At the meeting of life and death

The story of Savitri is narrated in the ‘Vana Parva’, or forest section of ‘The Mahabharata’, when the Pandava brothers were wandering in exile, meeting various sages who they found in Ashram retreats in the wilderness. There they meet the mysterious sage Markandeya who imparts spiritual understanding by recounting ancient legends, which have been preserved from primordial times in the oral traditions of forest dwellers. In the section of ‘The Mahabharata’: CCLXLI (Pativratta-mahatmya Parva) Here the sage Markandeya introduces the legend:: “There was a king among the Madras, who was virtuous and highly pious…..the name of that lord of Earth was Aswapati.” The sage continues to tell how this king was unable to have a child, and so practiced many austerities, offering ten thousand oblations to the fire, and reciting Mantras in honour of Savitri, who is also known as Gayatri. Finally, through these pious practices he and his wife were given the boon of an issue, who however, was a daughter, on the grounds that this girl should be named Savitri, and treated in every way as though she were a son.
Savitri is in a way the incarnation of the sun god, who is called Savitr. In fact in the Gayatri Mantra, which is considered the holiest prayer of the Vedic tradition, addressed to the sun, we find the words : Om Tat (that eternal Being) Savitur (light manifested through the sun, awakening the whole creation.)

The bride of light.

In a sense, the legend of Savitri is woven around the mystery underlying the Gayatri Mantra. It is the story of the passage of the sun, riding its chariot to seek out the limits of our earthly horizon, where in a forest region, at the far western brink of our world, the Light of the sun, which is like Wisdom, the spirit of illumination, discovers her beloved as an unknown youth whose blind Father is blind, was in fact a disinherited king, banished to the dark forest, where the family was living incognito in an ashram. This young man, who was called Satyavan, became the recipient of Savitri’s garland of love, which she had refused to give to all those eligible princes who came from far and wide to her “swayamvara” when she was meant to select the hero whom she intended to marry.
The journey of the sun princess in search of her beloved, is like the way that the sun goes out, traversing the heavens, only to enter finally into the darkness of night, and continue its journey into the underworld. The sun ascends, only finally to descend, and through the dark passages which no human eye has seen, go to the kingdom of the Lord of Death, there to awaken again the spirit that has to die, before it can be born again into a new life. The metaphor underlies the meaning of every initiation into the mystery of life, for as the poet Kabir has also suggested, the ultimate marriage is to be found not in this mortal life, but in what is often only understood as a process of dying.

The Primal Person

Twenty years later, when I again visited Kurisumala Ashram, Francis Acharya, the Cistercian monk who had founded the ashram, drew my attention to the link between this legend and the inner significance of the Song of Songs as describing a spiritual quest. It was St. Bernard of Clairvaux who gave to the Cistercian tradition a spiritual interpretation of the Biblical book of the Song of Songs, as representing the Soul searching for the Divine. I read in the Ashram library the Anchor commentary on the Song of Songs, which suggested that underlying what appeared to be a collection of simple pastoral love poems, was an ancient myth of the Middle East, that had close links with legends to be found in other cultures, particularly in India, concerning the love of Holy Wisdom for the human soul. (The anchor Bible, Song of Songs: A New Translation with introduction and commentary by Marvin H. Pope. Doubleday and Co, 1977)

Here the initiative lies with the feminine spirit, which is to be identified with that Creative Energy which was present in Creation from its very inception in the will of God. It is this energy that becomes incarnated, and helps in the process of divinising the human soul. Solomon the wise, dedicates himself to the search of this divine Wisdom, and it is because of this love that he has for the feminine principle that underlies the whole of Creation as we know it, that Holy Wisdom searches him out, and saves him from death. Here again we hear of this Spirit “awakening” Creation in the sense implied by the phrase in the Gayitri Mantra: “Om Tat Savitur”.

“I awakened you under the apple tree,
there where your mother conceived you,
there where she who gave birth to you conceived you.
Set me like a seal on your heart,
Like a seal on your arm
For love is strong as Death,
Jealousy relentless as Sheol.
The flash of it is a flash of fire,
A flame of Yahweh himself.
Love no flood can quench,
No torrents drown.
Song of Songs.8. 6-7

Devotion and the Song of Songs

It is this link between this lyrical book of the Bible, and the mystical experience that underlies much of Bhakti, or devotional poetry in India, that I tried in the following years to explore through a series of paintings on the Song of Songs, understood in the context of Indian love poetry, which has also been interpreted in a mystical sense. Fr. Abraham Mariaselvam, had made a study on “The Song of Songs and Ancient Tamil Love Poems” (Analecta Biblica 118, Editrie Pontificio Istituto Biblico—Roma 1988) I also found fascinating a collection of Tamil love poems, along with an introduction to the underlying symbolism behind these ancient works of the first centuries of the Christian Era, presented by A K. Ramanujan in a small book “The Interior Landscape” O.U.P 1994.

The series of sketches and notes which I made on the Song of Songs in 1988 became the basis for an Art Retreat and series of canvases that I developed between 1990 and 1994. They were eventually published by Fr. J. Ubelmesser in Weltweit, 1996.

The Shepherd.

There has been a suggestion that the ‘Song of Songs’ is a kind of Midrash, or Jewish commentary on the book of Genesis, and in particular the Creation story. The book opens with various images related to the life of shepherd communities who wander with their flocks in the desert. The image of the Tent, and later the recurring symbolism of the Palanquin remind us of the “Tent of meeting” or Tabernacle, which was a moveable Holy place, representing a Divine Presence that moves with a migrant people. There is also a strong sense of the significance of the harvest. In fact one suggestion is that the Song of Songs began as a series, or garland of hymns that had an almost liturgical significance. There is a link between the Song of Songs and the mood of the very lyrical book of Ruth in the Bible. There are also Messianic overtones, as the Lord of the Harvest, is also the expected Saviour of his people. Running through this early part of the myth is the underlying concept of Covenant. The relation between the Divine, and the human community, is a covenantal one, and this also implies a deep love, which is also found in the imagery of the Prophet Hosea, where the bond between the People of God and the Divine Presence is comparable to the lasting bond between husband and wife. But it is noteworthy that the relationship is an equal one. The two partners in this love narrative, have a remarkable autonomy, and the songs shift from the search of the male for the female, to an initiative where the woman takes the leading role. It is the feminine figure who searches, desires, and recovers the male partner. This has led some commentators to wonder whether the Song of Songs comes from a very Matriarchal society, as the Mother is mentioned seven times in the text, whereas the Father is not mentioned at all. The feminine figure in the Song of Songs bears a strong resemblance to ancient Mother goddesses of the Middle East. And there is little doubt that the love theme draws of ancient fertility rites, which have been given a new significance in the frame of the Covenant.

The veiled bride

The shepherd theme also links with an idea of death. This again reminds us of the story of Abel, the first shepherd, who is a Just man, but who is killed by his brother. The theme of death runs through the whole of the Song of Songs. One idea is that the pastoral lover dies, and goes down to the underworld. It is the task of the Divine Shekinah, or the Spirit of God that is also the Presence of the Divine in Creation, which goes in search of the lost lover. The persistent theme of search which is the thread that underlies the link between the different songs, is the idea that the Feminine Principle, which also represents life, goes in search of the human soul that is corruptible, and doomed to mortality. Perhaps in this connection that we can also understand the concept of the “blackness” of the feminine figure. One Jewish Midrash mentions the Chemosh, the chief god of the Moabites, was worshipped as a Black godess.:
“This is Chemosh, the Abomination, which is in the desert. It is a black stone, its form like that of a black woman. It was in the place and Moab and her environs used to go to midst of the high it to worship her.” (cf. Num. 21.29 : “Woe to you, Moab ! You are lost people of Chemosh!”) We are even told that “Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the god of Moab on the mountain to the east of Jerusalem” (I. Kings. 11.7) This black Madonna is thought to be linked to black aeroliths, like the black stone of Mecca, and is later connected to the black virgins who were believed to have a healing power to protect in the middle ages. The goddess Isis who mourns for Osiris in the Egyptian story, is also represented as a black goddess. In India we have the figure of Kali, or again Durga, who are manifestations of a dark power.

Holy Wisdom

The figure of Holy Wisdom.

Finally, we have to understand the image of the feminine in the Song of Songs, as in some way representing a dynamics within the Godhead. As in the later Christian concept of Trinity, Holy Wisdom, is an aspect of the Divine Persona. This image of God as Wisdom links with the second important theme of the Song of Songs: the character of Solomon. Here blackness is related in a way to the wilderness, to all that is unknown, and veiled. There is an imagery relating day to night, and the marriage of light and darkness as in the Indian concept of “Sandhya”, or time of twilight, when the opposites meet. Yaweh renews his covenant with Abraham as the sun is about to set.
“When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, there appeared a smoking furnae and a firebrand that went between the halves. That day Yahweh made a Covenant with Abram in these terms: To your descendants I give this land”.