The spiritual meaning of the Desert

JESUS was tempted by Satan in a desert, Tony Stark was forced to become Iron Man in a desert cave, and in DUNE, Paul Atreides meets his destiny on a desert planet. The desert is where spiritual adventures happen and it is the home of modern man, whether he knows it or not👇

Saint-Exupéry in The Little Prince (1943): “I have always loved the desert. One sits down on a desert sand dune, sees nothing, hears nothing. Yet through the silence something throbs, and gleams...” Insights, epiphanies, and entire new religions reach man's soul in deserts

Mythologist Cirlot wrote that God is found in the desert because it is the "domain of the Sun." The unearthly shine of the Sun reminds us of "things transcendent." For Chesterton, God's nature was like the Sun's. Impossible to see directly, yet making vision itself possible.

A desert's perfect symbolic flip side: a forest. Wet & fertile where the desert is dry & infertile, hidden from the Sun where a desert is fully exposed, obstructing man's movement where a desert allows freedom - a forest is feminine, inward-looking, mother nature herself.

Eucherius of Lyon, a 4th century saint, wrote: "The desert deserves to be called a temple of our God without walls. Since it is clear that God dwells in silence, we must believe that he loves the solitary expanses of the desert." In psychic minimalism, the master winks at us.

Jane Tompkins: "The desert flatters the human figure by making it seem dominant. There is nothing to stop the horseman's free movement across the terrain. The possibilities are infinite." In modernity's desert, you are free, dominant even, but quite lost. No arrows pointing home.

T.S. Eliot on the desert:

"You neglect and belittle the desert.

The desert is not remote in southern tropics

The desert is not only around the corner,

The desert is squeezed in the tube-train next to you,

The desert is in the heart of your brother."

Kazantzakis, Greek writer: "The mind topples in the Desert not from fright but from sacred awe; sometimes it collapses downward, sometimes it springs upward, enters heaven, sees God face to face, touches the hem of His blazing garment without being burned, hears what He says."

Lawrence Of Arabia, the man who cycled 3,500 km to study castles at 19 and became one of the Allied leaders of the Arab Revolt during WW-I, wrote that after you learn to forget about the desert's "emptiness," you find God to be the "only refuge and rhythm of being."

Modern man is on a lonely trek without allies. The blessing to roam free is the curse to get lost, there are no sign-boards, a lot of mirages, oases few and far in-between. Man needs God to whisper to him now.

Check out: Critics Of Modernity