*
PREAMBLE
Ten years have passed since this book was published in its entirety; and the first appearance of this material in the form of three series of articles in the magazine of American Astrology - Gifts of the Spirit, Challenges of the Earth and The Illumined Road - occurred twenty years before (from 1945 to 1949). The first chapter was written in the desert, near Palm Springs, California, during Thanksgiving week in 1944, at a time when I had to make a crucial decision which changed my life and ushered in an intensely creative period; but most of the material for this book was written in the mountainous states of Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico. It was however, thoroughly revised for publication in book form.
The contents of this present volume have been read by thousands of people since it was published by Servire in Holland at a time of great spiritual fermentation and youth protest all over the world; and many more had either glanced at or read carefully the early series of articles in the popular magazine that reached two or three hundred thousand men and women of the post-war period, now spoken of as "the best years" of our country. During these years, I received many letters of appreciation, and more enthusiastic comments have come recently, mostly from many young people. Nevertheless, I very often had cause to wonder how much my so appreciative and obviously very moved readers understood of what I had tried to state. I wondered if they merely reacted to the inspirational style of presentation, yet largely failed to really grasp, and thus respond to, the intensely practical and potentially transformative contents of this book in terms of their everyday lives and the quality of their individual experiences and interpersonal relationships.
This, of course, is the danger inherent in a symbolic and poetic presentation of ideas and images which are pregnant with the potentiality for self-transformation. Such a presentation can arouse a great warmth of feelings which somehow seems to open psychic windows and let in a breath of spiritual air. It 'feels good' to breathe it, but the ego playing its games in its armchair near a smoky fireplace insists at once that the window be closed, for the costly heat of the room would be lost.
Feelings alone cannot be a solid basis for building a new life, or even for the steady pursuit of a practice intended to develop latent capacities. Revealing images of the essential aspects of what one is seeking to accomplish should take shape within the consciousness. These images should do more than arouse 'feelings'; they should gradually repolarize the contents of the mind, substituting themselves for the set of conceptual and behavioral pictures inherited at birth and constantly stamped upon the consciousness of the child and adolescent. Such pictures are manifestations of the great symbols that are the soul of a culture. From them are derived standard ways of behaving under various circumstances, acceptable feelings when confronted by new relationships, conflicts and opportunities, and proper sequences of thoughts according to the rules of reason and logic.
When an individual "enters the Path," he or she is for the first time confronted by the need to deliberately and objectively examine all these inherited basic assumptions. Such a person has to watch intently and persistently his or her reactions to everyday life - or to some more crucial or spectacular events that deeply upset and challenged his or her ego. An individual can do this alone, or under the watchful eye and guidance of some kind of guru or (if a Catholic) of a guide de conscience.
Today there are many books purporting to help individuals who, either more or less deliberately or under the pressure of critical circumstances, have started to take the greatest and most dangerous of all "trips" - the journey that might eventually take the traveler not only through areas of human experiences entirely unfamiliar to the persons with whom he or she grew up in a particular sociocultural environment, but beyond the limits of what such a person and his or her culture consider the capabilities of human nature. Many doctrines and disciplines, many maps guaranteed to show obstacles and facilities on the way - and, what is still more confusing, different ideas as to the purpose of the journey and what the successful (and also the unsuccessful) traveler may expect at the end of it - have been made available to, or forced upon, the seeker.
This book, An Astrological Triptych, as it now stands, is an attempt to present a threefold set of pictures, symbols and more or less novel ideas to readers who either think of themselves as would-be travelers or realize they are already on the move but are unsure of what their decision to go or the conditions of the road imply. It is a threefold set because; three basic conditions should be met if the journey is to be successfully pursued.*
*When I used the term, triptych, as a title for this book, I had in mind the traditional meaning of the word, which, according to the dictionary is a "picture or carving in three compartments, side by side, especially an altar piece." Later on, a reader of the book who did not know what a triptych was (in this traditional sense) thought I was referring to what the Automobile Association gives to travelers asking for details concerning a particular trip. Such a series of maps they call a "Trip-tik," like a "trip ticket." In a sense, Triptych can also be seen as such a trip-tik, mapping out a spiritual journey. It is such a meaning that I am trying to elucidate in this pre amble - literally, pre = before, amble = to walk.
The first condition is basically that the individual should not only accept his or her limitations and the particular nature of the function (or dharma) for the fulfillment of which he or she was born, but should also remain open to spiritual influences complementing and harmonizing what this function inevitably tends to overstress.
The second condition is that the traveler should realize that he or she has begun a process of transformation implying a total shift of level and a re-centering of his or her consciousness, emotions and capacity for interpersonal relationship from the realm of bio-psychological nature (i.e., from the level of the biosphere) to that of a psychomental super-nature. Such a shift from one level of existence, activity and consciousness to the next inevitably produces crises. The traveler interprets these as "tests" because his or her mind is still conditioned by the idea of school work and passage from one grade to the next. Essentially, it is life that does the testing, but if the traveler is intent on accelerating the pace of the journey, he or she is likely to summon forth psychic and mental resistances of such a precise character (precise to the extent that the acceleration was forceful and deliberate) that these resistances may take the form of opposing entities or abnormally intense challenges.
The third condition refers to the development of a holistic and truly objective approach to the entire process of evolution, and of an imagination able to translate as yet inchoate feelings of what man can expect at the end of the journey into deeply meaningful and inspiring pictures having a universal validity because based on cosmic principles or archetypes. Such pictures should only be considered as symbols; at a social level we may speak of 'Utopias.' They enable the traveler to make a consistent map of his or her journey, and to understand crises and opportunities in terms of an impersonal and unemotional frame of reference. This frame of reference should be allowed to expand as the scope of the vision is enlarged, but the experience of it is a guarantee against wild meanderings and emotional despondency.
What we call astrology is and basically has always been, even in its primitive state, a method of building a consistent frame of reference for all the types of activity human beings encounter in their lives, day by day, year by year. Because in general human life has been mostly dominated by conditions of existence in the biosphere and controlled by external forces over which man seemed to have no control, astrology has been mainly concerned with physically experienceable occurrences and expectations of either collective national events or personal changes; but there has always been a kind of occult or sacred, religious or 'theurgic'* astrology establishing a frame of reference for the possibility of contacts between gods and men, that is, between a divine order of existence and the confused strivings of merely human beings seeking to become attuned to and recipients of the power of celestial Beings.
*Theurgy is a higher form of magic in which gods are called upon to bless, heal or direct human beings. The Catholic Mass is a theurgic performance inasmuch as it purports to bring the presence and power of Christ into the consecrated Host.
Astrology has been called "the mother of all sciences," and its symbols have been an integral part of most religions, either in a pure or disguised form, because it was almost certainly man's first attempt to build a system of interpretation of the order which he felt was inherent in the sequence of natural phenomena and in the mutual interrelationships linking the many components of all integrated processes of living. Animals live by this order of nature and according to the unchanging rhythm of the days and the seasons, but they do so compulsively and, as far as we know, without what we call objective consciousness. Human beings, on the other hand, have the capacity to develop a consciousness allowing them to follow internal impulses and react to external stimuli in a manner that may either ignore or transcend the compulsiveness of instincts.
Man has what we call free will, and this is both man's potential glory and his curse. Because he is not unconsciously compelled to act according to the order of nature, except in some purely biological areas over which he has practically no control, man can live a disordered existence. This possibility can often be so dangerous, and in most cases so confusing - thus creating such a basic insecurity - that all organized human societies have been impelled not only to build systems of order (taboos, laws, regulations), but to give to these systems a religious and cosmic sanction by claiming (and indeed firmly believing) that they reflected the mysterious yet unchallengeable order inherherent in the universe. All sciences are attempts to understand this universal order of nature, and all techniques or technologies constitute more or less consistent or sustained endeavors to apply the principles or laws which, in one way or another, could be derived from such an understanding.
Astrology is "the mother of all sciences" because it is rooted in the most evident, most universal experience of order human life on this Earth provides - the order displayed by the periodical motions of Sun, Moon, stars and planets. No one can deny the fact that this order exists. It was first measured by sundials and later, clocks. From it we derive our concept of objective time, thanks to which our social and personal activities can be precisely and effectively distributed so as to maximize our efficiency and security - especially when we cease being totally compelled by the internal rhythms of our biological instincts and we collectively and individually use our energies to pursue non-biological, intellectual or idealistic goals.
Once humanity's activities operate in terms of such goals, astrology has inevitably to become a consistent system of symbols. It uses the visible order outlined by the regular motions of celestial bodies as an archetype - a cosmic model - for the determination of the most effective way in which human beings can order their lives within an increasingly artificial and ultimately, a transcendent frame of reference. Astrology can then be used to tell human beings how they may best fulfill the potentialities inherent in their nature, and thus lead a fuller and safer existence.
When human beings feel an internal urge to enter upon the path of radical transformation, which they have been told may lead them, if all goes well, to a trans-human level of consciousness and activity, they are more than ever before in need of discovering patterns of order in the uncertain and dangerous journey they are about to undertake. Astrology can provide for the seeker at least some highly relevant guidelines; but it must be a kind of astrology that either uses the old symbols in a way that throws a new light on the natural experiences of human life at the levels of biospheric or social activity, or uses new symbols relevant to the unfamiliar experiences expectable 'on the Path.'
In recent years I have spoken of a "transpersonal" kind of astrology;* but much of what I have written concerning it was implied in much older books, and made very explicit in this volume, especially in the third part, The Illumined Road. The first two sections, Gifts of the Spirit and The Way Through, should throw a good deal of light on very practical matters referring to the personal life of anyone preparing to undergo a fundamental transformation of his or her nature. The entire book, in spite of what may seem to be its poetic and at times "mystical" tone, deals indeed with issues that for many people today, are essentially practical and at times haunting.
*Most notably in my book The Sun is Also a Star (E.P. Dutton & Co., New York: 1975) and the smaller volume From Humanistic to Transpersonal Astrology (Seed Center, Palo Alto: 1975).
These issues and the problems they pose are often described in symbolic terms which have a universal validity. The symbols are taken from the lore of astrology. Anyone familiar with it will realize that the first section of this book deals with zodiacal signs in a new way, the second with 'natal houses' considered as twelve fields of individual experience, and the third with the series of planets in their heliocentric order. The symbols are astrological, but they are even more 'trans-astrological' in that they are used in terms of a transpersonal frame of reference. This does not mean that they are less practical, but rather that they relate to a kind of practice transcending the more ordinary preoccupations of most human beings in our present-day world, especially in the United States where personal issues are given a paramount importance. Astrologers hoping to intelligently and compassionately guide young clients coming to them with many questions arising from their confused attempts at 'New Age' living should find in this book a wealth of relevant material helping them to reinterpret at a more transcendent level the data provided by the three main factors of astrology today - the zodiac, the houses and the planets.
What now follows is an attempt to make as clear as possible what each section of the book contributes to the whole, and how one should approach the study of its contents.
Gifts of the Spirit
This first section may, at first sight, appear merely to deal with characteristics associated with each zodiacal sign. Yet after carefully reading the Introduction, "Spirit and Human Needs", it should become clear that something very different from the material presented in the typical sun-sign astrology is being considered. Two basic realizations concerning what life as a human being implies are stated, and I am trying here to present their essential implications before they are discussed in detail.
The first thing to realize is that when an individual center of activity and consciousness is embodied in a human organism, it becomes conditioned by the time of the year (i.e., the relationship between the Earth and the Sun) when birth occurred. This time-factor can be interpreted by establishing twelve categories of organic responses to the unitarian power of life (prana in India, chi in China) which, in astrological symbolism, is represented by the sun - and in a secondary sense, by the Moon, which distributes this solar power as the organism requires it to meet everyday needs. These twelve categories of organic responses have to be understood at the bio-psychic as well as the strictly physical-cellular level. They define what we call twelve basic temperaments or types of persons.
A "type" is produced by the fact that one particular kind of response is most easily and effectively produced by the total organism of the persons belonging to that type. Representatives of a type tend "naturally" to act in a particular way when confronted by a situation; and they act in such a way because they are powered by a particular mode of energy - one out of twelve basic differentiations of solar power. This in turn results in a specific kind of feelings and mental processes characterizing people of that type. However, this does not mean that any one individual belongs exclusively to one type. Astrologically speaking, all twelve signs of the zodiac - all twelve types of relationship of life of Earth to the source of life's power, the Sun - are operative within human nature. Every human being, just because he or she is human, potentially partakes of all that is implied in human nature as a whole, but he or she partakes of this total human potential in varying degrees. Thus, what can be said concerning each of the twelve types has potential meaning for all human beings, and every type of personality may find its less developed potentialities of action, feeling and thinking stimulated by people of different types.
This is only one aspect of the situation. Another aspect is of the greatest importance, though more difficult to understand by Western minds unused to thinking in metaphysical and 'holistic' terms. To state the matter as simply as possible: when we think of a living organism, we should first of all consider it a whole of activities. The wholeness of the organism is the primary factor. Parts differentiate from this whole in order to develop particular functional capabilities, but the whole remains, enveloping (as it were) its many parts. It remains at a level which transcends, as well as encompasses, the activities of the differentiated parts.
If we study the development of a human body we find that the billions of cells it contains are differentiations of the original fecundated ovum. The biologist now tells us that the genetic code characterizing this original cell is found in everyone of the billions of cells of the mature body. What he does not say - because his strictly empirical approach cannot reveal, or at least has not yet revealed this to be a fact - is that this primordial cell is but the physical manifestation of what today science might call a "field," although it was known for millennia as the "design body," or the etheric body (sukshma sharira in India).
In modern physics, a field is not a material entity; it is a structured web of energies, and lines of force. A number of recent-day thinkers have accepted the idea that a physical human body is surrounded, and also pervaded, by a field of energy. What they do not see is that this field is the active presence of the whole of the human organism at the level of "operative wholeness - a spiritual level, from the point of view of the material body and its physically-bound consciousness.
Spirit is the active power of wholeness enveloping the total organism of differentiated parts, pervading all the parts and acting upon them in a "spiritual" manner. What this spiritual manner means is that to every part, whose function inevitably specializes it, the power of the whole - spirit - offers an antidote for its particular type of specialization.
If we now consider a human being of a particular zodiacal type, he or she is to some degree specialized because of the mere fact of belonging to that particular type. But while specialized as a particular person belonging to a Sun-sign (and also Moon-sign) type, he or she nevertheless remains a human being, operating within humanity and the Earth's biosphere. If we describe this person in terms of a psychological temperament, we have also to think of humanity as a whole in corresponding terms, thus as a vast field of psychomental energy. This field transcends the mentality and psychism of differentiated or individualized men and women. It operates at a transcendental metapsychic or transpersonal level. Its action upon individual persons is "spiritual;" it is a whole-ing action - that is, it tends to harmonize what specialization has inevitably disharmonized.
Such a "whole-ing" action of spirit - the power of wholeness operating through and upon the parts - has been understood in religious terms as the "grace" of God, or in terms of Hindu (and particularly Sri Aurobindo's) philosophy as "the Mother Force" of the universe. Gifts of the Spirit deals with the action of that "grace" upon the twelve basic zodiacal types of human beings. Spirit presents to all these modes of temperament-differentiation a quality of operation which the human beings embodying them need most in order to equilibrate what their differentiated natures have stressed - and, usually overstressed when under pressure or confronted by the unfamiliar.
Thus, this first section of Triptych deals with the relationship of individualized human beings to That of which they are differentiated manifestations and indeed functional parts or cells: Humanity as an all-encompassing and individuality-transcending Whole. The "gifts of the spirit" to human beings should help them to fulfill their function (dharma) more adequately, and to discover everywhere the compensating, harmonizing and thus spiritualizing presence and action of the Whole at the level of human activity. This Whole may be named God, Man, or Humanity-as-a-whole; names matter relatively little. What counts is the concept, image or feeling-intuition behind them. It is, even more perhaps, the vivid realization that whatever is behind the image acts, now, forever and in all individuals and groups. . . if they let it act.
The Way Through
This section differs greatly in style from Gifts of the Spirit, and years after the writing, the reason for this seems very clear to me. Here we are dealing with a series of "tests." What is at stake at this stage of our enquiry is no longer the fact that an individual person is born under conditions which determine the basic character of his or her differentiation as a human being - i.e., the special mode of energy he or she most naturally uses in everyday life - but the realization of the fact (and it is a fact!) that, when they have reached a certain stage in their evolution, human beings can change the level of their activity and consciousness, and the quality of their feelings and interpersonal relationships.
The issue then no longer refers to dealings with the consequences of specialization and of belonging to one type or another; it deals with how we can be "more-than-human," considering what today we believe "being human" implies. This section of Triptych therefore is a discussion of what is to be done, what experiences one must go through, what challenges to the quality of living natural to the Earth's biosphere have to be met, if with total unremitting intent we are attempting to start operating as individual centers of consciousness and activity at a "higher" (i.e., metabiological) level.
Many people today are so traumatized by and rebellious against Western civilization and the technological jungle of our big cities that they can only feel a compulsion, a "gut feeling," to return to Nature (with a capital N). This obviously is not a new feeling; it was powerfully experienced by Jean Jacques Rousseau more than 200 years ago and it dynamized the Romantic Movement of the last century. We can call it a reaction against the narrow intellectualism and the idolatry of the scientific-empirical method which far-seeing minds like Rousseau and Black saw emerging from the so-called Enlightenment of the mid-eighteenth century.
Reacting, however, is only a prelude to constructive and creative activity. One can actually be as bound to what one hates as to what one adores; and the violent condemnation of what, to the dogmatic rationalist, seems irrational is an unconscious and unacknowledged manifestation of the irrationality of the assumptions of rational empiricism: for instance, the denial that knowledge can be attained by any other means than man's senses augmented by his machines, or the unprovable assumption that the processes of nature operate everywhere and at all times in a universe postulated to be only material and inorganic.
The French mathematician, philosopher and mystic Blaise Pascal wrote early in the 18th century - in answer to the classical Newtonian mentality of his day: "La coeur a des raisons que la raison ne connait pas." (The heart has reasons that the reason does not know.) We could paraphrase the statement by saying that the process of transformation of man into "more-than-man" implies procedures the natural man does not understand. These procedures may be called tests. For a particular school of Zen Buddhism, one of these procedures is the use of irrational puzzles called koans. Even the Christian Gospel contains "hard sayings" and paradoxes such as those of the Beatitudes. (I referred to these in the introduction to and first chapter of The Way Through, both of which should be carefully studied.)
Today as in ancient times, and perhaps always, most human beings are not able, ready and above all willing to experience a radical process of metamorphosis. Of late, many have been seemingly eager to give up living according to nature in order to pursue an at least relatively unnatural existence in technologized large cities; but the level of a mostly social type of living is not radically different from that of natural-biopsychological living. We often deceive ourselves by an amazingly idealistic and unrealistic picture of what life in the biosphere implies. The law of life in the Earth's biosphere actually is "Eat or be eaten." It operates as well in the vegetable kingdom in the fight of roots against roots, or fast expanding grasses or trees against weaker species. There may also be remarkable instances of cooperation and mutual service between species, but they are far out-numbered by overt or covert warfare. Human societies have embodied much of the same spirit, even when officially preaching Buddha-compassion or Christ-love.
Perhaps the entire universe is the scene of a battle between two forces of the same strength, the cosmic Yang and Yin whirling forever within the circle of Tao; but the point seeming never stated, yet most important, is that these forces of opposite polarities whirl at different speeds at different levels of existence. Whether we like it or not, there is in all existence an inherent natural drive to increase speed and to shift from level to level. However, serious trouble arises when this increase of speed operates first of all, and often exclusively, in terms of activity at one particular level - for instance the physical level. 'Speeding' seems to be most significant and perhaps only really constructive when what is speeding is able thereby to pass from one level to the next - thus, in our case, from the physical to the "astro-mental" (akashic) level of being.
This shift of level is objectively and factually demonstrated only when the being that speeds up is able, not merely to enter a new world of existential phenomena and of actual relationships with other beings operating on that new and 'faster' level, but to function effectively there in full consciousness of his centrality and the full awareness of the forces he is centralizing and operating with.
This is a big order! It does not mean merely "feeling high" or having ecstatic moments of naively-called 'cosmic consciousness.' What is meant is actually operating at the level of what for lack of a better term we might call supernature.*
*In my book The Sun is Also A Star, I explained the difference between the level of physicality and of what I symbolically called 'galacticity', using the Galaxy as a metaphor for the level of existence transcending - yet also including - the experience of living as solid material bodies on a physical, dark planet.
The reason for speaking of a "way through" is that such a process of transformation leading to a radical change of level is not achieved by physically leaving the biosphere and all that the biopsychic nature of mankind as a special kind of animal species implies, but by going through whatever is implied in physical existence in the biosphere. Thus, The Way Through discusses what must essentially be experienced; passed through and overcome during the process of metamorphosis. This process does not last only the life-span of one physical organism. In fact, the potentiality of achieving the total change of level does not reside in the center of embodied consciousness to which we normally refer, whether we admit it or not, when we say "I". The actualization of this potentiality requires a double process and two 'actors': the soul-center and the ego.
We may speak (1) of a "descent" of the soul-impulse focusing itself increasingly upon one personality after another (i.e., a series of successive human organisms developing through a series of cultures, and all having a magnetic connection with the soul-field*) — and (2) of the "ascent" (the progressive refinement and responsiveness) of these personalities. This ascent is sparked by the inner soul-impulse; it is felt by the personality as an increasingly irresistible inner urge from what to the ego seems to be the 'depths' of being. In most cases, the ascent proceeds by a series of crises which, from the point of view of ego-consciousness able to cooperate with or at least watch the process, appear to be tests which may have to be repeated sub-cycle after sub-cycle during the life-span of the person.
*For a definition of "soul-field" the reader is referred to The Planetarization of Consciousness, Chapter 7 (Third and Revised Edition, Aurora Press, New York, 1977).
The Illumined Road
Granted that the personal "I" has been at least moderately successful in meeting these tests, a time comes when the consciousness is able to gain an objective outlook on what it is passing through. It may begin to think of what it has so long defined as "I" in terms of its being a cyclic process rather than a permanent entity. It gains a feeling of broad rhythmic sequence, of to and fro, of going, returning and going again from a new point of departure. This leads to Illumination; what was "I" (particle) is now "light" (wave).
It is to this phase of "transhuman" growth that The Illumined Road refers. The biospheric "I" entangled in relationships and struggling through tests has now become identified with a solar Ray on its way to the center of the Greater Whole, the Galaxy. It moves through the realm of Archetypes which for merely-human minds must seem the unattainable "divine" world. A new mind begins to operate - the Mind that directly sees what "is" instead of arguing about what constantly changes and "becomes."
The compulsions, conflicts and confusion of the biosphere, and of a human nature basically conditioned by (because rooted in) this biosphere, have been transcended. Yet they are not negated. If we think of the Galaxy as the realm of light-radiating stars, we have also to remember that it contains dark planets. The consciousness that had evolved on these planets retains the possibility of operating through the merely-human mind, if it wills to refocus itself for specific acts affecting the bio-psychic darkness. It can bring light to the darkness. Indeed, the thought of a quasi-absolute opposition between light and darkness, God and man, Creator and creature belongs to the "mind of ignorance," the dualistic, argumentative mind of which religious and political leaders made use in order to dominate the masses of unthinking human beings.
The profound truth is that light is bound to darkness by the indestructible link of Compassion (or Divine Love). The Divine and the merely-human interpenetrate; but human beings clothed in biospheric fears and impermanence are unable to see this fact, or to accept it when they are told of it - or if they accept it with their confused minds, they pervert its meaning through pride and intellectuality.
For this reason, the great truths about existence, the universe and Man have to be presented in symbolic forms, and symbols always contain the element of dramatization and the fascination of poetry and beauty. They appeal to feeling produced by experiences common to many human beings; and because no human experience is more basic than that of day and night, of light and darkness - and therefore of sun and moon dispelling darkness, and of stars, those mysterious witnesses of light in the unfathomable darkness of the night sky - astrology retains a wonderful wealth of beautiful and deeply meaningful symbols.
The value of what individuals - and a culture that inevitably sets the foundation for the development of individual minds - do with these symbols constantly changes. It changes because cultures are like living organisms whose cells are the minds of the human beings born and educated in them; and these collective organisms grow, mature and slowly disintegrate. Yet, even when a culture and the society it ensouled are disintegrating, individuals can be born who, in spite of the cultural entropy and the vulgarization of the values and symbols past generations have lived by - nay, because this disintegration provides them with something to struggle against and to radically overcome - can make the supreme decision to travel the Illumined Road.
What makes the decision is not the intellectual mind or the egocentric personality; it is a Power that impels from within and cannot be resisted. Yet the ego has to give its assent. It has to accept to "die;" but in that dying the whole person comes to realize its essential Identity. It experiences itself a humble, small sun in the vast Company of galactic stars - a cell in the transcendent Body of the whole Earth, whose spiritual Center our Western world symbolizes as Christ.
