Tosia H Zraikat

Sophia, Divinity in Matter

Pistis Sophia by Talon Abraxas

 

I have recently discovered that a mythic personality is working in me, through me. She is not a goddess, as Athena is; she is not classified as a goddess except in some Gnostic myths, though she can be partly recognised in mythic characters such as Isis and Innana, but she is Sophia, meaning wisdom.

May I emphasise with Gnostic scholar, Stephan Hoeller, that Sophia is a very specific character with specific qualities and mythology, not to be mixed up with other feminine or earth goddesses (in lecture series, The Wisdom of the Gnostics).

In the Gnostic text, Pistis Sophia, she sees the higher light, and seeks to achieve it, but being misled by the Self-Willed one, the demiurge, she is lured to a lower level, to the depths of chaos, where she is afflicted by forces who hate her for seeking to attain the higher level of light. In her suffering, she calls out to the light in which she has faith, and passes through twelve hymns or repentances. 

"For they have taken my light from me, and my power hath begun to cease in me and I am destitute of my light." 

Eventually, she is rescued and returns to her proper place as twin to Jesus, who is called the First Mystery, for he is indeed a mystery beyond the understanding of humankind in these times. 

However, due to her suffering and her redemption because of her faith in the light, Sophia creates and maintains a deep abiding connection with the lower levels, with the world of matter and the human race.  

"She never really completely leaves us"..."She becomes the mother of the world ... because this world has in a sense come forth from her power ... She is a sort of salvivic being" (Stephen Hoeller). 

In Aurora Consergens, a medieval text discussed by Marie-Louise von Franz in vol. 7 of her collected works, Sophia is the earthly counterpart of God, who manifests in her own existence the divination or sacrilization, you might say, of the body, of nature, of matter. That is, she represents the divine realising itself through flesh, through matter, the serpent rising.

In Gnostic texts, Sophia falls through her own weakness into the shadows of the world; in Aurora Consergens, though, she is more like embodied Spirit working through flesh, through matter, to bring its inherent divinity to the light. At one point of her redemption, she says yes to being raised to the Higher Light, but instructs, ‘do not remove my dirt,’ for she understands that the divine is also in the dirt, in matter, in the body and its desires and instincts, that there is no aspect of being in which the divine is not.

As I have said before, I have in the past year been taken, possessed, one might say, by Eros whose powerful energy has pushed me out of my tight resistances to feeling and close connection into an overwhelming emotionality and desire for love - not just love for one particular person but the most intense love for all life, for humankind, for nature, for my own soul. Overpowering, and somehow not grounded; so I had been feeling like a herd of wild horses running amuck. But I had a dream in which an older shaggy-haired female creature (I was an animal as well) was practically force-feeding me soup from a very roughly hewn bowl with a rough spoon. We were in the undergrowth of a forest. I took that as a message to connect more deeply with nature, with my natural instincts.

Something someone said to me, though, make me realise that I was also being told to connect with my femininity, and to do it consciously, earnestly through deeper connection with, and grounding in my body, in its animal instincts, its sensuality and Eros energy. And I recognised in that Sophia, not the pure chaste woman at the side of the Christ as depicted in the icons of Orthodox Christianity, but the Sophia of body, flesh, mud, grime, of sensation, of the instinctual, who raises God from the very cells and tissues of my body, from the ground beneath my feet and lifts it to where the divine in me can shine.

So. As Woman, I know what I am. I am free. and I finally know why that inner voice told me not too long ago that Everything Matters. Yes. It does. Matter contains everything, from the lowest to the most numinous. Matter matters.

 

 Sophia in Russian Orthodox Icon

Why I Love Jung

I could write a whole book telling why I love and am devoted to Carl Gustave Jung, and continue to dive into his writings for answers to my big questions and for guidance when I am lost .... which is so often. 

It is not only his theories and ideas that I love, though for me they stand as some of the most profound, original and magnificent ever spoken or written, and I am deeply grateful to have them often at my fingertips and spoken from his own mouth in videos. May those thousands of scribes, editors, publishers, film-makers, interviewers and their teams who have made such wealth available to us be forever blessed.

But I love also the man himself, as he is seen on those precious videos and depicted by those who met him, knew him, also loved him: Jung the friend, the peasant, the deep thinker, the healer, the eloquent writer, the jokester, lover, sinner, the sculptor, the artist, the complete human being ... Like the esteemed Edward Edinger, I see dear CJ as an epochal human being, one of those who come every thousand years or so to bring transformative wisdom for those who will listen. Not a saint or an angel but more, I think, because he was also so totally, genuinely, heartfully, imperfectly human. 

And like any devotee, I gather all I can of his wisdom, taking into my heart what little of it I can understand. I have dozens of books by or about Jung and his wisdom, and by his long-time devotee and colleague, Marie-Louise von Franz, who also loved him. I watch films of their interviews. I read writings and watch videos of others who knew them.

(Jung and the young ML von Franz. I cannot find the source of this image)

Recently, I began reading von Franz's book, Jung, His Myth in Our Time, and have been making my slow appreciative way through it, a richly detailed, earnest summary of Jung's work that just rounds it out for me even more. 

I love her too, Marie-Louise von Franz, who once said that she knew on their first meeting when she was eighteen years old and he in his fifties that she would never meet another of his stature. How brave she was, that intellectual young woman, to surrender to the creative Eros that drew her into the circle of Jung. I suspect that Jupiter, lord of higher truth and meaning and wise Sophia who touches God through the body and the mud of earth were also in the mix.

Others have claimed to know Jung as he is not usually known. In his prodigious Catalfaque, Peter Kingsley, scholar of ancient philosophy, Mystery and Magic, on which he has written several books, writes that Jung has not been recognised for the  shaman, the poet, mystic and prophet that he was. But though CJ shied away from such descriptions, he was recognised as such by Marie-Louise von Franz, Laurens van der Post, Henri Corbin, Karl Kerenyi and others who knew him. He was instantly recognised as such by readers in our times, not all, but by people like me who knew from the very first reading of his work that they were entering into a wider, deeper, more magical, mythopoeic world than was usually presented. 

In Jung, his Myth in Our Time, p. 62, the erudite von Franz whose dominant thinking function chastened what was so clearly her immense admiration and love for this man, writes:

I fell in love with Jung from the first book I read, his Memories, Dreams and Reflections, which I read sometimes weeping with joy at having found someone who knew, understood and valued the reality I had sometimes inhabited, who hugely expanded it, enriched it, sacralised it, and even more, could explain it. Here I am over forty years later, still picking up gems, still finding treasures of deep insight, still caught up by the Eros energy, Sophia's cthonic, profoundly feminine divinity in Jung's vision of the human psyche and the world. 

“Eros is a mighty daemon”

(C. G. Jung, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology)

(Marie-Louise Von Franz, Barbara Hannah, C.G. Jung)

 

Must the Animus always be Male?

Last year, I think it was, I dreamed I was on a ship and a strange-looking woman with orange wildly flyaway hair and the protuberant eyebrows one often sees in old men was helping me dress for dinner.

Later in that dream, she was going downstairs hugging a man in a black jacket (I never saw his face, but she turned to me with a very mischeivous smile), and I got the impression that they were interconnected, that he and she were one person. God knows why, but I thought of the goddess Athena who was never so outlandish or playful, as far as I know. 

In my youth I was strongly drawn to Athena who represented for me the clear thinking, practical, creative aspects of woman. I came to see her as a level-headed aspect of men’s anima that advises and guides a man who is open to her influence, a guide that keeps Odysseus from becoming yet another egoistic, war-loving, glory-seeking hero, that appreciates his loving relationships with his wife and son, his love of home, and of wisdom.

Yet I wonder whether this particular goddess could also represent a positive aspect of a woman’s inner masculine energy, her animus, my animus, one that could ameliorate or balance the negative animus that has exerted such a big influence over me.

She is for me, after all, a mix of masculine and feminine, born jumping fully armed out of Zeus’ head, child of the Alpha male deity with logos, creativity, ingenuity, rationality, detachment, toughness, and also of mother Metis, goddess of wisdom, creator of crafts, with feminine qualities. Can  a being with both male and female qualities serve as the animus in a woman's psyche, I wonder?  Must the animus always be male?

Early in life, I came to devalue femininity - its softness, loving, desiring intimate connection and deep feeling aspects - in favour of male qualities that I strove to develop. Girl, woman, lover, mother, I was possessed by a negative animus that told me to be highly suspicious and distrustful of Eros in all its forms, ashamed of my deep feelings, embarrassed by my hidden unexpressed longing for connectedness and intimacy, and see worth only in my intellect and intellectual acheivements. It has taken years of inner work to be able to finally recognise the necessity of Eros and to surrender to its energies.

But now, the negative animus is making itself felt again as a strong, judgmental resistance to the Eros energy that I have finally embraced and am working with. This negative animus speaks as an inner critic, a ‘voice of reason,’ sarcastic, derisive, fear-promoting, blaming, and some days, I find it very hard to ignore.

Marie-Louise von Franz in The Way of the Dream has been helping me to see its action on me more clearly “The negative animus mainly manifests as an opinionated resistance against having feelings of love,” she says and “The worst about it is that she experiences it as if she thinks it herself…. It thinks in her.”

So. That criticism is not my inner wisdom talking, as I had once thought, because my inner wisdom is telling me in all ways to embrace Eros, whatever it brings - positive and negative. It is the archetype thinking itself in me: I do not have to accept what it says. 

Now what would Athena say?

Wholeness

For Carl Jung, the aim of psychotherapy and individuation was not perfection but wholeness, a state of psychic integration based on psychological awareness, self-knowledge, and Self-acceptance. 

 

 

Too often, though, people speak of wholeness, of oneness as something easily achieved through practices like lighting candles, burning incense, yoga, retreats, and 'spiritual' language. While probably beneficial in themselves, these are simply trappings of inner work yet to be done, work that challenges our misconceptions about ourselves and reality.

 

Achieving wholeness is not easy... It is the work of a lifetime ... of lifetimes.  It requires courage, humility, and patience.

 

“... the right way to wholeness is made up, unfortunately, of fateful detours and wrong turnings. It is a longissima via, not straight but snakelike, a path that unites the opposites in the manner of the guiding caduceus, a path whose labryrinthine twists and turns are not lacking in terrors.” C.G. Jung, Psychology and Alchemy

 

 

 

 

 

Projection: Is that too, me?

Projection. An automatic process whereby contents of one’s own unconscious are perceived to be in others. (Jungian analyst, Frith Luton @ frithluton.com)

One of the tasks of consciousness is to learn what is 'I' and what is not. For the personality, that means distinguishing what is Me, and what is not Me. It is nowhere as simple or as easy as it sounds, because of a natural psychological mechanism called Projection. On the level of personality - small self - we often project much of the worst - and of the very best - of us in others. "What a liar man that is!" "She is so disagreeable!" "How creative he is!" "I wish I were as desirable as that woman!"

 

Negative projections blind us to shadow aspects of our own personalities that need to be recognised, and for which we need to take responsibility. In so doing, they hinder our psychological maturation, trouble our relationships with others, and foster misconceptions and prejudices that prevent us from recognising and appreciating the true nature, qualities and potentialities of the person, race or group onto which we have projected.

 

Positive projections can hold us in destructive patterns of self criticism, helplessness and unworthiness, keeping us ignorant of our qualities. They also hinder us from seeing the person on whom we have projected as who she really is, which means that we do not genuinely relate to them.  Until we recognise and claim back our positive projections, we remain ignorant of totally acceptable, desirable or even exceptional qualities, and our unexpressed, undeveloped potential, so that we fail to grow into the person we could be.

“Just as we tend to assume that the world is as we see it, we naïvely suppose that people are as we imagine them to be. . . . All the contents of our unconscious are constantly being projected into our surroundings, and it is only by recognizing certain properties of the objects as projections or imagos that we are able to distinguish them from the real properties of the objects. . . .Unless we are possessed of an unusual degree of self-awareness we shall never see through our projections but must always succumb to them, because the mind in its natural state presupposes the existence of such projections. It is the natural and given thing for unconscious contents to be projected.”

Carl Jung, "General Aspects of Psychology," par. 507.

“ Everything that is unconscious in ourselves we discover in our neighbour, and we treat him accordingly.” ( Carl Jung, Archaic Man). 

I have been thinking about this a lot lately, as veils are dropping and exposing to me so much that I had thought was real, but is not. My ego is taking quite a beating, and it is not pleasant, though necessary.

"The best political, social, and spiritual work we can do," said Jung, "is to withdraw the projection of our own shadow onto others.” 

It feels a lot like finding fine silken threads in the mud, and one by one, drawing them out. No Aschenputtel (Cinderella) trying to pick lentils or peas from out of the ashes ever had to work so hard. 

Where are my birds?

Multidimensional Personality

As a uni student many years ago studying world history, cultural anthropology, geography and psychology, I was suddenly struck by the realisation that everything - everything - is interconnected and affects everything else. The flutter of a butterfly's wing might not seem to cause a hurricane but in the greater scheme of things, nothing in this world - not culture, not history or human thought - remains untouched by the reflected light of a tiny jewel on Indira's universal web.

 

(image from radiant child yoga)

 

That insight changed my view of the world. The world of separate nations, cultures and histories that I had lived in before simply ceased to be.

 

This week, I was overwhelmed by another aspect of this insight, this time regarding human psychology. In response to a question about Jung's approach, a psychotherapist friend wrote "it might be helpful to add something about Organismic Theory. It was a view developed in Biology that emphasized the holistic-developmental nature (as opposed to the reductive-deductive approach) of all living organisms."

 

That was it! I felt it. Something had hit home... so I did a little investigation.

 

Organismic theory is described by the APA* as "an approach to psychology that emphasizes the total organism, rejecting distinctions between mind and body. It embraces [an] ... approach that takes account of the interaction between the organism and its environment." *(American Psychological Association).

 

How obvious! yet until then, I had not really understood it, not in my bones, not viscerally. Now I did. I felt it in every cell of my body, which rang like a bell at the knowing that I am not a discrete object but an ever-evolving confluence of everything I have ever experienced, consciously and unconsciously: the texture of a wall, scent of a patch of earth, family, society, food, air I have breathed, every person to person interaction, mistakes, misunderstandings, regrets, hopes, belly laughs, people passed on the street .... Everything is connected, and I- all of what I am, could be or will be - am one tiny but valuable part of One Infinite Consciousness.

 

It is not enough to know it intellectually, all this talk about holism and oneness. I had to feel it in the cells of my body, in my gut, in my deepest heart to Know it.

 

 

 

Prometheus

Prometheus' love for humankind drove him to rebel against Zeus, whom he had only recently (in Olympian time) helped to overcome the Titans and claim the throne of the gods.

He is not overly impressed by Zeus, though, perhaps because he is himself of the older race, the Titans, and in the ancient poem, Prometheus Bound, it is also said that some of the older gods and nymphs do not like him much.  Hephaestus observes that "Zeus's heart is pitilessly harsh, and everyone whose ruling power is new is cruel and ruthless." The nymphs, daughters of Oceanus, who come to sympathise with Prometheus, say, "New gods now rule on Mount Olympus, and, like a tyrant, Zeus is governing with new-fangled laws, overpowering those gods who were so strong before." 

Prometheus the Titan had helped Zeus overcome the Titans because of their cruelty, but he soon realises that Zeus is also sometimes cruel, and arrogant, and rather dismissive of humanity, whom Prometheus loves. His tricking Zeus into accepting the worst part of a sacrifice can be seen, then, as a little prick to deflate Zeus' ego a bit, but it makes the new Father-of-heaven furious, and he rather pettily, I think, withholds fire from humankind so that they languish almost to extinction. So Prometheus steals some it back for them, for which he is cruelly punished.

                        painting by Heinrich Feuger

Prometheus is nailed to the side of a high mountain in the Caucuses where a great eagle daily eats his liver (the symbol of life, lifeblood), which regrows to be eaten again the next day. My grandfather from the Caucuses told me how the wind there rushes through wide valleys and whips around mountain tops in storms and thick mists and gales, that eagles soar, and are seen as sacred. No coincidence that it is an eagle, royal denizen of the air, that eats Prometheus' liver every day.

                        Painting by Jacob Jordaens

Some mythologists and psychologists see Prometheus as representing the urge of human consciousness to awaken, to grow and become autonomous. Yes, I can see that. More than that, though, I see in his love for humankind and his refusal to bow to unjust authority expressions of Free Will, of an autonomous Mind with its own morality and valuations. Aeschylus' poem seems to confirm that.

It also describes the bringing of fire to humans as a conscious, intentional sacrifice. With foresight, Prometheus knew that he would be severely punished for it, though not so cruelly, for had he not been Zeus' ally?

"Thanks to my advice, the gloomy pit of Tartarus now hides old Cronos and his allies. I helped Zeus, that tyrant of the gods—now he repays me with this foul torment. It is a sickness which somehow comes with every tyranny to place no trust in friends."

Prometheus' identification with humankind, and his contempt for Zeus and the gods of Olympus who dare not offend him are expressed in this poem.

Hymn: Prometheus / Cover thy spacious heavens, Zeus (Goethe, 1772-1774)

Cover Your heavens, Zeus,
With cloud vapor
And try Your strike, as a boy 
Beheading thistles,
Against oaken tree and mountain height;
You still must leave me
My Earth standing 
And my hut which You did not build,
And my hearth, home's glowing
Fire which You begrudge me.

I know of nothing poorer
Under the sun than You gods!
Indigently You feed
Your majesty
On proffered sacrifice 
And breathfuls of prayer.
You would starve to naught
If children and beggars
Were not such fools full of hope.

When I was a child
That knew not its way in the world
I would lift my deluded eyes
To the sun as though out beyond it
There were an ear to hear my complaints
A heart like mine
That would take pity on my oppression.

Who came to my aid
Against the Titans' and their insolent rage?
Who delivered me from death,
From slavery?
Was it not you, sacred heart ablaze,
Who achieved it all?
And, swindled in your youth and good will,
Did you not glow, with thanks fit for a Savior,
For that mere Sleeper on high?

I should honor You? For what?
Did You ever gentle
The ache of my burden?
Did You ever dry
The tears of tribulation?
Was I not forged to manhood
By Time Almighty
And Eternal Destiny,
My masters and Yours?

Perhaps You believed
I should find life hateful,
And flee to the wilderness
Because not all my blossom-dreams 
Reached ripeness?

Behold
Here I sit, fashioning men
In my own image,
A race after my likeness,
A race that will suffer and weep,
And rejoice and delight with heads held high
And heed Your will no more
Than I!

(Translated by A.Z. Foreman @ poemsintranslation.blogspot.com)

 

Jung says that "sacrifice proves that you possess yourself, for it does not mean just letting yourself be passively taken: it is a conscious and deliberate self-surrender, which proves that you have full control of yourself, that is, of your ego….” (CW11, ¶390.). Yes. Prometheus’ sacrifice shows a quality of mind that one does not find in the other gods, its strength, its morality and sovereignty.

No other god of Olympus sacrificed as Prometheus did.

This is no ordinary trickster or obedient god. This is a Titan, created from the original elemental forces of the world, a grandson or heir to the Mesopotamian Tiamat whose body became the earth’s mountains and rivers. He is primal, fire and air, the fierce and creative power of love, of mind, of imagination. And Hesiod wrote that it was he, Prometheus, and his brother, Epimetheus, hindsight, not the gods, who created humankind from earth itself, and Athena breathed life into them. 

The work of Old Age

"An ever-deepening self-knowledge is, I’m afraid, indispensable for the continuation of real life in old age, no matter how unpopular self-knowledge may be. Looking outwards has got to be turned into looking into oneself. Discovering yourself provides you with all you are, were meant to be, and all you are living from and for. The whole of yourself is certainly an irrational entity, but this is just precisely yourself, which is meant to live as a unique and unrepeatable experience."

- C.G. Jung, C.G. Jung Speaking: Interviews and Encounters

Humans and What Else?

 

In this rainy weather, and with a predicted rainy summer on its way, I sometimes wonder how it affects nature spirits. Do they shelter under shrubs or in burrows, do they huddle on branches like birds or do they simply slip out of body and wait it out in energy form? 

Many years ago, I had an encounter with nature spirits in a National Park, and sense them now and then in my garden and wild areas.

 A friend told me that she was once woken by a yeti (we call them yowies here in Australia) outside her van. It was looking at the mirrored window of her van, perhaps surprised to see itself. It couldn't see in, she said, but she saw it clearly before it disappeared, for she had turned on the outside light. This is not the first time a yowie has been seen on that mountain, either. 

I wonder what other creatures of myth and folklore might share this planet with us, indeed, what terrestrial aliens or human-like creatures might be hiding in the shadows.  Little people, for instance, faerie, elves and gnomes that live in dimensions that intersect with, and influence our  reality, but operate according to their own natural laws. They are sometimes seen and can, it seems, manifest in our physical reality as either small or tall strange beings, but mostly they hide away from us. 

According to the old stories, nature and earth spirits once took an interest in us and our wellbeing. Now, it is said, most of them are so disgusted with our treatment of earth and her creatures that they want nothing to do with us. To those who treat nature gently, with love, though, some of the less disillusioned nature spirits may speak and make themselves known. 

Findhorn in Scotland, whose improbable gardens built on rocky ground once amazed botanists, might never have been without the active help and guidance of nature spirits and devas. We can, it seems, invite them into our gardens by leaving part of them to grow wild, untended, as nature grows them. I have such an area - not big, but wild - at the side of my house.

In our ignorance, we cocky westerners tend to dismiss such things as childish imaginings. Fortunately, there are some that don't, who are careful not to offend or harm the invisible folk and their places. Some still believe in the old tales of pretty girls or boys being stolen away as in the old ballad of Tam Lin, romances between faerie and human, and children born of those unions.  

 Almost half of Icelanders, it seems, believe in elves, and elf 'experts' are often consulted prior to roadworks and other constructions to determine whether elves live in that area and what to do about it. Iceland has elf gardens, elf whisperers, even an Elf school where one can learn all about elves! 

 What about little human or hominid people who live or have lived in our known physical world? Such populations have existed, and some still do.

To those of us raised on Celtic or Scandinavian stories of faerie folk, the Negritos of southeast Asia and Africa's pygmies may not seem much like faery, elves or gnomes, which is a pity for they might otherwise have been protected from mistreatment by their bigger neighbours. Yet they do have some notable fairy-like qualities. Left to themselves (which they no longer are), they were known to live peaceably; happy people who loved to dance and sing, and who were exceptionally sensitive to nature and her secrets, as are the faery folk. Their elders still retain an astonishingly deep knowledge of herbal lore.  

Anthropologist Ian Turner wrote of the strangely magical qualities he found among the African pygmies. Late one night when all slept, he woke to see a man dancing alone beneath a full moon. When asked why he danced alone, he was told by the young man, who smiled radiantly, "I dance to the moon," something, I note, faerie and elves often did. Like the faerie, the pygmies also make hauntingly beautiful music. The American Indians tell of a magical race of little people who were so mistreated by the big ones that they hid, and that they still are hiding in the secret places of the earth, rarely seen. 

Perhaps these races of little human people carry are part faerie, still carrying in their genes and consciousness traces of faerie ancestors who loved and mixed with humans. Anything's possible.

It was a great shock to the scientific establishment when evidence of a tiny human being was discovered.

I took a course on this latest human addition to hominids, Homo floresiensis, known as the Hobbit. There are indications that the Hobbit might have interacted with Homo sapiens (us) before disappearing off the face of the earth. Or maybe a few are still around. (See link below).

Then there is us, the genocidal hominid that annihilated our early relatives as readily as we destroy other human beings right now? Where did they go, the Neanderthal, the Denisovans (traces of whom were found in Siberia and whose genes exist in Australian Aboriginal and New Guinean populations); the Red Cave people (traces found in Red Cave, China), a hominid so far dubbed Enigma man also found in China, the little people popularly called Hobbits found in the Philippines and more archaic lines, including our accepted ancestor, Homo Erectus? 

Some of these lines might have ended due to natural causes, but given our dark history of inhumane, murderous treatment of different races, I hold grave suspicions about the true reasons for us being the last remaining hominids.

  The question remains, though, are we the only remaining human-like creature on the planet? Are there yetis, yowies or bigfoots in the wilderness wisely avoiding contact with human beings? Do small groups of human relatives or similar creatures still hide from us deep in the bellies of caves? Are there little people - or giants - who have watched in dread our clumsy civilizations rise and fall, waiting for us to truly evolve, not physiologically but intellectually, emotionally and spiritually into a human race that one can actually talk to without fear?

We might think that we can answer those questions, but the truth is, we just don't know. For me, the book is still wide open. 

 Read more:

Elves in Iceland https://faeriemagazine.com/seeking-elves-iceland/

Could 'Hobbit' still exist? http://www.rense.com/general58/exist.htm

 

Thoughts on Sacrifice

Prometheus god of foresight, knowingly sacrificed himself for the sake of humankind. He knew that Zeus would be furious and punish him; he stole fire for mankind anyway.

 

But what about Abraham, ready to obey God's cruel demand that he sacrifice his son, Isaac?

 

 

Unlike vengeful Zeus, God at the last minute relented and sent an angel to tell Abraham so ... It was all a test, he said, which supposedly makes it all OK.

 

How did Isaac feel about that? Could he ever really trust his father ... or God ... after that, or trust in Love?

 

What if Abraham had stood up to God and said, 'Not my son! I sacrifice myself willingly, but not my son!'

 

I think that Prometheus might have had the courage and heart to do that, to protect his child from God.

 

Thinking about Abraham's readiness to sacrifice his child (as I sometimes do), I wonder, who we are willing to sacrifice, and to what, to whom? Who are we prepared to sacrifice for what we believe is a higher cause, or more likely, in obedience to authority, to conformity, to what we believe is right and good, though it may not be.

 

What 'sacrifices' do we make even now, consciously or not, that instead of ennobling the Self, betray and diminish it? 

 

Art:

Prometheus by Gioacchino Assereto, and Ancient Greek image.
Sacrifice of Isaac by Caravaggio