WALKING LIBERTY
Modern society is quick to assume that few things have any
connection with another unless it is negative, like a
conspiracy. The Sarah Conners' of the world are not
seeing the beginning of the doom they fear just yet, but
when a bully comes down the beach and kicks over your sand
castle you're supposed to feel something. Terrorist want to
kick over all
of our Liberty symbols. Ideally the feeling is
similar to the spiritual idea that if one man is chained up
then none are free. The gloomy side sees only the
conspicuous opulence and squandering of resources, the moral
wasting of neon, nudity and narcissism. Help I've fallen for
myself, I can't get up. No matter how wise a man is he is
still caught up in a roulette wheel crap shoot world.
The justification of someone on the bottom goes back before
the preaching of Jesus.
The symbols chosen by the early American nation were ancient
European, based on fate, luck, and what we have labeled
immoral - crap shooting. Although, one might suppose if fate
and luck are virginal, how typical rather than immoral is it
to gamble with their virtues.
The morality of a neon nation is jarringly out of place
against classical symbols, Justice trampling the snakes,
Columbia's jeweled light, Liberty's torch. However, these symbols
were not always thought to fit into Holy Roman sanctity.
They were occult to begin with and gradually slipped into an
upscale message for the general welfare. Artists, designers
of coins and symbol statuary,
tend to feel cosmically connected because their goal is
positive, an innocent desire to be inventive, playful, and
colorful or, to seek an illusive truth- beauty alignment.
The road less traveled has its frustration, uncertainty and
folly all set out before it like the path of The Fool in the
Tarot deck. He could fall to his peril or be billowed up in
Zen dizziness. No guarantees. The liberty to choose one's
own uncertainties lies at the heart of our American symbols
and that is what fuels the anger of the vengeful and the lost. The
bitterness lies with the unintended consequences of a good
idea. Symbols that generate wealth and prosperity are often
viewed with pathological suspicion. Traditionally, the enemy
always poked out the eyes of the gods of the vanquished.
America has an enormous symbol system, as complex as the
ancient Greeks, Hebrews or Babylonians. Each system is as
unique as a snowflake, yet similarities can be found in
each. The method of symbol making is the same - an empirical
analogy of life experience, fear, aversion, desire and
intent. Gods and demons have their foibles and weaknesses as
well as the powers of supreme-being status. We like symbols
about truth, justice and the American way (democracy and
fairness). The irony is that the world is not now, nor ever
has been democratic or fair. We see ourselves as the torch
of hope that will turn back the ever creeping tide of
darkness. The Norsemen had a similar view in that Good could
only prevail as long as men fought for it, but ultimately
man would lose to chaos and corruption. It's like the movie
title - Hopeless But Not Serious. The only valor (the
survival morality of bravery) is in
striving to thrive by means of vigor and struggle. No pain,
no gain.
The competitive spirit, another pugilistic god-like quality
we worship, plays a saving role for the workers, it's okay
to betray loyalties and friends for a better salary. If your
neighbor falls down, it's okay because in this society one
assumes that everyone can get back up again. Equal
opportunity, is an infant among symbols, not unlike baby new
year. He appears alien and does not have his father's
eyes. He's not a cherub,
does not carry a bow and quiver of arrows. He's more than an
Echo. The goddess Venus would have you believe that the
secret to eternal preservation is echo-location and
amplification by perfect resonance - in other words, a tomb
with an echo (bat cave?). Societies have often thought that one's offspring
should be a reflection of the parents. To be otherwise is
shameful. Ironically people are genetic composites incapable of
duplicate character. But, who knew until a brilliant woman
invented an improved crystallography that led to DNA?
Our symbol system has gone through many metamorphoses, each
butterfly more bizarre than the previous. I venture that we
are stealth nectar
gathering night wings with portable intel
able to communicate like humpback whales around the globe.
The native American land-o-lakes corn goddess of plenty has
receded back to the W. P. A. (we putter along) New Deal era, fading fast before a
tungsten illumination of sharper images. Image is king.
Clean is never ever having to wash. Liberty steps fresh from
her bed and bath encased in body wash moving in beauty like
the deb with a Greek nose-job and the overbite of an orthodontic
make-over miracle. Will she stay the course or do something
original, typically American. Though chaos and corruption
may be inevitable it would be immoral to give up. The path
itself has no morality but the primitive view is that it
should have a heart. Ancient Egyptian justice weighed the
heart (soul) against a feather before allowing a crossover.
Justice
Blind Justice is a blending of the Roman blindfolded Fortuna
with the Hellenistic Greek Tyche:
Fortuna was the singer / harpist who played Lyra the golden
Lyre.
Odd that a seamstress making up history as she goes along
would be so interested in music, especially the music of the
sun and planets. It's all so theoretical, where it is not
clear whether Hermes or Apollo is the actual music theorist.
The Fates harmonize along as back up singers and allow each
planet to ring like a tuned choral bell.
Tyche, ( I wonder if tycoon applies?) is a classical version
of a lucky Wall Street character, often linked to urban
prosperity and, the opposite of urban plight. Her crown
often looked more like the walls of whatever city she
presided over. Also her Grecian begets go from daughter of
Hermes and Aphrodite to a sea sprite or Oceanid, daughter of
Oceanus and Tethys. She was also a good spirit which came
out of Nemisis ( good oft comes from adversity).
Columbia
In the
Greek legend of Arethusa, a kind of pink lady virginal water nymph
similar to the legendary St. Columb of Cornwall, there was a maiden
who preferred to remain
chaste. During the course of her adventures, she decided to
take a dip in the welcoming waters of the river Alpheus. But
as soon as she entered the river, she realized that she was
not alone. The god of this particular river, also named
Alpheus, was roused by the sight of Arethusa and immediately
fell in love with the nymph. Arethusa fled the advances of
Alpheus. However, Alpheus was not so easily deterred - the
god of the river assumed the form of a hunter pursuing his
prey. Some versions of the story say that Arethusa was
chased over the sea, all the way to Sicily. Finally, she
found refuge on the Island of Ortygia near Syracuse, where
she called upon the goddess Artemis to rescue her. Artemis
responded by transforming the nymph into a spring (artesian
well?). And this is how the nymph Arethusa became
identified with the legendary spring.
Liberty
On the head of Liberty lies a radiate crown with the seven
spiked rays of Helios-Apollo's sun rays, (note the medieval
Tarot sun has 13 rays) like a nimbus or
halo. The ancient Colossus of Rhodes, one of the
Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, was also a statue of
Helios with a radiate crown.
The similarities are not coincidental with a perennial
symbol such as the sun god or in this instance a sun
goddess. It may seem like a stretch from one to the other
but symbols do grow, evolve and change over time - the point
Joseph Campbell was making with his Transformations of
Myth Over Time. As I mentioned earlier this
according to Samuel Taylor Coleridge
is an organic symbol which tends to have a life of its own.
The movie National Treasure also makes good use of these
symbols. Somebody did their homework.
Our associations with these symbolic demigods and
demigoddesses is nothing like the original belief in a
patron religious figure, worthy of burnt offerings and
prayers, and yet we hold them reverently in our vision of
ourselves as a nation, whereby to profane them would be to
let the terrorists win. But let me come back to my
beginning idea that
both Liberty and the The Fool in the
Tarot deck have a similar insouciance, a stronger word than
naivety, owing to a non-scouting, unpreparedness motto for
living.
Both have left their fate up to God or the gods, and
likewise the USA.
The new-dawn deb and The Fool are both part of the whole
hollering Wheel of Fortune scheme and all of the stages of
life that cerebrally we know are coming, but somehow never
quite prepare for until it's too late.
Those 13 colonies gleaming in the sun like a jewel have been
glorified to near sacred status overlooking the struggle of
many cultures melting, blending and changing, and literally
making up their culture as they went along. Being both
creative, spontaneous, and by conspiring with God, the
unintended consequences of history now seem destined and
fated like a self-fulfilling prophesy. Symbols usually owe
their embellishment to the successes of the culture that
invoked them. Sports symbols have the same patron-like
adaptation. Instead of prayerful and pious evocations of our
patron deities we find a generous sponsor to kick off the
festivities.
The sport all takes place in an amphitheater with marching
bands, music and half-naked virgins, well,
half-virginal
looking
anyway.
Abraxas, Lord of Light and Dark
