TOTAL ECLIPSE
OF THE SOUL

In the top right corner shines the sun. The throne of the Lord is attended to by the Holy angels, who sing songs that praise the creation of the heavens and earth.

Below, in the realms of flesh and bone, lies the eclipse of the heart. The forbidden fruit, attended to by Adam and Eve and their children, forever exiled from the light of the sun. Gather around the hearth, for in this cold and dark world we can do little but dream of a light we have never seen, and tell hushed tales of what we think may await on the other side of the eclipse.

And then, of course, there are those who shoot for the shining star in the sky, but miss entirely. Far away from the eclipsed night and the bright throne, they land instead in a bed of idolatry and blood sacrifice. To them the faces they see in the dark, the ones that demand the blood of their fellow man as payment for light, are the true Lord. To them, the one that cast them and their ancestors away from his garden of light was mistaken, not their forefathers! They have been wronged by their creator, and have now turned their back on him.

In the age of the sea people they burst open the gates of every nation, in the age of Rome they broke through the Limès and came within a heartbeat of ending civilization itself, in the time of Lindisfarne, they ransacked the monastery, desecrated God's sanctuary, and laid wastes to the house of our hope. In time of knights and lords they gave plague-stricken blankets to the natives. Later gunboats and settlers streamed the seas, colony after colony. Today, they wipe their noses clean with white powder, and count bombs and dollars in the millions and billions. All of these, and more, can be seen in this image that catalogues both our nature and our history.