Wormwood
Wow, Revelations has finally gotten into all that stuff you expect with Revelations: trumpets blasting and angels heralding the End of the World. (There was a little bit of a juxtaposition tonight in Evening Prayer, to follow fire-and-brimstone with the Magnificat... maybe that could have been coordinated a little better, but who am I to judge?)
The picture at the left is of Wormwood growing in the wild. Wormwood featured prominently in yesterday's passage:
"10 The third angel blew his trumpet, and a great star fell from heaven, blazing like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water. 11The name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters became wormwood, and many died from the water, because it was made bitter."
Kinda downright spooky. If you google "Wormwood" you'll find many references to the plant (at left), many passages about absinthe, and many science fiction novels.
I find the passage eerie. But my trusted Jerome didn't help with finding any deeper meaning to the choice of "Wormwood" for the name of the evil star. Jerome says only that pagan cultures used to see stars as personified supernatural beings. ButI'm still stuck on Wormwood... wow, what a creepy image.
Peace, everyone.
posted by DailyOfficer @ 11:16 PM
1 comments
1 Comments:
To follow up on my previous comment about Teresa of Avila (this has not much to do about Wormwood, but I was struck by the language as well)……
I found the book I had about John of the Cross – by Crisogono de Jesús, The Life of St. John of the Cross, trans. Kathleen Pond. Crisogono de Jesus wrote in 1955, Pond translated in 1958.
The image you had posted for the of Teresa of Avila…. Was painted by Fray Juan de Miseria. The portrait caused St. Teresa to remark, “God forgive you, Brother John, you have me ugly and bleary-eyed”
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