I was doing some research lately into the Jewish word
Shekhinah, which wikipedia translates as "the dwelling or settling place of God, especially the Temple of Jerusalem". Before the temple, the Israelites would cart God around in a golden box - the Ark of the Covenant, which would lay waste to the enemies of the Chosen People.
We saw the terrible power of the Shekhinah during CNN's gleeful reporting of the "Shock and Awe" campaign against Baghdad at the beginning of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which I now believe had more to do with revenge for the
Babylonian captivity than alleged WMD or oil. Sorry
Neb, payback is a bitch.
Anyhoo, looking at the pic that accompanies the wikipedia Shekhinah entry:
King David with the Spirit upon him I notice the severed head of Goliath in the foreground, and besides the fact that he's the spitting image of Saddam Hussein, I couldn't help but be reminded of another image featuring a decapitated head - Heath Ledger's Joker. Symbolically, the decapitated head represents ego-death. It is the victory of Id over Ego, the I Am over the mind's illusionary concepts of I Was and I Will. The temporary state of ego-death consciousness was accomplished by the ancients via the intake or "anointing" of entheogens such as the famous Amanita mushroom.
In the image of David on the left, it is easy to see: the gold crown represents the magic mushroom of Kosmic Konsciousness - the spirit of the Lord upon him. The result is the death of his own ego, represented by the giant Goliath, brought down by a tiny, pineal gland sized stone. David sings inspired psalms in celebration of this event, represented by the harp.
But what about the image on the right? What the hell does the Joker have to do with the heroic King David? I'm suspecting that the collective human subconscious is even darker than I thought, and like Dionysus, I need a guide through this strange Underworld. Tonight, I nominate Heath Ledger as my guide - my
Prosymnus.
Before Heath Ledger became the Joker, he was a knight. Heath played Sir William Thatcher in
A Knight's Tale. With his handsomeness and tousled blond lion's mane, I can't help but associate him with the King of Judah - the Lion King. "He will rock you" pretty much nails it.
David was a humble shepherd, a herder, the preferred profession of the mushroom God. Perhaps that is because the shepherds were always grazing on mushrooms, along with their flock? In
Brokeback Mountain, Heath Ledger plays a cowboy, a herder, but a herder with a difference.
Like King David before him, Heath Ledger's character of Ennis del Mar had a homosexual love affair. David's affair was with Jonathan, the son of Saul and the royal heir of the Kingdom of Judah. It was an affair doomed from the beginning, with court intrigue and royal pressure for an heir all getting in the way, and Jonathan finally died in battle. However, it can be said that Jonathan was David's "first love". Like David and Jonathan, the love of Ennis and Jack Twist was doomed from the beginning by social pressures and internalized homophobia, and the parallels with the biblical story of David and Jonathan run through the script like a ghost, even to the violent death of Jonathan/Jack.
I deliberately bring your attention to Heath Ledger's role as a Knight and to ideas of Middle Ages heraldry, because the Anglo Saxon version of the heroic David archetype is King Arthur. King Arthur is also called the Once and Future King. From the mushroom inspired ravings of St. John the Revelator, we have this remarkable line:
The beast, which you saw, once was, now is not, and will come up out of the Abyss and go to his destruction. The inhabitants of the earth whose names have not been written in the book of life from the creation of the world will be astonished when they see the beast, because he once was, now is not, and yet will come. -- Rev 8:17
The modern state of Israel carries the Star of David as their heraldic standard - so in a symbolic sense they are acting out the prophetic archetype of the Once and Future King.
I have previously noted the odd homoerotic tension between the Batman and the Joker. It's like a sick and twisted version of David and Jonathan, or Ennis and Jack. It is obvious that David and the Joker are the same image, but one is dark and one is light - the Joker represents the dark side of King David! Both images together represent duality, yin and yang, good and evil.
I'd like to thank Heath for being my guide through Hades, but unfortunately, like Prosymnus, he has died.
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When the wine god Dionysus went to Hades to rescue his mother Semele, Prosymnus guided him to the entrance by rowing him to the middle of the lake. The reward demanded by Prosymnus for this service was the right to make love to Dionysus. However, when Dionysus returned to earth by a different route, he found that Prosymnus had meanwhile died. Dionysus kept his promise by carving a piece of fig wood into the shape of a phallus and used it to ritually fulfill his promise to Prosymus, while seated on his tomb.