Dear Don XX
Dear Don,
Well, Jonah is an interesting story in its own right, and of course ties in with the whole ‘devouring beast’ affair. Devoured or eaten… either way, an interesting consummation, you might say. Especially when you bring the star-beasts into play.
The animal connections seem to run through all our myths and stories, don’t they? I just looked through a load of images of the stained glass bible at Addington and it is surprising just how frequently beasts feature… and each of them a symbolic story in themselves that we immediately interpret and understand.
I was actually looking for the Jonah window we had seen. My usual method for the Buckinghamshire windows was fool proof… there is a site that lists every one by subject and location so all that needs to be done to locate a picture in my files is nip over there. Trouble is, they’ve taken the site down, so I am relying on memory until I can get in and catalogue every picture… if that ever happens! Can you imagine a more Herculean task and how much time that would take?
Have you noticed that the whole ‘time’ thing seems to be cropping up a lot lately? Time, death, rebirth… the spiralling patterns at the portals of life. Something or other is hovering on the brink of realisation there…
You could look at the devouring beast as a symbol of the incarnation of the soul, you know; the higher being passing through the belly of the beast and being transformed by the organic life process into the fuel of Life itself. That isn’t phrased at all right, the idea is nascent… but there is a possibility there.
Image source
You know there is a solar eclipse on March 20th?Well, I was thinking about that too… the face of the sun is devoured by the moon… and if you look at the footage of it, the sun appears to become the moon, travelling through its phases as the shadow passes. Now, most cultures have a devouring myth associated with solar eclipses… bears, giant frogs, dragons… even the floating head of an escaping god are said the swallow the sun. Or perhaps it is Crow trying to steal it :)
The Beast, however, is simply busy devouring the recycling… so I may have to go and put a stop to that.
Love,
Wen and Anu x
