CYCLE THREE

1. The contention, expressed above, that Italy should be identified with watery re-birth (the womb) lends itself to the notion that Italian sensibility is not only Marian as opposed to, say, Christic, but that Roman Catholicism, the mode of Christianity one would most identify with Italy, is accordingly biased towards Marianism, in contrast to the Christic bias of, say, Eastern Orthodoxy in connection with the Russian Church.

2. Now if Romanism is the Catholicism of Mary and Orthodoxy, at least in its Russian manifestation, the Catholicism of Christ, then one would have reason to believe that Greek Orthodoxy was, in comparative terms, the Catholicism of the Father, and what may be called Celtic Radicalism the Catholicism of the Holy Spirit.

3. Put elementally, in terms of fire, water, vegetation, and air, this would suggest that Catholicism could be regarded as stretching from fiery fundamentalism on the Far Left, as it were, of the Christian spectrum to airy transcendentalism on the Far Right, with watery humanism and vegetative nonconformism holding comparatively left- and right-wing positions in between - as, overall, from Greek Orthodoxy to Celtic Radicalism via Roman Catholicism and Russian Orthodoxy.

4. Hence Christianity would afford us the contrast, within the same religion, of Greek fieriness, Italian wateriness, Russian vegetativeness, and Irish airiness, with corresponding distinctions of emphasis between the Father, the Mother, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

5. If this were so, then we can believe that the Gaelic aspects of Irish culture, including stout and sport, owe more to Celtic Radicalism than ever they do to Roman Catholicism, and that there is accordingly a struggle at large in Ireland between the Marian culture of the official church and the spiritual culture of the church which, in its Celtic idealism, most corresponds to Gaelic sensibility.

6. That which is best in and about Ireland would therefore be less Roman than Celtic, and we may hold that only in the idealism of the Celtic Church would the Irish people come anywhere near the true spirituality of full-blown transcendentalism.

7. The Social Transcendentalism to which I, as a self-professed Messiah, subscribe would, of course, leave the Christian spirituality of Celtic Radicalism far behind in its advocacy of transcendental meditation and total break with Biblical adherence, through the Old Testament, to Creator-based concepts of God, but, in comparative terms, Celtic Radicalism would seem to be the mode of Christianity which does most justice, within the restricted parameters of the Catholic Church, to Christian idealism, with due reference, in consequence, to the Holy Ghost.

8. In this respect, it could be regarded as standing above both the Christic bias of Russian Orthodoxy and the Marian bias of Roman Catholicism, as air transcends both vegetation and water.... Which is not to say that vegetation and water don't religiously exist in Ireland, but, rather, that they would be less characteristic of the Celtic majority's sensibility than air, bearing in mind the extent to which Irish Celts are historically drawn, through Gaelic culture, to airy transcendentalism in response, in no small measure, to the mountainous uplands which typify a not-inconsiderable proportion of the island of Ireland.

9. Which, of course, is also true of Scottish and Welsh Celts, whose Gaelic traditions display a bias towards airy sensibility over vegetative and watery, not to mention fiery, parallels existing elsewhere.

10. Indeed, just as Scottish and/or Welsh Gaels can be added to their Irish counterparts in relation to airy sensibility, often culturally manifesting itself through piping of one kind or another, so it seems to me that the Portuguese should be added to the Germans where airy sensuality is concerned, since Portugal is by no means as flat or plain-like as Spain, and Portuguese influence in South America betrays ample evidence of an airy bias not incompatible with German influence there.

11. However that may be, there is scope, in Europe, for making fourfold ethnic distinctions, based on the elements, between fiery Gallic, watery Nordic, vegetative Slavic, and airy Celtic, with Latin or, rather, Hispanic (in broad terms), Teutonic, Slavonic, and Gaelic cultural implications respectively.

12. The Gaul and the Gael are not as close as a superficial analysis could lead one to believe, but are as antipodes in a gender dichotomy which places Gallic and Nordic on one side of the fence, and Slavic and Celtic on the other - the former as fire and water in relation to female alternatives, the latter as vegetation and air in relation to male ones.

13. Verily, the Slavic and Celtic side of the ethnic divide, being subjective, is beyond the objectivity of its female side, as folly and wisdom lie beyond evil and good, the one relatively so, the other absolutely so, as befitting the distinction between vegetative sin and airy grace.

14. Such, in very general terms, is how I conceive of the principal European peoples, although, in practice, they are much more mixed than such straightforward theories would allow, and all countries contain minorities, in any case, which seem to elude neat pigeonholing in relation to Christianity, either because they come from outside Europe or because they are products of cross-breeding, or for some other no-less cogent reason. My task as a philosopher is simply to establish broad categories whereby some pattern or methodology can be maintained, to the end of securing an enhanced understanding of life in general terms. And in this respect I believe I have succeeded where others, before me, have failed.