My previous paper on the current Theology of
Body (TOB) movement (hereafter referred to as
West-TOB, after the name of its leading
ideologist), ‘A pure gaze of lust’, was the
outcome of my attempts to understand why my
encounter with it was so destructive to my
prayer life and especially to my relationship with
Jesus Christ. I
rationalized in the end of that paper that the
major reason for this was the West-TOB’s
profanation of the most sacred, of the love of
God for a human soul, via muddling the sacred
with what they call “bold talk about sex”:
“I
have been into Carmelite spirituality for some
time now, with St John of the Cross being my
spiritual guide. Until I heard and read “the TOB”
my mind was free from the obscene associations
discussed above. It means that when I read the
lines of St John of the Cross from his
‘Spiritual Canticle: Songs between the soul and
the Bridegroom’:
“In the inner wine cellar
I drank of my Beloved, and, when
I went abroad
through all this valley,
I no longer knew anything,
and lost the herd that I was following.”
I see the spiritual reality of the pure intimacy
of a soul with God and the transformation that
causes, to the soul. I still perceive those
lines in this way. However, the TOB of West made
me aware of other possible interpretations.
After hearing and reading about “God and sex,
sex and God” I had to labour for days to get rid
of the dirt which got stuck to my soul. Please
notice that I have been studying Christian
mystical tradition for years now – and still I
was profoundly affected. It is really hard to
address God along the lines of ‘Song of Songs’
if ‘Song of Songs’ was turned, by a
“theologian”, into the “centrefold of the Bible”
because “centrefold” and God do not go together!
Imagine then someone who has never read anything
of the Christian mystical tradition (and it
appears to me that it is the condition of the
majority of lay Catholics now, in the English
speaking world at least) but instead
reads/listens to TOB. The ability of such a
person to perceive any spiritual reality
conveyed by the language of human love is
ruined, probably forever. Why? – Simply because
the sex drive is an instinctive, primary, and
very powerful force, and for a human being it is
much more natural/ easier to see “sex” instead
of the “sacred” everywhere; unless they are
educated properly so that their inherent sense
of the sacred is not ruined.”
In my experience of working with destructive
states of a psyche an identification of the
original source of a state usually drastically
diminishes that state or at least begins the
process of diminishing it. I was quite sure
that identifying the West- TOB’s profanation of
God [via muddling Him with sex] as the source of
the pollution of my relationship with God would
relieve my subjective sense of the loss of
intimacy with Him. Yet it did not happen.
Examining myself I realized that I was not just
suffering the loss of an intimate connection
with Our Lord (a periodical experience familiar
to any Christian) – something in me was also
resisting the very possibility of that intimacy.
I was longing for the intimacy with the Lord I
knew before and at the same time I was terrified
of something else, something inexplicably dirty,
forbidden, even evil that now was attached to it
somehow. By no means could it be just “the
sexualisation of God” like, for example, a
transformation of Christ the Bridegroom of the
soul into a fleshy lover. Why am I so sure about
that? – Because although to think of Christ as
just of a human lover is inappropriate it is
still normal – not normal and desirable
from a Christian point of view but normal if one
thinks of Christ as just a man (and He is the
Son of Man). A thought about Christ the Lover is
a thought every mystic has but it is always
“more than earthly”, “other than earthly”, “the
early term points towards the greater
metaphysical reality” etc. “Christ the Lover” is
an entirely normal concept of romantic
love between God and the soul hence the fact
that someone thinks of it in very earthly terms
cannot wreck another person’s relationship with
the Lord.
‘A pure gaze of lust’ dealt with the West-TOB
disembodied, laying down the critique of its
concepts, hence it is highly desirable that the
reader reads it, first, before proceeding with
this paper that is its practical counterpart.
Quite deliberately, it says nothing about my
personal encounters with West-TOB adepts, both
before and (naturally) after writing it. The
encounters that followed after its completion
especially convinced me that the West-TOB itself
would never make such a big impact at me if I
did not have several opportunities to see it
“embodied” and “in action”. Neither would I be
able to understand what is there that so
effectively blows off not only the intimacy
of God with the soul but inserts into the soul
an overwhelming – and entirely “insane” – dread
of that intimacy. This is why, for the sake
of providing the reader with the sense of “lived
experience” which I credit for my understanding
of it, I decided to speak about my highly
personal West-TOB related experiences, including
bodily responses. For the same purpose, I kept
a chronological order of the events.
Metaphysical rape
I happened to attend four lectures on the TOB
given by a Catholic priest. There was nothing of
note about the first two, apart from a curious
mismatch of the extremely undemanding
intellectual take of the lecturer and the
complex and murky Wednesday audiences of Pope
John Paul II. The only thing that stuck in my
mind were the strange statements of the priest
which punctuated an otherwise monotonous
discourse. One of them was that a priest (the
lecturer himself) was the bridegroom of the
Church. Another that the seminary is called
“seminary” because it produces priests who
“inseminate their congregations”. The third
lecture dealt with marriage and various sexual
deviations; that priest also briefly spoke about
‘Song of Songs’ treating it exclusively as
sexual, purely bodily affair entirely omitting
its symbolic meaning. The discourse was
sufficient to cause a listener, a man in his
late sixties to blurt out “some say there is
porn in the Bible!” with the fire and enthusiasm
of a teenager – the lecturer nodded approvingly.
‘Song of Songs’ thus became porn. And then (a
quote from my notes):
“The last lecture, called ‘Responsible
Parenthood’, proved to be the climax, for the
lecturer and a revealing point, for me. The
setting: a relatively small room. The lecturer,
a priest in his black cassock, was discoursing
about the sin of Onan, withdrawal, condoms,
natural family planning, and so on. My body, the
body of a person who is used to naming phenomena
as they are, somehow felt very uncomfortable –
to the point that it could hardly resist the
urge to leave. My reaction, quite atypical of a
married woman in her forties, became
understandable to me when I realized the sheer
absurdity of the situation: the lecturer, a
male, a priest dressed as a priest was talking,
in great depth and physiological detail, about
contraception and sexual acts before an audience
overwhelmingly consisting of seventy-eighty year
old people, mostly women. Somehow I feel pressed
to repeat with astonishment “in a black
cassock!” This picture, to my mind, while being
entirely absurd and quite shameless, matched the
TOB somehow. What I could not understand about
the TOB before
[I glimpsed at the work of JPII in the past]
suddenly made sense in this absurd frame: I
realized that the TOB, designed for “married
couples” makes much more sense for those to whom
the idea of the marital relationship is deemed,
for the variety of reasons, to remain an
abstraction.”
Now, when I read what I wrote at that time, I
find it quite comical. Obscene, stupid perhaps
but not anything that could warrant the lines
followed the description of the farce:
“I suffocated, felt being squashed and raped.”
Now I have a fairly good idea why I had that
bizarre, seemingly disproportionate reaction. If
I simply name it here the reader is not likely
to be convinced. I also have a point to make
that is better conveyed by an example.
Let us imagine that the lecture about the West-TOB
is given by a man who is not a priest. The
context of Christian mystical theology is
removed. He says “I, John Smith, am the
bridegroom of the Church. I am not a priest but
I went to a seminary. There they make priests to
inseminate congregations; this is why a place is
called a “seminary”. ‘Song of Songs’ is about
good sex, read it to your wives – it is good for
foreplay. And also, do not forget that coitus
interruptus is a sin! Remember how Onan did it?
– I will remind you, like that, and like this,
and like that… Yes! And watch out for your
fertile periods, old hens!”
Sounds comical. Compare that to the real
encounter then. I will retell it now, putting
the words and actions of the lecturer together
and interpreting them symbolically. It is not me
who brings the symbolic interpretation to the
situation; it is the priest who is, apart from
being a man, also a symbol, especially when he
is dressed accordingly and even more so in the
ecclesial environment. With keeping all that in
a mind see how the picture changes.
A Catholic priest
dressed according to his status
proclaims to the ecclesia (a group of Catholic
believers) that he is the Bridegroom of the
Church i.e. he takes upon himself the celebrated
title of Jesus Christ, “Christ the Bridegroom”,
of the Church and of each individual’s soul. By
doing that he becomes Christ, symbolically, just
like he does during the Eucharist – this is the
only context which actually sanctions his
becoming such a symbol. In the case of the
Eucharist he does not proclaim anything, it is
given by the Mass itself; here he does so
outside of that context hence he needs to
announce it. Being now “Christ” he then states
that his vocation is to inseminate the
congregation. It means that Christ now is turned
into “an inseminator” [albeit spiritual, at that
stage]. An action (sacrificial love) of Our Lord
towards a believer thus becomes a [spiritual]
ejaculation into him. Then he engages in
foreplay with the audience unfolding, in his
take, “the centrefold of the Bible”, ‘Song of
Songs’. Apart from titillating the audience,
this also pulls God into a human bed so to
speak. It is the end of the pure relationship of
the soul (as bride) with her true Bridegroom,
Christ. The message: “What you knew before is
romantic nonsense, some shy kisses – now I will
show you the real thing!” The theme of semen
then is picked up again and developed in the
detailed discourse about the sin of Onan. This
action, taken out of context, is just obscene
but within the context it serves as something
that gives the “physical reality” to the
previously “spiritual insemination”, enforcing
the notion of “Christ the inseminator” even
more.
There is no difference between these two
situations, in what was said. The only
difference is that in the second case there is a
symbolic figure, a priest who gives the ideas of
the West-TOB their symbolic meaning. He does it
via his words i.e. referring to himself as
the Bridegroom of the Church and also via
simply being a priest; this aspect is
highlighted by his priestly robe. It is the
latter that allows him to “pull off” the former
statement, because of the reference to his role
as Christ the High Priest during the Eucharist.
Remove the notion of “priest as Bridegroom” and
the episode loses all its potency – that potency
I admit will be entirely lost on non-Christians
or even on non-Orthodox and non-Catholics and on
those who know little or nothing about Christian
mysticism that is all about the Beloved, Christ
the Bridegroom. It also makes full sense only in
the context of ecclesia, the Church that is the
Bride of Christ.
Hence, being considered from the angle of that
knowledge, the actions of a priest, can be read
symbolically like this: an imposter of Christ
attempted to corrupt His Bride, the Church,
profaned Christ’s sacrificial love for her and
then raped her.
And finally, a
personal touch. The indecency of the discourse
made me physically suffer
and that fact was clearly visible via my words
and gestures which conveyed disdain, disgust and
protest. It did not stop the priest however and
he went on with the same topic, up to the climax
of his discourse. This gives the whole story the
subjective sense of violation; being done via
the sexualized content, it can be defined as
“verbal sexual violation”. It is more
understandable then why I wrote in my notes:
“I suffocated, felt being squashed and raped.”
And later on:
“The shock was not because of the outwardly
matters but because of the inner reality which I
did not understand on a conscious level yet (now
I do). It was all about “the Bride of Christ
being raped”.
The result of that encounter was quite
unexpected. I was plagued by an irrational fear
of sexual violation and also by the mental image
of a fake Christ, The Imposter.
The sight of the real Christ on the icons
triggered fear in me and I gradually grew numb
to Him. To my astonishment, I seemed to exhibit
typical signs of being abused – sexually abused
albeit metaphysically. As it happened, at
that time the Church was dealing with the
aftermath of child sexual abuse scandals yet
again. It suddenly became clear to me what makes
child sexual abuse, when it takes a place within
the Church, a true pinnacle of evil. It is not
that a priest “does not live what he preaches”,
along the lines of the common wisdom of this
world. It is not even what only a Christian can
comprehend and be horrified by, that a priest
partakes Christ in communion and then rapes –
non-priests partake and rape or partake and
murder and it is not yet a pinnacle of evil
although it comes close. It is that a priest
symbolically becomes Christ during the
Eucharist, distributes that very Christ among
the faithful, and then rapes one of those to
whom he gave Christ, often in the proximity of
the altar. Being a symbolic figure, he brings
into what is already an evil action something I
can only define as “the triumph of inferno over
the Church”, the symbolic rape of the Church.
But this is not all. Being a father figure, by
the nature of his vocation and by his official
title, he brings into this sexual abuse a
distinctive flavour of incest. Symbolically, in
him the imposter, “Christ the rapist” and
“Father the rapist” come together. This unplugs
the bottle of wild associations like “father
figure – God the Father” together with “Black
Mass”, “children sacrifices” and so on which
naturally pull the mind away from Christianity
and back to the dark mysteries of the dawn of
humanity like fertility cults and so on. And
then a mind which is already troubled enough by
all those associations is presented with a
striking similarity between the god of primitive
fertility cults, that is, sex and god preached
by the West-TOB.
The similarity between the West-TOB and the
fertility cults was discussed in ‘A pure gaze of
lust’ hence there is no need to repeat the
argument. I only wish to note briefly another
strange feature of the West-TOB, that while
speaking much about “sex oriented towards
procreation” it is somehow silent about its
fruit, children. Neither does it discuss the
relationship between parents and children;
“responsible parenthood” is understood strictly
as an issue of birth control. This
depersonalisation and zero family relationships
creates an even stronger impression of
similarity with fertility cults.
However, for now I would like to make quite an
outrageous move. Namely, to consider some of
the details of the ‘Gnostic Mass’ set forth by
Aleister Crowly.
Phallus, Candle, Lance
I am not sure how to satisfactory explain to the
reader how I ended up looking into the “golden
standard” of Satanism and, even more so, why
what I found there made me keep looking further.
If I say that the way the West-TOB treats
Christian symbols reminded me the way
contemporary Gnosticism/Satanism does it and
therefore “the West-TOB is Satanic” I would
probably fall into the category of the Bible
bashers who consider the depiction of
fleur-de-lis ornament decorating the floors of
the Catholic churches to be an ample proof of
theirs conviction that the Catholic church is
“Satanic”.
The matching details of two phenomena prove
nothing by themselves, unlike the similarity of
the spirit of the phenomena. However, while the
details do not prove anything the way those
details are organised and used usually reveals
something about their author i.e. the spirit
which I would define as “the spirit of an
attitude, methods, and purposes”. For example:
“The
fact that the Blessed Mother's womb became
fruitful indicates that a masculine act of
giving life occurred. It doesn't have to be in
the natural order of sexual intercourse any more
than we have to think that God had intercourse
with our mothers to give us spiritual life. But,
the marital embrace is an earthly SIGN of
life-giving love which points to the spiritual
life-giving love that God bestows on us.
I still do not understand why this cannot all
apply to the Easter vigil liturgy. If the candle
is a symbol of Christ on the Cross, which is the
marriage bed on which Christ consummates His
marriage to His Bride where He gives His
spiritual seminal fluid to her, wouldn't it make
sense that there would be some sort of phallic
imagery there? Rahner and Bux use the terms
procreative and fertilize which are both
masculine actions. Phallic images denote the
masculine act of fertilizing since they are used
in relation to crops and animals as well as
human fertility.”
I went a bit ahead though. I must state here
plainly that, being an ex-occultist I found it
startling that the West-TOB discourses would
bring to my mind lines from the occult
literature I had studied in the past. And not
just lines but the vague, general spirit of
Gnosticism which, while operating under
Christian symbols and names, is making out of
them something else. That “something else” is
most noticeable in its take on “someone else”,
Jesus Christ.
Here is an example of “something being not
exactly right” taken from ‘The Perfect
Matrimony’ by Samuel Aun Veor. It is
deliberately lengthy because the length is
necessary for the full effect of “immersing”
into modern Gnosis. I italicized the
notions which overlap with the West-TOB, at
least by association.
“The betrothal of the Soul and the Lamb is the
greatest feast of the Soul. That Great Lord of
Light enters her. He becomes human, while she
becomes divine. From this mixture of divine and
human develops that, which the Adorable so aptly
calls: “The Son of Man.”
When the Internal Christ enters the Soul, He is
transformed into Her. He is transformed into She
and She into Him. The Alchemists say that we
must transform the Moon into the Sun. The Moon
is the Soul.
The Sun is the Christ. The transformation of the
Moon into the Sun is only possible with the
Fire, and this can only be lit in the amorous
connubium of the Perfect Matrimony.
The Son of Man is born of Water and Fire. Water
is the Semen. Fire is the Spirit. God shines
upon the Perfect Couple.
The semen is the astral liquid of man.
In the semen is the Astral Light. The semen is
the key of all powers and the key to all
empires.”
The Bible also has many allusions to the
phallic cult. The oath from the time of the
Patriarch Abraham was taken by the Jews by
placing their hand beneath the thigh; that is,
on the sacred member. The Feast of the
Tabernacles was an orgy similar to the famous
Saturnalia of the Romans. The rite of
circumcision is totally phallic.
We find much phallicism in Christianity.
The circumcision of Jesus, the feast of
Epiphany, the Corpus Christi etc, are
phallic festivals inherited from the holy Pagan
religions. The dove, symbol of the Holy
Spirit and of the voluptuous Venus Aphrodite, is
always represented as the phallic instrument
used by the Holy Spirit to impregnate the Virgin
Mary.
“The phallic cult is terribly divine. The
phallic cult is scientifically transcendental
and
profoundly philosophical.
The Era of Aquarius is aleady approaching and
then even laboratories will discover the
energetic and mystical principles of the
phallus and uterus.”
“It is impossible to receive the initiations of
the Major Mysteries without the phallic cult and
without Sexual Magic.
Many single students receive the initiations of
the Minor Mysteries in their superlative and
transcendental consciousness when they are
chaste. Nevertheless, the initiations of Major
Mysteries cannot be attained without Sexual
Magic and Kundalini.
Sex is the foundation stone of the family,
because without it the family could not exist.
Sex is the foundation stone of man because
without it man could not come into existence.
Sex is the foundation stone of the Universe
because without it the Universe could not exist.
The force of the Holy Spirit must return inwards
and upwards. It is urgent that the sexual forces
are sublimated to the heart.
In this magnetic centre these forces are mixed
with the forces of the Son, to rise to the
superior worlds. Only the person who completely
develops Kundalini is totally christified. Only
the person who is christified can incarnate the
Father. The Son is one with the Father and the
Father is one with the Son. No one reaches the
Father but through the Son. Thus it is written.
The forces of the Father, the Son and the Holy
Spirit descend, to later return inwards and
upwards. This is Law.
The energies of the Holy Spirit descend to the
sexual organs. The energies of the Son descend
to the heart, and the energies of the Father, to
the mind.
We return via the energies of the Holy Spirit,
and on this return there are marvellous
encounters. In the heart we meet the Christ and
in the mind, the Father. These encounters
signify the return in wards and up wards. Thus
we pass beyond the fourth, fifth and sixth
dimensions of space. Then we liberate ourselves
completely.
The four Gospels are really four texts of
Alchemy and White Magic.
Initiation begins
with the transmutation of the water of life
(semen) into the Wine of Light of the
Alchemists.
This miracle is realized at the Wedding of
Canaan (sic!); always in wedlock.
The four Gospels can only be understood with the
key of Sexual Magic and the Perfect Matrimony.
Christ can do nothing without the Snake. This
only develops, evolves and progresses by
practicing Sexual Magic.
All the priests of all religions, teachers of
all schools, the worshippers of Christ, the
lovers of Wisdom, can traverse the Path of the
Perfect Matrimony. The Synthesis harms no one
and benefits all. This is the Doctrine of the
Synthesis. This is the Doctrine of the New Era.
We, the members of all schools, religions,
sects, orders etc., would do well to agree on
the basis of the Perfect Matrimony as the
foundation for a new civilization based on the
Wisdom of the Serpent. Jesus was a complete
man. Jesus was not castrated as depicted by
many religions. Jesus followed the Path of the
Perfect Matrimony. Jesus formed the Christ
within himself by practicing Sexual Magic with
his wife.”
I could sum up the similarities between this
modern Gnostic text and the West-TOB, like the
insistence on the “phallic underlining” of the
Gospels, interpretation of the Gospels mysteries
as sexual, preoccupation with “seminal fluid”
and so on but I am afraid doing that would cause
the reader to come too close to the texts, so to
speak, concentrating on the details instead of
grasping the whole. Instead I ask the reader to
step back as if he is looking at an
Impressionist painting so the rough brushwork
would blend and make a whole – an impression.
To aid this process, I will provide two sets of
quotes, with two quotes in each set.
1.
“Initiation
begins with the transmutation of the water of
life (semen) into the Wine of Light of the
Alchemists.
This miracle is realized at the Wedding of
Canaan (sic!); always in wedlock.
The
four Gospels can only be understood with the key
of Sexual Magic and the Perfect Matrimony.”
“If
the [Easter] candle is a symbol of Christ on the
Cross, which is the marriage bed on which Christ
consummates His marriage to His Bride where He
gives His spiritual seminal fluid to her,
wouldn't it make sense that there would be some
sort of phallic imagery there?
2.
The Alchemists say that we must transform the
Moon into the Sun. The Moon is the Soul.
The Sun is the Christ. The transformation of the
Moon into the Sun is only possible with the
Fire, and this can only be lit in the amorous
connubium of the Perfect Matrimony.
The Son of Man is born of Water and Fire. Water
is the Semen. Fire is the Spirit. God shines
upon the Perfect Couple.
The semen is the astral liquid of man. In the
semen is the Astral Light. The semen is the key
of all powers and the key to all empires.”
“I forgot to mention that Christ's baptism in
the Jordan is also part of that metaphysical
sexual pattern. Whether carnal or virginal, it's
the same pattern.
A husband 'knows' his wife.
The flame (or Christ candle) plunges into the
font.
Christ plunges into the river Jordan.
The seed falls into the ground.
The Holy Spirit hovers over the waters.
The Holy Spirit overshadows the womb of Mary.
The Persons of the Holy Trinity all indwell each
other in an eternally fruitful and blessed
union.”
The spirit here is so similar (if not identical)
that it seemed even to cause the similarity of
the style, of the modern gnostic and of the
West-TOB follower. An interpretation of the
Baptism of Our Lord as “metaphysical sexual
pattern” appears to be a twin of the gnostic
approach “We find much phallicism in
Christianity. The circumcision of Jesus,
the feast of Epiphany, the Corpus Christi
etc, are phallic festivals inherited from the
holy Pagan religions.” But, while it is
transparent why a gnostic = occultist = pagan is
trying to find in Christianity phallic symbolism
of “holy pagan religions” it is impossible to
understand why the Christian authors of the
quotes above are doing just the same. Surely a
phallus can add something to the mystery of the
Resurrection only for someone who has no idea
what the Resurrection (and whole Christianity)
is. Is this an answer then?
The same sense of “something familiar” that led
me from the West-TOB to Gnosticism brought me
then to the ‘Gnostic Mass’ by Allister Crowley.
Everyone knows that Black (Satanic) Mass is
intentionally a mockery of Catholic Mass hence
it keeps the same structure and makes use of
Christian symbols and actions by the priest
turning them into blasphemy. Below is the
‘Thelemic Creed’, to illustrate how it is done:
“I believe in one secret and ineffable LORD; and
in one
Star in the Company of Stars of whose fire we
are created, and to which we shall return;
and in one Father of Life, Mystery of Mystery,
in His name CHAOS, the sole viceregent of the
Sun upon the Earth; and in one Air the nourisher
of all that breathes.
And I believe in one Earth, the Mother of us
all, and in one Womb wherein all men are
begotten, and wherein they shall rest, Mystery
of Mystery, in Her name BABALON.
And I believe in the Serpent and the Lion,
Mystery of Mystery, in His name BAPHOMET.
And I believe in one Gnostic and Catholic Church
of Light, Life, Love and Liberty, the Word of
whose Law is THELEMA.
And I believe in the communion of Saints.
And, forasmuch as meat and drink are transmuted
in us daily into spiritual substance,
I believe in the Miracle of the Mass.
And I confess one Baptism of Wisdom, whereby we
accomplish the Miracle of Incarnation.
And I confess my life one, individual, and
eternal that was, and is, and is to come.
AUMGN. AUMGN. AUMGN.”
Other texts of the Catholic Mass are similarly
turned into blasphemy. Two key figures of
Gnostic Mass, Priest and Priestess perform a
ritual (symbolic) sexual act. During the
preparatory part, the priestess dresses the
priest in a scarlet robe and then puts a crown
on his head. The priestess then undresses behind
the veil. During the Gnostic Mass the priests
and priestess engage in various symbolic actions
with the Lance. That the context of the Gnostic
Mass makes a mockery of the tool of the Passion
is self-evident; it is enhanced by its
interpretation of the Lance as the Phallus and
by acting this interpretation out:
“Kneeling, she [Priestess] takes the Lance,
between her open hands, and runs them up and
down upon the shaft eleven times, very gently.”
What stood out to me in the Gnostic Mass was
something I have not known before: it’s murky
references to the Bride and Christ the
Bridegroom. The Priest dresses in a “scarlet
robe and a crown” bringing to mind the scarlet
robe and the crown of Christ during the Passion.
The depiction of Him wearing them is called
‘Christ the Bridegroom” or ‘Ecce Homo’. Dressed
[let us assume] as Christ the Bridegroom the
priest approaches his “virginal Bride”, the
priestess who is undressing while proclaiming
the lines which immediately brought to my mind
‘Song of Songs’:
“But to love me is better than all things: if
under the night-stars in the desert thou
presently burnest mine incense before me,
invoking me with a pure heart, and the Serpent
flame therein, thou shalt come a little to lie
in my bosom. For one kiss wilt thou then be
willing to give all; but whoso gives one
particle of dust shall lose all in that hour. Ye
shall gather goods and store of women and
spices; ye shall wear rich jewels; ye shall
exceed the nations of the earth in splendour &
pride; but always in the love of me, and so
shall ye come to my joy. I charge you earnestly
to come before me in a single robe, and covered
with a rich headdress. I love you! I yearn to
you! Pale or purple, veiled or voluptuous, I who
am all pleasure and purple, and drunkenness of
the innermost sense, desire you. Put on the
wings, and arouse the coiled splendour within
you: come unto me! To me! To me! Sing the
rapturous love-song unto me! Burn to me
perfumes! Wear to me jewels! Drink to me, for I
love you! I love you! I am the blue-lidded
daughter of sunset; I am the naked brilliance of
the voluptuous night-sky. To me! To me!”
Yes, it definitely is ‘Song of Songs’, a Satanic
version i.e. “sex strong as death”. Hence I
conclude that the “scarlet robe” and “crown”
signify Christ the Bridegroom who, during
‘Gnostic Mass’, de-virginizes his “virgin bride”
– and then the result of this act, the
“communion” is distributed [there is no
contradiction between the previous statement
about “Christ being killed by the Lance =
phallus because it is the Christ of Christianity
who is killed and the Gnostic Mass shows “the
real Christ who screws”]. There is of course
absolutely nothing surprising in the fact that
the Satanic Mass blasphemes via making out of
the loving relationship between Christ the
Bridegroom and His Church an act of sexual
intercourse, turning the Passion and Crucifixion
into sexual intercourse as well. What is
surprising is that the West-TOB, by bringing sex
into the Liturgy seems to achieving the
identical result. Like here:
“So, is
your sex life improving? It should for those who
have really understood and embraced the season
of Lent. We said last time in this column that
the season of Lent was great for our sexual
lives. Now it gets even better!
… The
events of the week leading up to Christ’s death
on the Cross are like a mystical “foreplay.” In
fact, Jesus is even stripped naked during this
process. What happens on the Cross is not just
the death of Christ but the consummation of a
mystical marriage between God and His Bride.
This is why Christ looks down from the Cross at
his mother and calls her “Woman.” He echoes the
name Adam gave to Eve because in this climactic
moment, Christ becomes the new Adam and his
Mother becomes the new Eve.
… This is why in my
church we sing with great exuberance on the days
of Pascha (EasterJ “Christ emerges from the tomb
like a bridegroom from the bridal chamber and
fills the women with great joy!” Wow! Now is
that sexual or what!?”
I find it is very interesting that the text of
the Gnostic Mass and the standard discourse of
the West-TOB on the same topic [any Mass
re-enacts Christ’s Passion and Sacrifice]
somehow clarify each other. For example, a
standard West-TOB argument against the
accusation of indecency in putting together Our
Lord and sex, that the sexual intercourse
described here is mystical, cannot withstand the
fact that the sexual intercourse performed
during the Gnostic Mass is mystical as well.
Another argument, that “there is nothing
shameful about sex” and therefore, that it is
fine to bring it into the Liturgy does not work
when put together with the fact that Satanists
have a very positive view of sex, in fact
probably much more positive than most Catholics.
Certainly they are not burdened by any sense of
guilt regarding sex; that sense of guilt the
West-TOB is seeking to release the Catholics
from; hence sex in the Gnostic Mass cannot be
viewed as something shameful in itself. It seems
to me then that Satanists use sex in conjunction
with Christian (and other) symbols for two
reasons:
1) to perform the “sex magick” and also to make
a reference to some scraps of ancient dark
mysteries/Kabbala/Alchemy
2) “to blow Christianity off” by marrying it
with something that it cannot be married with.
Indeed, the discourse of Fr Loya about Christ’s
“mystical foreplay of Passion” successfully
wipes off the struggle, pain, self-sacrifice,
–
in one word, Passion itself and also death which
is being turned now into the “climatic moment”
of the consummation of the marriage. The
reference to the sexual life of believers which
the recollection of the Passion Week is supposed
to improve completes the “finishing-off” the
reality of the suffering and death of Our Lord.
The real Christ is literally “killed with the
phallus” as he is in the Gnostic Mass and then
the Church is presented with the Imposter, the
god of sex who “fills the women with great
joy”. Someone like “Jesus Christ” on the
“icon” ‘Jesus Christ the God of Dance’ by Fr
Lentz.
This could be the end of this paper if I was
interested only in establishing the nature of
the West-TOB. My original quest, as the reader
may recall, was not so much the West-TOB as an
abstract phenomenon but to understand its impact
on my prayer life and my connection with Jesus
Christ. What I wrote above still could not
explain my strange fear of Our Lord
satisfactory/completely. While the Gnostic Mass
made it clear to me why I was having the
obsession about “a fake Christ, the Imposter”
ever since my encounter with the West-TOB priest
it could not explain why I continued being
fearful even after this clarification.
Furthermore, now not only icons of Christ
triggered my fear but also the writings of
Christian mystics which, before the encounter,
were my staple.
The solution of the enigma came from the special
issue of ‘The Journal of Thelemic Studies’, ‘The
Mysteries of the Gnostic Mass’:
“The union of
the Lance and the Cup as the Father and Mother
united (the Father “dying” in orgasm in the
Mother; the ego is dissolved in the Absolute in
Crossing the Abyss; “'Jesus,' slain with the
Lance, whose blood is collected in a Cup”) are
the Greater Mysteries. The Lesser Mysteries are
those of the Sword and Disk. The Sword and the
Disk are the Mind and Body and refer to the
Miracle of Incarnation, the cycle of
Birth-Life-Death that is celebrated in O.T.O.'s
Man of Earth degrees, which Crowley connects
with “On, Oannes, Noah, and the like.”
It is not that the mix of symbols “explained”
anything – something in it unexpectedly brought
me back to the setting of a Catholic cathedral
and me, among others, listening to the homily on
the day of Our lady of Sorrows. The priest was
the same West-TOB priest of my first encounter.
And, strangely enough, when I put the two
together, I understood why my relationship with
the Lord went to almost nothing.
The second encounter
I probably have to
remind the reader about the meaning of the feast
Our Lady of Sorrows first. Significantly, if
before the second encounter I would simply
convey it with my own words now I somehow feel
compelled to back up my understanding with the
regular/official/traditional understanding of
the Church and, even better, to provide the
quote from the official Catholic resource:
“The title, Our Lady of Sorrows, given to our
Blessed Mother focuses on her intense suffering
and grief during the passion and death of our
Lord. Traditionally, this suffering was not
limited to the passion and death event; rather,
it comprised the seven dolors or seven sorrows
of Mary, which were foretold by the Priest
Simeon who proclaimed to Mary, This child
[Jesus] is destined to be the downfall and the
rise of many in Israel, a sign that will be
opposed and you yourself shall be pierced with a
sword so that the thoughts of many hearts may be
laid bare (Luke 2:34-35). These seven sorrows of
our Blessed Mother included the flight of the
Holy Family into Egypt; the loss and finding of
the child Jesus in the Temple; Mary's meeting of
Jesus on His way to Calvary; Mary's standing at
the foot of the cross when our Lord was
crucified; her holding of Jesus when He was
taken down from the cross; and then our Lord's
burial. In all, the prophesy of Simeon that a
sword would pierce our Blessed Mother's heart
was fulfilled in these events. For this reason,
Mary is sometimes depicted with her heart
exposed and with seven swords piercing it. More
importantly, each new suffering was received
with the courage, love, and trust that echoed
her fiat, let it be done unto me according to
Thy word, first uttered at the Annunciation. (…)
Interestingly, in 1482, the feast was officially
placed in the Roman Missal under the title of
Our Lady of Compassion, highlighting the great
love our Blessed Mother displayed in suffering
with her Son. The word compassion derives from
the Latin roots cum and patior which means to
suffer with. Our Blessed Mother's sorrow
exceeded anyone else's since she was the mother
of Jesus, who was not only her Son but also her
Lord and Savior; she truly suffered with her
Son. (…)
The key image here is our Blessed Mother
standing faithfully at the foot of the cross
with her dying Son: the Gospel of St. John
recorded, Seeing His mother there with the
disciple whom He loved, Jesus said to His
mother, 'Woman, there is your son.' In turn He
said to the disciple, 'There is your mother.'
(John 19:26-27). The Second Vatican Council in
its Dogmatic Constitution on the Church wrote,
A...She stood in keeping with the divine plan,
suffering grievously with her only-begotten Son.
There she united herself, with a maternal heart,
to His sacrifice, and lovingly consented to the
immolation of this Victim which she herself had
brought forth (#58).
St. Bernard (d. 1153) wrote, Truly, O Blessed
Mother, a sword has pierced your heart.... He
died in body through a love greater than anyone
had known. She died in spirit through a love
unlike any other since His (De duodecim
praerogatativs BVM).
Focusing on the compassion of our Blessed
Mother, our Holy Father, Pope John Paul II,
reminded the faithful, Mary Most Holy goes on
being the loving consoler of those touched by
the many physical and moral sorrows which
afflict and torment humanity. She knows our
sorrows and our pains, because she too suffered,
from Bethlehem to Calvary. 'And they soul too a
sword shall pierce.' Mary is our Spiritual
Mother, and the mother always understands her
children and consoles them in their troubles.
Then, she has that specific mission to love us,
received from Jesus on the Cross, to love us
only and always, so as to save us! Mary consoles
us above all by pointing out the Crucified One
and Paradise to us! (1980).
Therefore, as we honor our Blessed Mother, our
Lady of Sorrows, we honor her as the faithful
disciple and exemplar of faith. Let us pray as
we do in the opening prayer of the Mass for this
feast day: Father, as your Son was raised on the
cross, His Mother Mary stood by Him, sharing His
sufferings. May your Church be united with
Christ in His suffering and death and so come to
share in His rising to new life. Looking to the
example of Mary, may we too unite our sufferings
to our Lord, facing them with courage, love, and
trust.”
After establishing a quite obvious fact that
follows even from the name of the feast itself,
i.e. that the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows is
about the pain of the sorrows = the unbearable
pain of the Mother watching her only Son dying
an exceedingly painful death the reader can
appreciate my sense of unreality when the
priest, after singing ‘Stabat Mater Dolorosa’
said the following:
“Today we celebrate the feast of Our Lady of
Sorrows. On paintings the Virgin Mary is often
depicted standing at the cross with the chalice
in which She is collecting the blood streaming
from her Son’s side. There is a rich symbolism
in today’s feast. The Virgin Mary is the symbol
of the Church. The Church is the Bride. On the
cross Christ consummated the mystical marriage
with His Bride. Mary is the Bride of the Lamb,
Christ. Christ calls her “Woman”, from being his
Mother she is becoming “Woman”. Mary is the New
Eve; Christ is the New Adam. From their union
the Church is born. Those symbols are worthy to
think about.”
I did not need to
think: if the Virgin Mary, Mother of Christ is
the Bride of Christ that makes her the Bride of
her own Son. If the Cross was “a marriage bed”
then, following this line of thought, it is
incest.
I predict the argument that the marriage is
“mystical” [and “virginal” as Cristopher West
adds elsewhere]. The words “mystical marriage”
however cannot remove the connotation of incest
inherent in this context because the absolute
taboo against “a mother engaging in sex with her
son” is engrained in normal human conscience to
such a degree that any hint to that possibility
causes a sense of disgust and horror [and also
the rejection of everything that is connected
with that incest].
Similarly, the words of Christ on the Cross
“woman, behold your son; [son], behold your
mother”, which the West-TOB stresses to smoothly
move on to the “mystical marriage of the New
Adam and the New Eve”addressed to Apostle John, cannot remove
the connotation of incest because they cannot
alter the fact that the Virgin Mary is the
Mother of God. The words of Christ indicate
that:
1) on the earthly level, He wishes His beloved
disciple to take care of Her because She does
not have anyone else
2) on the metaphysical level, those words
indicate that now, in His death that is about to
take a place, He is acting as God, atoning for
humankind, that is He is no longer just the Son
of Mary. And yet He is. [If he wasn’t it would
undermine His humanity, the ground reality of
His Incarnation, Death and Resurrection and all
Christian dogma including the Atonement. He
would effectively become the Christ of
Gnosticism.] She is His Mother for all eternity
hence any hint of her “spousal” relationship
with Christ [of whatever kind] always carries
the air of incest with it. This is probably why,
although indeed Christian mystics speak of the
Virgin Mary as “Bride of the Holy Spirit” or
even (much rarer) “the Spouse of God” they (and
the Church as a whole) never link Her directly
with Jesus Christ otherwise than as Mother and
Son. This is evident in the reading and hymns of
the feast of Our lady of Sorrows which are about
the pain of the Mother (‘Stabat Mater
Dolorosa”), the Sacrifice of Her Son (Death of
the Lord and Eucharist in the Letter of Ap. Paul
to the Corinthians) and also about the
relationship of Mother and Son (the Gospel of Ap.
John). This is precisely why the words of the
West-TOB priest were such a shock to me.
There is something else disturbing in all that:
even if I attribute the insistence of the priest
on the existence of “many paintings depicting
the Virgin Mary collecting the blood of her Son
into the chalice” to his lack of knowledge of
Christian art I cannot get rid of the gnawing
thought: why is that that he cannot see, from a
purely human point of view, the utmost
artificiality of such a scene? How can one
expect a mother to hold a chalice collecting the
blood of her child while a Roman soldier is
piercing the flesh of her flesh? I imagine that
all she could think of at that moment would be
her son, not some “ecclesia” [which, according
to the West-TOB is meanwhile being born from
“God’s imperishable seed” (Christ’s) and “the
New Eve” (her)]. It appears that the artists
shared my opinion because such depictions do not
exist. The blood, if it is collected at all, is
gathered by an angel or the symbolic female
figure representing Ecclesia. Aha! – may say the
reader, but the Virgin Mary is the symbol of the
Ecclesia, is she not? Yes, but somehow she is
never depicted as “an abstract figure” like the
figure of Ecclesia. What we have in Christian
art are two distinct types of images, of the
Crucifixion and of the symbolic representation
of the mystery of the Eucharist. The former
shows the Virgin Mary standing under the Cross
together with the Apostle John and St Mary
Magdalen (with other women) who support her
because she is unable to stand on her own
beholding such a sight. Occasionally an angel
collecting the blood of Christ is depicted.
The
latter is, essentially, a vision of the
crucified Christ during the Eucharist. The best
known of such images is ‘The Mass of St Gregory’
that shows Pope Gregory contemplating the Man of
Sorrows during the Mass. Another and much less
known is the vision of St Hildegard of Bingen,
which shows the Crucifixion together with other
Mysteries of God. The female figure symbolising
Ecclesia collects the blood of Christ (like in
the vision of St Hildegard of Bingen) flowing
from His side into the Chalice; below the
Crucifixion the same figure is shown kneeling in
adoration before the altar where the Chalice is
now being placed. The figure of Ecclesia here is
in the place of St Gregory.
The figures, of the Virgin Mary and of Ecclesia,
never overlap/interchange in the context of the
Crucifixion; if anything, they are deliberately
separated, via highlighting the role of the
Virgin Mary in the Incarnation and her motherly
love and sacrifice, like this very common
juxtaposition of the Virgin with Her Child
(‘Nativity’) and Crucifixion:
Apart from theological reasons for that, I am
quite sure it is so because the purpose of
Christian art is to express the truth, both of
God and of men. Christianity is not some
abstract [Gnostic] teaching but the faith of
Incarnation, meaning there cannot be anything
contrary to the normal human psyche as it is
intended by God. While, abstractly speaking, one
could depict the Virgin Mary collecting the
blood of her Son in a chalice “because she is a
symbol of Ecclesia” such a depiction would
always have something very odd about it because,
to a healthy mind, the sight of a mother
collecting the blood of her child for the
purpose of distributing it among others conveys
not the Christian truth but something else,
quite opposite to what the Crucifixion and
Eucharist are supposed to mean. It is so because
such a depiction would deny the normal humanity
expressed in the relationship of the Mother and
her Son.
It is probably fitting to add here this strange
numbness to the realities of the “parent –
child” relationship of Virgin Mary and Her Son
appear to be entirely in a harmony with the
West-TOB take on fatherhood as “insemination”
and motherhood as “being inseminated”, phallus
and womb (as it already was stated in the
beginning, the West-TOB speaks neither about
born children as persons nor about the
relationship of their parents with them, as
anything personal). In this context, and also in
the context of the extreme and senseless
sexualisation of Christian theology, the
transformation of “mystical marriage” into
“mystical incest” seems to be a logical end of
the development of the West-TOB.
The end of Christian mysticism
As it was stated in the very beginning, this
paper is the record of my desperate attempts to
identify what first damaged and then completely
blew off my relationship with Our Lord. In case
the rather heavy material of the previous
chapter obliterated an already emerging answer I
will sum it up: the transformation of Christ the
Bridegroom into a “sexually obsessed fake
Christ, the Imposter” during the first encounter
with the West-TOB embodied by a priest
caused the cracks in the relationship; the
notion of incest, being attached to the
“mystical marriage” during the second encounter,
ruined the relationship completely. The
mechanics are easy to understand if we turn to
the true Christian mysticism.
A human soul,
according to the Christian mystical tradition,
is a bride of Christ. In baptism, she is
betrothed to Christ; life after baptism is the
run towards her Beloved, towards an ever fuller
possession of Him (a process that lasts for
eternity, according to St Gregory of Nyssa).
The term “mystical marriage”, apart from
conveying the supernatural reality that is
“somewhat like human spousal union but
immeasurably more and not the same”,
also signifies the perfect conformity of her
will with the will of the Beloved that is only
possible through sacrificial love. As a result
of this conformity with Jesus Christ, a human
person enters into a blissful eternal communion
with all the Persons of the Blessed Trinity,
something that numerous Christian saints were
granted already in this life.
Both the language of
mystical theology and the realities it conveys
may sound “esoteric” and appear to have little
to do with the life of a common Christian. The
mystics however do not say anything different
from the statement made by Jesus Christ Himself,
“Anyone who loves me will keep my word, and my
Father will love him, and we shall come to him
and make our home in him.”
As for the language of the mystics, it is also
entirely scriptural, that is of the ‘Song of
Songs’.
Basically, the whole body of writings of various
Christian mystics boils down to the following:
God touches their hearts; they fall in love with
Him; being on fire, they run after Him; this
run, punctuated with the moments of reunion with
God, would stretch towards what is called
“mystical marriage”. It is a passionate love
story, between God and man; being such it is
fitting to write about it in terms of the love
story of human lovers. A mystic’s soul falls in
love with Jesus Christ, her Beloved Bridegroom,
both human and divine and through Him she is
brought to the loving union with the other two
Persons of the Most Holy Trinity. It is only
natural then that ‘Song of Songs’, which is the
song between Bride and her Bridegroom, a soul
(or Israel, in the Old Testament) and Christ (or
God, ibid) and also the love story of human
lovers is the staple of all who desire God.
It is
also natural for those who long for intimacy
with God and find help and inspiration in the
writing of the mystics to begin adapting their
language, including symbols, and to begin
thinking accordingly because mystical writings
are anything but “academic”; they are practical
maps of the journey with God and to God. Even if
a person does not make use of the notion of
Christ the Bridegroom of his soul the bride in
his relationship with the Lord i.e. even if he
does not think about his relationship with
Christ along those lines this notion will
nevertheless convey to him something of the
nature (or taste) of the objective reality
behind those symbols. Our Lord, when he speaks
of Himself as Bridegroom, quite naturally
alludes to the meaning of the betrothal in the
ancient Israel. That is, the bride and
bridegroom are already promised and given to
each other but the marriage as such is not
consummated yet; all the other realities [“love
as strong as death” or even stronger than death,
in the case of Christ and a soul] apart from
consummation are already there. The spiritual
reality which the terms “Bride and Bridegroom”
convey is of both passionate love and purity,
and also of the security the Bride has in her
Bridegroom (as the Church has in Christ). I
repeat, this is something that one who regularly
reads Christian mystics becomes accustomed too,
as a glimpse into the reality of the love of
Christ for her soul and of what she may hope
to attain. Like this, expressed
by St John of the Cross:
One dark
night,
fired with love’s urgent longings
–
ah, the sheer grace!
–
I went out unseen,
my house being now all stilled.
…
O guiding night!
O night more lovely than a dawn!
O night that has united
the Lover with his beloved,
transforming the beloved in her
Lover.
It is,
as St John puts it, “songs of the soul that
rejoices in having reached the high state of
perfection, which is union with God, by the path
of spiritual negation”. To put it simply, it is
the joyous experience of the union with God a
soul was granted after long days of being
deprived of Him.
It is of
course an extremely exulted state. However, in
its meaning and aspirations it is not so
different from the experience of a Christian who
fasts and contemplates the Passion of Our Lord
during the bleak period of the Great Lent so
then he could die with Christ and be resurrected
by Him again and be united with Him in communion
[the most intimate union with Our Lord] on the
day of the Resurrection. Regarding which another
West-TOB author writes:
“So, is
your sex life improving? It should for those who
have really understood and embraced the season
of Lent. We said last time in this column that
the season of Lent was great for our sexual
lives. Now it gets even better!
. . . .
The events of the week leading up to Christ’s
death on the Cross are like a mystical
“foreplay.” In fact, Jesus is even stripped
naked during this process. What happens on the
Cross is not just the death of Christ but the
consummation of a mystical marriage between God
and His Bride. This is why Christ looks down
from the Cross at his mother and calls her
“Woman.” He echoes the name Adam gave to Eve
because in this climactic moment, Christ becomes
the new Adam and his Mother becomes the new Eve.
. . . .
This is why in my church we sing with great
exuberance on the days of Pascha (Easter)
“Christ emerges from the tomb like a bridegroom
from the bridal chamber and fills the women with
great joy!” Wow! Now is that sexual or what!?”
It feels unnatural to make a connection between
the two texts even by comparison because there
are no real points of comparison there apart
from the names: Christ, Bride, mystical marriage
and so on. There are two realities – true
Christian mysticism and the West-TOB’s
“something” or even Christianity and
“something”. I have no idea how to call it, but
one thing I know for sure: those two cannot be
combined. Even more so, they cannot be
accommodated by the same mind or, as a matter of
a fact, by the same Church. If the Church sees
the “the events of the [Passion] week leading
up to Christ’s death on the Cross are like a
mystical “foreplay” [during which] Jesus is even
stripped naked during this process” and
recognises in this description “One Whom her
soul loves” she cannot then miraculously turn
from the Whore-mode into the Bride-mode and
exult in her Divine Bridegroom, the Almighty,
the First and the Last, “one Who is coming on
the clouds; everyone will see Him, even those
who pierced Him, and all the races of the earth
will mourn over Him.” She really should make a
choice with whom she is.
The “priest factor”
I stated in the beginning of this paper that
“the encounters that followed after its
completion especially convinced me that the
West-TOB itself would never make a big impact at
me if I did not have several opportunities to
see it “embodied” and “in action”. Neither would
I be able to understand what is there that so
effectively blows off not only the intimacy of
God with a soul but also inserts into a soul the
overwhelming – and entirely “insane” – dread of
that intimacy.” Finally, we can turn to the
key-figure without which the West-TOB would be
doomed to remain, as it is often said to excuse
its existence within the Church (i.e. “who cares
about it?”), on the fringes and not known to the
common church-goer. That is, to the figure of
the priest.
I am absolutely convinced that, just as that
figure was indispensable for me to understand
the most important things about the West-TOB, it
was also indispensable for the “insemination” of
a congregation (as the West-TOB puts it) and for
the fact that that “the seeds” would fall on the
fertile soil, not dry, not shallow, and that no
birds of the air would be around.
The upper layer of my parable is quite obvious
I think, namely that the presence of the priest
who endorses the West-TOB ideas makes it much
more probable that a common believer will
encounter them. Given during a homily, in the
frame of Mass, the West-TOB ideas may easily
pass as Church teachings. In such a context they
are not likely to be questioned, by most
parishioners. Finally, the figure of the priest
has a natural air of authority about it and as
such gives an additional credibility to the
message thus making a bigger impact.
The next layer of the parable is the realm of
symbols. As it was shown here, the aftermath of
my two encounters with the West-TOB priest was
the invasion of my mind by the two notions, of
“metaphysical rape” [a fake Bridegroom,
the Imposter, rapes the Bride of Christ, the
Church] and of “metaphysical incest” [the
play of the West-TOB with the symbols of Bride
and Bridegroom, Mother and Son, in the context
of its preoccupation with “sex” acquired the
strong connotation of incest, between Virgin
Mary and Christ]. I am absolutely convinced
that, while I could see both notions of the
West-TOB in the writings of its authors, I would
never be affected by them to the degree I have
been. That is, I would never become irrationally
scared of “Christ the Imposter”, would never
have developed the symptoms of being sexually
abused, and – most importantly – would never
feel as if there was something forbidden,
terrible, dirty about intimacy with Our Lord and
by all means resist that intimacy. Finally, I
would never experience “the total destruction of
meaning” which somehow enabled me to understand
the experiences of the victims of child sexual
abuse within the Church. What blew my connection
with the Lord off was not the message of the
West-TOB by itself but the messenger which
embodied or acted the West-TOB out, the
priest.
Let us now play with the figures and symbols
like the West-TOB does.
Priest is the Father. The congregation are his
Children.
The father figure must not be sexualized;
neither must he sexualise his children and his
relationships with them. Priest/Father who acts
sexually (verbally in this case) towards his
Children engages in incest.
Priest/Father who conveys the connotation of
incest speaking of the relationship of
Mother/Virgin Mary and Son/Christ to his
Children engages in “double incest”, not just
introducing some “sexual aspect” (that would be
one) but also introducing the story of another
incest which he relays to his Children, of the
Son of God and His Mother.
Bad as it is, the play still can be enhanced.
Priest/Father who takes upon himself the title
Bridegroom/Son of God becomes thus Father/Son of
God who engages in incest with own Children/
Siblings while telling them about incest of Son
of God and His Mother in which he is involved as
well, being now the Son as well as the Father.
I.e., he now (symbolically) engages in incest
thrice: as Father to Children; as a teller about
incest of the Son of God with His Mother; by
participation in the latter, via assuming the
identity of the Bridegroom, the Son of God. I.e.
it is now him who engages in imaginary incest
with Mother of God.
The Priest hence “incarnates” the West-TOB
incest. It is one thing to read the blasphemous
poisonous nonsense about God and another – to
hear it in the context of the Church, as an
integral part of the Mass, between the readings
of the Gospels and the Eucharist, presented as
some “deeper teaching of the Church” by the
priest, the teacher and the icon of Christ – and
thus becoming, at the same time, an active
participant in the mystery of God and an object
of a sexually abusive action of the priest that
not only violates the faithful but also makes
out of Christ and His Mother something that they
are definitely not.
But is it not what the Gnostic Mass is about?
Definitely, apart from “sex magick” the Gnostic
Mass is about the mockery of Christianity and
Christ and His Mother, “the
union of the Lance and the Cup as the Father and
Mother united (the Father “dying” in orgasm in
the Mother; “'Jesus,' slain with the Lance,
whose blood is collected in a Cup”) are the
Greater Mysteries.”
There is a subtle difference though. The
Gnostic Mass kills “Jesus” symbolically, via the
penis (Lance) of Father who engages in a sexual
act with Mother. The West-TOB also symbolically
“kills” Christ with the penis of “sex” of a
couple, father and mother, meaning it destroys
God with sexualisation of God. The Gnostic Mass
did not go so far as to make “Father” into Son
and “Mother” into the Virgin Mary, to ensure
that the already dead Saviour would not rise
again.
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