Since I started this devotional period for Harlequin I’ve gained some pretty interesting insights into his character and how he fits into my weird little pantheon.
Probably the most important of these insights is this:
Harlequin represents an energy that is ravenously hungry, that can never be satisfied or contained. Hungry for food, hungry for intoxication, hungry for flesh, hungry for love, hungry for power, hungry for fame. But most of all he hungers for the feeling of being hungry — to distract him from the terrible emptiness within. He can’t feel anything so he tries to feel everything and he has gone quite mad as a result.
It is a very different madness from that which belongs to Dionysos — complementary, yes. But also worlds apart. Weirdly, it feels more like the madness of Ariadne. There’s probably something to that.
You know, this is a textbook description of an enneagram type 7–which is actually my type! (Although it has some elements of a 4 as well, which many people have thought I am…and, classically, Dionysos would be more of a 4.) The deadly sin of the type 7 is gluttony; with many things, I don’t know when to quit…
I don’t know a whole lot about the enneagram system — I probably should.
It’s not utterly essential…It can be useful and helpful, but no more so than any number of other systems, from Meyers-Briggs to astrology.
I am going to write a book on it one day, which will largely re-interpret it…that might be the book I try and get published by a bigger publisher, like Llewellyn or something. We shall see!
Also sounds similar to someone else I know…
Oh yeah?