Venus in her swan-drawn chariot returns to find her lover, Adonis, slain by a big pig, the awful bore – holiness laid low.

In religion, death is usually a prelude to resurrection : one does not want to leave people with the wrong impression.   One wants to tell it like it is and this spirit of the Crown on the Tree of Life is is always associated with the farthest shore from which every traveller returns but unrecognised and only rarely with a tale to tell.

We see in Krishna's story the Traditional recognition this spirit which plumbs the depths, equally ascends the heights of joy and is repeatedly linked with romance, the gift of a spirit with feeling.  Christ too is the Bridegroom, at one point entertaining the five wise virgins who have saved the oil of their lamps in readiness.  In the Church he is the Bridegroom to the countless virgins who have taken the veil as faithful Brides of Christ, nuns.  In the End, in Revelation, and announced for now by the Pope in Rome in 1950, He is the Heavenly Bridegroom to the Heavenly Bride, the Virgin Mary but this theological union has the widest possible significance in which the scandal of incest has less import than an old fashioned marriage of convenience which produces universal joy and unnumbered children.

One would not expect Venus, the Queen of Love, to fall for a poor lover but it is almost the law of life, the greatest joys should be cruelly tempered with the ultimate tragedy.  This is the spirit of the Fishes, the highest holiness and the darkest treachery, too good for this world.   We need to make this world worthy of the bliss and divinity which are on offer to us all, when jealousy and envy can be banished.