I shall proceed:
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Yeshua, this reminds me of your post.
I was (pleasantly) surprised to note the mention of The Morrigan (and, yeshua, your mention of the mother/maiden/crone concept-- the original "holy trinity" of pagan goddess worship) in this video, as a few years ago when I was beginning my alternate spiritual journey and exploring various pagan paths, I was very drawn to The Morrigan and inspired by what she represented. Moving on from her, I found strength and inspiration in the Kali goddess/archetype which was similar...moving on further, I finally found Oya, who at the time was deemed to have been my head orisha. [UPDATE: 2/17/11 it is officially not Oya, by the way]
...but back to Gaga. I was discussing with a friend of mine the meaning of the Baphomet/Horned God hand sign and he INSISTED the hand sign was tribute to the Texas Longhorns football team. We seriously debated this for an hour or so and came to the agreement that people project what they want into symbols and it is the intent behind them that matters. So if I throw up the Horned God hand sign intending to pay homage to the Longhorns, that's what it is for me. If i throw it up to acknowledge Satan, that's what it is for me. If I draw a heart with squiggly lines and say it's a valentine (or Janet Jackson's velvet Rope Tour symbol), that's it. If I say it is a veve for Erzulie Freda, that's it as well. If I draw a cross and invoke the name of Jesus, that's the power that it will have. If I draw a cross and proclaim it as a mark of the union of two worlds-- the spiritual and material planes, that's the power.
Symbols are funny things. I find that symbols mean what we see them as. Just like art. Our experiences paint our perceptions. BUT just because one does not know an alternate meaning for the same symbol, does NOT make that alternate symbolic meaning invalid. Just because yopu don't know something, doesn't make it true. This is what I keep trying to tell people. Just because you don't know certain elite worship Lucifer and manipulate symbols in the media and use rituals and psychic energy to charge these symbols with negativity, doesn't mean it's not true. Just because, for example, you know Jesus as your personal Messiah and Savior, doesn't mean it's not JUST AS TRUE for someone else that he is a Prophet.
Truth IS. It is everything we can ever conceive of. I feel that there is no fiction or fantasy in the world-- everything we have ever imagined HAS AND DOES EXIST. Down to unicorns and jinn, demons and aliens...I believe God or whatever Universal Sustaining Self-Creating and Infinitite Force you name, has given us all that is. Whatever our mind can imagine is true because why would we be able to even conceive of anything if it wasn't possible? So...back to something Toure greatly helped me realize (more than he may be aware of), Beyonce can be a dirty Mk Ultra sex slave, she can be a hypocritical "Christian" poppin her coochie for Jesus, or she can be a Divine vessel for the orisha Oshun or help us all realize our Sacred Sexuality. They are all EQUALLY TRUE because someone has made it so. Everything is multi-faceted, even our concepts of "good and evil"...
which reminds me...who is "The Devil" when we say "The Devil is a liar!!"...who is the Devil at the Crossroads those bluesmen sold their souls to to play their guitars? Is this the "Devil" Jay-Z an' dem sold their souls to? Eshu-Elegbara? Papa Legba? The Divine Trickster? Pan? Hermes? Mercury?
So how does this relate to the idea of the Divine Enforcer? You can only move so far away from this idea before Nature itself, and human beings who are in the process of becoming conscious, create counter - balancing forces to guide you back to center. Esu has the function of Divine Enforcer. You can all say, "What about this tragedy, and what about that tragedy?" That is a difficult question to come to terms with objectively. But as an aspect of faith, in Ifá there is the belief that within the bigger picture, Divine Justice is at work. This is based on the belief that it is possible to get along, that it is possible to relate.
The symbolic analogy that Ifá uses is "Ifá Olokun o saro dayo," meaning "The
Spirit of the Ocean always provides for those who live in the sea." Every fish that lives in the ocean has a home and food to eat. So they have it figured out in the ocean, we just haven't figured it out yet on land. That's probably because they've had more time in the ocean to work on it. The idea of Esu as the Divine Enforcer is that the ground rules for figuring it out are in place. When we get too far away from that, things occur that bring the truth back to us.
This is all related to Chaos theory. Western science has a discipline called Chaos theory which postulates the idea that things which seem to be symmetrical in the universe have a range of variation when viewed at a distance. Things which appear random have a degree of symmetry when viewed at a distance. So the issues of justice and randomness are issues of perspective. If you get the big picture, the pieces start to fall in place. So Esu as the Divine Enforcer is what we invoke to get the big picture. You can do things on the short term that feel effective, righteous and ethical that can have long term negative effects.
You can do things that seem negative in the moment and end up having positive results. It is Esu that we invoke to get a clue where we are in that polarity.
****(speaking of crossroads)
