What is the Leonic virtue that was spoken of as an obstacle to the spirit’s metamorphosis?
Is it not exactly the same as the “pride” against which the gospels advise the faithful (in many religious tradiitons)? The worldly pride, the noble pride of accomplishment and potency, military discipline- including that of the intellect, emotions, and physical body. All this is virtuous and good, but all this is still “Rajas”. The radiance of the perfected king of the jungle is splendid, but if the spirit further transforms within experience, and in a sense overcomes (throws away) this worthy attire of earthly “royalty” and the approval of powerful colleagues, may the spirit attain to incomparable “Sattva”. (Or perhaps be mangled by the many wheat-from-chaff cleansing perils and detours on the way) Would the carefull reader not agree, after all, that here the overcoming of Leonic virtue could well be understood as that typical experience of newborn saints, for whom their own percieved virtuousness and piousness becomes utterly unimportant, and they seem to delight in little mockeries pertaining to the state of human affairs in religion, which to most, are by definition blasphemous (unvirtuous) things… This said, there is, simultaneously, an “undercurrent from the the underworld” that’s very much detectable, and this Nietzschean “overcoming of virtue” is tinged with victim blood, and the characteristically demonic disdain for weaknesses like mercy, compassion, and having conscience. Such an intertwining is only paradoxical in seeming, and not in function, where the simultaneous upward lift and downward pull perform most harmoniously.
I’ve come to the conclusion that a practicable equals-sign between the three gunas - pillars of Indo-Aryan philosophy - is not only semantically appropriate but quite intentional (perhaps it appears courtesy of Schopenhauer’s oriental fascinations), to wit: Tamas, the guna of dimness (which also means “indifference”) portrayed by the most indifferent animal, the Camel, Rajas (Raja means “king”) by of course the Lion, and Sattva (loosely “purity”) by Child. But this is nothing new.
An excellent way to mis-construe this spiritual roadmap is by imagining that Camel is valuationally the lowest and Child the highest, and therefore that according to this illustrious plan, all must skip the troublesome Lion stage, as soon as possible begin to act childlike and pure, which would then finalize the spirit’s sequence of changes and allow one to rest upon laurels. Acting this way or that way has very little to do with the spirit’s changes, in the first place, as acting is the domain of persons(theatric masks), and not of spirits. Just as one may say that a map is not the territory, so too, the parable is not the reality that it hints at; and traversing much of the actual territory is inevitable, if the poetic metamorphosis is ever to occur.
-WL