and with diamond clasps
were all its seams fastened;
and the image of the king of kings
was embroidered and depicted in full all over it,
and like the stone of the sapphire too
its hues were varied.
And I saw also that all over it
the instincts of knowledge were working,
and I saw too that it was preparing to speak.
I heard the sound of its tones,
which it uttered with its (illegible text), (saying):
“I am the active in deeds,
whom they reared for him before my father;
and I perceived myself,
that my stature grew according to his labors.”
And in its kingly movements
it poured itself entirely over me,
and on the hand of its givers
it hastened that I might take it.
And love urged me to run
to meet it and receive it;
and I stretched forth and took it.
With the beauty of its colors I adorned myself,
and I wrapped myself wholly in my toga
of brilliant hues.
I clothed myself with it, and went up to the gate
of salutation and prostration;
I bowed my head and worshipped the majesty
of my father who sent me,—
for I had done his commandments,
and he too had done what he promised,—
and the gate of his (illegible text),
I mingled with his princes,
for he rejoiced in me and received me,
and I was with him in his kingdom,
and with the voice of (illegible text)
all his servants praised him.
And he promised that to the gate too
of the king of kings with him I should go,
and with my offering and my pearl
with him should present myself to our king.
The Hymn of Judas Thomas the Apostles,
which he spake in prison, is ended.
• • •
This hymn is a Gnostic text lifted from the Acts of Thomas. It comprises a portion of the entire apocryphal text. It is entitled; The Hymn of the Pearl and is a story about the princely nature of a son that sets out to recapture the immense PEARL (at the behest of his parents) that is hidden in the ocean under the watchful eye of the dragon.
The dear son forgets his princely nature—and his goal and aim in coming to gain the immense treasure and wealth—and gets stuck in the hugger-mugger of routine and daily life. The father—the KING—needs to send a reminder to him to get it together, capture the prize, and head home and put on his princely robes one more time.
This battle with the forgetfulness of who we are in the divine nature of things is exactly what the Shadow/Duende is about. I have included the hymn here because it is a great place to begin to get an understanding of the Shadow/Duende and all of the hidden things in life that tickle us into not remembering who we really are.
There is a sensational book that highlights this text and other similar Syriac/Gnostic tales “The Wisdom of the Pearlers” (An Anthology of Syriac Christian Mysticism). It is well worth the read. It is a guide map of the interior life which is somehow a GPS of the soul and able to track interior coordinates on the exterior landscape of the lives we live. A lot of mystic literature performs the same role and function in our lives – gives us an x-ray of what God and the cosmos call us into living while we are here.
This particular tale is a part of the ilk of literature that the church would recognize as “Prodigal Son” literature. They are stories about what we do with ourselves in trying to find out who we are. They involve shadows, reflections, impressions, conflicts, forgetting of identity and calling, battle, and then a sort of ultimate triumph through some sort of humbling remembrance and return.
All of this is wrapped up in and around the notion of DUENDE – the theme of this volume. Duende is that place in us where the two halves of our life are conjoined. It is the place where we go down into the self and gather up that opposing force to our immediate nature. It involves the undoing of the “pretending-everything-is-ok-mechanism” in us and it is an overall waking up to the forces of conflict in life and actually mustering a strength to make abiding choices. Many throughout time have likened this awaking process to dreams and forgetfulness and because of that it seeks to reveal itself in shadows and reflections.
These “Prodigal Son” tales tend to end up someplace familiar; reminding us that we are who we are, no matter where we are. And, in order to become that which we think we are destined to become; we must return to our center and be who we have been all along. The tales tend to forge a unified self from both the “self” that exists in the light [the known-self] and the “self” that exists in the darkness [the unknown-self]. There is a going outside of ourselves to capture and regain some piece of who we already are. Then we bring it back inside of us.
It is a MYSTERY.
Some liked to note and identify these Gnostic tales as the stories of saviors who needed saving. In that vein, they are really tales about wounded healers or just plain common folk who begin to recognize the commonplace nature of the divine indwelling. The redeemer-prince tales speak to us of our complex nature. We are at one time divine and human; terrestrial and celestial.
• • •
Robert Bly spoke of the Shadow as the bag we drag behind us. We throw pieces of ourselves into the bag that we do not want to bring to the light of day – things we do not want other people to see. It starts with pieces of ourselves that others tell us they do not want to see.
In this light the Shadow is the personality of the son (in the gnostic tale from the beginning), but it is his forgetful-self – the portion of him who forgot he was the Prince.
Our bag of Shadow-stuff fills up easily. We ditch everything we are told or suppose is no good. At first it will be our parents that tell us what they do not want to see. Then it will be our teachers and our mentors. Then it will become our peers that tell us what they do not want to see. Their “shame-things” go in the Shadow-bag.
This is how we adapt—stuffing things in the bag to keep ourselves relevant and loved. We long to belong. We learn to feel shame at the things that separate us from belonging.
The stuff we are ashamed of is tossed into the bag and we pull it in our wake; not mentioning its presence and its worth. Just dragging the bag, we feel we are set free from the pieces of ourselves that we do not understand or cannot resolve (or more rightly put – things others do not understand about us and cannot resolve). Alas, the reality that we forget is that they are not gone.
We are bent under the weight of our attempts to hide our darkness. We limp and drag ourselves ahead because we are tethered to our bag – we are dragging a Shadow all along the way.
Like it or not, the Shadow is carried about. You can hide it, but it is still being carried.
• • •
This whole Shadow process is really laid out quite nicely in the Hymn of the Pearl. The son must leave his home and go and get his treasure which is somewhere else. He must “go down into Egypt”, or dig into his bag. There he