Evil, the Antichrist, & Kali, the Black Madonna of the East

[FROM THE ARCHIVE, March 20, 2020]

I am an elder.  I will have traveled around the sun 84 times by the end of this year.  One of my jobs as an elder is to tell stories to younger generations about what matters. 

Evil matters.  And evil is real.  And it is MUCH bigger than sin.  It operates like spirit does, indeed it is spirit, as St Paul tells us, “Our battle is against powers and principalities,” i.e., spirits. 

Buck Ghosthorse, a Lakota teacher and friend of mine who taught with us at ICCS and set up a sweat lodge on campus for the three years he was with us, used to say this : “Fear is the door in the heart that lets evil spirits in.”  Notice, evil spirits exist; and they can enter our hearts—and the hearts of our communities and society—if we let them.  He added, “Therefore all prayer is about strengthening the heart in order to keep evil spirits out.“

There is Christ; and there is Antichrist.  Antichrist is another name for evil.  The antichrist is language from the apocalyptic tradition of the Bible.  There is lots of evil afoot in our world today: Lots of lies and lots of hypocrisy and lots of killing of Mother Earth and covering it up by way of denial.  It must be called out.  We must shed light on it.

There is more of the Sacred than there is of evil.  We are all capable of both.  That is why both have to be named, and both have to be addressed through practices and hard work, inner and outer work.  “Original blessing” names the good and the sacred and so does “Christ” –the Christ in all of us who dwells in all things.  And “Antichrist” names the opposite of that.

Let us not be afraid to call evil what it is.  So that we can move beyond it and loosen its grip on us and become who we really are: Sons and daughters of the divine.  Other Christs.

And let us not be sidelined by what Buddhists rightly call “idiot compassion.“

The awakening I am speaking of when invoking Kali, the Black Madonna, and the Celtic goddess Cailleach (Hag) may prove to be precisely what the Great Mother has in mind.  Is there a link surely between the suffering of Mother Earth due to the climate crisis and the suffering brought about by the coronavirus? 

Marshall Burke, assistant professor at Stanford’s Department of Earth System Science, believes that the shutdown in China to combat the coronavirus outbreak probably saved 50,000 to 75,000 lives.  Says Burke: The reductions in air pollution in China caused by this economic disruption likely saved twenty times more lives in China than have currently been lost due to infection with the virus in that country.

Burke found that the two months of cleaner air saved the lives of between 1,400 and 4,000 children under 5 and 51,700 to 73,000 adults over 70 in China.

It may well happen, however, that the broader disruption caused by COVID-19 would cause many additional deaths not directly attributable to being infected with the virus. 

Does this mean pandemics are good for health? No, Burke says. Instead it means that the way our economies operate absent pandemics has massive hidden health costs, and it takes a pandemic to help see that.  Maybe it takes a hard hammer to awaken our hardened heads and hearts.

What else might the pandemic—and the Kali energy it represents–be wanting to help us see?  Obviously, the denial of the inextricable link between Earth and her health and our own needs to cease.  Denial of climate change and the suffering it poses needs to cease.  And the denial between the universe and ourselves; and between nature and ourselves needs to cease. 

And our capacity for compassion and making community happen needs to rise anew (as it did in the AIDS crisis in the 1980s).

Might we be on a fast track to learning lessons of where unbridled anthropocentrism and species narcissism are taking us as we stand at the door of doom and extinction? 

Might this be happening?  A return to respect for nature—its grandeur and brilliance and beauty—as well as a re-found respect for human nature—our capacity for brilliance and working together, our powers of compassion and building community.  Our creativity.  Our generosity and courage.

All powers, all values, all virtues that render us truly human and that show up in times of crisis like we find ourselves in today.

If this is the result of the pandemic it may prove to be an expensive–but worthwhile–price to pay. 

Meister Eckhart warns us: “If you want the kernel, you must break the shell.”  Many shells are going to be broken during this 2020 plague—but truly they need breaking if we want to enter more fully the very meaning of what it means to be human beings. 

See Ivana Kottasova, CNN, https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/17/health/china-air-pollution-coronavirus-deaths-intl/index.html.

See Matthew Fox, Trump & MAGA as Anti-Christ : A Handbook for the 2024 Election.

See also Fox, “Sacred Marriages,” in Fox, The Hidden Spirituality of Men, pp. 221-276.

See also Fox, The Reinvention of Work: A New Vision of Livelihood for Our Times, pp. 19-24, 140-168.

See also Fox and Rupert Sheldrake, Natural Grace: Dialogues on Creation, Darkness, and the Soul in Spirituality and Science

See also Fox, Order of the Sacred Earth: An Intergenerational Vision of Love and Action.

Banner Image: Women and men of Mahila Mangal Dal village,Uttarakhand, place their bodies between logging contractors and the trees, 1973. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.

Queries For Contemplation

Are you recognizing also a useful connection for you between the two current emergencies, the virus and climate change?  Is Kali’s anger arousing us all to a deeper love and a more generous service? How can the Black Madonna or divine feminine enable you to be strong ?

Recommended Reading

Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election

Matthew Fox tells us that he had always shied away from using the term “Anti-Christ” because it was so often used to spread control and fear. However, given today’s rise of authoritarianism and forces of democracide, ecocide, and christofascism, he turns the tables in this book employing the archetype for the cause of justice, democracy, and a renewed Earth and humanity.
From the Foreword: If there was ever a time, a moment, for examining the archetype of the Antichrist, it is now…Read this book with an open mind. Good and evil are real forces in our world. ~~ Caroline Myss, author of Anatomy of the Spirit and Conversations with the Divine.

The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine

To awaken what Fox calls “the sacred masculine,” he unearths ten metaphors, or archetypes, ranging from the Green Man, an ancient pagan symbol of our fundamental relationship with nature,  to the Spiritual Warrior….These timeless archetypes can inspire men to pursue their higher calling to connect to their deepest selves and to reinvent the world.
“Every man on this planet should read this book — not to mention every woman who wants to understand the struggles, often unconscious, that shape the men they know.” — Rabbi Michael Lerner, author of The Left Hand of God

The Reinvention of Work: A New Vision of Livelihood For Our Time

Thomas Aquinas said, “To live well is to work well,” and in this bold call for the revitalization of daily work, Fox shares his vision of a world where our personal and professional lives are celebrated in harmony–a world where the self is not sacrificed for a job but is sanctified by authentic “soul work.”
“Fox approaches the level of poetry in describing the reciprocity that must be present between one’s inner and outer work…[A]n important road map to social change.” ~~ National Catholic Reporter

Order of the Sacred Earth: An Intergenerational Vision of Love and Action
By Matthew Fox, Skylar Wilson, and Jen Listug

In the midst of global fire, earthquake and flood – as species are going extinct every day and national and global economies totter – the planet doesn’t need another church or religion. What it needs is a new Order, grounded in the Wisdom traditions of both East and West, including science and indigenous. An Order of the Sacred Earth united in one sacred vow: “I promise to be the best lover and defender of the Earth that I can be.”
Co-authored by Matthew Fox, Skylar Wilson, and Jennifer Berit Listug, with a forward by David Korten, this collection of essays by 21 spiritual visionaries including Brian Swimme, Mirabai Starr, Theodore Richards, and Kristal Parks marks the founding of the diverse and inclusive Order of the Sacred Earth, a community now evolving around the world.
“The Order of the Sacred Earth not only calls us home to our true nature as Earth, but also offers us invaluable guidance and company on the way.”  ~~ Joanna Macy, environmental activist and author of Active Hope.

Natural Grace: Dialogues on Creation, Darkness, and the Soul in Spirituality and Science 
by Matthew Fox and Rupert Sheldrake

Natural Grace, a 208 page inspired dialogue between theologian Matthew Fox and scientist Rupert Sheldrake, unites wisdom and knowledge from unconventional angles. Considering themselves heretics in their own fields, Matthew and Rupert engage the conversation from postmodern and post-postmodern perspectives, deconstructing both religion and science—while setting the foundation for a new emerging worldview. Having outgrown the paradigms in which they were raised, both Fox and Sheldrake see it as part of their life missions to share the natural synthesis of spirituality and science rooted in a paradigm of evolutionary cosmology.