginalized, excluded man in history and prehistory.

For example, the �spiritual teachers� of modern culture � priests, ministers, rabbis, counselors, therapists, and all the rest � are the very bulwarks of the traditional social orders. Likewise, they buttress the most conservative, matriarchal institutions of civilization, including marriage, market forces, war, blood kinship and blood vengeance, and incarceration. In support of these constructs, they invoke the name of Jesus at every turn.

Jesus opposed -- and opposes still -- each of these self-serving, unevolved behaviors. Yet his adherents cry for redemption: Jesus this and Jesus that, when oh when will he return and save us?

I suspect he's not in any hurry to rush back into mater's arms. Last time around wasn't much fun.