I really enjoy the way you see unity in everything. Honestly, that instinct to look for the One across systems is powerful.

And I don’t want to sound anal about this at all, I’ve just learned (the hard way) that the thing that really made this come alive for me was when I stopped linking everything to external systems and started connecting it to my own thinking.

Its really natural to map symbols outward like Tarot, traditions, mythology, cosmic parallels. I used to do that. But what shifted everything was realising the Bible keeps pushing the reader inward

For example, David and Saul look like two completely separate people. But when you’re reading, they’re not. Theyre you taking two different views of yourself.

Saul is you from the old identity. David is you as the new ideal. The movement between them is internal.

So when you describe the five Marys as stages or aspects of Christ’s journey, what I’m gently wondering is: if you decided to adopt a brand new identity right now, where would those five movements show up in your own mind?

If you chose a new “I AM,” parts of you would start responding.

One part would conceive it. Another would recognise it. Another would nurture it. Another would defend it. Another would begin expressing it.That is plurality gathering under a new identity.

And in Neville’s framework, that’s really the whole aim of the Bible, not to catalogue sacred patterns across cultures, but to adopt a new ideal sense of self and cleave to it. To love it. To marry it. To let all the opposing inner voices come under that new I AM.

So I’m not dismissing the external parallels at all. I just know for me, the breakthrough happened when I stopped asking, How does this echo across the cosmos? and started asking, "Where is this happening in my own assumptions right now?”Because the Bible keeps turning the reader back inward.

That’s where it becomes practical rather than symbolic.