Dialogue on HOLY SMOKE

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Dialogue on HOLY SMOKE

one man's nigredo

K Anand wrote:

<<Saw Holy Smoke, Deb. I enjoyed it, but my friend's

wife couldn't relate to it. Unconventional (and disturbing--

perhaps more so for a male, you think?) movie.

>>In fact, offhand I can't think of any man I know

who would like the movie. Interesting how the tables were

turned, unexpectedly but very plausibly. [The bitchy " I won!

Admit it, I won! " Kick the guy's balls when he's down! After

he objectified her initially.] >>

Deborah:

Think of exactly who he is and how he betrays his

position on every level. First as a philosopher, then as a

psychologist, the priest of his time. He has a captive

audience, he has the experience of his years, and look what

he does. So if she kicks him in the balls, he 1) deserves

it: he kicks her in the soul from the start; and 2) he needs

it. This is one man's nigredo.

Holy Smoke is the cusp we now stand on... a sliver of

moon, a tilting axis. What is the task of our age? We might

recall that WE ARE ONE SPECIES, the eyes and ears of a

planet where all matter descends from stars. War of the

sexes is the mindspeak of an age in the process of passing

way. Ruth goes beyond it. " I won. " What is she saying? She

won not because of taking the upper hand, controlling

sexually, but because she thought she'd shown him his

hypocrisy, that his psycho-babble spirituality misses the

whole point. And in saying " I won " , she was untrue to her

own sense of compassion --that which has been awakened in

her... and immediately regrets her cruelty. In the end, does

she not take him to her embrace? Not as a sexual creature or

as winner, but out of higher love. The words to the song in

the scene:

For time will catch us in both hands

To blow away like grains of sand

Ashes to ashes rust to dust

This is what becomes of us

When sexuality becomes part of Being, of *uniting* and

not a force unto itself alone--when we merge and become

neither male or female--that's the compassion of the great

heart, the stillpoint of the Self.

Libido understood this way makes everything one casts

eyes on a thing loved with the same passion one once

reserved for the sexual. So I can't speak of those wars of

the sexes at all. I only see cruelty (winning/losing) and

compassion (uniting). And that's what the ultimate message

of Holy Smoke is.

When I watched it with friends they laughed at Ruth's

conversion experience with Baba--and it was very funny, the

way it was done. But that doesn't mean there isn't a 3rd eye

and that doesn't mean that there aren't teachers /situations

that act as catalysts to open a soul *when it is ready* to

be opened. Ruth opened herself... and we see her ripen

throughout the movie. We see all the women ripening--all of

them way ahead of the men who are still stuck in that

Piscean world of opposites.

It's Ruth, the woman, who goes over the peak first,

into the sun, into the new age. That glorious scene, half

satire, half the deepest and most longed for moment of aware

ecstasis, enacts that: the women are in the kitchen (Carol

with her girls club shirt) and all of them singing the

lord's prayer--and we cut to Ruth, looking like the female

Christ, as she crests the hill and walks into the sun--she

crosses over, continues down the other side and

disappears--and she's across into the symbolic new age...

thy kingdom come, thy will be done, *on earth* as it is in

heaven--are the word the women sing. On earth... Yes.

Exactly. Our daughters:

Quis hic locus, quae regio, quae mundi plaga?

What images return

O my daughter.

" The pursuit of consciousness, " con-science " , unites

the goals of the two previous stages of Western history,

namely religion and science. Religion (meaning " linking

back " ) has as its essential purpose the maintaining of man's

connectedness with God. This corresponds to Eros, the connec

ting principle, and the " withness " factor of consciousness

as " knowing with. " Science, on the other hand, boldly gave

up the connection with the other and opted instead to pursue

an increase in human knowledge. If religion is

Self-centered, science is ego-centered. Religion is based on

Eros, science on Logos. The age now dawning will provide a

synthesis for this thesis and antithesis. Religion sought

linkage, science sought knowledge. The new worldview will

seek *linked knowledge.*

" It is already widely recognized that the pursuit of

scientific knowledge as the highest goal of human

endeavor is puerile and inadequate to the needs of the whole

man. A return to the intellectually naive standpoint of

concrete religious faith is equally inappropriate to the

modern mind. A genuinely new goal and purpose for human

existence is required. That new goal has been found and

articulated by Jung. In his words, " Man is the mirror which

God holds up

before him, or the sense organ with which he

apprehends his being. "

" Thus, the individual's striving for consciousness

becomes... the new answer to the age-old question of the

meaning of life. "

excerpt from Edinger's _Creation of

Consciousness_,

p. 57-58

And what liberation! Ruth and her mother and Carol

will escape into higher planes. But what of with a Y?

She who is primping and defines herself only as a sexual

object? She who has sex with phantasms when she's bonked by

the totally clueless Robbie? (Their clothes--the guns on his

shirt, their little boy playing cowboy -- " Bang bang!

Grandma! Bang bang! " Chip off the old notch.) We don't know

what will happen to with a Y, but maybe some of those

women watching who can't relate will see themselves in

her...

All unfolds in time.

I love that scene where Ruth realizes that her father

has lied to her (he's such a lying sack of shite in his

Playboy shirt, the bag of shite emblem). She takes the pole

and goes to hit him, and she becomes surrounded by the ring

of males. (Rods and circles. Temenos, Oroboros..) All of

them saying " We love you. " " Yes, we love you Ruth! " Ha! Such

love, girlie. They're gonna straighten you out! It's like

the patriarchs who are busy at work loving the whole earth

to death with their righteousness right now--the Vast Right

Wing Conspiracy: That which is passing away... and doing as

much damage as it can on its way down.

From inside the ring of men--her bondage--Ruth looks

to Timmy, her gay

brother--the only man who can come close to relating

to her. And even he betrays her. That's when she breaks.

Just believe Ruth. She's on her way to something.

She's taking us where

we're all going...

God I love her.

She dances with the woman in the club: " I put a spell

on you. " She has to awaken to her own power before she can

give it up freely--else it's a false ascension. And here's

she's feeling her power, watching PJ watch her, all right.

And doubly sweet because she knows what went on with ,

his holy hypocrisy (keep breathing) ... a worse trespass for

him because he has the role of a priest in this culture.

But the scene where Devi appears to PJ! When *he*

projects her image in Ruth's form, the goddess reveals

herself to him--BECAUSE HE IS READY. He's dressed as a

woman--his own anima. And he has only one boot on, is on his

knees and on his belly. Well, that lone boot/

sandal --that's an old symbol of Hectate (Hekate) worship,

and PJ is just about a sandal past Etna, as Liz and I joke.

He's on his way to the underworld to meet the goddess, the

heart, the fire that burns in everything. Hephastus and

Hades and Helios the sun are all nothing without her... she

who burns as a point in the darkness. The light of the dark

wing.

And so he recovers. He lets Carol patch him up and put

him back together, the mortal woman who forgives his

trespasses--and he has twins!!! That's Devi's image on the

computer at the end--did you see? " Something really did

happen. " He understands that Ruth -- the goddess he saw in

her-- " loves him from a distance, " and he says: " I wear it

like a blessing. "

He wears it like a blessing. PJ wasn't kicked at all,

certainly not in the balls. He had his 3rd eye opened, made

his trip down to Hades. Maybe the 3rd eye is just a little

lower in men!

What else?

Oh. As PJ has his vision of Devi / Ruth, it fades and

spits into three--a

trinity of beings. Who are they? , Robbie, and

Timmy: Female, male, and merged: Tim is gay. The opposites

and their resolution: metaphor for the coming age.

Anyway--there's a start. I love this movie... That's

all I can say.

Anand :

>>The whole power play between the sexes is

impossible. [Within the sexes is not as treacherous and

difficult. It's SEX that's the source of the mess. Yet,

excise the sexuality and too much is lost.] I despair of any

(even partial) resolution. At least I can see the

problem.>>

Deborah:

Just forget the sex bogey. Sex is just beings

meeting, seeing the godhood in each other--creator in the

created. Incarnation. Sexuality is the magic ritual of

incarnation. It's what we have to do--*with awareness*:

Consciousness makes it a sacrament.

Anand:

>>Kate Winslett's character lives her Eros,

uncompromisingly. She learns compassion.>>

Deb: Yes, yes, and yes.

Anand:

>>Not many women like that either.>>

Deborah:

Oh heck, we're all like that at heart. It's what we

really are--the way we're born. It's just nice when people

realize they don't have to die to transcend. Contrast with

Clarissa and Lovelace.

And yet--I AM Lovelace--just as I AM Heathcliff.

Sometimes I'm ce Olivier. No battle of the sexes here.

We're all in each other.

Anand:

>> I am just holding the movie in my consciousness

without taking sides. Would love to hear your take on it.>>

Thank you for asking.

Namaste,

Deborah

Magic is not about disorder. On the contrary, it

reestablishes a peaceful coexistence between the conscious

and unconscious when coexistence is under attack. ~Ioan

Culiano

back to Clarissa part 1

Holy moly! CLARISSA is released on DVD 2 and VHS!

....where we dare to be dewy-eyed among smart people

In the floods of life, in the storm of work,

In Ebb and flow,

In warp and weft,

Cradle and grave,

An eternal sea,

A changing patchwork,

A glowing life,

At the whirring loom of Time I weave

The living clothes of the Deity.

~Goethe, the Earth Spirit to Faust