In the grip of Love

Love: possibly one of the most overused, abused, misunderstood, and exploited words today. But Love doesn’t mind. Everyone wants it, seeks it, wishes it to others, uses it, defines it at will. Yet Love endures. Even in the disillusioned and cynical world of today Love still finds root in the hearts of those who deny him.

And I say ‘him’ because one of the most well-known depictions of Love throughout the recorded history of Western civilization is that of a mischievous infant boy, winged, and armed with bow and arrow – so as to inflict wounds on mortals and thus exert his influence upon them. There is much profound truth concealed within this symbolical depiction but most people fail to recognize it because they have grown accustomed to the image and, therefore, deem it unworthy of attention. We will not, however, venture down that particular path of speculation at present. Suffice to say that Love’s mysteries, like all mysteries, are hidden in plain sight: even though exposed before all eyes they are only seen by few.

Love is one of the principal creative causes and driving forces of our very existence. The ancient Greeks understood this. In Hesiod’s “Theogony” Love is part of the very first triad of principles which brings our universe from chaos into existence: “Verily at the first Chaos came to be, but next wide-bosomed Earth, the ever-sure foundations of all the deathless ones who hold the peaks of snowy Olympus, and dim Tartarus in the depth of the wide-pathed Earth, and Eros (Cupid / Love), fairest among the deathless gods, who unnerves the limbs and overcomes the mind and wise counsels of all gods and all men within them” (II. 116-138). 

In simpler, less poetic, terms Hesiod tells us that in the beginning there was Chaos and Earth and Love – and these three begat the entire universe and all that is contained within it, physical and metaphysical alike. Chaos is the black maelstrom of seething disorder. It is formless. All things are contained in it yet nothing there is ordered in a distinct shape or form and thus it is bereft of actual existence. Earth is matter; and by ‘matter’ one is to understand the entire spectrum of physical matter, not just the grosser portion of it which we can perceive with our senses: particles and nanoparticles, all sorts of radiation and energy waves, anything that has mass in general. Then Love suddenly appears, a conscious connecting force, the law of attraction, and out of this chaotic mess of matter things are pulled together. They are united and begin to take shape. First in pairs and then multiplying they form the vast cosmic panorama of planets, gods, universal forces and mortal creatures: everything from the highest and most sublime to the lowest and minute. Hesiod also calls Love ‘Phanes’ because ‘he was the first one to appear’, i.e. the light (an etymology derived from the ancient Greek verb ‘Phaeno’, ‘to illuminate / to shed light’). It is interesting to note that in the Jewish account of the genesis of the cosmos it is also ‘a light’ which inaugurates the creation of the physical universe: “And God said, ‘Let there be light’, and there was light” (Genesis / Bereishit, 1:3). Could this ‘light of God’ or ‘appearance of the fair god Eros’ be a mythical precursor to the Big Bang theory of modern science?

Still, it is undisputable that Love is the ruling power in our world. There are innumerable expressions of Love and each is as strong as the other. Trying to compare them would be as useless as debating which part of the human body is better over the rest for man’s constitution. There is the passionate, erotic love of Romeo and Juliet; there is filial love, religious love, love of beauty and the ideal, love for things and love of doing things, even love between man and other creatures, be they plant or animal. 

Some would rush to say that it is money and power who rule the world. Yet is it not a love for money and power which drives the power-hungry oligarchs and oil-tycoons? Even the somber scientist, who has broken down emotions to a series of chemical reactions within the human brain, is driven forward in his laborious researches by a love for knowledge, discovery or perhaps simply fame. 

In one way or another we are all the subjects of emperor Love. We can’t help it. It’s part of our nature since we are products of Nature – for Nature was pulled together into existence by Love. Evolution, after all, is another name for Love, albeit more sterilized from poetic taint. 

It is therefore only appropriate to devote at least one day of the year in celebration of Love. All ancient cultures held festivals consecrated to various deities incarnating this universal force of attraction and (pro)creation, from the Greek feasts of Aphrodite, to the Roman Lupercalia and the Holi festival of the Hindus. Later on, in the Christianized West, these traditions came down to us as St. Valentine ’s Day, with a little help from Geoffrey Chaucer’s pen. Finally, in the modern world which arrogantly laughs at the face of all religion as superstition, the new prevailing dogma, Materialism, has taken up the hierophant’s crown in leading anew the celebrations of Love. 

It doesn’t matter whether you partake in them or not, for you are already helpless in the grip of Love no matter what you do; and that’s a beautiful thought to hold on to.