I like to imagine the magi of the Epiphany story as mystics. Intuitives. Seers. Foretellers. Dream interpreters. Alchemists. Artists. Astrologers. Spiritual leaders. Philosophers. Teachers. Healers. In tune with the divinity of the cosmos and their soul. I know people who are like the magi, and they’re truly magical.
As the story goes, the magi brought gold, frankincense, and myrrh as gifts for Jesus.
Many interpret the meaning of the magi’s gifts as symbols of power because they were given to a king, as if Jesus is the king that everyone should worship. Or as if Christianity is the religion to which everyone should ascribe. Or as everyone needs to “believe in Jesus” in order to get into heaven after we die. These presumptions are about power and control. I don’t think Jesus was about dominating others, nor about controlling his life circumstances. Quite the contrary.
I see mysticism in the gifts. They provide a glimmer of meaning within an otherwise nihilistic existence. They tell us about life and death, divinity and humanity. They tell us about suffering and ease, stability and change. They tell us about who we are.
Gold
The alchemist knows that gold manifests when one has transmuted the base elements of herself into a brighter, denser, richer, and more beautiful material. She takes the undesired reality, whether grief, pain, scarcity, rejection, or fear and uses its very matter to experience the sublime.
However, the process of transmutation is not one of control. The alchemist does not try to control her every circumstance in order to rid herself of the unpleasant and secure the desired. She does not try to be “good” and “right” so that she is not punished, or so that no one hurts her, or so that she is never in need. Nor does she cling to the undesired, as if its transmutation negates its existence. She simply tries to be the truth of herself, a sensation-filled path, one in constant motion.
The process of transmutation is not one of certainty. The alchemist needs the unpleasant materials for her refinement, but her goal isn’t a unidirectional movement from undesired to desired. She can’t be sure she’ll get what she wants; she might get what she doesn’t. Her goal is to experience the truest form of things, of the world and of herself. The movement is toward truth. Arriving at truth is a purification process, one that requires the burning sensation of fire. Every agitation of the base contains the very substance that can create the stability of the gold.
Frankincense
Mystics light candles and incense. We send our prayers with the smoke up to the ether. We write down that which we would like to burn away from our lives and place it in the bonfire. We declare our hopes, needs, desires and set them ablaze to send into the mystery, anticipating that the ephemeral will one day materialize. Our intentions ascend as the states of matter transition from solids to gases, from material to spiritual. Sublimation.
The fire of incense is instructive: everything material is also spiritual, and everything spiritual is also material. Just like we are. Whole. Opposites coexist and mutually constitute the other. They move and change. Just like we do. This is our truth.
Myrrh
Myrrh comes from a tear-shaped tree sap. With fire, its resin can be made into oil, used for the body’s anointing and embalming. Anointing occurs at the beginning of something, embalming at the end. Life and death are two opposites of the same experience. To enter life is to finish what came before. To end life is to begin anew, neither of which occurs without tears.
A few years ago while meditating, I asked, “What is the essence of life?” To my surprise I heard, “Body.” I expected something less, well, material. Something less finite. I expected something spiritual like love or peace or truth. Something eternal. Ever since hearing the message in that meditation, I’ve been trying to make sense of it. Thanks to recent conversations with a dear soul, I now understand. The body is the essence of life because that which is never embodied never dies, and thus never lives. The finite IS the eternal. There is no life without death and no death without life; neither happens without the body. So for the spiritual to be made manifest, to live, it needs the body.
The Miracle of Opposites
The magi’s gifts tell us about the magic of this life, which is the same magic in the Christmas story. If we allow it, the refiner’s fire miraculously purifies our every base into golden brilliance. Jesus spoke a lot about renewal and transformation. The spark that ignites the frankincense transitions our material into the spiritual and back into the material again. Perhaps the whole reason he claimed to bring fire was to facilitate our movement within liminality, across the spiritual and material. The tree’s myrrh reflects the sacredness of our bodies, the essence of life. Through fire our tears create the oil to anoint every death, which is every life. Jesus spoke about the oneness of the body and God and about life upon death.
We’re comprised of opposites, never only one thing. Even our whole is not only a whole. It is a part of something bigger. Likewise, our parts are not only parts. They are wholes of themselves. Each opposite is comprised of the other and defines the other. Even a nondual perspective creates a duality. Both the nondual and the dual exist simultaneously. We are both the particular and the cosmic. Distinct and connected. Formed and in formation. One and both.
Opposites constitute each other. Just as the mountain creates the valley, the valley also creates the mountain. And still, they are the same landscape. They are not separate. They contain and create the other. Only the perspective of the observer moves from the peak to the valley floor, just like we do. With movement, suffering constitutes ease, and ease constitutes suffering. The spiritual constitutes the material, and the material constitutes the spiritual. Life constitutes death, and death constitutes life. God constitutes human, and human constitutes God, all of it a miracle.
Happy Epiphany.
Yes, alchemy of the body with death and new life. It is a painful and slow process to be in the fire. Peace