But it was especially the Celtic Cross that I was thinking upon the other day: how the cross blends with the circle. The cross is angular, finite \u2013 though its arms may stretch to infinity \u2013 and very much male: a yang<\/em> symbol. In contrast, the circle has no beginning, no end. It is smooth, enfolding. It is feminine, a yin<\/em> symbol. So in the one Cross there are both male and female \u2013 a true synthesis of God and Goddess.<\/p>\n And with that synthesis comes a reunification of earth and heaven. Jung recounts how \u2018up to Carolingian times [the ninth or tenth centuries c.e.] the equilateral or Greek cross was the usual form\u2026 But in the course of time the centre moved upward until the cross took on the Latin form…\u2019 He continues, \u2018it symbolised the tendency to remove the centre of man and his faith from the earth and to \u201celevate\u201d it into the spiritual sphere.\u2019[3]<\/a> This removal, I believe, has had disastrous effects on our spirituality, constituting a divorce between spirit and matter, heaven and earth. With the triumph of scientific materialism has come, not the new vibrancy that science should have breathed into spirituality, but too often a dismissive scepticism that rejects anything that cannot be \u2018scientifically proven.\u2019<\/p>\n As if the impoverishment of our spirituality wasn\u2019t enough, this separation has caused something just as bad on the material plane. We no longer see ourselves as a part of nature. \u2018Nature\u2019 is something to do with the birds and the bees, not with us. (I speak in generalities \u2013 there are many glorious exceptions!) So when the birds and the bees are threatened, along with the flowers and the trees, we act as if it doesn\u2019t matter. We have ceased to realise that our life-thread is inextricably entangled with theirs.<\/p>\n In contrast, to bring together again male and female, God and Goddess, is to remarry heaven and earth. Once more yin<\/em> and yang<\/em> are in balance. Sky Father holds hands with Earth Mother. We are Nature and nature\u2019s death is our death. Where Christianity persists in seeing God as \u2018Father, Son and Holy Spirit\u2019 (and even Spirit is usually given masculine pronouns), and Wicca honours the Goddess (with the God as a subsidiary adjunct), the Celtic Cross brings together again male and female, God and Goddess, heaven and earth. You can call it the alchemical marriage if you like. It is the healing our dying world desperately needs.<\/p>\n But I couldn\u2019t say all that in an Alpha meeting.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n References:![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.greenspirit.org.uk\/blog3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/032Galarus_Oratory-225x300.jpg\")
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Andrew Rivett is a writer and priest.<\/strong> The second edition of The Seaborne,<\/em> the first book of A G Rivett’s The\u00a0Seaborne<\/em>\u00a0Trilogy<\/em>, is due for release in August 2022, and Book II,\u00a0The Priest’s Wife<\/em>, is hoped for by the end of the year.<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n[1]<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 C G Jung, Man and his Symbols<\/em>, 1964
\n[2]<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 George Herbert (1593-1633), Easter<\/em>
\n[3]<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Jung, op cit<\/em><\/p>\n