Sedona Chamber of Commerce

The Living Christ is crucified upon the Tree of Life,

depicting humanity’s journey from primal roots in the hollow depths of earthly creation to the spiritual perfection of the Holy Trinity (golden apples) at the ultimate highest level.

The golden rose symbolizes that incremental, but inevitable, unfoldment of perfection as epitomized by the Christ whose omnipresence, though often concealed, has always been and will always be.

Though many have followed a path that seemed right, as the right hand false secular trunk, it leads to a dead end, severed from the True Path. The Christ connection at the split leads to Life.

The severed branch, however, has become the cross piece, the “patibulum” to which the Christ is nailed and tied, with the small leaf budding at the end showing that even those that are dead can be resurrected by the Spirit into life eternal. The original twelve leaves in the branches above allude to the symbolism of that number, 12 months, 12 Disciples, etc.

The “corpus”, girdled thrice around by hemp rope binding Him to the physical, three-dimensional, earth raises His left hand (divine feminine/heart) upward receiving Truth. The single index finger pointing heavenward represents the first “Great Commandment” to “Love God.” His right hand (divine masculine/mind) directed downward bestows a blessing unto all gathered here below, with two fingers raised for the second “Commandment” to simply “Love Life.” The bonds of both hands are gradually loosening, as His passing over to the final act of his “Mission” draws nigh.

The crowning glory, though originally meant in derision, is the “crown of thorns,” with three rose vines entwined around his anguished brow; the Holy Trinity made manifest in the ultimate spiritual perfection of the “Rose of Sharon,” the Christ. The Crown is adorned with 100 thorns – the “90 & 9” plus the one for the “lost sheep" found by the Good Shepherd – that none shall ever be truly “lost”.

The wooden sign nailed over Christ represents the Latin inscription INRI. The Latin inscriptions reads in English as “Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews” (John 19:19). John 19:20 states that this was written in three languages: Hebrew, Latin and Greek and was affixed to the “Holy Cross.”

James Muir, Bronze Allegorical Sculpture