Helen Martineau's Blog

September 29 is the AFL Grand Final, and it’s Michaelmas. It’s the great day for courageous warriors. Here on earth one football team vanquishes another in suburban warfare. There’s fist-pumping jubilation on one side and heads bowed in anguish on the other; that’s straightforward. In the other-worldly realm Archangel Michael vanquishes the mythical dragon-devil. But behind the usual dramatic picture of ‘war in heaven’ there’s far more than meets the eye. The fighting images have externalized a deep and personal truth. This war continually takes place in us. When Archangel Michael, a mighty spirit, wields the sword, it represents the strong backbone of our own human spirit that overcomes the dross of our lower nature. This is the dragon and it lives in us. It’s all the resentful, fearful, quarrelsome, judgemental thoughts and acts that set us against the world.                              ...

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...