The Free Mason’s Granddaughter: Spiritual Reflections and Some Thoughts on the Magical Logos in the Crucifixion Narratives
I used to be an alter girl, clad in white, reveried out as holy songs floated up through the aether and the candle flames grew tall in their reaching for heaven. I was all in, baptized Episcopal and avid Bible reader, though with a liking of tarot and a penchant for oddities even as a child by virtue of the culture of my home.
Despite being devout, one day I quit Sunday school because my beloved Sunday school teacher’s lesson was all about how rock and roll is the Devil’s music and to be good Christians, we must reject the Devil and all of the things he represents. I was shocked by my rebellion seeing how deeply I believed in God and in all things holy, but I felt the Sunday school teacher was insulting our intelligence, telling us make believe in order to shape us into obedient conformists with no imagination. I thought about how much I disliked other forms of music. If I had to listen to bad music in order to be a good Christian, I was out. My grandfather, bless his heart, was a father of five and a grandfather of nine. He just rolled his eyes because he had dealt with adolescent rebellion before.
He gave me a book entitled Faith and Practice. He asked me to read it because it would explain why faith was important in an imperfect reality. It wasn’t that we lived in a tragic universe where God did not care about the maladies of the world or really would damn someone eternally for listening to rock and roll, but rather, we as humans were being tested. The question is what would we do with our free will when things became tough.
The truth is I promised to read it but never did. I actually plan to read it this month though I have no plans to reconvert back to Christianity since I find it to be overly strict.
I had an atheist phase soon after I quit Sunday school, but I could not shake the feeling that there was more to reality than just the material. I used to visit the local Tower Records store frequently because it was within walking distance, and they had a book room full of mentally stimulating texts. I suppose I am just a rebellious spirit because I always veered toward the piercing and tattoo section. I especially liked the extreme body modification book not because I wanted to modify my body so much but rather because I wanted to understand how people would put their body through so much pain, like hanging from hooks by piercings. I suppose that is besides the point. One day, next to one of the volumes on body art, I found a book on Celtic Wicca. I was curious about what it said. One thing led to the next, and I became a self-initiated Wiccan, thinking that it made more sense for there to be a multiplicity of gods rather than one.
I am not a Wiccan today though I believe magic is real. I think of myself more as a born witch, someone who was just born with an ability to affect reality with intention and the assistance of correspondence. However, there’s more to it than that. I actually do think there is one God, with many faces or aspects, made up of an intelligent and creative Pneuma, the breath or energy of life that flows through all things, and the Logos, the active Principle or Reason that makes different forms cognizant of themselves and others and able to exercise Will, an emanation of God within. The many faces of God are the gods and goddesses of the pagan pantheon. They are expressions of God so to speak and have their own qualities.
For many people, this type of belief may seem very different, but it actually has things in common with Christianity and Neo-pagan belief systems. Christians believe in one God, creator of all things, all knowing and all powerful; they just reject the idea that there are other gods, other faces or aspects of God, or that if there are other gods, that they should not be engaged with. The Christians also believe in Jesus the son of God, God made flesh. Jesus can be seen as the Logos embodied, the supreme knowledge and agency of God taking form, especially if we are following the authority of the Gospel of John. As far as I understand, Christians believe humans should follow the example of Christ, his being and logic in perfect alignment with God. However, Christians do not believe that human beings should take it upon themselves to utilize the Logos or connect with whatever God energy may be within to affect reality through spell work. Spell work would be seen as a snare of the devil, a type of hubris challenging God’s sovereignty, an overestimation of the power of man or the earthly. In that regard, my beliefs have more in common with Neo-pagans and Wiccans. Neo-pagans and Wiccans believe that there are many gods and that nature to is to be venerated — the Pneuma inhabiting all emanation. Wiccans believe that they can alter their consciousness and do ritualistic work to alter reality. If this is so, it would certainly occur by connecting with the Pneuma within and exercising it via the Logos. Wiccans do not believe that there is anything evil about exercising the Will to affect change via spell; rather, it is a natural gift that human beings have.
Now, with all this in mind, I recognize a lot of assumption, stereotyping, and cynicism can come into play. Those who are strictly Judaeo-Christian will probably see what I am saying as heretical. More educated Judaeo-Christians may recognize the similarities with my mindset and their faith, but still think that their way of thinking is the correct way of thinking. The science minded, atomic materialists, and atheists may think that all of it is fairy tale nonsense. The Wiccans and Neo-pagans out there may not be familiar with the concepts I discuss and dismiss them.
Fine and well. Think what you want. My larger point is concerned more with demonstrating that there is something magical within the Christian ideological framework.
Before my grandfather died, I told him I was a Wiccan, and he told me that as long as I believed in some form of God, then that was fine but that our people always went to church. Our people went to Jerusalem to fight for Christendom and for Western culture. He told me that I should still go to church even if I don’t believe in everything that was preached because there was a lot of wisdom to be had and a community to support me so long as I kept my private beliefs private. He reminded me of how our family sat in the back pew of the church for generations. I could always do that and be close to the door if I didn’t want to interact or if the church seemed too dogmatic, and I needed to head out instead of talking with others. He was a free mason, and now that I am older, I can see the influence free masonry had on his thinking. He was a Christian man that could see that the magical was a part of life.
It was a nice alternative to the strict Baptists on my father’s side who believed in intrusive prayer, the laying of hands, and scolded me frequently about my “unholy ways” even before I departed from a Christian mindset. To them, there is no such thing as magic, only whatever grace God decided to dole out and to even think about magic is a sin.
Now that I’m older, in general, I don’t mind most Judaeo-Christian beliefs so long as no one tries to badger me into conforming with their views. I understand many people find guidance in their Christian faith and that there is wisdom that can come from Judaeo-Christianity. I don’t call myself a Christian because I am not, but I find value in the belief system anyway.
Like I mentioned before, my point isn’t actually to give you a spiritual autobiography; instead, I seek to argue that there is something magical about the figure of Jesus as demonstrated in the Gospel of John. In the synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus is depicted more as a historical figure but in the Gospel of John, he is depicted as a more supra-natural figure as evident in the crucifixion scene. [1]
John’s passion narrative, specifically in the crucifixion scene, suggests that Jesus is a completely divine being while in the synoptic gospels, Jesus is described in more human terms (the specific type of human, whether a revolutionary healer, a reluctant man adopted by God, a spiritual teacher, or a warrior hero, is another trajectory all together).
John’s description of Jesus’ last moments of life focus on Jesus’ divinity. More than in any synoptic gospel, even Luke’s, Jesus seems to die peacefully, without pain. His last words are only, “It is finished” (John 19:30), and he quietly dies. His calm attitude toward death intimates that he has reached some sort of enlightenment and is immune to the fear of death or the frailty of the body. In contrast, in Matthew and Mark’s gospels, Jesus feels pain and leaves his mortal bounds with a great, human shout (Matthew 27:50 & Mark 15:37). Even Luke’s gospel describes a cry issuing from Jesus before he breathes his last (Luke 23:46). Certainly, John’s description of Jesus’ last moment suggests supra-human emotional control at the end.
More importantly though, in John’s gospel, in the crucifixion scene, supernatural phenomena occurs directly in relation to Jesus, but in the synoptic gospels, supernatural activity during the time of the crucifixion is directly related to God. In John’s gospel, for example, when the Roman soldier pierces Jesus’ corpse, along with his blood, pure water flows out, suggesting his very essence is a font of life (John 19:34). This unusual phenomena issues directly from Jesus, indicating that Jesus himself is the source of the miraculous or magical. However, in Mark’s gospel, after Jesus dies, the miraculous event that occurs is the tearing of the temple curtain, a supernatural occurrence stemming from God (Mark 15:38). Matthew’s gospel also states that the temple curtain tears at the time of Jesus’ death, and the saints are resurrected (Matthew 27:51&52); both supernatural occurrences are caused directly by God. In Luke’s gospel, no supernatural phenomena occurs at the time of Jesus’ death. Thus, at the time of crucifixion, John’s gospel implies that Jesus is himself divine, but the synoptic gospels do not.
With all of this in mind, readers see that biblically speaking, upon close reading and with a quality translation, the stories of Jesus’ crucifixion vary and so too does the actually supernatural quality of Jesus himself. On the one hand, in the synoptic gospels, we might see Jesus as a historical figure who can perform miracles by grace of God, like some type of wizard, though not specifically in the crucifixion scene itself. On the other hand, in the Gospel of John, we might see Jesus as an emanation of God himself. He is actually the Logos, God embodied, and the miraculous or magical emanates from him directly.
It is in John’s Gospel that magic is real, embodied in a man, and thus, a similarity can be drawn between what the Christians believe and what Wiccans believe although certainly the similarity ends there since Christians reject the exercise of the logos in a magical sense as they view it as perhaps idolatrous but most certainly an act of pride against God. Nevertheless, there have been ceremonial magicians, like Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, in history during the strictest of Christian eras who performed rituals to alter reality and were never punished or burned. The reason why is that these ceremonial magicians used the language of Judaeo-Christianity to justify the exercise of the logos for magical ends. It wasn’t so much that they challenged God by altering reality with spell work as it was that their (spells) prayers were shaped ritualistically and facilitated by the grace of God and his angelic hosts.
Could it then be true that it is an issue of semantics that separates the Christian and the more magically inclined?
[1] The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha: Revised Standard Version. Eds. Herbert G. May and Bruce M. Metzger. New York: Oxford University Press, Inc, 1977.
