The Virtuous and the Profane: In Defense of Unicorns

I have been studying, researching, and interacting with unicorns since I was six years old (for forty years).* I first encountered them in the oddest of all places: Church. Yes, you read that correctly: this self-proclaimed “Wicked Witch of the South” began her humble journey into all things spiritual as a card-carrying Christian. Not the “crazy” kind, mind you. I was lucky enough (some might even venture to say “blessed”) to be raised by a very open-minded, and even more importantly, open-hearted, family of homegrown Christians who proclaimed no particular denominational leanings (I would describe my upbringing as slightly Presbyterian with a strong Catholic backbeat), preached the New Testament instead of the Old, and taught that Love was the ultimate answer for whatever the question might be. When I was a budding young girl of six, I came into “contact” with unicorns as a “thing” between the pages of a slightly-beaten-up copy of the King James Version of the Bible. There, between those gold-gilded pages, I discovered a very old painting–a depiction of all of the animals lining up for Noah’s Ark–and in it, a pair of unicorns. And then I found a line within the Psalms that still resonates with me today: “But my horn shalt thou exalt like the horn of a unicorn: I shall be anointed with fresh oil” (Psalm 92:10).

Of course, as a small child being raised in a Christian household, I was taught that “if you see it in the Bible, it is so”, so I took that as an authoritative statement that unicorns were real. Thus began my quest to find out everything I could about these mysterious creatures, and that research has, in fact, been life-long. So when I woke up this morning to discover this fabulous blog post by my friend and fellow author and psychic, Mat Auryn, the “regularly scheduled programming” for today–a blog post by Connla–was officially canceled, and I started typing like mad!

There is a reason unicorns appear in the King James Version of the Bible, far beyond the mistranslation of the words “rhinoceros” or “oxen”: in the Middle Ages, unicorns were understood as an actual symbol of Christ. We find this in the writings of Saint Basil the Great (recognized as a Great Hierarch by the Eastern Orthodox Church and as a Doctor of the Church by Roman Catholics):

On the whole, since it is possible to find the word ‘horn’ used by Scripture in many places instead of ‘glory’, as the saying ‘He will exalt the horn of his people’ (Ps 148:14) and ‘His horn shall be exalted in glory’ (Ps 112:9), or also, since the ‘horn’ is frequently used instead of ‘power’, as the saying ‘My protector and the horn of my salvation’, Christ is the power of God; therefore, he is called the Unicorn on the ground that he has one horn, that is, one common power with the Father.

–St. Basil the Great, Homilies on the Psalms, commenting specifically on Psalm 92, mid-4th century CE

But we shouldn’t just take Saint Basil the Great’s word as the be-all, end-all of the medieval opinion of unicorns as they relate back to Christ. I mean, sure, he was a saint, but he was also just one guy, and it is never a good idea to source an argument in a debate from just one dude’s opinion. Bestiaries which predate the King James Version of the Bible by over eight-hundred years also translate Psalm 92 as containing the word “unicorn”, rather than “rhinoceros” or “oxen”, and link the image of the unicorn with the allegory of Christ’s death (Bodleian Library, Bodley 764, folio 10). In many of these bestiary representations, a virgin is used to lure the unicorn so that the hunters may kill it; we also find this depicted in numerous medieval tapestries. Generally, the unicorn is depicted as being pierced in the side by a spear–in the same manner as Christ, at the Crucifixion–and the virgin, thereafter, as penitent, in the same fashion as Mary at the death of her son. Thus, the unicorn became an allegory for what happens to the pure–such as Christ–when exposed to the ugliness of this world.

The unicorn-luring virgin was also often symbolic of the Virgin Mary in other ways: by the fifteenth century, the concept of the unicorn as a symbol of the Incarnation of Christ was firmly entrenched. Some depictions of Mary as hortus conclusus (“enclosed garden”) came to include Gabriel, blowing his horn to drive the unicorn into Mary’s waiting lap, as the hounds gave chase. These images were further embellished with images of a very small Christ child, descending on rays of light from God the Father, making it absolutely obvious to the viewer what these images were intended to imply.

In other words, it can very readily be said, in response to the Doreen Virtue “A-Z List of New Age Practices to Avoid and Why” (see the link to Mat’s article above for a link to Ms. Virtue’s site; I have zero inclination to provide her with traffic!), that any “Christian” who would “rebuke” unicorns is indeed also literally rebuking Christ, and His Incarnation! Now, either this means that Ms. Virtue is not as well-read on the topic of unicorns as they relate to Christ and Christianity as I am (I kinda doubt it; she created an entire oracle deck and accompanying book on unicorns), or it implies that she’s just doing “damage control”, by refuting all of her previous work, or it means something a wee bit more sinister.

Now, that “something sinister” could be as simple as unmitigated greed, as has been posited by many in the Pagan community. In other words, as Connla so beautifully put it earlier this morning: the only “spirit” this woman has been “touched” by is the one that lives in her wallet which needs to be fed. Face it: there is a far wider Christian audience out there, when it comes to buying books, than there is a Pagan one. The Christian publishing industry is literally a multi-million dollar industry. As of 2016, Christians made up 73.7% of the adult U.S. population, with an estimated 2.4 billion Christians worldwide in 2012, as compared to only 1 million Pagans [link 1] [link 2]. Clearly, the statistics are in Ms. Virtue’s favor, when it comes to making more money as a “Christian convert”, than one of the “grandmothers of the New Age Movement”.

Or, that “something sinister” could be even more sinister. Now, I know a lot of people have a really hard time with the concept of “evil”. Most of those same people will totally call you out as a charlatan if you deign to use words like “demon” in their presence. That’s fine: as I say in the footnote at the beginning of this diatribe, “you do you, Honey”. I know what I’ve seen and experienced in my own little mystical life, and I have at least a passing glimpse of an understanding of physics, so yes, I believe in both evil and demons. If there is going to be “good” in the universe, there has to be its opposite as well, and if the word “evil” makes you uncomfortable as the designation of that opposite, please, go lodge a complaint with Merriam-Webster, rather than here, with me. I say that Ms. Virtue’s motives might be even more sinister, based on a couple of things: one, she is clearly now supposedly a self-professed Christian, yet in “rebuking” unicorns, she has also officially rebuked Christ Himself, which goes against everything else she’s hawking. And, two: ninety percent of the rest of her little list also directly refutes the very Bible she is claiming she wants to beat us into submission with, for she also “rebukes” angels (see Hebrews 13), positive affirmations (see Matthew 6), Ascended Masters (i.e., communicating with deceased religious leaders for guidance; see Matthew 17:1-4, Mark 9:2-6, and Luke 9:28-34, and google Transfiguration), astral projection (see 2 Corinthians 12:1-4), channeling (see 1 Corinthians 12:4-11, which is the list of the “gifts of the Holy Spirit”, which also includes wise counsel, clear understanding, proclamation/prophesy, distinguishing between spirits, and speaking in tongues/interpretation of tongues), Christ consciousness (see 1 John 2:6, 1 Corinthians 11:1, Ephesians 5:1-2, and Galatians 3:27, among many others, or simply google “what does the Bible say about being like Christ?”), divination (again, see 1 Corinthians 12:4-11, the list of the “gifts of the Holy Spirit”, which includes wise counsel, clear understanding, and prophesy), empowerment (see Luke 10:19-20, or simply google “what does the Bible say about empowerment?”), and that’s not even the whole list. I could literally go through the entire thing and refute almost every single assertion she has made with New Testament quotes! (That would be a blog post entire of itself, though. We’ll see what happens…for now, I’ll leave you with these, rather than be a total show-off.)

Now, none of this is me saying that just because she refuted Christ, the Bible, or whatever, that makes her automatically “evil”. But that is what a lot of non-crazy Christians would wholeheartedly tell you! This is me saying that she’s a total hypocrite, and myself and Jesus tend to have the same feelings when it comes to hypocrisy: it is readily one of the greatest sources of evil in the world. Basically, if someone is claiming to be one thing (in this case, a Christian), and then actively refuting or rebuking most of the extremely positive things that thing supposedly represents, they’re probably a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and that’s if you’re lucky! Generally, in my experience, it’s one of the hallmarks of “batting for the wrong team”, and I don’t mean “whoa, she’s a servant of Satan” (I’ve met some very nice non-theistic Satanists over the course of the past couple of years); I mean she’s actively putting more ugliness in a world that is already positively overrun with Ugly and by the modern definition of the word, that is evil. Or, if you prefer, sinister.

Perhaps the most telling sentence in Ms. Virtue’s entire diatribe is this:

“Remember that the devil always copies God, using poor quality substitutes.”

If that’s not the sound of one duck quacking, I don’t know what is! As Connla so eloquently stated this morning, drop the “d” off of “devil”, and see what you’re left with! Regardless of whether you subscribe to the devil himself as a personification of evil or not matters not at all in this conversation. You can easily just drop that “d”, and add a (s) to God, and that duck still quacks: “Remember that the evil always copies God(s), using poor quality substitutes”. Quack, quack.

As for me, I’ll keep my unicorns, as representations of all that is pure Light in this world, and leave this “poor substitute” for a human to wallow in her own hypocritical musings….

*If that last bit in the sentence–“interacting with unicorns”–completely discredits everything else I’m about to say in your mind, you do you, Honey! Or, you can stick around and read the rest of this post, because I have the research under my belt, as a Folklorist, former Christian, and ordained priestess, to put my money where my mouth is!