Am I alone in seeing something almost poetic in the fact that the first whistleblower convicted in the Vatileaks scandal, Paolo Gabriele, bears the name of the Archangel Gabriel? Gabriel, the messenger of God who announced the pending births of Jesus and John the Baptist? Gabriel, depicted in art and literature as the angel who will blow his horn come judgment day? If I were Pope Benedict, I'd be more concerned than ever about that Fatima prophecy.
Be that as it may, the verdict is in and the Vatican court is satisfied that the butler did it. Gabriele, manservant to the pontiff, was sentenced to eighteen months for hanging the Church's dirty laundry out to dry. It seems he believed sunlight to be the best disinfectant.
Gabriele slipped internal documents, including some of Pope Benedict's private papers, to journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi.
Nuzzi's book, "His Holiness: Pope Benedict XVI's Secret Papers" convulsed the Vatican for months and prompted an unprecedented response, with the pope naming a commission of cardinals to investigate the origin of the leaks alongside Vatican magistrates.
Gabriele insists he was only trying to save the Church from itself.
Gabriele has said he leaked the documents because he felt the pope wasn't being informed of the "evil and corruption" in the Vatican, and that exposing the problems publicly would put the church back on the right track.
. . .
"The thing I feel strongly in me is the conviction that I acted out of exclusive love, I would say visceral love, for the church of Christ and its visible head," Gabriele told the court in a steady voice. "I do not feel like a thief."
During the trial Gabriele claimed to have acted alone. But on other occasions he claimed that he was anything but. He alleged that there were at least twenty whistleblowers who, like himself, "want to help bring some transparency."
There's a fierce irony in the Vatican's aggressive investigation into Vatileakers like Gabriele. After decades of equivocating over whether or not child molesting priests should be turned over to the authorities, they brought the hammer down over some letters. The Church takes its secrecy very seriously.
Gabriele will serve out his sentence in his apartment, under house arrest. That is, unless the Pope decides to pardon him. Sources say this is likely and it might make His Holiness look like something other than a complete hypocrite. A wise leader, might also want to heed the message, rather than kill the messenger.
Well, it's Gabriel, Gabriel playin'!
Gabriel, Gabriel sayin'
"Will you be ready to go
When I blow my horn?"
Oh, blow, Gabriel, blow,
Go on and blow, Gabriel, blow!
I've been a sinner, I've been a scamp,
But now I'm willin' to trim my lamp,
So blow, Gabriel, blow!
Oh, I was low, Gabriel, low,
Mighty low, Gabriel, low.
But now since I have seen the light,
I'm good by day and I'm good by night,
So blow, Gabriel, blow!
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I have previously expressed my amusement that so many of the greatest proponents of the ten commandments consistently violate the second. The most devout Christians I've known through the years have surrounded themselves with religious imagery. They bow and pray before crosses. They also wear them. Catholics, in particular, are heavily invested in statues of saints and the Blessed Virgin, some of which are believed to have healing properties and even exude divine unction. (Yes. In many cases it turns out to be a coating of air-born cooking oils most likely caused by frying a lot of zeppoles but we don't need to go there.)
You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My Commandments.
The bottom line: Most Christians -- and Catholics in particular -- are idolators. The prohibition in the second commandment was probably a reaction against Egyptian practices and useful for stamping out pagan practices as Christianity expanded. And as I've pointed out previously, the iconoclast movements have long since been abandoned by Jews and Christians, making the second commandment a sort of vestigial relic.
I was ruminating on this irony just yesterday while I was in the shower. (I do a lot of my best thinking in the shower.) And I was wondering what real underlying motivation it could possibly serve to strip people of their freedom to express their spirituality in art or to appreciate some of these magnificent images. This new article by William Henry had me contemplating the issue again this morning. In it he discusses the legend of St. Francis of Assissi receiving the gift of stigmata through contemplation of images of the crucified Christ, beginning with a Byzantine image.
The likely source for this linkage is THE REMEMBRANCE OF THE DESIRE OF A SOUL, written by Thomas of Celano soon after the death of Francis. Thomas recounts Francis’s vision of Jesus speaking to him from the Byzantine image of a crucified Jesus at San Damiano, a dilapidated church near Assisi. Christ is alive on the crucifix. His eyes are wide open, as if contemplating his ascension, which is portrayed just above his head. The voice from the crucifix commanded Francis to “go rebuild My house.” As a result of this vision Francis went about repairing the church at San Damiano and reforming the Catholic Church.
Thomas says soon after the vision (which is thought to have occurred in 1205) Francis’s body began to change. “From that time on, compassion for the Crucified was impressed into his holy soul. And we honestly believe the wounds of the sacred Passion were impressed deep in his heart, though not yet on his flesh.
It is clear that Thomas believed that the seeds of the stigmata were planted in Francis’s gentle heart at the moment the Crucifix spoke and would later manifest/germinate in his body as the stigmata after Francis’s encounter with Jesus as a seraphim. But that happened later.
St. Catherine of Siena also attributed her stigmata to a crucifix.
Art, especially sacred art, has extraordinary, even supernatural, power. Saint Catherine of Siena received the stigmata from a crucifix. I saw our Lord fastened upon the cross coming down towards me and surrounding me with a marvelous light...Then there came down from the holes of his blessed wounds five bloody beams, which were directed towards the same parts of my body: to my hands, feet, and heart. This was how, according to legend, Saint Catherine of Siena described receiving the stigmata.
Art is one of the most powerful and immediate ways to depict core mythologies and archetypes. And myth has the ability to, as Joseph Campbell put it, make us "transparent to the transcendent." Campbell gives one explanation of this experience in Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation. Here, he may as well be speaking directly of the experience of these two saints and their merging with Christ.
Now, when you have a deity as a model, your life becomes transparent to the transcendent, so far as you realize the inspiration of that god. This means living, not in the name of success or achievement in the world, but rather in the name of transcendence, letting the energy come through.
This, at least, is how I experience spiritual artwork. I have always had a certain fondness for religious art and iconography. But as my spiritual path has deepened, so has my love for images of angels, gods, goddesses, the Buddha, and, well, many other things in heaven above and on the earth below. In part it is due to my study of sacred geometry -- and the proper use of these geometries in art is also a powerful psychic trigger -- but my response to the art itself is far more intuitive and emotional. I am at times utterly transported by images of angels. As I explained in my Christmas message last year, I have been moved to a kind of reverie that causes me to lose chunks of time while gazing at lawn ornaments in Target. Do I bow down and worship these idols? No. But then I don't bow down and worship anyone or anything... which puts me afoul of Christianity for entirely different reasons.
The experience is of one of merging with an idealized, dare I say mystical, state expressed through these archetypes. While these "peak" states are not dependent on images, symbolism in art is a powerful mover. It is not surprising that churches and other religious structures are full of it or that all those second commandment ignoring Christians surround themselves with it.
This also suggests another reason for the attempt to suppress religious iconography in the finished Bible and the ensuing iconoclast movements: The suppression of the mystical experience itself. The experience of personal transcendence has always been suspect within organized religion and at times violently suppressed. William Henry often points to the genocide of the Cathars as one such example. The execution of Joan of Arc is yet another example of the church persecuting one who "pierced the veil" -- only to rethink it and canonize her long after she was dead. Such is the difficult relationship between organized religion as spiritual authority and the personal revelations of practitioners that can result from religious experience. Only some of these experiences can be recast as fitting into orthodox beliefs; the rest become heresy.
The experience of the ascension process has been ruthlessly suppressed both in Biblical stories and by the Christian Church. Two of the best examples of this have been repeatedly referenced by William Henry: The destruction of the Tower of Babel and the "fall" of Adam and Eve. Both of these myths refer to the raising of kundalini. Towers, as I've stated previously, are symbols of the spine. (See here and here.) Babel means "gate to God." Trees are also used to symbolize the spine and in the case of Eve's "temptation" it is fairly obvious, as a serpent is in the tree. Trees also connect heaven and earth. Both of these stories are about humans being banished from paradise; from the realm of the gods or ascended beings.
As Henry points out in this article, the Seraphim, ascended beings, are also depicted guarding the gate to paradise. But many images of the Seraphim provide important clues to our own ascension process. As per Henry, the word Seraphim means "winged and/or fiery serpents." In other words, the fully ascended kundalini. They are suggestive of the merkaba with its whirling, counter-rotating fields. And in many of these images, they are covered with eyes, suggestive of the awakened pineal gland.
So many graven and other images of heavenly processes are filled with such symbolism. Art like this actually wakes us up and we can't have that now can we.
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It turns out an overwhelming majority of Americans believe in those mysterious, celestial beings. Belief in angels is most solid among Christian evangelicals at 97%, which doesn't seem terribly surprising. But belief in some type of angelic presence is also shared across a wide cultural spectrum, even among people who have no religious affiliation.
Protestants, women, Southerners, Midwesterners and Republicans were the most likely to believe in angels, although strong majorities in other groups also shared that faith. Belief in angels declined slightly with advanced education, from 87 percent of those with high school education or less to 73 percent of those with college degrees. Overall, 81 percent believed in angels.
One of the points made by Graham Hancock in his new book Supernatural is that religious belief is universal. These beliefs are not rational and not empirically provable, but they are part of every human civilization. He disputes the idea that religion is simply a means of providing comfort in a confusing world, by pointing out that religion is often counterproductive to cultural harmony. Many religious beliefs inspire fear as well as awe. And religious conflicts can escalate to open warfare. Hancock explores the human capacity for interfacing with the supernatural world that the highly reasonable dismiss as hallucinations. Hancock delves deep into shamanic practices, including the use of the notorious "vine of souls" ayahuasca. He posits the notion that the world we experience when we pierce the veil is not a disordered hallucination, but a separate reality accessible through the same brain that perceives this one.
In other words people cling to religious and spiritual beliefs because they experience them as real and tangible, even if their glimpses of this hidden reality are usually ephemeral. Such is the experience of Edward Pelz:
Edward Pelz, 80, of Grabill, Ind., said he believes that angels are guiding him, even though it's impossible to explain to anyone else.
"Have I ever seen one? Nope. We depict an angel as a person that's white, has a robe on, has wings on back. I'm not sure that's the way they look. So for me, I think sometimes there's angels that aren't that way."
Pelz recounted a story about a man who showed up to change his tire when he had a flat in Ohio five years ago.
"I look at life — I say, well maybe I had an angel with me here today. It could have been just another man doing a good deed."....
Pelz felt another spirit when he walked into his backyard on a winter's day — that of the wife he lost over two years ago. He called her Mom.
"She loved bluebirds," he said. "In the wintertime, we don't have bluebirds. I was out in the back, thinking, 'Mom I'd like to see you,' and this little bluebird comes by.
"I don't know, maybe that's an angel. It was just something I wanted to see. Maybe I imagined it. Next thing you know, it flew off. What is an angel? Is an angel something that has a heartbeat like us? Or is it ...?"
The thought trailed off.
Editor's Note: Graham Hancock's Supernatural is available in the bookstore. I will probably be writing more about the process of discovery Hancock leads the reader through in this amazing book. Really, one of the best books I've ever read.
. Here, he may as well be speaking directly of the experience of these two saints and their merging with Christ.
