Chapter Eleven


    IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD II
    ~ In the Court of the Crimson King ~




    - chapter 11 index -
    pg. 1 - Moonchild | pg. 2 - The Dream The Illusion
    pg. 3 - The Court of the Crimson King | pg. 4 - The Purple Piper
    pg. 5 - Three Lullabies | pg. 6 - Orpheus
    pg. 7 - The Keeper of the City Keys | pg. 8 - The Pilgrim's Door
    pg. 9 - The Gardener | pg. 10 - The Yellow Jester
    pg. 11 - The Dance of the Puppets | pg. 12 - Dionysus
    pg. 13 - The Fool | pg. 14 - Logos
    pg. 15 - The Magician | pg. 16 - Finis


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    "On soft gray mornings widows cry"

    Another reference to the impending death of the king, the differentiated Thinking function, and also an allusion to Frederick II's role in the Inquisition (as mentioned in chapter three) and his related status as High Priest of his own secular church.

    "It is because the church interfered with the empire that Dante attacks it so fiercely, but that does not mean that he is blind to the faults of emperors. In fact, he condemns the man he considered the last functioning emperor in Italy, Frederick II, to Hell for heresy. This is a puzzling fact in some ways because Frederick was a significant force against the political ambitions of the papacy in Italy; he emphasized the Roman heritage of his title, he developed an efficient state, and he was a scholar and writer, all of which Dante admired.[60] That he was also accused of unorthodox beliefs is not enough to explain Dante's condemnation of him--Dante was ready enough to put others accused of heresy in Paradise. Perhaps what troubled Dante is that Frederick treated heresy as a crime against the state, as treason, and assumed all responsibility for it. This view is supported by a comment Benvenuto makes about the emperor, that he tyrannically usurped all spiritual matters, "omnia spiritualia tyrannice usurpavit" (3.443).[61] Frederick did what Dante objected to most strenuously in the popes, he claimed jurisdiction in the other sphere."

    - The Political Vision of the Divine Comedy
    by Joan Ferrante


    "The wise men share a joke;
    I run to grasp divining signs
    To satisfy the hoax."


    Again, standing outside of himself, he sees the error of trying to find God by purely intellectual means (i.e. the empirical proof of "signs", physical evidence).














    "The yellow jester does not play
    But gently pulls the strings
    And smiles as the puppets dance
    In the court of the crimson king."
    Saint Bernard de Clairvaux
    (Miniature de J. Fouquet, Musée Condé, Chantilly)




    The Yellow Jester

    "Mercury...appears white or pale yellow.
    In classical mythology
    Mercury is the messenger of the gods and is depicted with winged sandals and helmet.
    Greek = Hermes."

    - Mercury

    "Buddhi (spiritual intuition) and Mercury correspond with each other and both are yellow and radiant golden-colored."

    - Esoteric Astrology

    Air

    "Air rules the East because this is the direction of the greatest light, and the light of wisdom and consciousness. Its color is yellow, the yellow of the Sun and the sky at dawn."

    - Correspondences

    Mercury is "the manipulator."

    - Mercury

    "Hermes is the messenger of Zeus and the herald of the gods...Hermes, the robber and cattle driver, the prince of tricksters, the thief at the gates, the bringer of dreams, the patron of travellers, is also the governor of the tongue and the guide of intelligent speech. Hermes is called...Psychopompus for being the guide of souls to the Underworld."

    - Hermes Greek Mythology Link

    As Jung (Sp. Merc. 241) says, "In comparison with the purity and unity of the Christ symbol, Mercurius-lapis is ambiguous, dark, paradoxical, and thoroughly pagan. ... The paradoxical nature of Mercurius reflects an important aspect of the self - the fact, namely, that it is essentially a complexio oppositorum, and indeed can be nothing else if it is to represent any kind of totality." He continues (245-6): "The magic of his name enables him, in spite of his ambiguity and duplicity, to keep outside the split, for as an ancient pagan god he possesses a natural undividedness which is impervious to logical and moral contradictions. This gives him invulnerability and incorruptibility, the very qualities we so urgently need to heal the split in ourselves."

    - The Pythagorean Tarot by John Opsopaus


    The Yellow Jester -
    Jung's Archetype of the Trickster


    Trickster. Psychologically, descriptive of unconscious shadow tendencies of an ambivalent, mercurial nature.

    "[The trickster] is a forerunner of the saviour . . . . He is both subhuman and superhuman, a bestial and divine being, whose chief and most alarming characteristic is his unconsciousness."

    "The so-called civilized man has forgotten the trickster. He remembers him only figuratively and metaphorically, when, irritated by his own ineptitude, he speaks of fate playing tricks on him or of things being bewitched. He never suspects that his own hidden and apparently harmless shadow has qualities whose dangerousness exceeds his wildest dreams."

    - Jung, Collected Works.

    - Jung Lexicon

    "Trickster, as archetype of transitions, lives insides the joints, synapses, sexual organs and bellies of our bodies, inhabits the cultural middle zone between sanctioned and illicit thoughts and attitudes, and acts as mediator of imagination between the personal and the transpersonal. Trickster catalyzes transformation. He tricks us into the psychological scat of our unconsciousness, exposes the weakness of our attempts to build false edifices of control, demands flexibility by inviting us to play with uncertainty, and leads us by chance to the center of creation.
    Trickster has been recognized in living mythology across the world and over the ages as Hermes the thief and Prometheus the fire stealer in ancient Greece, Coyote, Hare, and Raven in Native American folklore, Mercurius in Alchemy, Monkey in China, Krishna in India, Loki in Norse mythology, Legba in West Africa and the Fool in Tarot. He is seen in tribal ritual as the sacred clown Heyakoha, the King's jester who alone could mimic and correct the ruling class in medieval courts, and today is viewed on late night television as the comedian invited to utter the unutterable and in general to make fun of the high, the mighty, and those unfortunate to have caught the rascal's eye. Parsifal the fool who holds the key to the kingdom's revival in the Grail Legend, the surrealists, impressionists, and cubists who destroyed convention in visual art, and iconoclast writers such as Allen Ginsberg in poetry and James Joyce, author of Finnegan's Wake, are just a few who have exerted trickster like transmutations in the arts."

    - In the Blink of An Eye
    Trickster in Myth and Living




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