There is an ancient
wisdom known from the moment we expressed ourselves in signs and stories. Its
there already in the Newgrange/Knowth complex of 4000 BC in Ireland, so
important it is scratched into the inner sanctum walls as a triple spiral and
on the external curb stones in geometric signs. Its also there in some of the
earliest writings like The Upanishads in the constant referencing to threes, so
a text may describe the three sounds of the totality AUM, or a narrative takes
three attempts to reach its goal, or in the mention of three states of
consciousness or three modes of being; above, below and in between.
Later this sense of
three was transmitted by the travelling storytellers round the fire, tales that
depended on three tasks for completion, like Rumplestiltskin or Goldilocks and
the three bears with its three bowls of porridge,” too hot, too cold, just
right”. The medieval Arthurian legends have the same structure in the knight
who takes three attempts to reach the grail king with the right question, or in
Parsival, the knight whose name means “through the middle, the valley”. It’s in
folklore sayings about” things coming in threes”, whether it’s good luck or bad
luck.
The shamrock was used
to symbolize the same triple spiral as that found in Newgrange, only now it
appears as God, the totality of “three in one”, the holy Trinity. It’s symbolized in the Koran as
the “middle way” of moderation (nothing like the modern Islamist
interpretation!).
It’s represented in
the early Christian tripartite view of Man consisting of three qualities; Body,
Mind and Soul. This system had the Soul connecting Body and Mind in balance,
just like that old triple spiral. That’s the system portrayed in The
Philokalia, which was the early manual for living written by Greek Byzantine monks
in 4th Century, overturned in the schism of early Christianity where
East fought West and lost, not that different from today really except then it
was within the same religion!
In the Synod of 869 AD
the tripartite balance of Body, Mind and Soul was officially denounced and
replaced by the duality of Body and Soul, a system of conflict and adversity, not
balance and connection. That view paved the way for Descartes and his duality of
Mind and Body, split and sliced and conveniently soulless. Of course Soul
doesnt go away. It just shifts and becomes an absence, a yearning, something
missing. Jung integrated it back under a new name in his psychological theories
of Unity and Individuation; a spiritual psychology. And even Daniel Day Lewis’s
Oscar Acceptance speech shows its persistence when he mentions the “body, mind
AND soul” of Lincoln.
Without Soul we remain
disconnected in a divided self, a divided world.Three is what completes, what
holds the universe and us in balance, a Cosmic Order natural to the psyche telling
its stories back to itself in reflection. In all these manuals for living, whatever
the location or the culture, Good things come in threes.
