I’ve been silent for the last five months. It’s been more nourishing to dive inward than to engage in public outrage. But I wrote this blog in December, the opening week of the new movie “Spider-Man: No Way Home.” It lay in draft form under my pillow until a friend reminded me of it.
If only the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences would now read this blog they might reconsider and give Spiderman the Oscar nomination it deserves. But alas, this movie is way too dangerous for them to admit that.
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December 2021
We can’t live without Imagination. This can’t be proven by science, but only through personal experience. I offer these thoughts as imaginative food for your soul.
In today’s culture and entertainment realm there is a thirst for SuperHeroes, for someone to save us. As a child of the 50’s I would bicycle from the local library with a copy of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table firmly in my grasp as I cut through traffic on the way home. For many others there was Greek and Norse mythology. Marvel comics. Religious Messiahs. And today, even Dr. Fauci.
But for adults and youth born into the Third Industrial Revolution, the Digital World, there are the computer generated movies of today that follow that same path . . . the Journey of the Hero, as Joseph Campbell so wonderfully wrote. The newest movie release of “Spider-Man: No Way Home” captures this basic human longing that echoes back to the ancient Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh searching for his deceased friend all the way up to the more recent Star Wars series with Luke SkyWalker searching for his father.
Often, those who write stories may not even be aware of the source of their inspiration. In the recent Spiderman movie there are opponents, demons and allies from other universes to interact with Peter Parker, a high school senior. Or in the “Avengers” there are other worldly, supra-human beings, who may conflict in personality while at the same time fight as a team to save humanity.
But none of this is new. Past cultures are ripe with hero models. Christianity itself has a pantheon of examples, and not just the saints’ statues in the cathedrals that Martin Luther wanted to depose as idolatry. No. There are bigger fish in the sea of cosmic wonder. The nine hierarchies within the spiritual Christian tradition beginning with Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones all the way down to Archai, Archangels and Angels, reveal a league of beings more evolved than us mere humans. In fact they are there to help us become the Tenth Hierarchy of Humankind. Since we no longer have direct contact or revelation with our senior guardians and suprasensory coworkers, there are many pathways to their recognition. And there’s a yearning for their help and guidance if not protection.
I am suggesting that alongside the garden of different spiritual traditions and practices that reach out to this reality, there is also growth in the cultural sidewalk emerging between the cracks of our concrete reality. And yes, Marvel Comics may be such a plant that displays the myriad levels of consciousness of the universe (or universes) in comic representations and caricatures of higher powers. Is Marvel consciously channeling Archangels, no. Are Archangels consciously channeling to Marvel? Good question!
Spoiler alert! Christ does rise from the dead. And Spiderman does succeed in “redeeming” the beings who attack him by performing an exorcism of demons out of these highly developed humans who have been possessed . . . and he sends them home again, free. The possessed beings fight vehemently to not give up their super powers, but in the end becoming human again with all its weakness is the greatest power of all. They are free to be themselves.
And Peter Parker (spoiler alert again) accomplishes this by giving up his identity. No one will recognize him again. All his relationships will be dissolved. They will have to be rebuilt again, on a more conscious level. They will no longer be just automatic as in his blood relation to Aunt May or a romantic relation to MJ or even a friendship with Ned. It all has to be rebuilt again out of freedom. Don’t misunderstand, Peter Parker is not the Christ. But his sacrifice out of love to save those around him and the earth itself is reflective of the Christ impulse. This does not make him special, let alone super. It does make him more human.
Are the writers conscious of this? Who knows? But all of Spiderman’s web stuff is a sideshow, just like all our talents are merely window dressing for the real deal . . . becoming more human.
I would really like to hear Spiderman’s acceptance speech at the Oscars. I wonder whom he would thank first?
Catherine Torres- " The Fire From Within"
Within in all that it creates a hero, anti-hero, villain, archangel, demigod, demon,..etc all have in common... a story and a background of injustices that will never be saved by themselves or even the fact that imbalances are in the fates of law in nature. Of that in mind what else also identifies a mortal that creates a greater importance to what it must be a protector of humankind and loved ones to be for. For all that is at upmost identity and purpose, we choose of what we become and the desisions, risks, opportunities,and the sacrifices we are willing to take for. Even the most powerful, invincible, immortal, and unstoppable individual…