Magic and Reality

I'm writing as I'm watching the movie "The Mistress of the Spices", a movie which I saw just bits and blips but never completely. But tonight Netflix recommended it as something I would like and I went for it, basically because I love Aishwarya Rai and she's the star of the movie. Anyway, I decided to start writing as this relates a lot to my last posts on Myth, Reality and the ways we look to escape from the latter!

If there's something that gives us purpose is religion, keeping in mind that the term religion has many meanings and it can be interpreted in different ways. We will use one particular and that is "to bind again" (re-ligare) as the one to consider for the interpretation of the movie and the many aspects of this interesting film (or book if you have ever read it). The main character, Tilo, is a spice mistress, but before being trained to become one, she reveals she has psychic powers, she is able to foresee events that will affect her life or others, and she lives her life according to the ways of the ancient tradition of Indian spice mistresses; she is bound to certain rules she must obey religiously (and in this case, religion can be understood as law) and use the power of spices to help others.

Even though it looks pretty obvious that this has a religious connotation, the mistress of spices is the reflection of the need of the human psyche to be connected with its roots, with its gods and goddesses, with anything that represents what is beyond the perception of our senses. I'm not again religion as a way to reconnect, to rejoin, to bond again with our origins, with ourselves, even with our gods and goddesses (no matter how you call it or them), but then is the turn of events related to religion that makes you wonder; the thought of religion didn't come alone to me tonight, it actually came from watching another movie called "Agora", loosely based on the life of the ancient philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria. The movies are about women and what they represent, Tilo and Hypatia are women who posses knowledge, who represent power of the feminine and the change it brings; however, historically these women have always been considered dangerous, all women who possessed knowledge were not seen with very good eyes and they are known as "witches", mostly because religion, in different ways, can be used for the wrong reasons.

Hypatia - Agora

When we seek connection with whatever our beliefs are, we tend to forget that there are as many visions of the world as there are human being in this planet, so we try to impose one over the other, forcing each other to believe that there is only one true religion, one way to live. This idea of one true religion, one true this or that comes with our imprinted believe that everything works under one single law and that there is one rule for everything. This is portrayed in the film "Agora" when Hypatia explains how the circle with its perfection is the only way in which the planets could revolve around the Earth, but then she realizes that is the Earth that revolves around the Sun in a elliptical orbit, it means, she was able to see that there is not only one way to understand how everything works.

Science today still deals with the same issue and tries to come with a unified theory, a theory that will take long (and maybe science will prove me wrong during my lifetime) or maybe never will be attained, as we have not fully understood that in the Universe there is nothing impossible, only improbable. Then, it is difficult to fully understand that the true purpose of religion is to connect us with everything and everyone, to connect with our roots, with who we truly are, the intention of religion is not to dictate laws, laws are man made, the intention of religion is to remind us of who we are, of the simplest of all principles, a principle that is up to each one of us to find, but that deep inside we already know...