Helen Martineau's Blog

As well as the sword of the spiritual will, Archangel Michael carries a pair of scales. And scales are balancing implements. There is much in our world that’s out of balance. Just take male-female relationships. Humanity has lived with with 3000 or so years of patriarchy and the strong-arm leadership of aggression – of ‘male’ or yang domination out of balance with its yin polarity. Archangel Michael is traditionally portrayed as male, but that’s not the reality. This painting by Monika Bisits captures something of the reality. A spiritual being is not male or female. Spirit is one.  Really, we need a new word for such a being. ‘He’, ‘she’, ‘it’ or the clumsy substitute ‘they’ are inadequate terms. Female and male, yin and yang, all polarities unite in one whole.  Spirit is always active in the world and the power of Archangel Michael works specifically in this age, in our lives. Right now, we are in a liminal zone, approaching a threshold alive with promise. W...

It’s the season of Archangel Michael right now. In the Christian calendar it runs from Michaelmas on September 29 until Advent on December 1. Archangel Michael appears in many religions, portrayed as warrior fighting against evil. Mostly ‘he’ is wielding a sword in the cosmic fight, or gripping the weapon in readiness for action. But is this the kind of fight we need to embrace today? Michael is often portrayed as neither male nor female – that’s the nature of heavenly beings. It’s how my artist friend Monika Bisits painted the archangel in this beautiful work. In her portrait, however, the sword is present but not in use. You get the sense of it being held back, to be used differently, when humanity is ready for its transformation from a weapon of war. Archangel Michael is known as the regent of our current age, the age we live in. Today the sword as a symbol of battle has become redundant. So what is the sword’s purpose, inwardly for each of us, and for the world? In the penetrat...