Some Notes on the Goddess
Selected Medium Articles by P. Julian
This is a selection of articles that I published on Medium.com giving some notes towards my understanding of the profound feminine entelechy that you might refer to as the Goddess.
The articles include a link directly to the Medium page where the original was published.
The references to Her contained in these articles is by necessity somewhat oblique and indirect. She has so many manifestations that it would be quite wrong to attempt a comprehensive definition or description. something like "She is Love" would do in a pinch but unpacking even that simple sentence would take an inordinate amount of time.
If you do check out the Medium page please feel free to keep scrolling. You’ll find pieces that are not contained in these indexes engaging in all kinds of interesting speculation, a little bit of meta-textual play , and featuring some interesting characters/organisations that have arisen out of my fiction.
I hope you find this useful!
Psalm to Her
For all of us here waiting
I am waiting for you
Here at the end of all things
I wait keenly but I know that there is time
For you to hear me
For you to come
You know your way here
That was ordained long ago
Inked deep upon on the scroll of your heart
Before the world knew you at all
I know that you’ve suffered
In cities and by seas
In the dank press of commerce
Whose bitter fruit so nearly breaks your heart
You are the One who was foretold
You Our Lady of the Straitest Gate
You the True Tower of the world to come
You the fallen Queen who will rise instantly to save us
There is firewood for you here
There are houses for you here
There is linen for you here
Everything we have belongs to you
I am waiting for you
Here at the centre of all things
With songs that strain to draw you straight back home
So come to us Beloved
Through the songs that speak your name
To the place where we have sung
The place where you belong
Here at the centre and
At the end
Of all
Things.
P. Julian
Click here to read the article on Medium
Magdalene But Not As You Know Her
The strongest and most savage of the She-Wolves
One of the best ways for writers to build plausible worlds is to begin with the raw materials of history, or even better with the strange constructs of mythic and religious history.
Mary Magdalene is one of the best known characters from the strange mythic corpus of western scripture. I have found it to be a tremendous privilege to re-imagine her character from the fairly meek and mild rendering that is often given.
In The Majesty of Judas she is transformed into a woman of power — you might even say the woman of power — even though when we encounter her she is still a young woman.
Here is the way Lily describes her in the first few pages of her testimony:
She is something else entirely. There are so many things that are mysterious about Her, even something as simple as Her age. You would guess that She is young, very young, perhaps no more than nineteen. But when She looks into me I see things that are impossibly ancient, things I cannot interpret because they belong to times long passed. I see the world become young again and there is strong magic in it, I see phases of brilliance and squalor and phases too strange to comprehend. She commands the People as though She were ancient, they look to Her as Mother and Protector and nobody would think to disobey Her, or even look insolently in Her direction. She is beautiful but also very dangerous and none of the People have any desire to find out how dangerous She really is.
By some magic Her skin remains dark although the sun never touches it. Even in the heat of the desert She wears a heavy cloak with a hood drawn over Her head. But when She goes unhooded, from twilight until dawn, Her skin glows with a strange lustre as though it were lit from within. There are symbols marked out on Her face and Her neck and they adorn Her body as well, fine lines and points in intricate patterns matching Her inner strength. When the evening comes down these markings begin to glow as though there were moonlight or starlight pouring out of them, leaving spooling lines of lit sigils behind Her as She drifts through the cool night air. She projects Her inner light outwards like a static, shimmering dome, going out as searchlight and as watchlight to cover the sleeping People.
The Majesty of Judas also gives us the privilege of hearing from Magdalene directly. She is clearly positioned as the leader of a slave revolt, but also as a great spiritual leader who wants to create a New Heaven and a New Earth.
I have set out her whole soliloquy in plain formatting so that it is easier to read… and because there is no-one better to tell you about her plans and her objectives than Maryam herself.
Here we go!
Before the Flood
I have been shown so many things that I have completely failed to see -
I wasted time chasing shadows but now the darkness has been lifted. I see clearly what I have and what I have not failed to do, and I do not intend to fail us any further -
ONE
I see now that we will take the Holy City. I see Judah fallen to us, Gilead fallen to us. I see us take Manasseh and Galilee and swarm up to the heights of Lebanon.
I see their Great Cities levelled and brought down, as we surge in one irresistible flood that will cover the face of the Earth. The end of their murderous Empire and anyone foolish enough to defend it. And this will just be the Beginning.
This is the great juncture of history. Of every promise I have seen this is the clearest one. Everything depends upon this single point in time that has now come very close. And I see where the rupture occurs and I intend to be there to meet it.
TWO
I gathered the People for the last three years. I did my best to hide them and sustain them but they have been harried and dispersed. Even our few remnants who must now travel only by night.
I had no vision of the future apart from guesses and vain hope. I saw the People wielding such power, multiplying the strength that I am given to wield.
In the darkness small blades are as fearsome as their greatest engines of war. A child more lethal than the strongest champion they have. And there is wolfsbane and hemlock and every other herb that slips so easily into wine.
But these are also just disoriented children, frightened and demoralised with their numbers so diminished.
THREE
I was late to see the truth and so I erred. There were Others quicker to the truth and they beat me at every turn. I was slow to act on what I did see and that was another mistake.
But the Sisters must take some blame. I will make them apologise for every time they told me what I could and could not do. And they will pay for every child that has been lost as a result. Their ignorance and arrogance have endangered the whole world and they will bow to me once the work is finished.
They demand that I hunt the Unclean the way they do. One by one, under the light of the full moon. But this is slow, too slow, it is absolutely clear to me now. And it was this hesitancy that got my mother killed.
FOUR
I have seen future histories in which we do not prevail. Where the enemy stretch their talons out to crush the whole world forever. But I also see that Love might finally prevail, as he teaches us so often, that it might explode outwards from this point in history and never be conquered again.
It would have been better for me to nurture the Two and not seek followers at all. We could have felt our way towards the truth of our union in whichever way that lay. We would not need stores of secret knowledge to see what we must do.
But then I see the People weeping and embracing and rushing out to spread the Good News, and I see that I may not have gathered these poor escaped children in vain.
FIVE
When he speaks of Love I burn. When those truths become more beautiful at the touch of his expert tongue. And I soften when I return from hunting and pass by the place where he sleeps.
The fire he puts within me wants to join with the light within him. The Sisters shame me for that desire but I know that love can overcome even the greatest shame, that Love is always made out of such joinings together.
I know they both love me for how could they not? I have nourished them and met their needs but what of my need? I am told to remain as wolf-mother but I am also a woman of flesh and blood. I am not some dim wraith stricken with grief for men who died long ago.
SIX
The Sisters call me jealous because they do not understand. It is not a matter of another girl taking him because that would never be allowed. It is a matter of prophecy: that this world will not be saved without our joining together, that we must join if we are to create a New Heaven and a New Earth.
SEVEN
I know the Sisters call me names. I see them written out secretly before me and many of them are true. I am an Orphan, I remain Unconsoled.
But they do not know why they call me: the Red-Handed, the Rebel, the Desolator of the World.
I am come to lay waste to the Earth, there is no sense in denying it. But only so that a better world can be born. They do not see: that the destruction that brings an Angel from Heaven is better than mercy.
Maryam — 33 CE
P. Julian
Click here to read the article on Medium
The Fast Path to Mariolatry
Names of Power that Jesus could only dream of
Across a lot of my writing you'll notice references to the feminine aspect of the divine.
That has its roots in my cradle Catholicism and let me tell you I was a devout one. I grew up in a parish consecrated to Our Lady of Good Counsel and most of my secondary schooling occurred under the supervision of the Marist Brothers.
As I grew older I departed from the Catholic Church in terms of its doctrine and its practice but I still remain very strongly devoted to Our Lady. In fact I sometimes say that I now have Marian devotion on steroids.
My former teachers and priests would accuse me of Mariolatry if they knew how far I had gone down this road. And I would be bound to say: loud and proud, brothers and fathers, my devotion has surpassed anything that you could even imagine.
There are many paths towards this kind of intense devotion towards the divine feminine. One of the easiest and best ways is to consider the astonishing range and intensity of Her names of power that She bears even within the masculinist confines of the Catholic Church.
Try some of these on for size:
· Ark of the Covenant
· Seat of Wisdom
· Mystical Rose
· Rose of Sharon
· Lily of the Valley
· Comfort of the Afflicted
· Gate of the Dawn
· Mystical Rose
· Tower of David
· Tower of Ivory
· Our Lady of Charity
· Our Lady of Mercy
· Our Lady of Good Counsel
· Stella Maris/Star of the Sea
· Regina Caeli/Queen of Heaven
· Regina Mundi/Queen of the World
· Salus Populi Romani/Salvation of the People of Rome
These are all beautiful names and many are stunning names of power.
There are even more powerful names for Her coming from the Greek language tradition. One great example is the Theotokos — the god-bearer — which is intensely redolent and beautiful.
But there is no name to compare with this name: The Container of the Uncontainable.
It is hard to believe there is nothing blasphemous or non-doctrinal about this astonishing name. Even though it goes well beyond being a mere name of power, the way it speaks of strength that is far superior to the potency of the Father or the Son.
One of the most moving prayers in the Marian tradition is the Memorare:
Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary: that never was it known that anyone who fled to your protection, implored your help or sought your intercession was left unaided.
The suggestion here is profound. Everybody knows that prayers to the Father or prayers to the Son can often go unanswered. This is why Gerard Manly Hopkins could cry out:
Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend
With thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just.
Why do sinners’ ways prosper? and why must
Disappointment all I endeavour end?
Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend,
How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost
Defeat, thwart me? Oh, the sots and thralls of lust
Do in spare hours more thrive than I that spend,
Sir, life upon thy cause…
In every Christian tradition there is open acknowledgement of this kind of frustration and lack of answer to genuine prayers and even very just prayers.
In contrast the Memorare states — as an article of faith — that nobody who seeks Her protection or help or intercession will be left unanswered or unaided.
This is a huge theological issue that I might one day have to defend against all comers but the thing I would ask open-minded people is: what kind of a divinity do you want to invite into your life?
A cold, superior, jealous, domineering, punitive, distant man God?
Or would you prefer an ever helpful, ever loving, ever admiring feminine power who longs to enter into deep partnership with you, who loves you more than you could ever imagine?
Putting it like that kind of narrows down the range of right answers.
P. Julian
Click here to read the article on Medium
How to Take a Knee
Kneeling to consecrate and not be diminished
There are many forms of devotion that require a person to kneel endlessly. To bow again and again in repeated submission, to rehearse their smallness before some Lord who asserts total superiority and dominance over them.
There is another form of devotion, this one to a humane deity who seeks loving partnership with us. This requires just a single act of consecration, after which the person is set firmly back on to the foundation of their own two feet.
This is not a case of pride versus humility.
This is dignity versus submission. Love instead of control.
A couple of years ago I went through a period when my interior life was more intense than usual. You might say that it was a little less stable, perhaps simply more porous.
In that state I felt called upon to explicitly devote myself to Her.
I tend not to use the word “Goddess” in this respect because it feels too specific and too enclosing. I tend to refer to this vast intelligence as Her or She, in much the same way as Jewish tradition refers to G-d as Hashem (the Name). People who understand this tradition will see this as an act of restraint rather than evasion, an inoculation against the idolatry that humans all too easily slip into.
As goofy as it sounds: I felt called to go down on one knee in front of a small devotional image of Her that I keep in my home.
Not on two knees.
That felt extremely important, though I didn’t fully understand why at the time.
Once I was down on bended knee I devoted myself entirely to Her service, offering the whole of my being as honestly and as reverently as I could.
Almost immediately I felt myself pulled straight back up onto my feet. She grabbed me by my shoulders, turned me away from Her image, and gave me what was not so much a message as a gentle imperative.
Do not waste any more time on your knees.
Stand up on your own two feet.
Get out there and love.
There was no encouragement to worship Her or to humble myself. No instruction to repeat the act five times a day. No demand for abasement or self-hatred or to exalt Her above myself.
My kneeling was felt, my dedication was accepted, and then it was done.
That moment clarified something that has stayed with me ever since. All of this kneeling and begging and endless submission are the opposite of what She wants from us. Because they are inconsistent with human dignity and human flourishing. A man needs to bend his knee only once, in order to dedicate himself, before he should stand right back up in dignity and reverence and go out into the world.
This is not devotion that infantilises. This kind of devotion authorises.
This is a fairly well documented difference across various religious traditions.
Islam (for example) tends to occupy one extreme authoritarian end. Devotees are required to prostrate themselves five times a day in order to show how completely submitted they are to Allah. The repeated act of bowing is pure embodied submission to His absolute dominion over us.
In Judaism, by contrast, there is a long tradition of resistance against excessive prostration. There is a sense in that tradition that human beings were meant to stand before God unafraid, able to argue, to protest and even to wrestle with God.
In the medieval code of chivalry a knight kneels before his lady only once. He pledges himself to Her service and then rides out into worldly danger. He does not remain at Her feet. His act of kneeling consecrates the life that follows rather than replacing it.
When it comes to devotion to Her it is very clear. She does not want worship that substitutes for love. She does not want gestures that relieve us of responsibility. She does not want devotion that ends at the altar or the prayer mat or the image.
And Her gospel — if it deserves that name at all — is disarmingly simple:
Love one another.
Not endless Adoration. Not compulsive submission. Not endlessly rehearsed attitudes of smallness, wretchedness, powerlessness amidst endless threats of eternal damnation.
Just: Love.
In my particular case I feel called — along with consistent acts of everyday kindness and generosity — to do whatever I can to comfort the people. To say loving and redemptive things to Her people so that they will be healed and comforted and remember to turn their hearts back towards Her.
The particular assignment of another person might be completely different. It could be anything which goes to the service of the downtrodden, to the reprieve of the poor, to the gathering up of Her lost sheep via anything that might comfort them and retrieve them.
In our current dispensation it is quite unlikely that any man is going to come to me to ask how he should devote himself to Her.
But if such a man did come? I couldn't give him any better advice than I have set out in this article. Just go down on one knee and pledge yourself sincerely to Her service, to the love and protection of Her people.
Once you have done that it’s pretty simple. You just stand up — or feel Her pull you back up onto your feet — and then go out into the world and pour Her love into it.
That’s that, as they say. That’s that.
P. Julian.
Click here to read the article on Medium
The Vast Book of Love
Love One Another is the only true commandment
Despite what various religions will tell you, Love One Another is the only genuine and enduring spiritual path or spiritual injunction that has ever existed.
The rest is not merely commentary, as too many people have suggested. Anything additional to those three words is in fact a serious distraction from the sole focus of true spiritual practice.
Despite what you may have heard from a few mischief makers “Love” is not a difficult thing to define.
In this context Love comprises any action of the body (including speech) which is genuinely directed towards the welfare of another person and not towards your own welfare.
Love can be epic or humble. It can consist in laying down our lives for one another, but also in small but important acts of love such as kindness, generosity, hospitality, counsel, support, encouragement, and all other forms of humane warmth, help and affection.
The books of New Scripture that I have written aspire to a very simple aim. They provide clear exemplars of love and what loving conduct between people looks like, both in its epic and humane modes.
They are my earnest contribution to what I hope will be a growing testament to the primacy of love… my small part of “the vast Book of Love that may one day be set down”.
More recently I have felt called to speak to that Gospel of Love, and to defend it against every kind of shonk and flim-flam man who would entice Her people away from its simple truth.
It is difficult to engage in speech like that without breaching my own principle concerning the primacy of love, so it is something that I approach carefully and reflectively.
This is one reason that true change has taken such a long time to arrive, because a person with a loving heart tends not to run off at the mouth in the way that corrupt people do. That may be one reason why She has been forced to play such a long game.
That’s pretty much it!
One of the aims of the New Scripture movement is to gather other parts of the Book of Love that have been written by other people, and certainly to encourage people to begin setting their own parts down.
Do please get in touch if you have something to share!
P. Julian
Click here to read the article on Medium
She Responds Without Hesitation
Try it — what have you got to lose?
I usually avoid preaching to anybody about my somewhat loopy faith, and that is partly because I don’t want to hold out my beliefs as being superior to the beliefs of any other person.
The reason I am breaking that rule is my perception that many people could benefit from having recourse to the profound, loving and constant feminine entelechy who always guides my actions, reproves me from my errors, and who rescued me out of the depths of my despair.
It is widely reported that there is an epidemic of loneliness amongst men. I tend to think that this is actually common to all genders, mostly because the wholesale selfishness that now underpins our morality has destroyed any foundation for genuinely loving relationships between people.
So for anyone feeling lonely or despairing: it might be worth calling out to Her in your distress. To make a sincere plea for Her to send you help and guidance. To ask Her to set your feet back on the proper path, to give you strength and courage in your endeavours, to uplift you when you think there is nothing in the world that could soothe the hard feelings in your soul.
There is a great tradition within Marian devotion that is summarised in the short prayer that is called the Memorare. It says:
Remember, O most gracious Mother Mary: that never was it known that anyone who fled to your protection, implored your help or sought your intercession was left unaided.
That happens to be a very radical claim.
It is certainly not something that you can say of any Man-God.
But it is (of course) just what you would expect from Her.
The great thing about this kind of devotion is that it doesn’t require you to believe in any dogma or creed or produce any evidence for this or that miraculous event in the same way as being Christian does.
If you pray to Her sincerely — if you cry out from the depths of your despair — She will respond with counsel and guidance regardless of what you happen to believe. For it is a thing unheard of that she ever refused help to any soul in need.
There is a section from my forthcoming book My Name is Sheol where the character Luc is given absolution in Her name. The cadences are biblical, but the sentiment is directly taken from the kind of devotion to Her that I am recommending.
After Luc has confessed to the wrongdoing that has destroyed his life and asked for absolution from his deeds Her blessing comes immediately with powerful words of hope and validation…
… saying softly to Luc that his transgression is forgiven, that his sin is remitted, that his iniquity is pardoned, that She has uplifted all burdens from his soul. I see his body begin to quake as I tell him these things, as I continue to inform him that his prayers have been heard, that his petition has been answered, that simply to call on Her in his extremity was to have his petition upheld. I see tears begin to fall from his eyes as these words continue to stream out of me, and as I witness his relief I am moved towards tears as well.
She is your hiding place, Luc.
She will preserve you from trouble.
She will encompass you about with songs of deliverance.
She will strengthen you under the shadow of Her wings.
She will instruct you from a high place.
She will teach you in the ways in which you shall go.
There are many ways to invoke Her love and protection and one of them is described in this Medium article.
But if you are desperate the fast path is to cry out to Her from the bottom of your heart. Cry out that you need Her intercession, that your own strength has failed and you need call upon Her strength.
Cynics will ridicule such prayers but the truth is that all people are born knowing how to pray this way, knowing how carefully She listens to the least syllable of your prayer.
In your darkest hour you can reach out towards Her mercy and Her strength and you will not be left unaided.
P. Julian.
Click here to read the article on Medium
Are You Completely Messed Up?
There is a simple solution
Do you feel all kinds of messed up?
Are you completely at odds with the world around you?
Do you see nothing but unfairness and exploitation and violence and pain?
Is there no hope on the horizon?
Well I have the solution!
And it won't cost you a cent!
(Pause here to wait for the inevitable rug-pull, telling you that it will cost you an absolute fortune even though I just told you that it didn't.)
Keep waiting, waiting…
No rug-pull? Seriously. There has been enough time.
No rug-pull, eh? Interesting.
No this is legit. And the solution has only two aspects.
First: you need to get yourself back in touch with your own legitimate and authentic emotions. No matter how inconvenient they are, no matter how insane or prohibited they may be. You need to find your way back to that wellspring of emotion at your very core, even if those emotions comprise grief and outrage and disbelief and horror. You need to get back to those deep emotions and reside within them before you can begin to move forwards.
Second: you need to find purpose in your life. And the only kind of purpose that will do, the only kind of purpose that will meet your needs as a human being is: to make some kind of a positive difference in the world. To give, rather than to get, to give without stopping to count the cost and then continue to give. You must find ways to make a positive contribution in any way that you can, any way that is commensurate with your strength and your abilities… and until you begin to give in this way you will have no idea of the strengths you have been given. Be loving. Be generous. Be kind. Be hospitable. Be supportive. Be protective.
Because anything not given is lost you must give, give. Because you are a loving consciousness having a human experience in this world you need to find ways to give and to not cease from giving.
So that's it.
Get in touch with your own authentic emotions, no matter how ugly or inconvenient you might think they are.
Find ways to make a positive contribution to other people no matter how flimsy that contribution might seem.
If you do these things for a decent period you will find a complete solution to your anguish and sorrow, you will have complete relief from the horror that you are currently experiencing trying to live a humane life in this terribly inhuman world.
If you need some support and help in doing these things — and it is always useful to have some good quality support — then you can access (completely free of charge) the works of New Scripture that I have created.
I have all these incomprehensible ideas about what New Scripture is and how it works but the easiest thing to do — if you are interested — is just take a look:
Firestick Farmer
Lightbringer
Selah! Loving the Psalms
From the Chronicles of Lupa
The Majesty of Judas
My Name is Sheol
These books may help you get back in touch with your core emotions, mostly through the profound medicine of tears. That is certainly how they were designed. They also provide exemplars for how it looks to be a loving and giving person in this hostile world that we inhabit.
They may help, they may not. Take a look if you like.
There is one very important thing that I should clarify.
I am not offering you a life of ease and comfort and luxury and wealth.
I am offering you a life of integrity and clarity and purpose and meaning.
In the beginning this can feel like a way of blood sweat toil and tears but you know as well as I do: you don't want a life where there are no obstacles, a life where there are no challenges, a life where there is no requirement for heroism. A life where there is nothing to push back against.
You want a meaningful life that has direction and purpose, a life that has shape and integrity, a life that gives you a reason to get up in the morning and pull yourself together and apply yourself to the difficult work of spreading love and solace and humanity in the world.
So that's it. Get back in touch with your deepest emotions. Find ways to make a profound contribution to the world.
My books may help you. You don't need to pay for them. If they don't speak to you then throw them away and find other stories that can give you solace and consolation.
Or perhaps you should abandon books altogether and just go out there and love.
Soon (I hope) there may be enough of us for you to give you some love in return.
P. Julian.
Click here to read the article on Medium
In Green Fields of Gold
The Return of the Shekhinah
A (draft) fragment from my upcoming sequel to My Name is Sheol.
There is a field of barley swaying somewhere under the sun. An endless green field of grain shifted slowly by a gentle breeze. Two days of rain have passed into the warmth of spring, ripening the green sheaves towards the harvest to come.
Down though the air comes drifting a steady stream of leaves. Swooping and turning on their way down towards the green. This is not their proper time nor are there trees to shed them and yet they float and gleam as they descend like fragments of finely beaten gold.
The leaves fall in greater and greater number upon the bent heads of the grain, landing in their millions as the barley continues to sway. The rich green sward is soon transformed into a swaying, scintillating field of gold.
When every sliver has fallen the breeze begins to build around the far edges of the field. The golden leaves start to swirl together as the wind builds, pulling every fragment towards the very centre of the field. Pulling each leaf out of its random distribution, beating upwards and inwards to form a huge golden pillar that grows denser and denser as it builds.
Eventually the breeze falls back from its circular flow to drift in desultory patterns across the newly re-greened field. The barley sinks back from shaking until it barely shifts around in the last of the dying breeze.
The golden figure does not die down. She stands gently stretching Her heavy burnished limbs, a halo of golden hair set radiantly above Her brow. Shaping herself around old litanies to understand Her present purpose. She recalls eternities spent in the depths of the earth as though they were a single day, She knows how She is risen and that there is no time to lose.
Who can tell where this field exists in time. What things had to be scattered in order for it to form. Who can recite the names of the Golden Tower or the strength that gathers in the whirlwind. Who would guess at any limit to Her power or the things She will achieve, the shards of Her broken soul or the merit that hauled them together. Who would sing of Her bitter past or Her future inevitably sweet? Who would pronounce upon any of these things, tell me truly. Who would be reckless enough to say?
Such are the queries of the ignorant and there is no need to address them. She will move like lightning when the time comes for Her to move, She will come whenever She comes and never a moment too soon. And for this moment She will gaze quietly across the splendour of Her recovered domain, the true realm of Her final victory that will come whenever She comes.
P. Julian
Click here to read the article on Medium
How to Redeem an Incel
She remembers their covenant. Will they?
There are some times when you are writing that it seems that nothing is coming, that rubbish is all that you can create and it feels like all you will ever create.
Then there are those times when a hush descends. The room gets quiet and the air becomes very intense, and you sense that you are in the presence of inspiration that goes far beyond your ordinary skill.
In such moments you may even feel that you are setting down something that has profound value… you may even come up with a strange thought from somewhere other than your own mind: this may be the most important thing I have ever written.
The following paragraphs from My Name Is Sheol arrived in an atmosphere such as that. Everything began to feel very lit and reverent and I knew that I was sitting words that might be able to reach a particular group of abandoned, hopeless people.
The paragraphs come just before Che redeems Luc out of the place where he is condemned. He is required to admit his mistake and to declare his repentance from it, and the instant that he does so the following words appear.
1.166
Before Luc’s redemption can proceed there are formal words which must be said to him, words of hope and validation that can surge between certain realms, like deep calling to another deep. These words come through me in my ordinary voice, saying softly to Luc that his transgression is forgiven, that his sin is remitted, that his iniquity is pardoned, that She has uplifted all burdens from his soul. I see his body quake as I tell him these things, as I continue to inform him that his prayers have been heard, that his petition has been answered, that simply to call on Her in his extremity was to have his petition upheld. I see tears begin to fall from his eyes as these words continue to stream out of me, and as I witness his relief I am moved towards tears as well.
She is your hiding place, Luc.
She will preserve you from trouble.
She will encompass you about with songs of deliverance.
She will strengthen you under the shadow of Her wings.
She will instruct you from a high place.
She will teach you in the ways in which you shall go.
1.167
These words flow out of me for a long time as Luc weeps softly and bows his head. They speak of many things both just and merciful and every word that falls from me falls to retrieve his soul. Because upon every word is stamped the truth: you are Hers now, Luc. She has carved you on the palm of Her hand and in the shape of your heart is Her heart. She will never forget you, She will not leave you orphaned, She will guide you and protect you and in places beyond hope you will make your stand for Her. You will fight for Her, Luc, you will repay Her faith in you. You are entered into covenant with Her everlasting if you will only take your stand for the covenant. If you will glorify Her name and the marvellous things that She has done: so that whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose upon the earth shall be considered loosed in heaven.
Literate readers will recognise some of these words by the fact that they appear in traditional Western scripture: both the New Testament and the Old Testament.
I have taken words from disparate parts of scripture and improvised some of my own and then hit them with some heavy compression so that they inhere together in one compact piece.
The only radical thing about these words should be immediately obvious. I have transposed them from the realm of the masculine God (He/Him) into the realm of the Divine Feminine (She/Her). This simple change in gender orientation makes the piece land in a completely different way.
When I wrote these words I felt like they might be able to reach men in particular, especially young alienated and perhaps even embittered men who lack a loving feminine presence in their lives.
I am not preaching anything radical. I would not be requiring anything of these men in terms of a commitment to some dogma or revealed spiritual truth.
All I am saying is: maybe you should try it like this for a little while. Maybe you should consider some kind of relationship with the feminine aspect of the divine. Maybe it might show you more clearly the ways in which you shall go.
What this piece showed me is that my potential readership — people who might genuinely benefit from reading my work — may be easier to recognise by their spiritual and emotional condition rather than by any demographic or interest-based measure.
The reader anticipated by this passage is someone who longs to hear:
· You have not been abandoned
· Your suffering has not made you worthless
· You might still be seen by something loving and merciful
· Your life can be guided by covenant rather than by meaninglessness
The faith expressed in these passages has nothing to with doctrinal faith. It is something I have come to call faith as loving shelter. The divine feminine as a hiding place, a preserving wing, an intelligence that knows the way when the person himself has forgotten.
This passage does not leave Luc as a passive recipient of consolation. He is restored in order that he might stand, act, protect and repay that faith with his own courage-in-action.
That combination — absolute tenderness followed by moral summons — is central to the mounting power of the words set down in this piece.
I mention Incels in the heading of the article. That is somewhat tongue in cheek but it does go some way towards identifying and describing the benefit for some potential readers. They may be men who have grown unable to believe conventional religious claims, yet still experience a profound hunger for:
· blessing without humiliation
· transcendence without submission
· moral seriousness without condemnation
· a sacred feminine that is neither ornamental nor symbolic
· redemption that does not require hiding the worst of your wounds
That readership may include some religious people but I suspect it also includes many other people who would describe themselves as post-Christian, spiritually homeless, traumatised by institutional religion, or simply unable to accept a universe stripped entirely of meaning.
These readers may have a hunger for books about grief, abandonment, recovery, mercy, loneliness, mystical experience, lost boys and love-lorn men, wounded masculinity, or love that is stronger than death.
A person who no longer believes, but still prays.
A man who has survived by becoming untouchable.
One who cannot accept the old religions but will not survive an empty world.
Anyone who has wanted the divine to be a lover rather than a judge.
A broken-hearted man who suspects he may yet have work to do.
It is important to note that the language of this piece remains recognisably scriptural. The references to hiding place, shadow of wings, carved upon the palm, not left orphaned, binding and loosing, covenant, instruction in the was in which one should go.
None of those images is inherently masculine, yet centuries of grammatical and liturgical habit have made them arrive carrying the authority of a father, king, judge or lord.
If you He to She the authority does not disappear but it vastly changes the emotional temperature and boosts the sustenance which can be derived from the same words.
She will preserve you from trouble does not sound like a sovereign promising protection to a subject. It sounds closer to an intimate assurance of safekeeping.
She will strengthen you under the shadow of Her wings foregrounds the maternal content that was already latent in the biblical image but which is often obscured by the masculine identity assigned to God.
“She will teach you in the ways in which you shall go” becomes especially powerful. Guidance is no longer merely commandment imposed from above. It becomes something like loving orientation: the one who knows you, shelters you and therefore can teach you how to live.
The compression of the material matters too. Scripture disperses these assurances across psalms, prophets and gospel sayings, usually within larger theological structures. Here they are gathered into a sustained act of address to a single wounded man. The result is some kind of litany of intimate reclamation. Every promise is made to converge upon Luc until he can no longer plausibly believe himself to be forsaken.
There are many men who have been offered only two spiritual outlooks:
The first is a masculine God who demands obedience, discipline and moral conformity.
The second is some kind of secular masculinity in which dependence, longing and the need to be loved are treated as weak or pathetic or even shameful.
My Name is Sheol opens a third possibility. It tells a man that he may engage with tenderness without becoming weak; that he may be sheltered without becoming infantilised; that he may relate to the feminine without needing to possess or to control.
The distinction seems increasingly important. The man who has does not have a loving relationship with a woman can be intensely vulnerable to turning flesh and blood women into imagined sources of either oppression or rescue — mother, lover, muse, goddess — placing impossible burdens upon those particular women.
A relationship with the divine feminine — whether as reality or metaphor — can redirect that neediness away from worship or acquisition or control. The man no longer needs to find a woman who will save him because profound receptivity, devotion, tenderness and fidelity already exist as sacred covenants available to him by the sheer fact of his existence.
Perhaps the most important aspect of the passage is that it does not does not merely soothe Luc or promise him protection. Immediately after She will never forget you comes:
You will fight for Her, Luc, you will repay Her faith in you… if you will only take your stand for the covenant…
This prevents the divine feminine from becoming an endless mire of maternal indulgence. All men are loved and that gives them the strength to meet their obligations. A man receives shelter so that he can make a stand for Her. Her faith in him calls forth courage, discipline and service — not some brittle performative masculinity, but a masculinity fulfilled by and encompassed all about with love.
I think at the very least this is a call towards a long overdue spiritual experiment. It does not require any affirmation of a creed or a commitment to any metaphysical proposition. It asks the reader to temporarily inhabit a different grammar of the sacred, and observe what becomes possible within it.
Perhaps the most radical sentence in the whole passage is:
You are Hers now, Luc.
In a masculine religious system, belonging to God suggests conscription, submission, judgment or servitude.
Switching the gender feels like being loved while still remaining bound by covenant, responsibility and destiny.
That fusion — being claimed tenderly and then called to make a stand — may just be sufficient to reclaim desperate young men who have never experienced love and purpose as integrated parts of their lives.
P. Julian
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The Fisher Queen
The feminine counterpart to Grail mythology
1. The Fisher King is one of the most compelling and mysterious characters in all of Western literature. The wounded ruler at the heart of the Grail legend, a king whose personal injury somehow blights the whole kingdom around him.
2. The detail of these stories differ but the core scenario remains the same. The Fisher King languishes in his waterside castle, unable to rule properly and not susceptible to healing by any ordinary remedy, while the waste land all around him withers into a state of barrenness and desolation.
3. The exact nature of The Fisher King’s wound is kept deliberately obscure. He is said to be wounded in the thigh or perhaps the groin, with the wound generally being regarded as some kind of sexual injury. The means of the King’s eventual healing is also left obscure, most often connected with a True Knight who comes before him in order to ask the question: whom does the Grail serve?
4. The Fisher King is perhaps the greatest tragic figures in English literature. He embodies simultaneous themes of personal suffering, failed kingship, spiritual desolation, and the broken condition of the wider world… all of it gathered into one devastating mythic image that has endured for centuries.
5. The resonance of this image is not merely historical. Many people who are sensitive to the plight of the modern world say that the quest for the Grail remains a failed quest, that the Fisher King still languishes in his wounded state amongst the wastelands of the industrialised world.
6. The Fisher King appears regularly in the narratives of modern culture. He was the central soteriological character of TS Eliot’s famous poem The Waste Land although he only makes an explicit appearance towards the very end of the poem:
7. I sat upon the shore
Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
Shall I at least set my lands in order?
London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down…
Le Prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie…
These fragments I have shored against my ruins…
8. Despite his late appearance in these lines the Fisher King is invoked all throughout the poem: in images of water being withheld or polluted, in sexual failure and shame, in lovelessness amidst a civilisation that has become a spiritual wasteland.
9. The Fisher King has also appeared in more recent works, the best known of which is Terry Gilliam’s film of the same name. There are also strong overtones of the Wounded King in The Lion King and The Lord of the Rings. If you include works that occur within a similar setting — some kind of broken rulership over a waste land that cannot be set to rights — you would have hundreds and hundreds of modern examples to cite.
10. The image of the wounded king is a beautiful and terrible image but in my own work a kind of inverse image often appears. That of a wounded or captured woman whose liberation and healing is necessary for the world to be made whole.
11. In The Strange Mariolatry of Brother Bernard there is a poem attributed to a former Marist brother who was defrocked for publishing it and others like it. It is in fact a fragment of an earlier poem that I wrote in exploration of some of these themes. The piece includes the following lines calling in some kind of wounded or fallen Queen:
12. You are the one who was foretold
You Our Lady of the Straitest Gate
You the True Tower of the World to Come
You the Fallen Queen who will rise instantly to save us.
13. This kind of imagery occurs over and over within my fiction despite the fact that I never really set out to create such scenes. They just tend to slip through while I'm not watching in order to create very unexpected, very beautiful and sometimes very tragic images when they come.
14. One very stark example occurs at the end of my novella Lightbringer. Winnie recites words to the newly liberated Isabelle that he has been given to say, after kissing her and feeling her flamelight spark upon his lips:
15. You are what was promised, he said. You are what is to come. We have yearned for you from time beyond remembrance. You are the Way, and the Truth, and my Light only ever shone so that it might liberate you. In sacred texts is it written, and upon the very Heart of Man. You are the hope of every broken heart in the world.
16. In the title of this article I suggest that this lost or captive feminine character might be given the name The Fisher Queen.
17. Having thought about it I wonder whether her true name might be more like The Fallen Queen.
18. That is the way She always tends to appear: as some kind of kind of fair and just monarch who has been cast down. She might be obscured, buried, imprisoned, shamed, forgotten, or made invisible. In Her current condition She may not appear queenly at all, but rather She can present as broken, degraded, timid, naive, or even completely lost.
19. The core of Her mythic resonance lies in the fact that Her restoration is not merely her own personal rescue. When she rises, the whole world rises with her.
20. In the Grail stories the Fisher King’s wound is inexorably bound to whatever blight has destroyed the waste land. In the sovereignty myths of Ireland and Britain the feminine figure is often the land itself… or perhaps the recovery of our right relationship with the land, the hidden obligation of stewardship that inheres in every king.
21. This comes close to the mythic territory I am most interested in. The question is not whether men should rescue women — or whether women should rescue men — as if one were arranging symbolic furniture according to modern anxieties.
22. The question is much more ancient and more serious. What happens when the wounded centre of the world is conceived of as feminine? What happens when the salvation of the world depends not upon a king regaining power but upon a queen being spiritually redeemed? What happens when the great task of the hero is not to seize some sacred object but to restore some ancient soul?
23. This is at the centre of Winstanley’s quest in Lightbringer to liberate Isabelle from the clutches of darkness. It is not simply a rescue story, though it does include the risk and emotional force of any rescue. It is not merely a romance, though romantic love is central to its power. Lightbringer is in fact some kind of Grail quest in which the beloved woman is not a prize but a captive Queen in need of liberation and self-restoration.
24. Winstanley does not become great by possessing Isabelle or even by recognising who she is. His quest is not to win the Queen but to secure her freedom to rise up towards her ultimate triumph: to emerge as forgotten sovereign into the space he has cleared by his own beautiful but lesser light.
25. The time-honoured Grail question — whom does the Grail serve? — has always been understood to be a very strange and complex question. It cuts through the false glamour of the quest by showing that the Grail is not there to aggrandise the hero but rather to heal the afflicted and uplift the downtrodden.
26. In the legend of the Fisher King story that healing depends upon the right question being asked of the King. The failure of Perceval becomes a failure of compassionate attention. He sees the signs of woundedness and inner pain but he does not ask about them, so that even his courtesy falls far short of the deeper demands of love. The commitment required to liberate the Fallen Queen may be even more profound than that.
27. In my work there is a tradition of men calling out to the Fallen Queen. They cry out for Her to remember them and their eternal covenant so that She might come out of exile and restore the world again. These calls echo the plaintive cries of Song of Songs, and echoes can also be found in the Vedic hymns to Ushas — the goddess of dawn — petitioning her as the power who drives away darkness and restores the world to life.
28. The same pattern is found in the Memorare, one of the most beautiful prayers recited to Our Lady. The supplicant begins by begging Our Lady to remember her constant mercy and her unfailing response to our prayers:
29. Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary
that never was it known
that anyone who fled to thy protection,
implored thy help
or sought thy intercession,
was left unaided
30. There is something very beautiful and very strange about this idea of reverent men calling the Goddess back in. I think such traditions come out of a profound intuition: we call most urgently upon what we cannot manufacture for ourselves.
31. A man cannot command any beloved to love him. He cannot manufacture grace or mercy, or create the dawn or the magic of Her fertility or engage in unilateral reconciliation. He can only stand at the outer boundary and call, as beautifully and plaintively as he can. His song embodying desperate hope of the powerless before the powerless have collapsed into despair.
32. This is why such songs so often contain intense pleas such as remember, arise, come away, return, hear me now while remaining supplications rather than commands. The speaker has no power to compel, only the strength to call upon Her as truthfully an earnestly as he can.
33. Such prayers do not simply summon a woman into the man’s existing world. They acknowledge that her arrival will change the complexion of the world — perhaps even preceding the majesty of the dawn — so that darkness retreats, mercy becomes possible, and the wilderness and the garden might finally be reconciled.
34. So many of the ancient ground myths Centre around the requirement that the seeking hero utter the right question. In many of those stories he muddles the question or gets it completely wrong.
35. Perhaps the right question always was this plaintive invocation of the divine feminine: the attempt, through remembrance, praise and longing, to call a woman, beloved, mother, goddess or lost feminine presence out of distance and into living relationship.
36. To put it in a single word: please.
37. The most profound feature of the Grail myth may not be the vessel itself. It may be the discovery that the restoration of the world begins when a man finally asks the correct question in the correct way… so that he may remember what is is that he has sought all along.
P. Julian
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Psalm for the Night Season
To any right man who prays
ALTHOUGH brave men might despair they are never truly abandoned, and they may quickly retrieve themselves by observing the proper form of prayer: make me to understand wisdom secretly -
For Wisdom waits patiently to answer the supplicant. She responds without hesitation to any right man who prays. She seeks him out just as he calls upon her, she goes seeking amongst the children of men to see if there are any who might understand -
She is called by many names for she is devoid of a common name. She is called for her succour and her good counsel, these fragmentary glimpses of her. The devout seek her in the cool places of the earth but she is also of the desert places. To the frozen wanderer she is Mother of the Snows, to lost seafarers Star of the Sea -
There are some who have sought for her all of their lives, whom she now cherishes as her sons. For these She glows fiercely in Her loving protection, for the man who has the heart to call upon Her constantly -
She moves beside him as he wanders in his waking state, She coils around him as he seeks the solace of sleep. Her compassion for him is perpetual, She will never forget him or leave him orphaned. Even if he should stumble, even if he should fall -
She whispers truths to him so that he might understand, She tells him wise things so he might stagger onwards to the finish of his journey. She bestows all of these gifts so that he might turn and bring comfort to her People –
She loves particularly those rare boys who grow properly into men. She does not hide Her sensual parts from these, she calls to him like a Lover and not like a son, with all of the desire that has hitherto been hidden from him -
Knowing that men’s hearts respond especially to this. Knowing that if she calls to him as a Lover then he might comfort Her People like a Lover, and not simply like a valiant, fallen son -
P. Julian
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