MARCH,
2004
|
|
The
Passion of the Christ Paradigm
|
As of this morning, March 1, on the day this March calendar goes up at Hermes 3 and goes out to the e-mail subscription list, the main front-page story here in Hawaii is about a man who shut down Kahului Airport in Maui yesterday when he drove his Dodge Durango SUV into the ticket lobby, opened a back door and doused the seats with gasoline, then set his gas-guzzling karma bomb of a car ablaze, and ran. God be praised, the people near the SUV had ample time to get out of the way before the thing exploded. And the police caught the firebug, a 52 year-old man from nearby Ha'iku who yelled that he wants to die.
|
It is
stunningly appropriate that
a middle-aged man living
in an American state or
colony in 2004 would commit
ritual suicide in public
by torching his wheels.
What better symbol of the
soul desert that America
has become than a new suicide
scenario in which the desperate
one does not do away with
himself, but instead blows
up the costliest thing he's
got? One does not need to
be the Sufi master Esin
Chelebi -- or one of the,
likely, many others who
have said this by now --
that the source and radiating
center of the soul illness
and mental instability the
United States suffers now
is the almost complete loss
among most Americans of
true spiritual feeling,
practice and values. The
resulting way of life is
really only a way of things:
completely material, based
on the value system of one
core principle: that every
American has the right to
buy and break as much as
he damn well wants. The
more you waste, the bigger
you look, as F. Scott Fitzgerald
knew well when he was proofing
The Great Gatsby
80 years ago.
|
This
may prove a useful introduction
to the main mythic subject
for this month, Mel Gibson's
The Passion of the Christ
and its connection with
the grand celestial time
design in which the old
Piscean Age of the Christ
Paradigm continues to recede,
while the new Aquarian Age
of All-Embracing Friendship
grows and flourishes. Gibson's
great film -- for the script,
direction, acting, cinematography,
sets, costumes, music, all
of it is magnificent state-of-the-art
work that will cut some
new trails, if only technical
ones, for films to come
-- is a milestone in the
shape-shifting time that
now gathers breadth, depth
and speed, as old things
strangely vanish, and unexpected
new things suddenly appear.
|
The
Passion of the Christ
in fact belongs perfectly
to the time just before
the coming sudden awareness
that we do not live in a
world of things, but a world
of energy where human beings
learn to create their entire
conscious universe through
the power of their own intention.
Thus unneeded old thoughts
and their material anchors
disappear, many frightened
people weird out, and wondrous
new discoveries come. Among
them:
|
Philip
Sedgwick, in his article
"A Gem of a Star"
and others have reported
the amazing discovery of
"the most valuable known gem in the Universe,"
the object astronomers have
nicknamed "Lucy,"
from the Beatles' Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.
"This star, BPM 37093,"
Philip writes,
"crystallized into a diamond from a white dwarf star." It has a weight of about 10
billion trillion trillion carats." Those who wish to track these things
weekly, and learn months
ahead about approaching
major phenomena like the
Venus Occultation of June
8, will do well to get on
Philip's subscription list
for his free newsletter
through galastro@aol.com.
|
Yet another thrilling new find has come from Egypt, which
will prove the Land
of Surprises in many
ways in the years to
come. While it is not
at all unusual for archaeologists
to discover papyrus
scrolls hidden inside
mummies, it is a priceless
rarity to find what
has just come to light:
a manuscript of Achilles,
a tragedy by Aeschylus,
the first of the great
Greek playwrights. The
play, long thought to
have been lost when
the Romans burned the
library of Alexandria,
is reportedly equal
in quality to Aeschylus'
best surviving work,
and will be staged this
summer by the National
Theatre Company of Cyprus.
|
Which
brings us again to the subject
of tragedy and The Passion
of the Christ. It is
obvious from watching and
listening to the somber
and shocked audiences that
leave this film that it
has aroused powerful tragic
emotion. The question is
whether the emotion is cathartized
by the hero's suffering,
and lifted away from the
hearts of those who see
the story. If Aristotle
is correct in claiming that
the aim of Oedipus the
King and other successful
tragedies is to arouse and
purge the emotions of pity
and fear, then Gibson has
done half the job. He stirs
very deep pity for the suffering
hero, and fear of the cruelties
human beings do -- but all
this emotion is not transmuted
and cleansed away, and this
is why most people file
dazed from the multiplex,
exhausted and depressed
by The Passion, rather
than inspired and renewed.
It is hard to imagine that
this film will ignite those
who see it into fervor and
enthusiasm, and an urge
to become Christian right
now. Rather, The Passion is having the opposite effect of destroying the audience's self-esteem, and making them wonder whether human beings in general, and they themselves, are worth God's effort in saving them, loving them, or even keeping them alive at all.
|
The other problem
with the violent catharsis
interruptus of The
Passion is that the film lives almost
entirely in the dimension
of tragedy, while Jesus, in
the things he actually said
and taught, was working
fundamentally in the realm
of comedy. The main idea
and emotional force of comedy
in its purest form is the
unity of all beings, as
expressed in stories in which people
work and fight and plot
and play against each
other until they see the
misunderstanding that had
set them against each other
in the first place,
and find some way to forgive
everybody, even the one who dissed
them really deep and bad.
The actual ideas of Jesus,
not the fakes that appear
below where they belong,
are the principles of Comedy
(as articulated beautifully
in Joseph Meeker's
The Comedy of Survival):
that everyone is included,
every role is important,
and in the end all is forgiven,
and we have feasting and
marriages and new life in
a community of people who
practice love, kindness,
compassion and mercy. That's
what Jesus really wanted.
|
Did Jesus also
really want the
horribly bloody and harrowing
version of his story that
Mel Gibson has given us?
Only if Jesus envisioned
a world in which every
human being who is merciful
and kind is hopelessly outweighed
by a hundred
others who are bloodthirsty,
stupid, sadistically cruel,
mean, drunk with passion
and lies and religious pride,
and so indifferent to the agony
of others that when Pilate
tells the mob to "Behold
the Man" -- at least
the bleeding meat on his
feet that is left of him
-- the crowd howls for more
pain, more blood, the gauntlet
of spit and garbage and
the shame and horror of
the cross. The
tragic world as it appears in the
Jerusalem of The
Passion of the Christ is
much shorter on good people
than Cold Mountain
or even King Lear.
If Mr. Gibson's goal is
to show that human life
is tragic, that human beings
are so vicious and violently
hateful that there is no
way to improve us by human
effort alone -- so God has
to send a Savior to show
us a way to be better --
then The Passion
of the Christ has hit
its aim of making humanity
in general look sinful and
damnable and utterly unworthy of
God. It is no wonder that
audiences are bummed and
mumbling as they emerge
to the comforts of neon,
popcorn aroma and beeping
video games.
|
When the main thrust of the Jesus story is not the relentless hideousness of human beings, but Jesus' core teachings of forgiveness, compassion and love for all people, then human beings come out looking much better, and we are in Jesus' native domain of the comedy plot. The good news in this scenario is that Jesus wants to save us, even those who'd prefer to take responsibility for their own sins, thank you. The tough news is that Satan is after us too, and, as the Rolling Stones knew, Satan is said always to be a happy spectator when human beings harm each other most murderously. Mel Gibson is sure that the Devil is present and ugly at the cross, and as relentless as a telemarketer everywhere. Asked why many people still do not embrace the Christian faith, Gibson said, "they are Satanists, or dupes of Satan." One can well believe this from the notorious Super Bowl halftime show of two months ago, and its embarrassing proof that the main message of American pop music is, "Look at me. I'm a star who's getting laid a lot more than you are, so eat your heart out." And all of this is going on while the eternal given circumstances remain in effect, and God for many is still hard to find. No wonder demons appear everywhere to nervous and imaginative persons who haven't yet seen what Gandhi meant when he said, "The only devils in the world are the ones running around in our own hearts."
|
The
bottom line, as the end credits
roll, is that Mel Gibson
may have booted his own
purpose by creating a work
that will not have the intended
explosive effect of spreading
Christianity throughout
the world, but will have
instead the implosive effect
of showing why all the Christian
black and white, God and
Satan, heaven and hell,
and all the rest of the
endless addiction to duality
and conflict is increasingly
irrelevant in a time of
growing human freedom, awareness,
and responsible intention.
For reviewer Stephen Simon,
"the entire film seemed like the
dying gasp of an old ultra-religious paradigm that is slowly fading into
oblivion. I had the distinct feeling that I was watching the symbolic
conclusion to 2000 years of human history that, in the West, has been
dominated by the Catholic Church."
|
So be
it. One thing that is now
suffering and dying is the
Christ Paradigm itself,
the whole anti-human premise
that humanity is so sinful,
corrupt and e-word that we cannot become good through our own effort, so God must send a Savior to redeem our sins and rescue us from hell, and ourselves. Regular readers of this space have seen these ideas before, so we need not probe them here. The critical point now is that there are no more solitary Saviors on the way. Everyone knows the Lone Lifeguard is much more mysterious, sexy and dramatic than a whole monastery of high frequency hats, but there is simply no holding the truth back now, as the whole Aquarian impulse and method is communal, so we take individual and collective responsibility for the outcomes we receive, and we all work together to awaken ourselves and each other. We work out our own sins and do not need anyone else to die for them. Not any more. The agony scenario and the negating false paradigm it is built from must wither and blow away as the Aquarian energy of Friendship and Celebration spreads. So do what you can today to help an outworn, toxic paradigm make as graceful an exit as it can. Find a new friend. Drink watermelon juice. Sing! Keep holding that frequency.
|
Finally,
a few astral notes for the
generally placid month of
March, the first month of
the rest phase and runup
to June 8.
|
While
the New Moon of March 20
is relatively uneventful
-- in effect an intimate
dinner scene between Sun
and Moon, with Mars (sextile
to the pair at an angle
of 60°) seated in the
same restaurant, but at
a table across the room
-- the Full Moon of March
6 is the most powerful and
intricate Full Moon of the
year, rivaled only by the
Blue Moon (double Full Moon)
of July and the Libra Full
Moon in late September.
|
On March
6 Mercury conjoins the Sun
in Pisces as Jupiter
conjoins the Full Moon
in Virgo, while Mars and
the Moon's North Node in
Taurus (8° apart, and
thus not conjunct to each
other) are both trine (120°
from) the Moon, and sextile
(60° from) the Sun,
and Saturn in Cancer is
quintile (72°, one-fifth
of the circle from) the
Full Moon in Virgo. The
effect of all this is that
the Full Moon of March 6,
already festive enough as
the time of Purim, Holi,
and other laughter feasts,
is even livelier this year
as a time for celebrations
that combine fun and feasting
with spiritual ceremony
and wider communal understanding.
|
Not just
the Full Moon weekend, but
all of March, and the whole
four months from now to
late June, are of huge value
as an opportunity to introduce
others as gently as possible
to the spiritual actualities
of life on Earth, and increase
the common human stock of
love and active compassion.
This superb chance is empowered
and emphasized from now
through June 25 by the ongoing
trine (120° angle) between
Jupiter in Virgo and
the Moon's North Node (Dragon's
Head) in Taurus. Reinhold
Ebertin (in Transits)
attributes to this combination
the practical manifestations
of the "ability to
adapt, desire to enter into
good relations, successful
negotiations, gain of business
advantages with others,
partnership, engagement,
marriage." In other
words, the four months that
begin now are a time for
new alignments and alliances,
and the strengthening and
love-freshening of old relationships.
It is of immense significance
that this Jupiter - Dragon's
Head trine will be exact
on June 8, the day of the
Venus Occultation, when
Jupiter is at 10° Virgo
37' and the Dragon's Head
is at 10° Taurus 37'.
|
More on this next month or in May, as June 8 approaches. For now, another essential source for advance information about the June Venus Passage is the work of Carl Johan Calleman, author of The Mayan Calendar.
|
|
Copyright 2004 Dan Furst
|
Please
help support the Universal Festival
Calendar and Hermes 3. |
If
you like reading
this site and it
moves you to
neither sloth
nor folly,
will
you kindly help
the author and
send
a contribution? Many
thanks.
|
The UFC comes
in a convenient e-mail Newsletter for $25 a year, $50 for three years. A lifetime subscription is $100. |
Click here to subscribe, or contribute to the work of Hermes 3 by Donation. |
|
|
|
|
|