There. After reading merely the title, you know one more verse in the national anthem besides vocatively addressing the country over and over again. Unfortunately, I have tricked you, for that happens to be the fourth verse and now you are out of order and will have to cleverly piece it together in the correct order. With glowing hearts we see thee rise (Line 3) The Canadian archetype: peaceful, tree-hugging, often in a semi-comatose state of mind, threequarters of a decade behind America, a large abundance of hippies, maple syrup, Celine Dion, weenie socialist healthcare, whiney ice skaters, curling, hockey, politically weak, universal usage of the locution “eh,” and a police force of Mounties roaming about with funny hats. Yes mostly true, and yes mostly entertaining to gibe, however – hockey is not the only official sport, it shares that title with lacrosse – and curling is harder than it looks. These stereotypes are harmless, and by no means universal to all Canadians. Have you ever been clocked in the jaw by a Canadian for insulting their homeland? No, (unless it was a French Canadienne of course) chances are the peeved Canadian would just roll with the punches and accept his county’s comical defects while remaining internally smug with the knowledge of American ignorance to the real assets of his country. Canadians don’t get mad at igloo and “eh” jokes. Why? Because a Canadian is not an American. The Canadian saying “God Bless America, and God Bless the Canadians for having to put up with them” illustrates the stereotyped, but true, placid patience Canada extends to her American friends.

From Far and Wide, O Canada (Line 5)

Aside from the misunderstood baguette-toting, beret-sporting citizens of France, no other nation or peoples receives more “playful” and subconscious ridicule from Americans than the Canadians. For good reason though: it is amusingly easy to make fun of Canadians for myriad quirks and their socialist healthcare. Such jest aboot the Canucks is harmless. However, the buildup of harmless stereotyping has bulwarked American knowledge about real Canadian culture and history. Look back on your high school Canadian history class and try to remember that the French colonized Canada virtually around the same time as the British did the United States (and then try to remember that Canadians George Vancouver and Simon Fraser made it West of the Rockies before the Americans ever did). Canada owns a rich history and culture that Americans fail to notice behind the comical buildup of stereotypes.

God keep our land glorious and free! (Line 7)

In retrospect, the fact that Canadians were born from the French could be the underlying fundamental American aversion to Canadians (due to the American plight of Francophobia). However, French influence in Canada disappeared when control of the north passed to the British in the 18th century. Aside from the French cultural identity maintained by the Quebecois, Canada is, like the United States, a descendant of Great Britain. This is a notion visible in the fact that Canada is today a constitutional monarchy that maintains complete political sovereignty as a parliamentary democracy, yet remains loyal to the figurehead crown of England. Some view this as a shortcoming to the United States, not so! For while Americans attained complete independence from Great Britain through revolution, the Canadians obtained the same political sovereignty and independent cultural identity without war, and as a perk get to participate in rousing choruses of God Save the Queen every now and then.

We stand on guard for thee (Lines 6,8,9)

Americans view Canadian passivity as a political weakness, a pretense that is first and foremost based on naiveté. Canadian foreign policy strives in all international ventures to obtain peaceful resolutions and commit to war only when fundamentally necessary. Canada forfeited involvement in the Vietnam War because foreign policy did not mesh with the premises on which the war was being fought. Such ideology is also responsible for the stoic involvement with the Iraq War. This does not at any rate infer that Canada is weak or cowardly; merely that when Canada goes to war it is a result of necessity and is justifiable as such. Canada, aside from what you’ve heard, does in fact have an army – and yes, even a navy. In fact, the Canadian Armed Forces have actually been deployed in battle! Canadian participation in the World Wars was more substantial than most Americans think. Over 110,000 Canadians lost their lives over the course of the two World Wars, and the number who served reached well over one million. It was the Canadians outnumbering their British allies three to one who took Juno Beach on June 6,1944, an allied victory that cost the Canadians dearly.

True patriot love in all thy sons command (Line 2)

Canadians truly are a patriotic people despite the lack of magnetic ribbon bumper stickers. The number of naturalized Canadians living in the United States is relatively small compared to the number of legal alien residents. Whether it is out of fear of identifying as an American or for the true zeal of O Canada! Our home and native land! (Line 1), Canadians like being Canadians. Not to hint at a dislike of Americans, Canadians would be daft not to admit to owing much to their southern neighbors for influence both culturally and economically. However, Canadian political discontent with America is no secret: President George W. Bush is remembered for addressing a crowd during his first visit to Ottawa on Nov. 30, 2004 with the greeting “I want to thank all the Canadians who came out today to wave to me – with all five fingers!” You may be surprised to discover how many Canadians there actually are living among us… be careful though, contact may transfer passivity. If, however, you do come across one, you can now recite to them their national anthem and prove that the American stereotype of cultural ignorance is in
fact not universal.

How does one quantify cool? We see images of cool on television, in literature and throughout history, each example displaying a different shade of the same color, but how do you measure a person’s coolness? Attempts at such have certainly been attempted from time to time, with vague notions of “street cred” and the induction of social networking websites which translate popularity into a number. But popularity does not equate with coolness, and “street cred” is but an unstable system of measurement with no gold standard. Being cool is something intrinsic, a truly Taoist notion – true coolness is not something intentionally reached, but is attained through following the cool Way, the cosmic rhythm of all that is cool which transcends the feeble constraint of language. Like the mythical pot of gold or a fresh rainbow, the closer one attempts to get, the farther away he or she finds themself. In attempting to be cool, one passes into the territory of the poseur, the wannabe ... the LOSER. This ethereal quality of coolness has embedded its cool archetype in many different manifestations throughout history. In pre-modern Japan, the samurai class were the very definition of cool, dressed in ornate armor, riding majestic horses and given the full legal rights to kill anyone who looked at them the wrong way. Now, if this isn’t cool by anyone’s standards, I don’t know what is. The samurai
were set apart not only by class but by clothing, equipment and general appearance; coupled with their warrior quality and ability to take matters of life and death into their own hands, the samurai commanded a certain quality of respect. Today, this respect translates into the semi-idolatry our culture lends certain celebrities. While Paris Hilton certainly does not possess the physical or mental capacity to take the lives of her lessers into her hands, her clothing, accessorization and lifestyle certainly set her apart from the rest of the American people – and, for those reasons certain people find her to be cool, and more than a few of us wish to emulate her excessive, luxurious lifestyle if not her vacuous personality. To a lesser level, characters in literature and film often have a certain je ne sais quoi about them which makes them fascinating and invites us to live vicariously though them. Vic Mackey, maverick cop on TV’s The Shield is the very epitome of cool. Like the samurai, Mackey often takes matters into his own hands, not afraid to bust a few heads in his quest for justice – and yet, like the samurai, his character, embodying the brutish warrior spirit, also comes with a strong conscience; in his core lies the essence of a truly tender, loving spirit. The character of Vic Mackey is eternally poised with a gun in one hand and a flower in the other. Plus, Mackey is humanized by his all-too frequent forays from the path of written law. The amalgamation of these traits is precisely what makes him such a cool character: in between mutilating despicable child-molesters and stealing large sums of cash from the Armenian mob, he might be playing with his children, or helping a desperate prostitute care for her toddler. The Rock and Roller has grown to be overwhelmingly the paragon of the cool archetype in the latter half of the 20th century. Coopting the rebellious nature of the 1960s and 1970s, the cultural dearth of the 1980s, and the cultural lethargy of the 1990s, we saw the psychedelic, punk, new wave and grunge genres, respectively. Initially, it might not seem like Strawberry Alarm Clock, the Sex Pistols, Oingo Boingo and Nirvana had a whole lot in common. They don’t, really, at least on the superficial level, but it is precisely that superficial aspect which separates these bands and genres and endeared them to their audience. The appearance and sounds these bands produced represented the youth culture that came to their shows – the hippies dressed like hippies and enjoyed the music which most enhanced their free-flowing experience of life; the punks dressed like punks and enjoyed the music which most offended the ears of their parents and provided ample soundtrack for mayhem in the circle pit. These attributes were held up as cool by nature of being counter-cultural; Johnny Rotten is certainly no samurai, but was definitely unique from the general populace, in appearance and action. This differentiation between the cool individual and the status quo may hold the key to defining the cool archetype – the whole idea of not playing by anyone’s rules but your own. Physical strength and a solid moral compass are a plus, but not necessary, especially when presented with “cool” musicians such as Morrissey and Prince, who are extremely “cool” while firmly planted in the role of the “wussy,” and the aforementioned Johnny Rotten, who would occasionally spit or even urinate on his audience.

A quick wit is also an added bonus to achieving the upper echelons of the cool hierarchy. One such character who has acheived such a lofty denomination is Bruce Campbell’s character of Ash in the Evil Dead series – notably Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness. In these films, Campbell combines a cool demeanor with an undying warrior spirit to slash, squash and slice zombies, all the while firing off memorable one-liners. Upon receiving a chainsaw in the place of his recently severed hand, Campbell utters, “Groovy.” These manifestations of the cool archetype reach extremes of astronomically cool proportions when they are combined. The act of fighting zombies, established as cool in films such as Evil Dead 2, collides with the absolute coolest of Rock and Rollers in Wild Zero, a Japanese film centering around the punk band Guitar Wolf, who take on a town full of zombies ... alien zombies. Perhaps the coolest moment ever captured on celluloid is when the lead guitar player pulls a samurai blade out of his guitar neck, and proceeds to slice in half the alien spaceship at the film’s climax. A similar trope is seen in Six String Samurai, in which a Buddy Holly-esque rocker is equipped with the warrior skills of a samurai; with his katana firmly strapped to his Rickenbacker, he intersperses his battles with howling rockabilly licks. The general theme tying all of these very diverse manifestations can only be defined as cool. It is typified by an individuation from the status quo, by clothing, action, or both – usually meaning that the individual in question does not have to or does not wish to abide by society’s rules. Coolness is also typified by some kind of skill unpossessed by the rest of society – be it the ability to kill zombies, play some rockin’ guitar, or fire off a one-liner directly following the aforementioned. Above all though, the true nature of the cool archetype is one which cannot be truly put into words; instead it is like a river, a flowing river – it just flows. Coolness is also typified by some kind of skill unpossessed by the rest of society – be it the ability to kill zombies, play some rockin’ guitar, or fire off a one-liner directly following the aforementioned.

The first thing everyone wants to talk about when I tell them I did a beauty pageant is the swimsuit portion. That wasn’t actually too difficult. It’s too absurd to be upsetting. I was wearing a swimsuit with heels and make up and walking across the stage to music. The moment was surreal and funny. Far more disconcerting was when I forgot one of my four pairs of shoes and had to use an equally-functional but slightly inferior pair. It was an ugly feeling: something about me wasn’t quite right, and there were judges. I entered the Miss Spokane Pageant at the suggestion of one of my friends, who was also participating. Our group expanded to four, all from the same social clique. We were the only contestants out of the eleven from Gonzaga. My other motivation was as a self-project. I wanted to do something completely out of character. These reasons are both part of a social project. The separateness of this adventure placed the four of us in a distinct community, and the step out of character added to the ideas of myself which I choose to present. More than anything, I was seduced by the shamelessness of the contrast. There is an inherent contrast in a beauty pageant between the real and the ideal; the whole idea is that a young woman presents the absolute best of herself. Anyone who knows me knows the many ways in which I am not the ideal presentation of a young woman in a Miss America preliminary. I have a slight English accent and a beer belly. My room is a pit of dirty laundry and books and I don’t like to shave my legs. Several impartial observers have pointed out that I cannot walk in heels. Just the idea of being in a pageant was savory to me. Even now, the most fond memories are of turning up for our official photo unshowered and hungover, also slightly windblown from the bus transit. As if to highlight myself as an anomaly, I chose the conclusion of Winston Churchill’s “We Shall Fight on the Beaches” speech for my talent. Mr. Churchill is in the poster above my bed, cigar in hand and gun in mouth. I describe myself as a feminist, but I like to sleep under the embodiment of the patriarchy. Churchill became my icon for the pageant; I would say, stalking along in a rainy bus stop, getting waxed, or losing my shoes: “KBO, KBO. Keep Buggering On.” In my perception – and I don’t think I’m too far out on this one – Churchill is the very opposite of the ideal young American womanhood. Nonetheless I decided to stamp around a stage in pointy heels and shout at an audience that we would never surrender. Surely that was something that could be true for anybody? I was interested in the question of how much? How much was in my own idea of the ideal person? In the pageant, I constantly made small decisions about the ideal way to present myself. What looks good on me, what can I do well on a stage, what facts about myself will sound good to judges? I kept saying, “I feel like a girl.” Within the context of the Miss Spokane pageant, feminine perfection is something created and false. We wore false eye-lashes, body-slimmers and breast-enhancers, colored-out hair and waxed like none other. Our makeup and outfits were designed with the sole intention of being seen from stage; in person, we were garish. Yet it was a constant and active choice. We were choosing to present ourselves. Sometimes the role was consciously passive or fake, but we were selecting that at every moment. I wanted to reconcile the self-painted, passive and smooth image of young womanhood with roughness and vulgarity, with elitism and aggression. I did’t feel like there had to be a conflict between any of these traits, because they were all aspects of me. I like World War II, I like lipstick. All part of the same whole, yes? Well, sort of. The conclusion that young womanhood can be feminine and empowered, constructed and true to herself is premature. I found empowerment in choosing to play a role, but my sense of control, amusement and pleasure came almost entirely from my sense of separation from an ideal. This was an ideal I could not separate entirely from gender; everything seemed to heighten a sense of woman-as-unit. I attempted to look nice, speak well and Do Good Things as part of a larger picture. I was a picture of a girl, an aesthetic idea. There may be a Mr. Washington pageant, but I am not aware of it. Do young men never feel the need to present an entirely aesthetic representation of themselves before judges? If not, why not? I’m not sure, but I find it interesting that the role model I selected, Mr. Churchill, was so entirely masculine and vulgar. He is no less a constructed image; as prime minister, Churchill constantly worried about how he presented himself. He watered down his alcohol so he could appear to be drinking more. I haven’t found a feminine figure I respect as much in terms of the link between self-presentation and self. My ideal of Churchill is one in which is an actor, but an actor pretending to be like his best (or most dynamic self). My experience of the pageant was of presenting one small aspect of me, the aspect which enjoys heels and skirts. I found, as I knew I would, that I can be both, but I still find that neither image is enough. Where is there a pageant for the woman who does as many things as she can as fully as she can, until she can say she has completely chosen what she is? I might not be ready for entry yet, but I’d probably devote a little more time.

Of the various archetypes we can draw from the collective unconscious for use in the creation of our “life metaphors,” the most powerful of all may be the archetype that makes a metaphor of us. I’m referring to the archetype of rebirth, which, rather than being something we “express” in our day-to-day lives is more like something that expresses us in the operation of its own creative activity. Jung saw the archetype of rebirth as exhibiting five aspects: metempsychosis, reincarnation, resurrection, the phenomenon of being “born again,” and the participation in the process of transformation. As a historian, I find the last of these most interesting, for the process of history itself is an enactment of the rebirth-transformation on a grand scale. The narrative that informs all history seems to be an archetypal myth of rebirth, in particular, the myth of the “dying god,” whose death and resurrection provides the pattern for all historical change. Over the course of millennia, the very story has died and been reborn; from pure myth into a religious eschatology, and from religious eschatology into a secular teleology of material progress. How did this mythical archetype of rebirth morph into history? The answer seems to be linked directly to the dying and rebirth of the God who became Man. C.S. Lewis refers to the Incarnation as the “Grand Miracle,” the central event of world history, and the “the very thing that the whole story has been about.”1 The story itself bears the traces of ancient vegetation myths, and Lewis had no apologies for the mythical foundations of his own faith. In the Christian story God descends to re-ascend. He comes down; down from the heights of absolute being into time and space, down into humanity; down further still, if embryologists are right, to recapitulate in the womb the ancient and pre-human phases of life; down to the roots and sea-bed of the Nature he had created. But He goes down to come up again and bring the whole ruined world up with Him. 2 For Lewis, Christ was the consummate “corn-king,” a god similar to Adonis and Osiris, but also “Bacchus, Venus, Ceres all rolled into one.”3 What made Jesus different from these other deities was that he was “the only dying God who might possibly be historical.”4 In Lewis’ formulation then, the historicity of Christ is unique, and this perceived uniqueness gives Christians the rationale to assert their faith as history’s true religion. Yet, similarities between Christ and the dying gods that prefigure him constitute the substance and pattern of the entire history of the world. In the natural, moral, and emotional life of humanity, the descent and re-ascent of the god is the “thing written all over the world.”5 Whether or not one assigns the same divine value to the life and death of Christ that Lewis does, it is difficult to deny that Christianity has introduced a profound and lasting dimension to the ancient myths that describe the eternal cycle of life, death, and rebirth. The motif of the dying and reviving god was first named as such by Sir James Frazer in The Golden Bough (1890).6 According to Frazer, the emergence of “corn gods” marked a transition from primitive magic into ritual religion. After primitive human beings developed to the point that they realized that something more powerful than their own magic arts governed the forces of nature, they began to see “the growth and decay of vegetation, the birth and death of living things” as the consequences of activity of divine beings living and dying through these cycles on a macro-level.7 The dying god of antiquity went by the name of Tammuz in Sumeria, Adonis in Greece and Attis in Phrygia, but as Osiris in Egypt, this dying god also held the office of earthly king. Osiris, the son of the sky goddess Nut and the earth god Geb, was born on the first of the five sacred intercalary days between lunar years, in other words, on the 25th or 26th of December. He married his sister Isis, and ruled with her over Egypt. As king, he delivered his people from savagery by suppressing the custom of cannibalism and introducing the plow, agriculture, and a grain diet. Osiris and Isis also introduced wine to the Egyptians by teaching them how to cultivate and tread grapes. Eager to export the blessings of civilization to the world, Osiris left Egypt and traveled abroad, bringing knowledge of agriculture, monarchy, and wine to neighboring lands.8 Because he “did not spread them by the sword but by persuasion,”9 word of Osiris’ virtue spread far and wide. Now Set, the brother of Osiris, became jealous of the king’s fame and tricked him into “trying on” a custom-made sarcophagus. As soon as Osiris entered the coffin, Set and seventy-two co-conspirators nailed it shut, sealed it with lead, and dumped into the Nile. In grief, Isis cut off her hair and wandered up and down the great river searching for her lost husband. Once, taking the form of a hawk, she “fluttered over the corpse,” conceiving her son Horus.10 She eventually found the coffin of Osiris washed ashore in Phoenicia and brought his body back to Egypt. There, on a hunting expedition beneath the full moon, the wicked Set discovered the coffin, and ripped the body of Osiris into fourteen pieces. These he scattered to the four winds, Eric Cunningham Illustrations forcing Isis to embark again on another quest to retrieve her husband. On this trip, she was joined by her son, Horus, her sister, Nepthys, and Anubis, the son of Nepthys. Accompanied also by the moon god, Thoth, the party succeeded in finding all the pieces of Osiris’ body except the genitals, which had been swallowed by a fish. Osiris’ body was put back together using bandages, and then, over the body, Isis and the bereaved party performed funeral rites that would be incorporated into the ceremonial burials of all the historical Egyptian kings.11 Afterwards, Isis fanned the cold, reconstructed body with her wings, and Osiris came back to life. He now reigns as king over the dead in the underworld, and judges the souls of the departed. The story of Osiris, like all myths, is wide open to a number of interpretations. Certainly we can locate great anthropological moments in this story. Osiris puts an end to cannibalism and introduces agriculture. He creates civilization and according to some interpretations is implicated in the creation of script writing.12 Egyptologist A.H. Gardiner saw the myth of Osiris as an emblem of evolving kingship in Egypt; and his rule over Egypt might easily be seen as a historical marker of the great cultural changes that took place between the late Neolithic and the Bronze Ages. Nevertheless, the story is more than simply a marker of civilization’s development. Even Frazer, who saw Osiris as one among many corn-gods, recognized that the yearly celebrations of the death and resurrection of Osiris in Egypt were uniquely popular and universally observed.13 Owing to this popularity, Osiris acquired, over the centuries, a superabundance of divine attributes marking him as something greater than the “standard” late Neolithic god-king. According to Frazer, “in the resurrection of Osiris, the Egyptians saw the pledge of a life everlasting for themselves beyond the grave.”14 Thus, as far more than a mere allegory of vegetation and life cycles, the story encodes humanity’s aspiration for immortality into a heroic archetypal narrative of progress through time and space. Osiris is, in Joseph Campbell’s words, a “mighty lord of death and resurrection,” and his myth offers full satisfaction of the desire to triumph over evil, overcome pain and suffering, and transcend the limits of the world.15 The annual ceremonies surrounding the cult of Osiris in Egypt became known to the Greeks, who, adding their own modifications, celebrated them in honor of Dionysius.16 When Herodotus writes of certain festivals concerning the mourning of Isis, he is careful not to mention that they are for Osiris, possibly because Osiris was the center of a mystery cult whose rites were of the utmost secrecy.17 The aim of the initiate in the Osiris mystery cult was to “become” an Osiris and to realize that “when the body is given up to the earth, preserved within the earthly element, then the eternal part of man sets out upon the path of the primordial eternal.”18 An initiate in the Osiris mysteries saw himself as one among many pieces of the dismembered body of the god, and sought communion with him through a transformed earthly life. As Rudolf Steiner notes, “[e]ach man is an Osiris, yet the one Osiris must be represented as a special being. Man is engaged in development; at the end of his evolutionary course lies his existence as a god.”19 In the Greek mystery tradition, the initiation into the body of Osiris was considered to be a fractal piece of the creation and consummation of the world.20 Plato, in Timaeus and Critias, describes God’s motive for making the world as the desire to create a living being with soul and intelligence.21 The body of the world was composed of the four elements, spherical in shape, and without limbs. The soul of the world, which was created before the body, and thus became its primary cause of activity, was placed at the center of the body. The soul diffused through the body and also enclosed it, weaving itself from the core of the body out to the celestial sphere. When the substance of the world soul was mixed22, it was cut into strips which were placed in the shape of a cross and attached at the ends. Once the body and soul of the world were created, the Father set out to make the universe resemble the eternal living pattern as much as possible, but since the living being was eternal, and the created universe could not be eternal, he placed the universe inside time, which according to Plato, is “a moving picture” of eternity.23 Steiner tells us that in the mystery cults, it was understood that soul, the divine element in the world, met its death on the “cross” so that the body of the world might live, and the corporeal world came to be seen by the ancients as the tomb of the divine soul.24 When a candidate for initiation underwent the trials of the mysteries, his earthly nature was put to death and his higher self was awakened.25 Often the initiation took the form of a three-day narcotics-induced trance, which would put the initiate in a state ripe to receive the wisdom of the divine being. Upon awakening, the initiate would be transformed and would possess a share in the eternal life of Osiris.26 The mysteries of Osiris still resonate in western history, and they have influenced everything that western civilization has encountered. These mysteries are the template of the Christ myth and remain the base structure of the story of the dying god in all of its historical iterations in the western world, up through the modern period. A modern Rosicrucian volume, The Mysteries of Osiris: Ancient Egyptian Initiation, asserts that the Christ myth not only is the myth of Osiris, but also expresses with it an ongoing historical drama in the process of fulfillment: It is the eternal story of the Christ or Christos: the solar myth of the new testament: that of the virgin birth: of the dying, yet arisen “savior”; all of them symbolizing, or typifying the human soul, its descent into matter: its struggle on earth: the necessity for the crucifixion (cross-i-fication) of the baser (carnal) nature: The soul’s final victory over the evils (weaknesses) of the flesh, and its final ascent to the hierarchies mentioned in Biblical literature.27 To suggest that the story of Jesus might have been understood by some people in the pre-modern world an aspect of the myth of Osiris would hardly be outlandish. More difficult to accept would be the notion that a mythical figure could enter the stream of history and by incarnating, fulfill and make obsolete all myths leading up to that incarnation. Yet, this is exactly how Christianity was presented by its first followers, and later institutionalized by Christian historians. Jaroslav Pelikan has referred to Jesus Christ as the “turning point in history,” 28 which means that Christ is understood as fulfilling all world events before him, and setting in motion all events after him.29 This turning point is more than a simple transition in time—it is the pivotal moment in the cosmic interpenetration between the spiritual and material worlds, and marks the creation of history from the raw material of myth and spirit. According to Pelikan, a “new interpretation” of history set the life, death and resurrection of Jesus as the “principal goal” of the world.30 Early Christian theologians interpreted the story of the Israelites as an expanded pre-figuration of the life of Christ, and “ransacked” the Hebrew Scriptures for prophetic references to Christ. Jesus’ roles as priest and king were seen to fulfill the eternal priesthood of Melchizedek and the kingship of David, while his life and career were held up as the moment to which the mysteries of the psalms, prophets, and historical books all referred. As Pelikan writes, “the prophets of Israel had found their aim, and their end, in Jesus.”31 Of course, given the fact that Israel had a strong messianic tradition, and recognizing that Roman Judea was the site of especially pronounced millenarian activity, there is a certain expectation that we would find Jesus “plugged” into a messianic formula, and held up by certain cultists as the answer of the ages, but this would hardly qualify him for the status of “turning point of history.” But Jesus was identified in the first century as the “divine answer to a question that had in fact been asked everywhere,”32 and this helped spread his cult into the Greco-Roman world giving his “history-consummating” persona a more universal quality. Non-Jewish “prophecies” of Christ can allegedly be found in a pointed passage from Vergil’s Fourth Eclogue, which predicts that “the birth of a child” would bring about the transformation of the human race and transform the “iron age of humanity into a golden age.”33 The poem also predicts that this child would do away with wickedness and “free the earth from its incessant fear.”34 Although Vergil’s poem was actually written in honor of the emperor Augustus, the Emperor Constantine later interpreted the Fourth Eclogue as a prophecy of Christ. Sts. Augustine and Jerome also concurred that the poet was speaking of Christ, and Dante completed the tradition, quoting the verses in Purgatory, and thanking Vergil for leading him to Christ.35 Pelikan makes reference as well to several Sybilline Oracles that took on special significance for early Christian apologists, and most of these spoke of judgment and threats of divine punishment; all of these were used by Church fathers to remind believers of the eschatological function of Christ in a corrupt and decadent world. The various Roman prophecies concerning Christ would have to be seen as thin support for Jesus’ claim to the messianic office—to be sure they were all interpreted as applying to Jesus several centuries after his death, during a time when Christianity enjoyed the support of the Roman Empire. Far more provocative than these contrived “pagan” prophecies are the more esoteric claims of Jesus’ fulfillment of non-Jewish tradition. Philo of Alexandria (25 BC -50 AD) was a neo-Platonic philosopher who argued that the path to spiritual wisdom was an interior journey by which the soul became one with the invisible god through experience of the divine.36 By stepping out of the ego and all sense experience, the soul could enter a state of illumination and identify personally with divine essence. The divine spirit that was said to diffuse the world was the logos, or Son of God, and the logos mediated between the invisible god and the world of the senses. In terms of the “chain of being,” the logos occupied a position above man and below god, and man’s cosmic activity was to link the two by suspending the ego and placing the soul into the illuminated state. Philo, like Plato, believed that it was the destiny of the human to be “the closing act of the great drama, the awakening of the spell-bound God.”37 Philo interpreted the Jewish Old Testament texts as “images of inner soul processes,” and saw that the story of creation was merely an allegory for the soul’s interior search for god.38 Accordingly, his object in reading the Old Testament was to find a map for the soul’s ascent to godhead. These texts, which his Hebrew contemporaries considered the authentic words of the living God, were read by Philo as mysterious revelations of the invisible god imparted directly to the individual’s soul. When the disciples of Jesus claimed that he was the logos incarnate, the effects on the Greek world were far-reaching. The state of unity with God that was previously understood to be found only in the most private communion between the soul and God, was now said to have been contained within the human personality of Jesus. The result, according to Steiner, was to introduce the idea that the personality was no longer able to conquer death and meet God through its own power, but had to establish a new relationship with God through the mediation of Jesus Christ. The difficult metaphysical negotiation between old notions of mystery wisdom, and the new dispensation of salvation through Christ was reflected not only in the writings of the formerly pagan early Church fathers, but also in the fierce conflict in hammering-out the differences between orthodoxy and heresy in the first several hundred years of the Church. While the relationship between the Greek mystery tradition and Christian Church seemed clear and direct, those practitioners of the mystery tradition who became Christians often found themselves anathematized for failing to acquiesce to the new orthodoxy.39 The new order of priests, theologians, and holy emperors not only took command of orthodoxy, but also formulated the new history, which explained that Jesus was both the summation of the past and the causus primus of a new dispensation. Taking literally Jesus’ promises that “the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand,”40 the first generation of disciples truly believed that they were living in the final days of the world. Pelikan writes that Jesus’ persistent call for repentance and transformation of the soul was based on the anticipation of an imminent parousia, and suggests that the impractical and difficult ethical code he demanded was taken to be only a temporary lifestyle until the end of history.41 But again, Jesus did not return to earth in the time his disciples expected, and if he did, it was certainly not in the manner they expected. If anything was clear to Jewish and Greek Christians of the first century suffering suspicion and persecution at the hands of Roman authorities and traditional Jews alike, the kingdom of God was not theirs in any sense. Jesus’ failure to return within “a generation”42 was seen by Albert Schweitzer as the fundamental problem in Christian theology. As Schweitzer states it: The whole history of ‘Christianity’ down to the present day, that it is to say, the real inner history of it, is based on the ‘delay of the parousia,’ i.e., the failure of the parousia to materialize, the abandonment of eschatology, and the progress and completion of the ‘de-eschatologizing’ of religion which has been connected with it.43 Pelikan observes that believers adapted to the delayed parousia, giving evidence that by the second and third centuries, Christians in the Roman world had reconciled themselves to the contradiction that existed between hoping for the kingdom of God and wanting to live a long life in the historical world. He cites the first century theologian Tertullian, who simultaneously rejoiced in the expectation of “the angel’s trumpet,” and prayed for “the delay of the final consummation.”44 Pelikan argues that Tertullian’s contradiction reflected a new understanding of the meaning of history and Jesus’ place in it. By this understanding, Jesus’ primary activity in history had already been accomplished. In the first coming, not the second, Jesus died on the cross, and in this most earthly of deeds, redeemed and transformed the world into something substantially new. Once Christians were forced to abandon their short term eschatological view of the world, they entered into a long process that would have the unintended result of not only “de-eschatologizing” Christianity, but arguably also of de-Christianizing the world. The reason for this, ironically, seems to have everything to do with the historical status of Christ. That seemingly high level of historical verifiability that made Jesus super-ordinate to a god such as Osiris made him forever sub-ordinate to the history that now contained him. In the Christian myth, Jesus died, rose from the dead, and redeemed the world, thus becoming the “turning point of history.” In that moment, though, history became an eternal linear process that owed its operation to the absence of its central figure. We might even say that history became the sarcophagus of the dead god buried in the material substance of the world. While Jesus remains physically absent the promise of the consummation of the world goes unfulfilled and the process of history goes on. The delayed parousia then, is the unfinished part of an incomplete story whose texture is determined entirely by what happens in time and space. Only when the eschaton arrives will the world end and the story of history be finished. Until then, the story will contain mostly staged deaths and contrived rebirths. New products, new programs, new elections, new administrations— they all offer the promise of something truly novel, but more often than not, deliver the same old product in a new package. Until we “become Osiris,” so to speak, the cycle of death and rebirth becomes a tedious process of material change that modern historians call “progress.” If we wanted, though, we could also consider history as the heroic quest of Spirit itself, which has descended, to paraphrase ethnobotanist Terence McKenna, into the “hell worlds of matter” in order to retrieve something required for the ascent back home.45 Then we will wake up with Joyce’s Stephen Dedalus from the “nightmare” of history into the morning of a new experience in which three-dimensional rationalism, fixed matter, and the hard boundaries of a subject-object world are as confusing as dreams seem to us now.

1) C.S. Lewis, Miracles: A Preliminary Study (New York: Macmillan,
1947), 112.
2) Ibid., 115-16.
3) Ibid., 119.
4) Ibid., 118.
5) Ibid., 116.
6) Sir James Frazer, The New Golden Bough: A New Abridgement
of the Classic Work, ed. Theodor H. Gaster (Garden City,
New York: Anchor Books), 221.
7) Ibid., 163.
8) Ibid., 184.
9) Rudolf Steiner, Ancient Myths, Their Meaning and Connection
with Evolution: Seven Lectures Given in Dornach, 4th
to 13th January, 1918, 2nd printing (North Vancouver: Steiner
Book Centre, 1971), 3.
10) Frazer, 184.
11) Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God: Occidental Mythology
(New York: Penguin/Arkana, 1991), 426.
12) Steiner, Ancient Myths, 19.
13) Frazer, 184.
14) Frazer, 186.
15) Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God: Occidental Mythology,
234.
16) Herodotus, The Histories, trans. Aubrey de Sélincourt
(London: Penguin, 1965), 148.
17) Rudolf Steiner, Christianity As a Mystical Fact and the
Mysteries of Antiquity, trans. E.A. Frommer, Gabrielle Hess
and Peter Kändler (Blauvelt, New York: Steinerbooks, 1977),
49.
18) Steiner, Christianity and the Mysteries, 128.
19) Ibid., 129.
20) Ibid., 130.
21) Plato, Timaeus and Critias, trans. Desmond Lee (London:
Penguin, 1965), 42.
22) Ibid. The mixing of the soul is a complex formula consisting
of a first mixture of 1) indivisible and divisible existence,
2) indivisible and divisible sameness, and 3) indivisible and
divisible difference. Combined, these three groupings produce
intermediate existence, intermediate sameness and
intermediate difference. A final mixture combines these three
subsequent products into Soul. Soul is then divided into sections
according to the mathematical proportions 1:2:4:8 and
1:3:9:27. The internal logic of these proportions is the squaring
and cubing of the initial values, the result of which is the
realization of soul existing as a two dimensional plane and a
three dimensional solid.
23) See Plato, Timaeus, Section One.
24) Steiner, Christianity and the Mysteries, 94.
25) Ibid., 130.
26) Ibid., 131.
27) R. Swinburne Clymer, The Mysteries of Osiris or Ancient
Egyptian Initiation. (Quakertown, Pennsylvania: Philosophical
Publishing Company, 1951), xiii.
28) Pelikan, 26.
29) Henry Chadwick, The Early Church (Penguin: 1967),
9. Chadwick writes of the first Christian Jews, “They took it
for granted that his coming, being a fulfilment [sic], must be
continuous with the past revelation of God to his people and
could not mean a break either with the old covenant made with
Abraham, symbolized by circumcision, or with the Law given
to Moses on Mount Sinai. If something new had happened, it
was the action of one and the same God, Creator of the World,
Lord of History, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the
twelve patriarchs. His new word to his people must be consistent
with that spoken in the past by the prophets.”
30) Pelikan, 26.
31) Ibid.
32) Reinhold Niebuhr, quoted in Pelikan, 34.
33) Pelikan, 35.
34) Ibid.
35) Ibid., 37.
36) Steiner, Christianity and the Mysteries, 187.
37) Ibid., 128.
38) Ibid., 188.
39) Chadwick, 153.
40) Mark 1:14-15.
41) Pelikan, 24.
42) Matthew:10:23.
43) Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, 1st
complete edition (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), 328.
44) Pelikan, 25.
45) McKenna, History Ends in Green, tape 1.