(no subject)

[novapsyche]

Billy Graham is speaking in the background, live. It's my first time actually hearing him speak. I can see why he holds sway over large crowds. His rhetorical skills are just lulling enough and compelling enough.

He was describing the Garden of Eden (which he pointedly situated in Iraq), and it got me to thinking. The angels that guard the Tree of Life with a flaming sword? Maybe that symbolism is more than just a symbol--maybe it's a riddle.

I'm thinking of the pattern the ring of fire would make when the sword makes a full rotation. The circle would be perfect, of course, since angels are capable of circumscribing a circle.

I'm thinking that in the moment of death, the soul (consciousness?) is transformed (reduced?) to electricity/light. This light "walks the path" of the circle that the angels draw with their flaming swords. This I liken to walking the pattern in the Amber diceless roleplaying game (if I'm understanding the concept of walking a pattern--Loki or Blade, correct me if I'm wrong).

Walking that circuit returns us to the original, primordial pool of energy from which we all spawn.

It's an idea.

Comments

[liquidgrey.livejournal.com]

the situation you describe is roughly analogous to the Bardo states, when, if successfully traversed by the aware post-death mind, is returned to the non-dual state of the godhead ("the clear light").
it's not walking a circle, but it is a bit like it since traversing the Bardo states would require complete presence, much in the way an angelic being might manifest a perfect circle.
Perhaps I presume, and I'm speaking across symbolic languages, so perhaps this concepts are less commensurable than I see them to be.