23rd April. Today is a day for lovers, for the lovers
within ourselves, as our masculine parts descend and our feminine parts rise to
join in amorous harmony. The union of the heart and brain.
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| Edward Burne Jones dipiction of George |
The prince of the skies, Saint George came down from
the air. He fell from paradise, from the place of union of light, flew down
through intuition and found himself confronted by his own earthly reality. Suddenly he is no longer the prince of the
skies but now a (half) human (half) being. Woaah! What is that dragon?
They say that we are born on earth impure. The
Catalans would say malparits, which is literally born badly, figuratively
translated as “in a sorry state”. We come out a little monstrous, not quite as perfect as our minds would like. We are our own Frankensteins. We are
not in harmony with the universe (One- version) but we pipe our own out-of-unison
song. The cosmos flows around in orderly lines, like a ploughed field, in
harmonic unison with each other, like an orchestra with each musician playing
as one creating a beautiful uplifting piece of music. And then we are born and
get out those party horn things. And blow it. But it's not exactly Mozart.
The dragon is a representation of this rather
uncoordinated clumsiness. We are all made up of the four elements, everything
is. In an enlightened state, the four elements are equally balanced and working
together: Air (intuition), Water (emotions), Fire (thinking) and Earth
(sensations). We need to balance our four elements. Ether (the belonging to a whole greater than the sum of its parts) is impotent without the others in balance. It is the secret of
physical and psychological health. None of us, as far as I can see, are
enlightened: we've got work to do! We’ve got our dragons to face.
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| Aristotle's elemental qualities |
The dragon is a representation of the four elements,
he blows fire angrily out from his mouth, his wings allow him to fly clumsily
in the air, his claws grip into the earth and he cries big baby crocodile
tears. But his elements are all badly born. Clumsy and angry, his elements are
all at odds with each other, like trying to light a fire in the rain or flying
through tarmac...
So, Saint George finds himself in a predicament coming
up against this dragon (inside of himself) as he heroically admits to discovering his instincts. And as all cavaliers, to
save his good name, he is faced with one option:
Slowly, calmly, he gets out his sword and shield.
He fights nobly from the top of his white horse of the
mind, just like all of our fantasy heros do, and with his
sophisticated sword work he manages to slice through the reality of himself
(like Shiva´s sword) getting a little closer to the truth to give him a little more strength to dominate his dragon. Some stories just go right ahead and kill the
dragon off, but how can instincts be killed? It is impossible. Some Granddad got carried away retelling the story…so in the mystic story, the
dragon is dominated. Saint George is able to dominate with his mind the
impulses of his instincts. Dominating the dragon he has aligned his four
elements to be more in harmony. They do not fight so much anymore, the dragon
is a little more docile. Ether is given a chance.
Saint George finds himself in a more balanced state,
and as a result, from the mouth of the cave, steps a beautiful maiden now that
the dragon is not ferociously guarding the entrance.
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| Jung's dipiction from his Red Book |
Saint George is rewarded by glimpsing his soul. His Anima, the feminine within, influences
his interactions with the world giving them more meaning. Allowing him to begin to conceive of himself in the Uni-verse. It could be
considered the path to our creative gifts. From floating in the mind, suddenly
Saint George is using his heart, and if expressed in a harmonious way, while
the dragon is comfortable domesticated, it is beauty and truth and purity and
wonderfully creative expression. It is being fully and ecstatically alive.
We can have as much information in our brains as we
can fill, but until we have understood our knowledge through love, it cannot be
comprehended. Those moments of eureka when suddenly you ‘see’, when you ‘click’
into what you you know is true because you remember somewhere knowing it once. You feel it's truth, because it is so obvious, so simple. It is like peeling away an onion skin,
or taking off a veil (revelation). Normally we are left with something so beautifully simple
that we secretly wonder if actually we knew it all along and had just somehow forgotten.
If we only understand our world with our brains, it is
dry and unconnected. Comprehension is with our hearts and we connect with our
profound memories, with our entire being. This connection of knowledge and
heart is represented by the union of Saint George with the beautiful maiden,
and how lovely she is! She allows us to leave the dark depths of the cave and
resurface to fresh air where we can wake up and smell the roses. (The
Rose is the western equivalent of the eastern Lotus flower).
The masculine and feminine come together once more,
the sky and the earth rejoin... They have sex (alchemically speaking of
course...)
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| The Alchemical union of the King and Queen |
The union of Saint George with his maiden creates a
third, a rebirth. This time the birth is a little better. They are transformed
into the new castle and live happily ever after according to Walt D (....No!!! Don't believe it!!) The
castle with its slightly better squared four walls is a representation of the four elements in slightly better harmony.
And the cycle comes to a close, but not an end. Like
any spiral, Saint George is back where he began, at the same point but not the
same man. Now he has aligned himself a smidgen more to the UniVersal, he has
dominated his dragon for a while, and he has incorporated the Beauty of the
glimpse of Truth into his self thanks to his inner maiden emerging from the cave of matter.
But too much of a good thing is never good…Saint
George soon falls back down through the clouds, motivated by the image of a
greater world…to go delve in the realms of his dragon land. Saint George is in
constant movement, never getting stale, constantly birthing in another weird
but wonderful way as he and his inner maiden evolve in greater and purer love.
Happy Saint George's day!
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| Carpaggio's dipiction of Saint George |
