From a realist perspective, power serves a state first and foremost to ensure its own survival. As there is no sufficiently strong global control authority for international politics, states must constantly protect themselves against others. Accordingly, powerful states strive to avoid situations in which they are vulnerable. Great powers are dependent on entering into strategic alliances and preparing themselves against military or economic attacks. Ultimately power is a paradox and self defeating: To ensure survival, great powers tend to enter into to many commitments and become entangled in all sorts of conflicts which usually tends to be their downfall.

The United States is perhaps the best example of a state that has made too many strategic commitments and is constantly weighing up which allies should be prioritized at any given time. Strategies usually pursue a range of intentions. When the US launched its second invasion of Iraq, one of its goals was to isolate Iran and to be able to attack it from multiple sides in the event of war (in the early 2000s, almost all neighboring states — Iraq, Turkey, Pakistan and Afghanistan — had a US troop presence). As is well known, these goals failed spectacularly: Iraq did not become a beacon of democracy in the Middle East, but a state on the verge of becoming a failed state that has been ruled by pro-Iranian groups for years.

All in all, the USA has served its enemy Iran options on a silver platter: Destabilizing Syria and supporting the opposition has made Assad an unwilling vassal of Tehran. The free hand policy towards the Saudis in Yemen has turned the Houthis from warlords into statelords and of course there is the Palestinian question. The mullahs have always been religious fanatics, but in the 1990s supporting the Palestinians was a strategically sensible decision. Iran, weakened by the Iraq-Iran war, was able to present its population with a noble cause. Although this will divide opinion in the West, supporting a people displaced and disenfranchised from their homeland is not a bad talking point for the domestic audience. Moreover, Israel was almost 2,000 km from the border and almost no one in Tehran would have dreamed that mutual rocket fire would one day become an integral part of relations with Israel.

The unresolved Arab-Israel conflict has given Tehran further opportunities. The support of the Palestinians has secured them the sympathy of numerous Arab populations and, from the Ayatollah’s point of view, Hamas has been a constant thorn in Israel’s flank. Nevertheless, Hamas has proven to be a highly unreliable henchman: Although many observers firmly believe that the masterminds behind October 7 were in Iran, none of the country’s rather hesitant reactions suggest that the mullahs were bent on escalation. Morgenthau pointed out back in the 1960s that Washington’s strategic mistake in Vietnam was to think they were in a proxy war with Moscow, when in fact they were fighting a nationalist uprising resisting the colonial exploitation of their country. The same is probably true of Hamas. Sinwar and his followers were no doubt aware that even a successful attack would mean the deaths of tens of thousands of their compatriots and many of the group’s leaders and their families. They did not take the decision to attack because Tehran ordered them to do so.

Hamas vividly demonstrates why Iran itself has fallen into a trap. In the 2010s, it looked impressive that Quassem Soleimani and his Quds Forces had built up a network of militias throughout the Middle East. But on closer inspection, these proxies have never been worth the financial and political investment. They are too independent to actually be controlled by Iran and their nature as counter-state actors prevents the countries in which they are active from achieving stability. But this would be necessary to create real political partners that would help Iran’s ailing economy.

The power vacuum that the Americans have created in the Middle East has led to exactly what Morgenthau described as the trap of power. Iran has a network of militias that need to be permanently armed and supported with political backing. These proxy wars constantly siphon off capital from the state suffering from sanctions, while they have only created liabilities internationally. Every time one of the militias goes a step too far, its ranks are decimated by American and Israeli missiles, while each new escalation brings the Iranian economy closer to collapse. Anyone driving through Tehran today will meet young women on every street corner who refuse to observe the hijab laws of a government that is robbing them not only of their human rights but also increasingly of any economic future for them and their children. Cab drivers and shopkeepers agree that the mullahs should not be worried about the destruction of Israel, but about water shortages and air pollution at home. It may prove to be a great irony of history that it was a series of gross strategic errors by various US administrations that sowed the seeds for the fall of the mullahs’ regime.

To those who originally advocated for decolonization in the mid-20th century, it was clear that it denoted a violent struggle against the European colonial powers. That meant armed resistance, terrorist attacks on colonial armies and administrations, and often attacks on the civilian population as well. Many here might be familiar with the South African struggle against Apartheid. If you dig into the conflict, you’ll find countless examples of the oppressed behaving as violently and ruthlessly as the oppressors. In fact, the revolutionaries of the African National Congress killed way more fellow black people than Dutch-speaking Boers or other whites.

While you can always argue that the material conditions led to such outcomes, decolonial rhetoric, theory and practice all agreed that the unleashing of violence was necessary during the process of decolonization. Shullenberger writes: “In his 1961 manifesto, The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon argued that violence was essential to the defeat of colonialism for psychological as much as for practical reasons: Without a bloody struggle against the colonizer, the colonized can’t heal the psychic wounds imposed on them by colonialism.”

This contrasts strongly with the more chic struggle for decolonization that is currently popular with young activists mostly found on campuses and some corners of the internet. Nowadays, you can decolonize your local high school, Television, or even your diet. While some of the methods used are considered extreme — such as blocking the entrance to certain locations or harassing people considered colonizers —, it is primarily a game of rhetoric and performative behavior. I am not aware of anyone blowing up their uni cafeteria because they serve meals fine tuned to the tastes of white colonialists, but I have heard about fancy bars serving ‘authentic African cuisine’ to rich educated Westerners. The chic struggle for decolonization is much more about consumption, performance, and mental attitudes than it is about changing the material conditions on the ground.

The current dilemma of the online left is that people who lean either toward a violent or a cosmetic version of decolonization gather in the same spaces. This brings about a disconnect described by Collin Wright in the following words: “What does it tell you when the same people who break into hysterics at “microaggressions” are able to shrug at scenes of horrific violence in the name of “decolonization”?” But this is certainly not the whole picture: False equivalences are just as present on the right side of the political spectrum. These days, people who advocate for Israel’s right to exist and defend itself, find themselves in bed with proponents of ethnic cleansing and wave of Islamophobia is spreading across the Western world not seen since 9/11.

Shullenberger concludes his essay by the following words: “For years, elite colleges — and other influential institutions — have lent their prestige to once-radical concepts like decolonization, seeming to imagine that they could be kept separate from the gruesome histories out of which they emerged. As the world becomes more dangerous again, the luxury of metaphorical radicalism may prove too costly to sustain.”

Where I disagree with Shullenberger is his idea that the eruption of new bloody conflicts will lead activists to either abandon their ideologies or dig in, radicalize and try to change the material conditions on the ground. I think the rise of online culture and the creation of virtual echo chambers will only increase the rhetoric but actively demotivate people to do anything to change the existing material conditions. In that sense, the Israel-Palestine conflict seems like the mother of identity politics.

Speaking on a purely materialistic basis, both Israel and Palestine are entirely insignificant. Their populations are tiny and the whole area could (theoretically) be crossed within a few hours with any decent car (if it weren’t for those checkpoints and more importantly: Israel’s frequent traffic jams). While Israel is a sizeable technology hub, it is by no means crucial for any global industry, the land holds no valuable resources and it is not positioned at any important geopolitical fault lines. Unlike the struggle for decolonization in the mid 20th century — from China to India and the whole of Africa — no empires or civilizations are at stake. If both Israel and Palestine disappeared, absolutely nothing would change and yet — paradoxically — everything would change.

As it is a holy land for almost half of the world’s population and a crucial focal point of both the Western and the Islamic civilizations, it plays an outsized role in the mental map of the global consciousness. This is why I view it as such an important cornerstone of today’s discourse as it is an issue, almost everyone will have a strong opinion on: Whether you stand with terrorists or settlers, oppressors or the oppressed, baby killers or advocates of ethnic cleansing — to name but a few of the myriad distinctions that are made online. Whatever middle ground there was, it seems to be receding as the conflict grows more violent by the day. In this sense, Israel-Palestine serves as a signifier for much larger issues. One’s own position will probably give hints at what one believes about the justification of the state’s monopoly of force, the meaning of injustice or the separation of government and religion.

As the opinions people hold toward those matters seem to shift more and more to one extreme or the other with every new crisis that arises while the world’s general conditions appear increasingly dire, I have little hope in a permanent resolution of the conflict. A solution would require cathartic action but both the right and left favor grandstanding inaction. The opinions people have about the conflict seem more important than the conflict itself. It wasn’t always like that: In the era that followed the Second World War, people by and large might have held different points of view but agreed that a solution to ongoing conflicts such as Israel-Palestine was necessary. It seems no coincidence that the hope for a two-state solution died in the 1990s, the period the ‘Culture Wars’ began to kick off in earnest.

Today it seems like all the inherent contradictions of our political system require a focus point that allows us to release our anger at the system, our disgust with our opponents, and our dismay at our own futures. In other words, if we didn’t already have an Israel-Palestine conflict, we would need to create one.

In his thought provoking as well as anxiety inducing 2018 paper “Deep Adaptation” climate scientist Jem Bendell warned that catastrophic climate change was now inevitable, and humanity would soon be faced with collapse. Bendell, who has recently updated his position to claiming that collapse is already occurring, though not as a single event, but as a cascade of economic, ecological and societal degradations, linked the failure of academia to recognize collapse to society’s more general “inability to conceive of its own destruction and possible extinction”. He urged scientists and lay readers to look to the past and “to explore what we could learn from other cultures that have faced catastrophe.” Deep adaptation, as defined by Bendell, refers to a society coming to terms with and adapting to radically changed circumstances.

One culture which suffered a series of catastrophic events which ultimately led to the transformation of society was the Roman Empire which fell apart during the fourth and fifth century CE. The explanations given for the steep decline of the Roman Empire are numerous and scholars identify a number of important factors such as the lack of a politically stable system of government, the concentration of extreme wealth by a small caste of land owners and officials, climate change, plagues, a debasement of coin and waves of migration from outside the borders of the Empire. While the Eastern Roman Empire managed to postpone total political collapse for a number of centuries, the Western half (stretching from the Balkans to the British Isles and Northern Africa) saw a steep decline in living standards and population density. Archaeologists have shown that the average diet of harbor workers in Italian ports changed from a wide variety of meats and vegetables to nothing but grain soup. The once glorious capital city of Rome shrank from a metropolis with over a million inhabitants to a population size numbering in the thousands as a result of repeated invasions and civil wars.

While the fall of Rome is widely known (and often linked to current debates about the not-so-distant future), much less is known about how people experienced this collapse and tried to make sense of it. One reason for this is our lack of historical sources linked to the general upheaval and decline in literacy rates (ancient libraries famously often contained ten thousands of scrolls while even in the 14th century, the library of the Paris University scarcely possessed a thousand books and was still considered the continents largest treasure of knowledge). One remarkable account of the collapse comes from Pope Gregory the Great who became the bishop of Rome in 590 A.D.

Gregory the Great is to be understood first and foremost as a theologian who lived in a time overshadowed by crises, whereby he held the conviction that hardships were part of a divine plan. As late antique bishop of Rome, Gregory exercised a dual role as pastor and administrator, which was both secular and spiritual in nature. The important question for him was how it could be that Christianity had been able to establish itself as the sole religion on the one hand, while the living conditions of the people had deteriorated dramatically. For this, Gregory developed a narrative about the approaching end of the world and life as a test for believers and unbelievers.

Gregory was born into one of Rome’s aristocratic families and ordained as a priest as a young man. Gregory’s youth saw the reconquest of Italy into the Roman Empire under Emperor Justinian, which was followed by the Gothic Wars that depopulated large parts of the country. Despite the crisis phenomena present throughout his life, it would be short-sighted to view the Roman Empire only from the perspective of an approaching collapse. Gregor’s epistolary contacts, for example, indicate that the infrastructure was robust enough — at least for the imperial elite — to maintain contacts across three continents, as the letters to Constantinople, Alexandria and Antioch show.

Gregory was elected pope in 590, succeeding Gelasius II, and his political role is made tangible by the repair of Rome’s city walls as well as his close collaboration with the still existing military. The pope’s duties in the sixth century were not fundamentally different from those of other bishops and included maintaining communal peace, levying taxes, distributing bread, and paying and financing local troops. As pope, Gregory was also a leading official of the empire, organising the administration of Roman Italy together with the magister militum as Rome’s highest-ranking military officer and the exarch of Ravenna. Conflicts that arose in this context are to be understood less as the increasing self-assertion of a cleric vis-à-vis a civilian power, but rather as disputes within the functional elite about the proper use of the strained resources of the Christian empire.

Although he was a representative of political authority, his positioning towards worldly power such as the Church itself was rather ambivalent. This can be explained by his attitude towards evil, which for Gregory is an integral part of the earthly world. He underlines this by referring to the paradoxical-sounding saying of Job: “I was a brother of dragons” (Job, 30:29), whereby the dragon stands for evil in the words of Gregory. In the present church, the good also come together with the bad, since its members are “mixed by their diversity”. Mortal life is characterised by this mixture of good and evil and is unavoidable as well as willed by God. He proves this simultaneity of both with examples from the Bible, especially pairs of brothers (Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau, among others), in which one is good, the other bad, and transfers this to the Church, in which orthodox and heretical sects exist. Wanting to eradicate evil is therefore unchristian, because “those who do not tolerate the bad testify to themselves through their own intolerance that they are not yet good”.

In addition to letters, Gregory’s sermons to the Roman people are particularly important sources. A report by Johannes Diaconus describes Gregory as an eloquent preacher whose words met with such a great response that the crowd called on him to continue speaking. Unlike the theological works addressed to the (high) clergy and the letters addressed to the secular and spiritual elites of Christianity, the sermons were addressed to a broad group of lay people who were presumably mostly unable to read and write, or at least only partially able to do so, and therefore used simple and comprehensible language.

In a sermon, Gregory speaks about Saint Nereus and Saint Achilles, reading from the Gospel of John (4:46–53). According to legend, the two saints were soldiers who resigned from military service for religious reasons and were martyred under Emperor Diocletian (284–305). In a figurative sense, the sacrifices of the martyrs also led to the Roman Empire converting to Christianity. He describes the saints in the following words:

“These saints, at whose grave we stand, trampled down the flourishing world with spiritual contempt. There was long life, constant prosperity, material abundance, fruitfulness in offspring, rest in lasting peace; and yet, though the world was flourishing in itself, it was already withering in its hearts. Behold, already the world is withered in itself, but still it flourishes in our heart. […] Behold, the world that is loved is fading away.

Gregory recognisably places Nereus and Achilles in a historical context, which he associates with the (proverbial) flourishing of the Roman Empire. More important to Gregory than a correct chronological classification seems to be the concept of a once glorious and stable empire in which everyday life was not overshadowed by crisis phenomena. The fact that the saints had opted for religion despite material abundance distinguishes them in particular from Gregory’s point of view and serves him to state that the process of decay in the world had already progressed so far that religion had become the last consolation. While earlier generations could indulge in worldly pleasures, there was now only religious joy.

A common thread running through Gregory’s work and biography is the observation of the gradual decline of state structures and the increase in suffering and challenges, even though Christianity had risen to become the sole state religion of the empire. The key to understanding Gregory’s ambivalent worldview and his emphasis on the (God-ordained) role of the devil is found in the Book of Job, which describes the sudden reversal of fortune of the upright and prosperous Job, who is confronted with blows of fate from the devil (acting on God’s behalf), in which he loses his family and worldly possessions, but nevertheless remains steadfast in his faith.

In keeping with the leitmotif of Job, he describes the present world negatively, for it is daily “beset by new and ever greater evils.” The audience itself can see “how few are left of the once numerous people.” He then describes the Roman people as an old man who is afflicted by more and more diseases. Gregory refers here above all to the plague, which had repeatedly afflicted the Roman Empire for half a century and which had broken out again in Rome in 590. For Gregory, the increase in disease represented the ever greater decay of the Roman Empire and the world, but it was not entirely negative. On the one hand, it offered believing people the opportunity to show their faith by enduring evil, while also offering sinners the opportunity to change their lives.

Without passing judgment on whether the rise of Christianity as a mass religion was a positive or negative development for the empire, several conclusions can be drawn regarding Deep Adaptation. Firstly, religion represents a natural phenomenon in times of crisis, from which people expect to find support. Second, when the state collapses, religious organizations often fill its role. While Gregory still saw himself as an official of the Roman Emperor, his successors would establish their own church empire in Italy. Thirdly, posterity is not merciful to its decadent ancestors. Gregory preferred to identify with the few who decided against material prosperity rather than with the indulgent majority. Fourth, even from today’s perspective, Gregory’s words possess power. His acceptance of the necessity of evil, his conception of life as a test, and his lamentations on the creeping and inexorable decay of his civilisation sound frighteningly timely and perceptive these days.

As you probably know, humans are not the only species that will occasionally, to quote Hannibal Lecter, “have an old friend for dinner.” In fact, cannibalism is quite common in the animal kingdom, either as a survival mechanism, a form of population control, or as part of a reproduction strategy. So, let’s have a look at which cannibalistic animal your favorite characters resemble the most.

1. Chimpanzee

Unlike the gentle Orangutan, our closest living relative almost seemed borderline psychopathic to me: Chimpanzees are highly territorial, often are aggressive towards other members of their group and even practice a sort of warfare with one another. Chimpanzees (for the most part males) will occasionally cannibalize infants of their group when they think it will help raise their chance for breeding.

It pains me to say it, but while Shauna is definitely one of my favorite characters, I would also rate her as perhaps the most dangerous member of the group. Especially her adult self has shown herself to be ruthless when she thinks she or members of her family are in danger, and she is definitely not afraid of a fight. While we haven’t seen her go that far (yet) I definitely think she will aggressively defend her territory even if that means endangering an innocent.

2. Lion

In more than one way, our group of survivors resembles a pride of lions. The composition of the survivors is somewhat similar to the composition of lions in nature, with only one adult male (Coach Ben) and two male cubs (Travis and Javi) living together with an otherwise mostly female (and all-together stellar) cast.

The character that mostly resembles a lioness in my opinion is Nat who is the huntress of the group. With her fierce personality, loyalty, and unaffected by what others think of her, she is my favorite type of big cat. Hear her roar.

3. Hippopotamus

The Hippopotamus is a rather fascinating animal: Its somewhat awkward looks lead many to think of it as cute and a bit clumsy but don’t be fooled, it is actually the biggest mammal threat to humans alive, causing thousands of deaths each year. While they are primarily herbivores, they will from time to time eat (but not kill) the corpses of members of their species, including adult animals. Scientists believe that this is a behavior they will only engage in when they fear for their survival.

This reminds me of Van, who has by far the thickest skin out of the characters, already cheating death twice (and counting). While I wouldn’t mess with her, I don’t see her as someone who would attack a member of her group unprovoked.

4. Hamster

This one was pretty easy: While hamsters may look cute, they are more than capable of feeding on their own, including their young. Misty does not look like a threat, but she is certainly able to bite.

5. Crab spider

The crab spider differs from the animals we have discussed so far as it is not the parents, but rather the children who devour members of their own kind. After she has laid eggs, a crab spider mother will offer up her own body to her brood to ensure their survival, a behavior known as matriphagy (eating of mother).

The closest to this behavior may in fact be Mari. So far her actions have not really made her a fan favorite as we haven’t really seen her personality. Her main characteristic so far has been to be the promotor of Lottie’s cult, and if she isn’t careful, she may end up caught in her own net. Many fans of the show suspect that she will turn out to be the fabled pit girl who is hunted by the others as fair game. In a way, this can be seen as a sacrifice for the survival of the brood.

6. Caecilian

The caecilian practices perhaps the most unique form of cannibalism. Similar to the crab spider, females will offer up their own bodies to their offspring, but unlike other animals, caecilians survive being cannibalized. They produce a special outer layer of skin that is filled with nutrients, which the young will rip off their mother. While I don’t think its especially enjoyable, the mother quickly regrows her skin and can provide many meals until her babies are all grown up. While I had initially pegged Shauna as the group's Caecilian, I have to admit that Lottie is the better match. Not only is she special as her gifts (or curses) are unique amongst the group members, the sacrifice of oneself to the group reminds me of Lottie’s daily ritual of offering her own blood to the hunters. While she is a willing sacrifice, she’s also among the eventual survivors, leading us to wonder if her deeds are also a form of survival mechanism.

7. Cane toad

Cane toads are equal opportunity cannibals as they eat their siblings when they are still in their tadpole stadium. It’s pretty easy to draw a parallel to poor Krystal (with a K), who ate her own twin in the womb.

8. Polar bear

The polar bear is unique compared to the other animals mentioned in this article: Cannibalism mostly takes place between infants and adults, while adults will not actively try to kill mature members of their species for meat. Polar bears do in fact seek out other members of their species and will battle it out in a death match, after which the victor will eat their opponent. While this is rare under normal circumstances, it has become increasingly common as polar bears see their natural habitats and food supplies dwindle and are forced to make harsh choices.

Just like a polar bear, Thai is a fighter who will prioritize her own survival. When the next winter comes, I can see her becoming a killer. While she isn’t the only one who will opt for tough decisions, I do see her giving an opponent a fair chance, challenging her prey to a battle royal.

9. Black widow spider

The black widow is aptly named, as the females will also devour their mates. Unlike the male specimen of the praying mantis, male black widows (if that is their proper name) practice a form of ‘copulatory suicide’ in which they partake in their own demise.

Obviously, Dark Thai is not interested in eating guys (at least not in a kinky way), but her relationship with her partners (and even towards herself) is to some degree based on her being in a position of power and I wouldn’t push my luck with her.

10. Praying Mantis

Together with the aforementioned Hannibal Lecter, the praying mantis is one of the world’s most famous cannibals, with females eating their mates in a unique mating ritual.

I couldn’t resist: Her name makes an ideal candidate for Lottie Number 2. For the sake of the male members of her group (and her compound), let’s pray she won’t decide on that kind of mating ritual.

So, what did you guys think: Did I match your favorite Yellowjacket with the right type of cannibalistic animal? If you liked my writing, consider checking out my other article (with more to follow) or leave a comment.

Acknowledgments: The pictures used are not my own and were taken from Wikimedia or showtime promotional material. My list of cannibalistic animals was inspired by https://www.discoverwildlife.com/animal-facts/cannibal-animals-creatures-that-eat-their-own-kind/

In today’s world, marked by uncertainty and disruption, visiting classical art museums can offer a sense of reassurance. The Alte Pinakothek in Munich, founded in 1836, is a prime example of a place that appears to be frozen in time. The exhibition has changed little since the days when Bavaria was an independent monarchy. The paintings are still arranged according to the principles that were popular in the 19th century, with styles organized by region and period, such as Old Dutch, Old Upper German, Italian Renaissance, and French Baroque.

This is until recently when the museum’s curators decided to shake things up by temporarily rearranging around 200 paintings in a program fittingly titled “Old Masters on the Move.” This initiative invites visitors to form new connections, break old certainties, and gain a fresh perspective on classical art. In a world as conservative as the one of classical art, hanging El Greco's pious ‘Disrobing’ (where Jesus is forced to take off his clothes) next to Matthias Grünewalds irreverent ‘Mocking of Christ’ (where a man pulls down his pants), almost feels like a revolution.

Admittedly, no revolution is without its casualities. When I recently visited the Pinakothek, I could not fail to notice that Boucher’s ‘Resting girl’, a rather provocative nude of one of the French king’s mistresses, was conspicuously absent from the exhibition, leaving me to wonder, if the classical art world’s conservatism had simply morphed into a new shape. Overall, though, breaking up the temporal and regional order of the gallery felt like a breath of fresh air.

A move like this makes me wonder if the convention of grouping painters together by regions and epochs in most art museums first piqued my interest in Gothic art from the Middle Ages. As a young university student, I tried to compensate for my rural upbringing by visiting as many old European towns and cities as possible in an attempt to educate myself on culture and sophistication. Lacking some crucial social skills (and perhaps the funds for fancier pursuits), I often found myself frequenting museums. Classical painting galleries, in particular, tend to begin with Gothic (and at times even Romanesque) paintings.

Many people deplore Medieval artworks and I admit that they can appear clumsy, and lacking in proportion or perspective, and let’s not forget about the elephant in the room: Almost every painting from before 1500 will depict either a biblical scene, a saint, or an instant of religious life. Unlike more modern paintings they also require a certain understanding of symbols and Christian iconography. Martyrs, for example, are usually depicted with the instrument of their death: Swords, arrows or — in the case of St. Lawrence who was roasted alive — an iron grill. Only if you take the time to familiarize yourself with Christian legends and art conventions you begin to grasp the Medieval mind that was still shaped much more by images then by writing.

Admittedly, after you have seen about a thousand St. Peters and Madonnas (on the rocks, in caves and anywhere else you’d possibly imagine), you naturally feel drawn to the more interesting versions. Paintings where artists strayed outside of the narrow confines of their trade or when they re- (or even mis-) interpreted classical tales. One slowly becomes a connoisseur of weird and strange images.

One opinion I don’t share is that Medieval art wasn’t “real” art, as it lacked messages worthy of interpretations beyond the underlying iconography and the obvious religious connotation urging one to piety and the renunciation of sins. When I recently visited the Alte Pinakothek, by far the biggest revelation to me was the rearrangement of two paintings attributed to the same artist but which were until now hung on different sides of the room, highlighting how a small shift in perspective can often be everything. I am speaking of Rogier van der Weyden’s “St. Luke Drawing a Portrait of the Madonna” (1440) and “Saint Columba Altarpiece” (ca. 1450).

Van der Weyden belongs to a school of Dutch painters from the 15th century whose members were already heavily influenced by the Italian Renaissance but still stayed close to the conventions of Gothic art. At first glance, both paintings seem more realistic than earlier Medieval artworks and feature impressive decorations as well as a clear sense of perspective. But overall, they seem to portray rather conventional scenes, with the Adoration of the Magi (the central piece of the Columba Altar) being an image still known today — it is the story of baby Jesus being visited by three wise men who bring gifts, accompanied by shepherds and a star.

Let’s first look at Luke and Mary. Van der Weyden is retelling a legend that first appeared in the 6th century, in which the Apostle Luke supposedly drew Mary and Jesus, and this painting was the first-ever depiction of Christ, inspiring every other painting of Jesus ever made. This legend would go on to spark bloody wars between Orthodox Christians who could not agree if those icons were sacrosanct or blasphemous, but let’s not get caught up in iconoclasm. In his version, van der Weyden omits the angel that often accompanies this scene in older Greek art, and more crucially, he leaves out the halos of the three central figures of the New Testament.

Museumgoers often wonder why the children they see in Medieval paintings are staring at them in the uncanniest of ways. For the most part, they are representations of the newborn Christ, and artists and theologians alike wondered: How do you depict a person who is at the same time a helpless infant and the cosmic force giving shape to the universe? Thus, baby Jesus’s menacing stare can often be seen as an attempt to portray authority and wisdom beyond his age. Not so in van der Weyden’s depiction of him, where he is just a baby, looking somewhat absent-mindedly into the room, showing a half-smile, and turning towards his mother’s breast. He is first and foremost a child, while Mary is a caring but ordinary mother.

Yet, to the skilled eye, we already see glimpses of the futures of our protagonists. On the left side, there is the throne on which Mary is sitting, hinting at her ‘future’ as the queen of heaven, and if you look to the right, you can see an ox hiding underneath a table on which rests a book. The ox is, of course, the Christian symbol of Luke as one of the four evangelists and makes it clear that the book on the table is meant to be his testimony of Christ’s life.

Therefore, the classic symbols of Christian iconography are present, yet they remain in the background, almost as if van der Weyden meant to say: “Now they’re still just humans, but one day they’ll become more.” One might also wonder about the age of Luke: He is already a middle-aged man with wrinkles visible on his face, and his hair starting to gray. By the time Christ was crucified at the age of 33, he would have been an old man, and until the time he would have written the gospel, he would have reached an almost biblical age (no pun intended). Might we infer, therefore, that Luke is not really drawing Mary and her child physically sitting in front of him but is drawing either from memory or even an apparition that comes to him from the past? Is Christ really physically present or are we witnessing Luke calling up an inner world — or rather: is Christ contacting him from outside and sending him an image of his childhood?

Let’s further elucidate those questions with the central piece of the Columba altar. Again, van der Weyden puts into question the linearity of time and space: Of course, just as in the other painting, the background we see is not the one we would expect from a scene depicting the Middle East in the year 0, but rather that of a Gothic town in 15th century Europe. This was not at all uncommon throughout the Middle Ages as Biblical scenes would often be depicted in the local style crossed with some other influences. In this painting, we can, for example, see the three Magi dressed in the attire of Christian princes. At least one of the Magi, the one to the right, might represent the historic figure of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, and the person on the left side of the image represents the patron who paid for the creation of the altar.

The figures in the background more closely resemble what one might expect from a historicized depiction of the Middle East, as we spot at least one turban. If you look at the shepherds closely enough, you can see that one of them is staring directly at you, the viewer, and is gesturing to the left side (his right). The two people standing next to him are also looking in the same direction he is pointing towards. It is, however, not the Holy Family they are all focused on (this time with the proper halos).

Unlike the princes, they stare at a smaller instrument, right in the middle of the scene: on the central column of the stable hangs a crucifix, a depiction of Christ nailed to the cross, hinting at the destiny the newborn child is headed towards. It is, to my knowledge, the only depiction of this overall joyful scene in which the artist so clearly refers to the brutal death of Christ. It appears to me that both paintings are ultimately messages about the nature of Christ: he is not just a man and God in one person; he is also, on the one hand, a “historical” figure who was bound to a place, an epoch, and a lifetime, but he is also a cosmic force that exists outside of linear time. Christ transcends linear time and the boundaries of space, as he is simultaneously in many different places. Long before any modern speculations on the nature of our universe, he was already both immanent and transcendent, far removed in time and space, as well as omnipresent.

While my recent visit to the Pinakothek was the first time I consciously made the association between van der Weyden and Christ as a figure transcending ordinary space-time boundaries, it was not the first time the Colomba Altar made a deep impression on me. I have to wonder if it was my early student days visits that sowed the seeds for the meeting between me and Christ.

What I just wrote might sound strange, and you as the reader might wonder if you have just stumbled on my personal coming to Jesus story, but far from it. While what I would like to describe in the following part of the essay was a highly relevant personal experience, I would never situate it in the same category as the religious revelations and ecstatic visions of Christian mystics (or members of other faiths).

While it might not readily be apparent to a reader who is not accustomed to Jungian psychology why I am drawing a connection between my musings on art history and highly personal experiences, I would like to showcase how our conscious thinking is shaped by our inner lives and vivid imagery we can connect with through dreams or — in this case — active imagination.

This particular journey of mine begins in 2020, a year marked by the death of one of the closest persons in my life, the dissolution of my family, and, last but not least, a global pandemic, which you may recall. Reading Jung became both a process of initiation and of processing complex emotions. In his autobiography, one of the very few books I’ve ever read that gave me both dreamlike visions and vision-like dreams, it was where I first encountered the term active imagination. While today I am better versed in what Jung specifically meant by it, back then it seemed to be primarily a suggestion or an invitation to dream again.

As a child, I had told my best friend stories I made up, and as a teenager smitten by fantasy novels, I populated whole worlds with kingdoms, peoples, and wizards, but like many others, I ceased to dream when I ‘matured’ into adulthood. But in this crucial period of anguish and opportunity, having just broadened my lexicon with archetypes and divine figures, I gave myself to my imagination. Before my inner eye, I created (or visited?) a world that was home to figures from mythology, history, and my personal past. It grew to become a process I have sometimes referred to as my Odyssean journey, a spiral I have continually engaged with during meditation, before sleep, or on long bus rides, and which has shown me some insights into my psychic life.

In a nutshell, I invite the archetypes to join me and put on their best masks.

While it would take a long amount of time — and I might do so at some point — to recount the whole story of this fictional inner ‘metaverse’, suffice it to say that it centers on myself, a young prince whose father was murdered by his enemies and who grew up in exile (a Parzival-like origin story, as I once observed) and who now must unite different forces to regain his original kingdom. For the most part, my inner story is as bound to time and place as the paintings which hang in the Alte Pinakothek. I traverse realms that lie to the North, East, South, and West of my ancestral homeland, and I cross these in an expanding spiral facing outwards towards an unknown place.

It was during a time of crisis that I found myself outside of the time-space boundaries I had made up for my world (showcasing how much even our innermost lives are shaped by our experiences in the everyday world). A great battle was taking place, and within the story, I sacrificed myself, burning on a pyre of my own imagination. After about half a year of Odyssean journeying, I could have ended the story there, but instead, I was ‘reborn’ and found myself outside of the confines of the imaginary world.

Active imagination is at the same time a process of conscious associating and thinking as well as an invitation to the unconscious, a force that will often surprise you, just as it did in this case. Without knowing why, my subconscious placed me in the city of Jerusalem during the time of Christ.

While the unconscious direction the story took seemed very surprising, the Jesus I met was, for the most part, a very conscious and rather mundane projection. He very much resembled the image one might get from modern movies of a soft-spoken man with long brown hair who would speak in a consoling and understanding manner without letting me peek into the depths of what I saw.

Still, there was yet another side to my ‘trip’ to Jerusalem. The place radiated an energy that reminded me of my best friend who had died in an accident six months earlier and who now seemed to be linked to this exact spot in my subconscious vision. Retrospectively, it felt like a way to keep some spark of my friend alive, to see him in an image that both represented and transcended him — a life force, a vision, a spirit that carried on.

While there were some moments of my time in Jerusalem worth mentioning, easily the most significant one was when I imagined myself as witnessing the crucifixion. When I saw Christ dying on the cross in front of my inner eye, it started out as a scene familiar to everyone who was raised in the Christian (more precisely Catholic) tradition: Three men nailed to crosses, Roman soldiers, and onlookers around them, accompanied by a few weepers in the background. It was only when Christ began to act that another thought process kicked in. What is often forgotten is that Christ, according to religious doctrine, was not idle on the cross. Death, even before the resurrection, was not a defeat, but a triumph. In the words of the Apostle’s Creed, Jesus “descended into hell” (or literally descended into the depths), which alludes to Christ, not in his physical form, but as a spirit, going into the outer lairs of the Underworld to free the souls of the Patriarchs of the Old Testament while his physical body hung lifeless on the cross.

While I contemplated the connection between Christ stepping outside of time to free the souls of his forefathers, I raised my eyes from the host of onlookers towards the sky. I saw the sinking sun, and in this moment, I understood the psychic significance: The sun appeared to me as my recently passed best friend, my companion, my love, fading from my eyes, but still radiating warmth. Just like the sacrifice of Christ has set his spirit free, my Odyssean Journey had also led me to my own sort of resolution: To accept someone’s death, but still remember how it felt when they were alive. Even if it was only a brief moment within my imagination, seeing my friend still felt deeply consoling.

This moment was amplified by a powerful image from the unconscious. To return to Van der Weydens powerful image in the Columba Altar: The artwork spoke to me because it combined the birth of the Messiah with his death and ultimate resurrection, being witnessed by both the people present and past. Back then I saw something very similar. Thousands of people throughout the millennia had themselves painted kneeling in front of the crucified Christ, artists depicted themselves amongst the crowd standing at mount Golgotha together with onlookers from all ages. What if we were all there together, believers and seekers, laymen and saints? It wasn’t just the onlookers from ages to come — those denizens of Gothic paintings — that had traveled back in time to see the Redeemer, but also those Patriarchs and Prophets of the past that had awaited a Messianic figure to liberate them. Elijah and Jeremiah stood amongst the people just like St. Catherine of Siena and Ignatius of Loyola. Christ had transcended from a fixture in time to a cosmic wave that washed into all directions, shaping both past and future as a being inside and outside of existence.

Time and space became meaningless during the ebbing and flowing that washed over me: I was there only in my mind, and yet I had experienced an image that tied together the personal and transpersonal. It was then, that I first felt reconciled with my grief, as I had understood the purpose of my active imagination. It was St. Teresa of Avila who, during a vision of Christ, reported to have heard him say to her: “I would create the universe again just to hear you say that you love me.”