Helen Martineau's Blog

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...

When someone says, ‘I love you’, that potent word ‘love’ can lead to embarrassing misunderstandings. This is because in English it has a range of interpretations and we need to ask, ‘What do you mean by love? Other languages are more efficient. In Greek, there are at least eight different words. Four words in particular mark the evolution of love into its purest expression, with each earlier stage enfolded and enriched within the ‘DNA’ of what follows. These are eros, storge, philia and agapé . Ancient Greek philosophers so revered love in its highest form, they compared the way love transforms and evolves to a fat caterpillar metamorphosing and taking flight as a beautiful butterfly. Eros The first budding of love emerges in passionate infant desire for the one who nurtures it and appeases its hunger. That’s eros – it’s a desire-filled hunger, and it is experienced in all the myriad ways where pleasure is sought, including food and sex . Eros is a life force. We couldn’t...