Jesus, Lucifer and the Architecture of Meaning in the Face of Tragedy


Facing the harshness of reality, the human being clings to explanations that restore a sense of stability. Science describes, but it does not embrace. Logic orders, but it shatters under an unexpected blow. In that instant, magical belief emerges; not as a denial of the world, but as first aid for the soul: an ancestral way of weaving meaning where only ruins remain.

“God has a plan.”

“Jesus protects.”

“The evil comes from outside.”

These sentences are not dogmas; they are bandages. They do not seek truth; they seek survival. In order not to fall apart, the psyche projects outward the cause of harm and upward the source of consolation. Jesus and Lucifer thus become the two pillars of this emergency architecture: one concentrates the promise of order, the other explains disorder.

From a Lacanian perspective, this gesture serves the function of the sinthome, that symbolic point of anchoring that keeps the structure cohesive when tragedy loosens the knots between the Real, the Symbolic, and the Imaginary.


It is the splint that immobilizes the fracture so it can begin to knit.

But no splint can stay with you forever. Over time, you discover you cannot live indefinitely in a world split into black and white. The initial comfort begins to feel hollow. Simple explanations collide with the complexity of real pain. Sooner or later, life presents you with a wound that no doctrine fully heals.

Then a bifurcation appears:

stay in the childlike safety of the dichotomy,
or walk through the anguish of a deeper understanding.

It is here that symbols open. The opposition between Jesus and Lucifer is not a map of the cosmos; it is a map of the soul. The history of religions confirms it: this sharp division was late. In the first centuries of Christianity, lucifer, “light-bearer,” was also a title applied to Christ, as Scripture still preserves when calling him “the morning star” (Rev. 22:16). There was no antagonism, but two modulations of the luminous: a light that shelters and a light that reveals.

And this ambiguity traverses them both. Jesus is not only comfort; he is also the one who claims not to have come to bring peace but a sword, commanding an inner rupture. And Lucifer, in certain Ethiopian and Gnostic traditions, does not fall from pure evil but from an excess of clarity or love.
The shadow, then, is not born of hatred, it is born of overflow.

When this becomes flesh, the narrative stops being a refuge and becomes a workshop.

Magical belief no longer protects: it dialogues.
It no longer expels the shadow: it translates it.

From here on, symbols cease to act as shields and become tools to rebuild intimacy after collapse. It is no longer about blaming an external demon or awaiting redemption from a distant protector, but about integrating what once seemed incompatible: fragility and strength, fall and light, wound and meaning.

Jesus becomes the metaphor for the gesture that embraces pain without denying it.
Lucifer becomes the symbol of the courage to look at what burns.
One teaches care; the other, clarity. Both are ways of holding oneself in the open air.

Tragedy is not overcome: it is inhabited.

And to inhabit it without falling apart, you need a symbolic language capable of containing the paradox of living. Meaning is not born from choosing between the light that consoles and the light that reveals, but from learning to hold them together in the same inner space.

There, when the double light ceases to frighten, you understand that true strength does not come from being saved by an external clarity, but from daring to produce meaning from your own wound. Jesus and Lucifer then stop pointing in opposite directions and begin to name two complementary gestures of the same operation of the soul: embrace and revelation, tenderness and truth.

And then the essential appears, with a sharpness no tragedy can erase: it is not about who saves or who condemns, but about what allows you to stay alive inside. There, in that double light, you no longer ask to be saved: you ask to keep desiring from the very center of the fall.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Anxious Cat: The Case of Q

Image
Everybody who has had pets knows that they all have unique personalities, fears, and desires, and in some cases, they can experience emotions such as shame, guilt, playfulness, and anxiety. I have been living with a cat for some time now. During this period, I have learned to understand him beyond his normal behavior; I can recognize when he is anxious. In Lacanian psychoanalysis, anxiety arises from the delicate and ever-shifting interplay between three fundamental registers of human psyche: the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real. The inherent tension and potential for disruption within their interconnectedness generate anxiety. Here's a brief breakdown: The Imaginary: This realm encompasses identification, the ego, and the formation of the self through specular images and identifications with others. It is where we develop a sense of bodily unity and coherence, primarily during the mirror stage, when an infant recognizes themselves in the mirror. This sense of self, however,...
Read more

Unmasking Evil: The Truth Behind Our Darkest Desires

Image
Evil, as an action, could be a thought, but that is usually forgotten, a damned intranscendent mental Sin. In general, evil is only evil when it becomes action and comes out of us as a manifestation of our darkness. But, as an action, it is not inherently evil; rather, it is evil only in relation to other actions or, better yet, perceptions of actions—interpretations. Above all, evil is a function of one's relationship with one's manque, the fundamental lack that structures one's desire. Most of the time, what is evil is not determined by an external reaction, but by the accusation of one's inner Other, nor by the moral codifications that attempt to define it. Rather, evil’s true weight emerges in the subjective coordinates of one's own lack, in how one's act situates itself in relation to this void that constitutes one. In Lacanian psychoanalysis, the subject is always structured around the manque-à-être—the lack of being. It is this absence that fuels desire, ...
Read more

The Cat F. and her object of desire

Image
There is a toy the cat I live with, F., loves. A small, insignificant object by itself—a hair band—but for her, it is everything. She plays with it, run with it, and then—loses it. Again and again, it disappears under the sofa. At first, I thought it was mere accident, an unfortunate consequence of her wild enthusiasm. I would retrieve it (with difficulty, moving the whole big and heavy sofa), place it back in front of her, and she would resume the game. Then I noticed something strange: F. was not merely losing the toy—she was hiding it, pushing it carefully under the sofa and then wait. Not searching for it, not retrieving it herself, but waiting for it to come out, like a mouse. This is the game. Not the toy, not the having of it, but the not having it—the game of waiting. Lacan taught us that desire is not for the object itself, but for the dream of having it, and the wonderful things that it will make us feel. The objet petit a , that little elusive remainder, is not what we want...
Read more