Kriophoros

                        

In the last few days I’ve been getting ready for Beltane, that great Feast of the Lady, and on Sunday, there was the specifically Catholic ritual of the May Crowning, the time when the statue of the virgin is decked in a corona of flowers and processed into the place or worship. This is the time to honor the mystery of the Bride and the Mystical wedding in Catholic eyes. But I had gotten so busy with this I completely missed what the introit song to Sunday and the readings reminded me: this particular Sunday was good Shepherd Sunday and the beginning of the week of Easter where we look upon Christ as Good Shepherd. This happens every year. The first Sunday of May and all the weeks of May when the Virgin is revered will always coincide with part of Easter, and they usually run into Good Shepherd Sunday.  I didn’t want to miss the readings that focused on the aspect of the Divine as pastoralist and provider.  The shepherd is a potent and strange metaphor because the shepherd, especially in the ancient Levant, meant many things, as did the animal he herded. Of course, Jesus’ calling himself the Good Shepherd hearkens back to King David his ancestor who was the shepherd and psalmist who wrote, ‘The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” But before David there was Moses and then the Patriarchs who were shepherds, which his to say in the context of Israelite iconography if not reality, a shepherd was a king’s job. A shepherd was what a patriarch did. And while we are at it, they did not simply care for the sheep, they slaughtered the sheep. A shepherd was not only the butcher of the sheep, but he was the sacrificer of the sheep, for he was the first priest of this people. How can we mention the patriarchs and not remember Abraham who was called by God to sacrifice his own son?  In the end it is God himself who must stay Abraham’s hand, and a ram shows up to replace Isaac. But there are some who say in the original story God did not stay Abraham’s hand, and the first time we meet a shepherd it is Abel who both slays and then is slain. Jesus is the Lamb of God, and he also allies himself ultimately, with Abel and not David or Moses. He is the sheepgate through whom the sheep enter. He is the sustainer of the sheep. He becomes the chief sheep. He is not the slaughterer but the slaughtered. So, when we see the image of the sheep or ram over the shoulders of the shepherd, we must remember, it is not that one is the sacrificer and the other sacrificed, but that both are sacrifice, and both are divine.---

For a long time I have been obsessed witth image of Hermes Kriophoros. You have probably seen it too, a shepherd boy with a sheep over his shoulder, but this is not Jesus, and the sheep is a ram. The Kriophoros becomes the first icon of Jesus in Christianity because of a coincidence that made it easy for an often illegal religion to hide itself in common signs like fish and or the Shepherd Hermes. After all, Jesus called himself the Good Shepherd, and Hermes Kriophoros was the good shepherd of his people. The stories around the Kriophorus image differ, but most state that Hermes saved a town from plague by carrying a ram on his shoulders and walking around the town walls.

           

When I was growing up, often people who did not know very much about iconography wondered what it meant that Jesus was the shepherd and we were the sheep. Very often it boiled down to, “We’re not very smart and we should trust God who puts up with all of silly and sheepish mistakes. And this is fitting for mainstream Christianity a religion which relies on people not being smart, being sinful and bumbling and needing to be lead about by shepherds on earth who speak for one in heaven. It is not a grown up idea or a mysterious idea. The early Christians were both grown up and occult, and they knew that the image of the Good Shepherd was almost as disturbing as the crucifix and bore the same message. For in the image of the Kriophoros, shepherd and sheep are one.  The shepherd is the Divine Shepherd, the Great Priest, and he will be the Sacrifice, but if the shepherd and the sheep are one, and we know the sheep is the natural sacrifice, then does that not make us the Divide Ram as well, the initiate who must, in time, undergo their own immolation on the altar?