CYCLE SIX

1. A mounting tendency of mine to regard sex as having a kind of middle-ground status in between sport and dance, as though it were the result of a compromise between positions more closely affiliated with masculine and feminine extremes - the former effectively lunar and the latter more inherently of the World (planar, or planetary). In such fashion, one could speak of sex as taking a mid-position in a vertical axis which stretches from sport at the apex to dance at the base, the one effectively homosexual on account of its overly masculine connotations and the other no-less effectively lesbian on account of the feminine connotations which accrue to the World, heterosexuality being a sort of sexual compromise between these more extreme positions.

2. Likewise, I find it difficult not to regard Anglicanism as, in some sense, a compromise between Puritan and Catholic extremes within this same lunar/planar axis, a denomination of the Christian Faith which is effectively heterosexual where it could be argued that Puritanism, in its purgatorial masculinity, is homosexual and Catholicism, by contrast, lesbian, since closer to nature, and hence the feminine. Thus where Puritanism affirms the masculine (Christ) and Catholicism the feminine (Blessed Virgin), Anglicanism would seem to be balanced between these two extremes, neither homosexual nor lesbian, but heterosexual and/or androgynous.

3. Unlike Anglicanism, both Puritanism and Catholicism deny sex, the one from a masculine point of view (homosexual) and the other from a feminine point of view (lesbian), as relative to their lunar and planar (planetary) extremes. However, in the late-twentieth century such a denial was less compatible with sex per se than with heterosexuality; for there would seem to be no self-denial where homosexual and lesbian alternatives are concerned, which necessarily relate to Puritan and Catholic positions respectively. Nor is there much self-denial, in regard to these latter denominations, where sport and dance are concerned.

4. Puritanism divested Christianity of so many facets of its humanist integrity, including the removal of Christ's image from the Cross, that it was perhaps inevitable that the resulting abstraction should be a foregone candidate for damnation by politics, particularly in its parliamentary, or liberal, manifestation. For no such abstraction could possibly have the strength or, more correctly, moral substance to hold-out against materialist damnation and, willy-nilly, subversion. The Puritan Christ was doomed to a subordinate authority beside the more powerful Antichrist ... of parliamentary tradition, which was not above speaking-out in defence and ostensible advancement - witness Cromwell and his Puritan followers - of the very same Christ which Parliamentarians had successfully dethroned. Hence a Christ paradoxically dependent upon the Antichrist! A Christ Who, to this very day, is still vigorously defended by people whose (political) role in society is dubiously Christian - indeed, manifestly anti-Christian, and hence Antichristic! No, it is not difficult to see what befalls a Christ who is stripped of his humanity and reduced to the materialistic and hateful symbol of the very thing upon which he was historically crucified! Thank goodness that no such fate befell the Catholic Christ, who was accorded his humanistic due and therefore permitted to prevail in concreto rather than as a pitiful abstraction! The result, logically enough, is that politics did not, and in the circumstances could not, 'turn the tables' on this Catholic Christ, with a result that Eire is still a place where, in James Joyce's memorable words, 'God and the Church come first', being a Catholic Republic and not a republican democracy (like America) or, worse again, a parliamentary democracy (like Britain). Now the reward, naturally enough, for this Catholic preponderance is the possibility of spiritual salvation in and through the Second Coming, and an advancement, in consequence, to the 'Kingdom of Heaven', viz. the Social Transcendentalist Centre, in which the People, having democratically opted for religious sovereignty, would be entitled to institutionally-guaranteed self-realization (of the Holy Spirit of Heaven) for all Eternity. Contrary to those who, in their moral blindness, 'went to the dogs' ... of Empire-building devilry, the true adherents of Christ and his Blessed Mother will be saved ... from the World to the Beyond, wherein only the peace of the Holy Spirit of Heaven shall prevail.