Yesterday afternoon my friend Jeff and I attended an extraordinary gathering in Madison Square Park, convened by Matthew Grace, whom I met in the subway last week. Gathered together in the green plastic tents in front of Danny Meyer’s Shake Shack, under the watchful eye and outstretched right arm of Roscoe Conkling, I think it was very much an assembly of like-minded souls as this sharp-tongued anti-slavery representative, a lawyer and politician who served in both the House and Senate, and who was so commanding in his physical presence that he served as bodyguard for radical Republican Representative Thaddeus Stevens.
Known for his robust physique, and dedication to hygienic maintenance of the body through abstinence from alcohol and tobacco, Senator Conkling was a superb boxer at a time when boxing was for ruffians, not gentlemen.
Not ruffians, but gentle men and women met, abstaining from the unhealthy habit of mask-wearing, convened to outline artistic, egalitarian, hospitable, inspiring programs for freeing our beloved city from its self-imposed enslavement to a threefold – masks; social distancing; lockdown – regimen of totalitarian, anti-human control. We were of course the only human beings in that graceful park who were maskless.
How happy Roscoe Conkling would have been to see us there! And with him also a whole host of other past pedestrian lovers of Madison Square Park – the union members who met there for decades, to speak out in favor of more humane labor laws; the Socialists who assembled there in the 1940s and 50s, to preserve democracy against the onslaught of the Red Scare; the peace activists of the 1960s, dedicated to ending the apocalyptic nightmare of nuclear war.
All of them – and us too – were and are watched over in Madison Square Park by the loving, nurturing, and erotic eyes and ears of Diana, Goddess of the Moon, of Arcadia, of Childbirth and Crossroads.
Augustus Saint-Gaudens’ Diana of the Tower was commissioned by architect Stanford White as a weather vane for the tower of Madison Square Garden, the world’s most extravagant pleasure dome, that used to anchor the northeast corner of the park. In 1891, when she was unveiled, the Garden, its park and its neighborhood was hands down the most erotic locale in all of North America – perhaps the world. Aside from the carnal pleasures of food and drink and dancing at the Garden’s opulent eateries, the Garden’s arena hosted a packed calendar of sensory spectacles – brass band concerts, magic shows, 6-day bicycle races, temperance meetings, dog shows, Annie Oakley shooting glass balls out of the air in a flash.
The first version of Saint-Gaudens’ aerial goddess was 18’ tall and weighed 1800 pounds – far too heavy to be moved by the wind, as a proper weathervane should be. Saint-Gaudens's design also specified that the figure appear to delicately balance on its left toe atop a ball. The Ohio metal shop where it was fabricated was unable to pass the rotating rod through the toe, so the design was altered and the figure instead was poised (less-gracefully) on its heel.
Diana’s nudity immediately offended moral crusader Anthony Comstock and his New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. To placate Comstock and to increase the likelihood of its catching the wind, Saint-Gaudens draped the figure in cloth, but the cloth blew away. Both White and Saint-Gaudens concluded that the figure was too large for the building, and decided to create a smaller, lighter replacement.
Scaled down to 14.5’ and 700 pounds – 60% less than the original sculpture – this Diana was light enough to rotate with the wind. As Saint-Gaudens originally envisioned, the figure was balanced on its left toe atop a ball. The statue was hoisted to the top of the tower on November 18, 1893.
Diana presides at the Temple of Artemis – the Greek name for this spiritual being who has as her special care the human physical body – at Ephesus. In John’s Revelation, seven letters are directed to seven separate geographical regions where particular emphasis is placed on one of the seven parts of the human being. The first letter is directed to the Ephesians. They put great stock in the development of the physical body.
The ancient Greeks knew that in regions like their own, where the physical body was especially harmoniously developed, if persons neglected the physical body, it would then become a caricature of its highest potential. As Rudolf Steiner taught: “If what is supposed to be brought to a certain perfection is not developed, then something arises inwardly that makes such a person receptive to the evil manifestations in the evolution of humankind.”
At this time in human spiritual evolution, when the physical body is increasingly becoming an expression of the etheric body, the astral body, and the I, it is imperative that we practice the most loving hygiene toward our physical body, as corollary to our practices of the purification and harmonizing of our astral/emotional and I/ego bodies.
The Pythagoreans expressed the four members of the harmonized human being in the ratio: 1:3:7:12. In their mystery schools there was a wonderful rule-of-thumb that at this time, when the physical body has been so constrained and defiled, we would do well to remember and celebrate:
Become such that the twelve becomes the seven, that the seven stars appear.
In John’s Revelation, this is spoken by the Lord to the Ephesians, because among them the physical body was especially developed. The development of Christianity means a transition from the old forms of community based on blood ties to spiritual love, that the spiritual will take over from the flesh. But in this historical moment, we are all called upon to honor and purify and move our physical bodies in harmony with the “seven stars” – the spiritual beings of the classical planets – as a preparation and collaboration with our upper members – etheric, astral, I.
Just as the heel-bound, heavyweight (one ton!) Diana could not dance in the etherically-stirred air high above Madison Square Park, one cannot dance – or sing or converse or kiss or caress another human being with smiling eyes – when the highest and most perfect organ of our physical body – our face – is behind a mask. As the snows melt and the birds begin to sing and every living creature looks about for one with whom to partner and bring new life, may my city’s citizens free themselves from this satanic bondage, and embrace the principle of the 12 becoming the 7. May we dance and caress and converse our way back to the city and country and world that Diana and her fellow gods and goddesses and angels so rightfully deserve, as our gratitude for their immense gifts of Beauty, Truth, and Wisdom to us. May we feel in our body’s every sinew and surface the cosmic wisdom embodied there, and then may we honor it with new songs, new dances, new, face-to-face, truly erotic – in the sense of life-giving, Grail–expressive – conversations.
Diana Beckons Us
I could read your writings all day, Kevin.