El Greco, Pentecost (ref: Acts 2:2), 1610. Prado, Madrid.

The Muse Of The Future Is Pentecostal

Look at all those heavy robes! I had not noticed them before: I saw them as petals around a rose.

Or lips whispering in awe (around a sacred vulva or vescia pices of the Sophia-Christos, the perfect Yin-Yang).

Pentecost is about community. But it is also about I. Not me-me-me, but I as a body of its own making, a cathedral with flying buttresses (physical frame), a fount (etheric inflow) and glass windows, an organ, an altar (astral acoutrements). Come in, my people, to be amazed, to let the mind wander into wonderment until it sees through the dust and haze the colour: all that colour poured out of flames.

The German is marvellously perspicacious on the meaning of Pentecost with its description: ausgießung des heiligen geistes. With its hissing of the light (too bright in the serpent then), "geist" is more than the English “ghost”, that portion of the Spirit Word (Logos) which, by incarnation, now with the blood-quality of I-ness, warms this light thoroughly into a translucency (rather than a blinding glare). In Dutch we find "geest" used for both mind and spirit; while "geestig" means funny. Yes, loosen up folks, just because it's holy doesn't mean it isn't human.

The “gießen” travelled into the Old English ġēotan, to pour, to flow, even to shed tears. Last found - as the verb “yote” - in Chapman (metaphysical poet, rival of Shakespeare, 1559-1634), meaning then “ to steep”.

For El Greco to be full of the holy spirit means to be ecstatic. For Goethe and other Romantics who stressed the flow of emotion over and above classical jackets of philosophy, the spiritual was poured into the more tangible aspect of the Eternally Feminine (the attainable lover, lost no sooner than attained, for she is only a representation of that pentecostal Sophia-Logos fusion; to fix her into something lasting is a different (poetic) Work...).

I would like us to pause at how it is virtually impossible to understand the meaning of Pentecost. You have to see it for yourself.

Maria As Focal Point

What the original Greek wording for this event of the Holy Spirit descending upon the disciples is, in the New Testament, I don’t know. Wait, I can look it up, I have a Greek translation somewhere on a bookshelf. But I am more interested in turning to how aritists developed an image from the little there has been worded and came down to them in whatever language. Whether or not the image was already corrupted by the time it arrived in their studios (scriptoriums? When and where was the first Pentecostal image to be found?) due to faulty translation is another topic, and not as compelling right now, with plenty to go on that is fairly consistent (lasting many centuries). Consistent in comparison to the Christmas story: cave or stable, shepherds or kings, tree with angel, star, finial, dove or santa hat for a topper: choices, choices.

There is nothing written with regard to Whitsun in any of the four gospels we use for the rest of our feast days. We must turn to Luke Part Two (Acts) for what happens after the Resurrection on Easter Sunday.

When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. - Acts 2:1-47 ESV

We are often told that Pentecost is about the miracle of suddenly being able to speak in foreign tongues - but language is a wide net that catches many fish and does not only refer to grammar and syntax and dialects. I'd have to check that Greek after all, which word for tongue/language they use.... I really hope everyone sitting for their finals will be inspiried by Pentecost, but I'm not promising straight A's in your language exams.

Those more deeply embedded in the Mystery of Golgotha, with a nice set of hair roots developed in the rich soil of the past fifty days since the Resurrection, will sip happily from the notion that those tongues of fire refer back to the days before the disasterous miscomprehensions during the building of the Tower of Babel, which sound far from alien to us with our modern points of reference in the common building site with its mix of immigrant workers. We will return thanks to the sacrifice of God (his only begotten Son) to a Wholeness of a New Kind: The Brotherhood of Mankind. Why a guy God's-child had to die for that ...? It can be explained, but Pentecost is the furthest thing from philosophy and the closest thing to the love Christ promotes, so no explanations today.

May the obscure meaning of Pentecost, at least point, to that there may be more to it than wishful thinking and (Shuavuot) rejoicing before the cold snap with its scythes of death come back to town. Consider how unlikely this harmonious union of men as brothers is going to hinge on our language skills. It has a little to do with learning eachother's language as it does with agreeing on one lingua franca (all useful practices but hardly spiritual). The Holy Scriptures were not sponsored by Berlitz.

Another kind of understanding takes place on Whitsun. Or precisely, standing under the GodHead (from which that dove always flies, check out the old masters), in the rain of fire (that ether which gives us fruit and seed) we forsake our mental computations and SEE and HEAR SPIRITUALLY.

We enter an Etheric Realm. A reality of union. Here we understand what it is to be one and how there is no other being, only death outside this realm.

Osnabrücker altar, Westfälischer Meister, 1370-80, Köln

Personal Pentecost (inspired by Personal Jesus, Dêpeche Mode)

Someone to hear your prayers

I came here, to Steemit, in a pentecostal state of soul. It’s not a handy way to put it, in this multi-cultural, either fervently religious or indifferently atheist community. The medium is always problematic for this kind of Artist who above all means to innovate on the front of Consciousness. How to steer a middle course between the giver and the receiver. Poets who go too crazy with language must have a very good reason, but above all, find one key - common ground - ingredient that can tease out sufficient patience from the ambitious reader. Art as experience is not for everyone.

Someone who cares

Art as off-road endurance event, with its sand and camel-grass, my wheels often spinning in mid-air, the tyres sometimes flapping, slashed by a rock adrift in the erg (sand sheets), which is the landscape of metaphysical science (knowing).

Someone who's there

For me, it would be pointless to post up pretty pieces that tell it like I see it. I've spoken of Steemit as a place that demands "presence", as if it might be a steamer with a crew.
To post every day not a problem, I do so regardless of the net, pinning new ideas, assessments, finds, decrees, quotes to my own door, filling the house with music, voices and their reports, readings, dramas, and my own peals of laughter.
I don’t need external prompts on top of the ones around me already; the ones I ended up with (through fate) that seem religious, but I have no church; that feel full of faith, but I have only little.

I often rain on parades. I undermine simple hopes - raising the stakes: let's go for a bridge of belief instead of hazzardous stepping-stones of wishful thinking. Where the minds are stable and mature enough I will bluntly ask you to cut out the crap. For the rest I leave the sleepers to dream: it's dew for their brows, even if we need meat for our minds.

More, much more, importantly, is that my posting can only mean to impose. This is not a nice thing to do.
Suppose I just slipped in and out, it would be so sophisticated, but I think I come from farming stock somewhere in my ancestry. It is not conducive to the Eternally Feminine to impose or to sit stubbornly - be it on your high horse or in another man'sgutter. Of course, everybody is allowed to have a presence - but not wherever they choose to. Think of the beggar on the street. Fine, especially if it's his choice, but not in front of my door, thank you very much. We might discuss further the myth of choice.... but that would mean to impose already: you never asked; all that is given that is not asked for is an imposition. Sometimes, an intervention is necessary, but no often. Usually trespassers (incl. messengers) will get shot.

It cannot be done that I only visit your gardens. I can speak of the Grand Canyon in München, even bring you photographs, animate it in our midst, but it's not the same as if we would be shoulder to shoulder looking out over the red dust together.

I didn’t come here for me.

Lift up the receiver

I have struggled to draw the line that would make the path for us.
We all have a stick and this Steemit is the sand. All someone needs to do is draw a line that makes a beach someone else likes enough to walk along. On one side the sand, and a sea on the other, yours, mine, and a horizon beyond, ours.

I track the direction we are walking in by our footprints, before the waves naturally wash them out every tide again. I purposely walked the stretch non-stop, unbrokenly to keep the line steady. The direction is not a line, it is a presence, and an accountability, counted out by the footprints present.

There are some who walk together for a longer stretch (regardless of how frequently they posted or commented, or how well they ever “saw eye to eye”. The good thing about a beach walk is, you walk side by side, keeping straight, never arguing about which fork to take.) Most go off, though, on an anabasis, land inwards, to build a hut, a retreat, a monument to themselves, again (the Discord effect, but also the upvoting contracts).

I am not going anywhere when I am gone. Nowhere to go.

Pentecost is about becoming a believer.
It is to eat of that bread and drink of that wine and sit at that table.

But then what? The Bible ends (apocalyptically). Our prophets draw charts, and read seizmographs and count the queues for maize and milk. The power struggles continue. The oil will run out, the electrical mites will sleep deprive us all, and we will go blind from all that light.

All we can do, is ask eachother to walk together into the sunset. Who know what then: the greatest insights have come to men and women silenced by the beach - someone in a wavy line of quivering faith drew.....

Ms Hunter 229 f.12v Pentecost, from the 'Hunterian Psalter', c.1170 (vellum)