More Artists on Evil: An Opera on the Anti-Christ Playing in Berlin

In Saturday’s DM, I emphasized how Evil is often best spoken of by artists. (Hildegard and Luca Signorelli being integral to my most recent book on the subject and Mersault’s brilliant satire has been upfront in recent DM’s.) 

Lo and behold! A friend sent me an email recently with the post “a rare performance in Berlin of Anti-Krist.” It brings news about an opera originally composed in the 1920s and currently running in Berlin named Anti-Krist, “Anti-Christ.”

Art assists us to find a language for what we are undergoing in the world today, whether vis-à-vis climate change or the rise of fascism. In my major book on Evil, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul & Society, I propose a new language for evil, based on the seven capital sins of the West and the seven chakras of the East.

Poet Rafael Jesus Gonzales affirmed my most recent DM and sent me some cartoons (another important art form to speak truth to power), calling them appropriate for April Fools’ Day. Happy April Fools’ Day tomorrow!

In the Anti-Krist opera, Lucifer sends the Antichrist into a godless world who adopts man guises. Humankind is tested and tempted by pride, lust, lies, despondency and hatred in “all-against-all altercations.” 

Based on the Book of the Apocalypse and “suffused with fin de siecle atmosphere and pessimism,” the opera warns of catastrophe and denounces the vices of the modern age. The music is described as “exuberant” and “eccentric.” The opera’s finale features the world freed of evil and sorrow in a culminating chorus scene, thus fulfilling the composer’s belief that music connects people to the godhead. Hope comes from the music itself.

Called “one of the most remarkable experiments in 1920’s opera,” it was composed by the Danish composer, Rued Langgaard. Is it perhaps  synchronistic that the MAGA president, often called antichrist, is seeking to seize Greenland from Denmark at this very time?   

The opera foretells “a doomsday frenzy” as a parable of our own times. Issues like social fragmentation, the roughening of public discourse and the bitter climate debate rage. [Today’s] late-capitalist-era appears on the verge of collapse: a car plummets from a grave, satanic figures swirl around, people are tested and set loose on each other. We are told “punchy and fantastical” images abound.

Of course, apocalypse also means revelation, and for many, the apocalypse is the mother of invention and has given rise to all the science of the modern day…The end of time also contains the seeds of a rebirth.

Good Friday gives way to Easter Sunday. The Dark Night yields to Breakthroughs and new births, the Via Negativa to the Via Creativa and Transformativa after all. 

Langgaard has been dead for over 75 years, but his opera seems to speak to our day where plenty of apocalypses are happening at once. One article about the opera is entitled: We are the apocalypse. 

See Matthew Fox, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society.

And Fox, Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ.

And Fox, The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors To Awaken the Sacred Masculine.

And Fox, Original Blessing: A Primer on Creation Spirituality.

And Fox, Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth.

To read the transcript of Matthew Fox’s video meditation, click HERE.

Banner Image: Promotional poster for Rued Langgaard’s Anti-Krist, now playing at the Berlin Opera House. Art by Thomas Aurin. From the Deutsche Oper Berlin website. 

Queries for Contemplation

What works of art instruct you about Evil and ways to name it and stand up to it? And resist it and not fall into denial about its power?

Recommended Reading

Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society

Visionary theologian and best-selling author Matthew Fox offers a new theology of evil that fundamentally changes the traditional perception of good and evil and points the way to a more enlightened treatment of ourselves, one another, and all of nature. In comparing the Eastern tradition of the 7 chakras to the Western tradition of the 7 capital sins, Fox allows us to think creatively about our capacity for personal and institutional evil and what we can do about them. 
“A scholarly masterpiece embodying a better vision and depth of perception far beyond the grasp of any one single science.  A breath-taking analysis.” — Diarmuid O’Murchu, author of Quantum Theology: Spiritual Implications of the New Physics

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.
For immediate access to Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election, order the e-book with 10 full-color prints from Amazon HERE. 
To get a print-on-demand paperback copy with black & white images, order from Amazon HERE or IUniverse HERE. 
To receive a limited-edition, full-color paperback copy, order from MatthewFox.org HERE.
Order the audiobook HERE for immediate download.

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

Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality

Matthew Fox lays out a whole new direction for Christianity—a direction that is in fact very ancient and very grounded in Jewish thinking (the fact that Jesus was a Jew is often neglected by Christian theology): the Four Paths of Creation Spirituality, the Vias Positiva, Negativa, Creativa and Transformativa in an extended and deeply developed way.
“Original Blessing makes available to the Christian world and to the human community a radical cure for all dark and derogatory views of the natural world wherever these may have originated.” –Thomas Berry, author, The Dream of the Earth; The Great Work; co-author, The Universe Story

Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth

Fox’s spirituality weds the healing and liberation found in North American Creation Spirituality and in South American Liberation Theology. Creation Spirituality challenges readers of every religious and political persuasion to unite in a new vision through which we learn to honor the earth and the people who inhabit it as the gift of a good and just Creator.
“A watershed theological work that offers a common ground for religious seekers and activists of all stripes.” — Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality and Practice.
“I am reading Liberating Gifts for the People of the Earth by Matt Fox.  He is one that fills my heart and mind for new life in spite of so much that is violent in our world.” ~ Sister Dorothy Stang.