Did you ever notice that three of the ingredients in the witches’ potion in Macbeth represent the three major Abrahamic religions?
Third Witch: Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,
Witch’s mummy, maw and gulf
Of the ravin’d salt-sea shark,
Root of hemlock digg’d i’ th’ dark,
Liver of blaspheming Jew,
Gall of goat, and slips of yew
Sliver’d in the moon’s eclipse,
Nose of Turk and Tartar’s lips…(4.1.22–29)
Examining the relevant ingredients of the brew which eventually though implicitly brings Macbeth to his tragic end, we can see “liver of blaspheming Jew” (Judaism), “Nose of Turk” (Islam), and “Tartar’s lips” (Christian Orthodox). Macbeth, of course, who is about to enter the scene, represents Western European Christianity (and everything associated with it, such as capitalism, coal, colonialism, etc.). Thus, including Macbeth, all four representatives of the major Abrahamic religions are included. The witches, by listing these symbolic aspects (and implying Macbeth’s inclusion and the representative of Western European Christianity) mean to single out these four flavors of closely related “triumphalist” religions, which all stress patriarchal (male) power and (female) obedience to this power.
These patriarchal religions also are strongly associated with political power (expressed as colonialism, capitalism and industrialization in history) that both drives Macbeth to the top and then destroys him in eventual collapse. The word “blaspheming” spotlights the contentious and bellicose relationship between these religions. Each one takes the position that the others are “wrong” or “blaspheming”. The body parts (liver, nose, lips) foreshadow Macbeth’s own death, his own breakdown as he collapses. This is because a non-sacred nature (where Earth becomes merely a source of economic resources and a sink for wastes instead of a precious spiritual resource to be protected for generations acting together politically for this purpose) means that eventually the planet becomes so degraded environmentally that it cannot sustain life or any type of religious groups with clerics and hierarchies, all of which require all sorts of extra income and resources for their texts, buildings, parking lots, electricity, etc.
(It is important to understand that Shakespeare was not a “hater”, but more like an anthropologist or a scientist, who viewed history over a long time frame. He would NEVER agree that “hate” or antagonism is fine, and he merely predicts the decline of some religions based on lack of interest and lack of relevance as people increasingly turn their attention elsewhere — -and in fact, this is already happening with the rise of the religious “nones”, just as he predicted.)
Thus, in The Merchant of Venice, Portia’s line “Which is the merchant here? And which the Jew?” also implies that, from the standpoint of the Goddess (pantheism and paganism), there is not much difference theologically between any of the Abrahamic religions, which all have a stern male god and do not have a goddess (Divine Feminine).
Another piece of evidence that Shakespeare did not see any particular difference between the Abrahamic religions can be seen in Shylock’s lines addressed to Antonio: “You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog, and spet upon my Jewish gabardine” (1.3.111–12). Interestingly, we never actually see Antonio spitting on anyone, including on Shylock (there are no stage directions that say “Antonio spits on Shylock”. Although we can be of course one hundred percent sure that Shylock is telling the truth (and Antonio even confirms this: “I am as like to call thee so again/To spet on thee again” (1.3.130–131)), nevertheless, Antonio never fails to behave properly, kindly and like a more or less sensitive gentleman throughout the play. This opens up a little gap in the mind as the reader/audience must mentally form the image of Antonio spitting and try to square it with the polite, well-spoken and urbane Antonio presented on stage. This gap is exactly the sort of quiet and subtle trick that Shakespeare uses to raise questions in the minds of the people who consume his content: “why is someone like Antonio, a polite person, driven to behave so badly to someone else?” “what sort of narratives are being fed to people to make them behave so out of their usual kind character?” Shylock is very much humanized as well. He cares about his daughter, misses his late wife, has his feelings deeply hurt by being spat upon and cursed and marginalized. Again, this was Shakespeare’s strategy to undercut the stereotype of the “other”, the Jew, and have it be at odds with the facts, since Shylock is a family man. I even think the stress of losing his daughter Jessica might precipitate his cruelty towards Antonio. (A case of Shakespeare illustrating how it is the interaction of the Abrahamic religions that causes conflict).
The Goddess
When interpreting Shakespeare’s plays, my strategy is to investigate references to the sun, especially those that are linked to characters, such as the line “Juliet is the sun”, the line that reveals Juliet’s identity in a secret play about the history of man and the sun hidden in Romeo and Juliet. Similarly, Duncan the king is referenced by Lady Macbeth’s line “O, never shall sun that morrow see” (1.4,60–1) because he (Duncan, symbolizing the sun economy and sun culture) will not survive until morning.
In The Merchant of Venice, Portia is first described in the play, by Bassanio, as having “sunny locks” (1.1.169):
In Belmont is a lady richly left
And she is fair and, fairer than that word,
Of wondrous virtues. Sometimes from her eyes
I did receive fair speechless messages.
Her name is Portia, nothing undervalued
To Cato’s daughter, Brutus’ Portia.
Nor is the wide world ignorant of her worth,
For the four winds blow in from every coast
Renowned suitors, and her sunny locks
Hang on her temples like a golden fleece,
Which makes her seat of Belmont Colchis’ strond,
And many Jasons come in quest of her. (I.1.161–172)
This first characterization of Portia, spoken in her absence, functions as a litany of words from classical mythology and the religion of Antiquity. From the context, the phrase “hang on her temples” indicates the anatomical place near the forehead, but once the word “temples” is included in the litany of other words (golden fleece, Jason, Colchis, sunny), “temples” takes on its religious meaning as well―importantly not Christianity, the religion of Shakespeare’s country―but a pagan one, based on nature deities. Other words in Bassanio’s speech also give Portia an aura of being tremendous beyond a human scale, more like on a planetary scale (wide world, four winds, every coast, wondrous, speechless messages, sunny). The presentation of her secret identity as the sun (a goddess, energy, the material cosmos) is through the interaction of the two worlds: the Classical world, tied to nature gods, and the cosmic world of vastness. The word “sunny” is the only direct iteration of her hidden identity, and it connects both the cosmic, huge world, and the spiritual world of Antiquity. “Nor is the wide world ignorant of her worth” also clues us in to the notion that the sun is the base of economies and religions everywhere; the Elizabethans had some knowledge of other countries and cultures.
Later, in Act Five, after Portia has defeated Shylock in court, and is on her way back to Belmont, it is likewise significant that she and Nerissa comment on the lights in the window of Portia’s house:
Portia: That light we see is burning in my hall.
How far that candle throws his beams!
So shines a good deed in a naughty world.
Nerissa: When the moon shone, we did not see the candle.
Portia: So doth the greater glory dim the less:
A substitute shines brightly as a king
Until a king be by….(V.i.93–5)
Of course, Portia, by implication is the “king” whose true power has been revealed, in comparison with Shylock’s (who allegorizes coal, as he uses the word “stones” a lot[1]), to be much greater than his. She has underscored her status as a “king” (a cosmic king, that is, the sun) in her famous “the quality of mercy is not strained” speech (4.1.184–205) where she uses a heavy and notable abundance of words like “awe”, “majesty”, “throned monarch”, “kings”, “mightiest in the mightiest”, “God”, “power”, all words of supreme power which all get associated with her, whose voice utters them:
The quality of mercy is not strain’d,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
’Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy. I have spoke thus much
To mitigate the justice of thy plea;
Which if thou follow, this strict court of Venice
Must needs give sentence ‘gainst the merchant there. (4.1.184–205)
Portia, speaking these lines, becomes very regal, very majestical. The message about mercy, while pleasant, doesn’t carry much weight in light of the fact that the Christians don’t have that much mercy on Shylock after defeating him, taking all his assets and forcing him to convert.
So we are left with the regal atmosphere enshrining the secret goddess, Portia. Moreover, the way that Shakespeare uses the gender conventions of the Abrahamic religions (“God himself”) means that he was strategically hiding his pantheistic/pagan message under an orthodox surface and actively and deliberately attempting to trick people engaging in Shakespeare interpretation, in the same way that, for example, Hamlet deceives Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, sending them to their deaths by rewriting their letter of command to the English king. Note that Hamlet (who allegorizes Shakespeare himself) expresses no remorse at all for this act when he tells Horatio, “They are not near my conscience. Their defeat /Does by their own insinuation grow” (5.2.60–61). In fact, Hamlet’s words are also an implicit admission of guilt on the part of Shakespeare that he intentionally engaged in deception when he wrote his works. Shakespeare deeply supported the Divine Feminine, the goddess, and pantheism. In The Comedy of Errors (which, in my interpretation, is about the beginning, middle and end of Christianity) he predicts that everyone will eventually “turn witch”[2], which basically (as far as I can tell) means people will eventually go with individual spirituality with no clerics. Witches have a rule of no clerics (to be more specific, witches have a rule of 13 witches maximum to a coven, in order to prevent cults and groupthink, but most witches don’t join a coven and just practice alone). People think that witches are those who wear purple skirts or cast spells with feathers and rocks and crystals. But a witch is actually someone who is spiritually independent and doesn’t listen to or follow clerics. There are no clerics in witchcraft. There are no denominations, groups, sacred texts, official buildings, and such. This doesn’t mean that witches don’t read books or follow ethical and moral ideas, because witches obviously are free to choose to be good and kind, like anyone else.
[1] https://www.academia.edu/96890834/_Come_Ho_and_Wake_Diana_the_Divine_Feminine_and_the_Solar_Allegory_in_The_Merchant_of_Venice
[2] https://www.academia.edu/60838136/_Turning_Witch_The_beginning_middle_and_end_of_Christianity_depicted_allegorically_in_The_Comedy_of_Errors_
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