The Two-Headed Calf

Wrapping our finite earthbound minds around infinite spiritual concepts is tough and that’s why metaphorical language is almost always necessary. To that point, I ran across a striking image recently that I believe offers an excellent depiction of our central dilemma as fallen creatures and I wanted to share it: It comes from a chapter in Alan Jacob’s excellent new book “Original Sin,” in which Jacobs recounts the true story of author Rebecca West’s journey to Yugoslavia in the 1930s to work on a history of the country. At one point, West and her husband visit a museum where they discover several oddities, including:

“...a stuffed two-headed calf in a glass case, an animal ‘strangely lovely in form,’ so that ‘it was a shock to find that of the two heads which branched like candelabra, one was lovely, but one was hideous…’ The museum’s custodian affirms that the calf lived for two days ‘and should be alive today had it not been for its nature.’ West’s husband expresses puzzlement at this statement, and the custodian explains that when they fed milk to the calf through its beautiful head, its ugly head spit the milk out, so no food got into its stomach, and it died. This account prompts West to meditate: ‘To have two heads, one that looks to the right and another that looks to the left, one that is carved by grace and another that is not, the one that wishes to live and the other that does not; this was an experience not wholly unknown to human beings…’”

Observes Jacobs of this story: “The whole history of Yugoslavia, West comes to think, is the story of a two-headed calf, and maybe the whole of human history … ‘[Quoting Alexasandr Solzhenitsyn] The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either – but right through every human heart.’ In other words, each and every one of us is a divided self, a two-headed calf … (West) sees with an absolute clarity our innate dividedness, the immovable and constant presence of an ever vigilant ugly head, always determined to expel nourishment and thereby to reject life and to choose death instead …”

A two-headed calf! It’s an image right out of a carnival sideshow. But like effective metaphors can do, it should stick with you, giving your imagination something concrete to work with in helping you make sense of a difficult spiritual subject. I know it has done so for me.