The Whore of Babylon

I saw a woman mounted on a scarlet beast…. the woman was clothed in purple and scarlet and bedecked with gold and precious stones and pearls. In her hand she held a gold cup full of all obscenities and the filth of her fornication…. I saw the woman was drunk with the blood of God’s people and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. (Apoc. 17:3-4, 6)

This woman, the famous “Scarlet Woman” and the “Whore of Babylon,” is the antithesis of the woman clothed with the sun in Apocalypse 12. The woman clothed with the sun gives birth to Christ in her children; the Scarlet Woman is drunk with the blood of those children, now martyred. The woman clothed with the sun is attacked by the dragon, the Antichrist; now the dragon, the Antichrist, escorts the Scarlet Woman in her apparent hour of triumph. The woman clothed with the sun is a mother who remains forever a virgin; the Scarlet Woman is the mother of all abominations and prostitutions imaginable. If the woman clothed with the sun is Sophia, the Divine Wisdom (Proverbs 8-9, Baruch 3-4, Wisdom 6-8), then the Scarlet Woman is the “loose woman” whose house is the gateway to Hell (Proverbs 7, 9).

The icons of Novgorod used scarlet as the background of divine light, out of which the saints stepped to greet the faithful. It is also the color of the Hellmouth, the great beast who devours the damned in icons of the Last Judgement. Scarlet is the presence of God who can be accepted or rejected but never escaped.

The Scarlet Woman is at the moment of decision, capable of giving herself over completely to the destruction of beauty and light or of turning aside from that path of destruction. She can remain the Whore of Babylon or become the Virgin Mother of the faithful, the “holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride for her husband” (Apoc. 21:2).

(For a fuller discussion of the woman clothed with the sun and the whore of Babylon, see my chapter “Clothed in Scarlet, Clothed with the Sun: Thoughts on the Women of Apocalypse 12 and 17” in Earth’s Abominations: Philosophical Studies of Evil available here.)

Mother of God as Fortress and Incense

This icon, similar to the icon in Rome of the Mother of God known as “Health/Salvation of the Roman People,” illustrates the Song of Songs 4:4, which reads, “Like the Tower of David is your neck … a thousand shields hang upon it, all arrows of the mighty.”

“Who is she that goes up from the desert, as a pillar of smoke of aromatic spices–of myrrh and frankincense and all the perfumer’s powders?” (Song of Songs 3:6)

The friends of the groom are surprised by what they see, St. Gregory of Nyssa tells us. They know she is beautiful more splendid than gold or silver. But now they see her ascending and are struck with amazement and compare her beauty and virtue to not just a simple, single variety of incense but to a mixture of frankincense and myrrh together.

“One aspect of their praise is derived from the association of these two perfumes: myrrh is used for burying the dead and frankincense is used in divine worship…. a person must first become myrrh before being dedicated to the worship of God. That is, a person must be buried with Christ who assumed death for our sake and must mortify themselves with the myrrh–understood as repentance–which was used in the Lord’s burial.” (St. Gregory of Nyssa, On the Song of Songs)

A person must embrace ongoing self-examination and repentance; only then is it possible to then possible to enter the presence of God as the frankincense which is offered by the angels before the throne of God (Rev. 8:4).

Another of the spices used by perfumers was cinnamon. It was thought to have several remarkable properties, such as stopping putrefaction or infection and would cause a sleeping person to answer questions truthfully. So the application of “spiritual cinnamon” would stop anger, induce honest/truthful self-examination, and calm the anxious.

Myrrh and cinnamon were therefore metaphors for attitudes and practices that would protect a person from sin. In the Song, the bride–who was a type of the Mother of God–was not only myrrh and cinnamon but a protective fortress as well. The bride–in patristic sermons, the Mother of God–is a fortress with shields hanging from the battlements. The walls of the fortress are impervious to spears. The early fathers took this to mean that the prayers of the Mother of God could protect Christians from the darts and arrows of temptation. The fortress could also be seen as the Church herself, steadfast and immoveable on the rock of faith.

There were 18th century icons to illustrate this idea of the Mother of God as fortress; the inscription at the top of these icons was commonly:

“Like the Tower of David is your neck, built on courses of stone; a thousand shields hang upon it, all arrows of the mighty.” (Song of Songs 4:4)

In the example of this kind of icon seen above, the two saints appearing at the sides are additions generally not found in other versions.  They are the Martyr Adrian and the Martyr Natalia.  Some examples have instead the military saints such Alexander Nevsky at left, and George at right, but many have no saints added to the main image.

Much thanks to the Icons and Their Interpretation blog for information about this icon.

“Pleasing is the fragrance of your perfumes….”

This image of the Mother of God, “Health/Salvation of the Roman People,” dates from the 6th century and is kept in a chapel of the St. Mary Major basilica in Rome. The Mother of God is frequently identified with the bride in the Song of Songs; just as this image is reputed to bring health and salvation to those who venerate it, the fragrance which the bride shares with her companions also brings health and salvation.

“Even though one may gather every perfume and every flower of fragrance from all the different meadows of virtue and is able to make one’s whole life fragrant with the scent of all these virtuous actions … still one could not look steadily upon the Bridegroom, the Word of God, any more than one could look directly at the sun.”

St. Gregory of Nyssa is commenting on a verse from the Song of Songs:

“Pleasing is the fragrance of your perfumes;
    your name is like perfume poured out.” (Song of Songs 1:3)

St. Gregory goes on to quote St. Paul the Apostle, who said that he was “the good fragrance of Christ” (2 Cor. 2:15). St. Gregory points out that the apostle “inhaled the fragrance of that inaccessible and transcendent grace, offering himself to others as a kind of incense for them to partake of according to their ability….” St. Gregory urges us to treasure this fragrance in our hearts, as the bride does in the Song of Songs. The bride makes a sachet of this fragrant perfume and keeps it between her breasts; the warmth of her heart enables all her actions to spread the beautiful scent of the perfume.

Some manuscripts specify that this perfume is frankincense or myrrh. In the medical theory of the ancient world, these scents strengthened and energized certain animals but acted as poison to others. The effect of these scents on humans, however, was the result of human choice: a person could choose to be energized and invigorated by the scent or to be weakened and debilitated by the scent.

The choice is up to us.