Who are the virgins? · 29 April 2008
This post follows up on questions about my reference in Monday’s post.
Like I said, the virgins keep coming back. But it’s a good haunting now. Nothing sinister.
When I was small, they were phantoms of doom. The original story, from Matthew 25, is that they were ten. Five were wise, kept their lamps trimmed and burning like in the gorgeous old spiritual that turned into a blues song: Blind Wille Johnson version, Billy Childish version.
(The way the idea of waiting for the judgement plays in to the writing of this song I do not know, but the minor chords and the keening that come through the blues version—if not the dry, domesticated hymn I sang as a kid—make me imagine it was first sung in the fields of Dixie… pointing to a whole new, and better, idea of apocalypse. The tiiime is draaawing niiiigh….)
Unlike the wise virgins, the foolish five let their lamps go out. When a “bridegroom” comes to them he takes the wise five, marries them, and takes them behind the door. But he says to the others, who had let their flames go out: Verily I say unto you, I know you not.
Or more specifically: go to hell. So the straight interpretation of the story is obvious. Watch out because the judgement day is coming and if you don’t keep working out your salvation with fear and trembling you won’t get to have sex with Jesus like you know you want to. (Jesus is always having sex with the church in the gospels, and the clean interpretation of this is that it represents spiritual union of God and his community on earth). Given all this sex, maybe the judgement day version actually isn’t cut and dried like the mainstream church would have it...
In any case, all I care about anymore is the lamps and the flames they keep. Flame is “spirit,” whatever that is, all over the world all over time.
For example, staying with the Judeo-Christian tradition, here’s something wonderful from a book I do not like (Proverbs 20:17 KJV):
The spirit of a man (sic) is the candle of the Lord. Searching all the inward parts of the belly.
...The fire inside?
...Keep your lamp trimmed and burning.
...Stay awake.
That’s all it means.
I never thought of this simpler, more beautiful understanding of the virgins until I encountered Tolle talking about waiting as a kind if being present. It’s somewhere around page 60 of The Power of Now (which, please, is not the most amazing spiritual manifesto by a loooooooooong shot, but is interesting and a kind if inspiring so far as it goes). The satirical imp Tolle writes that the lamp’s flame is merely awareness in wait for the bridegroom of enlightenment.
Even that is more interpretation than I need, though.
The spirit is the candle of the “Lord…” Searching all the inward parts of the belly?
“Spirit” isn’t something “out there” though when I think of the lamps now… it’s just awareness. Which is just the spark that is here if I bother to tend it. So there's not much of a story hanging on to the little flame image anymore, even if the virgins keep coming back by association.
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Categories: astanga yoga
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Interesting connections. One other thought of amrita – the nectar of immortality. We often practice mritasana or death asana aka savasana. Of course, this school only acknowledges “take rest” as far as I know. So mrit is death and amrit is immortality. The amrita is said so flow from the palate or thereabouts down to the belly whereupon it is burned by the fire that presides there known as agni. Inversions are supposed to reverse this process and do something that I assume is good for the lifespan. (Different question: is living longer or forever really such a good thing?) Something to consider in the “25 breath” 30 second headstand that comes around every so often.
Did Jesus really say that a man could have 10 wives, but they need a working lamp to consummate the marriage? I guess God likes to keep the lights on… but he sees everything anyways so what’s the point of that?
Posted by: e&sj · Apr 30, 01:05 AM · #
Don’t forget Johnny Cash’s rendition: “The Man Comes Around”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytA3Tr8R9Yo
Posted by: cody · Apr 30, 02:56 AM · #
What this connected with in my mind:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/egg/205/antoni/index.html
Posted by: karen · Apr 30, 04:42 AM · #
Owl, that is beautiful and I love the way your mind works. Thank you.
Posted by: Anna · Apr 30, 05:10 AM · #
Oh that was a nice treat. Yum.
Two questions begging!
Whats the most amazing spiritual manifesto by a long shot? :)
and
Dya think once we get away from the cultural baggage of so many wives, and virginal at that, that the light is enlightenment to who you are? Virginal in the sense of original? hmmm…methinks…
Posted by: Gregor · Apr 30, 08:30 AM · #
Hello. Interesting that people like this. I thought it would make no sense.
My subconscious is is a burial ground full of this: images and songs and verses of the apocalypse… which I’m unearthing, breaking down, and recasting as something simpler.
But maybe the associations will never really go away… the virgins and the goats will always be here in some form. We’ll see… I really don’t mind if they stay around. They're just denatured metaphors at this point.
More in a bit in response to comments.
Meantime, here’s Ted Haggard (you may have heard of him) talking about Jesus and the church having sex and the implications of this for how men and women are supposed to behave.
If you can’t stand to listen, just forward to the 1:40 mark.
This kind of authority, sarcasm and fear are typical of what I grew up with. I don’t know how to put this up in a compassionate way. I mean it to illustrate the baggage that post-fundamentalist people have to deal with… since I’m in a position to tell the story.
I joke about Jesus fucking the church, but it's not really funny in some ways.
Posted by: (0v0) · Apr 30, 03:41 PM · #
Ok. So many associations!
The agni, of course. Leave it to the yogis to kind of literalize it with the relationship to the nectar and then play with it by turning everything upside down.
So many flames: those in the belly in India and China, flames in the heart (I love the Sacred Heart of Jesus after living in Latin America). Also flames in the brain, in that the yogis’ meditative candleflame can be substituted for gazing in to the third eye. William Blake: “In what furnace was thy brain?”
Posted by: (0v0) · Apr 30, 05:35 PM · #
That’s my friend Julie playing and singing with her husband Billy…
All that burning and flames of hell stuff is some crazy shit to put on kids, and adults for that matter.
Posted by: Susan · Apr 30, 05:43 PM · #
Nice! Your friend Julie must be brilliant because her husband sure is.
CP the genre of apocalypse songs is so big! Even within Cash’s body of work… that cover of The Mercy Seat. So beautiful and resonant. (Also this.)
He covers a collection of his mother’s favorite spirituals on the last CD of the box set that we have, but I was sad the Lamps song wasn’t there. It also isn’t in Harry Smith’s anthology, but I guess that makes sense.
Contemporary Christian rock music, which is uniformly bad, contains a ton of fire and brimstone music and songs about the judgement day. Great theme for rocking out. :)
Posted by: (0v0) · Apr 30, 05:47 PM · #
About virginalness and light being enlightenment to who you are.
Yes. I was thinking that. How meditators become “virginal” in a cognitive sense. Stimuli are fresh and suprising to the deconditioned brain.
That is the micro-micro approach to you question I guess.
But pursuing the idea… then there are so many ways that the notion of “rebirth” comes in to spiritual practice. So many ways! And here we are finding a sort of variation on that theme. It’s a good one.
Posted by: (0v0) · Apr 30, 05:53 PM · #
For a very fine Jungian interpretation of what Jesus said (including the virgins).
The Kingdom Within
by John A Sanford (ex-minister – Jungian Analyst)
(I saw my analyst this evening and asked… and we checked and it’s internal symbolism refers to the union of self and ego, and being ready and willing for its spontaneous call)...
Posted by: Gregor · Apr 30, 06:29 PM · #