Tag Archives: dragon

The Whore of Babylon

Posted on by
Reply
Two depictions of the whore of Babylon: left, in the Beatus Apocalypse (an 11th century Romanesque illuminated manuscript); right, a 1532 hand-colored woodcut by Hans Burgkmair in Luther’s translation of the New Testament.

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.)

Sea of Glass

Posted on by
Reply
Russian icon depicting the victory of the Archangel Michael over the dragon, the beast, and Babylon the Great; Christ in the upper corner invites the faithful to the banquet of the heavenly Eucharist.

Then I saw another portent in heaven, great and astonishing: seven angels with seven plagues…. and I saw, as it were, a sea of glass mingled with fire and, standing beside the sea of glass and holding harps of God, were those who had been victorious against the beast and its image and the number of its name. (Apocalypse 15:1-2)

St. John sees another seven angels ready to unleash another seven plagues on the earth and then he sees the victorious martyrs standing beside a sea of glass and fire, holding harps and singing “the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb.” (Apoc. 15:3)

We have encountered the sea of glass in Apoc. 4 — here it is described as a molten mix of glass and fire. This sea is an allusion to the Red Sea which was deliverance for the Israelites and doom for the Egyptians. Here, the victorious sing “the song of Moses” which is no vindictive triumph over enemies but solely a song of praise to the Lord and King.

St. Andrew of Caesarea thinks

The sea of glass is both the multitude of those being saved and the future condition–the brilliance of the saints-, who will shine by means of their sparkling virtue…. the fire will both burn the sinners and illuminate the righteous. Fire is both divine knowledge and the life-giving Spirit–for in fire God was seen by Moses and the Spirit descended upon the apostles as tongues of fire–and the harps indicate the mortification of members (Col. 3:5), the harmonious life of a symphony of virtues plucked by the musical pick (plectrum) of the divine Spirit. (Chapter 45, “Commentary on the Apocalypse”)

The sea is both salvation and condemnation, just as the incense in the bowls held by the angels:

We are the sweet fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing: indeed, to some the fragrance of life and to others the stench of death. (2 Cor. 2:15-16)

Tyconius, in his classic commentary on the Apocalypse, points out that the prayers of the saints–the incense offered by the angels, an allusion to the liturgical intercessions of the Church on earth–lead to both the salvation of the world and the condemnation of the fallen order.

As with so much in the Apocalypse–as in life–the same events or experiences can lead to either salvation or damnation. How do we choose to react to these events?

The choice is ours.

St. Michael and the Dragon: Victory in Heaven

Posted on by
2
The war in heaven depicted in “Las Huelgas Apocalypse,” Spain AD 1220; the commentary of Beatus of Liebana.

Then war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon. The dragon and his angels fought back and he did not prevail…. The great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent who is called Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world…. (Apocalypse 12:7-9)

The Archangel Michael (Jude 9) is the captain of God’s armies and the champion of the Chosen People (Daniel 10:21, 12:1); in the Old Testament, he is the most powerful figure, second only to God. Although Satan does occasionally appear in heaven (Job 1), he is definitively cast down and overthrown here.

The dragon is identified both with the serpent who tempted Eve and with the adversary, the accuser who demanded that God allow him to test the sincerity of both Job and the Apostle Peter (Luke 22:31). Satan wanted to ruin them both but did not succeed. Satan, the dragon, wants to ruin the human race. He wants to ruin the entire creation. His jealousy goads him to want to destroy everything (Wisdom 1-2) but in the end, his jealousy destroys only himself.

Often the spear that St. Michael uses to fight the dragon with is a wooden lance; it is by the wood of the Cross that the dragon is overthrown. The archangel Michael’s victory is the heavenly and symbolic counterpart of Jesus hanging-dying on the Cross. The martyrs, as members of the Body of Christ, who testify-witness about the victory of the Cross, share in this victory but the victory is demonstrated by their dying as Christ died on the Cross. The events described in chapter 12 of the Apocalypse—the woman clothed with the sun, the dragon, the war in heaven—are the central events of the Apocalypse, around which everything else revolves, because they are the representation of the central events of earthly history.

“I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven,” says Jesus (Luke 10:18); therefore the apostles are able to cast out devils who possess humans. The Lamb, “who was slain from the foundation of the world,” is both eternally the victor and the one who wins the victory at a particular time-place in the world. Both the eternal victory and the victory in time are true; neither victory cancels or outweighs the other.

The dragon is not simply THE Devil, a single angelic personality. The dragon is all the enemies of God at once; in Ezekiel 29:3 and 32:2-3, we read that the Pharaoh of the Exodus is “like a dragon in the sea,” a great water monster who attempts to devour the Chosen People. The dragon is the Roman system which attempts to eradicate the Church. The dragon is everything and everyone who attempts to deny the victory of the Cross.