1:40am last night and I got stoned and thought about the Holy Trinity, as one does. Specifically how weird the Holy...
1:40am last night and I got stoned and thought about the Holy Trinity, as one does.
Specifically how weird the Holy Ghost/Spirit is in there. Like, you’ve got the classic demiurge-patriarch who’s been a character from the start. You’ve got the human incarnation/avatar/savior hero figure, and both of them are like human-analog figures - they have dialogue and thoughts and the story is organized around a series of conflicts involving them as parties. And then you’ve got, like, the transcendent concept of competent, inspiring leadership.
♫ One of these things is not like the other… ♫
(I’ve said before that on reflection most of my sense of Christian mythology comes from Vertigo comics, and at this point I realize I’m kind of conceiving the Holy Spirit as Genesis in Preacher. And at THIS point I realize no, Garth Ennis conceived Genesis as the Holy Spirit.)
I mean now that I think about that I dig that, that they put it on that level. I’m a big believer in the power of charisma (I kind of do wonder what translators would make of my use of “charisma”, or “enchant” and “idiom”. Probably get it wrong.) after all. Now that I think of it, that kind of means that anyone with a spark of charisma - compelling speakers and leaders of men like say the early missionaries and church fathers for example - would have been understood to some extent as inherently divine or divine vectors.
Like, I snicker at Mormonism for the whole prophethood (/no, godhood!) of all believers thing (and for the convenient hack that people are only given authentic prophecies as pertains their designated rank in the hierarchy) but how far off is that, really.
Buuuut the question comes back, if/when I do that biblical paraphrase, what am I going to do about the Trinity? It’s too central to dispense with, but the Holy Spirit just isn’t a character, he’s like… a buff, or maybe mana. I get that there’s some fascinating kind of spiritual angle there, Christian mystery and all, but that doesn’t really do much for me and I don’t picture it doing much for the nonbelieving heritage audience I’m aiming at.
One idea would be to make it a thesis/antithesis/synthesis trilogy of the Father/Rebel/Son with the Miltonian Lucifer taking over for the Holy Spirit - those would all be *characters* at least, and each pair has an interesting resonance (in opposition to the third) AND a good conflict.
But that just gets back to the question I had before, where the hell in the order of things do I stuff the War in Heaven and the Fall?
This could be fixed by making the Holy Spirit into a psychopomp figure, filling a gap in Christianity and giving us some really cool stained-glass fodder.
Well Gaiman’s Lucifer was kinda a psychopomp, and like I said the Vertigo books were a big influence on me. Just taking the Spirit as ferryman alone, well okay that actually gives him a role and a form but I think that might still be a step down in terms of being central enough to hold his own with the other members of the trinity. Like, what would be his conflicts/connections with the Father or Son be based on?
I mean just spitballing I can think of a few plot beats involving Purgatory where a psychopomp’s ability to withhold or misdirect souls from the other afterlives might work as an independent power base for some True Neutral force, but True Neutral doesn’t really make sense as a mediator or balance to Father/Son. I still think all the plots would work better redone for a Lucifer, the Father/Rebel/Son trilogy has better thematics of (Divine Order as its own end) v. (Human Liberation as its own end) v. (Human Liberation thru. Divine Order).
Honestly I think if you wanted to whip together a psychopomp you’ve got better material with Mary, though you could take Simon of Cyrene in a pinch.
Actually wait, Saint Peter at the gates with the book and keys. There’s your psychopomp.
That or the Grim Reaper which… well, that’s mythology, and it’s particular to Christendom (or if adapted from the near east no more so than the rest of it) so I guess that’s Christian mythology. Figuring out how he fits in might be kinda fun, actually.