Three of us left Paris on a TGV to Rennes where Skippy picked up a Rental Car and navigated to Mont St. Michel in Normandy. Barber stayed in Paris where his Teaching Restoration Class on his Poussin sketch was progressing. Before the Captain, Ibeca, and Skippy left, Barber spent a long night with Lucky in his room at L'Hotel. This too was a "Teaching Moment." Barber was using the Morton Smith forgery of the Secret Gospel of Mark as his exemplar of a highly successful Bogey. The preponderance of opinion in Theological as well as Historical Camps was that the Secret Gospel was genuine and not a Morton Smith creation. Barber knew better but he doubted that the rest of the world would catch on anytime soon. Homosexual Politics in the 3rd Millennium after Jesus Christ was going to keep the Secret Gospel alive and kicking for a long, long time. Barber hated the Secret Gospel for what it was trying to do, but he could not shake the admiration for Smith and the brilliant minutiae of the Mss. which made it impossible to simply dismiss it. The Gospel plugged up narrative lacunae in the Canonical Gospel of Mark and this made the Bogey "precious" to scholars, especially those who had a horse in the race. Smith had played that well. Very well. The Etics get possessive when their favorite mysteries are "illuminated" and the Secret Gospel - when added to the Canonical Gospel - plugged up holes which had bothered the Hermeneutics of the Bible for centuries. Suddenly, with Secret Mark, the Gospel of Mark made a lot more sense. But then the sense that it made was worrisome for Christians because Jesus was not the dude which History describes - not at all. Not at all.
A Lacuna - in Manuscript Study - is a gap in the MS, or an inscription, in text, painting, or a musical work. It's a hole in a work. Sometimes the hole is in Logical Flow, or in Sequencing.
Click on the Button below 8 times and enter the Myth of Michael.
Secret Mark plugs up a handful of Lacunae in the Canonical Gospel of Mark. The most famous of which is called: "The Young Man in the Linen Cloth." It also brings sense to the story of Lazarus, and the problem of Salomé. . . .
Fuck the Grail, says Barber Perfect. His Cornflower Blau eyes narrowing in derision. Too Pussy. Too feminine. Barber claims that we are living in the Wane and that a civilization shows that when it becomes Ultra-Feminized. CNN is just reporting that most of the male fish in American rivers are turning female. They are producing Eggs as well as Sperm. So Fuck the Grail, says Barber: "It's really only ever been all about the Lance." Syntax aside, he was referring to the "Spear of Destiny," the weapon with which the Roman soldier had pierced the side of Christ as he hung upon his Cross. Barber is convinced that the Holy Relic is tucked away in the Monastery on the Mount of St. Michael in Normandy.
Christian legends have for long placed St. Michael's Lance, and his Sword, as well as his Shield in the safekeeping of the Monastery of Mont St. Michel. But, the legends are fuzzy as to why the Archangel would leave such powerful tools in the hands of Monkeys. Where the fuck does an Archangel get a Lance, a Sword, or a Shield? One sees Vulcan at his forge in the Pagan's Mind's Eye, but there is no Canonical basis for thinking that Heaven has an Armaments Industry and no Metallurical Science to explain the composition of Spiritual Weapons. Which, I suppose, is the lacuna in the myth which allows us to speculate that Mike's Hardware was earthly & substantive and therefore objects which may indeed be stored in a place like a Benedictine Monastery on the top of a hill on an offshore island. Not a bad Keep, all in all. And it's the Tide that seals the deal. Defenders of an Island have a 20 to 1 advantage over the Invaders. So, in the Medieval, an Island fortress on the High Ground would be the Fort Knox of its "Place et Milieu." As with the Grail, there are very few Etics who give much credence to stories about the Spear of Destiny, aka "The Holy Lance," the "Spear of Longinus," etc. Relics were the currency of the Medieval Christian Church but their history is so filled with forgeries, phonies, idiocies, and fakes that Relics have become the "Tooth Fairy" of the Catholic Faith. All of which Barber knows perfectly well. He and his "family" have had a hand in the Manufactured Relics Industry for half an Eon. Pooler Jones brought the first vial of the "True Blood," back from Constantinople after the fiasco of the 4th Crusade. Do you want the skull of John the Baptist? How about the 7th Veil from Salomé's Erotic Dance? St. Peter's in Rome owns the Foreskin of St. Peter, but Barber knows where there's another one - an "alternate version" if you will. Pooler says he has a vault in his place in Paris where he can lay his hands on over 150 skulls of some of St. Ursula's 11,000 Virgins. Or how about a pair of Dice, carved from the Horns of Moses? Skippy gets stoned on Sardony when Kenny starts talking Relics.
In Hermeneutics the "count noun" `Recension' is used to refer to a family of manuscripts which share similar traits. Recensions are "copies" of things like Myths and Legends. A Recension is a Revision, or a new Edition. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke are Recensions of the Gospel of Mark. The Canonical Gospel of Mark is a Recension of the Secret Gospel of Mark. The Foundation myth of Mont St. Michel is a Recension of the Foundation myth of Monte Gargano in Italy.
Click on the wispy button vignette above 5 times to watch the Dragon generate a Recension.
This Vitrail of Michael, Mary, and the Old Dragon is in the small Chapel devoted to Mike which is about half way up the Mont and is outside the walls of the old Monastery. You can see by its style that it's a Modern Recension of Michaeline Iconography. Mike is up against it in the scene, doing battle with the Beast of the Apocalypse, the Multo-Headed Muthafuka. He's using a flaming Sword on the concoction while his left arm and hand are pointing Up. Always Up. Hermes used to pose like this too. So the Stained Glass window in the Chapel of St. Michael on Mont St. Michel illustrates a Recension of Hermetic Iconography also. Next to Michael is Mary holding the lil' baby jesus. She stands on the Horned and Crescent Moon and her heal helps to Crush the Devil below her. Mary has a special place in the Michael Myths. Jesus makes Mike Mary's `Muscle' - her Guardian, for both her Material body and her Soul. Until she was "Assumed" into Heaven - Body and Soul - Michael was her cachepot. In Western Iconography when the Divine Feminine is depicted standing on a Crescent, with a Serpent below, and 13 Stars surround - She is Lunar, Pre-Christian, and fades back into Babylonia. When the figure is shown surrounded by 12 Stars, she is Solar, Christian, and making a Dominance Claim over the Pagan Myths. All Christian Icons and Images are Recensions of earlier, Pagan ones. It's a Trump motif as well as a Historia. Mary is a Cover of Isis; Jesus of Horus, Michael of Thoth, the Old Dragon of Leviathan, Set, and Sebek. There are no New Myths; there are only Recensions of the old ones. There are no new gods, or demons, or angels, gnomes, sprites, elves, fairies, or even Golems. Everything is Bricolage. Everything is Bricolage. Solvé et Coagula. Kenny is picking up rusted parts of the past and Galvanizing them for their rebirth and refitting. Everything is Bricolage, and Everything is Discourse.
The Auctoritas for the Jewish Claim on Michael as the Defender and Protector of the Jews comes from Daniel 12 in the Old Testament where Gabriel, the Annunciator, is telling Daniel that at the End of Days when it is time to deal with the Old Dragon: "At that time shall Michael rise up, the great Prince, who standeth for the children of thy people." It's the "who standeth for" part which is the covenant.
Click the Green Pussy Button to the right 9 times and wind with us up the Serpentine Route to the Monastery.
In 1067, the Monastery of Mont St. Michel supported William of Normandy in his claim to the English Throne. It was rewarded with land and properties in the newly conquered England, including a small island off Cornwall which became the Sister Priory of St. Michael's Mount of Penzance. We are winding towards there and Satan's Redemption.
How High's the Water, Mama? Oscar Wilde wrote his play Salomé in French to illustrate "Maeterlinck Symbolism" - the "interesting effect resulting when an author writes in a language not his own." The idioms and metaphors cross-parse in odd combinations which poets search after. Syntax becomes labile and creative and once again, poetry dribbles out. Some Bible Scholars think that Morton Smith left a bunch of these "Maeterlinck" artifacts in his forgery of Clement's letter and the resultant "Secret Gospel of Mark." It begs the question of whether or not a Modern can ever successfully inhabit the Mentalité of a "Primitive." Can we get into the Mindset of the Past? Can we ever look out of the Weltanschauung of the Ancestors? Is our Recension traceable to the Ur-Mind which first created Angels? But isn't that God?
Click on the Sacred Swastika to the left to meet Oriental Jones and see how Linguistics fathered Racism and birthed the Aryan Myth. Or click the Mr. Natural button to the right to grok the Broken Spell in the Entzauberung.
Click on this to go to Page 4 of Saint Michael the Archangel and the Old Dragon.