This is my Icon of Saint Catherine.It now hangs in the library of a girls Public School in UK.She is an interesting saint because she never existed ,yet she is one of the most popular saints.Its an example of the power of archetype over personal existence, for she embodies the same properties as Sophia or Sheba or isis, stretching backward and forward in Time.Wisdom is woman in form as Justice is Juno,for as Ibn Arabi concludes,nothing is complete except through the feminine,something well understood by men who are creative and by modern psychology - See Erich Neumann "Art and the Creative Unconscious."
She was tortured for her non conformity since she was a danger to the church,able to confound the traditional church with her power of argument,something that was unacceptable in a woman.
Her name is linked to the "cathari", a Greek convent of nuns in Sinai, and to the heretical "Cathari" who were persecuted in southern France for deifying her.She is also famous for the firework, the catherine wheel,the instrument of her torture, a wheel of fire on which she was tortured.
This belief in her demonstrates the eternal human hope for the endurence of free thought.Thats why she is revered in a Girls Public School,for whom she is its patron saint.
Hypatia, of course, did exist in that region, an Alexandrian Neoplatonist intellectual who was persecuted,murdered and burnt by the early 5th Century christian church.Her death signified the suppression of the free flow of knowledge between West and East, an intellectual schism. Free thought went underground and only emerged again as christianity loosened its grip.However knowledge was still encouraged by early Islam which is why Ibn Arabi is so important to the contemporary world.For instance the word "archetype" in modern usage goes back to Ibn Arabi.
